Now we are six

Today I turned six again. This time there’s a zero after it. But what’s a zero? Zilch. Zip. Nothing.

I don’t know what time of day I arrived, and there’s no one who remembers to remind me. I do know I arrived two weeks late (which may explain my proclivity to tardiness) and that my mom, already mother to three children under five years old, hung wet laundry on the line between contractions. So I think I arrived during daylight hours on a sunny day.

Genesis tells me God created the heavens and earth in six days and then rested on the seventh, blessing and hallowing it. I’d like to take my cue for my seventh decade from God. I want my sixties to be blessed, holy, and restful.

I don’t mean restful in the sense of ceasing activities. God has given me some things to do—teaching and writing, to name two—and I sense I’m not finished yet. Rather in the midst of life, I want the rest Jesus offered, soul rest from the Lord of the Sabbath.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28 – 30, NIV

I wonder what that looks like. Trusting more and worrying less? Singing more and complaining less? Giving more and demanding less?

I expect I’ll frequently mess up on this. Please be patient with me. I’m only six.

Samaritan in a Pickup

And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
He said to him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?”
So he answered and said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’”
And He said to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.”
But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Then Jesus answered and said: “A certain woman went down from Watsontown to Milton, and the brand new wheel bearing in her 2002 Kia Rio melted and smoked, leaving the car half dead next to a corn field.

“Now by chance certain drivers came down that road. And when they saw her, they passed by on the other side. And when she phoned home, she cried unto an answering machine.

“But a certain bearded man, as he journeyed in a pickup truck, came where she was. And when he saw her, he had compassion. So he crawled around on the ground and examined the tires. And he studied the skid marks the tires had left on Route 405. And he sniffed the smoke and shook his head sadly. And he set her in his own vehicle, and drove her home. And behold, he was not a pervert, and did not assault her, but drove away promptly.

“So who do you think was neighbor to her whose Kia fell among defective wheel bearings?”

And he said, “He who showed mercy on her.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

There are still compassionate strangers in Northumberland County and many other locations. I thank the bearded Samaritan who rescued me.

Do you have a Good Samaritan story? Please send it to me.

Based on Luke 10:25 – 37, NKJV (www.biblegateway.com) and real life.

A Puppet King

            While in Jamaica early last March, one of my favorite songs we performed with the puppets was “Josiah.” We’d ask for an eight-year-old boy from the audience to come to the front and wear a paper crown during the song. The lyrics tell about Judah’s King Josiah, who began his reign while only eight years old. You can read all about him in 2 Chronicles 34 and 35.

            Judah had another boy king less well known, Joash. You can read about him in 2 Chronicles 22, 23, and 24. Though separated by two hundred years, Joash and Josiah began their reigns in similar circumstances: Each boy, younger than ten years old, lived in an idolatrous society. A priest, Jehoida, mentored Joash, while a prophetess, Huldah, advised Josiah. Each repaired the Temple, and saw idolatry decline and the nation return to God.

            There the similarities end.

            It seems Joash was a puppet:  His performance reflected the man controlling him. After the priest’s death, Joash followed the ungodly officials of Judah, abandoning the Temple and worshipping idols. He even murdered Jehoida’s son who rebuked him. God’s judgment followed.

            Conversely, Josiah’s faith was his own. “Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength…” (2 Kings 23:25)

            In the New Testament, young Timothy could have become a puppet, controlled by Grandma, Mama, or Paul, but the Apostle deemed Timothy’s faith authentic:  “I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.” (2 Timothy 1:5)

            Working with young people—whether teens at school or five-year-olds at church—I face the same challenge:  I want them to follow Christ for real, not because I or their parents or some other adult controls them.

Random Thoughts on a Tuesday Morning

            No one would describe me as outdoorsy or athletic, although I happily ride a bike on the Boardwalk in OCNJ if the temperature is above forty. And it’s not raining. And there’s a fresh-squeezed lemonade in the picture. Or breakfast at Ove’s.

