ALL THAT GLITTERS--by Linden Malki

Money is  not the point.  You can have a little and are OK--or not; you can have a lot, and worry more.  Jesus comments that riches can make it harder to have the right heart.

The point is the place that money or "stuff" has on your priorities.  What do you really want, and what are you willing to do? I've known people who will go hungry rather than compromise a principle; I've know people that will do whatever it takes to bring in the bucks. Sometimes these people are married to each other. in both cases, it can become a giant source of criticism and conflict.

We can become "hoarders", wanting more stuff--sometimes needing to "have" money but live poor while it piles up; sometimes spending it on things that don't do anything but get in the way. We can spend it on trying to impress people, or obsess over what other people have.  How much of our conversation concerns how much we have, how much we need, how much do the neighbors have?

Even giving away money can be good or bad--are we doing it to gain "points" with the world, or with God? Are we giving with "strings" attached; insisting on it being used in ways that we think others ought to want, and promoting our own agenda whether or not it actually has healthy results?  Are we buying influence behind the scenes, or using it to throw our own weight around?  Are we "doing
good" to make ourselves feel good?

Money, or what it buys, shows what it really important to us--our own self-interest, or God.  It's not easy to give up our own fascination with ourselves.  We live in a world that is increasingly self-absorbed, and it's not good for us spiritually. Look at the 10 commandments: most of them warn about putting ourselves, our wants, ahead of what God says is His design for us.

The Power of the Gift--by Linden Malki

Once upon a time there was a man who lived by a bay, and had a boat. With his boat, he could gto fishing; he could put out crab pots, he could just let the boat drift in the waves and watch the seagulls swooping and circling overhead. If he wanted to visit friends on the other side of the bay, he could row over. It took a time and effort, but the bay was pretty much his back yard; he could get almost anywhere he wanted to go there on the bay by himself. He didn't need anybody; he could do it himself.

One day a friend brought him a mast with a sail ready to rig. So they rigged up the sail, and took the boat out. The friend knew something about sailing, and the boat owner knew how the boat handled, and so the two of them could sail farther and faster than either or both of them could row. Of course,it took both of them to handle it under sail, and they had to have the right wind and weather, but they knew a sudden gust of wind or a storm could be trouble.

Then they had the opportunity to get a deal on a motor for the boat; it was a gift. They made sure it ran, mounted it on the boat, and set off across the bay. This was a whole new thing--they could do things and get places with the motor than weren't feasible with just oars and sail.  And--they could take it out of the bay and into the open water; they weren't limited by muscle and wind power. Of course, the motor used fuel, but they found a source for fuel and oil for the motor.

One day, the owner of the boatyard came to them and asked them to come into his office. He had charts laid on on the table, and he showed them what the bay and the adjoining sea was really like; where the water was deep, where the rocks were, where the sandbars were, and how the currents ran. He told them that one of the boats in the drydock needed some special parts, and they were available at a harbor a little ways up the coast. "Now that you have some experience with your motorboat, can you go pick up these parts? I'll supply the fuel, and there's a bonus in it for you."

Think about our lives--there are things we can do with the abilities that we developed on our own, but when we are given a source of power and direction, we can do things not just for ourselves, but for others as well. The combination of who God made us to be and what He can do with us if we let Him add on the power and fuel, takes makes us unique.

“There are no real personalities apart from God. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerers have been; how gloriously different are the saints.

But there must be a real giving up of the self. ... It will come when you are looking for Him...Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” ― C.S. Lewis

BEYOND TIME--by Linden Malki

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." This is one of the most profound statements in Scripture--or anywhere else.  Noted physicist (and atheist) Steven Hawking once said "You can’t get to a time before the big bang, because there was no time before the big bang. We have finally found something that does not have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means there is no possibility of a creator because there is no time for a creator to have existed."  He has missed the whole point!  God existed before Time, and He created Time.  Moses, who had truly talked with the Creator, said it like this: "Before the mountains were begotten, and the earth and the world were brought forth, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn man back into dust, saying, 'Return, O children of men.'  For a thousand years in your sight are as yesterday now that it is passed, or as a watch of the night." [Psalm 90:2-4]  Moses realized that God was eternally outside of Time.

