Surrounded by His Favor- a Reprise

March 27, 2020

 Last night was not a good night. The statistics for coronavirus infections stood at 86,000 infected in America, the most for any country. Only 713 recovered and 1300 died. My nephew called and shared a long time about the hardships for the supply chain for the respiratory devices that he sells. He’s not allowed in hospitals to teach people how to use the machines and the manufactures can’t keep up. Although it is good business for the manufacturers, as I have always contended, “The people that need the respiratory devices I design are to be pitied.” The numbers that are to be pitied are increasing exponentially. 

Now, this morning I woke to find that number includes one resident at Landis homes where Karen’s day resides. Her dad called in tears after finding out this news. Of course, they have no masks for the residents and workers. On top of that is the growing antagonism between the USA and China and the high-level finger-pointing for who is to blame for this epidemic. Finger-pointing between such well-armed adversaries is always disquieting. And the animosity appears to be extending downward, even to my friends who seem to be becoming circumspect in the way they talk with me. I tried to end bouts of sleeplessness during the night by repeating the prayer, “God, how are you showing us your favor in this mess?”

It hadn’t worked too well. The report of my youngest daughter's child having coughing fits through the night had not helped. She was understandably worried that he had contracted the virus. And my wife’s brother-in-law was in the hospital for some major bowel surgery. The virus made it impossible to have any visitors in the hospital with him. His kids were showing their love to him by standing, holding hands in a heart-shaped circle in the street, five floors below. 

And then there was the matter of my access to Social Security. I had spent hours the day before trying to penetrate the password wilderness that guarded the entry into my locked-down Social Security number. Two clever, and extremely devious, Indian hackers had gotten into my computer back on Halloween night of 2019 and had riffled through my personal documents, leaving a note at the end on a blazing screen, “Got it you M-F’er! You’ve been hacked!” This along with a screenshot of the pertinent SSN information that they were carrying away to be sold on the dark web unless I intervened in their plot and sent them a cool $500,000. I retained that screenshot as a testament to a very bad night and as evidence for the local police department. But my non-payment of the requested sum continued to bother the perpetrators who would call back on numerous occasions to remind me of their continued presence in my world. The only comfort back then on that Halloween night when I had prayed, “How are you surrounding me with your favor in this mess?” was for God to assure me that the favor was to give me two Indian hackers to pray for! Small comfort! But I was ready to take any assurances at that point. 

But now, with my job shut down by the virus and both Karen and I self-isolating in our house, the world was seeming rather chaotic. I did have small comfort in knowing that my most productive activity was to make my wife as happy and comfortable as possible in her home office. To that end, I had gone to Staples to buy a cable to connect between her laptop and an extra flat panel display. Going from a huge, Apple monitor at her workplace to the confines of a small MacBook Air screen at home was a real frustration. The service person at Staples seemed a little put-off by the mask I had chosen to wear into the store. I had been mandated to wear it by my wife who was starting to point out my hypocrisy of so loudly advocating wearing masks in public and then being too timid to do it myself. Between the perpetual fogging of my glasses and the uncomfortableness of talking to another person through a mask, I was able to buy what I thought was needed to solve my wife’s display problems. Except that it hadn’t worked! I plugged the mDP cable into the computer, connected the HDMI cable from the monitor, and nothing! NO SIGNAL PRESENT. Another downer! But a quick call to Staples' IT guy allowed me to solve the problem with eloquence! Turn the computer and monitor on, unplug the cable from the computer and re-plug it, and -- success! Even Karen saw it as a grand advancement after a bit of grumbling about, “Never did it like this before!” 

So, I awoke in the morning from a sleepless night with only the working monitor to my credit. That joy was completely counterbalanced by all the negativity that I couldn’t avoid hearing on the news. But I did have one task to complete for that day. I wanted to put a coat of paint on the Welcome Center cabinets that I was building for the church. I realized that I could paint and be on hold on the phone at the same time due to the marvel of the hearing aids I allow Blue Tooth connectivity between my phone and my ears. I called the Social Security office and was understandably put on hold “for the next available operator.” Call times were unusually long, I was assured, due to the coronavirus. I could reasonably expect to speak to someone live -- not just hear the elevator music and the periodic sincere apologies for “people who were working hard to service 60 million people” -- some time an hour-and-a-half hence. But it was in the actual 2 hours and 19 minutes that the full surrounding of God’s favor appeared. First, I got into a WeChat with a girl, in Shandong province of China who had lost her job the week before Spring Festival. She had gone back to her hometown and had been isolated there ever since. Arriving there with a very bad, almost suicidal attitude, she had really been touched by God in that time and had made a remarkable rebound spiritually. She had just turned 30, which in China means that you are not very likely to ever get married. This milestone had almost drugged her into the grave. But now, sitting in her parents’ home, she had been reborn in her love for God. She was telling me about her dreams of being a Sociologist and studying in America. I told her that she should write down her remarkable story and I could include it in the “SwitchPoints” book I was contemplating writing. 

Then amid the telephone hold time, another friend got hold of me on WeChat. This was a friend who really resonates with me about the stupidity of Americans being so averse to wearing masks in public. This was hardly surprising. She is the one who has been beating the drum about the need for me to protect myself by wearing a mask ever since she was aware that this dread disease was coming to America, which is to say, way back in January. Both her and my Chinese engineer sidekick, Joey, agree that some protection is better than no protection. And they were quick to point out that the proof is in the pudding; China has been able to turn back the tide of this virus that was ravishing their country. Some of that success surely is credited to the quick, widespread adaptation of masks with their ability to knock contaminated water particles out of the respired air. It has been fatal to wait to ramp up the production of protective equipment in the USA until the virus is widespread among us. It felt good to chat with someone that supported my position. 

But then came the real wonder of the long telephone hold. Someone answered! The elevator music stopped and a male voice with a slight Southern accent asked if he could help me! Milton was answering the phone from home quarantine in New Mexico. He had a kind, gentle voice; exactly what you would expect from a government worker during a crisis! I explained to him my anguish of not being able to access my SSN due to the identity fraud that I had encountered on Halloween night. Interestingly, what he had me do was to go through filling out the form again, but this time I was to put in a fictional birthdate. I did this once, then again, and then a third time. Now it gave me the dire warning that I was permanently locked out of the account! Thank God for Milton on the line with me! He told me that is where he needed to get me. Now we could start all over with the correct information this time! Wow! It worked! He successfully got me an account! Then he asked if I wanted to sign up to start receiving benefits. If so, I could go to the local SS office, sit in a long line and talk to a sweaty agent in some booth or he could help me do right now! In my chair – at my desk – guided by his kind, gentle promptings! This was not a hard choice! So, for the next half hour, this kind gentleman from the great state of New Mexico walked me through the process. I felt as if a great burden had been lifted off my shoulders. I gladly gave him straight 5’s on the evaluation survey after the call. The only thing that bugs me is that I didn’t give him was the reference to Psalm 5:12, and tell him that he, for today, had been that shield from God that was surrounding me with his favor. 

