Rain, Rain, Go Away: The Sequel

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I am officially over the rain. I liked it for a bit, then it got old. Then it continued to rain.

I spent more than double my usual commute time from work to the Starbucks on Franklin Road in Brentwood where my friend and I meet weekly to walk and talk.

Thankfully, I had classic 90’s tunes in the form of the fantastic album, Surfacing, by Sarah McLachlan. I do believe that 90’s music by and large is better than the current pop music playing on most radio stations.

Still, I got stuck in traffic. At times, I’m fairly certain I could have gotten out of my car and walked faster than I was driving.

I don’t know what it is, but being in extended traffic makes me weary. I suppose it’s from being constantly hyper-aware of all those drivers around me (including those numbskulls who STILL don’t have their lights on in the rain EVEN after my last blog specifically on that topic).

Ultimately, being stuck in traffic means that I have a job to drive to and from, a car to drive in, and a me that is healthy and able to drive said car to said workplace. That in itself outweighs and inconveniences caused by traffic delays and the snail’s pace.

It’s still all about perspective. Before you complain about your life, remember that you still have it better than most of the world’s population. In fact, most people would give anything to have your problems versus the ones that they are facing.

Before you whine about being the 99%, remember that if you have a roof over your head, more clothes than the ones on your back, more than one meal a day, running water, transportation, and cash in your pocket, globally speaking, you are the 1%.

Plus, I had a very good chestnut praline latte at Starbucks to reward myself for not losing my everloving mind over being in the car so long.

All in all, I’d call it a good day.

 

Rain, Rain, Go Away

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I know it’s only been raining for three days, but it feels like much longer. 

Simply put, I’m ready for some sunshine. Even if it comes with bitterly cold winds and sub-freezing temps. I just want to see the sun again.

The beautiful part about this weather is that it will change. It’s highly unlikely that it will rain every single day for the rest of my life. Unless I move to Seattle. But that’s also highly unlikely.

We’ve all been through dark, dreary days, spiritually speaking. Those are the days where your life makes less sense, where the voices of fear and doubt are harder to drown out or dismiss, where it’s hard to imagine lofe ever feeling good again.

Those days end, too. God promised so.

Some times, it takes a change in your attitude. Sometimes, it takes deliberately finding three things a day to be thankful for (and if you do that for 21 days, your perspective changes). Sometimes, it takes remembering that God is really in control and that He knows what He’s doing in working all these things together for His glory and your ultimate good.

I still prefer not to drive in rain, especially at night. But that’s a topic for another day. 

My PSA for the Day

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This will be short and sweet. Well, it will be short.

When it’s overcast and/or rainy, for the love of all that’s holy, turn on your headlights.

Just because you can see other drivers does not mean they can see you. When your lights are on, you give them extra time to react when you cut in front of them on the interstate (which is another bad idea).

Having your lights on when it’s raining is a state law in Tennessee. It’s common courtesy. It should be common sense, but apparently common sense is a flower that doesn’t grow in everybody’s garden.

I’m far from being a perfect driver, but I do turn on my headlights when it’s rainy or overcast. Almost all of the time. Except for when I’m distracted.

I should turn on my headlights in the rain. You should turn on your headlights in the rain.

The end.

Every Ornament Tells a Story

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Today, I helped my parents decorate the Family Christmas Tree. We used every ornament, every bit of tinsel, and every strand of fake pearls we could find. It was great.

Some of those ornaments are almost as old as I am. Some are basically me scribbling on a styrofoam cup under the close supervision of my kintergarden teacher.

Every ornament brings back memories. Some are of the people who gave us the ornament. Some are of the timeframe of the creation of the ornament.

Some are looking a bit old and ratty. Yet somehow when they’re all on that tree, they end up looking beautiful. Maybe that’s a perfect picture of Christ’s Church. Individually, many of us aren’t much to look at, but together we make God visible to the world.

So I’ll take that Family Christmas Tree over any fancy decorated tree in any upscale department store. It holds a lot of my best memories.

Return to the Dog-Sitting Life

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So, it’s Thanksgiving Day and I am back dog-sitting for one of my favorites, Millie. Actually, they’re all my favorites, but Millie is special.

