My grandma, Pauline Browning, passed Thursday, November 4th, 2004. She was soon to be 84. The situation required that we have her services on Saturday afternoon, and so many who were her friends were unaware she had passed at the time of her burial. Many of you knew her well, as she visited us frequently in Manassas, until ill health precluded travel. I had to say good bye to her so quickly, that I beg your indulgence today while I remember a little of her.

When she was young I am sure she reached five feet in height, but I was never around for those days. She was a tiny woman who loomed large in so many lives because of the force of her personality, and the intensity of her relationship with God. She always reminded me of the godly woman of Proverbs 31. That woman is praised for her domestic virtue, certainly. But she is multi-faceted. That woman is also praised for her business sense, the impact she has on her community, her role as a shaper and molder of lives. My grandma wore all those hats with flair as well. And so I have written my own version of Proverbs’ ideal woman in tribute to her. I’m sure you were blessed with a mom or a grandma much the same.

Read more: Who Can Find One Like Her?

I have a beef I'd like to share and it comes from my having been assigned to read Charles Dickens' Bleak House in 9th grade. I have loved reading ever since the Man in the Big Yellow Hat brought Curious George home with him. I can't remember a time since second grade when I didn't have a book going - usually more than one. I am so addicted that I refuse to be found without reading material. This passion flourishes in spite of whoever decided that a 14 year old would benefit from slogging through 517 pages of satire on the British Chancery. In the days of my recovery from that traumatic experience - when I was I5 and tearing through John Steinbeck, I blamed this act of intellectual aggression on the fact that I was going to school in Wayne County, WV. But this explanation is inadequate. I had several fine, gifted teachers in Junior High and High School. And here, in prosperous, cultivated, evolved Northern Virginia my seventh grader brings home a book by Witla Cather she has to finish by Monday. Cather is one of my favorite authors, and the book, My Antonia, is one I thoroughly enjoyed - when I was 32, not when I was 12. If she had to read a book by Wila Cather, why not assign her Shadows on the Rock, a book that is more simply written and about a girl just her age?

Kids who are 12 or 13 need to be taught to really read. I'm not referring to phonics or whole language (although this is too often the case). I'm talking about picking up a document and really comprehending it. If I were teaching middle schoolers to read I'd assign book a little below their level, and then challenge them to take that work apart - identify the themes, the patterns, plot the narrative arc, gather the wisdom, find the flaws. I'd rather my 12 year old reread Charlotte's Web, and really understand it, than get an A by memorizing and regurgitating Sparknotes, and come away hating Willa Cather novels, and perhaps even reading. If they want to challenge these kids with something a little above their level why not assign something short and simple, but that packs a wallop - like John
Steinbeck's The Pearl, Jonathan Swifts A Modest Proposal, or Yukio Mishima's Patriotism?

This matters. Too many peopie don't like to read. This means too many people don't read the Bible, or don't know how, or don't enjoy it. Since God speaks to us in a book, and Jesus is to he met in this book, how impoverished are the lives of those who carry around their own Bleak House Baggage? How many believe what others tell them the Bible says without finding out for themselves because they have been taught that reading is a bore and a chore?

Certainly Paul describes reading and comprehending the Bible a process that requires work, and an application of requisite skills (II Timothy 2.15). But that process is supposed to be a joy, a balm, an excitement (read Psalm 119 - even if you are in 7th grade).

My plea is that you give reading, especially reading the Bible, a chance. Don't reject the Bible and punish yourself because your lit teacher back in 1974 made you write a term paper on Paradise Lost. How can we learn, how can we grow, how can we change, how can we be pleasing to God if we don't pick up a Bible and read?

Oh, how I love your law. . . how sweet are your words to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey in my mouth. Psalm 119.97,103

Warren Zevon (you remember him – Ahhooo… Werewolves of London) died of lung cancer last year. Shortly before he died he appeared on the David Letterman show. He had been a friend of the show for years, sometimes filling in for band director, Paul Shaeffer, when he was vacationing. Dave devoted the entire hour to Zevon who performed his most recognizable tunes. At the end of their conversation Dave asked if there was a life lesson Zevon had learned that he could share with us all. Warren replied, “Yeah, enjoy every sandwich.”

I was thinking about that the other day in the drive-through at Wendy’s waiting to get a Junior CheeseBurger Deluxe, which is about all I can handle since my cancer surgery. It was the end of lunch rush, and I knew that most of the people we were in line with would be eating in their cars as they dashed back to work after waiting in a longer-than-usual line at the bank or post office. They would not be enjoying their sandwiches. They would be happy not to soil their shirts and blouses. “What is the point of ordering?” I thought, “when you have to wolf it down so quickly why not just order soylent green or something.” The thing is that when you have no time to enjoy your sandwich, having endless choices is meaningless.

