Dust Flies When You're Having Fun

   I’m remodeling my kitchen. Well, it would be more accurate to say that I’m having my kitchen remodeled, meaning someone else is doing the heavy lifting. I am, however, doing plenty of work myself in the midst of the work being done. My task list includes:

Stuff Assessment - Do I really need to keep all the stuff that I just moved out of the kitchen and family room? I mean, when is the last time I actually used the Tupperware orange rind scorer, and why am I hanging onto that Coca Cola bottle with the Chinese writing?  It is kinda cool though.  

Dust Duty - Workmen come, do their work, and create a lot of dust in the process. Workmen leave at the end of the day, but the dust remains. I do my best to keep other rooms closed off while the crew is here, but the dust goes pretty much everywhere in the house. So when the last worker heads out, my shift begins. I sweep up a bit, vacuum, and otherwise trying to keep the chaos corralled as much as possible because I don’t leave at the end of the day.

Stress Management -   I’m not into stress eating yet, but there are two bags of potato chips on standby. On a more healthful note, my friends and family have given me dining privileges in their homes or the pleasure of their company out somewhere. What a blessing it is to break bread in calmer, cleaner surroundings.  

Comptroller - A comptroller is the person who keeps tabs on income and expenditures for a business. I’ve got a great handle on the outgo part of this remodel, let me tell you. This American is doing her part to stimulate the local economy. It’s the income I’m a little concerned about. I may have to give serious thought to the “Kitchen Remodel Tour.”

    Despite all the dust, aggravation and expense that goes along with a house remodeling project, I truly love it. I don’t enjoy living in the midst of it so much, but I love watching the transformation as vision becomes reality. I find it very soul-satisfying to see the old and worn become new and beautiful again. Surely my personal sense of enjoyment must be a small reflection of the nature of God the Creator within me, His created one.  The Lord Jesus was a builder by trade while He walked among us, you know. I imagine He enjoys a good remodeling project, especially one that makes a worn and sin-weary life new again through the miracle of the new birth. And then there’s those ongoing sanctification “updates” the Holy Spirit oversees in the lives of believers. We are His workmanship in more ways than one (see Ephesians 2:10).

    Proverbs 14:4 says, “Where no oxen are, the manger is clean, but much revenue comes by the strength of the ox.” Where there’s a good work going on, you can count on some dust being raised.  After all, dust flies when you’re having fun.

Methane Rising

Welcome to January - that hopeful month in which untold numbers across the nation make resolutions to put off their bad habits and take up good ones. We’re only two weeks or so into the new year and already a plethora of ads for gyms memberships and weight loss programs have flooded everyone’s mailboxes - both e-mail and “snail mail” versions. The turning over of a new year also marks the time when many evangelical Christians will begin a 21-day spiritual exercise known as the “Daniel fast.” Thousands of normally indiscriminate diners will purposely give up their usual devil-may-care dietary fare for all the vegetables, fruit, legumes and water they can stand. It’s all for the purpose of drawing closer to God in prayer - with the added perk of dropping some unwanted pounds.

    “So who is this Daniel guy and why is there a fast named after him?” you ask. If you’ve read much of the Old Testament you’re not asking that question at all. But in case you haven’t, here goes.  Daniel was a young Jewish man who had the misfortune of being carried off into exile when the Babylonians invaded Israel around 605 BC. However, the Lord gave Daniel much favor in the eyes of his captors and he soon found himself selected to receive training to be in the personal service of King Nebuchadnezzar. So were three of his Hebrew buddies. They even got new Babylonian names: Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego - or, as the late comic Richard Pryor used to say, “A Bad Negro.” But I digress.

    As trainees for imperial service, Daniel and his friends were privileged with a meal plan from the king’s own commissary. This presented the young men with a serious dilemma, however, as the food wasn’t exactly kosher. The Bible describes the king’s food as “choice,” which sounds to me like it wasn’t very heart-healthy, either. More to the point, the meat had been sacrificed to the gods of the Babylonians. What’s a good Hebrew to do? In Daniel’s case, he made a very wise appeal to the man responsible for his training.  “Sir, I’m a little concerned about the royal food and wine the king has so graciously provided us, so I’d like to propose a test. How about letting us Hebrews eat only vegetables and drink only water for the next ten days? If we don’t look healthier than these other guys in our recruiting class, we’ll eat the king’s food from then on. Otherwise, we’d like permission to “keep kosher” while we’re here in Babylonia. What do you say?”  Amazingly, Daniel’s appeal was granted and the test was on. While the rest of the trainees chowed down on Baby-lonia-back ribs, Chaldean cheese fries and all the king’s vino they could drink, it was only veggies galore and water for the God Squad. Sure enough, at the end of the ten days, Daniel and his friends looked much healthier than their peers. That’s because they actually were healthier.

