Friday Tidings

While waiting for a repair, I noticed an elderly man reading the Wall Street Journal. As he folded the paper, our eyes met and I commented on the headlines. He raised a bushy eyebrow. I ventured to ask what he thought about the North Korean threat. He frowned, but then in what must have been a time-honored tradition of respect, the old man rose, bowed slightly, and politely shared that his name was Sidney. Sidney counted off the fourteen presidents he’d lived through—recalling their achievements and enumerating their faults.  As a veteran, he also knew every American overseas military engagement. He explained that nuclear threats aren’t new, but there are now more diabolical players in the game. “Did you hear that Iran’s Ahmadinejad wants to be president again?” he asked. I nodded. “He’d love to start World War III. He doesn’t care who dies. That’s his whacked theology.  And North Korea’s crack pot leader is craz...

I learned about “thin places” when a pastor explained that it’s where the veil between heaven and earth becomes so thin you can feel God’s closeness in a new way. The pastor’s thin place was a circle of enormous redwood trees. I’ve been on mountain tops and in lush valleys. Near quiet lakes and places so pristine that I wondered if anyone had set foot there before.  But I wouldn’t say I experienced being in a thin place. Maybe I’m too earthy to feel much heavenly closeness. Then I remembered a tiny room in an old trailer home we lived in decades ago. We’d brought our premature daughter home in the middle of a very cold winter. We had to keep our baby warm and feed her 3 ounces of milk every ninety minutes. After one early morning feeding, I was holding her, rubbing her tiny back as she writhed in pain trying to digest the small amount. Tears slid down my cheeks as I wondered why it had be so hard for her.   I rocked her and gazed out into the dark ...