Railroad Crossings

      The most annoying part about a car trip is having to stop at a railroad crossing, especially when the train is moving exceedingly slow. There is nothing to do. That's why someone, a long time ago, invented the game of "let's-count-how-many-cars-there-are-on-this-train." I don't know about you, but I get dizziness and a bad headache from watching all the cars fly by. I also lose count after about the tenth car, so I always wind up slouching in my seat and groaning until the guard rails go up.
      Tonight, however, was different. My sister and I were on our way home, car windows down and enjoying the wind blowing the hair in our faces. We were making good time--we were tired and anxious to get home--when we saw the red railroad lights flashing and the rails going down. After we stopped, we stared blankly ahead as we waited for the train to go by, hoping it would be a fast, short train. A pick-up truck, also with all of its windows down, pulled up in the lane next to us; it pulled a little farther forward than us, so the back seat of the truck was in line with my sister and I.
      Rarely do I ever pay attention to people in other cars, but tonight was different. It all began when the train first came into view. It moved slower than any other train I have ever seen before in my life. I wouldn't normally complain, but this train was so sluggish I had to voice my thoughts: Are you kidding me?! You can do it... Just a little bit faster! Seriously?! Then I heard voices from the truck next to us--the driver was saying just about the same things I was saying about the speed (or lack of speed) of the train.
      Then I heard a smaller, second voice. I look to my right and I see little fingers gripping the edge of the window. Then, like a tiny gopher popping out of its hole, I see two little eyes peering over at me and disappear two seconds later. Giggling, I poked my sister and nodded towards the truck. We watched as a little boy, about three years old, leaned forward, smiled, and waved at me. Unable to stop myself, I grinned and waved back. And thus began the best time I've ever had at a railroad crossing.
      I don't know how long we were stopped there, but it couldn't possibly have been long enough. The little boy waved until I waved back. He would then excitedly say to the driver, "Daddy, daddy! Look at that pretty lady! She's waving to me!" and keep waving. At some point, he stopped waving, but started rocking back and forth in his seat, in and out of my view. I realized he was playing peek-a-boo, so I covered my eyes with my hands, opened them, and continued the game with my new little friend. He started shrieking in the most adorable voice "Peek-a-boo!" and "I see you!" over and over as he popped in and out of sight. We were both laughing so hard (my sister was getting a kick out of it, too). Every now and then, he would announce to his dad "She's smiling at me!" or "We're playing together!" At one point, he said "I really like her! Can I date her?" I could barely hear him, but I heard the three-year-old's dad say "Isn't she a little too old for you?" At that, the little boy leaned over and simply beamed at me.
      Unfortunately, the train had gotten faster and was coming to an end. My sister pulled forward in anticipation of the green light, just enough to put us in line with the truck's driver. He yelled out his window, nodding at the little boy in the seat behind him, "Thanks for keeping him entertained! That could've been the longest train ever!" Laughing, we drove off in different directions.
      Now I wonder if that little boy does that at all the red lights and railroad crossing he stops at. It's like the game "Sweet and Sour," where you wave to everyone you see (if they wave back, they are sweet, otherwise they are sour). This precious boy could probably turn even the most sour person into a sweet one, according to the rules of the game. It was impossible for me to resist joining his little game. Besides, there was nothing better to do with my time.
      At railroad crossings, what do you do? Are you the person who ignores the other cars around you? Do you count the train cars as they go by? Does the music volume get turned up when you see it's a long freight train you're waiting for? I highly doubt you do what the little boy did, but why not? He made my day, and I maybe made his.
      Smiling is contagious, and it is the simplest way to spread happiness. At times when you have nothing to do, you should question yourself about what would be a good way of filling your time. If you're in the car by yourself at a railroad crossing, spend the time praying or thinking over a Bible verse. Smile at the person in the car next to you, especially if it's a little kid (they will almost always smile or wave back). Next time you are stopped because a train is crawling by, try it out. Take advantage of the extra time on your hands and spread a little happiness.

Medicine

Note: I was sick yesterday and today, so I think medicine is an appropriate lesson to share...

