I had a preconceived idea this morning.  I believed if I made a right turn while driving I could later make a left turn to head me back in the right direction.  But, I learned my preconceived idea was wrong.  I also pushed out of my head a true fact: I have no sense of direction.  I will, if at an intersection where I don’t know which way to turn, always turn in the opposite direction I should go. 

This morning I gave my son a ride to work because the car he drives is in the shop for a few repairs.  After dropping him off I decided to take some side streets home rather than battle any potential traffic jam ups.  I meandered along enjoying the scenic view of landscaped yards with pretty spring flowers.  I turned onto the street which would take me home.  As luck would have it a few blocks later I arrived at an intersection where a road sign clearly stated,”Right Turn Only”.  I needed to continue straight and would have ignored the signs instructions, but the traffic I had previously tried to avoid whizzed passed me in both directions.  I made a right turn per the instructions of the road sign.  I then made a left turn to make up for the right turn.  I continued my spring flower sight-seeing so I didn’t mind this little detour.  The little road twisted and turned and when I came to the end of it I  wasn’t sure of my location, but relying on my intuition, I made another left turn.  When the road ended I turned again based in my intuition.  I was a little lost but pretty sure I was going in a direction which would take me home and hoped I would soon recognize a landmark.  I did recognize a landmark, but I was going in the exact opposite direction of home.  I’m not sure why, but it surprised me to discover I was going in the wrong direction.   I made a U-turn, secure in the idea I now knew where I was going.  But another road sign popped up in front of me, “Road Closed”.  I made a quick left, but another road sign loomed ahead of me which clearly stated “No Outlet”.  I decided I really was lost and couldn’t get home on my own.  I pulled over to the side of the road, right in front of a road sign that said, “No Parking At Anytime”.  I picked up my phone, clicked on the map app and typed in my home address.

Preconceived ideas and ignoring the truth can cause us more trouble than we would like to think about.  We have preconceived ideas about where our lives should go, about what career directions our kids should take, and about how our friends should treat us.  We have more pre-conceived ideas about what the teacher should be teaching in his class or how the pastor should be running the church or how people should be treating us with more respect.   Then there is the truth we like to ignore: God’s pre-conceived ideas are better than our own.  “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him.” (1Corinthians 2:9).  “Now unto Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us…” (Ephesians 3:20). “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” (Jeremiah 1:5) and “For I know the plans I have for you….” (Jeremiah 29:11).  Preconceived ideas have a bad connotation, but we are all preconceived ideas.  God preconceived us to walk in His paths of righteousness.   Just like I pushed the truth that I have no sense of direction out of my head and continued with my plan to take the back roads home rather than staying on the main roads, we like our own preconceived ideas and push on to accomplish them.  We think we can clearly see our own way little realizing the troubles we are creating for ourselves.  We find it scary to go on the path God has created for us.  It requires believing in something we can’t see.   “We live by faith, not by sight”  (2Corinthians 5:7).  “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Here is a short parable to illustrate;  I’m sitting on a small hill out in nature enjoying the beautiful view.  Jesus walks up to me and asks me to join Him in a climb up the tall mountain in the distance.  I hesitate, the view is really nice right where I’m sitting and I was just daydreaming plans to build a house on the very hill I’m sitting on when Jesus walked up to me and interrupted my reverie.  I look at that tall mountain in the distance…..Jesus wants me to climb that?  I don’t really care for exercise and I can just imagine the aching muscles I’ll have at the end of the day.  But Jesus counteracts my thoughts as if He can read my mind.  He says, “You can sit on this little hilltop and see for miles around, but if you climb this mountain with Me, your view will be greatly increased.  The higher we go the more you can see and the more I can point out to you.  There is joy in knowing Me more deeply, but you will also experience a deeper sadness at some of what you will see.  The more time you spend with Me the more your heart will become like mine and your love and compassion for others will grow.  At the top of the mountain I have already prepared a home for you.  A home far more beautiful than the one you are planning on building for yourself here.”  He reaches out his hand and asks, “Will you give up your preconceived ideas about life and follow Me?”  

Sometimes I feel like I’m driving down the road of life at a 100 mph, but I feel like I’m sitting still and getting absolutely nowhere.  I love to drive fast, but when I drive fast under my own power my works look momentarily cool stirring up dust behind me, but then the dust settles and disappears.  I spend so much time driving my car fast  I don’t take the time to stop and have it repaired, until one day the engine of the car stops running on empty and gives up, unable to go on anymore, broke down beside the road.  No one stops to help, everyone rushing by at 100 mph, too busy creating their own swirls of dust to even see me broke down beside the road.  

