Peaches and Tea

I am sitting in my kitchen with the door open to the fresh morning air and perfect clear blue sky.  The aroma of freshly baked peach crisp is filling the house.  I am full of anticipation for this afternoon when my sister and niece will join my daughter and me for tea. Not tea as in a mug of Lipton, TEA as in small sandwiches and sweets and pot after pot of darjeeling served in china cups.

Years ago a woman told me that one thing she loved about her husband was that he had the "habit of happiness".  That phrase is etched in my brain forever.  I want to be a habitually happy person. I am going to have to be intentional about this.  Being happy is not always easy. 

Instead of thinking about the good and beautiful things, many times I focus on the difficult things.  Today, I could focus  on ongoing frustrations that soiled the atmosphere in our house for a time last evening.  I could focus the anger I felt after my naughty dog escaped out an open gate, and rebelliously looked me straight in the eye, while she ignored my demand that she come.  Many times there are much more significant heartaches robbing me of joy.

Today happens to be a good day to start developing the habit.  It is an ordinary day, a muddle of the wonderful, the awful, and lots of stuff that is neither.  A good starting point is reading Philippians 4:4-8.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.  Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.  The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.  Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

How will I start?  The same way I develop any good habit.  The process is pretty much the same each time.  At first, I try something deliberately, consciously.  It feels strange and awkward and uncomfortable.  If I keep at it, practicing at absolutely every opportunity, feeling ridiculous, the action gradually feels more comfortable.  Eventually, one day, I catch myself doing what used to seem so unnatural without even realizing it.  It has become a habit. 

I'm going to give developing the habit of happiness a shot. To begin, I am going to consciously choose to rejoice.  I'll let you know how it goes.

20-20 Vision

I see what I expect to see.  It happens in my writing all the time.  I try to edit and revise. I read things over a zillion times, and still I completely miss glaring errors right in front of my nose.

Research confirms that the see-what-you-expect-to-see phenomenon occurs in medical labs too.  People examining slides of tissue from biopsies see many more samples of healthy tissue than of diseased tissue.  After a while they tend to see only healthy tissue, even when the slide contains some cancer cells.

The same thing happens in my relationship with God.  

I pray and people I love continue to suffer.  I get tired of waiting for God to act.  Secretly I doubt.  I wonder if He has abandoned us. Sometimes I even wonder if He is there at all. I see only what I expect to see.

This kind of blindness occurs frequently to people in the Bible.  I love the story of bad eyesight found in 2 Kings 6.  Elisha the prophet, seems to enjoy interfering with Syria's plans to to wipe out Israel.  Elisha always knows what Ben-hadad, king of Syria is doing before he does it.  He is in the habit of letting the king of Israel know when and where Ben-hadad is going to launch his next 'surprise' attack.  Repeatedly the Syrian army charges onto a battle field, only to discover that Israel's army has moved on.  Tired of looking stupid, he assembles his officers, and demands to know which of them is a spy.  Fearing for their lives, they plead innocence and redirect the king's anger toward Elisha. 

The scene now changes to Elisha's home in the village of Dothan.  As the sun is just coming up over the horizon in the east, Elisha's servant Gehazi, heads outside and stops dead in his tracks. An entire army surrounds their little hillside village.  
He dashes to Elisha in panic, and pleads, "What are we going to do?" 
I imagine Elisha calmly taking another bite of his bacon and eggs before he answers. 
"Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." 
Before Gehazi can respectfully suggest that his master has lost his mind, Elisha asks God to open the servant's eyes.  For Gehazi peeking cautiously out from behind the curtain, the situation now appears to be entirely reversed. Elisha's home is surrounded by a second army.  It is comprised of intimidating chariots of fire facing down the Syrians. They seem far less frightening by contrast.

Elisha calmly takes one last sip of coffee, and prays for his enemies to be struck with blindness.  Then he goes out and informs the commanders of the Syrian army that they are lost.  He offers to take them to "the man you seek", and leads them all the way to Samaria.  The Syrians never dared to raid Israel again.

Wouldn't it be great if we could pray and suddenly be able to see the forces of good fighting for us the way Elisha could?  Maybe we can.  We can pray for 20-20 spiritual vision, and ears to hear, "Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them."

Kisses from God

A twelfth century monk is an unlikely choice for a tutor on kisses.  This morning I sat down with Bernard of Clairvaux, and he taught me about kisses. 

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!"

Is it a quote from a romance novel or a steamy chick flick?  It definitely doesn't seem like what it is, a Bible verse.  

I do love kisses.  My favorite thing in the whole world is for my husband to hold me tight and kiss me tenderly, passionately, intimately.  During my many years as a single mom I wanted so much to be loved, to be kissed by a man, that I ached, literally, physically.

So, when Bernard talks about longing for kisses from God, he definitely has my attention.   I know all about longing for kisses.  But, do I ache for kisses from God?  Maybe part of the problem is that I can't quite imagine God desiring me.  I can imagine "Jesus loves me"  in a Sunday-school-sing-songy kind of way.  But, God wanting to kiss me?  That sounds too intimate.  Can I imagine God himself bending down, filled with love for little Beth, wanting to kiss me?  It feels wrong, like blasphemy somehow.  But if it is in the Bible, and saints from millennia past thought of relationship with God in terms of kisses,  maybe it is OK.  Maybe more than that, maybe I am missing out on something really good.  

His living and effective word is a kiss; not a meeting of the lips, which can sometimes be deceptive about the state of the heart but a full infusion of joys, a revelation of secrets, a wonderful and inseparable mingling of the light from above and the mind on which it is shed, which, when it is joined with God, is one spirit with him.   -Bernard of Clairvaux

That is a kiss I want to experience, over and over forever!
During those years when I wanted so much to be loved, I felt bad about it, like there was something wrong with me.  I wondered why I couldn't be content.   Now, I don't think I wanted too much.  Actually, I think I settle for too little.

Listen to what else Bernard told me this morning, "I can scarcely contain my tears, so ashamed am I of the lukewarmness and lethargy of the present times."  I don't know too much about Bernard's times, but I can hardly imagine that they could possibly have been more lukewarm and lethargic than we are in our times. 

So, I feel a free and powerful longing to be kissed by God welling up inside me.    Bernard takes things a step further even, getting almost sexual in his description,

O happy kiss...which is not a mere meeting of lips, but the union of God with man.  The touch of lips signifies the bringing together of souls.  But this conjoining of natures unites the human with the divine and makes peace between earth and heaven. 'For he himself is our peace, who made the two one' (Eph. 2:14)  This was the kiss for which the holy men of old longed, the more so because they foresaw the joy and exultation of finding their treasure in him and discovering all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in him, and they longed to receive of his fullness.

I want to know God that way, tenderly, intimately, passionately.  I say with the Song of Songs "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!"    I want my human soul to be united with God; I want to find my treasure in him. I want to receive his fullness.