And one final small act of favor, on my part this time, was to jump in the car and run to Dairy Queen to buy a small, Heath Bar Blizzard for Karen who said she needed it for her mental health! I even got the girl in the speaker to laugh when I asked her if I needed to stop the car 6 feet from the microphone to maintain proper social distancing when placing my order! 

Why did I find so much of God’s favor today? Perhaps it is because I had repeated the prayer about the Psalm 5:12 promise to God so many times over and over as I sought to find some sleep last night. Maybe my multiple asking’s were rewarded with multiple giving’s. Malachi 3:10 says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” Malachi’s God sure seemed alive and well today!

Blue Smoke in my Pocket

June 2, 2020

I had another “surrounded by His favor” moment on this past weekend! I decided to mow the yard. But, when I started the mower it began to blow out blue smoke—big billows of it! It got worse and worse. I was embarrassed to be seen driving it. It had never done that before. I figured that the engine was blown and or that the rings had broken. Now I was going to have to drive to Lancaster and bring home the mower that I had just taken there. And I would need to get the motor on this mower rebuilt for $500 or so. But I stopped at this little lawn mower shop located in a guy’s garage not far from my home. When I explained my problem he said, “Oh, you blew a head gasket. You can fix that yourself! You’re good with mechanics." I was so relieved! He had just saved me a bundle of money.

I decided to ask him what made him an interesting person and that launched him into a 45-minute dialog about his very colorful life! I felt like I had gotten free advice and a good friend! Plus, when I got home, the neighbor boy, Matt, said that he would mow the yard for me the next day! Which he did. When I tried to give him $30 for his efforts, he refused the money. Now Karen says she will make him a batch of chocolate chip cookies instead! (and I will get to eat some!)

So, I decided to take the advice of my book, “Created to Commune” and "not let God's blessings find a dead end in my pocket!" I sent the $30 to a friend whom I knew could use it, or more likely, would find a way to pass it on and keep the blessings moving!

What is That Contraption?

June 10, 2006

Quite a few years ago, I was the Sunday School teacher for an exception bunch of fourth and fifth graders. I have always liked to teach using analogies to develop truths. One Sunday I put the breathing system from the anesthesia machine that I was designing at Draeger Medical into a cardboard box and took it to class. I told them that the night before I had witnessed the most amazing sight! This streak of light, like a meteor approached the house from the east. Something bright and shiny landed in the field across from my house. The machine, whatever it was, settled onto the ground and soon a door opened in the front surface. A ramp pivoted downward onto the grass and two creatures that looked like little, glowing, green men descended the ramp. In their arms they carried this funny shaped object. They carefully placed it on the ground, looked around for a moment and then returned to their machine. The ramp lifted with a slight whirring sound, the craft lifted off the ground, hovered there for a moment, and then with a whoosh, streaked away into the eastern sky from whence it had come.

Shaken, but curious, I slipped into my shoes and eased out of the front door of the house. I cautiously snuck up to the area where the machine had alighted and saw the object that they had deposited still sitting there on the ground. Rather than risk contamination, I left it sitting there and ran back to the house and grabbed a box and some gloves. Returning, I carefully picked up the contraption and placed it into the box. It was not overly heavy, so I was able to carry it back to the garage and keep it there until morning. I was excited to bring it to class with me and see if they could help me figure out what it was!

With their curiosity thoroughly aroused, I undid the top of the box and lifted the odd contraption from its resting place. It was all a tangle of hoses and valves with a large translucent canister attached to its underside. The black of the base contrasted with the shiny silver of the metal parts. A rubber balloon dangled from the longest hose. What could be the purpose of such a device?

The kids started to squeeze the balloon and blow into the hoses. They twisted the knobs and flipped the switches. They turned it over and poked around in the recesses. Suggestions were made that the canister could be filled with water or soda. Perhaps it was a portable fish bowel. Or an alien breath analyzer or a galactic telephone.

Of course, they quickly realized that my story about it being dropped off by some aliens was an elaborate ruse, but what  was it really? I told them that in fact it was a device that allows patients to breath and keeps them alive during surgery. Not only did I know the purpose of the device, but I was friends with the person who had designed it. His name was Jan Sievertsen and he lived in Germany. If they wanted to know anything more about it I could give them his phone number and they could call and talk with him. Better yet, he had written an entire operators manual on the unit so that every doctor would understand its design and the correct way to use it.

By now the light was slowly dawning on them about where this little demonstration was going. They, the young boys and girls marveling at this breathing system, were analogous to that complicated devise with all its dangling hoses and mysterious valving. And it was God, the one who created them, that they could get in contact with via prayer. And the operators manual was the Holy Bible that our loving Creator had so graciously provided us. Mr. Sievertsen would never have designed his breathing system and placed it out there in the hospitals without any way for doctors to understand it and its purposes. Neither would God have created them, such wonderful boys and girls, and left them without an instruction book and a way to contact him as they attempt to find their purposes in life.

But just in case I had made my story too vivid, I told them that there was no need to pressure their parents to stop and let them look for spaceship tracks in the field across from my house! God could be trusted to be there for them everyday, very unlike those fickle aliens!

The Path to True Worship

"No Agenda" Moments

Many years ago, I had a Honda Civic, a wife and two daughters who took afternoon naps, and an inspiration. I would use those several hours of sleep-time on Sundays to throw my toolbox into the back of the Honda and spend the time cruising the highway on a lookout for people who were having car problems. This was in the era before cellphones, so anyone with a set of wheels could be a big help to someone stranded along the road. 

As I set out on these afternoon jaunts, I would pull to the end of the driveway and offer a prayer. “God, the next several hours are yours. I have no agenda. Just lead me wherever I’m needed to meet with whoever you wish.”

From there I would head down the road in whatever direction seemed appropriate. I would keep on the lookout for cars stranded along the road: flat tires, blown radiators, and cars out of gas. I found all those and more on these excursions. And always I found thankful spirits from those I was privileged to help.