            An outdoor activity for me is sitting on my back patio, reading. That’s where I sat this morning, these random observations both distracting and enriching my time with God:

            The breeze ruffles Bible pages and my hair, not quite long enough to stay tucked behind my ear.

            A bunny sneaks in and out of a hiding place beneath the shed.

            Bees move methodically from purple to white flowers on the shrubs that have spread down the edge of the yard, so intertwined that the same plant seems to produce both colors.

            Birds flit in and out of the neighbor's tall scraggly lilac, chirping.

            I’m in Milton, not paradise. Outside my tiny yard, there are utility poles and a nightmare of old wires.

            In the yard next door, my neighbor cusses. G-d d-mn this and G-d d-mn that. She usually calls down curses on the squirrels which graze at her bird feeder.

            A passing car treats me to several measures of loud Spanish lyrics set to a pounding rhythm.

            A few houses over in the other direction, another neighbor screeches at his rambunctious offspring.

            But if I look past the churches’ parking lots, I see lush green trees, and above me a bright blue sky with white crayon clouds.

            This blog is called “wit, words, and the Word.” Today, it’s just words.

Women and the Appliances We Love

            My mother frequently sang the Washing Machine song, which she apparently composed, since I’ve never heard it anywhere else. As I remember it:

The washing machine, the washing machine is Mommy’s bestest friend.

If I didn’t have my washing machine, I’d come to no good end.

Oh, I’d wash & I’d wash, & I’d scrub & I’d scrub all the live long day,

‘Til by night I’d be so tired that I couldn’t go out to play.

            Many times her bestest friend was a fickle friend and had to be repaired. Somehow those were the times my siblings and I always chose to play bakery in the back yard outside our home in Iselin, New Jersey. Four kids making mud pies out back and one baby making his own version of mud pies in cloth diapers.

            No wonder my mom worshiped her washer.

            My appliance idolatry is focused elsewhere.

            Growing up, my sister Taffy or I occasionally mentioned to our dad the family needed a dishwasher. To which he always gave the same hilarious (to him, anyway) reply, “We have two dishwashers, you and your sister!” Cue laughter.

            And so the unjust child labor continued for years. David and Brett, my older brothers, had intermittent and seasonal chores. Take out the garbage a few times a week. Rake leaves in autumn. Shovel snow in winter. Taffy and I had the daily monotony of dishwashing.

            As the baby, Tim’s only job was to be cute, very easily accomplished with his uncut golden curls.

            Taffy and I found ways to endure the boredom as we took turns washing and drying. We created our own version of Tip-It. Whoever washed would precariously pile the pots, pans, and dishes in the drainer so that whoever dried had to carefully remove each item without knocking the whole business onto the counter and floor.

            (To watch the original TV commercial for Tip-It, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YmnK9F6rf8. Doesn’t it make you long for 1965?)

            I learned years later that my mom cringed whenever Taffy and I did the dishes, as she watched soapy water drip down her brand new kitchen cabinets in her new split-level house in Park Ridge, New Jersey. She would have rather done them herself, but my dad was strict. One summer evening we failed to do the dishes immediately after supper. Dad found us—gasp!—watching TV. Instead of sending us to the kitchen, he gave us each a licking and sent us to bed. My mom had to wash the dishes herself. In retrospect, I think we were all happy with the outcome.

            Another fun game was to neatly put the silverware away in the drawer…and then SLAM it shut. Raucous laughter erupted when we opened the drawer and saw its disheveled contents. We’d straighten the silverware again and SLAM. It amused every time.

            One summer my parents went to California to visit my mom’s brothers. My dad’s sister, Laurel, came to babysit us, bringing along our cousins, Jeffrey and Robin. When Aunt Laurel learned Taffy and I washed supper dishes, she decided we could wash them after breakfast and lunch, too. Of course Jeffrey and Robin didn’t have to do anything since they were guests.

            Little did we know, Aunt Laurel was sitting on the back patio after lunch, listening to an annoying series of sounds repeatedly wafting out the kitchen window:  SLAM. Clink Clash. Hahahaha. SLAM. Clink Clash. Hahahaha. Cousin Robin stood in the kitchen, wistfully watching our fun. We graciously offered her a turn.

