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Kept and Keeping

~ Rest in Grace, Labor in Love

Kept and Keeping

Tag Archives: Who is my neighbor?

Called to Unlikely Service

06 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Lauren Scott in Home and Family, Living Faith

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Tags

Cancer, Ecclesiastes, Embracing Obscurity, Man's Best Friend, Servanthood, Service, Who is my neighbor?

Most of the time we think God must call us to serve Him in ways that are consistent with the gifts and interests He’s given us. Take for example, say, a church bulletin board on which are posted numerous opportunities for service within the local body. If I were perusing the options listed, I’d probably consider signing up for teaching a ladies’ bible study, or washing the linens after church events, or making meals for those who are sick or who have just had babies. Those are right up my alley. I can outline a passage of scripture in order to teach it. I do laundry all the time, so what’s another load or two? And sharing good food with others brings me joy. You could call it my love language.

They all seem like reasonable options.

But sometimes we don’t get the luxury of a sign-up sheet. Sometimes the “call” to service isn’t a check-off list in which we get to choose our most preferred ministry style. Sometimes it’s chosen for us. Sometimes it’s just dumped into our laps. Sometimes what we feel called to do is not the same as what God is indeed calling us to right this very moment.

Such has been the case the past few weeks and months.

Confession: Neither my husband nor I are dog people. We like animals alright, and see the need for them to be sweetly cared for—but not by us. We aren’t so much into pets.

But about four months ago, our neighbor Carolyn found out that her husband George had cancer. Brain and lung cancer. And these neighbors, these friends of ours, have two little dogs that mean the world to them.

When I think of friends dealing with cancer, the first things I’m willing to sign up for are to pray for them, bring them meals, and offer to clean for them. While those things are certainly appreciated, what was the first thing we were actually asked to do?

Train their dogs to stay in their yard. Help bury the wire for the invisible-fence-and-collar system to keep the little pooches from getting out again.

Our neighbors were too busy with doctor’s visits, cancer-induced vomiting and headaches, brain surgery, radiation, and dealing with the myriad physical and emotional effects of being in the throes of an ongoing battle against cancer to do it themselves. So, Nathaniel and I, who had no experience training dogs, found ourselves being made useful to the Lord in an area in which we felt woefully under-prepared. To be sure, it was a good experience for us and for our boys to learn about caring for and training dogs. The boys loved it! But it was awkward feeling so under-qualified and knowing that surely there are other people out there who could do a much better job…

Eventually the situation with the dogs was solved, and our less-than-competent services were no longer needed. Praise the Lord He made good of it despite us.

Then there was good news. George’s cancer had all but disappeared! The treatments seemed to be working! He was going for walks around the neighborhood with Carolyn, and even mowing the lawn on his riding lawnmower. We praised the Lord!

But then there was a heart attack. And then pneumonia, which seemed to take him down harder than the cancer had.

And about three weeks ago, the vomiting and severe headaches returned. Something was wrong.

For about a week there was quiet suffering at home as George didn’t want to eat anything because of all the nausea and pain. On a Friday two weeks ago, they went in for a routine check-up with the oncologist at a hospital about an hour away. They haven’t been home since.

George’s cancer had spread to his neck. He had become so weak that he needed to be admitted to the hospital immediately. I got a call that day. It was Carolyn asking me if I could take care of the dogs for a few days. I’d go over to their house a couple times a day to feed and care for the dogs. It was a pleasant enough task, aside from the reminder of George’s failing health every time I entered their empty house.

That week things were very up and down for our friends in the hospital. I suppose you could say they were very up and down in our home, as well. Nathaniel had just arrived home on Sunday from a long business trip, and while we were thrilled to have him home, we had no choice but to welcome him into a gastrointestinal house of horrors. So for several days, I was wiping up puke and diarrhea off of the floor at home and then going over to another house to wipe pee off the floor when the dogs had an accident (which thankfully was only twice). Nathaniel and I didn’t get much sleep at night because the boys were having their issues two or three times a night.

It was at this moment that I had to laugh. I had just been reading a book called Embracing Obscurity, which examines the call of Christ to be lowly servants for His glory rather than seeking to build our own kingdoms of “ministry” for our own glory. It’s been a great read, quite challenging, and here I was seeing the “practical application” of what I was learning. Thanks for the object lesson, Lord! You washed the dirty feet of sinners. This is totally fitting work for one of Your followers. I get it.

The stomach virus finally left us alone and we had a beautiful Saturday working together as a family around the house, taking care of the dogs over at their house, and celebrating our oldest son’s birthday at the lake. But that night we received a distressing text from Carolyn. She wanted us to take the dogs into our home—she didn’t think they were safe at her house.

This was a bit confusing, and the next morning we called her to clarify. There was indeed a situation, so after deliberating (which included me listing all the reasons why it would be a bad idea, and then recognizing those reasons were rather selfish), we said we’d do it.

I mentioned before that we are not “dog people”. What I didn’t mention is that we had both long decided that if we ever were to have a dog, it would most definitely be an outside dog. Our neighbors’ dogs were very decidedly inside dogs. The irony here couldn’t be missed. God was taking one of the few things on our “never” list and asking us to move it to our “whatever you need” list. This was more than just “Come over and help with the dogs and then go back to the relative peace of your own home.” This was invading our space.

