Guess what?!

I get to spend a small but exciting half hour of my week one on one in a small practice room with an eager six year old musician.  Yes, Emily the Piano Teacher is back.  I don't have as many students as I did in Fargo (which is actually kind of a relief) but it's students like this that make me happy to be teaching in this capacity.

We had a pre-lesson conversation in which I asked her about school, and she went on and on, and then I asked her more specifically about math.  She said: "We're learning about penguins!" and proceded to have me guess how tall emporer penguins are (three to four feet) and spurt out other bits of knowledge about the said mathematical creatures, often starting her statements with "Did you know that..." or "Guess what?!"  (Side note: If you work around children, you need to understand that "Guess what?" is not actually a question requiring an answer but a means for them to fully proceed onward in their monologue of communication that they want to share with you.  It's suppose to make it sound like they're truly interested in your response but mostly they just need to share). 

Then, she started telling me about predators of penguins.  She couldn't quite remember what they were called, but after describing what they did, she realized they were whales.  Then, she told me:

"Killer whales can kill anything.  Except Jesus."

How true that is - killer whales can kill anything, but probably not our RISEN Lord and Savior.
Happy Easter to all!  I hope you get a chance to celebrate the new life that is possible through the work of Jesus Christ.  He is amazing, conquering sin and death... and could totally take a killer whale. 

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

As a general rule, I'm not a big mirror person. I intentionally did not put one up in my locker in middle/high school, going against the raging trend of teenagers at that time to check on your make-up and hair in between classes. (My reasoning: I wouldn't have enough time to do anything about it if I noticed something wrong with my hair, so it would be better off just not knowing. Also, I didn't wear make-up).

I know you're probably on the edge of your seat right now, wondering why I would have started this blog post about mirrors when I don't care much about them. Maybe you're even wondering why it's taken me so long to update.  To the first question I say keep reading, please.  To the latter, I have wondered about this as well, but avoid answering it by posing another question: Ever been through a spiritual plateau?

Hello, my name is Emily, and I have ups and downs in my spiritual life (and sometimes just don't have the drive or discipline to blog). I feel like this topic could be an entire network of posts, most of which would only vaguely make sense, but let me suffice it to say that I knew and still know that God is always good and is doing things that I am often unaware of but it doesn't mean my walk with Him is always bursting and bubbling over.

However, I have been reading Genesis lately.  It has honestly been a bit depressing. Other than God creating the whole world and it being amazing and good and all that, there is a lot of sin, right away in the world. Even people who are considered righteous are sometimes doing some clearly unrighteous things.  This has bothered me lately.  I was particularly troubled by Jacob, a man who gets about 11 chapters devoted to his life story.  As much as his name is technically Israel by the end of the story (which is a big deal, no question), his initial mark in the Bible is sketchy at best.  His name means "deceiver" and he lives up to its meaning right away, tricking his brother in a deal and working in cahoots with his mother by blatantly lying to his aging and blind father in order to receive a blessing.

 I'm reading this and thinking to myself, "Isn't Jacob a patriarch? Isn't that supposed to mean he's important and godly and stuff?"

One antidote to this came in the form of reading a commentary, Handbook on the Pentatuch by Victor Hamilton, on the text, as recommended by Ryan the Stable and Wise. I have really enjoyed learning some more historical/cultural insights on such passages as well as getting additional insights from a believer who was knowledgeable enough to write a prominent book on this particular part of scripture.

 
Anyway, Jacob's world shifts when he leave home to find a wife. He is on his own, encounters God via an intense dream, and makes a vow to state his now-dependence upon God. (Genesis 28:20-21). He then meets Laban, his mother's brother, and has this joyful meeting of a long-lost relative and ends up working for Laban.

Lovely as this all seems, Laban appears to be just as icky on the inside as Jacob. The story is really more complicated than I want to summarize here but the point is that Laban is also a deceitful man.

"Oh great!" I thought to myself with exasperation, "Another guy in the Bible who we should not emulate."

The commentator had something different to say.

 Hamilton notes that God is preparing to transform Jacob. Step one: Appear to Jacob (The dream covers that- check). Step two: "Hold up a mirror to Jacob. The method is to let Jacob spend the next twenty years living with a person whose character is much like his own: Laban."

Huh... Laban is a mirror? Someone who is sinning in the same way challenges Jacob to look at himself and see the sin? That made some sense to me. I entertained the concept and thought it to be a good insight until God gave me a little mirror experience of my own, at which point lesson hit me like a truck.

Recently, I observed someone asking a question to a child about a slightly trivial matter. When the child gave his response, the person asking the question got aggravated and tried to convey to the child that his response was not the right response and eventually cajoled the child into agreeing to what the adult thought was the correct response on the semi-minor issue.

Being the Love-and-Logic educator I am, I internally dove into negative response mode at this person. I think it's in very poor taste to ask a question when you only want one answer - experts prove this! Besides, it seems manipulative. I was pretty judgmental.

Fast forward a couple of days: Ryan and I are making potato soup. The bread dough is rising, the broth is boiling, and Ryan is cutting vegetables and putting them into the pot. We have the following interaction.

Emily: [observing the vegetables that are on the cutting board] Do you want to add some onion to the soup?

Ryan: No, probably not this time. I think it's [the pot] is going to be pretty full.

 And I stopped dead in my tracks.

 No onion!? Ryan, what are you thinking, you crazy man!! You are supposed to be the stable, rational one in this relationship. Have you lost all sense? Onion adds flavor and deliciousness to so many things, including this soup, of course we would include onion in this soup!

Then I thought: Mirror... mirror...

Wait a second. Was I just embodying the very thing I had mentally condemned a few days before?

 In a word, yes.

 I asked the question thinking the following conversation would occur:

 Emily: [observing the vegetables that are on the cutting board] Do you want to add some onion to the soup?

Ryan: Yes, of course! Onion adds flavor and deliciousness to this soup. Thank you so much, my dear and beautiful wife, for reminding me of this essential element for tonight's dinner. As a token of my gratitude and love for you, would you bestow upon me the honor of a giving you a back rub later this evening?

 I wanted to add the onion - not a big deal in itself.  Yet, I asked - and when the answer didn't suit me, my first response was to manipulate to get my way.

 (For the record, I did stop myself before continuing the conversation and explained my revelation to Ryan, who still did not offer me a back rub but smiled with me and continued to work on supper. The pot really was too full to add any other vegetables, anyway).

 I have to wonder if there's a bigger lesson going on here.

 God gave Jacob someone who was sinful in just the same way, to show Jacob the error of his way.

 Do you have someone in your life that is bothering you? Could they possibly be embodying a sin of which you need to be purged of, too?   I was a skeptic at first, but the onion episode (plus several more since I then) have convinced and convicted me.

 God is in the business of refining people and that means the sin has got to go.  Is He using a mirror in your life right now?