I’d like to compare my life to Felix Baumgartner.  This week, he broke records when he jumped out of a tiny space capsule, 23 miles from earth.  They say he’s a daredevil.  I think every mom is a daredevil.  Who wouldn’t be labeled brave, who birthed a child?  No women I know.  As we launch out into the stratosphere of our day, life seems pretty mundane.  Just another liftoff.  However, every day we are breaking the speed of sound as we leap out of our capsules and venture at hair-raising speeds into what we affectionately call “life”.  Sometimes it feels like our bodies are spinning so fast our head hurts and our stomach ties into a knot.

For me I feel the most free-fall around lunchtime.  We recess from school and I’m faced with seven hungry bellies, mine included!  Today I cracked a dozen eggs, made three loaves of banana bread and some tater tots.  I had just dished up my own plate of yummy broccoli-laden eggs with tater tots on the side, when Betty hit the last leg of her morning journey.  I scooped up her crying little self to find her jeans soaked.  She also smelled poopy.  A thorough search confirmed that yes, we are indeed out of wipes.  Up to the bathroom we went, where I stripped her and washed her in the tub.  She loves baths, and I love the way she says “bath” with a very strong emphasis on the “th”, said with as much force as possible.  Her tongue sticks out and she sprays saliva from her mouth when she says it: “ba- tthhhhhhbbbbbbtttthhh.”  Anyway, into the batthhhhbbbbtttthhh she went and came out smelling beautiful.  Into clean clothes she was dressed, and then into her beloved bed she lay.  Her pink bunny snuggled up with her and she happily hit dreamland.  At last I came to the table, where everyone had long ago finished eating their lunch.  I warmed up my food and sat down to accept the nourishment provided.

Another scenario of a meal happened yesterday while I chatted on the phone with my sister.  I made a triple batch of pancakes while five little mouths inhaled them.  It’s almost like watching a cartoon, where the character shoves something into its mouth and it disappears.  Thirty-six or more pancakes down the hatch.

During quiet hour today, Elsie kept wanting to surprise me, so she cleaned off the table (which meant moving everything to another location and wiping it down with a nice wet rag).  Then she similarly tidied the living room, removing, moving, and “doing her best!”  It was really sweet.  After quiet hour, Jack came down with his almost-always-present notebook to show me what he drew.  On top of his artwork he wrote something on his own for the first time, sounding out the words.  It said, “Jack is a arsts.”  (Jack is an artist.)  He’s been working so hard on de-coding sounds back into letters and I just about hit the moon when he showed me.  It’s taken him awhile to get this far, but now the lightbulbs are going off in his brain, and it’s so exciting to watch!

About this time, after cleaning up from the morning’s ride, another curve lies dead ahead.  Time to start supper!  While doing this, I’m also doing laundry, which has been a humorous undertaking the past couple days.  Something happened to the washing machine so that it washes and washes and washes without moving on to the next cycle.  I smelled something hot the other day, but completely tuned out to the fact that a load of laundry had been washing away in the machine for over an hour.  When it finally dawned on me that the smell was coming from the washing machine, I noticed how the dial hadn’t moved a millimeter.  Since then I’ve been setting timers to remind myself to manually change it to the next cycle, so it doesn’t spin into orbit!

So now my quiet is over, and it’s almost time to pull out my parachute so I can gently finish yet another day.  Unlike Baumgartner, the whole world isn’t watching.  But like Felix, I kneel at the end of each mission and thank God for the courage to jump, and the grace to finish.  I call it, Mission: Life Is Beautiful

One of my dreams was to be an archaeologist.  Maybe it was the lure of digging in dirt, or the fascination with history.  I have always been drawn to learning about the past and applying those things to today.  Thursday I stepped back in time, about 3000 years.  Matthew and I had the privilege of going to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia to see the Dead Sea Scrolls which are on their last week of display there.  In addition to the scrolls, there were ancient artifacts, pottery, jewelry, household objects and such.  It was amazing to say the least.

And we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.  2 Corinthians 4:7

One section of the tour included a large collection of “household gods” found in ancient Israelite homes.  It gave a glimpse into what really was happening there, inside the homes of people who supposedly were not to have any other gods before the One True God.  I found it interesting to read this description of what was expected of the Israelites.  It bespoke of  hypocrisy.  I thought how very little has changed in the homes and hearts of Christ-followers.  We go to church and we put on our handy, happy, plastic faces.  We mask the pain of bad choices.  We even change the wording of sin to make it not sound as bad.  I like food.  Cars are my thing.  I might need this one day.  It was too good a deal not to buy!   We have an excessive addition to stuff.  Just like those household gods which littered ancient homes, what is literally under our beds, in our cupboards, and filling our storage?  This a serious issue, and one that has been plaguing the hearts of God’s followers for thousands of years.

