Bringing Faith to Life
Archive for January, 2015
Exchanging Fear and Worry for Thanks
010 years
New every morning. Or after a nap, a good run, a walk around the lake. It’s not the rising and setting of sun that sets my mood, it’s the respite. A time to let the mind wander and tippy toe over the field of neurons who happily spark and ignite one another on their merry way to thoughts, images, expressions and feelings. Completely unguided by the slave driver who, the rest of the time, cracks the whip….
Get with it! Shape up! You have a deadline to meet! Conference is coming, you know! People are gonna expect things from you! Are you gonna be ready? Heck, is anyone gonna come?
Oh my goodness, why do I talk to myself that way? Take a seat, will ya, and come back a bit later when a swift kick in the pants is in order.
Funny how that guy doesn’t take orders. He’s all about giving orders, but he uses every trick in the book to get his way. All of sudden, he’s got me moving but my motivation is fear and worry, not excitement and energy. Lord, I don’t want to row this life with fear and worry as my paddles. I want to set out to sea with oars of steel and a good strong stroke, waves take me as they will. You call the strokes. You be my Coxswain.
How good it would be if all I had to do was put some muscle into it and not have to keep looking up for land or landmark or buoy. But there are reefs out there and sharks, you know. There are swells that would swamp me and ocean liners that would smash me to smithereens. Who in their right mind would set out into that on their own?
Oh yeah, me. But the dangers that surround are not nearly as ugly as the ones within. The ones who question whether I should have set out in the first place. Turn back! While you still can!
And then the dark settles. I can’t see a thing, can only feel the muscles pulling at the oars. Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. And I am strong and growing stronger. I am! I am capable. I have a body that listens and works with me, that recovers and tries again, that coordinates itself. Good grief, think of all those neurons and their signals to all those muscle fibers that contract in complicated sequence to choreograph a single pull. What an amazing feat is one stroke. And then another.
I can do this.
And I AM grateful. What an opportunity I have before me. How exciting this all is. Who would have ever thought this would happen? To me.
Suddenly the demanding voice is different. Not shouts and commands but instructions and direction. My thanks for the miracle of muscle and motion that has turned the tide. I see and hear anew. And the sun rises.
When play was work, and work was play
0
I kick away the packed and icy snow from the slate walk and it breaks into chunks. Like tectonic plates, the continents move aside to reveal the dark stone underneath.
I am transported back to the elementary school playground. Hour upon hour we played 4-square on that black top. Except on icy days when inch-thick plates of ice prevented access. On those days, with the heel of my snow boots, I pounded and pounded until a few inches and then a few more gave way. Others join in the assault. Occasionally, a large sheet gives way and a shout of triumph rings out.
The school bell sounds. Man, that was a lot of work!
Next recess, we play.
The One Question God will always answer
0“If you could ask God one question, what would it be?”
That was the bumper sticker on the car next to me. Oh my God. There are so many things that need answers. Why do you allow suffering? Why, death? Why, child abuse? Why, domestic violence and kidnapping and racial strife and executions? Why, pain and cancer and illness? Why, loneliness and despair and hopelessness? Why, oh God, why?
But all those questions came with follow-on questions. If I knew the answer to that, then I would need to know this…. The offer was one; I had to edit all my angst down to one measly question.
“Why do you love me?”
You know me completely. All my faults, failures, misgivings and mistakes. You know all I’ve done and all I’ve failed to do. You know my intentions, my obligations and my shortcomings. In spite of it all, you love me. Why?
And in that moment, there were no more questions. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God did love me. And if God could love me, God could love the rest of these. Every last one. There were no more “why’s,” only, perhaps, how’s.
Such is the nature of Love. This I know.
Coming of Age
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We tend to think of “coming of age” as a once in a lifetime experience, or at least one season of our lives. Then we’re done. Thank goodness that’s over. Now I can move on to adult things, and put those childish ways behind me.
But what if I don’t, or rather, I can’t. At least not now. And the further I get from my childhood, the harder it is to let it go. By then, I have held on so long it has become a part of me. I hold dearly to these things I “know” about myself, so dearly that I just take them for granted. I always cry at …. I never know what to say when… I’ll lose so why bother doing … It’s his fault that… No one listens when… These are part of “who I am.” Even the things I don’t much like about myself I have learned to live with, so I figure I’m stuck with them. But what if I’m wrong?
