Devotion

Building 2020

February 24, 2020 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

Often my husband and I walk our dog Snuggles and talk about the next thing we want to build, lately that conversation has centered around how our baby church plant is growing up, a new garage or filling the massive potholes where we park our car. Building is tangible, it takes vision and resources and you can touch it when it’s done. Yet, there is something satisfyingly intangible about this process. You can’t be entirely sure how it’s going to turn out and unplanned obstacles interfere along the journey, causing a shift in thinking and dollars. This requires flexibility and creativity on the part of the builders. “How could we value engineer this to get the same result, but not incur the significant up-charge?” A question forever plaguing and refining the building project.

When we built our home in northern Wisconsin the power generator established by the developer sat out on the road and it turned out we needed to add an (unplanned) new junction box closer to the house. The power was too far away since we chose to put the house in the back of the lot. This meant that the limestone apron we hoped to wrap around the entire base of the house got axed. The money for the stone now went to the new power source, an aesthetic sacrifice for a practical reality. Our creative minded general contractor said, “Let’s still put in the extra thick foundation and that way if you want to add the stone apron in the future, you can.” Problem solved, with an eye to the future solution.

My first experience with the joy of building things hit me in sixth grade at Jill Oddy’s slumber party. Jill lived in my favorite house in our neighborhood a couple of blocks from ours. Her parents gutted it, kept every rich historical detail and updated the color scheme with tons of Swedish blue and yellow florals, toile wallpaper, and painted tiles featuring peasant village scenes around the fireplace. Her birthday party occurred between the old wallpaper coming off and the new wallpaper going up and her parents let us write ALL OVER the stripped down walls. Profound quotes by Oscar Wilde, the Bible and Shakespeare would underlay their new decor. Just kidding, “I LOVE MICKEY AND MICKEY LOVES ME,” written inside giant hearts conveyed the sentiments of these pre-teen girls. Just as Snuggles marks her territory on our morning and evening walks, we long to do this as well.

When our church bought a 98,000 square foot warehouse to convert into a gorgeous, post-modern sanctuary, we held a candlelit assembly to worship in the emptiness and mark the old concrete floor and steel girders prior to renovation. We covered that decrepit Alcoa factory in Bible verses written in permanent ink Sharpies. Beneath today’s creamy, ceramic tile those unseen verses undergird the congregations’ walk with Christ. Twenty years after Jill Oddy’s slumber party we wallpapered our own dining room walls in floral yellow and blue and my husband and I wrote life-changing messages all over our own stripped down walls, “C.P. + M.P. – True Love 4-Ever.”

All of this takes me to Nashville a couple of weeks ago. Our youngest son is about to graduate with a music degree from Belmont University and he is involved in a couple of bands who record at “The Basement Space” studios. This start-up began literally in the basement space of a home the brothers lived in during college and beyond. The business grew and they are about to christen their trendy looking, take-your-breath-away recording studio behind the house. We toured this work in progress and took in the writing on the walls…

The owner’s face beamed as he told us about how the builders, a father and son team had experienced a significant growth in their faith since working on the project and they also wanted to contribute messages to the walls. He talked about all the enhancements and expansions the new space will bring to their recording work and I could see energy and light wash over his face and our son’s smile as they contemplated future opportunities.

The new Basement Space Studio in Nashville

A dizzying amount of preparations take place prior to breaking ground and that is what Lent is all about. We are on the cusp of a season where the Lord wants to build new things in us prior to the celebration of Easter. When we submit to his desire to write on the walls of our hearts he builds new light and life into us, often by revealing the decaying darkness of our own hearts. Lent is a building work and it starts this Ash Wednesday. Come and break up some ground and prepare a room for him these next 40 days. The master builder is looking for people to take up his trowel and his towel.

Believing in New Shoots

April 4, 2019 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

Something new is springing up; we’re moving to a new state, getting to know a new town, rooting into a new community and while it’s exciting there is a bittersweetness. We’ve spent 29 years walking these creaky, oak floors and sharing one shower upstairs, boiling glass baby bottles and drying them overnight on these counters, watching each child come around the upstairs hall corner in footsie pajamas, just a little bit taller with each passing year.

We removed the corkscrew willow tree (which was dying) and put in a gigantic perennial garden marking each plant with an identifying stake. Our kids grew their first tomatoes and basil while the squirrels traversed the fence and ate all our corn. Even in their twenties, our sons climbed to the top of the gigantic Norway Spruce trees and cut out the branches so they could take in the view of our entire town. One summer afternoon, the boys coaxed me up there and what did I see? Nothing but a green canopy. Everything, even the houses and streets disappeared from view, except for the trees. With a mere seventy foot climb my entire perspective changed. All concrete and cars, gone. I’d spent over two decades taking in a myopic, street level view. Little did I know the freedom lying in wait at the top of those trees for those willing to take the risk. I’m thankful for people who push me to reach “further up and further in” and that gets at the heart of what’s hard about digging up roots, it means saying goodbye to the other plants in our garden, our people.