The dictionary defines idolatry as an immoderate attachment or devotion to something.  If we’re honest with ourselves, we can all probably say there is one, if not more, places in our homes that hold “stuff” we just can’t give up.  We might not have touched it for a few years, but it’s still staying.  Stuff has such an allure.  It gets moldy.  It burns.  It rusts.   It decays.  Yet it still wraps its invisible chains around our hearts so that we can’t let it go.  We can be so enslaved to stuff, that we buy it even when we can’t afford it.  For some of us, this has cost us a great deal more than the initial dollar amount.  Our relationship with stuff has taken such precedence over our relationship with God, that when He nudges us to give some of it away, we balk.  Or when He tells us to give away the very means that would allow us to buy more stuff (aka: money), we really  balk.  We then start a vicious cycle between our hearts and God’s, where the two can’t truly connect, and we stop listening to His voice.  We stop listening to His voice, because we’re scared He might tell us to do something uncomfortable.  Like give.  Or release.  Or repent.  Or a great many other things which in actuality bring us such freedom and peace!  The father of lies is working overtime to distort God’s voice so that we don’t hear Him saying the simple things.

I can’t help but wonder what those archaeologists thought when they found those artifacts.  These small clay figures clashed with the God the people of Israel supposedly loved.  I wonder if it made God seem not as amazing as He really is?  If a piece of clay could allure them, then what kind of God did they really worship?  I wonder the same thing today.  Do our lives make people wonder if God is worth knowing?  He certainly is better than any earthly thing, yet we store up so many treasures that onlookers really don’t see much difference between their lifestyles and ours.  In the New Testament the early Christians gave as each one had need.  That means, if your friend didn’t have enough food but you did, you brought them a meal.  It means that if your car broke down and your friend had two, he gave you his other car.  They looked to God for their needs, and He in turn used His followers to meet those needs.  It was different from the way everyone else lived.  It was noticeable.

There should be no doubt in people’s minds when they look at us that we love the God we serve so much, we put nothing above Him.

They were afraid, but they were filled with joy. When I read that this morning, it seemed to describe the story of my life.  After Jesus had died and was buried, the women were on their way to his tomb.  When they came to the tomb and discovered an angel sitting on top of the heavy stone they were worried about trying to move, this was how they are described: afraid, but filled with joy.

Every day I fight fear.  Fear that things will happen.  Fear that things won’t happen.  Fear of what other people think of me.  Fear of what I think about myself.  Fear debilitates us to action.  When we know God wants us to go or do or say, fear will  stop us in our tracks, tie our hands behind our backs, and silence us like a gag.

I know people who are afraid to lose weight.  The fear of losing who they are comfortable being, in exchange for discipline and commitment to a new lifestyle, keeps them locked in a cycle of bad habits.  I know people who are afraid of moving on.  They are consumed by their past, and their fear keeps them from seeing what is around the corner.  I know people who are afraid of change.  They’re afraid of what it might mean and will never experience what it can do.  I know people who are afraid of letting go.  They’re afraid of losing the grip that they hold so securely, whether it’s a grudge or something that’s been done wrongly to them.  They’re afraid, and will never experience the freedom of having their grip loosened, only to have their grasp filled with forgiveness and peace.  I know people who are afraid of trying something new. They’re afraid, because they might discover they’re actually good at something they were never told they were good at doing.  Or maybe they’re afraid of failing, so they never try.  I know it, because I’ve been in each of these situations.

I don’t want my life to be characterized by fear, though it is something I constantly battle.  Instead of being filled with fear, with little sprinkles of joy, I would much rather be afraid and filled with joy.  Joy is the filling aspect, and fear is just a seasoning.  It doesn’t debilitate, but rather keeps my heart in tune with Jesus, who has conquered fear.

This morning when I  was reading in Matthew 15, I read this interaction between Jesus and His disciples.  Jesus feels deep concern for the multitudes of people about to walk home on empty stomachs.  He knows their need, and He looks at his disciples as if to say, “Did you learn what I can do when I fed the 5000 people a few weeks ago?”  You would think that their reply to His unspoken question would be, “We know!  YOU can give them what they need!  You are completely able.  We saw it, we believe it!”  Instead, they say, “There is nothing here.  Where could we get enough bread to feed this large crowd?”  Wow.  I have been there, said that.  It seems so silly when I’m sitting on my front porch, sipping some tea with yummy toast, knowing what is about to happen in the story.  You empty-heads… um, Jesus is standing there with you.  Don’t you remember how He fed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish?  Yet, I have often given the same excuse when a need presents itself.  I have nothing that could be of use here, Lord.  I don’t have the means to help that person.  I have nothing here!  Jesus then simply says, “How many loaves do you have?”  The excuse was: there is nothing.  Turns out there was something.  Something very small in comparison to the need.  There were seven loaves and a few small fish.  Jesus makes everyone sit down, and He gives thanks for this little something, and you know what happens?  There is enough, with seven baskets full of leftovers!  About the next day, this issue of bread comes up again.  The disciples forgot to bring bread with them and when Jesus starts using yeast as an example about what to look out for (bad doctrine, sin that grows and infiltrates everywhere) the disciples are worried that He’s chiding them for not bringing any bread on their trip.  He replies, “Your faith is so small!  Why are you talking to each other about having no bread?  Don’t you understand?  Don’t you remember?”  And He reminds them of the miraculous multiplication of bread not once, but twice!  When we talk about things we don’t have, it evokes more worry.  We might not have what seems important.  We might not even have what is important.  Sometimes the need is truly pertinent.  Whatever our circumstance, we do have Jesus with us in the boat.  Ready to provide.  Able to provide.  He is the same God who multiplied what was available into what was needed.  Give Him everything, and see what He does!