We are  obsessed with Time; our whole lives are organized around time. We celebrate milestones of the passage of time; we make sense of the world by referencing time. One of the most powerful tools for understanding not only history but its effect on our world is the "timeline."  I had a seventh-grade teacher who put up a ribbon with places to insert markers around the classroom, and we added markers as we studied history and other subjects that had a relationship to history. By the end of the year, we were expected to be able to walk around the room and identify each marker and its importance. My best friend and I asked if we could made a dialog out of it,and the teacher gave us additional references to add as appropriate. We did a 2-girl hour-long comedy sketch of the history of the world for most of the school; this was my first written drama.

We can get something of a "feel" for God's view of history by looking back; we can pick up a reference book, open it anywhere, and see what was happening at a specific time and place. We can turn pages back or forward and dip into other events and other places. I suspect that this is God's view of the universe, but He can see it all, beginning to end--not being limited to a specific time and place as we are.  I cannot imagine what Eternity will be like, but that it will be totally different that anything we can imagine. I suspect that we also will not be stuck with time that passes at a specific rate and moves in one direction.

I also suspect that we get a little preview of God's version of time even in this world of clocks and days and seasons; we've all had the experience of subjective time that is not in synch with the clock. There are times when we become so engrossed in something that is happening that time flies by and we were not aware of the tick-tick-tick of  "real" time. We also have experiences of time that drags, either because we have "nothing to do", or we are looking forward to something that seems to be taking forever. (Moms know about subjective time, from the experience of having children to watching them grow, to watching them wait impatiently for some things and seeing time fly in others.)
We also have the markers of day and night, winter and summer, and experience the changes in these during the course of the year. Several years ago, my son David and I were in Finland the last weeks of June, not quite far enough to get a total midnight sun, but almost--at one point, he heard a weather report that announced "sunset 1am, sunrise 3am, twilight none." We went walking through a city on the west coast of Finland with afternoon sun at midnight, and went driving one evening out on an island chain in the gulf between Sweden and Finland most of the night, with the sun skimming the horizon.  God gives us these glimpses of the elasticity of time.

Time makes us plan and take responsibility for how we use the time He gives us; we also know that His schedule is not always what we want, but His timing is better than ours. It's not a matter of rigidly scheduling ourl lives (that doesn't work well) but of being aware of His leading as we seek His purpose for us.

I Am Second--by Linden Malki

Seen painted on a truck I saw at a stop sign on my way to work this morning:"I Am Second".  I recognized the

reference from having read a book of this name recently; it is stories of people, some famous, some not, whose messed-up lives were changed when they realized that they were called to put God first in their lives--all parts of their lives--and themselves second.  (When I saw a Harvest Crusade sticker on the rear bumper, I knew that they'd read the book.) You can even say that there are two kinds of people in this world: ones whose priorities and purpose are second to God's; and those who put themselves first. 

On first looking at God's direction for your life, it looks scary. I remember being skeptical about Matthew 11:30, where Jesus tells his followers that "my yoke is easy and my burden light." It doesn't look that easy, when you look at it from the outside; like those in John 6:66 that left Jesus because the way looked hard. But as always, context is important: 'Come all you who are weary and burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart. Your souls will find rest...: (Matthew11:28+)  The key is that we are not expected to carry the whole yoke; He will carry the weight; it is his strength that makes it possible. I found out a long time ago that I cannot do everything  myself.  And it's not always the same answer! I don't forget three "booming voice in my head" unmistakable answers to prayers: One was "Shut up, lady, I'll handle this!"; another was "I gave you a brain, use it!"; and the other:" I gave you a different gift."  What I had to was 1:drop the subject and go on--the situation did resolve itself in time and in stages, and turned out now to be way better than I could have dreamed; 2: I went with my best judgment, and again the long run was an amazing blessing; and 3: the gift He brought to my attention has gone in directions I wouldn't have ever expected.