I clearly remember the one recipient of my aid. I saw a large gouge leading down the road and ending underneath a disabled car on the side of the road. The owner of the car was still behind the wheel, tightly surrounded by all his earthly possessions. He was documenting his predicament in neat, little, scrawled writing on a slip of paper when I knocked on the window. He said something – he wasn’t sure what – had gone, Bang! He had barely been able to get the car off the road.

I peeked under the car. He was right about the bang thing! The whole support structure of this overworked Oldsmobile had broken out from under the transmission! The driveshaft had dropped to the ground and had created that long groove in the pavement.

I walked up the side of the road and found a broken-off piece of a road sign. I dug it out of the underbrush and lugged it back to the Olds. It was just the right length so that I could wedge the one side under the frame and lever the transmission up off the ground. I managed to tuck the other end on top of the opposite frame member. The car was mobile again – barely. The man with the mini-scrawl writing was ecstatic that he could again drive. He thanked me profusely and then asked whether I thought it could pass inspection that way! I thought not!

I don’t know how many people I helped on those occasions. But it doesn’t matter. The one person I know benefited the most from those times was me. I still look back on those “no agenda” moments as times when I really experienced true worship. Those were times that I could truly see God working in the “fragrant muck and misery” of the roadside.

A Lesson in Duplication

On one of my frequent trips to Lübeck, Germany while working for Draeger Medical, I got to talking with a German physicist I met in the gate area. He lived in Hamburg and worked for Philips Electric. During the conversation, he told me about the fact that Philips held the joint patent on the CD disc technology. That caught my attention and I told him that I had a question.

“Suppose that one were to take a CD disc full of information and copy it to another disc. Then they were to copy the copy to a third disc and then copy the copy of the copy to yet another disc and so on, always copying the latest copy to the successive disc. Now, after 1000 copies, if they were to compare the information on the first disc with that on disc number 1000, would they find that all the information was still perfectly intact?”

“Yes!” he told me emphatically. “Philips has developed a very robust copying routine and had built in lots of safeguards and error checking to assure that the data is copied properly.”

“OK,” I said. “Now suppose that you are God, and that you have just put the first human genome onto earth. Your expectation is that this genome will be copied and the copy copied and the copy of the copy copied and so on until here you and I are, many generations later talking together and looking very much like most of the original information has been preserved. Do you think, that if you were God, that you would have built a careful set of rules around that copying process, such as morality, sexual purity, loving parenting, and nurturing family values? Wouldn’t following such guidelines be important for the successful transmittal of our humanness from generation to generation? Wouldn’t they be just as important as all those rules that Philips developed for governing the duplication of data from one disc to another?”

“You’re right,” he said. “I never thought about reproduction in those terms before!”

We often lose sight of the fact that our sexuality is one God's greatest gift to mankind and that we should not use it as some plaything. How often people forget that the rules God places around us are not to make us miserable, but to make us viable!

The Homeless Muslim Girl

The Homeless Muslim Girl
June 26, 2017

One of the many benefits that life has provided me is the joy of accompanying my wife to her many video conferences around the world. This has given me the chance to visit many interesting places in Europe and America and to meet scores of people and explore fascinating cities. But one of the more interesting people that I ran into first appeared to me as a ruffled blanket and stuffed garbage bag lying against the wall of a building in Cincinnati, Ohio. If it hadn’t been for the protruding shoe, I likely would have walked on by. But my momentary interests evoked a rustle from under the blanket and the face of young girl appeared with her head wrapped in a head scarf. She seemed uninterested in pursuing a conversation, so I moved on. But when I returned later, she was sitting up and I was able to talk with her.

It turned our she had been in a bad marriage, had been thrown out by an abusive husband and had lived here on this spot for many years. All she wanted out of life was a bus ticket so she could move to Washington D.C. She had heard that living on the streets there was much more satisfactory. “Could you please give me enough money to buy a bus ticket?” was her plea.

I told her I could give her something much better! I could get her off the streets entirely in a short amount of time. I pulled one of my CrossPuzzles from my knapsack. I told her that I would be willing to give her as many of these puzzles for free as she wanted and she could hand them out to any passers-by. Within a week, her picture would be in the local paper if not on the national news!

But when I tried to hand the cross to her she drew back in disgust. “That is an instrument of execution!” she hissed.

“Yes!” I said, “But is also the instrument of salvation!”

It was obvious that she was not getting the connection between the two concepts. So, I proposed an analogy to help her understand. I asked her to imagine that she was in jail, accused of some heinous crime. She was to be executed the next day. But today, her identical twin sister had come to the jail to visit her. The two of them had snuck into the ladies’ room and had switched clothing. She had emerged, wearing her sister’s business suit, and her sister had been returned to her cell in the prison garb. The next day it was her sister who died at the hands of the executioner. She was on the street, a free woman. Her crime had been paid for by her sister!

I told her that we all have an identical twin. His name is Jesus! And he has paid for our sins so that we can be free.

The light of understanding seemed to come on in her eyes. She had never heard the story framed in that manner. But the years of abuse and indoctrination were stronger than my analogies. She continued to cling to her lineage as a Muslim for her assurances. I told her that one of the best thing Jesus had ever done was to die without having children. There is no bloodline of Jesus. We can not evaluate our worthiness by examining how much of Jesus blood flows in our veins. For the descendants Islam, the attempt to trace bloodlines back to the proper son of Muhammad has been the root of generations of struggle since his death. With Jesus, he ended the bloodline. His blood does not flow in our veins. His blood covers us! We can all be his children; no restrictions from genealogy!

But in the end, all I can claim is that I had planted the seeds. Hopefully, someone else can secure the harvest. I saw her one more time, months later. It was on Google Earth as I panned the camera up that street. There she was, still lying under the purple blanket on the sidewalk. But a week later, when I again searched for her on Google, she had been painted out of the picture. Only a bottle, leaning against the wall, remained. A friend of mine, who was visiting the city, stopped across the street at the church and asked after her. They remembered her, but said when last they had heard about her, someone had given her a bus ticket to Washington D.C. Her dream had come true. But my dream for her, most likely, may never to be realized.

New Excitement for the Taste Buds

New Excitement for the Taste Buds

The Microsoft welcome screen on my Surface laptop this Saturday morning suggested that one should seek out new excitement for the taste buds. Hah! I had already gone there, even without their prompting! I had gotten out of bed before 6am and put on the pot of coffee to brew. I then set about the task of cooking myself some “Eggs in a Basket.” This is not an onerous task; else I would have left it undone. But given the proper level of creativity, it can evoke a true explosion for the taste buds. Let me detail some of steps of that creativity for you!