What if the opportunity to lay down the things I hold dearly happens annually? or monthly? perhaps weekly? OMG, daily? Yes, I may never see them again. That is, unless they are good for me: good for my direction, my progress, my soul. Then I believe I will see them again. They’ll probably sneak back in under the guise of a project, a phone call, a surprise email or a tug to get back to writing that blog you were so fond of. But the rest of those things need not rear their ugly heads; they were meant for drop-kicking.
New every morning are my opportunities to see myself in a new light, with capability to address the day in a new way. Coming of age may happen in a moment for a few souls, or for the boy Jesus who was “about his Father’s business” when he was left behind by his parents, but for me it’s a day by day diligence. You don’t need to be who you were yesterday, but to be better you need to release your grip on the stuff in your fist. Yes, YOUR fist.
That oughta lighten things considerably around here. Who knows, maybe this stepping may turn to skipping and leaping and bounding. Good grief, I may get to hurdle a whole bunch of stinking stuff. Who knew I was the one holding the key to tossing it aside? 
Without a deadline, I’d never get to Christmas
0
It’s amazing what a deadline does. Take Christmas for example. On December 25th, at least in these parts, folks wake up to Christmas day and they expect their gifts to be under the tree, stockings to be filled and Christmas dinner preparations to be well under way. As the Dr. Seuss’ Grinch so aptly points out, we can stop Christmas from coming, it comes just the same.
Part of the craziness of Advent – the season of waiting – is making our preparations. Because it will come, with or without us. Christmas day is the deadline. So we scurry to buy, wrap, bake and mail, in time for Christmas. This struck me between the eyes when I saw my friend Cammy’s Facebook post of herself live-streaming the 11:00pm Christmas eve service on her computer while she was getting her last minute wrapping done. Her comment:
“Having a wrapping party while watching the Floris UMC 11:00 service live streamed, after going to church and having dinner with all of the family in Winchester. I hope that next year I will get my act together and have something wrapped a little bit earlier, but this sure is a wonderful way to wrap gifts! Merry Christmas, everyone!
If it weren’t for the Christ child insisting on His day, I would certainly be putting off the celebration until I got around to getting everything finished, too. But there’s a deadline: Christmas day. That’s why I throw things into gear. The next day is too late; it’ll all be over.
Thank God for deadlines. Left to my own devices, I’d coast and glide and continue through life as if it were up to me to set the pace. God knows I need an endpoint, a target, a landing place, an arrival. THERE. DONE. Not to revel in my success, but to take a big inhale and stop to celebrate. Then, only then, to begin again.
As I catch my breath and beat myself up about my procrastination, vowing that next year will be different, I look around at the unwrappings of a season and the accomplishments of a year and realize, were it not for the deadline, none of it would be. Christ would never come. But He did and he has and, rumor has it, He’ll be back.
I have other deadlines looming. Thank GOODness!
Good words inspired by the Good Word
010 years
Dear friends,
As we turn the page to a new year, here are a few sentiments that held special meaning for me from the pages of my copy of the Upper Room devotional booklet. Happy New Year!
“While living the Christian life is difficult – even risky – what it means to be a Christian is actually simple: we are called to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbors as ourselves.”
“God desires to lead us not dominate us.”
“He is with me to show me his wounds and to heal mine.”
“How did you deal with your own feelings about being late?” “I’ve learned to trust God to take care of it on the other end. Now when, through no fault of my own, I’m running late and have notified others of my dilemma, I’m learning to believe God is at work wherever I am heading.”
“God asks us to learn from our failures and mistakes but not to live in our past pain. We take steps toward newness of life as we daily turn from the temptation of despair and put our hope in God.”
“Remember: God already knows what is in our hearts, so we are not informing the Lord of our cares and burdens when we seek God in prayer. We are laying our burdens upon the Lord so that we no longer need to carry them ourselves.”
“God always waits for us to return.”
“Jesus made a choice to save me from my bad choices.”
“The gift of his magnificent sacrifice and his offer of eternal life gives him pleasure.”
“Great God, help us to see opportunities in obstacles. Lead us by your Holy Spirit that we might act boldly like the apostle Paul. Amen.”
“Never let those cards stop coming. Everyone else forgets.”
Thanks for stopping by in 2014. The Kinesthetic Christian blog will continue with regular posts in the new year. It seems to be the ballast by which God balances the rest of what I do.
Here’s to a productive, God-centered, powerful 2015 for one and all!