The Spur of The Moment

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Excerpts from The Spur of The Moment

Searching For Something That Fits

By Marcia Laycock

There’s a beach on the north shore of Lake Superior that fascinated me as a child. It was a bit hard to get to, unless you had a boat, because the only land access was up over the back of a high cliff. My brother and I made the trek often and would spend hours on that beach, searching. It was a pebble beach, its entire length strewn with rounded stones of all sizes and colors. My favorites were black. They absorbed the heat from the sun and felt warm and comforting when you held them in the palm of your hand. I spent hours searching for the perfect stone, the stone that fit my hand as though it had been cut from it. Sometimes I was successful, but more often than not, I walked away from that beach, dissatisfied. I would carry a stone or two around for a while, but usually drop it, in favor of another that looked more promising. Sometimes I’d take one home, to add my collection.

As I think back on my life since those days of childhood, I realize much of it was spent searching in that same way. Just as I searched for that perfect stone, I searched for something in life that fit, something I could hold on to, that would bring me satisfaction and fulfillment. I picked up a lot of stones that didn’t fit: jobs, hobbies, diversions, even friends and closer relationships. All were efforts to fill the void in my life. All were attempts to find something that fit. Like my search for the perfect stone on the shore, I was never totally satisfied.

It was not until many years later that I discovered I was going about it all wrong. I was trying to fit something external to my shape, my way of thinking, my way of dealing with life. It wasn’t until I turned to spiritual things that I realized I was the one that had to fit. I was the small round stone that had fallen away and had to find its place again, in God’s hand. In John 15, Jesus tells us how to do that. He says: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love." (John 15:9) He also says, "Abide in me."

Abiding is effortless. It’s a simple act of rest. Jesus is saying, live in me. Live as though you were being held in the palm of God’s hand. There is no safer place, no place that offers more comfort and peace, no place that gives more satisfaction and sense of fulfillment. You are the stone. Jesus is holding out His hand, waiting for you to curl up in it. It’s the place where you will always fit.

It’s getting close to that time again - time to clean out our overflowing junk drawer. Opening it takes a strong arm and a healthy heart. Odd things are apt to leap out - springs, bits of wire, shoe laces, almost-finished tubes of "Goop." As I looked for something the other day, I resolved to tackle the task of sorting and discarding, but I was distracted. As I pawed through the debris, I discovered the innards of a broken music box. The only thing left was the small drum and the handle which causes the "fingers" to strike the nubs. I played with it for a while before deciding it should be thrown away - the tune was vaguely reminiscent, but the sound was feeble. Just then my daughter Meagan came home, picked up the metal contraption and walked into the living room. Suddenly the air was filled with a tinkling Christmas melody. When I investigated, I realized why the sound had suddenly become so clear. Meagan had placed the small drum on our wooden coffee table. It became a sounding board, making what had been a muffled noise into something delightful.

I remembered a friend hitting the keys of his piano after its sounding board had been destroyed in a flood. The keys made only dull thudding noises. One of the most familiar passages in the Bible tells us we have a sounding board in our lives that takes a muffled, unlovely sound and makes it into something pure and beautiful. Our sounding board is love. Without love, we make only noise. 1Corinthians 13:1 says - "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal."

When our words and actions do strike the sounding board of love, they resonate with power and clarity. Unfortunately, most of us have damaged sounding boards, like the one in my friend’s piano. In one way or another, the presence or appearance of love in our lives has been warped. We’ve come through the flood of life and our keys make only dull thudding noises. Unlike my friend’s piano, however, we can be healed, we can be whole.

1Corinthians 13 goes on, in verses 4-8, to describe what love is - these are the verses often quoted at weddings. It’s a list worthy of a saint and can seem impossible to follow, especially once the honey moon is over, yet it is a list of hope, a series of goals set before us. It is the path of healing. Striving to love as Jesus taught will heal the cracks, straighten the warp, and cause our lives to resonate the way a perfect note sings from a solid sounding board. There are many examples of this: there are those who have extended forgiveness, for example, even though they have been terribly wronged, those who have chosen to love someone who is incapable of responding, those who have loved no matter what. They are physicians in the process of healing themselves.