1.     Find a slice of high-quality bread. Then cut a hole out of the center of it using your wife’s favorite cup, much like your kids did with their playdough. Clean the any crumbs from the lip of the cup so that your wife is not displeased with your having borrowed it! Now spread a thin layer of butter onto the bread and its inner disc.

2.     Get out your best, non-stick skillet and put it on the stove at medium heat. Melt a tab of butter onto its bottom.

3.     Separate the disc from the bread and place both, butter side down, into the skillet.

4.     Crack two eggs into the confines of the slice of bread. It is ok if some of the egg white cascades over the side and spreads out into the pan but limit its expanse if possible. I typically break the yokes and stir them up slightly at this point, but that is a matter of preference for how much yellow goo you want to deal with when eating them later.

5.     Now the good part! Sprinkle the top of the eggs with Garlic Pepper. If you do not have any of that, I will be happy supply your need from my storehouse of the substance, uniquely available for my Mennonite friends in Missouri.

6.     Then, to really engage your taste buds in their exciting mission of delivering delight to your palate, sprinkle a healthy coating of crushed red pepper on top!

7.     You are now ready for the next creative step. Cover the cooking egg with a lid and pour a few tablespoons of water around the brim so that it runs down under the lid and fills the area around the egg with steam. This allows the egg to cook quickly from both sides and causes the top to skin over, vastly improving the results when attempting the next step.

8.     Slide a spatula under the contents of the pan, and in one intense act of concentration, flip the whole thing over without allowing it to leave the confines of the pan or landing inside the pan but all crumbled up. Even crumbled up results are still edible, but lack the high-quality appearance seen in fine restaurants.

9.      Now sprinkle some grated, sharp cheddar cheese on top of the eggs and recover for a moment and allow the cheese to melt. When it is satisfactorily gooey, flip the now toasted disc and any of the errant egg white up on top of the egg.

10.  And one more idiosyncratic flare can now be added. Spread a thin coating of peach jam on top! Strawberry also works, but I grew up raising eggs and do not like to see red intermingled with my eggs!

11.  Enjoy, with loud groanings!

12.  It is now time to go back over to the stove and turn off the burner! Leave the dirty dishes for your wife so she is impressed at your industry so early on a Saturday morning!

I wonder if that was what Microsoft had in mind with their welcome screen?

The Freedom of the Autobahn

The Freedom of the Autobahn

October 29, 2011

The other Sunday I taught the youth on the passage Romans 14. This is a passage that could be taken a lot of ways. It is all about how we are to exercise our spiritual liberty within the framework of caring for and understanding those around us. About how we can remain teachable and sensitive to the feelings of the weaker brother, or even the stronger brother. But the point I decided I would try to drive home to the youth was the contrasting message in verse 10. It stands there in the center of the chapter and tersely states that “we shall all stand before God’s judgment seat.”

I told the class about my recent trip to Germany and the thrills of driving on the autobahn at over 200 KPH. The freedom of knowing I did not have to worry about getting pulled over for going too fast was exhilarating. It gave the act of driving a whole new thrill. I didn’t even bother to follow the speed limits in those areas where it was posted because I was enjoying the freedom of the open road so much. Or at least I was until I came home and was talking with a friend who had recently traveled in Germany. He had been receiving a string of very expensive tickets after being photographed in his rental car barreling through various speed zones at high rates of speed. A sense of deep foreboding came over me. I had been driving in complete ignorance of the roadside cameras. How many tickets were being processed in my name? I tried to take comfort in the thought that surely they would not hold me responsible if I was ignorant of the fact that I was being watched. Was the German government even powerful enough to hunt me down and enforce the penalty? But in the end I just came to dread the mailbox. Maybe I could unregister my address from the postal service!

But then I had a marvelous discovery. On the bottom of the Visa contract, buried in the fine print, it said not to worry about traffic fines levied against people that rented cars using their Visa cards. Visa would pay all such penalties. They would do this just because they liked me!

Ok, it didn’t really say that! That was just wishful thinking! Visa was not going to pull me out of my troubles! But that idea did illustrate for me, and hopefully for the youth, that we are not just going through this life without someone who is watching over us. “For it is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment,” it ominously states in Hebrews 9:27. When I asked the kids if they wanted to live forever, the kids all raised their hands. But none of them seemed to have a realistic plan of how to achieve that goal. None of them had a working plan for escaping the judgment of God upon their lives and behavior. At least they didn’t if they hadn’t accepted the very real plan of salvation offered in the Bible. And this plan was not one of wish fulfillment. It was a tried and true plan that has been experienced and used throughout the last 2000 years –“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” Romans 10:13 . And in this case, the one backing up this marvelous, grace-filled offering is doing it for love. It is not because they are obligated to do so. It is just for the love of it. Something Visa would never be caught dead doing.

But it is worthwhile to reflect a bit more upon the freedom of the autobahn. Yes, there is freedom. But it comes at a steep price. To drive in Germany requires a very extensive and expensive time of training. All who drive on the autobahn obey very strict codes of behavior. One must never pass on the right. One must always yield the lane to a faster car coming up behind them. The Audi that flashes its headlights at you as it approaches from the rear at a closing speed of over 120 KPH must not be ignored! Text messaging at 200 KPH is not tolerated. And speed limits, when they are posted, must be obeyed. Yes, there is freedom, but it is a tightly controlled and ordered freedom. This is no free-for-all. Nor is the freedom in Christ that is so passionately spoken of in Romans 14 a freedom from all constraints. It is a freedom that places us under the loving constraints of God himself.

An Interesting Angle

I recently received a response from a good friend who had just read my blog about how the first chapter of Genesis was the foundational story that created the week. (Unappreciated Origins; Where did the week come from?) He called it an “interesting angle.”  He quickly went on to lay out reasons that I am missing the real joy of God as creator by not seeing in Genesis 1 the factual description of how God had created everything in 6 days some 6000 years ago. Moreover, I’m missing that everything that we see in geology is the result of a universal flood some 4000 years ago.

Now, the world is blessed by people who have many different points of view. It should be regarded as wonderful, not dismissive, that someone has their own “interesting angle” on something. The people in Franconia Notch in New Hampshire found an interesting angle from which to view the cliffs overlooking their village. That spot became famous as the place to stand and gaze up at the glaciated, rocky cliffs above and see “The Old Man of the Mountain.” From any other angle those rocks looked like, well, just a bunch of rocks. The presence of that interesting angle of view changed the whole culture for that town. And the world was notified, and appropriately horrified, by the collapse of those rocks on May 3, 2003. The Old Man is gone, collapsed into a heap of rubble in the valley. But I count is as a blessing, that before that tragic day, I was able to stand on that spot and see that Abe Lincoln-like man peering across the valley.

