Category Archives: Faith

The Big Picture

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Hong Kong, featuring Two ibc

The other morning three-year-old Atticus noticed a little winged insect on the car door. He wanted me to kill it. (Boys!)

I told him that the bug wouldn’t do anything to hurt him; it didn’t have a stinger and would just fly off as soon as we started moving, if not before.

Offended at the depths of the bug’s imposition, he wanted to know why that bug was on our van. The bug probably didn’t even know it was a car, I told him as I buckled his car seat belt. He may think it’s another tree or something.

He can’t see the big picture like we can.

Think about how many times bigger than that little bug we are, I told Attie. Think about how small his brain must be. Does he even see us for what we are? Maybe we’re just moving mountains to him. Maybe he sees no further than that gray bit of MPV door he’s lit sideways on. Maybe all that we are is just a blur in his tiny little vision.

I’m not sure how much Attie understood of our conversation. He had his serious, crinkled-brow look on. He nodded gravely that the bug is indeed one of God’s creatures: “ExACTly, Mommy.”

But it got me thinking.

What’s our equivalent of that little bug to us? We don’t have one in real life, not a “live” one, anyway. Even a nine-feet-tall giant like the biblical Goliath wouldn’t compare, right?

Okay . . . I’m 5’4″ or so. That’s about 64 inches. That little insect was maybe 1/4 inch tall, and I’m being generous. So there are more than 256 of him in one of me. And 256 times my height is 16,384 inches. Divided by 12, that’s more than 1,365 feet or 416 meters. Wow.

So how does that compare?

Well, let’s try some skyscrapers!

I’ll start with New York’s 102-storeyed Empire State Building because it’s one I know pretty well. It’s 1,453 feet to the top of the lightning rod, but SkyscraperPage.com doesn’t count the needle, so it’s number 13 on their World’s Tallest Buildings. (The tallest is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, built just this year, and — whoa! — it’s about twice as high as the ESB!)

Two International Finance Centre (or Two ifc) in Hong Kong, China, seems to come closest to my comparison height, at 415.8 meters or a little more than 1364 feet. It’s listed as the 10th tallest building in the world. If you go to their website, you can see three different views from the top. I especially love the one of Victoria Peak. It’s breathtaking!

From up there, cars are so tiny that you can barely tell what color they are. People? Practically indistinguishable.

Yet God, far bigger than any skyscraper — bigger than the world, bigger than the universe! — sees me. He sees my heart and mind, as tiny and limited as they are, and loves me just the same. He sees into me and through me.

And we are all called to be like Him, to see as much of the “big picture” as we’re capable of seeing, always striving to see more.

Nursing Home ‘Concert’ with My Mom

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Me and my mom 🙂

When I was in high school, I was really active in my church youth group, mainly for the fun activities like beach trips and hay rides. But in order to do the fun stuff, we had to do the service projects like visiting a local nursing home.

I remember feeling good about caroling up the corridors and talking with the residents because, as we were told, many of them had few, if any, visitors. That made up for the odd smells and uneasiness of speaking to the people who didn’t seem to notice. And many of them even seemed to enjoy our being there.

Well, I recently had the opportunity to go back to the very same nursing home after all these years. My mom asked me to sing with her on Friday, June 11, at one of her monthly visits. She and my dad, Danny and Nancye Ricketts, are founding ministers at Victory Family Church, and as part of their outreach, they visit the nursing home regularly to speak, sing, and pray with the residents who are able to join them in the activity area.

It was a good experience for the most part. My dad opened the meeting and introduced me. (“She’s an English teacher,” he said, my mom backing him up: “Yes, she’s an English teacher, but we love her anyway!” :P) Many of the people who were there were singing along with us and saying “Amen” when my mom was reading scriptures and talking.

But it was sad, too. The same odd smells . . . and seeing a lot of them looking asleep or otherwise engaged. One lady made strange noises the whole time. And another woke up after we finished, yelling what sounded like, “Hey! Hey! What in the world are you doing?”

Like my mom reminded me, though, we don’t really know how much they hear by the way they respond. We just have to do the best we can to help and hope that they get something positive from it.

Okay, on to the “concert.”

I set up the H2 recorder over to the side (where I could find an available, albeit dusty and hidden, outlet) and didn’t realize until then that there wasn’t enough space left on it to record the whole thing, so I decided to just record the music.

My mom played her keyboard and we sang through microphones plugged into a amplified lectern. The songs were mostly old gospel hymns that we ran through quickly the night before at their church. You may just recognize a few of them. 😉

Victory in Jesus: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/01-victory-in-jesus.mp3|loop=no]
Amazing Grace: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/02-amazing-grace.mp3|loop=no]
Love Lifted Me: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/03-love-lifted-me.mp3|loop=no]
I’ve Got a River of Life: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/04-ive-got-a-river-of-life.mp3|loop=no]
‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/05-tis-so-sweet-to-trust-in-jesus.mp3|loop=no]
In the Name of the Lord: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/06-in-the-name-of-the-lord.mp3|loop=no]
I Must Tell Jesus: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/07-i-must-tell-jesus.mp3|loop=no]
Just a Closer Walk with Thee: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/08-just-a-closer-walk-with-thee.mp3|loop=no]
Something About That Name: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/09-something-about-that-name.mp3|loop=no]

Atticus sings ‘Hail, Mary’