I open the glove box hoping to  find an old candy bar or a bottle of water, but I’d been too busy to stop and add emergency supplies to the car.  All I saw was the owners manual.  What a dry boring book, I’d  never bothered to read it, it looked as new as the day I bought the car.   I picked it up, I had nothing else to do and maybe I would find something  to help me get back on the road.  I looked up all the light symbols lit up in red on the dash board; oil can…..low on oil, annoyed I realized I didn’t have a spare bottle of oil in the car.  Tire with a slash through it……low tire pressure, disgusted with myself again I realized I didn’t have an emergency tire inflator in my car either.  A third light told me the engine had overheated, now there was something I could be proactive about, I could wait for the engine to cool down….but I still couldn’t drive it without oil.  So I sat there next to the road berating myself for my broke down condition.  Flashing lights pulled up behind me, a police officer strolled up to me and ticketed me for sitting next to the road in a broke down car.  He did offer to call a tow truck for me, but I refused.  If I called a tow truck I would have to let him tow my car.  If I let the tow truck tow my car it  meant I had given up control of where my car went and no one drove my car but me.  The officer strolled back to his car leaving me alone again.  

I was tired after all the years of racing around creating dust, so I leaned my seat back, closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.   A moment later I jerked awake as a semi-truck blew past my car rocking it from side to side.    I almost wished I had let the police officer call for a tow truck, but I hadn’t and now it was getting dark.  The cars that whizzed past me had turned on their lights.  Obviously I’d slept several hours.  I picked up my cell phone to check the time and saw my battery level blinking at 2 percent.  I panicked.  Then I saw the car manual again where I had tossed it onto the passengers seat.  On the front cover in oversized bold print was a number I could call for roadside help.    

I picked up my cell phone, which now blinked at 1 percent and contemplated calling the number.  I needed to call soon, but I paused for just a moment longer to review my options.   Ok, so there weren’t many, I could sit here broke down next to the road, cold and hungry in the dark and soon be without cell service or I could call the number on the front of the Owners Manual.  A few more thoughts flashed through my mind, I remembered vaguely seeing other broke down  cars for just a moment through the haze of dust and the memories of the people  sitting in their cars weren’t pretty, but I was going so fast it was easy to ignore them.  I didn’t want the same thing to happen to me.  I didn’t want to stay trapped in my car forever because I couldn’t give up control of who decided where the car went.  I needed help!

I hadn’t even finished dialing the number when a tow truck pulled in front of me and a man jumped out and hurried over to my car.  He opened my door and helped me into the front cab of his tow truck.  Next he reached into the back of his truck and pulled out a take out bag from my favorite restaurant.  While I opened my bag and pulled out my favorite meal he smiled and walked back to hook up my car.  Three semi-trucks blew past and didn’t even ruffle his hair.  Finished with making the car secure he hopped into the front of the cab and drove us to the repair shop.   We pulled up to the shop and I wiped the last of the crumbs off my face.  Delicious!   I got out and watched the driver unhook my car.  He pulled a white rag out of his pocket and proceeded to wipe all the dust off my car.  The scratches in my cars paint and the small dings disappeared.  He popped the hood and with the same rag wiped all the grease from the engine.   When he was finished he folded the cloth and put it back into his pocket.  I was wide-eyed when I saw the cloth was as white as when he had started, but my car looked like it had on the show room floor.   He opened the passenger side door and offered to take me for a drive.  I hesitated for a moment because I like to drive my own car.  But, I decided to live dangerously and hopped into the car eager to see what else this man could do.  He got into the drivers seat and started the engine, it purred as if it were brand new.  I looked at the odometer, “000,000”.  Why hadn’t I called for help sooner?

I stood at the picture window and watched the darkness loosen it’s  grip, drifting into a hazy beginning.  The wind breathed the leaves of the trees lining our street into action, inhaling and exhaling the shadows on the pavement into shadowy shapes.  The shadows came to life in the form of a man pushing a small child on a swing.  I could almost hear the boy laugh while his daddy swung him back and forth.  

We moved into this house  ten months ago.  I have been outside many times, raking leaves, planting flowers, pulling weeds or sitting on the porch while Aspen rides her bike up and down the sidewalk.  I’ve never seen a man and a boy hiding in the tree tops.  1Corinthians 2:9 tells us,  “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have  entered into the hearts of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him”  When the shadow boy swung toward his father, the father reached out for him to give him another push.  The boy laughed and the cycle continued, back and forth,  the wind blew the father and the son towards each other.  It reminded me of how the Holy Spirit blows on our hearts inviting us to spend time with our Father in heaven.  The natural cycle of the Spirit inviting us to spend time with the Father results in the Father reaching out to spend time with us.  

Sometimes we listen to the Holy Spirit and spend time interacting with our Father, other times we don’t, we choose to ignore His call.  When the wind of the Holy Spirit whispers to us, we resist, we don’t want to be blown towards the Father, we want to do our own thing.  The wind blows often here in Nebraska, in fact we spent last night sleeping in the basement due to a tornado watch until 2am.  I’ve seen the wind blow the leaves many times in the front yard, but I never felt any joy from it.  But, I did feel a certain sense of lightheartedness watching the shadow father interact with his shadow son.  The father and the boy are always there, but the leaves of the trees don’t always respond in the same way to the wind.  The possibility of a relationship with our Father in heaven is always there, but how do we respond to the invitation whispered on the breath of the Holy Spirit?