She’s always so glad to see me and perks up whenever I’m around. You’d never know she’s 15.

Dogs (and cats) teach us to appreciate the small things. It takes so little to make a dog happy– a pat on the head, some kind words, a few treats. They are grateful beings.

What if we were that grateful for everything? 

What if all we had were the things and people we expressed our gratitude for? Who and what would we have left?

That is a sobering and convicting thought for most of us. Maybe it’s extra incentive not to let our gratitude and thanks go unexpressed.

Let those people in your life know that you’re thankful for them while they’re still in your life. One day, it will be too late.

Oh, and enjoy those Thanksgiving leftovers. They’re always better on the next day.

In Whatever You Do

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“Surely, no matter what you are doing (speaking, writing, or working), do it all in the name of Jesus our Master, sending thanks through Him to God our Father” (Colossians 3:17 VOICE).

So, this is my 1,955th blog. Tonight, I revisited an old classic, To Catch a Thief, from the year 1955. Coincidence? I think not.

It’s always nice when a Wednesday turns into a Friday. For the lucky ones (like me), that means that we get both Thanksgiving Day and The Day After Thanksgiving (also known in some circles as Black Friday) off from work.

I’m thinking about these words. Whatever you do, do it all in the name of Jesus, sending thanks through Him to God our Father.

Do it all for the glory of God out of a spirit of thanksgiving. How appropriate is this verse? Maybe that’s why the good folks at Bible Gateway chose this to be their verse of the day on this November 25, 2015.

Today, I am thankful for my job. I’m thankful for my car that got me to my job. I’m thankful for good health and legs that were able to get me to my car, which got me to my job.

I’m thankful for friends who refuse to accept bumper sticker answers to hard questions. I’m thankful that I have friends who have stuck around when maybe they shouldn’t have.

I’m thankful for the abundance of turkeys who made the ultimate sacrifice for our feasts tomorrow. Your sacrifice will not be in vain. Trust me.

I’m thankful for 15-year old furry babies who still like to curl up in my lap and lower my blood pressure in the process.

I’m thankful for every single day that I get to live and remember those who didn’t get that chance.

I’m just plain thankful.

The end.

 

 

Jesus Sees You

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Tonight at Kairos, Mike Glenn talked about wee little Zaccheus and how he climbed up a wee little sycamore tree to see Jesus. Or maybe for Jesus to see him.

How many of us long to be seen and noticed by others? How many yearn for someone to say, “I see you. I see your struggles and victories, scars and joys. You are not invisible.”

Jesus saw Zaccheus. Not as the tax-collector who cheated people for extra profits, but as a broken man needing to be noticed. As someone who was lost and needed finding.

Jesus sees you. He doesn’t see your job title (or lack of one). He doesn’t see your impressive resume of mistakes and fiascos. He sees you.

He sees a broken person who’s tried every kind of piece to fill in the gap. He sees someone who holds the weight of the world on his mind and on his shoulders. He sees someone who yearns for love but doesn’t quite know how to ask for it.

He sees you.

Best of all, He sees the best possible you, the you that not even you can see. It’s the you that God always meant for you to be, your absolute best self when you look most like Jesus and feel most alive.

Jesus asked Zaccheus to come down out of his tree. He didn’t demand it. He didn’t force Zaccheus down. He asked.

If Zaccheus had refused Jesus’ offer, Jesus probably would have moved on and Zaccheus would have missed out on what he was looking for.

Sometimes, it takes you climbing down out of your tree, your self-imposed barrier to everything that’s hurt you and made you feel like less. Sometimes, you have to walk away from everything that’s comfortable to follow Jesus.

But it’s always worth it. Because Jesus not only knows and sees the real you, He will tell you who you really are. He will show you. And He will transform you.

That’s great news for all the Zaccheuses out there. Including me.

 

Thanksgiving and Thanksliving

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“Go through His gates, giving thanks; walk through His courts, giving praise. Offer Him your gratitude and praise His holy name. Because the Eternal is good, His loyal love and mercy will never end, and His truth will last throughout all generations” (Psalm 100:4-5, The Voice).

These days, you hear a lot about how thankful everybody is. Especially on November 26, known on most calendars as Thanksgiving Day.

