About
seven months ago, I posted a blog entry called Owie, which Blogger tells me is my most-viewed post so far. I guess people
like to read about gory things like ripped-off guitar calluses. Well, reader,
if you're one of those callus-photo fans, you're about to get another eyeful.
My disclaimer is that this post will most likely be as tangenty as its Owie predecessor,
but hopefully it will make sense and all come together in a sweet way.
Recently,
some friends reminded me of some advice that I was given years ago: A treatment
for allergies is eating local honey. Since the honey is made by local bees with
local plants, eating the local honey will get my body used to the local pollen.
And it really does work! My allergies bother me much less than they used to.
But this natural treatment doesn't work overnight like an allergy pill. This
treatment can be unpleasant and quite grueling. What you do with about one
tablespoon of local honey is mix it with apple cider vinegar. This bittersweet
concoction usually inspires me to sing out loud in falsetto. Wow! But after the
allergy season passes, it isn't really necessary to drink the vinegar anymore,
and I've enjoyed a little bit of local honey almost every day. It's kept the
allergy junk away. Another cool thing about this particular local honey is that
it seems to be bottled by a Christian company. They quote this Bible verse on
their label:
"How
sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (Psalm
119:103)
I
recently checked out the rest of this psalm and found some harder sweet stuff.
"Before
I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey Your word. You are good, and what
You do is good; teach me Your decrees. Though the arrogant have smeared me with
lies, I keep Your precepts with all my heart. Their hearts are callous and
unfeeling, but I delight in Your law. It was good for me to be afflicted so
that I might learn Your decrees." (Psalm 119:67-71)
The
other day while I was sitting in a church service and playing with my guitar
calluses, the one on my ring finger (in the photo above, it's the second from
the right) mostly peeled off on its own. It was stubborn in coming off, and I
ended up ripping off a tiny bit too much. See the little red owie? It's amazing
how much a tiny little owie can smart so much that it will distract you from
your day-to-day activities. The owie only needed a few days to heal, but while
it was doing so...
...I
had to put a Band-Aid on it so that I could function during my day-to-day
activities. The photo above actually has two Band-Aids -- one horizontal and
one vertical. Ideally, I should have let the owie heal uncovered, but it was in
such a location that uncovered healing wouldn't have been feasible. (All I did
was fasten my car seatbelt, and the owie started to bleed. Falsetto!) What I
couldn't do normally with two Band-Aids was play my guitar. It was doable, but
pressing the bandaged finger on one string to play a chord would muffle one or
more nearby strings during the same chord. After a while, I only needed one
Band-Aid, and that made guitar-playing more normal-sounding. Band-Aids are
nice, but they're so awkward to implement into your life because if you don't
keep replacing them with fresh ones, they'll get wet and stinky. Gross.
"But My people would not listen to Me; Israel would not submit to Me. So I gave them
over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices. If My people would
but listen to Me, if Israel would follow My ways, how quickly would I subdue
their enemies and turn My hand against their foes! Those who hate the Lord
would cringe before Him, and their punishment would last forever. But you would
be fed with the finest of wheat; with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."
(Psalm 81:11-16)
I'm
not a theologian, and I'm not a scientist. But I know what it's like to be in emotional
pain, and I know what it's like to be in the middle of a healing process, and I
know what it's like to finally obey God and let Him heal some owies, even when
it feels like He's ripped off a little too much of a callus, and I know how
embarrassing it can be when He gently or violently peels away the old, moist, gross
Band-Aids. And I know what His honey tastes like.
There's
a story in Judges 14 about Samson's encounter with a lion. Basically, the
animal charges him, and God's Spirit gives Samson strength to rip the lion
apart with his bare hands. Then afterwards, Samson discovers that some bees
made some honey in the lion's carcass.
Speaking
of violence, I think honey itself is a very ironic substance. It's made by
bees, which are creatures that have been known to painfully sting people. Honey
is made when bees regurgitate nectar. So, when I eat honey, I'm basically
consuming a product that's been spit up by stinging insects. Ain't honey sweet?