Or another example. There are literally billions – ok – trillions of stars in the sky. But there is only one that has served to change the shape of civilization on earth to a large extent. And I am not talking about our blessed sun. Of course, it makes civilization possible! But the second-place star that I am thinking about has its noble distinction only because of our “interesting angle” of view of it in the heavens. The North Star is just a common, ordinary star in every other fashion. But, the fact that it lies on the axis of the rotation of the earth has made it a reliable beacon for navigation for thousands of years. I’ve covered that intriguing topic in my blog, Christ at the Apex, so I won’t go into explaining its significance farther here.

But the point in this essay is explaining that interesting angles matter. If I had failed to walk 100 yards farther down the trail to gaze at the cliffs above Franconia Notch, I never would have been at the right angle to see that stately man of the mountain. If the sailor had fixed his sexton on some star other than the North Star, his ship may have ended up in Reykjavík rather than London.

So, to dismiss the observation that the week had its origins in the creation story as just an “interesting angle,” seems somewhat small minded. The week, with the Sabbath at its apex, is the unifying narrative of the whole Hebrew Bible. Violating the staid traditions of that Sabbath, after all,  it is one of the things that got Jesus in such hot water in Jerusalem. And going beyond just the Jewish nation, it has been an agreed upon time-marker for almost all nations since antiquity. It has civilized mankind in ways that we can’t totally appreciate by giving us a time of rest and contemplation upon our creator rather than a full-time existence with every day being a workday.  

I do have my own “interesting angle” on God. My God is that one Being that:

Could we with ink the ocean fill

And were the skies of parchment made

Were every stalk on earth a quill

And every man a scribe by trade

To write the love of God above

Would drain the ocean dry

Nor could the scroll contain the whole

Though stretched from sky to sky*

Bets are that every one of those scribes is going to be writing their praise of God from their own “interesting angle” and it will result in the most splendid of tapestries.

* Verse 3 of The Love of God- Frederick M. Lehman - poem by Meir Ben Issac Nehorai

Frederick Lehman tells us that verse 3 “had been found penciled on the wall of a patient’s room in an insane asylum after he had been carried to his grave.” While it is only supposition that he was the one who adapted the Jewish author’s poem to leave us these well-known lines, if the account is true it shows in any case that he highly esteemed the message.

Perhaps of interest for farther reading:

https://www.icr.org/article/157/

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-cant-we-get-rid-of-the-7day-week

How Air Pollution Saved China

I have said for years now that "the Chinese live in our future and we live in their past". My initial intent with that phrase was to express the everyday reality that they are always either 12 or 13 hours ahead of Pennsylvania, depending on the vagaries of Daylight Savings time. But recently, since the outbreak of the coronavirus this past January, this phrase has become even more significant. Rather than just 12 hours, they seemingly live 3 or 4 weeks ahead of us in the progression of this virus outbreak. They have had to deal with this on a scale that we are only beginning to appreciate. Now, as I write this two months later, they are finally finding some relief from the rapid, inexorable spread of the disease across their country. The jury is still out on how they were able to hopefully squash this plague before it ravished more of the country, but one explanation that I am offering is China's experience with air pollution. Anyone who has been to China is struck by the seriousness of the pollution problem. Because of it, the Chinese are therefore quite comfortable with being out in public with masks covering their faces. When this epidemic started to threaten their many population centers, their people with ready and willing to don any protective gear they could find when venturing out. Masks were not a stigma or a negative fashion statement for them. 

Did that willingness to adapt to masks in public save them as a nation? Obviously, not in totality. But it is hard to dismiss the positive evidence that something was working in their favor to slow the spread that has not been working in Italy -- or in the USA and Spain. When I told my one friend in Beijing that I could not get hold of masks here, she immediately, within an hour, had 80 of them packaged up and on the way to my doorstep. They arrived, miraculously, six days later. Does she believe in masks in public? The answer is obvious! Last night, when another friend in Beijing learned that my daughter in Florida was concerned that she might have contracted the illness, she had a package of masks on their way to Florida within 4 hours. She also seems convinced of their efficacy. China, as of today, is up and running with a capacity of 300 million masks a day. They were incensed with our sending empty airplanes into Wuhan to evacuate our citizens. "Could you at least have filled the empty planes with masks and medical supplies?" they asked plaintively. They had a gut-level feel that masks were a good thing. So, are they? Our gut-level revulsion to the use of them has certainly delayed our full-scale push to produce them on an industrial scale. Even Congress put their collective foot down on making masks readily available. There is, of course some wisdom in that position. Elevating the benefits of wearing masks to a level of a life and death concern, would have spawned violence on the streets and the kind of stockpiling that has become apparent with toilet paper! (That is why we had to shut down construction! All Job Johnnies have been robbed of their toilet paper!) 

What to do? I guess obey the rapidly formulated social distancing laws. But I think that restricting us from going out of our houses without masks at the beginning of March would have prevented some of this. But then, I live in the present and am only in touch with the future over WeChat!

The One-Armed Man vs. the CrossPuzzle

Our town has what they call "First Fridays" which is a street fair that happens the first Friday of each month. Our church participates by being there and selling refreshments. I take my CrossPuzzles. On one occasion, there were these two little kids, probably around 12-years-old, who came up to me. The one kid asked me, "Can I have a dollar?" I said, "Why should I give you a dollar?" to which he answered, "I just need a dollar."

I told him that I would give him a dollar if he could answer me a question. I asked him to tell me what the following is. "What is a multipath, expansible, amorphous, carbohydrate, absorption module, sensitive to differential molecular tension?" After no more than 10 seconds of contemplation he said, "It's not a sponge is it?"

I told him that indeed it was a sponge! And that for that answer I would give him two dollars! After commenting on his obvious brilliance, I told him that I had another puzzle for him. I gave him and his buddies a couple of my CrossPuzzles. Before long there were about 15 of the street kids gathered around, all trying to get these puzzles apart.

Earlier in the evening I had been talking with a man in a wheelchair. Not only was he paralyzed in both legs, but he only had one good, functioning arm. When I saw him sitting eating at a nearby table, I took a puzzle over to him. I had him read the instructions and clues and explained to him that most people can't unlock it by their own efforts. But everyone tries to anyway. In his case however, I said he could easily unlock the puzzle and do it with only his one good hand. He was quite amazed when he did just that!

