Friday, November 23, 2012 

The Day After Thanksgiving 

One of my Facebook friends posted the following on her FB page this morning:  

“When your friends become family and your family are your friends, that's when you know you're truly lucky in this life.” 

However, I would change the wording to: 

When your friends become family and your family are your friends, that's when you know you're truly blessed in this life. 

I can say I am definitely one of those people who are blessed. The oldest of four girls, me and my 3 younger sisters (Betty, Jackie and Susan) are very close. We are doubly blessed that our parents are still alive (dad is 82 and mom is 80 and married 58 years). These very special people are not only my family, but also my closest friends. We have so much fun together, from celebrating the holidays with each other to traveling around the word together. 

However, the dearest people to me are my husband, Dennis, and three children, Kathleen (33), Christy (almost 28) and Kevin (24). My kids and I have the best relationships. I love nothing more than spending time with them – either collectively or individually. They share their lives with me – from Kathleen telling me all about her current guy to Kevin seeking girlfriend advice from me to helping Christy plan her wedding to her wonderful fiancé, Brian. Just thinking about them warms my heart! 

And then there are my friends, especially the “fifth” and “sixth” sisters – Debbie and Kelly. They started out being the friends of my sisters Susan and Betty, respectively. However, over the decades (yes, decades) they have become part of the family. They join my family for holidays and special occasions. We even travel together. (In fact, we are currently planning our next trip together – to the Amazon in 2014!) 

Luck? Mmmm… I don’t think so. God has put these people specifically in my life to bless me and bring me joy and love. I am so thankful.

 

 Me with my sisters: Susan, Betty & Jackie

 

 Me and my sisters with our mom

 

 Me with my dad, mom and sisters

 

 

My husband, Dennis, and me in Ireland

 

 
 My 3 children - Christy, Kevin and Kathleen

Debbie and me

 

 

Kelly and me

 

 

Debbie, Susan, Kelly, Rick (bro-in-law), Betty and me

Sunday, November 18, 2012 

“The Golden Rule” – Matthew 7:12: The Life and Words of Jesus 

This morning pastor Josh Harris’ message was on Matthew 7:12: So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. 

Introduction

The name “The Golden Rule” (Matthew 7:12) originated about 200 years after Jesus’ ministry with the Roman Emperor, Alexander Severus. He wasn’t a Christian, but he was so impressed with Jesus’ words that he had them inscribed in gold on the walls in his home. 

It’s a lot easier to put these words on your wall than it is to live according to them. It’s much less costly to write them in gold on your walls than to write them on your heart. So what does Jesus want to teach us? What does in mean for this to be the rule of our lives? The Golden Rule is… 

…A Simple Rule of Love

What is so striking about the Golden Rule is its powerful simplicity: it is not complex, but it is profound. Even kids can understand it: if you really want to care for someone, if you really want to do right by them, then treat them the way you would want to be treated. 

When Jesus says, “for this is the Law and the Prophets” he’s saying that this sums up the teaching of the Old Testament about how we should treat one another. (Matthew 7:12 is a literary “bookend” for the entire section of the Sermon on the Mount beginning in Matthew 5:17.) Jesus distills laws about not lying, not committing adultery, not cheating, not coveting, and so forth, into a single sentence. He’s showing us the essence, the heart of all the commandments and teaching about how we relate to our fellow man. He’s showing us what love for others looks like in action. 

This commandment is taught elsewhere by Jesus and in other places in the New Testament. For example: 

1) A lawyer asked Jesus, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And he [Jesus] said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:36-39). The second great commandment is the same principle as the Golden Rule. 

2) The Apostle Paul echoes Jesus words in Romans 12:8-10: “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. 

Doing unto others as you would have them do to you is the fulfilling of the law. The Golden Rule is a simple rule of love.

·    Do you wish others would be honest with you? Then be honest with them.

·    Do you wish others would believe the best about you? Then stop judging them and believe the best.

·    Do you wish others would be patient with and overlook your weaknesses? Then extend mercy and grace toward them. 

…An “impossible left to myself” rule

If we’re honest, we see that this isn’t our natural disposition. This isn’t how we live left to ourselves and our desires and strengths. There’s something about the clarity and simplicity of the Golden Rule that reveals how self-centered and unloving we often can be. We want people in authority over us to be just and fair. Yet, when we have power over someone else, we can use it for our own advantage. We want others to give us the benefit of the doubt, but so often we are quick to judge other peoples’ motives. We want others to forgive us when we ask forgiveness and stop focusing on our mistakes, but when other people cross us we hold it against them. 

