friendship

Step by Step

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You know what generation you are by what song came to mind with the above title. If you are from my generation, it was probably Huey Lewis and the News. If you came a generation later, you probably heard the song by New Kids on the Block.

But that has nothing to do with anything. Just one of those random observances that I am so very good at.

I went to the Opryland Hotel after work to see the Christmas lights. I ate at the food court at Opry Mills and walked over. After I reached the hotel, I probably walked for at least a solid hour.

Today, I logged over 21,000 steps on my Fitbit. That’s a new personal record.

It’s true that every journey begins with a single step.

It’s also true that there will be some days and seasons when you don’t feel at all like making a journey, when you are bone-weary, all you can do is put one foot in front of the other.

True maturity and spirituality isn’t about doing great things. It’s about how you keep taking the next step, no matter what, even if you don’t know where the next step will lead you.

If you’re not in that dark place, maybe what God is calling you to is to walk with somebody who’s there. Maybe you can be the encouragement a friend needs to keep going when all they want to do is quit.

One downside from sitting down after all that walking is that you realize how sore you are. On the upside, I saw the usual amazing lights and decorations, plus I got in a fair amount of people-watching (which is probably one of my favorite sports).

Life is hard, so go easy on yourself and on others. You never know the secret battles many are facing, so be sure to err on the side of grace and forgiveness.

Always.

 

Invited

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“But you, Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
        of the clans of Judah, are no poor relation—
    From your people will come a Ruler
        who will be the shepherd of My people, Israel,[b]
    Whose origins date back to the distant past,
        to the ancient days” (Micah 5:2, The Voice).

For some of you, this time of year is the time when you feel the most insignificant of all. You just happen to be scrolling through your Facebook feed and you see all the exciting events and parties that your friends are having that you weren’t invited to.

Maybe you end up sitting alone on your couch on Fridays and Saturdays because no one thought to ask if you had any plans for the weekend.

It’s easy to feel like you don’t matter to anyone. You are not alone. But you matter to Someone.

You’ve been invited to celebrate a birthday. Not just any birthday. This is the birthday of God-turned-fetus-turned-newborn wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.

The first evangelists of the blessed event were smelly shepherds. If anyone could feel like unwanted outsiders, it would have been them. Their occupation didn’t lend itself to a lot of socializing.

This year, Jesus invites you to celebrate His birthday. You don’t even have to bring anything– just you. It doesn’t even matter if you cleaned up and straightened up. All He’s asking is that you show up.

There’s not a single person in the Bible who found significance before God called them. Your significance ultimately isn’t in where you live, what you do for a living, or who you know. It’s Who knows you. It’s Who chose you.

At The Church at Avenue South, Aaron Bryant said that God is drawn to the insignificant, off-the-radar people.

Look at where God chose to introduce Himself to humanity. It wasn’t Rome or Jerusalem, but backwater Bethlehem via a peasant couple surrounded by barn animals and some of those aforementioned stinky shepherds.

God was (and still is) saying that all lives matter. Every life has significance. Simply being created in the image of God gives you incredible significance.

Just remember that when you’re sitting in the dark staring at your cat. You matter.

 

Do Not Seek the Treasure!

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 “Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or—worse!—stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being” (Matthew 6:19).

I went to dinner with some friends and the topic of discussion turned to internet security and hackers. There was much that I did not understand and that made my brain hurt, but the gist of the conversation is this– if someone wants your stuff bad enough, they’re probably going to find a way to get it.

There’s no such thing as security when it comes to the internet. Someone (or maybe several someones) out there is smart enough, patient enough, wily enough to crack any encryption and figure out any password.

Besides, even if you manage to fend off every thief, swindler, and hacker out there, you still can’t take it with you when you die. Case in point: have you ever seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul? Me neither.

Jesus told us that true treasures aren’t the kind behind bank vaults or in walnut frames behind your desk or the initials before and after your name. True treasures aren’t things; they’re people.

I heard a pastor say once that the reason the streets in heaven are paved with gold is that gold isn’t the real currency there. It’s like asphalt is here. The true currency in heaven is L-O-V-E. Not the syrupy, romantic kind in all those power ballads, but the kind that gives up its rights and lays down its life for the beloved. Like Jesus.

What’s the point to all this? I’m not saying to withdraw all your money and put it under your mattress. I’m telling you to remember that your worth isn’t found in your bank account or your job title or your degrees. Your true worth is in how much you love and how much you are loved.

The best treasure of all is knowing that the King of the Universe loves you truly, madly, deeply, and that love will never change.

The end.

PS I just remembered a great line from It’s a Wonderful Life that seems appropriate here– you can only take with you that which you’ve given away.

Looking for the Pause Button

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Sometimes, I wish life had a remote control, like in that Adam Sandler movie where he fast-forwards through the boring parts of his life.

Only I wouldn’t be looking for the fast-forward button. I’d want to pause my life.

Today, I went to the funeral of a friend’s dad. I hadn’t seen or talked to him in a long time, but I remember him as being a quiet, gentle man who loved his God and his family and who also happened to own the first PC that I had ever seen.