So, latter, as the boys were trying to get their puzzles apart, this guy in the wheelchair goes rolling by. I hollered at him to come over and show these kids how to unlock the puzzle using only his one good hand. He picks up the puzzle, but before unlocking it, he goes through the whole object lesson about how this cross illustrates that we can't get to God by our own works. God needed to come to us in the form of Jesus so that we could have salvation and have a relationship with God. I don't know if the wheelchair man was even a Christian, but he sure was a quick learner. And when he unlocked the puzzle using only one hand, these kids were in awe. They all wanted to have a puzzle to take home and challenge and amaze their friends.

That is the kind of reception that I have found with this puzzle. It doesn't make me a lot of money, but it certainly lets me connect in places where I normally would be not be connected!

The Purple Balm

Cruising up and down the isles at the International Christian Retail Show, ICRS, I noticed a booth where a lady, all dressed in a lovely purple dress, was displaying her product called Heaven’s Healing Balm. “It’s Divine!” the pamphlet announced! Interested in understanding the divinity of her product and her attractive booth, I sidled over to get a better look. The little tins filled with the honey-colored stuff did look vaguely divine, but our conversation quickly veered off into the divinity of the purple color that graced her and the booth. I asked her if she knew that color had led to the discovery of America…rather indirectly to be sure. 

Indeed, purple was a very rare color back in the days of the Bible. It was the color of royalty. We see Lydia in the Bible being a “seller of purple.” It was a rare and expensive dye derived from a particular kind of seashell that was found in the Mediterranean Sea. All available shells had been hunted down and processed into this dye. With the shells becoming harder to find, the push was on to find new sources for them. The likely spot appeared to be in the huge body of water beyond the forbidding Straits of Gibraltar. But to go through them was to encounter the ravages of an endless ocean. Bigger ships and braver people were required to wander beyond the relative safety of the Mediterranean. So it was that the push to find more purple seashells drove the push for greater seafaring prowess. And these bigger, better boats, initially starting with the goal of finding shells, found much, much more! And one of those finds was the New World itself! So, indirectly, the color of her dress paved the way for her being there in the first place. Hmm!


Anyway, when we again turned attention to the product at hand, this lady said that she uses this stuff for headaches and migraines. So, I successfully made a deal that in exchange for all the information that I had been able to provide her relating to the color of her dress, she would give me a complimentary package of this nectar of the gods. I guess I have joined Lydia in being a trader in Purple!

A Brief History of the CrossPuzzle

The story of how the CrossPuzzle came into existence is a long and wonderful tale. I can’t begin to present it in total here. What I will briefly detail are some of the highlights of this project, a real “God Project”, that He seems to have recruited me on. It has truly been a pathway upon which all I can do is follow His marvelous logistical planning. He really does want to get the Good News of His plan of salvation for mankind out there to the whole world and somehow this little puzzle is part of His plan. All glory goes to Him!

I am a mechanical engineer who has designed anesthesia machines most of my life. My latest engineering job was working for Dave, a good friend who had started his own medical device company. He had been my boss twice before in life. Now, the third time he hired me, I came on board with his newly-founded company as the mechanical engineering resource for designing medical ventilation equipment for his company. We were acting as the engineering advisory team to a large Beijing medical company. As part of this team, I got to travel to China about three times a year for 2-week stints to work with their engineering department. The two weeks part was crucial, since it gave me the opportunity during the middle weekend to get acquainted with the people and churches in China.

It was during one of these trips to China in December of 2014 that I got asked a question that was to figure largely in the succeeding years of my life. It began on the 6^th floor conference room at the company headquarters in Fengtai. We were to visit the brand-new production sites in one of those new “build-it-and-they-will-come” villages just outside the Beijing city limits to the east of the city. I would need a translator so that I could communicate with the production personnel there. I had not picked up very little of the Chinese language. At the meeting, I was introduced to Lu. She was assigned to help me with the language problem and she did so splendidly. A bit quiet and reserved, she demonstrated an impressive mastery of the difficult translation of medical and engineering terms even though she had only been at the company for a very short time. And, although it was inconvenient for her to come out to the plant on the second day and continue helping me with the translation work, she willingly offered to do so. After work that day, when it was decided that I would take the train back to the hotel alone, she volunteered to accompany me back to the city and look out for my safety.

It was on this subway ride that I found out that she was part of a house church in the university area of the city. This connection made, our talk quickly turned to a discussion of our faith and values. The question – the one that changed so much of my following history – came unexpectedly and quite surprised me. Holding my gaze with her dark brown eyes she first noted, “You have been an engineer all your life. You probably made a lot of money.” And then she asked, “When are you going to stop worrying about making money and just do the Lord’s work?”

My eyebrows surely lifted as have those of so many others to whom I have related this story. But it was asked innocently enough, and I felt it deserved an answer. “Well,” I stammered. “We don’t often ask questions like that in America, but I think it is a good question and let’s sit down and talk about it.”

Which we did, at a little porridge shop on the south side of ChangAn Boulevard, just west of Tiananmen Square. With my spoon dipping into that warm pumpkin porridge, I told her about this little ministry tool that God had sort of dropped into my lap about a year before. I recounted how I had been sitting in church one Sunday, listening to the preacher, to be sure, but actually tossing around in my head a passage from a book I had recently read. The book was “What’s So Great About Christianity” written by Dinesh D’Souza. The book included a page where it described all the major religions as following books that told you what good works and deeds you needed to do to get to God. All, that is except Christianity, which, quite contrarily, says that you can’t get to God by your own works. It was necessary for God to send Jesus to us so that we can get to God through him; not by our own efforts. The question that was toying in my mind during that sermon was how I might build an object lesson that would illustrate that simple truth.

GK Chesterton had made note in his book “Orthodoxy” about the paradox at the center of the cross.

Quote from GK Chesterton (speaking about religious symbols in his book "Orthodoxy")

For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its center it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.

As I thought about this image of a paradox and a collision of two pieces of wood, the answer to that question about how to create an object lesson suddenly dawned upon me. I would design a puzzle in the shape of a cross; two pieces of wood, locked together, that could not be taken apart by one’s own effort. It would be a puzzle that needed to be placed in different force field to be unlocked. A force field present everywhere in the universe, just like God’s love. A puzzle only unlockable by that force, just as the human heart, stained from birth with the effects of sin, can only be unlocked and cleansed by the belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus – God’s solution to our dilemma.

