Whatever is Pure: Christian Thoughts And Stories

When I was a child, back in the 1930's we did not have much. I do not remember ever getting a birthday present. But we always got a cake. It was Mom's Lemon Layer Cake. She made the cake from scratch. A white cake. She also made the lemon filling from scratch. It is also known as Lemon Butter. This was generously applied between the layers of the cake, and the plain white frosting was topped by coconut. Just thinking of it makes my mouth water.

Mom was always there for us. No working away from home. On the rare occasions when she was not there it seemed to me that the house was never warm until she arrived. No matter the weather outside, even on the hottest day in summer, or with the hottest fire in winter, the room seemed cold until she appeared. She brought a warmth into my life that made everything better. As I reflected on this, I ask myself how many times my own children came home to a cold house. Or were left in a cold room, because their mother's presence was not felt.

All throughout my life, whenever I had to leave the presence of my parents, I left with a hug and a kiss from each of them. When I was small, it was when I went to bed, or to school. When I came home, I was greeted with the same salutation. After I married and moved away from home, the same still applied. A kiss and a hug to say hello. A kiss and a hug to say good-bye.

When I was 32 years old I kissed my mother goodbye for the final time as she was called home by our Lord. I am sure He greeted her with a hug and a kiss.

Have you hugged or kissed your children lately? Do they come home to a cold house? Our days on this earth are short. Our time with loved ones has no guarantee for a specific period of time. Make the most of it.

©Patti Yampolsky
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From the Daily Christian Quote Archives :

The mother's heart is the child's classroom.

Henry Ward Beecher
Archives

Do You Have A 'To-Do' Or Do You Have A 'To-Love' List?
In Dedication to All Those Who Have Nurtured My Heart In So Many Ways.

From The DCQ Archives :
October 20, 2002

Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.

Barbara Johnson

With sincere respect to Mrs. Johnson, I'd like to go one step further with this thought. 'Never let a person become a problem to be solved rather than a person to be loved.'

"Visit? But they don't even know me!" Sister Anne, my co-worker in a group home for mentally challenged children, simply handed me my jacket and pushed me toward the door. "They'll welcome you with open arms, tell them I sent you over." She was right. Before I had a chance to say who I was, I was wrapped in the gentle hug of an elderly man who had the smile of an angel. A dozen curious people greeted me and helped me put my coat away. I was pulled into the warm kitchen and handed a mug of hot apple cider and a slightly burned chocolate chip cookie.... all before I had much chance to take it all in.

It was my first taste of L'arche, a Christian community made up of the mentally and physically challenged adults and those that love them. This was not a group home run by the government. The people who lived there were not in 'care', they were not wards of the state, they were not patients or clients. They were valued and honoured, loved and supported and tenderly cherished by those who they had chosen to work beside them. Every worker and assistant in their home had to be approved by a board made up of the residents and a couple of helpers. Their home was exactly that -- their home. They had a real say in the every day running of their home from meal planning to interior decorating to staffing. Any one who wanted to work there had to go through a stringent battery of tests to prove not just their physical qualifications but their heart ability to truly love and respect the house mates as their equal in God's eyes. The people of L'arche were not to be spoken of as clients. They were to be spoken of and treated as friends of the heart.

Many of the friends I met that night had come from highly regarded institutions and had received the best of medical care and had all their physical needs met. Within the sterile confines of their institutions their spirits often withered and slumbered, neglected by staff who were given the mandate to tend to their patients physical needs and a clean environment above all. Upon arrival at L'arche, many of the formal inmates were withdrawn and closed deep within themselves but in time, new shoots of life began to spring forth and with patient loving care, they blossomed. No longer were they a jot on someone's chore list. They were counted as friends. Once the truth that they were truly loved as a person sank into their hearts, they quickly turned around and poured that same love into the lives of those around them, even a slightly shy and bemused teen such as me.

My prayer is that I remember the lessons I learned through these generous hearts. Lord, protect me from seeing the people I serve only as projects on my to-do list. Awaken me to the treasured value they have in your eyes and my words and actions be only a mirror of your great love for them.

I'm not suggesting that we have the power to heal physical conditions with our human fingers. But I do believe there's a healing of the spirit that takes place when we touch others. There's a comfort that can't be found anywhere else but in a touch or a hug. Somehow, God's love and power is shared with others through the simplicity of our physical touch.

Amy Nappa

So often I’ve struggled when I thought about Grace; trying to fit a description around it that made sense to me. Finally, I have discovered what was my problem…… Grace, real Grace, doesn't make sense at all.

In our worldly culture, there's the old rule of "an eye for an eye". Sure, we’ve learned to forgive to some extent, but there are very few of us who do it well or do it completely. We try to forgive; we look for a sign from the other person; some indication of remorse; any reason to forgive and let it go. C There is just something about our human condition that demands justice when we’ve been wronged. Justice demands that we must pay for our mistakes so, logically, if we’ve been wronged, we should have restitution. After all, I’ve been hurt and someone must pay! ... It's only fair...

Jesus never mentions fairness. He never mentions deserving. But He did talk about forgiveness and was very clear about it.

"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."
(Matthew 6:12)

"Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brothers when he sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, " I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."
(Matthew 18:21-22)

This is the only place in the new testament that Jesus tells us that what we will receive depends totally on what we give. Salvation is a gift from God. Eternal life is a gift from God. But forgiveness appears to be earned…….