None of us can say that we have perfectly upheld this rule of doing unto others as we would have them do to us. Jesus wants us to come to this humbling realization. Jesus is not giving us the Golden Rule so that we might attempt to earn our salvation by our good works. He gives us the Golden Rule to expose the folly of trying to be justified by the law. Jesus loves us so much he wants to rescue us from the lie that we can save ourselves by being good enough. Jesus loves us so much he’s knocking the legs out from under our dead, man-centered, performance based religion. 

Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has shown us that we need more than just rules to make it to heaven. We need salvation. We need inner transformation. God’s standard is so far beyond us we could never win his love by meeting it. 

…A “possible in Christ” rule

Every major religion has some version of the Golden Rule in its teaching. It is a universally acknowledged principle of how to treat others that is not unique to Christianity. But what is unique Christianity is God becoming a man and through his death and resurrection giving people like us the power and grace to live a new life. 

It is only half the story to realize that we can’t earn our way to God by keeping the Golden Rule. But God has come down to us. Jesus humbled himself, took on our humanity and lived a perfectly righteous life before God in our place. And because he died as our substitute to make us right with God and rose from the dead conquering death forever, we are not the same. We have been born again. The power and grace of God is at work in us. We can obey. We can love. What we cannot do in ourselves is possible in Christ. 

Conclusion

It’s so important that we read the Sermon on the Mount and this verse in particular through the lens of the power of grace. We can never be justified by obedience to the law. We are only justified through faith in Jesus. (Gal. 2:16). But through faith in Jesus, what we read in the Sermon on the Mount is the new life we’ve been freed to live. We don’t strive to obey the Golden Rule out of fear that if we fail God won’t love us. We strive to obey it in the confidence of his love and the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us. We can love like this. We can love others as we love ourselves, because God has loved us. Jesus has come to rescue us.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Friday, August 19, 2011

Slippers

Monday, August 15, was a very sad day for me. My sweet kitty, Slippers, passed away.

Slippers came into my life as a kitten 20 years ago. It was a nice fall day in 1991, and I was sitting in my living room. I heard the soft mewing of a cat, but every time I looked outside, I didn’t see anything. However, the mewing continued and I finally traced it to a branch high up in one of my trees. About 20 feet up was a small black and rust colored kitten looking down at me. I called to her, but she wouldn’t budge. I was finally able to coax her down by putting little piles of cat food (I already owned another cat, Molly) on a long board and then raising the board up to the branch, creating a ramp for her to walk down. It took awhile, but she finally made it down the ramp and into my arms.

She was a beautiful tortoise shell, and her nose was half black and half rust. She had a white neck and four little white feet, which is how she got her name, Slippers. I estimated that she was about 5 or 6 months old. I decided to keep her, much to the delight of my 3 children.

Slippers became an indoor/outdoor cat (this was before it became widely-accepted that all kitties should be indoor cats). I would let her outside during the day and she would come back home every night. One day in the spring of 1992, she disappeared. I looked for her for a few days, but couldn’t find her.

A couple months later, my daughter was on her school bus when she heard one of her busmates describing the cat they had just recently found. It sounded just like my Slippers, so I went to the little girl’s house to check. Sure enough, it was Slippers. And, she was pregnant. I told the family she was with that if they wanted her, they could keep her. However, they insisted that I take her back. So I did.

In June 1992, Slippers gave birth to 6 adorable kittens: 5 gray tabbies and 1 one taffy-colored. Slippers was the best mother ever. She never left those kittens and nursed them all the time. In fact, she was so diligent about nursing that she became emaciated. Eventually, the kittens were old enough to go to new homes, but I kept the runt of the litter: a tiny gray tabby named “Baby.”

Over the years, Slippers and Baby grew up together. Baby was strictly an indoor cat (having never been outside), but Slippers loved the outdoor life. When she was about 8 years old, Slippers accidentally ingested some pool chlorine and ended up with a terrible chemical burn in her mouth, on her tongue and down her throat. She was a very sick kitty, and we weren’t sure she would make it. After a long time in the animal hospital, she was finally able to come home; but she had to return daily for tube feeding and IV fluids. After a couple months she healed, but all of the little papillae (spikey-like bristles) on Slippers’ tongue had been burned off.

