A Swarm of Angels

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On Eagles Wings by Michael Joncas 1979
Sung by Josh Groban

Psalm 91:9-12
9 Because you have made the LORD your refuge,
the Most High your dwelling-place,
10 no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.
11 For God will command the angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
12 On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.

Date: Wednesday August 15, 2012
Time: about 4:30 pm
Place: the office of Dr. Michel X

Dr. X: well, the ultrasound of your left carotid artery shows it is 80 to 90 percent blocked and I really don’t know how you have missed having a massive stroke. I want you in surgery tomorrow, so I am scheduling you for 9 am at ES hospital.

For a week now I’ve been trying to articulate what the events of August 15th -17th have honestly meant to me and with the greatest of difficulties I am writing now. For the last week I have responded to the news of emergency surgery and questions about it with a joke or a laugh as if it was just an everyday occurrence. It wasn’t and I know that. What I do know is for the last 5 to 6 years I have complained of several physical symptoms to a series of medical specialists and none of them correlated the symptoms with a blocked artery in my neck. In the last 5 years I have traveled extensively, had several medical procedures done, including surgeries, actively exercised and I NEVER HAD A STROKE. So what I am trying to understand is why me. What or who kept me protected.

When Dr. X came in to tell me I could go home he said “the blockage was so bad the blood flow in your left eye was reversed, you are so lucky to be alive and not incapacitated by a stroke.” I don’t believe ‘luck’ had anything to do with. I believe someone(s) was watching over me.

The hymn “On Eagles Wing” written by Michael Joncas in 1979 is based on Psalm 91 and Isaiah 40:31 and that hymn and Psalm popped into my head on Thursday morning just before surgery. Ok so you might say, it’s not so unusual for a person well versed in theology to think about a favorite hymn or a comforting piece of scripture in times of stress and maybe your right. Life is often about where you put your trust and the path your thoughts take in times of crises. But I will tell you this that when I let go of my fear and give it to that invisible, but tangible presence, I not only feel protected, I am protected. The trust I place in the Holy Spirit is not the kind of trust that says I’m going to be a millionaire, a celebrity, or live a life of ease. Those are things I might want but not need. The trust I’m talking about is trusting that what I NEED will be there, not what I want. It is also recognizing that what I think I need isn’t always what God thinks I need and that again comes down to the difference between “I want” and “I need.”

God needs me to follow the path laid out by Jesus and that is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly beside my God. That is my model for living. I must admit I don’t always follow that path. It seems I am always drifting off one side of the path or another and when I reach a fork in the road my ego is strong enough to take the wrong one. Such wanderings do make it difficult on the Holy Spirit in guiding me back to the path, the Great Divine is telling me all along the way back “if you had just gone the way I told you to this would have been a lot easier.” Problem is I’m not a good listener and I have a really poor memory. But, just as many people I do come home to the shelter of those comforting wings eventually, most often in times of trouble. Last week I came home real quick!

I don’t want you to think that simply giving into what I believe God wants will make my, or any, life easy because it won’t. In fact if I really follow the path laid out by Jesus, my life will have a heck of number of pitfalls, road blocks, crises, and just plain hard times. The thing of it is I probably won’t notice those hard times. I will see instead the joy of being a partner in God’s creation, the smiles on the faces of those who never had a friend before, and the satisfaction of knowing that something wrong has been made right. Its knowing life isn’t about me, it’s about being part of the plan, about feeling the presence and hearing a swarm of angel’s wings knowing I am just a small cog in a huge plan to bring everyone under the shelter of those wings.

I am grateful to be here to write this, I pray all of you will feel and hear your own angels as they guide you on your own path. May the grace of God go with you

Ruth Jewell, ©August 22, 2012

Promises!

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filled to the brim

Isaiah 43:5a Do not fear, for I am with you

Promises!

The Lord said:
She created me, formed me
Tells me “Don’t fear”
She calls me by name and I am hers
I will not be overwhelmed
I can walk through all dark shadows,
and dangerous paths,
I will not be harmed
She ransomed me, bought me
Rescued me from my enemies
Because, She loves me, . . . ME!
I will not fear because GOD is with me

©Ruth Jewell, June 26, 2012 Continue reading Promises!

Who Knew

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He is dirty
She smells bad
Hungry – thirsty
Ill – lost

People hurry by
Don’t touch me
Stay away
… Nice tidy beings

A song swells
Notes ring like bells
The sun breaks out
Soft breeze drifts

They sing amidst the trash
Hold, forth, great beauty
Who knew
The blessed of God

© Ruth Jewell, April 7, 2012

So often we miss God because it doesn’t “look” like what we think God should look like.  But, what does God look like?  Who knows – no one – so look for God in the unexpected; dirty, shining, poor, rich, hard working, lazy, all are God.  God looks like the unknowable, like anything I can’t describe.

Writers Block

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I am restless today!  Maybe it’s the sunshine outside calling to me, maybe I’m burnt out with class work and writing papers, or maybe I’ve got to many things on my mind to concentrate.  And, focusing and concentration is what I need to do right now.   Two papers are due for a class on Wednesday and I have put off writing them in some rather inventive ways and some not so inventive.