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      Everyone has been sick at some time in their life. There are countless maladies in the world, and it is highly likely you have suffered through at least one of them. I pity the hypochondriac who feels he suffers all of the world's illnesses (and all at the same time, no less). But for almost every sickness, there is a treatment; if there isn't, it is on the brink of discovery most likely.
      Whenever a doctor prescribes a medicine, it is for a specific reason. They know what the patient needs, so they write down what medicine will take care of the problem. But the medicine only works if it is used; unfortunately, just buying the bottle of pills isn't enough. Wouldn't it be nice if we could set the bottle on the counter and say "Work your magic!" and be healed?
      Also, you have to follow through. You can't take half the pills and say you are fine--it's all or nothing. A lot of times, if you don't finish off the prescription, the sickness will come back (sometimes stronger than before). It's better to deal with it all the first time than to deal with a stronger second bout.
      Luke 5:31-32 says "Jesus answered them, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance.'" Jesus is like a doctor: The sick go to Him and he prescribes a remedy. Then it is up to the sick to decide if they will accept the remedy or not. The sickness in this case has nothing to do with the physical, but is spiritual. Our world is full of people suffering from spiritual depravedness, but only some will go to God for help. Those who do often turn away from the remedy, which is salvation. Some will "try" it, then give up on it. Salvation is all or nothing--you have to fully accept God's gift or suffer the consequences.

Blankets

      Every child has his or her favorite security blanket. It's dragged around all day and slept with all night. By the time the child is six or seven years old, the blanket is worn thin and ragged around all the edges. It has mud stains, slobber stains, food stains, and all other sorts of stains. There are holes, both large and small, across the blanket. When the parents insist the blanket be taken away and replaced, it is the hardest thing for their young ears to hear. Their precious blanket has been with them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for as long as they can remember, and now their parents dare to take it away? For a young child, their parents' actions are near to betrayal. How could they be so heartless to replace something the child cared for so much?
      For one thing, the blanket is among the most comforting things in the world. Blankets are never outgrown. Yes, they might be traded for newer or better ones over the ages, but nearly everyone has a blanket as long as they're alive. Whenever you feel sad, cold, or lonely, it is easy to cuddle with a blanket and cry. People often turn you down when you want comfort from them, but the blanket can never say no.
      Many kids carry their blankets for extra security. In the midst of a fearful experience, they cling to the blanket as if their life depends on it. Security and comfort go hand in hand. Comfort is relaxed and free of anxiety or fear while security provides protection from harm. A security blanket gives the sense of protection; as long as you are holding onto it you will be safe, thereby comforting you.
      On dark and cold nights, it is so wonderful to be able to wrap up in the warmth of a blanket. To feel the softness against your skin and feel the coldness flee your body is to lead you into a state of pure content.
      There's a joke that goes as follows: "When a little girl got home from church, her mother asked her what she learned about. She replies, 'In Sunday school, I learned that God is a quilt.' Puzzled, the mother asks what she means. The little girl says, 'Well, Pastor said God is our Comforter.'"
      In a sense, the little girl was right--God is like a blanket. He provides security and comfort, and never leaves us. Like a blanket, He is with us as we fall asleep so we won't be afraid. We are to take hold of Him, cherish Him, and never let Him go (after all, He will never leave us). He will never say no and will be there to hear us cry. He holds out His arms to us so we can be wrapped in His warm embrace. His unfailing love is our comfort and our security for us to hold on to.

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Verses related to comfort and security:
"My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life." Psalm 119:50

"May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant." Psalm 119:76

"I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; For You alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." Psalm 4:8

"LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken." Psalm 16:5-8

Closets

      The most hated chore of all time is to clean the bedroom. When your mom or dad tells you to clean your room, you take one look at it and nearly pass out. You make every excuse for putting it off. Of course, we all know that waiting to clean it only makes the problem worse, but it is impossible to clean it the first time we are asked.
     The typical teenager's bedroom is a disaster zone: clothes strewn across the floor, crumpled papers that didn't make it into the waste basket, unfinished homework scattered on the desk, gum wrappers litter the ground, shoes and socks hastily thrown down, unmade bed... The floor is invisible under the layers of debris.
      When the time comes for the room to finally be purged of its filth, it looks as if the task will take years to complete, even if a team of professional cleaners was hired to help. But, seeing as you can not hire a team of professional cleaners, you must ask yourself How can I clean my room in as little time as possible? This is when the term "clean" is redefined. Your parents' definition of clean is that there is no trash in your room, all the clean clothes are put away, your bed is made, and the floor is absolutely spotless. Everything is organized and in the right place, and there is not one single thing out of place. However, upon examining the task at hand, you realize that this idea of cleanliness is impossible to achieve.
      At this point, you look at your room and sigh. How is it possible that your parents would expect this room to be spotless? After several minutes of scrounging through the mess, you find your bed and sit on its edge. You ponder your parents' command. Finally, you make a conclusion: As long as the room looks clean, it is clean. Thus begins your hour-long fight to make your room appear clean.
      But what is the easiest way to clean? It takes too long to go through and organize everything into boxes and drawers. It takes too much effort to decide what things to throw away, donate, or keep. So, you decide to shove everything into your closet.
      By the time you are done "cleaning," your closet doors are bulging and straining to stay closed. You are confident your parents will only see the tidy floor and be pleased with your work. You call your parents to your room, both of them in shock that you actually accomplished something. They smile as their eyes scan across the room, but their smiles fall slightly when their eyes reach the bulging closet doors. A pit is forming in your stomach because you can see where this is going. Your dad walks over to the closet door and you try to keep him from pulling it open. He doesn't need to pull hard on the door because the pressure of the junk on the inside shoves it open. Like a waterfall, the tower from inside the closet topples out and sprawls itself across your floor. You are back where you started.
      After a stern lecture about the accurate definition of what a clean room is, your parents leave you alone in your hazardously messy room to re-clean it. This time, you do the job right. It takes several consecutive days of gruelling, back-breaking work. In the end, though, you realize it was worth it. Your whole life feels less cluttered when your room is clean (that and you finally know what it's like to obey your parents).
      Closets are very multifaceted. They hold your clothes and hide your messes. In crime dramas or mystery movies, there is almost always a dead body in a closet. Closets are useful for the storage of things you don't need out at all times. For children, closets are the places where monsters dwell.
      Your heart is like a closet. It holds the good, the bad, and the ugly. It holds the key to who you are, who you want to be, and who you will be. It holds the secret of what you have done and will do.
       God is the parent who tells you to clean your room. He asks us to clean up our lives, but we redefine what we think He meant. A nineteenth-century Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, once half-jokingly said "We pretend to be unable to understand [the Bible] because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly." When we decide to try to clean up our life according to our misinterpretation of God's instructions, we do it in a haphazard way. Instead of owning up to our errors, we shove them to the back of our hearts and hope to never see them again. By ignoring our sins, we are not taking care of the bigger problem-- we are only putting it off until it is re-discovered.
      Eventually, those sins we ignored, those skeletons in the closet, will reappear and make a bigger mess of things than before. Disappointment and shame overwhelm us when this happens, but these emotions are necessary to spark the appropriate reaction. This is when we realize that the sins we ignored need to be dealt with and thrown away. After giving up your sins, you will feel the satisfaction of being guilt-free and the warmth of a loving Father.

Elevators

    Have you ever noticed that children tend to love elevators, but adults hate them? At malls and hotels (or wherever else elevators can be found), kids drag their reluctant parents to the elevators. For them, there is bliss in pushing the elevator's buttons. They find a thrill in riding elevators from floor to floor; it's comparable to an amusement park ride. While they giggle and cheer with delight at the ride, their parents cling nervously to the rail and anxiously await the arrival to their desired floor.
    Children have a precious innocence and naivete that protects them from many of the irrational fears adults have. Sometime around adolescence, people start to become aware of things they couldn't see as children. They become afraid of the cables snapping and plummeting to their death, they become claustrophobic, or afraid of getting trapped.
    Sometimes I wonder if I will ever find someone who shares my unrest regarding elevators. If the walls are glass, and I can see out of the elevator, I am fine; but if the walls are solid, I refuse to step in. Most people are afraid of looking out of the elevator and seeing how high up they are, but I have to know how high up I am. Generally speaking, I am not claustrophobic or afraid of being trapped, but if I think the elevator is taking too long to open the doors I begin to panic. If the elevator feels like it isn't moving and the doors aren't opening, thoughts enter my mind saying perhaps I will never reach the next floor. When I can look out of the elevator, I feel peaceful because I know where I am. At times, I feel like the elevator has stopped moving when it still is, and vice versa, so I feel comfortable watching the outside as the elevator moves.
    When I happen to be in an elevator without windows, I have to focus on the number on the wall that tells me what floor I am at. I hold my breath the whole time I'm in the elevator, sighing a sigh of relief when I see the number matching the floor I need off at. In the meantime, I just have to believe that the elevator will take me where I need to go safely.
    In a way, God's plan for our lives is similar to elevators. How many times do you question God about your future? How many times do you worry if you will make it to the next stage in life? How many times do you have to look back and see how far you've come, and become anxious about how much you have ahead of you? When you finally decide to listen to Him, you will hear a whisper that says to be calm and know He is in control. As God says in Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the plans I have for you...plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
    Many of the fears people have of elevators are similar to their worries regarding God's plan for them. We worry about God letting us down, we fear falling back to where we started (or a worse position), and we dread becoming stuck in the same stage of life. Or perhaps you are like me and fear not knowing where you are at, or whether or not you will reach the place God wants you to reach.
    Always remember Jeremiah 29:11 and rest assured that God will not let you down. He knows what He has in store for you, and it's not necessarily always for you to know (and it may not always be what you want to hear). Someday, the elevator doors will open and you will see that you had no reason to be anxious because He knew all along that you would reach this place, and you are where He wants you to be.