Speaking
of sweetness, I might never seriously consider getting a tattoo, but if I did,
that's what it would say. (And it would probably go on my forehead instead of
on my arm near my rock-star bracelet.) I'm not sure why, but relatives,
friends, and perfect strangers alike can be very quick to call me
"sweetie." I've finally started speaking up for myself in recent
years and asking people to NOT call me that. I can understand the need for people
to give me a nickname because my real name can be difficult to pronounce, but
"sweetie" is the one name that I usually don't tolerate. I'm not
exactly sure why, but it has bugged me so much that I even composed a newspaper
column about my aversion for "sweetie" several years ago, and I wrote
it into a song last year, and here I am displaying a photo of a fake tattoo for
everybody to read. OK, so maybe there's some sweetness in my personality that
God put there. But honey is often the result of a process.
"The
voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of
the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon."
(Psalm 29:4-5)
So,
this same voice of God that can be so gentle, still, and comforting is also
powerful enough to rip apart cedars and, well, my insides. God is so sweet, but
He's also the toughest, strongest Person in the universe. In Revelation 5:5,
Jesus is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Lions roar. Lions are
dangerous. Lions are capable of destroying creatures. Yet in Malachi 4:2, Jesus
is also the Sun of Righteousness who will arise with healing in His wings. And
in Ephesians 3 and Colossians 1, Jesus is also a mystery.
I'll go off on a major tangent
now. Last night, I ordered a livers meal at Chicken Express with a side of
okra. I ended up getting livers and jalapeño poppers. I'm
not sure how the guy behind the counter thought "okra" sounded like
"poppers," but I thought I'd go with the flow and try the poppers.
Even though half my gene pool is Hispanic, I usually avoid jalapeños
because I'm not fond of spicy foods, and jalapeños kinda scare
me. I was afraid that my taste buds were going to ignite on fire for the rest of the
evening, but to my surprise, the jalapeño poppers
weren't that scary, and I actually liked them. I wouldn't want to eat too many
of them at a time or eat them very often, but I was pleased at how tough my
taste buds were. I've even developed a craving for them in the past 24 hours.
Poppers!
When
I get in God's presence -- the presence of the Lion who is capable of ripping
apart cedar forests with His voice, the Healer who shines the brightest Light
in the darkest places of my heart, the Promised One who assures me mysteriously
yet absolutely of my eternal standing -- it can be sweet and scary
simultaneously. If I'm wounded, He'll want to heal me, and I'll want to let
Him, but it might be a messy process. There are lots of things I'd rather do
with my time than curl up in a fetal position on my couch and bawl my eyes out
while I'm feeling the worst emotional pain I've ever felt in my entire life,
but if it means that the God of all comfort will comfort me directly in the
process, well, I'm probably gonna develop a craving for this process. Sometimes
Band-Aids are necessary if the process is an excruciatingly long one. For
example, sometimes I'll need to seek comic relief so that I can keep my brain
from melting down after thinking about an issue for hours on end. (Check out Proverbs
17:22. And cats are usually awesome comic relief.) But God has taught me that there
usually isn't a shortcut to the unpleasant, grueling healing process.
So,
sweetness can spring from brokenness. I wonder if the rock that Psalm 81 talks
about -- the Rock where the honey comes from -- is actually Jesus in a way. I
wonder if the lion in Judges 14 -- the Lion inside which the honey was made --
is actually symbolic of Jesus in a way.
I
heard a pastor say at a church service once that the root of an allergy is having
a broken heart. Maybe part of the reason that my allergies don't bother me as
much anymore is because Jesus is healing my heart. Or maybe consuming His honey
is actually treating my broken heart in a way that it repairs and reconditions
my heart to beat the way that He created it to beat -- sweetly and strongly,
without any owies.
I wonder if there's such a thing as sweet jalapeños. Poppers!