We are surrounded by people who want what they want for their own self-interest, self-esteem, self-amusement--we can look around and make a long list. The common thread is that the result is usually disappointing; doing more of the same looking for more satisfaction usually gives less. Even doing "good works" can be done for the wrong reasons--read a very interesting article recently pointing out that we as a nation are spending more every year trying to make people "happy", and the poverty rate is the same as it was 60 years ago; a lot of people made money and jobs out of the programs (mostly the administrators), but the problems are still there and sometimes worse. Charities that collect money to cure something or fix something very often spend most of their income on "administrating" and nagging advice, and very little gets actually fixed. I don't get very many charitable spam calls any more; I used to ask "how much of what you take in actually is used for the intended purpose" and the solicitor either doesn't know (and if asks, is shocked at the answer) or gets very defensive about how expensive fundraising is, and the cause is fortunate to get something more than nothing. (I think I got taken off the lists.) But the solicitors and administrators and donors and advocates go home thinking what good people they are--but what they are getting is warm fuzzies for their own self-image. 

When my kids were little, I told them that not every idea that came into their head was worth acting on.  Sometimes I got an "oh, mom, you're just negative!" But there did come a day when I heard one of my daughters tell a high-school friend who had been complaining about her parents: "You ought to listen-they really aren't as dumb as they look." That works on another level as well: we may think we know what we're doing, but not everything we think we want is worth doing. One of the ideas out there about God is that He's "negative"--watches to make sure you're not having fun. God's not as dumb as we sometimes think, either--there are things that He tells us not to do that in the long run are NOT good for us, and do not get us where He wants us to be: fit for Heaven, to live with Him there. 

God Designed Inlaws--by Linden Malki

"Inlaws" are a common subject for comedians, sitcoms, and gossip; but it has been said that inlaws are the glue that holds the human community together.  They are the folks that become part of your extended family; people who will in the long run share grandchildren and connect you with a whole additional chunk of humanity.  The power of marriages to connect more than just two individuals has been recognized since the beginning of history; the classic example is Solomon, who married 300+ wives to connect with all the tribal and political leadership in his part of the world. He did have political peace, but it cost not just him but a good part of his own family their spiritual heritage. On the other end, we see small communities who are all cross-connected and ingrown.

At its best, extended families are a positive thing. Coming from a large extended family, and marrying into a large extended family, I have had the privilege of connecting with a wide variety of interesting people, from a wide variety of backgrounds. My dad's inlaws were pretty much Scandinavian; his grandchildren's inlaws look like the UN. Several years ago, my daughter and I visited one of her cousins in England, and one night at dinner, between a total of 10 people, all connected by blood and/or marriage, we had ancestral backgrounds of Sweden, Finland, Lebanon, Turkey, Italy, South Africa, and the Philippines, all within two or three generations. Not having sisters, I am grateful for sisters-in-law, one of whom was my earliest mentor and all of whom are valued friends.

It is especially good when the families have church connections as well.  My dad and his next younger brother's families keep running across each other in all sorts of places; one of my cousins knew my husband John's family in Lebanon before I met him; I have met people in all sorts of places who know various missionary relatives; and one of my cousins and I both wound up in San Bernardino after growing up in totally different parts of the country--and her son Mark Lambert and I were on the NCF Ministry Board together for several years; and there are more.

Hanging in there through 50 or 60 years of marriage isn't always easy, but I've been to several celebrations of family and friends that have made it.  One couple that I have particularly appreciated is Al and Edie Lambert; Edie's and my dad were the two older brothers and always close; so we knew our uncles well.  After my dad was gone, my uncle and aunt (who also made more than 60 years of marriage!) were substitute grandparents for my kids. To make it better, Al and John got to be good friends as well as inlaws.  This is the  picture I found for this week,  illustrating the results of one family who served the Lord and raised their kids to serve Him as well. This is God's intention for His church and His world!