In the latest edition of Utne Reader (January/February 2005) there was an article by Anjula Razdan (pp.59-62) entitled “Take Your Time: Why our busy nation needs to chill out.” It wasn’t a fluff piece about enjoying a hot bath with scented candles, but a serious consideration of the moral implication of the pace of life we live. Razdan asserts that “Lack of free time may be the ultimate moral issue,” that technology is forcing us to “live at speed, not depth,” and that perhaps the great appeal of George W. Bush, is that he represents a slower paced/anti-modern sensibility (as did President Reagan) which many of us long to embrace in defiance the multi-tasking overdrive we’re forced to maintain.

I have been forced to “stop”, since my surgery, and have been enjoying most sandwiches I have been eating. I agree that there is a moral dimension to this issue of time. I have known this from scripture for years, and have preached it. I have been forced to experience it. God sanctified the seventh day because on it he stopped working. God stopped. Why? Was he tired? No. We don’t believe, nor does the Bible teach that God is prone to human limitations like fatigue. There must be some moral value to just stopping then.

“Stop striving and know that I am God.” He says to us in Psalm 46.10. Stopping the struggle makes way for the time and thought it takes to begin to know God. God codified this value of stopping in the 10 commandments, where Sabbath keeping receives more attention than any other commandment. Although Sabbath keeping is not part of New Testament observance, Jesus assumes we will stop, taking time to fast and pray (Matthew 6.5-18). Jesus not only commanded it but lived it, frequently withdrawing to solitary places to pray (Luke 5.16).

We have a moral obligation to stop. God stopped, and made stopping a holy thing. Jesus found stopping a necessity, not a luxury. I know that what we stop from doing is usually important, often urgent, and that doing “nothing” seems like laziness, but prayer is not “nothing,” reflection is not “nothing,” thought is not “nothing” - and the quality of each is greatly diminished if we refuse to stop.

Yesterday the snow they promised would begin at 4am began falling shortly before 11. The 7" to 9" of snow we were supposed to get turned out to he less than four. Yet, if the 7", 9", or even 10" had come we were ready. We had emptied the hardware store of it's shovels and de-icers, plundered the supermarket of its milk, bread and toilet paper, and had shut ourselves in to wait for Balto to get through with the penicillin (he did), and for Robert Falcon Scott to make it back to base camp (he did not).

We get two or three snows a year. Rarely are we snowed in for more than 24 hours. And yet, the mere mention of the possibility of more than a dusting sends us all to the grocery store to fight over the last gallon of 2% like it was a wedding dress in Filene's basement. I'm sure the folks in International Falls, MN (not to mention the folks in Point Barrow, AK) get a real chuckle out of us. It is not just snow that sends us into a panic. I still have sand bags by my back door, left over from the threat of hurricane Guy (pronounced Gee, like a French actor, or hairdresser). Guy turned out to he a blowhard drizzler. We were all prepared for him just the same.

I'm not complaining. I am quite pleased with the temperate climes of northern Virginia. I would like a third season sometimes, in addition to the 6 months of summer and 6 months of winter we get. I'm just intrigued by our panic at the smallest chance of extreme weather.

This is even more intriguing to me in view of the way we so readily and easily take in stride the very real threats we pose to ourselves. Aggressive drivers, dimly lit parking lots, the highest violent crime rates in the world, the threat of domestic terrorism, airborne diseases, not to mention the carcinogen drenched environment make quite a list- yet we walk out our doors every morning, after a jolt of caffeine, happy to face the day.

I see a troubling pathology at work here. It is not that we have a healthy fear of natural forces, it is that we are so oblivious to the danger we ourselves have created. We are so afraid of the mess nature can possibly make of things, yet are snow-blind to the bigger messes we create, and are actually in. We really are that guy Jesus says we are in Matthew 7.1ff who is not aware he has a fence post sticking out of his eye socket, but is perturbed when his neighbor gets a speck of dust in his eye.

Of course the lasting damage we do to ourselves, we do through sin. It was sin Jesus was talking about m Matthew 7, and it is sin we least want to take responsibility for. We have become so sophisticated, so creative at the rationalization, the half-apology, the empty mea culpa, that we rarely have to take personal responsibility for anything. For the time being, anyway. Jesus reminds us in Matthew 7 that there will be judgment - certain and inescapable judgment. He also tells us we can survive this, and an other storm if we "hear" and "do" the things he tells us to.

In E.B. White's book The Second Tree From the Corner (1954) he has a piece titled "Air Raid Drill" which is about a city wide drill New York had that year to prepare for an atomic bomb attack. As he walked down from the 1st to the 10th floor of his building, he noticed that there was no 13th floor. Humanity had advanced far enough to build an atomic bomb, but not enough to stop avoiding the number 13. He also noticed how nonchalant everyone was about a drill to prepare for an atomic bomb attack. He noticed that the fifteen minutes of easy camaraderie they enjoyed was itself a blessing, and that A-bomb drills might not be such a bad thing if for no other reason than that one had the chance to "look into the eyes of the next man."

15 minutes would be even better spent looking into our own eyes, into God's word, and being honest about what we find.