After the episode with the pool chemical, Slippers became an indoor cat. She no longer seemed to want to go outside, so it was an easy adjustment.

The years passed, and Slippers and Baby aged. In 2008, Baby became very ill: she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer and had to be euthanized. Slippers was so distraught over the disappearance of Baby that every night for 6 months she would walks around the house yowling. It just about drove me and my husband crazy! (Our cat, Molly, had passed away some years earlier at the age of 18.)

After Baby was gone, Slippers became extremely attached to me. She would sleep with me, snuggling under the covers with her head resting on my arm and do “happy paws" against my chest. In the morning when I got out of the shower, she would be sitting on my bed by my pillow waiting for me. Every night, she would sit on my lap and wait patiently for me to give her a few cat treats.

A few months ago, Slippers developed a cough. (By the way, a kitty cough sounds nothing like a human cough.) I took her to my veterinarian, but, of course, she didn’t cough for the vet. Over the course of time, the cough worsened until it gone so bad that she would have these coughing fits and her body would actually shudder. Another trip to the vet determined that she had some 20-year old kitty teeth that were infected, and that was causing her cough. The vet said that she needed to have the teeth removed, but it would be a very risky surgery for such an old cat. (Twenty cat years is like 94 human years.) However, without the surgery, she would get worse and eventually die. The vet assured me that she would take every precaution during the surgery to keep Slippers healthy. I was very nervous about it, but after praying felt that Slippers needed the surgery.

So, Slippers had her surgery on Thursday, August 4. She made it through brilliantly with no complications. I brought her home the day after her surgery, and after a couple days she was back to her old self – minus the cough. I was so relieved. They vet told me as long as she developed no further complications, she could live another 2 or 3 years. (All of her organs were healthy.)

However, one week after her surgery, Slippers started sneezing. Not just one or two sneezes, but 10 sneezes every 5 minutes. I thought maybe she had developed a little cold, so I decided to take her to the vet the next morning. However, the next morning she was having a very difficult time breathing. I could tell she was extremely uncomfortable because she wouldn’t sit down and she was purring extremely loudly. But this wasn’t a happy purr, it was a dreadful sounding purr.

The vet’s office wasn’t open yet, so I left them a message saying I would be waiting at their front door when it opened, and I was. They took her right away. She was in a lot of distress, and now a discharge was coming out of her nose. She was still doing the really loud purring; the vet told me she wasn’t actually purring, but that she was trying to get some air. The vet took Slippers for an x-ray, and the diagnosis was pneumonia. The vet said it was very serious, and because of Slippers’ advanced age, there was only a 50-50 chance she would make it. They decided they would keep her, give her IV antibiotics and fluids, and oxygen if necessary. They were going to do everything possible to get her well. That was last Friday, August 12.

I visited Slippers on Saturday, and she was much sicker than the day before. She could barely breathe and the discharge from her nose was very thick. When she saw me, her breathing became even more labored because of the excitement of me being there. I was heartbroken. I couldn’t see how she was going to get better, especially since she was such an old kitty. But the doctor said there was still a chance! I didn’t stay long because I could see that she was totally stressed by my being there. Both the vet and I agreed that it would be better for Slippers if I didn’t visit anymore until she got well.

So, I didn’t visit on Sunday. The vet called me Sunday afternoon and told me that Slippers had improved slightly. I was encouraged. Monday morning, the vet called me and told me that Slippers had passed away “peacefully” early that morning. I was devastated. All I could think about was that she was alone when she died. I wish I had been there to comfort her.

I told the vet to have Slippers cremated and return her ashes to me. (I have Baby’s ashes, too.) A few days later, one of the other vets in the practice called me to find out how I was doing. I asked her how they could know that Slippers died peacefully. The vet told me that when they found Slippers, she was curled up like she was sleeping. If she had been in distress, she would not have been in this position.

So, that is the story of Slippers. Even as I write this, I am crying. I miss her so much. I still have not put her things away… her bowl and water dish and litter box and cat treats. Her bed is at the vets, and I will pick it up when I get her ashes. I found one of her whiskers, which I will treasure.

Good-bye, Slippers…