There are a handful who’ve brought out the best in us and sat beside us in our worst. They challenged us to live with meaning and purpose. They gave us their loyalty and love, their already overextended hearts. Our next- door neighbors came over the day we arrived home from the hospital and held and admired each precious new addition to our family. Our pastor and his wife were the first people we called when my husband lost his job. Our wine drinking friends commiserated with us and celebrated teenage trials and triumphs. Our travel buddies loved our daughter and even came to see her dance in her new city with her first dance company, who does that? We’ve laughed until we cried about summer camp experiences, our kids getting lost together and backpacking their way through homesickness and swarms of mosquitos. These are people you actually want to spend your summer vacation time with. Why would we leave them?

The answer lies in trusting the underground work and the above the treeline vista. We’ve lived many springs and we know that the hyacinth and daffodil do not fail. We know that snowdrops bloom the last week of February, regardless of the weather and we hear the first cardinal summoning his mate right around Valentine’s Day each year. We can trust the unseen worker for new friends, a new job, our new place in this world because “He is making all things new.”

I bought a bouquet at Christmas with corkscrew willow branches as an accent. After the amaryllis flowers died I went outside to throw the bouquet away, but noticed that one of the branches generated roots. All that work going on inside the vase as we opened our presents and entertained our guests with Door County Cherry Bounce cocktails. Long after Christmas returned to basement boxes, I planted the new tree in a pot and here on the cusp of spring I own a new tree. A piece of home to carry to our new home. We cut down a corkscrew willow over 25 years ago and now we leave with a new one. New life, new adventures, new hope in what we may find out there on the lake…

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!” ― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

Letting Go of Billy Graham

February 21, 2018 by Margaret Philbrick 2 Comments

It’s not easy to imagine life in America without Billy Graham. He served as a comforting blanket of trustworthiness and faith in the highest corridors of power and some of the least visible places on earth. He moved through doors freely and as long as he walked the planet we knew someone important must be encountering God in a potentially life changing way which would hopefully trickle down and impact all of us for the better. President Obama visited him in North Carolina only eight years ago, the last of our Presidents to actually see him. I never met him, but he changed my life.

While sitting on my Grandma’s gold velour sofa, eating a hot fudge sundae at the age of seven, I watched his crusade on t.v. Grandma always let me stay up later than my parents and never guilted me into thinking I watched too much t.v. Like parents today who admonish their kids for wasting precious time on video games, my parents did the same with t.v. But on that night, no time was wasted. Mr. Graham spelled it out so simply, “You are a sinner, but you don’t need to die a sinner. Come to Jesus and he will change your life.” He didn’t try to impress me with quotes from commentators or other erudite sources, just the gospel pure and simple. In listening to his message and watching the endless stream of people walking forward to “make a decision for Christ,” I knew I wanted that hope. I didn’t tell my Grandma or anyone else, but when she tucked me in and turned out the light on her rose colored nightstand I did as Mr. Graham said, I asked Jesus into my life. To this day I remember that feeling of security and peace, falling asleep new beneath Grandma’s starched white sheets.

About thirty years later I was on a call with an evangelist, John Guest and he asked me, “How did you come to faith?” I shared my story of Billy Graham and he startlingly said on the phone, “Let’s pray for Mr. Graham and your grandma right now and thank God for the way he used them in your life.” Never before had someone requested that we pray together on the phone. I felt shy and insecure doing it, but as the memory of that night came back accompanied by the smell of Grandma’s rose scented hand lotion and the rattling of her newspaper while I pretended to be asleep, my heart filled with gratitude. Millions came to faith or were exposed to the truth of the gospel through Billy Graham’s ministry and they are welcoming him into heaven today with a big crown and a choir singing something even better than Handel’s Messiah, but for me on that night in a single bed in River Forest, Illinois it was just me, Billy and Jesus.

Forever grateful.

All Creation Waits, Book Review

December 4, 2017 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

(Greenhouse teacher Debbie Gottlieb won the book! Thanks everyone for reading. I always keep the comments private:)

In the book, All Creation Waits, Gayle Boss presents the hidden work of 24 animals as they wait for the return of spring. In a combined effort of art, poetry, faith and science we learn the wonders of mama bear as she gorges herself all summer on berries and insects to store up for the birth of her cubs, an event that happens while she sleeps in hibernation. Now that’s a delivery scenario I could handle! No drugs, no pain, no birthing classes, just berries and sleep.

This book forces us to slow down and savor the unseen and unknown quiet facts of protection and preservation that God offers to his precious creatures. It also provides encouragement, for if God gives so much to the Chick-a-dee, then how much more does he give to me? “So do not fear, you are more valuable than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:31. In this day of divisive social media driven vitriol, this book brings us back to the center, to the small, the unnoticed miraculous works of creation. It serves as a seat to savor nature, the preservation of life through the seasons, all of which are magnificently more interesting than the Kardashians latest shoe choice or Trump tweets.

David Klein’s black and white, line intensive illustrations highlight the intricate detail and unique personality of each animal. He invites us to touch the pages to feel the texture of their fur.

Take some time this Advent to wonder in the waiting of what God is doing, even in the places you can’t perceive or see. Spend some time with the animals, the few chosen ones who were there the day He came, Emmanuel. God with us. Thank you Gayle Boss for helping us see a little more of who God is through this expression of your devotion. We wait with you.

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