    You see, Daniel and company were used to eating lots of vegetables and whole grains back in Israel.  Oh, and lamb, of course. The point is, they were accustomed to ingesting lots of roughage; most Americans are not. Why, there’s probably more fiber in the cardboard box that our overly-processed food comes in than in our actual food. A typical American “Daniel-faster” is introduced to much more fiber in his daily meals than he’s probably eaten over the previous 11 months put together. This presents a dilemma of the kind the ancients rarely faced; I like to refer to it as “methane rising.” This could be the title of one of those battle action video games, now that I think about it. After a few days of eating more beans, peas, and cruciferous vegetables in one sitting than they’ve see in a year, people are blowing up all over the place.

    Gastronomic difficulties aside, the story of Daniel’s attempt to remain faithful to God in the midst of Babylon is how eating lots of fruits and vegetables, otherwise known as “food,” became associated with fasting in the contemporary American church. I’ve explained the grocery list for a Daniel fast, but where does the 21-day period come from?  Well, that’s also found in the Book of Daniel, chapter 10 verse 1-4:

    “In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia, a revelation was given to Daniel (who was called Belteshazzar). Its message was true and it concerned a great war.  The understanding of the message came to him in a vision. ‘At that time I, Daniel, mourned for three weeks. I ate no choice food; no meat or wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over.’” (NIV Bible)


Daniel was now much older and had survived multiple adminis-trations. He was so burdened by the nature of God’s revelation to him, that he began to pray with unusual fervency, even for him.  He returned to the spartan fare of his youth and didn’t bother much about his external appearance. His focus was to humble himself and pray until God answered him on behalf of the destiny of the Jews.  It took 21 days, but finally the answer came. The Book of Daniel chapters 10, 11 and 12  record one of the most stunning revelations of prophecy ever given to a servant of God. Daniel’s willingness to fast and pray with focus and determination brought the break- through he needed.

    I’ve poked a little fun at the way I and my fellow believers carry out the “Daniel fast,” but the reality is that fasting, even a partial fast such as the one taken from Daniel’s example, is a powerful spiritual discipline when accompanied by prayer. Sometimes the only way to get the answers you need from heaven is to fast earthly things as you pray.

In the Interest of the Public Good

    Back in July I posted an entry (“Weighing In On Weighing In”) about my attempt to lose a bit of real estate around my middle-aged middle.  I was pretty good about posting regular updates in the beginning, but that fell by the wayside after about eight weeks or so. I hate leaving projects unfinished, so here’s the final report on how my attempt at taking on the Vemma 12-Week Bod-e Transformation Challenge ended up.

    The plan calls for a carb-cycling meal program, regular exercise, and the Vemma product supplementation. I dutifully followed the program for the first 8 or 9 weeks, and saw a weight loss of about 3 to 4 pounds and little less belly.   During this time, I also kept up my already-established exercise regimen of 2 hours per week of weight training and some walking.  The biggest change for me was adhering to the meal schedule, even more than portion size and food choices recommended for this program.

     I actually enjoyed the taste of the Vemma Bod-e Burn drinks, and found it easy to drink one shortly after rising, along with the prescribed small carbohydrate-rich breakfast. That was usually a whole grain English muffin, a toaster-style waffle, or a bowl of instant oatmeal with a few sprays of liquid butter and some sugar-free syrup.  This meal is designed to get your metabolic furnace heated up for the day. It worked for me; maybe a little too well. I was as ravenous as a termite within 2 hours. In fact, I stayed pretty hungry on this plan, as in almost all the time. Three hours to the next meal seemed like an eternity to me on some days.

