LOVE HURTS! by Linden Malki

A true friend is one who matters--
There is no "reason" for a a special friendship; you may like things about the friend, but they are not the "raison d'etre" for the friendship.  It is not earned.  It happens--you find that something in them resonates with something in you.  There may be an emotional "rush" but it doesn't last. That may be all there is. But hopefully you can find the  base of a lasting friendship.





This does not mean that everything is easy.  When someone is truly important to you,  as a Dorothy Sayers character * says, "you can hurt each other so dreadfully", often without intending to; in fact, often your best intentions make it more devastating when something goes wrong.   It can eat away at the underlying trust.  This is a real test--can you deal with each other's imperfections in a realistic, non-judgmental way?  Can you forgive?

"Forgiveness" does not mean sweeping it under the rug, but choosing to love anyway.  It can help you realize the strength of the bond between you.  It allows you to tackle the problem as a team--or perhaps simply choose to live with it.  It gives you the opportunity to choose your friend over your own self-pity, to get out of your own way.

 I think it has taught me something about God. He doesn't love us because we earn it by being good. We can never be good enough on our own. He loves anyway--even when we disappoint Him. He wants us to forgive each other, to suffer with each other, and ask  for help and strength.  We refuse to forgive, and He grieves. We hurt each other and He hurts with us.   If we were perfect (or thought we were) we would depend on ourselves too much and be insufferably proud. We all know people like this, too. He's much more about mercy, and our being real, than about judgment--which He has taken care of for us.
 
The payoff is that this kind of a friendship is more than 1 + 1 = 2. At best, it's more like 1 + 1= something like 3 1/2.   I have never forgotten reading of Elizabeth Taylor's reaction to the death of her husband Mike Todd: "I feel like half a pair of scissors.". Two separate halves of scissors are not any more useful than one; but connected properly they are what they were designed to be.  We are designed to be connected; to be friends.

*"Gaudy Night", Miss De Vine to Harriet Vane

The Faith of My Father--by Linden (Lovegren) Malki

My Dad built things. He had grown up in the lumber business, and always had projects going.  Another of his major passions in life was our church, Grace Baptist in Spokane.  A Christian Education wing was added on to the main building when I was growing up, and included in the new building was a new furnace room (very important in Washington winters!)  Dad kept thinking about the space where the old furnace room had been in the lower level of the main sanctuary building, and decided that it was a good size and a good location for a really good kitchen. The main kitchen at the time was a small, antiquated room off in a corner of the fellowship hall in the basement. He felt sorry for the folks who cooked church suppers (he himself was an excellent cook), so when he retired he compiled the designs he had built up in his head when he couldn't sleep at night, recruited a volunteer crew of church members and friends in the building trades, collected donations of building materials, and they gutted and remodeled the whole lower level of the original building. I was in high school at the time; while obviously there were costs involved, I don't recall a lot of high-profile fund raising. God showed him the need, gave him the inspiration and talent to do it, and he did it with the faith that the people and materials would be there when needed.  I remember that a flooring company gave them free boxes and boxes and boxes of two-inch commercial-grade floor tiles in a variety of greens. So a bunch of hardworking and appreciative guys started in the middle of the room, laid down one color of these little bitty tiles in an expanding square until they ran out, got a contrasting color and laid that those next,  and kept going until the entire room had a new floor, two inches at a time. When I was in Spokane about forty years later, that floor was still there and still good. (It was finally replaced a few years later.)

The kitchen is still modern-looking, very functional, and still in use. He didn't do it for personal credit, even though it was named after him when it was dedicated--it is still Lovegren Hall, even though "our" church has since merged with another congregation. He would be pleased to see something I saw happening there recently: a Bible study with lunch provided for people who worked at the nearby courthouse and other area businesses. He was committed to this church and this community, and his faith is an important part of my own spiritual life.

People of the Book--by Linden Malki

All human societies have words. Even the most isolated and primitive people have stories, folklore, traditions and  some kind of shared memory. People who grow up in a preliterate environment have minds capable of learning to  read and write. It is amazing what all is hardwired in  the human brain from the beginning, talents that may not be expressed without the right opportunity.

