Between a Rock and a Hard Place

There is a spot between a rock and a hard place
called a cleft: a crack, crevice or fissure.

I’ve been there. Have you?
It’s not so bad. In fact, it’s rather secure and protective.
Nothing can reach me there.
Nothing but the hand of God.

That’s where Moses was when desperation backed him up against the mountain.

He was arguing with God because everything he had worked for so long and hard had shattered around his feet.

He was arguing with God because things weren’t going the way he planned. People had disappointed him. He had disappointed himself. Life was not good.

“You said you’d go with me -- where are you?” he shouted.

Had he forgotten the Red Sea?

“I am with you,” God said.

“Prove it. Show yourself.”

A death wish? No one sees the face of God and lives to tell about it.

Have you been that desperate? So desperate that death seems better than what you’re going through?

I have.

But God said,

“There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock.”

And he hid Moses in the hard place - the cleft - and covered him with his hand.
The hand that held a man of clay,
and held back the sea,
and would one day hold the nails.

And as he passed by, Moses peeked out and saw the back of God.

Have you been that close to God?
In the hard place?
Where fear and fatalism die?

It is the sweetest place I know.

So why do I wait for pain to push me into his presence?
When I can choose to be in that place

near God.
Standing.
On a rock.

“And I will … cover you with my hand.”

O God, cover me.


Exodus 33:21,22

***

Ever feel like you’re missing the performance because you’re stuck under the bleachers?

When Mike was rodeoing, our first Fourth of July run into Montana took us to Red Lodge - an Old West type of town tucked up against the mighty Bear Tooth Mountains. As was our custom, we parked our rig back of the holding pens and unloaded our menagerie: Mike’s clown mule Ike, our border collie Bobbie, four guinea hens, two chickens, and a little pound-found mop of a dog we called Fifi.

Busy with our routine of making camp, we failed to notice the meandering mule work itself underneath the aluminum bleachers bordering the backside of the arena. We didn’t see how Ike had gotten in there, but when we noticed his predicament, we knew it wouldn’t be easy getting him out.

Ike’s hankering for the tender mountain grass lured his muzzle and the rest of him over and under the aluminum crossbeam supports. Leading a horse to water is one thing, but leading a mule through a maze of metal proved to be something else altogether.

It took most of the afternoon, a bucket full of grain and a strong lead rope to drag that mule back out from under those bleachers. Mike and couple of cowboys would coax it down on its knees and pull it under one beam, then it would jump to its feet and they’d have to start all over again. It was a lot harder on Ike coming out than it had been going in.

I can relate to Ike.

It’s a lot more fun getting into trouble than getting out.

Most of us don’t notice where temptation is leading, especially when we’re just taking one little curious step at a time. But when we finally stop and look around, we see we’re trapped, just like that mule, with no way of getting out of our predicament on our own.

Our good Lord never leads us in the wrong way. But when we wander off, if we ask for his help, he’ll sure get us back on the right path - even if the going might be a little rough.


James 1:13

Follow through on that good idea

“I’m drawing a blank,” said the caption beneath the girl’s empty cartoon frame. She smiled up at me. “Funny, huh?”

I had to admit it was funny, but a cop-out, too.

“The assignment is to draw a cartoon: single frame with caption below, or four-frame strip with bubbled dialogue inside.”

What a great class, I thought as I strolled through the seventh-graders, reading over their shoulders, encouraging their creativity. As a substitute teacher I’ve seen just about everything, including an eighth grader launching a calculator across the room at her ex-boyfriend. He ducked and it shattered on the linoleum. It was the teacher’s calculator.

So comics were cake, as far as I was concerned. And a viable means of communication as well. Did I, myself, not turn first to the political cartoon in the daily newspaper? And what about my collection of B.C. comic strips? A lot can be said with stick figures and a witty remark.

A group of boys at one table came up with the idea of cereal killers and they snickered over murderous spoons and poisonous milk. They loved the play on words, or homophones as those in pedagogical circles call them, but one bemoaned the pun as too obvious.

“Someone else has probably already thought of it,” he said.

Yes, I told him. There are very few truly unique ideas. Most of what we cook up has already been contemplated by someone else.

“There are a lot of ideas, but not everyone acts on them,” I said. “Do something about it. Be different.”

I once heard a literary agent tell a group of aspiring writers that ideas were a dime a dozen. (The worn cliché surprised and disappointed me, but then again, we are all susceptible on the spur of the moment.)

