A Labor of Love

Dear Readers of Footnotes2Stories,

“I am writing this to you, and I hope that you will read it so you’ll know . . .” how much I care.

When summer ended and school used to start after Labor Day, often the first day assignment included writing: “How I spent my summer vacation.”

Writing was good practice for thinking about what I had done, what I read, and which experiences stood out. Swimming lessons, Camp Fire Girls Day Camp (raising and lowering the flag each day), and weeks spent at the Friends of Youth Camp at Mt. Charleston outside of Las Vegas, Nevada made summer fun.

Although I never had an actual summer vacation until after I married, like teachers and students everywhere, l needed a break from school.

A Break from Blog Writing

Needing a break from writing, I took the summer off to give myself time to think about why I write a blog. Why have a website at all? I questioned whether or not to keep writing, which is why I didn’t tell you readers, “I’ll be back after Labor Day.” (I always hesitate to presume upon the future.)

Still, I hoped by the end of summer I would want to continue and to have gained clarity for what to write about that might benefit other people. To those of you gracious enough to invest your time reading various posts and articles, the last thing I want to do is to waste your time. Or mine.

From the beginning, I found myself unable (or unwilling?) to focus on a particular topic or, to do as web gurus insist, ”Identify your target audience.”

I don’t have a target audience, any more than I have a rigorous daily routine, as if I could aim, achieve, and measure a goal. Then what?

What I do have is a love for words. For the power and potential of words affecting people’s lives the way words continue to influence my thinking through what I read, watch, study, experience, or learn from someone else.

Especially words that tell stories. You and I are wired to connect to stories.

Jesus told stories. Most of the Bible comes in story form, the spine of a stupendous narrative where God who created everything declares everything anyone needs to live a life of meaning and purpose. Of course, you and I can’t learn everything all at once, any more than we learned how to walk, talk, listen, read, or think for ourselves.

Your story and mine began with absolutely no choice about where we were born, when we were born, or what family we were born into. Shaping tools. Formative for our view of life, the universe, and everything.

Along the way, some choices get made for us, and others we make ourselves.

We make our choices and our choices make us.

Caring Enough to Keep Learning

I cared enough about the Bible to go to seminary and spend four arduous years getting a Master’s degree, knowing that even if I graduated––crossed that finish line––this late in life achievement would not lead to a career. Not knowing why I was there added to the anxiety I felt and the challenges I faced. I still don’t know why.

Before that, I cared so much about studying the Bible for myself that I spent twenty years in Bible Study Fellowship. For nine of those years, as Teaching Leader, in addition to teaching weekly lessons, BSF is where I learned to care about people I didn’t know.

Once, during a lecture, I said to the class, “You made me love you, I didn’t want to do it.”

Tears in my eyes, the words to the song, first sung by Al Jolson (1913), but as I remembered it sung by Judy Garland, conveyed the feelings that had grown for people I didn’t know except through Bible Study.

That’s the way love works, isn’t it?

I grew up watching old black-and-white movies. Formative and informative.

It had never been easy for me to love people, especially people not like me. People who didn’t believe what I believed or behave as I thought everyone ought to behave.

But as I invested myself in the lives of people who didn’t see the world the way I did, I came to appreciate ways our stories overlapped. Circles inside circles, intersections of faith and experience and longing.

Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Until I became an adult who could analyze how anything fit together, my life was a patchwork of geographical oddities and life experiences that helped me learn good people exist everywhere.

Later, as my worldview enlarged, I had as much unlearning to do as I did learning.

Kind of like needlepoint: it’s harder to take out stitches than it is to put them in right at the beginning. Undoing: You have to rip-it! And it makes a mess.

Where I go from here?

Circles inside circles, when teaching the Bible, my life intersects with people who hunger and thirst for the same living water that had drawn me to Jesus as a child.

If loving Jesus describes a target audience, then you’re it.

Going forward, my focus will be on relating the Bible to contemporary culture. Whether from books, movies, articles, stories people share with me, the common thread you and I share is our humanity. Being human comes before being anything else.

As the contemporary culture exhibits increasing hostility to a biblical worldview, it gets harder for Christians to be in the world and not of it. I get it.

Both Sides Now

I refreshed my website to enhance its appearance. Sort of like making a new dress, it took longer than I thought it would take me.

New features:

• Links to specific podcasts I find helpful
• Books currently reading
• Books read and reread
• Recipes that people always ask for
• Bible stories that connect to life, as you live it

While I care deeply about what’s going on in the world, I find the lane of cultural commentary overcrowded and stuck in the traffic of too many opinions and too little wisdom.

If I can’t do anything about a problem, fretting does not help.

Be still before the Lord

    and wait patiently for him;

do not fret when people succeed in their ways,

    when they carry out their wicked schemes.

Psalm 37:7

I have missed you, noble Readers, and hope you are as eager to hear from me again as I am to continue. My plan was to resume my blog writing schedule the week of Labor Day. Ta-dah!

Readers, you’re the best. You made me love you.