God spoke  the world into existence; He also spoke with Adam.  He spoke to Cain,  Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses,  and many others--in different ways with different messages, some with promises and some with judgment.We have a record of many of these conversations. God told people to remember His words and teach them to their children. They appear to have been put into written form pretty early;  fragments have been found by archeologists. Other writings have been found from other similarly old societies, but they are in languges that were lost and only recently recovered. Hebrew is one of the oldest languages that has been in continuous use; not always as a common street language, but there have been scholars who have maintained it. The written word has been the glue that held  God and His followers together.

You may hear people speak of "faith" as "believing something that isn't true".  That is actually the opposite of reality! We are asked to believe truth on the basis of good evidence, experience and responsible authority.  One of those sources is the written word which we have been given.  I found 99 uses of the phrase "it is written" in Scripture, going all the way back to Deuteronomy.   We are expected to know the writings that God has inspired in His servants.

In addition to the books that the Jewish scholars and the Early Church accepted on good evidence and inspiration to be authoritative, we are also fortunate to have many other writings by people who have had experiences of God's mercy and wisdom over many centuries.  They vary from very profound and complex to very straightforward.  It is fascinating to read of amazing experiences of God  working in peoples' lives in many times and places.  One of my favorite writers said that some people are afraid to surrender to God, because they fear being turned into some sort of boring cookie-cutter person.  But if you look at people who have really gotten serious with God, they are not less than they were, but more individual and unique than ever. 

As I have been moving from my former house in Devore, I realized that I had to deal with a lot of books. Many of them are God-related:  inspirational, historical, theological, educational, geographical.  It was obvious that it is time to share many of them with others;  NorthPoint folks may have noticed the book box on the Welcome Table the last few weeks. Those are FREE for the taking; I am adding new ones each week, so check them out.  I will be posting a list on the NorthPoint San Bernardino Facebook page soon.  These are all ones that I recommend. 

Just because something is in writing doesn't mean that it is a dependable source; there have always been things out there that do not jibe with the main core teachings of Scripture.  Some of the New Testament books were written to counter off-center writings, and the early church had to deal with writings that did not pass the tests of inspiration and legitimacy.  Listen and read with your brain on; and if you have questions about something you've run onto, I will see if I can check it out.  

What are our Choices? by Linden Malki

Life is all choices. Every morning we have the choice to get up or not--but this is a good example that not all choices have equal consequences.  I very often have customers describe what they're doing to their car, and say "I could do.." . Yes, you probably could do it. That doesn't mean that it is a good idea or that it will actually work for any length of time.  Occasionally, a customer tells me that he found something really odd in a car he recently acquired. Sometimes I know what he found--because the previous owner told me what he  "could" do to  get the car running long enough to sell it. 

Despite Yoda's advice, yes, we can try. Sometimes this is a good choice, but often it is a  shortcut or an excuse to get off the hook.  Sometimes we didn't know things we ought to have known before trying it. And sometimes we get stuck on the idea of "perseverance", because we can't or don't want to believe that it really isn't  working.  And sometimes we say "I tried...." to excuse not actually doing the job.

" Doing something" just for the sake of doing something  better than nothing, can be the wrong thing. When I was involved in competitive debate in high school and college, the first thing a debater has to prove is that there is a need for change.  Most debate questions have good reasons on both sides of that one. There are usually advantages and disadvantages to the way things are, and it often depends on what side of the situation you are on. It also depends on your information.  If you have bad intelligence,  you may find yourself somewhere you really shouldn't be.

"Doing nothing" is also a two-edged blade.  In my business, we often have to make a decision between "while you're at it" and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."  How often do we try to second-guess God? Sometimes we think we can improve on His design--and sometimes He has left us options--but there are often unintended consequences. The history of medicine is full of practices that seemed like a good idea at the time, but turned out to either not work or create worse problems. I personally have known or experienced enough negative side effects that I have a healthy respect for the way God created us and His world.