You see. Grace isn't fair, Grace isn't justice, Grace isn't deserved, Grace isn't logical. Instead, Grace is Love. Grace is mercy. Grace is forgiveness….... for no reason at all.

When Christ came to us as a baby …... when Christ was beaten for our sins….when Christ was tortured and hung on the cross, and died… none of that was fair….

©Dick Kent
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She picked up a small round stone worn smooth by the rhythmic action of the sea over decades or centuries and held it out in her small hand to show me.

"It's very pretty", I observed, "Perhaps you might want to add it to your collection. Do you have a collection?" She looked at it and shook her head. "Yes, it's alright, but I'm looking for a pure white one" The chilly wind blew her hair about and it seemed to me that if I had a camera it would be the perfect picture of the child. Overhead the noisy gulls wheeled and cried in the clean ocean air.

Beautiful animals with shrill unmelodious cries. The waves rolled up the beach marching along it with a cascading crash and then the slow drawn out moan as they retreated back over the long rocky shingle. The day was overcast and misty. Behind us the darkness of the cliff was a blurred shadow. It was cold and uncomfortable and I was looking forward to climbing up from the beach and warming myself in front of Walter's wood burning stove and unburdening myself to him.

I had come up to the coast to visit Walter, after not seeing him for 3 years. We had gone to law school together and had been best man at each others weddings. Kate had died leaving Walter a widower. Within 3 months he had moved from the luxury of his Manhattan apartment, and a lucrative practice to small wooden house on the coast of the North Atlantic. First Kate's death and then

Walter and his 4 year daughter Jessie suddenly up and gone. It had left a hole in our lives. I had come to a place in my own life where I needed to get away and think. It came to suddenly like a bolt out of the sky. . .Walter. I quickly packed, got in the car and drove North for several hours.

Now here I was on an isolated headland of the North Atlantic coast. Walter and I talked and remembered the old and happy times that first night. The next morning he instructed Jessie to take me for a walk on the beach. It was cold and drizzling rain and I winced at the idea .Walter laughed and dressed me in some of his "weather" clothes and boots and Jessie led the way down the cliffs and along the beach.

She was without fear, jumping from rock to rock while I struggled behind her down to the beach. Looking up and down the beach two words came to my mind, desolate and lonely. Jessie motioned for me to follow her. I sighed and started along the beach behind her. I slipped and sunk into the wet rocky pebbled beach making slow progress while Jessie skipped on ahead of me. This was not my definition of a beach, which tended more to the lovely white sand of Pensacola than the rocks of Coltran Head.

I stopped and looked at Jessie's retreating figure. So small, so unafraid, so . . . . I struggled to grasp the thought, so much a part of this place. I looked around again. There was bleakness here and yet something else. Something I could not quite touch or understand.

When I finally caught up to her she was sitting on a rock waiting. I was a little winded from struggling across the beach. I sat down near her. She looked me over but said nothing.

"Do you really like this place?" I asked, still breathing hard. For a minute she didn't answer, staring out to sea as if there something to see. There was something about this 7 year old that made her seem older beyond her years. She turned and looked into my eyes.

"I don't remember. Tell me about her." My brain slipped into high gear as I tried to process the question." Hasn't your father told you about your mom?"

"Well she was a wonderful . . .and nice person." I managed to stammer. She got up off the rock, picked up a large pebble and threw it out over the water, watched it disappear beneath the splash then turned back to me.

"I don't mean that. Tell me about her," she persisted. I saw Kate in her eyes, and then in her face. It was like Kate, to push aside the trivial and to get to the core of an issue just like her daughter was doing now. I paused and reflected.

"Your mother was the most caring and thoughtful person I have ever known. And your dad was the luckiest man in the world to have had her as his wife for five years. She and your dad were our best friends. You were almost four when I saw you last. Do you remember?" She shook her head. "It was Christmas and my wife and I spent with it with you and your dad and mom in a cottage we had rented in Connecticut."

She let me drone on for several minutes then stopped me. "What's your wife name?"

"Tell me about her." Jessie said as she tossed another stone into the water. I was uncomfortable now. Not just with the question, but because it wasn't coming from some New City psychologist or psychiatrist but a seven year old girl who ought not to have the ability or right to be probing into the affairs of adults.

What did she want to know? Susan's favorite color, what she got for Christmas last year? How about our difficulty communicating over the last few months? What about the sense we were leading separate lives, or about the sadness the Susan could not hide at our inability and my lack of interest in having children, of our union and our lives seemingly falling apart. There was a long silence as I replayed the scenes in my mind and felt the reproach sting my mind every bit as much as the North Atlantic salt spray stung my face. Jessie had stopped throwing stones and was staring at me.

"She played along this beach just like I do. Dad says that she would talk about this beach. She told him it was a place to come to get healed. Are you here to get healed?"

I didn't know what to say. She was right. Kate was right. I had come here to get healed. I remembered my impatience and frustration with Susan at what seemed to me, her irrational and overwhelming desire to have children so soon after marriage with our careers just taking off. And here in front of my eyes was my healing. Wind blowing her hair around, large brown eyes that answered my questions without words. I tried to respond without showing the wetness in my eyes or the hoarseness of my voice.

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