I saw him lying in the coffin, looking like a perfect wax replica of a person. Then I remembered that I was looking not at the man, but at the shell. The moment he breathed his last he was instantly in the presence of Jesus, fully alive and healthy and happy.

I heard where two Briarcrest students who were set to embark on their senior year of high school died Friday at the hands of a drunk driver who had four DUIs in the last five years.

There’s too much sadness and loss in the world. Too many people had to say goodbye to the ones they loved, while more than that never got the chance.

I sense more than ever how precious and fleeting this life is. I understand more how important it is never to take anyone in your life for granted.

I’m thinking about the quote from the movie The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel– “There’s no present like the time.”

I recall a pastor who said that at best this life is like a clean bus station. You don’t set up a bedroom suite and move all your belongings into a Greyhound terminal, because it’s only a stop along the way toward your final destination.

This life is so brief because this is not our final destination. Heaven is. As much as I keep forgetting, as much as I want that pause button to work, I know that I can’t stop that second hand from racing clockwise toward another tomorrow.

I can only choose to live each moment fully and to be fully present to every person in every place at every moment that I’m given. I can know that in God’s economy nothing is ever wasted and the good a person does follows after them. Your legacy will far outlive you and in the end, it won’t be what you did for a living or who you knew, but who you were and what you did with what God gave you.

 

Real Love

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“If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5).

Love. It gets talked about quite a lot these days. We talk about how we love our spouses and children. We also say how much we love oreos or vanilla ice cream. We use the same word for the people whom we pledged to spend the rest of our lives with as we use for food groups.

The Greek language has four words for love. I won’t get all technical on you, but basically those words in English are companionship (between people or even between a person and his or her dog), friendship, erotic/sexual/romantic love and unconditional love. The last kind is a kind that only originates from God and while we may say we love others with this kind of love, it’s really God loving those people through us.

Love is more than a feeling. It’s definitely more than the sappy lyrics to any of the multitude of syrupy love songs you’ll hear on the radio. Real love is an action, a choice, a verb. It means you always act toward the best interests of the beloved, whether you feel like it or not.

If love is a feeling, then it won’t last, because no feeling lasts forever. But if love is a choice, then you can always keep choosing to love and keep choosing to act lovingly even when you don’t feel love.

 

 

The Odd Blog

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I had an idea or two about what I was going to write about this evening, but at the moment, neither of them seem as compelling. Plus, I’m very tired.

I’m thankful for people. I know it’s an odd thing to say. Besides, people can be disappointing and rude and unkind at times. Even the best of people have their off days every now and then, not to mention periods of grumpiness and bad moods.

But life without people isn’t nearly as fulfilling as life with people. As much as I love my cat, she’s not the most stimulating conversationalist I’ve ever met. She tends to be a little short on words.

The right people in your life can inspire and encourage you to do more than you thought you could. They can keep you going when you by yourself would have given up.

That’s what I want. I want someone to say, “Because of you, I kept going. I didn’t give up.”

I’ve had those people come into my life at just the right moments. Some were only meant for a short season and some are still around. I thank God for all of them.

My assignment for you is this: find someone who needs encouragement and be that encouragement. Find someone who won’t believe that God loves them until they see it from you. Find people who doesn’t see much in themselves and help them to see that they too bear the Imago Dei, the image of God, and are intrinsically valuable.

In short, love people the way you want to be loved. Treat people like you want to be treated. And remember that God loved you at that moment when you were at your very worst, so you can love anybody.

Seasons

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The writer of Ecclesiastes talked about there being a season for everything in life– a time to be born and a time to die, a time to laugh and a time to mourn, etc.

I’ve found that to be very true. Especially in my social life.

There have been times when I have constantly been around people and there are times when I’ve felt alone. There have been times when I felt very popular and times when it seemed like I was the only one not invited to all the social activities I was seeing plastered all over social media.

I’ve come to terms with that.

I am who I am, regardless of whether that makes me popular or not. I have friends who I still see on a regular basis and some that I don’t see nearly as much as I used to. Again, that’s okay.

It doesn’t matter who else knows me and knows where I am when God does. While it  would be nice to occasionally hang out with celebrities (and who hasn’t daydreamed about that?) and have some of them know your name, the best part of all is that the God of the universe not only knows your name but has it engraved on the palms of His hands.

That’s worth celebrating.

So maybe I spend a night or two alone while people I know are off having a grand time at places I wasn’t invited to. I’ll live. Things like that don’t bother me anymore.

It took a very long time for me to get to this point. I don’t claim to have fully arrived or to be 100% mature about all this, but I am so much further along than I was two years ago.

That’s the key– not so much looking at how far you have to go but seeing how far you’ve already come and the progress, no matter how small it seems, that you’ve made. That’s what really matters.

 

A Puritan Prayer on Contentment

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image

I have a book called The Valley of Vision. It’s essentially a collection of really old, i.e. 1600’s Puritan prayers. I chose one of them at random to share with you (and because it’s just so freakin’ awesome).