White Boards

   White boards were made to be useful tools for teachers. If you go to a school, you would be hardpressed to see a classroom without one; in fact, you would probably see more than one. Teachers spend hours each weekday writing notes and drawing diagrams on them. Students are always competing to be the chosen one to go up to the board and write the correct answer for all to see.
   For whatever reason, there is such joy in writing on a white board. First, there is the squeak of the cap being twisted as it is separated from the pen and the pop-snap as it is placed onto the other end of the marker for safekeeping. Then, the marker is touched to the smooth, white surface of the board and is prepared to write. Each stroke of the pen glides gently as it makes its intended mark. The sounds vary each time. Sometimes, the pen squeals as it writes, but other times, the pen sounds like it is dragging through sand. There is something calming and often mesmerizing about watching the ink bleed onto the board. After the sentence has been written, after the picture has been drawn, the cap covers the marker's tip with the sound of a whip cracking.
    When all is done, and the marker is placed back onto the silver ledge beneath the board, it must be erased. It seems ludicrous how much effort is put into making every line, every curve so perfect, only for it to be erased. Yet, this is the purpose of the white board: to be marked on and erased in an endless cycle. That is, in a cycle that lasts until it is too used up to be written on anymore.
    Humans are very much like white boards. When we are born it is inevitable for our clean hearts to be marked with sin because we are born with a sinful nature. In the case of a white board, it is a shame to see the hard work of a teacher or student to be erased off the board. But in the context of sin, isn't it wonderful to see the mark erased? Isaiah 1:18 says "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." There are often memories of past sins, similar to how markers sometimes leave a residue or an outline of erased words, but over time you will forget the guilt of committing the sin and only remember what you learned.
    Much like how the white board has no power to erase itself, we can not forgive our own sins. Jesus Christ is the only one who has the power and ability to forgive. He holds the most important eraser of all time: the cross. The comparison between the cross and an eraser is not intended to diminish the importance of the cross, but is used as an illustration. Unlike a teacher who comes to the board to erase it, Jesus does not come to us asking if we want to be forgiven. Instead, He stands with open arms, waiting for us to come to Him and ask for the cleansing of our sins.

Dentists

  You're led to a back room with a solitary chair. You sit down and something is strapped around your neck. The chair tilts back and a bright light shines in your face, blinding you. It feels like an interrogation--the questions don't stop coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. This situation seems like something out of a crime drama: an interrogation full of questions you can't answer. But this is the dentist's office, and you literally can not answer the questions.
   Dentists are the masters of rhetorial questions. Think about it: From the moment you sit in the chair to the end of the cleaning, you are asked questions. You have opinions and comments, but your mouth is so full of foreign material you can't say a word. The phrase has changed from "cat got your tongue" to "dentist got your tongue."
   What did you do for vacation? Have you ever gone to Hawaii? What do you think about those new safety regulations at the airport? They're awful, aren't they? Did you see that new movie that just came out? What did you think of it?
   On and on it goes for more than an hour. Every time you try to speak up, a new dental tool is crammed into your mouth or you nearly drown in the pool of saliva that has been collecting in your mouth. Finally, when the appointment is done and you are free to go home, the last thing your ears want to hear is another question. But, as you walk out the door, the receptionist says "Did everything go well?"
   Most people dread the dentist. For some, they hate the pain. For others, they hate the sounds of the scraping and buzzing and grinding coming from the tools the dentist uses. In actuality, the reason people hate going to the dentist is the non-stop chatter you can do nothing about. Why can't the dentists keep their mouths shut and just play calming music throughout the appointment? It would make the experience better for both dentist and patient.
   What is the point of rhetorical questions? Wait, don't answer that. Why do we ask rhetorial questions if we don't want an answer? Don't answer that either. We live in a society built upon asking but not caring. How many times each day do you say "How are you?" How many times each day do you care what they say?
   Hebrews 3:13 says "But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness." If we don't listen to other people, how are we to help them? Listening means to pay attention to something and take it into account. To listen to others, pay attention to more than just their words and see what you can do.
   The world is too small for everyone to act like dentists. Stop asking rhetorical questions and learn to care. Learn to encourage and help each other in love. The world would be a much better place without the empty and careless questions. Don't you agree?

Introduction to "Serendipity"

   Serendipity, by definition, means "the gift of finding valuable things not sought for." This blog is dedicated to finding lessons in ordinary things.
   Let this year be the year to stop living vicariously! Learn to live, and live to learn. Take each moment, each breath, and learn from it. Find what you normally see as insignificant, and discover what makes it significant. Take time to observe the seemingly simple parts of life and watch how your view of the world changes. Pray that God will reveal Himself in miraculous ways every single day, and see how much closer to God you will grow.
   I hope you join me on this journey to stumble across unexpected lessons. If you have questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me at serendipitousrose@gmail.com.