    What gave me the most difficulty, however, was trying to eat the other four small meals per day, spaced 3 hours apart. I found that in order to get the five meals actually eaten, I had to start reasonably early, like by no later than 7 a.m.. Otherwise,  I would be eating the last meal of the day well after 7 p.m..  Since I’m a night owl by nature, I don’t do “reasonably early” very well, truth be told.  So I often ended up eating four smaller meals more often than the called for five meals. You would think that missing a meal would not be a problem on a weight-loss plan, but it actually runs counter to the Vemma program.  The Bod-e Challenge is designed to help you get a  hefty amount of protein into your diet day in order to help you build lean muscle. A missing meal equals less protein consumed for the day, and one less log thrown on the ol’ metabolic fire.

    About two-thirds of the way down the road to “body transform-ation,” I hit a major pothole. Issues with my lower back sent me back to my doctor and the physical therapist.  Walking usually helps me with stiffness and pain, but not this time. Walking began to aggravate my condition, so I had to cut that out of for a while. When I did venture out - on days the weather was just too wonderful to stay indoors - I kept my route along flat areas in the neighborhood, and avoided chugging up inclines. All this to say, my activity (hence calorie-burning) level dropped off.

    My enthusiasm for carb-cycling took a major dive, as well.  I realized there was no way I was going to adhere to this meal strategy on a permanent basis. Around the 9-week mark, I didn’t think I could look another cup of low-fat cottage cheese in the face, and I didn’t want to see anymore turkey until Thanksgiving.  I grew distracted.  I began lingering too long in the snack aisle of my local Publix. “Oh look, Cape Cod potato chips are on sale, two bags for $5! I could get the reduced fat ones....but then the regular ones have an extra ounce of chips in the bag. Hmmm.....” I'm afraid I never met a potato chip I didn't like. Discipline began to give way to the siren call of the salty snack.

    In short, I staggered to the end of the 12-week Bod-e Trans-formation Challenge not exactly transformed. By Thanksgiving my “after” photo, if I’d bothered to take one, looked almost like my “before” photo. But my experience only gives credence to the policy of weight loss companies of printing somewhere on their glowing promotional material, in tiny print, “Results not typical.” This statement always appears on a photo of Big Bertha Schmitt after she drops the equivalent weight of a grand piano. I suspect that my results are actually very typical.

    I like the Vemma product, for the most part. Each Bod-e burn drink has 20 grams of protein and 7 grams of fiber, and their proprietary blend of vitamins. I thought seriously about repeating the Bod-e Challenge. However, after considering the additional expense, I balked. Bod-e product is almost 4 bucks per serving (2-3 daily) by the time you figure in shipping. Vemma would not be my path to renewed sveltness.

    So there it is. I give you my final report in the interest of the public good, as promised. I have no amazing Bod-e Challenge testimonial to give you. They do exist; I’m just not one of them.  Then again, I wasn’t in need of a major transformation to start with.  The Vemma Bod-e  Plan wasn’t the best fit for me, but a lot of their customers swear by it.

    Healthy lifestyle changes are like pairs of shoes. Sometimes you have to try on a few different styles to find the one that truly fits you. In fact, I'm trying on another one now. There's a copy of Dr. Joel Furhman’s book, Eat to Live, on my iPad and a very large container of organic baby spinach in the refrigerator.  Large plate of greens, anyone?

It’s Beginning to Look Somewhat Like Christmas

   Sometimes I think my neighbors must believe that I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. You see, I never get the outside of my house or the yard decorated for any holiday, not even for Christmas, the mother of all decorate-your-property holidays.  There are no icicle lights hanging from the eves of the house, nor twinkling on the bushes.  I have no electric candles shining from the windows at night. There’s not one bit of greenery on my mailbox. I do own a wreathe hanger for the front door that I purchased a few years ago, but no actual wreathe to hang on it. My house’s exterior practically screams, "Bah humbug!" at Christmas time.

    Now, I’m not against decorating. I’m not one of those “Christmas trees are pagan” kind of Christians.  I would be truly disappointed if no one else strung lights all over their landscaping, made their gas lamps look like candy canes, or set up a nativity scene.  I honestly enjoy and appreciate everyone else’s efforts. I just don’t want to do all that work myself because, frankly, I don't enjoy it. Besides, decorating outside for Christmas invokes the law of gravity - what goes up must come down and preferably before summer arrives.