I remember when we were deliberating, Nathaniel said something quite insightful: “If we do this, it clearly won’t be for us. It will be out of service to them.” We’ve often talked with our children about the fact that merely helping others when you want to isn’t so helpful. It’s far greater to meet a real need when it arises. Here was our opportunity to practice what we preached. Yet again, we were being called to something that was a rather unlikely service for us. It didn’t fit. There were surely other people who could more easily have taken these dogs into their homes. But here we were—evidence that God doesn’t call the wise or powerful, or even the qualified. He stretches us beyond ourselves and qualifies us for the task by His grace.

So what was our first order of business as doggy foster parents? Well, it was a Sunday morning, so we took them to church! Being a part of a home church has its perks. 😉 And starting out with the dogs in someone else’s home (another dog-owner’s home, to be precise) seemed to ease the transition for us. The dogs were very well behaved, and our church family loved on them and prayed for our neighbors.

The past week has been challenging as I wake up to little ankle-biters that demand my attention more loudly and persistently than do my preschooler and kindergartener. The invasion of my space, and particularly when that space would normally be quiet, has been a kind of static interference in my days. While our sleep was interrupted last week with sick children, it has been interrupted this week by sad puppies who miss their people. Still, I’ve kind of gotten used to it. And we couldn’t have asked for sweeter, cuter, or better behaved dogs. Really, all things considered, caring for them in our home has been quite easy. It’s the caring about our neighbors that has been the hardest.

I finally heard this morning that George has only days to live at this point. We hope to visit him in the hospital before he dies.

There is indeed a time for everything. A time for rejoicing and a time for mourning. A time for serving with our strengths and a time for serving despite our lack of the same. A time for fighting for your life and a time for saying goodbye when your Heavenly Father calls you home.

God is good.

Please pray with us for our friends.

Many Christians estimate difficulties in the light of their own resources, and thus attempt little and often fail in the little they attempt. All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His power and presence with them.

~Hudson Taylor

A Time for Everything

20 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by Lauren Scott in Home and Family, Living Faith

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

childbirth, devotional, Ecclesiastes, seasons, Who is my neighbor?

As I type I am anxiously awaiting a phone call. A sweet friend of mine is expecting her firstborn son. Her due date has passed, and her usually intermittent contractions have been intensifying today. I have the incredible privilege of being on the “first-call” list, even (hopefully) getting to play a support role in the birthing process.

You’d think I was in the earliest stages of labor. My anticipation and excitement is through the roof, I’ve been busy today trying to focus on the ordinary things that need to be done (like laundry, the dishes, schooling, and food prep) while also scrambling to make sure my bag is packed for the hospital—with personal items I may need, lotions and massage therapy tools that may be useful during labor, snacks, a Bible, my journal, a notebook for keeping track of labor’s progress and hopefully soon baby’s stats.

Bags packed, I finally got a text saying they were in town walking to encourage things to move along a bit more quickly (apparently the going has been slow). Sigh. Ok. Not needed yet. Hang in there, Lauren. Don’t get too excited. This could still go on for a couple of days. Just move on with your day and be ready whenever the call comes.

It’s a beautiful day, so I decided to walk down our long drive way to check the mail. The boys were in bed for nap time, and I usually like to step outside at this time of day for some fresh air. The grass and ivy, ferns and flowers, trees and bushes are all so lush and bright with color. Spring is a beautiful time of year, reminding us of God’s promise of new life. What a wonderful time of year to have a baby!

As I walked down the driveway I saw that the large trashcan was at the curb. Yes, the trash truck had been by and now the can was empty. I’ll get to pull that back up to the house, I thought. It wasn’t a hard job, but something about the slight physical exertion required sounded perfect to me right now. It would give me an opportunity to exert some of my pent-up energy. As I drew closer to the mailbox and the dumpster, I took a look down the road to our next door neighbors’ house. We had collected their trash in our can so that we could help them out during the difficult time of trial they’re facing.

It suddenly struck me that I could be celebrating the birth of a precious newborn and comforting a grieving widow this week. I do not know what the future holds exactly, of course, but it is a possibility. Our next-door neighbor, George, was recently diagnosed with both lung and brain cancer. About a week and a half ago, his wife Carolyn had to drive him to the ER as he suffered a heart attack. Just this past Saturday, when we stopped by to check on them, we found out they had just returned home from an overnight visit to the hospital—the cancer in George’s lungs had metastasized and began causing internal bleeding that had to be dealt with immediately. Carolyn is weary but hopeful that the Lord will deliver them from this trial. Our prayer is that we can be a blessing to them, that the Lord would intervene on George’s behalf, and that most of all they would hope in the Lord no matter what happens.