“Heavenly Father, if I should suffer need, and go unclothed, and be in poverty, make my heart prize Your love, know it, be constrained by it, though I be denied all blessings. It is Your mercy to afflict and try me with wants, for by these trials I see my sins, and desire severance from them. Let me willingly accept misery, sorrows, temptations, if I can thereby feel sin as the greatest evil, and be delivered from it with gratitude to You, acknowledging this as the highest testimony of Your love.

When Your Son, Jesus, came into my soul instead of sin He became more dear to me than sin had formerly been; His kindly rule replaced sin’s tyranny. Teach me to believe that if ever I would have any sin subdued I must not only labour to overcome it, but must invite Christ to abide in the place of it, and He must become to me more than vile lust had been; that His sweetness, power, life may be there. Thus I must seek a grace from Him contrary to sin, but must not claim it apart from Himself.

When I am afraid of evils to come, comfort me by showing me that in myself I am a dying, condemned wretch, but in Christ I am reconciled and live; that in myself I find insufficiency and no rest, but in Christ there is satisfaction and peace; that in myself I am feeble and unable to do good, but in Christ I have ability to do all things. Though now I have His graces in part, I shall shortly have them perfectly in that state where You will show Yourself fully reconciled, and alone sufficient, efficient, loving me completely, with sin abolished. O Lord, hasten that day.”

Those Puritans sure knew how to pray.

Friends and Pins and Stuff

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friends-quote

I have a Pinterest account. I think I’ve established that fact.

I will go a while without pinning anything and then I will pin for 30 minutes straight. Or something like that. I’ve never actually timed my pinning sessions.

Lately, I’ve been pinning a lot of Friends- themed pins. It’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that the last episode of that show aired 10 years ago. 10 years.

In my mind, 1994 was 10 years ago, not 2004. It’s like I have a 10-year block in my brain. And I am really not ready for 1984 to be 30 years in the past.

I don’t feel 40-something. Most of the time I feel 30-something (or even 20-something on really good days). The joke is that you feel like you’re in your 20’s until you hang out with actual 20-somethings, then you feel your own age again.

So back to Friends. I still love watching the re-runs. All those characters were so perfectly cast and each one had his or her own quirks and faults and strong points. Like me. I’m sure I have my strengths and weaknesses like anybody else.

I think we all have to realize that as imperfect as we are, so is everybody else around us. If I can give myself grace for not being perfect and for committing the occasional blunder or two, I can do the same for others.

It’s easy to nurse the wounds and play the martyr and hold grudges. Somehow, it feels better. But it’s not the better way. Jesus showed that the better way is forgiveness. The better way is turning the other cheek. The better way is loving your enemies.

Notice I didn’t say the easier way. Usually, the better way is the harder way because it goes against my natural inclinations. I’d rather treat others like they treat me and not give those who don’t treat me right the time of day.

But ultimately, it’s not about how others treat me. It’s about how Jesus treated me when I was a stranger and an alien and an enemy. That’s my new standard now.

And no, I didn’t expect to go from 90’s TV sitcoms to heavy theology in one blog. That’s just how I roll sometimes.

Throwing Rocks

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 2 Comments

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“I’ve been tryin’ to get down
to the Heart of the Matter
But everything changes
And my friends seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me anymore” (Don Henley).

Kairos was fantastic as usual tonight. Amy Jo Girardier spoke on forgiveness, which probably is something that doesn’t come easy to any of us. Especially those who carry the scars of wounds and words from those who were supposed to nourish and protect.

For some reason, I thought about the scene from Forrest Gump where Jenny is throwing rocks at her old house. It’s the place where her own father abused her for years, where all her woundedness came from. After she throws the last rock, she collapses on the ground into weeping. Forrest Gump say a line which I think is the best line in the whole movie: “Sometimes there aren’t enough rocks.”

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Unforgiveness is like carrying rocks. You visualize confronting the person or persons who cut you with their words, who betrayed your trust, who let you down, who deserted you in your time of need, who feigned friendship while sticking the knife in your back. You imagine what it would be like to use the rocks to wound them like they wounded you.

It seems like the natural thing to do. You have every right to be angry, to hurt, to want justice– even revenge.

But maybe what God is calling you to do is to take those rocks and build an altar. On that altar, you sacrifice your right to be angry. You give up expecting that the person can fix what they did to you. You let go of hatred and of wishing them harm. Instead you learn to pray for them and even eventually love them.

Then you realize you’re not the only one wounded. The person who hurt you was acting out of his own woundedness. He’s continuing the cycle of violence, of cutting words, of lashing out, because it’s all he knows.

Forgiveness breaks the cycle. Forgiveness opens the door of the prison of hate and anger and bitterness and the person who walks out is you. You are the one set free when you choose to forgive.

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One of my favorite quotes from C. S. Lewis deals with forgiveness and the high cost that comes with it:

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life – to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son – How can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night ‘Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.”

Forgiveness is hard, but in my experience, not forgiving and carrying the weight and burden of all that anger, bitterness, and hurt is harder.

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