Going to Church of course is always a great excuse for not writing, so is the fact that I have a cold and therefore out of sorts and of course taking time out to write a blog takes up time.  But my greatest procrastination technique is to pretend I’m meditating.  Who knew how much time the space of silence can fill when I need to write, but can’t.  When I fall asleep during silent prayer I can always say “God knows what my body needs and apparently it was rest.”  And, when I’m caught snoring I have been known to repeat Romans 8:26 “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”  No one believes me of course but it makes me feel better, even if it isn’t what Paul meant.

I often wonder from what depth I drag up the words to put on paper, at other times the lake is way too shallow to allow anything worthwhile from surfacing, and today appears to be one the shallow days.  Did Paul have this problem or did the words always come forth?  From what I’ve read of Paul my guess is he struggled with words as well and just like everyone else who uses WORDS to live by Paul had his good days and bad days.  I think Parker Palmer in the forward to his book The Courage to Teach, (Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2007) says it best; “I doubt that I have ever published a page that has not been refried eight or ten or twelve times.”  Yes writing and re-writing is the primary tool of anyone who creates with words.  My motto is if it’s worth writing, it’s worth writing over and over again and my guess is that’s every writer’s motto.  Right now I’m in sixth rewrite and the whole thing still stinks!

I was hoping that writing an entry for my blog would jog (oooo, that rhymes, good for me!) my creative juices.  But, I still feel restless and just want to run as far from my computer as I can get.  Now what else can I do to procrastinate, ah yes clean my study, straighten my books, pet the dog and play with my parrots.  How about another cup of tea, always good for my cold, or just a glass of cold water anything to lubricate my brain in order to get these stupid papers (oh my, did I just say that?) done.

Ok, let me rethink this paper business.  This is my last academic quarter and I have to admit I am burnt out, so I am going to forgive myself for being a little, well more than a little, bit of a procrastination and just relax.  I know it will come (it always does), so I’m going to and get that third cup of tea take a walk and come back when I feel closer to who I am, and not what I think the professor wants.  See you all later.

Ruth Jewell ©April 2012

JOB’S WIFE

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Scripture: Job 2:9-109Then his wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.”10But he said to her, “You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

I am taking a class on “Job and the Mystery of Suffering” this quarter and when we were assigned this passage to write on for this week I found it way more interesting than I thought I would.  The book of Job is a difficult book at its best and when I read it the first time I started having questions about Job’s wife but couldn’t find anything about her.  She is mentioned only twice and is never named and in a culture where remembering your name when you’ve died is your immortality that is complete death.  So I want to take her part, I want to be her advocate, I only have questions

I get the feeling here that Job’s wife is feeling real pain; she has after all, just like Job, lost everything and is grieving deeply.  While this may be the story of Job his wife, who is allowed to live through this experience with him, is always forgotten.  You can hear her frustration and pain most clearly in the paraphrase bible, The Message, where she says:  “Still holding on to your precious integrity, are you? Curse God and be done with it!”  Here is a woman in pain whose feelings are being ignored not just by Job but by God as well.  Job tells her to quit talking like a “Shameless, Harlot, Fool,” and accept whatever God hands them.  (Mind you he is kind enough not to call her those things, just stop talking like them.)  She is a side effect of the Adversaries bet with God, and if Job doesn’t deserve such suffering, she certainly doesn’t.  According to the bet with God the Adversary was to test Job not his wife, so why is she being tested along with him?  Or is this one of those patriarchal editorial jobs that just manages to forget to add that Job’s wife was just as faithful to God as Job was and she too was being tested?  I have only questions because there is no information on this forgotten lady, even her name is gone and in a name forgotten was true death.

One of the reasons I am asking these questions is because of what Crenshaw (Crenshaw, James L.; Reading Job, a Literary and Theological Commentary, Smyth & Helwys, Macon GA, 1984, pg 45) says concerning the Hebrew word for curse, barak, which he says is difficult to interpret and may actually mean blessing, which changes the meaning of the wife’s words to “Bless Elohim and die victoriously.” Now that is interesting, because the wife in that version seems to be saying just be done with it, if God wants Job dead, then be done with it and die a virtuous man.  Job, on the on the other hand, tells her I’m not giving up, I will accept what I’m given, if I’ve done anything to offend God then I deserve what I’ve gotten.  Job doesn’t know what he did but he’s going to stick around and demand more information.  As I looked for reasons for Job’s stubbornness I looked back at the Pentateuch and found in Deuteronomy 28:1-68 something rather interesting.  In this chapter Moses tells the people of God that if they follow all of God’s commandments they will be blessed and if they don’t then they will be cursed.  In fact, Deuteronomy 28:38 (“The LORD will afflict you at the knees and thighs with a severe inflammation, from which you shall never recover—from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head” [italics mine]) describes exactly what the Adversary does to Job in verse 2:7 (“The Adversary departed from the presence of the LORD and inflicted a severe inflammation on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” [italics mine]). If Job is as faithful to God as the prologue says then he knew full well what was said in Mosaic Law and that meant he must have done something wrong, he just doesn’t know what it was.  Job’s wife is ready to give up and go to her rest, Job is not.

©Ruth Jewell, January 25, 2012