Wednesday, November 17, 2010

How do you really judge a vehicle to be road worthy anyway??

Today's day trip to Sidon was lovely, and by about 5pm, we were feeling satisfied and ready to head back to Mt. Lebanon.  Turning onto the main road heading north out of town, we got stuck behind a slow moving motorized wheelchair.  Yes, a wheelchair.  Not to worry, though, we soon enough passed the slumped but impeccably dressed wheelchair driver and continued creeping through the jumbled mass of everything on wheels.  However, the driving dynamics of 5 lanes of traffic trying to use a two-lane road during the evening hours of a major Muslim holiday meant that, pretty soon, that darn wheelchair passed us.  Ouch!

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Evidence of God

We were walking up the aged, mossy village stairs on an achingly bright Sunday morning.  My son's little hand in mine, I let it become a moment to probe his heart.  "How do you pray?" I asked.  He lifted two strong fingers and replied, "I say my 'Bless us O Lord' before food, and my bed prayers."  "How come you can talk to God?" I asked, to see what might come next.  He answered, "Because He is in my heart."  I wanted to know more.  "How do you know God is in your heart?"  He replied, "Because he bangs from inside, so it goes thump, thump, thump."  I lit up, "So you know He is in your heart because you can feel Him??"  Peter's voice got excited, "Yeah, He does it all the time!  Thump, thump, thump.  And . . . and . . . you know, you can put your head like this and hear Him in another person's heart too!!"
Oh, Lord, why is it so hard to convince me that You are so close?  Not only is your creative Spirit of Life beating a pulsing lifeblood through my veins, but your Sacred Innocence is all around.  Your Goodness and Mercy are there in my son's hand on a sunny morning on a sacred mountain in Lebanon.  Have mercy on me, a poor sinner who forgets, whose eyes are dim and ears deaf to the evidence that normal life provides.