Ripples--by Linden Malki

Mom, why does Dad have a secret cell phone?"  My friend suspected something like this, but she was sad that their son had found out about it. Things had not been good for a long time, but this was the beginning of the end game. He had been throwing around accusations and hints that she was the one who was losing her touch on reality.  In fact, he pretty much had been living in his own reality all along. It wasn't like he didn't know; he'd grown up in a church, had a brother who was a preacher, and could talk it with the best of them. He just didn't really care about anyone but himself and his own self-image.  Their kids were old enough to see what was happening, and to be ready to take primary responsibility for their own lives; some things would be tough, but some would be better off without him.

It's not just Mom and Dad and their kids.  When Dad moved out, his whole family stopped speaking to Mom, even though they had all been good friends.  There was another woman hanging out with Dad, who also had a younger child. She caught onto him pretty fast, however.  Mom had known things were not right for a long time, but she wasn't about to see a situation where he would have access to their kids without her.  The biggest thing her friends noticed was that she was having a hard time trusting people; she wasn't used to "nice."

When there is sin in a marriage, it doesn't only affect the partners; even if it is hidden, there is a difference: it changes the relationships with other family, friends, and how we live in community. There are ripples in the smooth face of life. In the past generation or so, there were two prominent national personalities that grew up in similar circumstances--an alcoholic father or stepfather, struggling mom, kids that didn't know what to expect next. There was a difference, however, in how they coped. One mom was very honest about the problem; she explained to their children that no, we don't like some of the things that your dad does, but appreciate the good things and pray through the bad things.  The other mom tried to cover it up; hide, lie, don't admit that we have a problem, don't tell anyone what goes on. A son of the first mom grew up to be an honorable and respected leader; the other one became known for his ability to charm folks, to lie and to cheat. It made a difference to a lot of people who knew these men; who worked with them, and were affected by them. Little ripples can become tsunamis.

There are times when staying on God's track may not be easy; it may be uncomfortable, and not always "fun". The payoff is when you get to the end, and you don't have the baggage of broken relationships, hurting people that you responsible for, and a trail of tears behind you. My dad liked to cook; he always did Sunday and holiday dinners. One thing that Mom really appreciated is that as he worked, he washed all the dishes, pots, pans, and tools he had used, so when the meal was on the table, the kitchen was clean. That's what God wants for us--to come to Him without a mess trailing behind us.  Yes, God can clean up any mess we let him have, but there may still be stains and scars.  Even Jesus has scars--that's what our sins cost.

The Right Context-by Linden Malki

Context is more important than we realize in living the life we are called to lead.  As we grow up, we build our working images of our world by what we live with. If we are surrounded by people who are selfish, mean, crabby, and/or abusive, this is what we think is "normal" and becomes the context of the relationships we build; if we are accustomed to kindness, consideration, ethics, and love, this is our "normal".  We can learn how to deal with behavior that doesn't "fit" our underlying context, but we have to recognize what’s going on, and pray hard for the wisdom and strength to be a force for the right things. .

I am finding myself being more and more thankful for the blessings of having known love and fun and niceness over the years. My dad used to say that “you don’t have to be crazy to be part of this family, but it helps!” My parents made a point of doing things together; Mom went camping because

Dad loved it; some years we went to the coast because Mom loved that; and I was lucky to have experiences of both.  Family, and friends, and church were a large part of things we did together as well.  And having good friends and good times is important; it gives us a shared history for connecting with people we don’t see every day, and those we do. One thing I find fascinating about family and friends I don’t see often is that we have different experiences of the same people and places, which makes for great conversations, and it’s amazing how we find things to share that we didn’t expect. My husband John had worked for the British Army in Palestine as a very young man, working with East Indians as well as the Brits; and one of my brothers had been in the US Army in India, working with the Brits as well as the East Indians, at pretty much the same time—it gave them a link beyond the family.

We are also blessed by living in a world created so that we can have adventures and good times, with God’s outside world, His people, and the special people that we call family. Couples who obviously like each other and enjoy being together are a good model for their own family, as well as an encouragement for those around them. After John’s death, I got an email from a young man who had worked for us some years earlier, and said that he had not only learned about fixing cars at our place, but also about God and family. Something like that is the most fun of all!