    Believe it or not, there is a positive side to being an exterior decorating Scrooge. No one has ever tripped over any guy lines anchoring down a tacky Santa Claus inflatable anchored in my front yard. The mailman can get my box open without shredding his knuckles on a pine cone.  Best of all, I’ve never been rushed to the ER because I fell off a ladder trying to hang a string of lights from the eve of my house (or while taking them down again in July). This is an important point, as I’m already in physical therapy for the stuff I manage to do myself with both feet on the ground.  My medical co-pays are high enough right now, thank you very much!

    “Come on, Lynn, show some Christmas spirit,” you say. I know, I know - I should at least go find that festive wreathe for the front door.  Don’t be too hard on me, though.  I managed to get a few Christmas cards out for the first time in a long time. And my Christmas tree is up and decorated inside the house. So it is beginning to look somewhat like Christmas around here.

    Merry Christmas, ya’ll!

Church of the Buckshot

 

   Every person on the planet has this in-born tendency to repeat the same behaviors over and over again, be they good, bad or boring.  Sometimes we call such behavior a routine, which can be a good thing.  There’s virtue in establishing routines like structuring our mornings so that we get to work on time every day, or going to the gym the same two days each week. Sometimes, however, we stick with our behaviors just because we don’t want to be bothered with making a change.
 
   We humans are indeed creatures of habit. Nowhere is this characteristic trait more obvious than where people sit in a church sanctuary from Sunday to Sunday.  About two years ago, my church added a second service, and I was asked to lead worship for it. Since it meets earlier than the main service, our numbers are smaller. You would think that our First Service people would adjust to our reduced size and sit as an identifiable group, but no.  They all sit in exactly the same seats on exactly the same pews where they used to sit when we all met together in one service. The problem, for me at least, is that hardly anyone sits near the front, or even near each other. I mean, they look like a spray of buckshot out there!

    As a worship leader, this distresses me. It’s hard to connect with 40-50 people in a room designed to hold 300 when they’re spread out as much as they are. I’ve tried my darndest to get at least some of the Church of the Buckshot to sit a couple of pews closer to the front. I swore publicly that it was safe for everybody, as no one on the worship team had cooties. Our bass player even piped up that he’d had all his shots. They all laughed at the joke, but nobody budged an inch. The following Sunday, they all sat to the rear of middle, as usual. I kept trying though. One Sunday I sang a special song to them, a parody of Carol King’s “So Far Away:”

    So far away, doesn’t anybody want to sit close anymore?
    I don’t understand why you sit back by the door
    It just doesn’t help to know that you sit far away
    Yayeeayeeeee, so far away...

They thought the song was pretty funny, but they still didn’t move in any closer. Sitting in a different location would require change on their part, don’t you know. My Lord, whoever heard of Christians making any changes in their lives as mammoth as sitting in a different seat on Sunday? What a preposterous idea!

    I suppose I should just give up trying to make them behave like a congregation instead of strangers in an airport terminal. People are going to do what people are going to do, etc., etc., etc..  - but I can’t. This buckshot seating pattern just BUGS me!  I especially hate to see single people sitting off by themselves - it just doesn’t look like God’s family has gathered.  So next week I may try another appeal for a migration out from the fringes and closer to the front. Maybe this parody of “La Bamba” will work:

    Please sit a little bit closer
    Please sit a little bit closer
    Be friendlier saints
    Sit a little bit closer

    Sit a little bit closer, show me your face
    Please sit up near the front,
    Sit closer together, not all over the place
    Just for a change, just for a change   

    Pleeease sit closer, Pleeease sit closer
    Pleeease sit closer, Pleeease sit closer


That should do the trick, don’t your think? Yeah, right.


That’s all she wrote,
Lynn

I’m Not Making This Up

    Years and years ago, when my two brothers and I were mere youngsters, we shared the amenities of the hall bathroom of our family's modest 3-bedroom ranch home. On nights before a school day or a Sunday morning church service, my brothers and I negotiated our turns with baths and tooth brushing. “You go first! No, I went first last night. You go first!”  Eventually someone acquiesced, and the nightly routine began. Our standing rule was that the first bather had to let the other one know when they were done with the bathroom.  “I’m out!” was our usual signal.