What about the other 51 weeks of the year?

You find that thanksgiving works best when gratitude becomes the attitude of your heart and not something you celebrate only around holidays and special occasions.

Thanksgiving becomes thanksliving when gratitude becomes less of an act and more of a lifestyle.

You really do see more of God when you see everything as grace and a gift from His band. I’ve found that out through experience.

You really do find what you seek. If you go around expecting the worst, all you see is bad news. When you look for the good, seeing blessing in everything, you find that you being alive today is the miracle. You breathing in and breathing out is pure grace.

I confess that I’m not always good at gratitude. Often, I get caught up in the trap game of comparison, which leads either to pride or despair. Either way, you never see the entire picture of what (or who) you’re comparing yourself with.

If I do any comparing, it’s with myself. I want to be better than I was yesterday. I want to be less critical and more compassionate, less grudging and more giving, less fretful and more forgiving. I know that I’m a long way from who I used to be and am not nearly what I shall be when Jesus is through with me.

So, live thankfully. Be grateful. Don’t let Thanksgiving be one day out of the year where you eat your weight in turkey, but an attitude that carries you through all 365 days of the year.

 

Lavished Love

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“Consider the kind of extravagant love the Father has lavished on us—He calls us children of God! It’s true; we are His beloved children” (1 John 3:1a).

Don’t rush past this like I’ve done all these years. Take it in slowly and savor what you’re reading.

This Father, the King of the Universe, has LAVISHED his love on us.

I can’t help but thinking of a chapter I read in a book called The Autobiography of God by Lloyd John Ogilvie. The very first chapter is called The Prodigal God, about the parable of the prodigal son.

In it, Ogilvie defines prodigality as that of being extravagant, excessive, and wasteful. He says the character in that parable that best fits the description of prodigal is the father.

The father is the one who had every right after his son left home to hold a mock funeral and to live as though he had only one son. He could very well have written his son off the way his son had written him off.

But that’s not what happened.

I imagine that father waited every day in the same spot on that front porch, looking out into the horizon for any sign of his son.

I know for a fact that the father RAN (something dignified men NEVER did back in that day and age). The father fell on his son’s neck and lavished him with fatherly kisses and affection.

This was my son who was dead, he said, and is now alive.

That’s the picture of the extravagant kind of love the Heavenly Father lavishes on us. It’s that excessive. It’s that wasteful when you consider how many of us ignore it or take it for granted (and I am one of those).

The Father is running after you, not to scold or punish you, but to envelop you in His arms and tell you right now that He loves you just the way you are, soot-covered, shame-covered, sin-covered, but He in His love refuses to leave you the way He found you.

He wants you to be living out of the full knowledge that you are a son, a daughter, a child of God.

 

The Five Longest Minutes

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I tried an experiment on my second visit of the evening to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. I set the timer on my phone for five minutes, and I spent five minutes in silence, not reading anything, not saying anything, not looking my phone. It was just me sitting in a pew in semi-darkness for five minutes.

Five long minutes.

It’s amazing how society has conditioned us to need almost constant stimuli from the radio, television, tablets, internet, and smart phones. Our attention span is so much shorter than it was even twenty years ago.

It’s good for the soul to be silent.

I think of it like rebooting a computer every so often. It helps it to run more smoothly and to reset the equilibrium when things get a bit off-kilter.

We need rebooting periodically. That’s what silence and meditation are for.  That’s what prayer and fasting are for. That’s why God instituted the Sabbath as a day of rest, although historically His people haven’t been very good at using that day for the purpose of which it was intended.

I’m not very good at any kind of silence. That five minutes seemed a lot longer to me than five minutes. It definitely seemed a lot longer than five minutes spent on Pinterest or Instagram. I’ve been known to waste way more than five minutes scrolling through the posts on Facebook at the end of the day.

Silence takes discipline, something that the culture around us seems to treat with disdain. You don’t see or hear many advertisements extolling the virtues of discipline and self-denial. Usually, it’s quite the opposite.

So there I was in that quiet space for five whole minutes, not saying anything, not reading anything, praying as I felt led. It was refreshing and soul-cleansing. I felt more relaxed and less anxious. I felt at peace with myself and with God.

I should probably do that more often.