I have spent the last few weeks moving out of a house I lived in since my grown kids were small.  I've already written about the choices of dealing with "stuff", but this last week I've run into another class of problems.  In the process of moving, I've been dealing with the electric company, and the phone company, and the storage pod company, and the postal service, all of whom have made the choice of substituting automation and arbitrary procedures for actual human competence.  As a result, I've had a couple of days of chaos.  People that couldn't reach me because they didn't update their records to my cell despite our instructions. The phone company didn't  the refer the home number as promised and couldn't  figure out how to move it to my daughter's house.  I got a recorded call at 9:30 this morning confirming an appointment that had happened at 9 am; fortunately we had someone there.  There was an express mail delivery that was promised "before 10:30". We found out the mail person drove by my store at 7:47am, decided I looked closed, and didn't even stop and knock to see if I was here (which I was), or plan his route around reasonable business hours.

God gives us many choices, and also instructions for making good choices. He also gives us the freedom to make stupid choices, uninformed choices, stubborn choices, self-serving choices, greedy choices, irresponsible choices.  Or as an old proverb says: When all else fails, read the instructions!

What's a Job? by Linden Malki

Recently, I was talking to a young man who just graduated from college. His response to my question as to what he was doing next, was: Find a job. What do you want to do? Make a lot of money!!  Then I asked my standard question: What can you do that is worth someone paying you for it? Turns out his concept of the ideal job was working at a gym so he could work out. Unfortunately, I suspect that that's not what the staff does all day.

Reminded me a little bit about my first job, for which I realize I'd been "interviewing" for since I was 5. I've always been a book person, so the librarian at the small branch library five blocks from our house saw a lot of me. She was one of my first mentors--took an interest in me and recommended things she thought I would like to, and things I should, read. She also got me a job as a "page"--the lowest form of life in the library world. I thought it would be great to be around books--but found out that the pages don't get to read on the job. They're there to put the books back when people return them, mend them as necessary. and generally to keep them in order. I was fortunate in working at a very small branch, without any more staff than the librarian and a part-time page, because I got to do other things, that were technically above my pay grade (which was at the bottom of the system as well). I'll never forget one patron who asked my boss for a specific book, and she said that the page would help him find it. So he came to me and said "You're the page? When do you get to be a whole book?"

What could I do that was worth the Spokane Public Library system paying me? I learned to alphabetize and put away books efficiently,  became familiar with the standard library cataloging system, answered the phone and generally learned enough to be helpful.(Once in a great while I will find myself answering a phone "North Monroe Library".) I learned enough to get a job at the college library when I went off to college, and spent a summer and several Christmas breaks in the catalog department of the Seattle Public Library. Later, when I found myself working with John, I realized  that filing systems and cataloging systems were pretty similar even when what was being filed and cataloged and organized and shelved where they could be found was different. Later, my son David wangled his way into a job at an art supply store, and said that selling a tube of paint was just like selling a spark plug except for what was actually in the box.

I think one of the valuable things I learned was learning how to work. One friend seems to miss a lot of work, and then complains that he isn't making much money. His excuse: "I lost my mojo."  Somehow that's not something I tell myself when I get up in the morning--I go to work, whether I happen to feel like it or not. The bottom line: you're not worth anything to anybody when you're not there. If someone is there, and willing and able to learn, I can teach them what they need to be worth something.

We were created to work; to cooperate with God in taking care of His creation. Even in Eden, Adam was given a job. There is a story of a man showing off his garden; a visitor commented on the beauty of God's work. The gardener replied: "You should have seen it when He was doing it by Himself!" God deliberately left work for us to do!

STUFF HAPPENS--by Linden Malki

Some years ago I was looking through my mother's old photo albums with her youngest sister, making notes of who was what and where. We noticed that in a good number of pictures from mom's grade-school years, she was wearing the same dress. My aunt explained that when they were growing up, they each had one good dress, which they wore to church and any other special occasion, and often got passed down.  One good dress! When I was growing up, there was a family in our church in Spokane who had relatives in Seattle who were fairly well-off and had daughters who were a size or two bigger than their Spokane cousin. So the cousin got their hand-me-downs--very nice things, usually. And my mom's best friend had a daughter another size smaller. And I was the next size down, and there were two more girls down from me. We would check out what the bigger girls in the chain were wearing, because that's what our "good dress" would be down the line.

