They’re Messing with my Thimble

I just ordered the classic edition of the Monopoly board game on Amazon.  I have one that belonged to my family when I was growing up in the sixties. I didn’t need a second one, but I did want another thimble token. This week the Monopoly maker, Hasbro, announced they will retire the thimble. This news made me sad, sad, sad! I can’t fault Hasbro’s business move. They asked their fans to vote on their favorite tokens and the thimble did not make it. But it was my favorite!

You may have a favorite Monopoly token too. Everyone does, right? Somehow we latch onto the token that we identify with the most and it becomes our piece forever. We call dibs on it. We are willing to fight over it. There is always a life story to explain why our token is ours.

The thimble is my token because I come from a line of seamstresses. I treasure the hand sewn baby dress that my great-grandmother made for my grandmother.  The grandmother that wore that little baby dress, grew up to be a creative seamstress. She made my mother’s childhood dresses out of flour sacks during the depression and won ribbons in her local home and garden club. And then my mom blew away the previous two generations with her sewing abilities. She made everything from my frilly dresses to her tailored suits to my wedding dress to pleated draperies. Sewing was so much a part of her life that she collected over 100 decorative thimbles. My brothers kindly let me have her thimble collection when she passed on.

I began sewing the summer I turned eight.  My grandmother visited and gave me an assignment to make a 9-patch quilt top. Her assignment provided ample practice of sewing straight seams. I still have that quilt, but no longer have my first thimble. It was a big deal to get my own.  Mom bought the smallest size and then bent the metal to stay snug on my finger.

Why is the tiny thimble so mighty? The average millennial may not know what a thimble looks like or why it’s useful. It went out of vogue when we exchanged needle and thread for the convenience of “ready-made.” But a thimble comes in handy even to sew a button back on. This defensive little cup of metal shields fingers from the pricks of the needle’s blunt end. When my thimble is misplaced, my finger suffers. So I have learned to always use it.

In the spiritual realm, we have a piece of defensive armor that protects us on a larger scale than the thimble. Paul suggests the whole armor of God to fight against the powers of darkness in Ephesians chapter six. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, shoes of readiness for the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit

What strikes me about Paul’s instructions on the armor of God is that he gets more specific about the shield of faith.

In all circumstances take up the shield of faith,

with which you can extinguish

all the flaming darts of the evil one; [Ephesians 6:16 ESV]

 

He tells us exactly what it shields us from – the darts of the evil one. Perhaps you have felt the darts of accusation, shame, hurt, abuse, temptations, and lies that Satan fires at our souls.

 

Paul tells us how the shield works – not just deflecting the darts, but putting out the flame of these attempted assaults.

 

And he tells us when to use it – all the time.

 

My shield of faith is precious to me. It claims the very center of my identity. Walking with God doesn’t mean you don’t get in battles with life, but it does mean you have supernatural protection. But like the thimble, the shield of faith is powerful only if you use it. Faith isn’t meant to be put on just for Sundays or special occasions. It’s a way of life, to be carried all the time.

Incurable Hearts

Two Valentine’s Days stand out in my memory.

The first Valentine’s I remember celebrating was in Mrs. Koch’s first grade class. She gave us careful instructions to bring an empty shoebox to school the next day. We would turn it into our Valentine mailbox to receive all the tiny white envelopes from our classmates.  My family kept all of our shoes in the original boxes, so I worried whether I would be able to find one that could follow me to school. But I found one and decorated the box with the best of my creative hearts. It was pretty, definitely in the top, oh, say, 50 percentile of the class.  Nancy and Jose always took up the top 10 percentile. Next I worried about whether I would choose the right valentine for each of my classmates and whether I would get as many in return. And whether Russell, the freckled faced boy I chased on the playground at recess, would pick one out for me or let his mother do it. I proudly carried my box home full of cards and little candy hearts with sweet nothings stamped on them.

The other Valentine’s memory is our first married one. We were both in college, had just moved away from our hometown (i.e. homesick) and were closing in on our 8^th month anniversary. We were full-time students and each had a part-time job. Money was tight. Money was real tight. Then we found a coupon for Shakey’s Pizza for one heart shaped pizza and a pitcher of soft drink for $5.99. That was still a lot, but we splurged. We lingered to drink the whole pitcher of Coke so we didn’t waste it. We noted that heart shapes had less area than the normal circular pizza. We discovered the value of date night, even before married couples were advised to put them on the calendar. We didn’t think our hearts could love each other more, but we were wrong. We didn’t think we could hurt the other’s heart, but of course, we were wrong again. To love is to hurt sometimes.

