The grocery store shelves were empty earlier this week. Hurricane Sandy was on its way into our region and local residents had cleared the shelves of emergency items like milk, bread, and bottled water. At places like Home Depot and Lowes demands for sump pumps, generators and batteries outstripped the supply. The newspaper reported that the stores were frantically trying to keep other “essentials” in stock. For some people, this meant stocking up on doughnuts and pizza.  A crowd celebrated when one truck arrived with 1100 bags of potato chips to meet the customers’ demands. (Since when were potato chips part of a basic survival kit?)

Everyone wanted to be prepared for a disaster.

My half-hour radio interview on Atlanta radio is now available on-line here.

--Emily

Last week our local writers' group gathered for their monthly critique session.  To warm up our skills before the critique, our leader gave us a brief writing exercise, challenging us to take a common word associated with the Fall season (cider, cornstalk, pumpkins, etc) and place it in an unusual context.  My assigned word was "apple orchard." What follows was my offering to the group.

I'd hiked all around the farm market that damp October afternoon when I saw the kid sitting on the curb.  Was he eight years old?  Nine?  He wiped his nose on his sleeve and looked up at me hopefully.  In front of him sat a plate of dark green leaves, withered and sere.  From his bulging pocket, he withdrew another round object.

"Lady, I haven't made a sale all day.  Won't you buy my stuff?"

I bent over to examine his meager offerings.

"I grew 'em myself.  They're from my backyard."

Glancing around, I searched for my husband.  When I turned back, tears were running down the child's grimy cheeks only to be wiped away by an even dirtier fist.

With feelings of pity mixed with disgust, I sighed, "How much?"

"Which one?  The apple or chard?"

While I enjoyed the writing exercise as an opportunity to create a play on the word "apple orchard," I knew my story was based on a real memory.  Many years ago I had walked through a Saturday market in a small Mexican town where I lived in the hills of Oaxaca.

There I met a child who looked very much like the urchin in my story, only instead of chard, his tin plate held five ripe tomatoes.  I was willing to purchase all five tomatoes, but he refused to sell me more than three.  Confused, I asked why he would not sell all five.  "Because then I'd have to go home."  Once his "goods" were sold, he had no further excuse to linger and socialize at the market.

So many times we look at the world through our adult eyes and forget to see through the eyes of a child.  How thankful I am that God, our Heavenly Father, sent His Son to live here on earth and see our world from a human perspective.  Our Savior doesn't laugh at our often foolish reasoning and or offer help due to pity for our human needs.  He responds with love.  And that is a blessing, in Autumn and in every season of the year.

Did God order a heavenly dove down to my college dormitory room years ago to tell me that one day I would be speaking to thousands of hormonal teenagers about dating and marriage? No. If he had, I might have whooshed that birdie out the window and slammed the sash down on its tail feathers. In his great wisdom, God knew better than to reveal the whole picture from the beginning.

After working as an archaeologist in southeast Asia and excavating an ancient temple site in Laos, I returned to Oklahoma ready to pursue graduate work. There God made clear that he never intended me to spend my life repairing cracked pots from hundreds and thousands of years ago. Instead he was sending me to work with a tribal group living in the jungles of Mexico.

Me, a missionary? I had a strong measure of faith, but frankly, I had no pioneering skills and looked more like “Missionary Impossible” than Indiana Joan. I filled out an application to the mission only to prove God wrong. They’d never dare accept it.

Only they did.

That night, I fled from campus to a nearby church which had an 24-hour prayer chapel. There in that darkened room, I wept and exclaimed, “God, for the first time in all eternity, you have made a mistake.”

Allowing my pulse to slow down, I began to read my Bible. It opened to the verse in Psalm 143 which said, “Show me where to walk, for I have come to you in prayer . . . Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. May your gracious Spirit lead me forward on a firm footing.”

And that is what he has done. Over the years, that Spirit has led me, step by step, to good places. Sometimes I go willingly but other times kicking and screaming. I ended up loving my work in Mexico so much that I intended to remain single all my life. When God introduced Gene into my life, I protested. Loudly.

But again God gently prevailed. The single woman married. Gene and I became the parents of three. They grew up and married. Together, my husband and I began counseling others whose marriages were falling apart. I saw all around me young people who had not chosen to follow God’s path. Their dating relationships were full of pain and sorrow. They had regrets. So with the blessing of my husband, I began speaking in public schools and to community groups about the benefits of waiting for sex until marriage.

Today I look back and see how every step of the journey has been good. God, with his wry sense of humor, moved me from gluing together shards of hundred-year-old clay pots to repairing the broken lives of young men and women. He is wise.