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SIMONE MARTINI Maestà (1315, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena)

Months and months ago, a tune for the Catholic prayer called “Hail, Mary” came to me, so I’ve been singing it a lot around the house (and in the car and everywhere else ;). It didn’t take long for the kids to pick it up, especially 3-year-old Atticus, who seems to prefer singing it to saying it. (If you listen to his version above, you can definitely tell he LOVES to sing it. 🙂

When we started down the path toward Confirmation almost two years ago, I was confused by what I saw as the Church’s preoccupation with Mary (among other things that are posts for other days). Our kids, however, haven’t been confused at all about Mary. In fact, 5-year-old Lucas told Kevin the other day that he has two mothers, not one as he answered, because Mary is his mother, too. What a deep kid that Lukie is. 🙂

After a lot of study and prayer, I too came to realize that it all makes perfect sense. In the beginning of the gospel of Luke, Mary says her soul magnifies the Lord. And what does a magnifying glass do but enable us to see more clearly what was a blur through our eyes alone. Through Mary, we can know her Son, Jesus, so much better because we can see Him so much clearer. Likewise, all honor, love and respect we give to Mary is funneled right through to her Son, Jesus.

So, here’s Attie:
[audio-clammr mp3=”hail-mary-atticus-june2010.mp3″]

And now, for those of you who aren’t Catholic, here are the words to the “Hail, Mary”:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Maybe one day I’ll post my version of this song. I’ve recorded it several times, my mouse always on the delete button. . . Here’s my version of this song. 🙂

Christ Pantocrator

Jesus coin: ‘Ἰησοῦς Χριστός’

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It was the coolest unexpected Christmas gift I’ve ever gotten. It was given to me a couple of years ago by my father-in-law, who is an avid historian. A Roman coin made of bronze, it was made 1,000 years before me around the year 973, during the reign of John I.

The tradition was to have the Roman emperors on the obverse, or front, of the coin. However, it was commonly believed that the world would end in the year 1,000, so people were turning toward Jesus who usually hadn’t before. It seems almost a sort of penance to put Jesus’ image on the coins.

Jesus is pictured on the front of the coin with a halo, holding a book of gospels. You can see what the image would have looked like from the mosaic above of the Christ Pantocrator (usually translated “Almighty”) that’s in the Hagia Sophia.

Even though it’s a Roman coin, the words on the back of the coin are Greek. They say, “XINSUS XRISTUS BASILEU BASILE.” It means, “Jesus Christ, King of Kings.”

My husband, the hero :)

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Letter from lady about Kevin fixing her tire

The Piedmont Shopper letter from the lady whose tire Kevin changed. 🙂

About a month or so ago, Kevin dropped me off at school like he normally does on the mornings he doesn’t work (so we can spend just a few more minutes together…aww…), and before he got down Central Blvd. a bit, he’d passed a minivan with a Sacred Heart School (our church’s school) sticker on it and a lady sitting by herself inside it.

He couldn’t just let that lady sit there, he said, and no one else was stopping. So he made his way around a few cloverleafs and pulled in behind her. The tire was busted, so he offered to change it and wouldn’t accept any money for doing so. His good deed for the day…

Well, he hadn’t gone a fraction of a mile before he noticed another vehicle stopped on the other side of the street, its tire blown, as well. An older lady was in this one, and nobody was stopping. Well, what do you think he did? Yep, he pulled around again and changed her tire too!

He told me later (when he called to let me know what had happened, so I wouldn’t worry in case anyone told me they’d seen our van on the side of the road…aww…) that he thought he might have to get mean with this lady because she didn’t want to take “no” for an answer in the giving-him-money-for-his-time-and-all department. But she finally did. And, on a side note that proves the title of this post even further, Kevin asked me not to tell anyone about this when he called. He said he didn’t do it for the fame. I, of course, told him I couldn’t agree to that. 😉

Okay, so flash forward a few weeks. Donna, a science teacher at my school posted on my Facebook wall, wanting to know if my husband was the one the lady had written the letter about. I had no idea what this was about, so Donna posted a link to the local Piedmont Shopper and told me what page to look on. There it was: A Kind Deed. 🙂

Here’s the text, in case for some reason you can’t read the image:

A Kind Deed

Recently, as I was returning home, a tire blew out just as I was leaving Riverside Drive and entering 86 S. I sat there for 10-15 minutes attempting to reach someone (by phone) to assist me. Many cars just zoomed past me.

Then a nice young man stopped and asked if he could help me. He changed the tire and absolutely refused to accept any money stating that he would not be a Christian if he had passed me by knowing that he could help.

Thank you, Kevin Hawke [sp fix], for your kind deed. There should be more like you.

Bobbi Renn

Thank you, Mrs. Renn, for taking the time to share this story with everyone who reads it. I pray that it will inspire others to spread kindness wherever and whenever they can. 🙂

Our Confirmation

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What a glorious day was June 5, 2010! After such a long journey home, we finally made it: Confirmation! No longer turning Catholic, we have now become. 🙂

Thank you to everyone who was there to celebrate this day with us, especially our priest, Father Charles Breindel; my parents, Danny and Nancye Ricketts; and our sponsors, Tom and Beverly Laptos. Thanks also to Tom and Bev for taking and sharing these pictures with us and for hosting a wonderful (surprise!) cookout party afterward. It was awesome!