Coming Soon In Russian

While my computer has been down, real life goes on. Here is a posting from my diary last week:

Sometimes, while we go about the ordinary, wonderful things happen.

Saturday (1/5/08), Ginny and I ate a long leisurely breakfast at Dave’s Dinner where one of the guys expressed disappointment that he had not been able to travel to Dollywood for his Christmas vacation.

Then we dropped a few bags of clothes, sheets and shoes off at a mission for the door.

We sat in the park awhile smoking and talking about this and that.

We went Christmas shopping — yes, Christmas shopping! That woman I married wanted to send a special widget to her brother, Eric, as a gift, but she was not able to find it before Christmas. Instead of sending him something else just a good, she’s obsessed with giving him this particular thing. So the Love Of My Life dragged me into another three stores shopping for this thing.

I lost my Christmas spirit weeks ago, but here I am still shopping for a Christmas gift. Guys, that’s the sort of thing that happens to you when you fall in love.

When we got home. Our daughter Eve came over to borrow a penny.

Yes, one penny.

She and Mark are getting married next month and she wanted Something Borrowed to carry with her down the aisle. This fixation goes with the old poem for brides:

Something old.
Something new
Something borrowed.
Something blue.
Something something, something (I forgot the line)
And a penny in your shoe

We discussed wedding plans that become ever more complicated by the minute. But, on the up side, as Father of The Bride, I have the legal right to tease her unmercifully about how I intend to tell embarrassing stories about her in front of all her wedding guests.

After all, what else is a Daddy for?

As you can see, we were enjoying a perfectly ordinary Saturday. Mostly hanging out, filling bird feeders, watching football (Jaguars 31, Steelers 28), watching the political debate from New Hampshire. Ginny baked a raisin pie. Ordinary stuff of life. No particularly religious thoughts. No urge to witness. No agonizing in prayer.

Then I checked my e-mail and see this message:

“За то лепечущими устами и на чужом языке будут говорить к этому народу.”

That’s Isaiah 28:11 in Russian.

It means, “For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people”.

That’s part of a message which came from a stranger, a Christian pastor in the Ukraine. K.K. and his wife asked permission to translate a chapter from one of my books into the Russian language.

The chapter they want is the profile of Madam Guyon from my collective biography, Strangers On The Earth.

This came as such a surprise to me. I really feel wonderful, honored and flattered.

Recently I’ve been feeling jealous over how my friend Barbara’s Along The Way books are selling so much better than the books I write. I find that discouraging. I feel envious, second-rate, useless.

Jesus said that when someone else sins against us seventy times seven — a rare occurrence even with the most aggravating person — we are to forgive them. When I sin against my self seventy times seven — yes, I dredge up the same sins, resentments and envies again and again even from things that happened years ago — then I must seek forgiveness myself.

So in this present case, I must confess my sin of envy and I find it also helps to pray earnestly for the continued and expanding success of Barbara’s books beyond my own.

I don’t like to do that. It is painful for a writer not to be read. So I tend to nurse my sin. To justify my feelings of envy. To grow moody and peevish and depressed. I feel despair and feel as though I’m just typing on air.

Then, just when I get to feeling down and as though I’m pretty much useless to God and man, here out of the blue comes a privilege like this chance to have a bit of my work rendered in Russian. I get to speak with stammering lips to a people far away…

You know, that’s sort of scary.

What’s going on here?

A phrase in my devotions tonight points out that at the creation of the world, God saw light.

And He said it was good.

It was good because He created it.

And, whenever there is any light in us, He also sees that and pronounces it good too.

Even when I myself can see no light at all, when everything is murky at best, even then God sees the spark of light He Himself put within us.

And, He says that’s good.

Yes, even ordinary days conceal wonders.