I rushed home after church and quickly created a design on my computer. We had Jerry, a Chinese exchange student, living with us. I gave him the task of looking up the Golden Ratio so that I could use it to create this puzzle with just the right proportions. And then I hurried out to my woodshop and cobbled-up the first prototype. And it worked! As designed! I called it the CrossPuzzle.

So now, sitting there in that porridge shop, I told Lu about this little puzzle that for some odd reason, the God of the universe had selected for me, out of all the 7.4 billion people in the world, to create. And he had laid it on my heart to share it with others; if only I could find some time!

1. I told her that if I was to take her question seriously, that I would like to get involved with this puzzle as a way of doing the Lord’s work. I laid out 3 main ideas to Lu that night: I would like to get the CrossPuzzle distributed across the USA. And I had recently found a way that might make that possible. It was a religious organization called Transport for Christ that worked with providing chaplains at truck stops across America. I thought that truckers would work particularly well with this puzzle because a) they like techy things and this puzzle is just that, and b) they are always meeting new people and this puzzle works well with new people, and c) truck drivers are the most mobile people in America; well suited for getting the puzzle across the country. 
2.  I would also like to get this puzzle made more inexpensively so that missionaries could feel free to give them away to people they meet.   
3. I would love to travel around and talk about the puzzle. It is so easy to use as a good sermon illustration. And God had provided me with so many good stories surrounding it.

It was late December 2013 when I said goodbye to Lu and headed back to America. Over the next months I worked on various items from that porridge shop list. I got in contact with the local man who was an organizer for Transport for Christ and I got CrossPuzzles sent to all the 44 chaplains across the USA. The puzzle was now on the road and quickly made its way to California and to many other states.

June 2014 rolled around and one day my boss called me into his office. “Ken,” he said. “You know that the FDA is being really slow at approving new anesthesia machines. Ours has not been approved, which means we can not sell it in the USA. That means that the cash flow is down and the Chinese are requiring that I lay someone off. And that someone is, unfortunately, you!”

Expecting that I would be devastated by this announcement, my boss, my old-time friend, was quite perplexed that I took the news so well. But rather than being devastated, because of that question asked months before, I felt that one door had closed, and another had opened. And now I had the time! When I called Lu and told her the news, she reminded me that we had talked about this 6 months before! So, it was that question that provided the seamless link between my old life as an engineer and my new life in ministry. Not that my previous life had not also been a ministry. But this was a season of life that God was providing for me to focus on doing his work whole-heartedly. So, there I was, a 59-1/2-year-old engineer, suddenly freed to follow God’s calling more intentionally on a daily basis. And Lu’s prompting to ask the innocent question had been partially correct: I had made decent money and more importantly, had chosen to live a modest life-style so I didn’t immediately need to look for a job with similar earning potential. It was a chance to live as Proverbs 21:1 suggests – to just follow God’s watercourse!

The logistics for following that watercourse came by way of another question asked by a young man from our church. Tyler told me one day, “I love the puzzle, but it’s too big. Can you make one pocket-sized?” I told him, “No, because it contains too much interior mechanism.” However, I went down to my shop and made up a ½ scale version of the puzzle and got it to work. But it is one thing to have a working model and quite another to have a mass-produced product. And God had a plan for that problem as well. One day, Andy, a man from China came to visit Vision Video where my wife works. When she heard he was from China, she suggested that I might want to meet him. Over an American supper I showed him the ½ style prototypes that I was making. He was quite excited about the concept and said that he could take these back to China with him and get them made much more inexpensively. That sounded great to me and I gave him several to take along.

Then the next twist in the path presented itself. My youngest daughter got pregnant. And then my oldest daughter got pregnant. Their families were so happy to be having babies so close together and my wife, Karen, was planning to be with them for some extended grand-mothering. The problem was that our Chinese “son,” Jerry, who had lived with us for three years while going through high school, had offered Karen and me a free trip to China to meet his parents. When offered the choice between China and being with the new grandchildren, Karen predictably chose the kids! So that gave room on the trip to take Tyler along, the guy who had suggested the cost-saving version in the first place. With great anticipation, the two of us watched Andy open the closet in his house in the coastal city of Qingdao, China, and retrieve the Chinese prototypes of the CrossPuzzle. And they looked great – except they didn’t work! They had copied the design exactly – except for the most important part. I lay in my bed that night wrestling with God about what to do. They had already quoted me a great price. If I told them that they needed to correct the process to add the extra parts, it was likely to double the price. God left me to stew in my distress for a bit and then provided the answer. I didn’t need to change the design. I just needed to change the instructions. And He even provided the wording for the change. The first line in the clue should say, “Jesus said, “If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me.” Such beauty in that solution! Here a Chinese mistake had given me a better instruction sheet and a cost reduction!

We took a leap of faith and had a company in Shenyang, China make 10,000 of the crosses. They had been making crosses and other Christian items for many years but had never made anything like this. One of the largest churches in Singapore gave out 2,500 of the newly minted crosses. Soon I was shipping them to countries around the world and translating the instructions into 8 different languages. It was not long before I needed to order another 10,000 of them.

God who has been providing the direction and vision into this product. It truly is a way for people around the world to open spiritual conversations with people that they meet. It has opened its arms to the four winds. It has been a signpost for the free traveler. It places something tangible in their hands that makes them want to tell others about the secret of the CrossPuzzle and the Good News of Jesus.  

The story has continued in so many unexpected and marvelous ways over the past 5 years. With 15,000 of these puzzles distributed around the world, my hope is that this kind of experience will be happening at many more places than I could ever have dreamed.


 **************************************************************************

Stories and Responses

Crosses to School 

Hello Ken,

I am a Sophomore at an art school in Bethlehem. I was given one of your small cross puzzles while doing Light the night with my youth group this past October 31^st.

I took it to my high school and showed it to several friends in some of my classes.  I was able to share the gospel while having fun with the puzzle. To my surprise in the middle of my history class, my teacher (who is clearly not a believer) asked me to stand up and explain to the class what I had been showing a few classmates before class.

I was able to stand up and clearly share the gospel using your puzzle.  While I was sharing one of the male students asked, “So basically you are saying we are all sinners?”  My reply, “Yes, everyone is, and we struggle with it our entire lives. But just like this puzzle, God created the perfect solution by sending His Son, Jesus to pay for our sins on a cross.” 

I am a quiet person, yet I was not nervous at all and the words just flowed.  After I was through the class just sat quietly.  My teacher thanked me, and I sat down.  I was grateful to be given this unbelievable opportunity to share the good news!

I will keep using this tool whenever I am able.