I read Esther chapter 5 this morning.  It tells the story of  Esther inviting the king and Hamaan to a special banqet prepared  just for them.  The distinctive honor of the invitation increased Hamaan’s pride.  He rejoiced in his elevated position.  But, one action took away his joy, a man named Mordacai refused to bow before him when he saw him at the gate.  Let’s take this one step further.  What was it that actually caused Hamaan to seeth with anger when Mordacai refused to bow before him?  It was his pride, which he held onto instead of letting go, his pride caused him to be hung on the gallows he had built for Mordacai.  The actions of Mordacai did not cause the ultimate downfall of Hamman.  Hamaan refused to let go of pride and therefore held onto a ticking time bomb.  

When the Holy Spirit whispers to us to receive joy from our Father by spending time with Him, it is our pride that stops us from accepting the invitation.  We say,”No” because we have our own grand plans for life, we don’t want to give them up.  It is pride that steals our joy and we do it to ourselves, refusing to let go of the ticking time bomb that stops us from relaxing in the natural joy of swinging towards our Father and laughing in joy when He reaches out to push us…..push us into places of joy we never imagined could exist.  “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the hearts of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him.”

Warm spring breezes scented with lilacs have gently, but with determination, blown the  cold winds of winter far, far away.  I love spring, greens in every shade imaginable sprout forth from the brown of tree limbs and dirt.  I imagine beautiful veggies growing in my garden, untouched by bugs and yellowed leaves.  Maybe it’s the scent of the lilacs or the fresh cut grass, or the combination of both with just the perfect amount of warm sunshine that causes me to dream of a garden much bigger than I need.  I made plans for the perfect garden which included the skills of my husband, who makes use of his testosterone by skillfully weilding manly tools like drills and staple guns and carrying the heavy stuff.  

A couple of weeks ago we started our garden project.  We popped up the pop-up green house, Brett put together the raised beds stored in the shed and I filled them with dirt, manure, and compost.  But, my plants still sat in the green house waiting for us to find the spare time to put up a short chicken wire fence to keep Peter, Flopsy, Mopsy and Topsy out of the garden.  The little cottontails are adorably cute hopping around the yard, but I am a little selfish and  do not want to share my lettuce with the neighborhood bunnies.    

Brett and I went to Lowes and after much pushing the cart up and down the ailes, and doing more math than we’ve done since graduating from highschool, we finally determined the various prices of different types of wood in the amount that we needed.  We settled on the cheapest stuff we could find, had it cut to the appropriate length and left the store with grand visions of our new fence.  

Brett pulled into the parking space in the back of the house and unloaded the lumber.  For all our planning the actual building of the fence went up with one new idea at a time.  We decided to attatch the wood to the lined up boxes.  I held the wood while Brett operated the drill and buzzed the screws into the wood.   The last peice of wood in place we stood back to admire our work.  Most of the peices were straight, but several were decidedly crooked.  How could we have not seen they weren’t staight up and down?  Brett reversed the process and drilled the screws out of the wood.  This time he held up the wood and I stood at a distance to tell him when it was staight.  

We finished one section of the garden and decided to move onto the second section to be fenced.  After putting a few boards up in the second section, Brett stood up and glanced over at the first section, no doubt to admire the results of his hard work.  He noticed the long boards we had attatched to use as trellis’s for the tomatoes and cucumbers looked as though they could use more support.  We took a few of the longer boards and attatched one of them horizontially across three of the vertical boards.  Having begun the new project without a real plan of how it would look when finished we tried the second board in a few places before attatching it.   So far, so good.  But, what next?  We were quickly using up the boards we had bought for the second section of fence.  We attatched a couple of boards diagonally and had one small board left to attatch.  Wanting to attatch it in just the right spot and straight rather than crooked, we had learned from our previous mistakes, I stood back and told Brett to move the board to various places trying to get it “just right”.  It dawned on me that if he attatched it in the middle of the other two boards we would have a capitol “H”, perfect as the first letter of our last name.  

Brett posted photos to Facebook of our finished garden fence with the letter “H” in the center.  A friend used the word “clever” to describe our fence.  She didn’t know we hadn’t planned it that way, we just took one step at a time and arrived to the perfect ending.  

In the middle of building the fence I told Brett I would use the story as an example of our relationship with God.  First of all there are many times we think we know what we are doing and have no idea the boards of our life are going on crooked.  We see the situation up close, God sees the whole picture from a distance.  Just like I stood back and gave Brett directions to place the board straight, only God can help us get the direction of our lives straight.   Brett and I haphazardly put the fence up, making up the next thing to do as we went along.  At one point we thought we were finished, but then realized we needed to make the trellis’s more stable.  We randomly started putting up wood and somehow or other ended up with the first letter of our last name in the middle of the fence.  

When we follow God, we only need to know the next right thing to do.  Brett and I made it up as we went along, God doesn’t.  He has a plan and in the end, if we follow him one right action after the other, we will end up with the perfect ending.  We seemingly haphazardly ended up with our name represented by a capitol “H”  in the middle of our new garden fence, but God’s plan for us isn’t haphazard.  He knew our name from the beginning of time and planned for us to be in His family.  Now when I see our garden fence, I am reminded that just like I pre-planned my garden, God pre-planned us being here.  He has planted us in his garden and just like I envision beautiful plants bearing much fruit, God envisions me growing in His garden and bearing much fruit for Him.