            SLAM. Clink Clash. Hahahaha. Aunt Laurel burst into the kitchen. “Who is making that racket?! Robin?!!” It’s hard to say which I enjoyed more, the game or Robin’s punishment.

            As we matured, we stopped slamming the silverware drawer, and started the singing game. I would start singing and end abruptly in the middle of a line. Whatever word I last sang had to be the first word in the next song started by Taffy. We went back and forth using pop songs, choir anthems, and Broadway show tunes.

            Fast forward to my young adulthood:  Living in a church parsonage in Pennsylvania with my husband and our four sons. Preparing many meals and washing lots of dishes. I enlist my two oldest boys as dishwashers and dryers…and watch the soapy water dribble down the wooden cabinet door.

            I naively mention to a church board member how nice it would be to have a dishwasher installed in the parsonage kitchen. His answer and laughter echo Dad’s decades earlier. Somehow the conversation comes to the attention of an older church lady who says to me, “I have a portable dishwasher that I only use once a year when I houseclean my kitchen cupboards. Would you like to have it?”

            No church council was consulted to canonize Saint Irene of West Chillisquaque Township. I blessed her name and prayed for her health and happiness every time I connected that hefty appliance to the kitchen faucet. Since it drained into the sink, I would put greasy fry pans or grimy Corningware in the path of the draining hot soapy water. They’d be almost clean by the time I had to hand wash them.

            Now I own a home with a built-in dishwasher. I thank God for it every day. It makes me 99% delirious with happiness.

            That missing 1% would be achieved if I could interest other family members in my cult of dishwasher devotion. Don’t they understand idols need to be fed? It doesn’t require a high priestess; anyone can feed it plates and bowls.

            However, not everyone can load a dishwasher properly. To my logical female mind, it seems that a person who empties it—and doesn’t suffer short term memory loss—should be able to fill it. Just remember the arrangement of the clean dishes you removed and arrange the dirty dishes in the same pattern. I usually end up rearranging their random placement of dishes, but I’m happy when my sons interact with the appliance in any way.

            Whenever I go away for more than a day, I remind my sons the dishwasher will have to be run while I am gone. I cannot come home from southern New Jersey or western Pennsylvania or Jamaica to turn it on. They seem to grasp this, but they continue to find one aspect confusing: There are little transparent packets of measured detergent; the material dissolves, releasing the detergent. And there are little blocks of compressed detergent wrapped in crinkly plastic which doesn’t dissolve and which must be removed before placing in dishwasher. Which kind do I use? Whichever is on sale at the Surplus Outlet. Although the packaging of both brands gives clear usage instructions, my extremely intelligent and highly literate sons don’t read packages. So they have been surprised to open the dishwasher and see the little wrapped detergent block, its red eye staring up at them.

            Can I get any participation from my highly successful and overly educated husband? (He has an Associate’s degree, a Bachelor’s degree, and two Master’s degrees.) Rather than put away clean dishes and load dirty ones, he will hand wash a kitchen full of plates and cookware and diabolically pile them in the drainer in a manner that makes the childhood sisters look like amateur Tip-It players. This treachery triples my workload: I have to put away drainer dishes and dishwasher dishes and then sweep up all the glasses that crashed on the floor.

            Nevertheless, 99% is a good grade in delirious happiness or anything else. I’m so happy I sing about the appliance I love.

God save my dishwasher,

Protect its jet-stream clean,

Built by Maytag.

May every fork and dish

Crusted with tuna fish

Be spotless. That’s my wish.

God save my dishwasher.

Epilogue

            The Maytag died right before I left for five days at St. Davids Christian Writers Conference. I posted a warning sign on her door:  Broken! Clean your own dishes. I bought large packages of paper plates and plastic cups for my menfolk, and then enjoyed not cooking and not washing dishes at Grove City College.

            A week ago, Dan the Appliance Man installed my new Frigidaire dishwasher. I’m singing on a new song.

Getting to know you,

Getting to know all about you…