The end of 1Corinthians 13 tells us this process will have an end point, a time when we shall be whole and complete. "But for right now, until that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love." (from The Message by E. Peterson)

Mystery and Trust

By Marcia Laycock

Sometimes we can’t see how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Sometimes we just have to be content with mystery.

It was dark in our bedroom at two in the morning, but my eyes were wide open and I couldn’t have been more awake. That’s unusual for me - I don’t wake up "bright eyed and bushy tailed," even when the alarm goes off at seven in the morning. My first thought was that someone had called me. I listened for the sound of one of my children. Perhaps one of them was ill. The house was quiet. No small voice cried out in the dark. So I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep. That’s when a woman’s name came to mind, out of the blue, with a strong sense of urgency. I have had a couple of experiences like this, and I’ve learned, when it happens, to listen with my "internal ears," for the still small voice of direction. That night I was directed to pray in a way I never had before. The woman whose name boomed in my mind has Multiple Sclerosis. The directions were to pray for the strengthening of her body, and specifically, to pray for her legs - the bones, the muscles, the tendons, the flow of blood. It went on for some time until I eventually fell back to sleep.

The next night I was in a class with the woman with M.S. I said nothing to her or any of the other students, about my experience of the night before, but I had a sense of expectation. The class went by in a normal way and we were getting our coats on to leave when someone said to the woman, "Is it my imagination or are you walking better tonight?"

She smiled and answered, "It’s been a good day."

I smiled too.

It’s been years since that night. As far as I know, that woman still has M.S. She still has good days and bad days. I don’t know why I was woken from a sound sleep in the middle of the night to pray for her so specifically. Perhaps in some way those prayers will be used as small pieces of a bigger puzzle. Perhaps that woman will some day be healed while she is still living on this earth. I don’t know.

I do know God was saying, "Yes." He was saying yes to me, to the woman with a debilitating disease, and to all of us. He was saying, "Yes, you will be healed. You will be whole. Hang on. I’m coming."

Sometimes we are left with only mystery. Sometimes all we can do is trust.

"Don’t you dare bring that thing into this house!"

It was a familiar admonition, one my mother made sure we heard, at least once a day. She said it to me to prevent her house from becoming a natural science fair, full of the "interesting" creatures I’d find on the beach and in the bush around our house. ("Look how orange this crayfish’s belly is, Mom!")

She said the same thing to my brother because he too was a scavenger. He’d spend hours roaming the beach on Lake Huron, and always came back with something. Often it was a piece of drift wood, covered in sand and slimy green weeds. He had a pile of these treasures under the deck around the house. My father thought they made great kindling once they were dry. My brother seemed to be the only one who could see the beauty in them.

Then he was given a special gift on his birthday - a Swiss Army knife. He discovered he had the ability to transfer what he saw in his mind, through his hands, as he carved the drift wood into birds, animals and sometimes people. His creations were then sanded and polished to a satin sheen, painted, or left natural. When he presented the finished products, my mother was always the first to exclaim over them. The gritty, slimy bits of wood had become works of art to be displayed on tables and shelves all through the house. Because of my brother’s talent with a knife, we began to see, through his eyes, the beauty in things we had thought fit only for burning. Even my mother started collecting driftwood.

Jesus saw with that special kind of vision. He looked at lepers and saw beauty carved out by a touch. He looked at prostitutes and saw beauty carved out by true love. He looked at thieves and murderers and saw beauty carved out by forgiveness. When we see with the eyes of Jesus we see beauty everywhere, even in people that seem ugly and worthless. It is a skill, like carving, to be diligently learned and practiced. It isn’t easy and there will be a cost, but the results are worth the effort. Ephesians 5:1 says - "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. When we look for beauty as Jesus did, with compassion and love, we see with new eyes. Those before us are transformed and so are we.

All Text Copyright, Marcia Lee Laycock 2000 - 2007

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Updated March 11, 2007