Thank you and Merry Christmas,

Ava

Crosses to Haiti

  

Packaging 200 Creole-language CrossPuzzles for Haiti (and another 250 in Sept 2019)

Crosses across China

For Easter 2019, my broker in Qingdao, China, put this message on WeChat. It was quite a risky and brave thing to do on this Chinese government-controlled version of Facebook. He was announcing the free give-away of 500 of the CrossPuzzles.

Free gift from the Yishu Family Home

　　Why send out such a gift?
　　Because of love.
　　Because God loved us first.
　　Because this love is so beautiful, we can't fail to pass it on.
　　So, Mr. Ken Rutt, the designer of the CrossPuzzle, and Mr. Zhang Jian, the producer of the puzzle, decided to provide this gift so that the cross, which contains the mysteries of the gospel, could be known and used by more people, creating the opportunity for more people to get the gospel.
　　Therefore, we hope that you are:
　　A Christian;
　　Willing to share the gospel;

Willing to use this gift to bring good news to more people!

Figure 1 Cross Distribution in China

What's in Your Balloon?

Here is something you can do if you are bored and searching for some puzzling scientific problem to solve. Go to your local Walmart and buy one their cheapy helium-filled balloons. Take it out to your car and release it so that it floats up against the ceiling of the car. Now drive across the parking lot and hit the brakes. Which direction does the balloon go? Does it go toward the front or the rear of the car. Now accelerate away from the stopped position. Again observe the movement of the balloon. Did it move in the direction that you had assumed it would move. Of course not! If it had, I wouldn't be asking you these dumb questions! But the fact that it did the exact opposite of what you were expecting, and the fact that I am pointing it out to you, means that now you need to figure out why it acts like it does!

I don't want to truncate your thought process as you ponder this phenomenon. But just to direct it slightly -- think about the situation in terms of the "spirit", or the gas, with which the balloon is filled. It is that in-filling spirit that causes the strange reaction of the balloon. And it takes only a small shift of focus to see that this as an analogous situation to what we are called to in the Christian life. Ephesians 5:18 tells us not to be "drunk with wine, in which there is debauchary; but to be filled with the Spirit." This filling causes some rather strange behavior on the part of those filled. Things like not returning evil for evil, going the extra mile, caring about the widow and the orphans -- in short, living in an "Upside-Down Kingdom" as Donald Kraybill wrote in his book many years ago. One can deduce from watching the reactions of the helium balloon what that expanded bag of latex is filled with. And one can also able to detect what the professed "Christian" is filled with when you see their reactions to the circumstances they are hit with. It's not something that can be faked, just like the balloon can't fake what it is filled with. It is obvious from observing the reactions. Two inflated balloons, held upright in an anchoring board, do not look any different than two people sitting side-by-side on a church bench. But release them from their anchor, and suddenly it is completely obvious what they are filled with.

But what is not quite so obvious is the cause of the curious behavior of the balloon that I alluded to above. Why does a helium balloon float to the rear of the car when one hits the brakes? Answering that question required me to rack my brains for several days and even reach out to my engineering professors. (This was back in the days prior to smart phones, so my professors were the best source of insightful information!) But the answer finally dawned on me. A helium balloon will always move toward the less dense air. In the case of the car suddenly coming to a stop, the air in the car has been traveling along with the car as it was moving. But when the car stops, the air continues to move forward, causing it to become more compressed up by the windshield. The balloon naturally floats toward the region of the less dense air at the rear of the car. No magic! Just physics!

Oh! And one final thing to plug into the analogy. A latex balloon filled with helium ends up sinking limply to the ground after several days. The skin of the balloon may look impervious to us. But to the likes of a very tiny helium atom, it is as leaky as our Southern border. Escape is always an option, and the gas slowly leaks out. Our bodies are also leaky "earthen vessels" filled with the Spirit, and we must be mindful to always keep ourselves close to the source of that filling. Fortunately, unlike helium, which comes from the radioactive decay within the earth's lithosphere and is only available as a rare side-product in natural gas production, the source for God's Spirit is inexhaustible!

The Magic Umbrella

This story grew out of the coronavirus epidemic in China. One of the girls I know in Beijing, Winnie, lost her job before the Spring Festival. This was about the time that the whole virus crisis began. The outbreak meant that everyone in Beijing was isolated to their apartments, unable to go out to their jobs or classes or shopping or to visit with friends. I was trying to instill a feeling to her that people should take advantage of this forced isolation to sit and write their stories. Winnie wrote up some of the stories of her growing-up days and shared them with me. One of them caught my eye as being particularly insightful. I set about to filling in some embellishments and bringing it to life. Here is Winnie’s story.

One of my earliest memories is when I was 4 or 5 years old. I remember wanting an umbrella – a bright blue umbrella – like the one I saw the little girl carrying down the street. I couldn’t stop thinking of holding that umbrella over my head as I danced through the water puddles. I asked my mother if she could buy one, just for me. She looked at me, a little smile playing upon her lips, and said, “But honey, you don’t need an umbrella if it isn’t raining!” I couldn’t believe it. I would have to wait for it to rain to get my umbrella! Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than a big rainstorm. But the sky seemed to be perpetually blue. There was not even a cloud in the sky. And this lovely weather went on for days. I could barely stand it. I so wanted rain – lots of rain. The weather forecast would say it was going to rain and I would get excited. But the forecaster was wrong – the sun continued to shine! 

And then one morning it happened! I woke to hear raindrops drumming on the rooftop and water droplets sliding down the windowpanes. I sprang out of bed like a cat and clambered down the stairs to find my mom. “Mommy, mommy,” I screeched in excitement. “It’s raining! It’s raining!”

My mother gathered my speeding body into her arms and gently told me that perhaps I should look behind my bed. I looked up at her with awe and wonder in my eyes. Had she been thinking of me and doing this special thing for me? I spun around, ran back to my bedroom and dove across the mattress. I peered down at the floor between the bed and the wall. And there it was! A bright blue umbrella; just my size. I reached down plucked it up with my eager fingers. I pressed the little button on the base that caused it to unfurl its brilliant canopy and I allowed it to float above my head.

I could barely contain my excitement as I slipped into my school clothes and rushed down to the kitchen again, the umbrella held high in my outstretched arm. I placed it carefully on the floor beside me as I gobbled down my breakfast. I was so eager to head off to school in the pounding rain with my bright blue umbrella held proudly over my head. But first I gave my mother the biggest hug. She had been thinking about me all the time. And she had bought me the very best gift; a magical umbrella that not only kept my head dry, but which also warmed my heart!