Lord, teach me. . . .

  Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. –Confucius   My husband recently had surgery for cataracts. You may know the drill: get the first eye taken care of; wait two weeks and get the second one done. It’s a relatively common procedure these days. So he went for the first eye, and everything went well. And he had some improvement in his distance vision. He knew all along his close-up vision wouldn’t improve. But after the second surgery, he was amazed. Everything was brighter! Colors were brighter, and outside—he really needed those dark glasses, because—wow! But something else happened, as well. Suddenly, he became aware of how dirty the windows were. Especially the big one in the living room, where the cats sit and watch the birds. It was before the pandemic that we had them washed, and it showed. He was able to ignore it for about three weeks. Then he had to do something. One day, I came home from the church and everything was sparkly and clean! The cats ar

  I think every person has their own identity and beauty. Everyone being different is what is really beautiful. If we were all the same, it would be boring. –Tila Tequila     My husband and I have matching t-shirts that we’ve been wearing a lot during Pride Month. On the front are four elephants, all viewed from behind: three ordinary grey elephants and one amazing patchwork elephant. Underneath, it says It’s OK to be a little different . I love the shirt, not just because it’s elephants, but because it’s so true. There is a wonderful children’s story by David McKee, about a patchwork elephant named Elmer. [1] Everyone loved Elmer, just the way he was- even though Elmer didn’t always like himself. One day, he made himself look ordinary grey, like all the other elephants—but it only lasted about a minute, because it wasn’t who he was, and it was so BORING! When the other elephants realized it was Elmer all along—well, they loved him all the more. (Isn’t that exactly how it

  “What if I fail?” Oh, but my darling, what if you fly? –Erin Hanson Francis R. Scobee. Michael J. Smith. Ronald McNair. Ellison Onizuka. Judith Resnik. Gregory Jarvis. Christa McAuliffe. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Thirty-five years ago, the dreams of these brave souls came to an abrupt end when the space shuttle Challenger exploded after liftoff. For many, the “ordinariness” of Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher who had always dreamt of flying among the stars, made this tragedy even more tragic. After all, who among us hasn’t laid on their back on a lazy summer afternoon, staring at the big, puffy clouds and trying to imagine what it’s like out there ? As children, perhaps we wondered: Is God out there? If we flew high enough and far enough, would we zoom past reality and reach eternity? Where is heaven, anyway, and how can we know for sure ? John Ortberg ( God is Closer than you Think ) compares our curiosity and dreams of heaven to the plight of a dog listening at the d

Three things in life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind. –Henry James   People can be really wonderful. And people can also be jerks. Every last one of us. (Yes, us .) No matter how well-intentioned we are on this journey, sooner or later someone is going to cross our path who is . . . challenging . You know: the one who manages to find your very last nerve and jump up and down on it. Or perhaps the one who seems so very nice at first, but behind the smiles, is all snake oil and venom. Or maybe simply the one person who knows it all , and is convinced you don’t. Yeah, people are wonderful. And they’re not. But Jesus didn’t call us only to love the nice people, or the kind people, or the ones whose smiles are genuine. Jesus calls us to love them all . In seminary, when I was complaining to a professor about the man who was oh, so difficult to deal with, I reminded myself that yes, even he is a beloved child of God. An