    So one Saturday night, on an evening my brother Tommy took his bath first, I decided to watch some television until the bathroom was free. The Rev. Billy Graham was on the air, and he was preaching about Jesus’ encounter with the demon-possessed man.  He skillfully set the dramatic scene, as only a good preacher can do, and I was hanging onto every word. “The demons who had been tormenting this man cried out, ‘What have we to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?’ Rev. Graham paused for effect and then swung his hand for emphasis in a motion not unlike one of those Atlanta Braves tomahawk chops. “Jesus commanded the demons to leave the man.  ‘Come out of him!’”  A split-second later, I heard the bathroom door swing open and my brother loudly announcing, “I’M OUT!”   I’m not making this up. I only wish someone had been there with me to appreciate the moment!

    On another evening, much more recently, I discussed some song possibilities during a rehearsal with my worship team for the service we lead at our church. “I’ve been considering this classic gospel song, ‘Fill My Cup, Lord.'  I think a lot of our people would enjoy singing it.”  Our piano player promptly began to giggle and nearly slid off the bench laughing. “Oh, no! I don’t think I can do that one!”  He then went on to tell us the following true story.

Friends of his were attending a church prayer service - I’ll just say it was somewhere in America - when the pastor began to exhort his parishioners to pray in faith. “You have not, because you ask not!” he declared. At that prompting, one of the ladies present began to fervently ask the Lord for, ah, how shall I put this... well, for a larger bosom.  The pastor was rendered speechless by this unexpected development, but he regained enough composure to ask the worship team to play a song. Quickly. The song they chose was  “Fill My Cup, Lord.”  I swear I’m not making this up!

    Needless to say, we have yet to sing “Fill My Cup, Lord” at the nine o’clock service at my church. The entire worship team would probably all crack up within the first three notes if we tried to do it any time soon. Quite honestly,  if I even think about that story now, I start laughing. I’m not making that up, either!

Lynn

Tripping the Tongue Fantastic

I recently enlarged the font size of my blog entries and changed it to Times from Helvetica. Let me know how you like it. 

If you speak to groups of people often enough, you will eventually say something pretty goofy.  It will come flying out of your mouth before you can do a thing about it, and often with very comical and even embarrassing results. If you’re lucky, everyone will think your spoken faux pas is funny and you can laugh at yourself and move on.

One of the best sermon bloopers I ever heard about actually happened in my own church. Several years ago one of our pastors ministered on the topic of harvesting souls for God’s kingdom. He used the analogy of a piece of modern farm equipment, the combine, to illustrate a point.  “And the farmer rides that combine...,” he began.  Well, he meant to say "combine." The trouble is, he didn’t. He said “concubine.” 

Now, I wasn’t present in the service that morning, but I sure heard about it later. And I laughed and laughed, and it still makes me smile just thinking about it! This man is so respectful of the sensibilities of others, he would never in a million years say such a thing from the pulpit intentionally. And that just makes it all the more hilarious!

Worship leaders are not immune from tripping over their tongues, either. Some years ago, I was leading my home church in the song, “Amen! Praise and Honor.” The chorus is pretty easy to remember, but the verses get a little wordy. If you’re not paying attention, it’s easy to flub the lyric.  So we get to the line that says,

    Day and night they are standing there
    Lifting palm leaves up in their hands

 If there is one advantage of being the worship leader instead of the preacher, it’s that other people are singing along with you, which helps hide your vocal mistakes. What I sang, and over a microphone, was “lifting palm trees up in their hands.”  I’d been singing with my eyes closed, but they shot open as big as saucers when it dawned on me what I’d sung. And then I immediately got this picture in my mind of the multitudes before God’s throne straining to heft large potted plants, and, well, I just couldn’t help myself. I started snickering! I was well on my way to guffawing, when I caught myself. I must have turned red as a beet from trying to hold it together in front of the church, but I did manage to keep from totally losing it. We finished the worship service with most of the congregation none the wiser.  But I was never able to sing that song with a straight face again!

The song "Amen! Praise and Honor" hasn't been included in one of my set lists in quite some time - I still tend to sing "palm  trees."  I don’t think I'm going to hear a sermon in my home church any time soon that involves farm machinery, either.  Too bad!


Lynn

“Amen! Praise and Honor” by Gerrit Gustafson
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