Doug Van Pelt

Pleasant Things

Enjoyed watching my daughter give a report to her class on the country of Colombia. At the end she played the Colombian national anthem and passed out chocolate covered espresso beans. That's my girl!

I felt nervous for a little bit. This boy (let's call him "Cole") went right before her and must've read from 4 to 5 pages of single typed notes, because he took at least ten minutes. He shared all kinds of fun details about Venezuela. Did you know it's a custom for the bride and groom to duck out from the wedding reception without telling anybody? And people wear yellow on January 1 for good luck? And they travel through the neighborhood with suitcases in hand with their family -- to bring safe travels and better luck throughout the next year. One girl brought some interesting fruit/vegatable from the inside of a palm tree. "Heart of Palm" I think it was called. It was funny to see the squirms and sour-puss looks on the faces of most of the kids. The last kid I saw talked about Jamaica, and he played a Bob Marley song at the end, as his mom entered with some sort of chicken entree.

Don and Paul arrive in Portland and it's fun (again) to read his description of a place I'm familiar with. This is better, though, because this is a place he had never been to before, and thus he describes it with greater attention and detail. He is shocked at the number of coffee shops in that town. This shows that the book was written a while ago, because even the Houston that he refered to as hardly having any of them is now overrun with Starbucks everywhere.

WE INTERRUPT THIS BLOG TO INSTRUCT YOU (YES,EACHANDEVERYONEOFYOU) TO STEP INTO STARBUCKS IMMEDIATELY AND ORDER, PAY FOR, AND SHOVEL INTO YOUR MOUTH ONE GIANT ESPRESSO BROWNIE. WE NOW RETURN YOU TO THIS BLOG.

What was that?!

Anyway, I certainly know why Don fell in love with that city. It's such a beautiful part of the country. I remember a friend of mine (the guy who designed the first "hm" logo -- the one with the trendy-at-the-time oval), Dann Ledwick telling me about where he lived. Back in 1995 even the McDonald's there served espresso.

It's funny to "listen in" to the conversations Paul and Don have about life and spiritual things. They both talk about women as young single men longing for a wife. I remember having conversations like that with my best friend in high school: "All I want is a fine wife to come home to." One of Don and Paul's conversations -- the first one in a coffee shop in Portland -- starts there and travels to the conclusion that perhaps what we all want is to be loved (by God, women, our parents, etc).

That certainly is a big motivator for us. I remember when the whole concept of being completely loved and accepted by my Father in heaven kind of came into focus. It really took a lot of the pressure off. All the people-pleasing efforts and stress involved with that kind of dissapates when it doesn't matter.

I agree with Scripture in thinking that it's a wonderful thing when an unloved woman is loved. Proverbs 30 gets poetic about it:

"Under three things the earth trembles,
under four it cannot bear up:
a servant who becomes king,
a fool who is full of food,
an unloved woman who is married,
and a maidservant who displaces her mistress."

It's funny, because now I can see this passage in a different light. I guess I still agree with it, but it doesn't mean what I thought it did. This passage always jumped out to me, because I thought of the wonder of a woman (or a person, really) finally finding the love they've been longing for. I see that as a romantic and wonderous thing of beauty. When reading the negative context of the four things listed, though, it becomes apparent that this list is not a positive thing of wonderment, but a troublesome list of bad things. The "unloved woman who is married" means a wife that isn't loved by her husband. This could easily describe the context of either David or Solomon's wives (I'm guessing, because they had multiple wives, I think). This displacing of a maidservant might be a case like Sarah and Hagar, where the maidservant gets to have a baby that the wife was longing for. It's funny to bring up a point and then shoot it down myself.

The main point is, I think, that all of us long to be loved. I imagine that it is a trait that God ingrained in us, His creation. In conclusion, it's a safe bet that He can love us and fulfill this longing like no one else can.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at December 13, 2006 01:07 PM