Now can we even imagine having just one all-occasion good dress? I've been house-hunting off and on for about a year, and the newer the house, the larger the closet. I've seen some that have closets bigger than some bedrooms used to be.  Now I'm "paying" for my genetic packrattery, as my house finally sold and I am dealing with 40 years worth of stuff. Actually more, because there's stuff that came from my folks' house as well. My first thought was to find a house about half the size of this one, and deal with stuff over a year or so. I was fortunate in a way to have all the houses I was interested in not work out, some of them because I didn't have a good closing date until this month. I think a light bulb went off when I was reading a book I ran across sorting books (books are somewhat out of hand around here) by a family who went through several disasters that essentially wiped them out at least twice. It made me truly realize that I was over-stuffed, and I needed to somehow get down to basics and downsize a lot farther than my original plan. I hadn't done a lot of packing ahead because I didn't have a time frame or know what space I was going to find. I still don't know where God wants me, but am working on what is the minimum I would need and/or want wherever. My kids have been over here helping clear out, and I came home one day last week to find that my daughters had posted a list of what needed to be done. At the top it says 1) Pack Mom's needs--not wants. 2) Pack Mom's wants--limited to the tubs . We are dealing with enough dishes to do Thanksgiving dinners for 30-50 people, closets with clothes in various sizes because I've been various sizes over the years, not to mention stuff left over from everyone else.  My kids had great fun last weekend finding old stuff of theirs; and even more fun reading things I wrote in college and the summer I met their dad.

 

There is some value in old stuff, it helps you understand where you've been, what you've learned, and what God has done with you over the years. But we live in a world full of stuff, some of which becomes a substitute for the realities of life. It brings me back around to a question I've been haunted by for some years now: what do we need to give up to be ready for the presence of God?

BTW: we are having a house sale the weekend of May 31-June 1; call me for directions (909-844-1920). 

TOXIC MOTHER by Linden Malki

Usually on Mothers' Day we talk a lot about how mothers are hardworking, wise, loving, etc., etc., and many of them are all those things. However, there are exceptions.  One thing we notice is that unconventional and dysfunctional mothers are often the children of less than textbook families themselves. One example of this is a lady that was the subject of a daily Bible reading last week; the thorn in a bouquet of great Godly mothers. (Note: the first part of this story is not a commonly told Sunday School story.)

One of the things we know about the northern kingdom of Israel after the split with Judah after Solomon's death is that the northern kingdom had no record of Godly kings or stable dynasties. The most dramatic of the northern ruling families is that of Omri, in the ninth century BC, about a hundred years after Solomon.  Omri's son Ahab married Jezebel, a daughter of a king of Tyre in Lebanon, who was an aggressive Baal worshiper and an enemy of the God of Israel.  Ahab had a daughter named Athaliah, who married King Jehoram of the southern kingdom of Judah, who had all his brothers killed when he became king, and was accused by Elijah the prophet of leading the people of Judah away from God and serving the idols of his in-laws. All of his sons but the youngest were killed by raiders from outside, and so the only remaining heir to the throne of David, Ahaziah of Judah, became king when Jehoram died at the age of 40, and the queen mother Athaliah was the power behind the throne. Ahaziah was soon killed by Jehu, the northern general who had also killed Ahab, Jezebel and their pagan entourage.  When Athaliah heard that her son was dead, she had all his remaining family (her own grandsons and whoever else she could find) killed and took power herself, the only reigning queen in the history of either kingdom. 

However—God had promised that the Davidic line would survive. She missed a daughter who was married to the High Priest at the Temple, and the youngest grandson (Joash) who was rescued by his aunt, hidden and raised in the Temple until he was seven years old. The story of the High Priest organizing a bodyguard and coronation for Joash is a good Sunday School story, and also how he organized a collection box to repair and renovate the Temple. All’s well that ends well, and King Joash was one of the Godly kings—but it was a close one. 

The Bible is nothing if not honest. It pulls no punches describing the bad deeds of Ahab and Jezebel, and the bad judgment of King Jehoram of Judah. Elijah asked the same question that occurs to us: what was he thinking to marry into that family? Yes, Omri had been successful politically and economically, but at what cost? Sin is not only a roaring lion, but it has fierce cubs as well. I haven’t tried to count how many people died violently in those times but it is a whole bunch. We’ve talked a lot about legacies in the past few months, but we need to remember that legacies are not only powerful for good, but can be powerful for evil as well.

2 Kings 11; 2 Chronicles 21-22