And so I walked back up to the house, mail in one hand and the handle of the trashcan in the other, remembering how, about six years ago, and about this same time of year, Nathaniel and I felt many of these same emotions. We lived next-door to a woman named Evelyn. At about the same time I gained a husband, she had lost hers. And with her husband, she had lost the will to go on. I visited her from time to time. We’d sit and have a snack and talk, or I’d sit with her while she watched TV. It was a very hard decision for both her and her daughter when they finally sold the house she had shared for decades with her husband and moved her into a nursing home, but one bad fall when Evelyn was home by herself sealed that fate. I continued to visit her in her new home—and Nathaniel and I were glad to share the news with her—we were expecting our firstborn son. I had hoped Evelyn would get to meet him, but we told her goodbye in the nursing home a couple of months before he was born. Life and death. Rejoicing and grieving. I remember how stunned I was to experience them so close in time.

Once the trashcan was back in its proper place, I gazed at the irises that had already bloomed and withered next our front porch, and I considered how fleeting life is. How beautiful, but how fleeting. Like the flowers that spring up as the days grow warmer, but fade ever so quickly away. We enjoy their radiant beauty—a reminder of the creative splendor of our God—but soon they whither as the cycle of the seasons moves on.

So, too, does the cycle of life move on. It can be a bleak meditation to consider that just as life seems to really get going, we begin to realize that our parents are aging, our friends are aging—we are aging. And not only this, but we see that when one person dies, the rest of the world just keeps on going without them, the majority of people unaware that someone has died at all. Our own insignificance and mortality begins to stare us in the face, and we wonder, what’s the point? We’re here for such a short amount of time. Much like the Preacher of Ecclesiastes, we ask, Why do we go about our work or pleasure just to leave it to another? Our lives are so fleeting, a vapor. Where is the significance that I long for?

But oh, when I consider the creative beauty of God, and His purpose in ordaining the seasons—both the natural seasons of each year and the changing seasons of our lives. There is much beauty to behold. And its purpose is not merely to grant us some bit of pleasure here and now, as precious a gift as that is, but to point us to the true and lasting beauty that is the Lord Himself in all of His glory and perfections. As we ache for the changing of winter into spring, so too our hearts long for the eternal spring to one day relieve us of every dark and dreary winter. He has set eternity in our hearts. He is not far from each of us.

And so this mixed up time of anticipation—in which I both delight in the thought of a friend’s new baby and fear the impending death of a dear neighbor’s husband—I remember the wisdom God has given concerning such things:

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—

A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn and a time to dance.
A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.
A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.

What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils? I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves.

He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.

I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor—it is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-14

There is indeed a time for everything.  Including that phone call.  I suppose now I can take a deep breath and continue on with my day.

The Good Samaritan

04 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by Lauren Scott in Living Faith

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Tags

asking the wrong question, devotional, Good Samaritan, Jesus, that evasive Jesus, Who is my neighbor?

From Luke 10:25-37

An expert in the Law of Moses came to Jesus and asked Him “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

The Scripture says the man asked this question to test Jesus, and in accordance with His usual style in such situations, instead of answering the question Himself, Jesus asked the man what he thought: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” What tasteful conversation skills—allowing the expert to speak on his area of expertise. Well played, Jesus.

“’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’, and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

This was perhaps a brief moment of pride for the law expert—his conclusion had just been affirmed, after all. But he wanted to justify himself, the scripture says. So he asked this question: “Who is my neighbor?”

At this point, Jesus could have very easily just answered straightforwardly—“Well, anyone near you who is in need is your neighbor.” That is how we like to summarize Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. But that’s not actually the point. Jesus never really answered the man’s question, despite the fact that the question itself does logically follow the train of thought of the command, “Love your neighbor”.

As Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, it demonstrates that this expert in the law was asking the wrong question—and for the wrong reason.

Let’s read the story for ourselves in Luke 10:30-35:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. `Look after him,’ he said, `and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

This scenario gives us one man who is hurt, and several men who interacted with him. If Jesus were directly answering the man’s question, he’d have set up a story in which one man is wondering who his neighbor is, and then has to choose between several options. Jesus turns the question on its head, demonstrating that obeying God by loving others doesn’t begin with my evaluation of their worthiness, but with my willingness to help anyone who is in need.

The priest and the Levite demonstrate the hearts of someone asking the wrong question—seeking to justify themselves, they’re the ones thinking, “Who is my neighbor? This man? No. I don’t know the man. Besides, I am important and must get to my important destination and do my important religious things for God. This man’s blood will defile me and make me late. I don’t have to help him—he’s not my neighbor. Perhaps someone else will help him.” Ah, the logic of self-justification, taking the word “neighbor” in God’s command and finding in it a loophole that allows selective obedience.

In contrast, we see a Samaritan come along and take pity on a man who is his social and political enemy—by no stretch of the imagination is this injured man his neighbor. The Jews despised Samaritans, and it’s likely the Samaritans returned the sentiment. This Samaritan, however, doesn’t seem to get tripped up with “Is this man my neighbor?” He simply sees a man in need. And then sees to it personally that those needs are met.

How does Jesus bring this lesson home for the man who sought to justify himself?

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

Never mind the first question, Jesus is saying. Answer this question.

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

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Lauren Scott

Lauren Scott

Christian. Wife. Mother. Home Conqueror. Home Educator. Blogger. Book Addict. Outdoorist.

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