“Write the book,” she said. “Don’t just send me a paragraph with a great idea; write the book.”

In other words, act on it. Follow through. Be different. And so I continue to pound away at my keyboard when I’m not teaching, wrapping bone and sinew and muscle around my ideas to make them into some thing, some thing that is more than just some idea.

What ideas do you have yet to act upon? Move on them. Take action! Follow through and create as others before you have done - those to whom we owe buckets of gratitude.

Consider the zipper. Microwave. Sticky notes. Toilet paper. All ideas that someone - probably many someones - had, that some one acted upon.

In the words of one of those seventh-grade, commercial-savvy cartoonists, “What’s in your head?”

The trees are raining

Diamonds wink
from every branch
and at the touch of sunlight,
spill
in liquid crystal.

I hear it
beneath blue morning sky
where moments before all
glistened
in silent frost.

Sun breath
melts the glaze
into a dripping,
singing
rain.

Just like my
cold
and hardened heart
beneath the breath
of God.

What is a Cowboy Christmas?

Mike’s old team roping rope on the door with a big red bow.

Boots by the fire instead of stockings.

Barbed-wire stars and rusty lanterns.

Pine bough perfume …

and a stable for the babe.

That’s right - God’s boy was born in a barn! He slept in the hay, wrapped in the warmth and comfort of livestock.

No palace for this King. No mansion or rampart or tower, but a stable where even one as simple as I could enter.

Have you noticed? He left the door wide open.

How else would the rest of us find our way home?

“…I am the door …” - Jesus (John 10:9)

What are you scratching for?

We live in an area called “Hardscrabble.” The name arrived with gold seekers and ranchers scrabbling to make a living off this pebbly patch of Rocky Mountain soil. That scrabble even shows between the sparse blades of winter grass in my side yard, where sparrows peck and scratch for God-knows-what.

I noticed them a few days ago, scraping at the barren, wind-blown ground, and in answer to their tireless quest I hung a new cedar bird feeder filled to the brim with wild bird food and sunflower seeds.

They ignored it.

No birds alighted the next day either, but I assured myself that like the hummingbirds homing in on their favorite nectar, so would the sparrows. Give them a day, I told myself. They will find it.

On the third day, there were still no birds at the feeder. From my window I watched them scratch the bare earth, heads down, flushing away when the dog bounded round the corner and into their foraging grounds.

And this morning they were at it again, busily scraping with their frail little feet, heads bent, pecking at imaginary seeds. I could almost hear their frantic thoughts: “There has to be something to eat in here somewhere!”

While above them hangs my feeder, still full to the brim of the choicest of fowl fare.

Will they never notice my care for them? I’ve had feeders at every home, and always the birds have found them and filled their gullets on my gifts.

It isn’t hard to see that I am much like these Hardscrabble sparrows, bent on my own way of providing what I need, unwilling to look up to another who waits close by, provision in hand. How often do I flit past my Bible, too busy to stop and feed on its life-giving words? How often do I pursue God-knows-what in my quest for sustenance?

And that is just the point: God knows what. He knows what I need and has provided it.

Why do I seek my own way instead of His?


“Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:31).

Over the phone and through the mail

This Christmas finds our family spread across the country from Colorado to California. How can we continue our tradition of exchanging names when few of us will be together for the holidays?

We just won’t, I decided. It wouldn’t be the same. Besides, it would be wise in this economy to save the expense of giving and mailing. We’ll just pass this year.

No! said our eldest from across two mountain ranges. It’s being part of a family, he said, knowing that you’ve put thought and effort and love into the gifts chosen for your designated member.

“You choose,” he said over the telephone. “You and Dad put all our names in a basket, then choose for each of us and let us know.”

I thought about his words, his insistence that we should pursue the tradition regardless of position. So I wrote our names on slips of paper, eight in all including parents and children and spouses. We tossed them in a cup, picked out one at a time and sent the chosen names to each.

“I got you!,” texted one spouse to our daughter. “What do you want?” The excitement had spread already, unhindered by miles and mountain ranges.

It grew in my own spirit as I considered the one I’d chosen and what specific gift would touch that loved one’s heart. And I realized that distance had not mattered to the first Giver. How far away mankind was from the perfection and love of God! Yet He gave. Across the miles and mountains and galaxies, He sent a specifically selected and perfect gift to His chosen recipients.

Jesus: His love, our life. His living, our hope.

Merry miles-away Christmas to you this year. May you know His perfect Gift.