Valentine’s Day, holiday of the heart. When hearts are reciprocal in their love, it’s a celebration. When reciprocal in their hurt, it’s a sad reminder of what was. When one-way, it’s a reminder of what wasn’t. It turns out, our hearts are complicated.

God spoke about the complexity of the heart in simple terms in Jeremiah 17:9 [NIV]:

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.

Who can understand it?

Deceitful enough even to trick ourselves. Incurable, never to be healed to perfection. Puzzling, a mystery even to the highest of EQs.

Before we give up on the hopeless case of our stinking mean heart, we must drop down to verse 14 to see the prayer of the Israelites in response to this accusation.

Heal me, LORD, and I will be healed.

Save me and I will be saved,

For you are the one I praise.

My prayer for you this week on Valentine’s Day is that your incurably sick heart will be healed by the One you praise. If your heart is broken, lean solely on Him, giving time to fuse it back together so you can risk loving again. If your heart is wounded, look for the wounds in the other heart also. Be as willing to nurse it back to health as you are to accept your own mending. If your heart is still loving through the scars of past battles, carry on.

If you love, you will, with certainty, exchange wounds again, because our hearts are deceitful and incurable. But as long as our wounds become scars, the healing of the incurable heart will continue, and you will find more love than you thought possible.

Waiting for Belonging

February has rolled around again, and with it comes Black History Month in the U.S. and Canada. When I worked, my company made it easy to celebrate, but now that I’m retired, I’m on my own.

I’m aware of some of the controversy over celebrating Black History Month.  For some, the question is “Why do we need to focus on just one group?” For some, the question is “Can’t we move on now?” Others see it the way Morgan Freeman explained to Mike Wallace on 60 minutes in 2005. “You’re going to relegate my history to a month? … I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.”

Me too, Morgan. I want our country’s history to be inclusive. But it isn’t yet. I want everyone to feel like they belong. But they don’t. 

It seems we have to go through stages when trying to achieve social justice in any area.

1)      Discrimination - the time of wrongs, some blatant and some blindly unintentional, some looked over and some protested

2)      Tolerance - the time of laws and policies, political correctness, when “isms” are sustained through silence and resentment

3)      Appreciation - the time of accepting, listening, respecting, celebrating, acknowledging, honoring the hidden figures of history

4)      Belonging - the time when full inclusion is the norm and no one is “the only” or the token

I’ve experienced these stages as a female professional in a male dominated work world. I found they were not always sequential. Just when I felt like we were easing into the next phase, something happened and we slid back into the previous one. One step forward and two steps backward. Progress is slow. In some circles, I felt we were in one phase and in other circles in a different one. Progress is inconsistent.

I remember attending women’s conferences or celebration events and wishing they weren’t necessary. I just wanted to belong, not be appreciated for my minority status. I didn’t want to have a special group for my kind. I just wanted to be a part of their group. But the pace of belonging was not determined by me alone. The pace was also determined by the majority. And they had to learn how to recognize discrimination before they could tolerate before they could appreciate before they could include.

So I can understand when my African American friends get weary of educating everyone else on black history. When they wish all the special celebrating and appreciating weren’t still necessary. When they prefer to not talk about race because they’d rather race didn’t make such a difference. When they find themselves switching between a moment of belonging, to a bit of uncovered history appreciated, to some awkwardness of tolerance, or to the discrimination of being followed in a department store. When they wish they weren’t still having to spend energy on this stuff at all. Wishing it were easier.

Amos, one of the Old Testament’s minor prophets, wrote around a major theme of social justice. He spoke particularly against the disparity between the rich and poor, but his words are relevant to any disparity we experience. In Amos 5:21-24 [ESV] he recorded what the Lord instructed Israel. God didn’t want their ceremonies and sacrifices and songs. What He wanted was their justice and righteousness. He said it like this in verse 24:

But let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

When justice rolls like water, it comes easily, without effort. That is what it feels like when we get to the stage of belonging.  When everyone belongs, justice doesn’t have to fight, because it flows. That’s the world I want. And I accept that the pace of change in my little world is in my hands. May justice and righteousness roll like water through my fingers.