Distraction
Since I’ve been sick, I have some time, so I’m doing an awful lot of thinking about distraction. The last straw was yesterday, my Bible in my lap, reading Philemon until finally realizing I had no idea what I had just read. This wouldn’t have taken a monumental feat of focus. Philemon is 1 chapter, barely a page. (I think the letter is pretty funny, too. Paul is sort of manipulating a slave-owner, saying things like, “I could make you, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll ask…I don’t want you to do it because you’re forced to, but because you want to…I’ll pay anything he owes, and won’t mention how much you owe me.” Ha!Th)
But I’m sick, and as always, very dramatic about being sick. At the risk of oversharing super-gross information, there is absolutely no way that my head could store in 3 lifetimes all of the mucous that is coming out of me. Where does it come from??? It’s just produced from nothing at all, like the water, land & stars in Genesis 1. But all of it makes my head feel like it’s underwater, unable to think clearly and coherently.
Illness is simply one of so many. One of the biggest struggles of living a purposeful life is to maintain a focus on our call & mission. The constant barrage of stimulation that (may or may not) require immediate attention can keep us like animals frantically chasing the next shiny object. We live in reaction, intention is a dream, and days and weeks are lost to the blur of distraction.
There are people, with our drama, divisions, responsibilities, and breaks. Work. Our daily practices, spiritual and otherwise (even though there really is no otherwise – all of life is spiritual). Ministry. And on and on, right? There’s no end in sight.
What’s surprising is that all of these ‘distractions’ are good things. How can spiritual practice become an obstacle to our focus, or mission? When it becomes the point, the end, instead of the means to a greater end. We are called to love people, to have “dirty pens” (my paraphrase of Proverbs 14:4), and that dirt can sidetrack our call. Helping to carry each other’s burdens is beautiful, but the burdens can easily become dead weight. When ministry is solely a rote activity to check boxes and not an expression of gratitude or glorification, then it becomes distasteful and a tool of the enemy.
My sickness kept me from several appointments and opportunities. Of course, I needed the rest, needed to regain my health, but the fact is that there was a big cost. I think the main thing is to acknowledge those costs, to have our eyes opened to the spaces where our focus can be drawn away from our true love. Then we can decide. It can be anything, it really doesn’t matter what we choose. Sleeping last week was probably the more important thing for me, but any step towards bringing the intention and attention back into our lives is vital. Our work is simply another way of worship, as long as we make it so. Everything can be worship, as long as we make it so.
The reason music on vinyl is so great is not the sound. It’s the ritual. We decide what we want to hear, choose the record, remove the album from the sleeve, set the needle down, and become active listeners. We can become active participants in these gracious divine gifts that are our lives, and this can happen as soon as we say it does. It can happen today.
Something Happened
So, a bad thing happened. One of us had a car accident, and that happens. It’s an expensive lesson, but it is a space where life teaches out loud, and maybe someday, we’ll be very thankful for the lesson and the cost will be very low.
Before the sermon yesterday, I read the account of Jacob & his dream, from Genesis. This is not unusual, I refer to it often. But sometimes, the message of “surely God was in this place and I was unaware (Gen 28:16),” or, as I paraphrase, “don’t miss your life and the people in it (Chad 24:365),” hits differently.
Everything valuable in that accident was ok. The most valuable to me got in our car & came home with the Angel & I. The other valuables had minor damage to their vehicles, but went home, as well. There are a million ways that day ends where everyone doesn’t come home. I am grateful, in ways I can’t express.
When I read that passage yesterday, I nearly began to weep, because “What if…” The beautiful gift of this life we’ve been given, the beautiful gift of each other, can be very fragile, and what if (one of those million inexplicably horrific ways that too many have to endure)? Our hearts don’t seem big and/or strong enough to hold all of this love. But they are – we’ve been made in the image of our God.
We keep loving, and keep loving, and keep loving. Of course, it can hurt like crazy, where it feels like the pain won’t ever stop. And we love anyway. The only way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to be alone, and that won’t do at all. Being made in the image of a triune God means being alone is “not good,” according to Genesis 1 & 2. Loving with a whole heart, mind, and soul requires living with the possibility of the dreaded “what ifs.” I hope the “what ifs” never, ever happen to anybody. But I certainly do hope we all know the love that makes the “what if” so vicious.
The tears are an offering poured out from a fully present, engaged, working, thankful heart. A heart that is created to keep loving and loving and loving.
Instead, Offense
After the message yesterday, the Angel graciously (as softly as possible) informed me that, “You said 3 points, but I have no idea what they were. I only had 1.” This is not a strength of mine. I have lots of strengths, (well, several strengths), but easy steps to enlightenment isn’t one of them. So, here they are:
1. Embrace Your Humanness. We are human. We will fail. Julie Z. says, “Humble people have an ability to withstand failure/criticism because they have an inner sense of the value of being human rather than externals.” Externals are bumps, obstacles, utter failures, and they don’t mean there is something wrong with us, that we’re broken, or that we’ve let everyone down and have no value in the universe. It simply means we’re human, and we’ve taken a shot. That’s a very, very good thing.
The Gospel Equation is: God, Scripture, the Helmet of Salvation, our Value, Identity in Him > (is greater than) our circumstances and/or performance. For instance, my love for my son is exactly the same if he has 40 and hits a game-winner at the buzzer, OR if he goes 1-28 and they lose by 1,000,000. In fact, my love for him doesn’t change if he doesn’t play basketball at all.
The Action Step is to: Try something you don’t know how to do (learn something new) AND fail a lot.
2. Practice Mindfulness and Self-Compassion. “Mindfulness grows our self-awareness,” Julie Z writes, “by giving us permission to stop and notice our thoughts and emotions without judgment. If we judge what’s going on inside us, we paint a distorted view of ourselves.” We can change only if we can learn to see ourselves kindly and discover where our unhealthy/limiting beliefs are, accept them (and ourselves), and then transform them with Jesus.
Our Action Step is to ask ourselves what we think (about anything & everything). Why do we think that? Is it helping, hurting, limiting, or freeing? Be introduced to and pleased to meet you.
3. Express gratitude. Gratitude makes us less self-focused and more focused on those around us. In other words, gratitude makes us more humble and much less awful. The Action Step: Say Thanks…often.
In a sentence, learn who you are, learn who they are, take care of you & each other, and be thankful for all of it. You are created in God’s image…and so are they, and that is awesome. That’s probably why she couldn’t tell the difference between 1, 2 & 3. I can’t. Each gives and takes from the other, the lines that divide are blurred, and it becomes a kind of circle that feeds the circle.
Now, I’m writing today, not to restate yesterday’s bullet points, but because of a conversation over lunch. A man said to me that what he thought during the message is how he’d been playing defense, almost exclusively, and how he needed to send the offense on the field. (Maybe we all use and understand sports metaphors is because Sports are, without question, the American Religion.) What he meant is that he had been reacting to the changing landscape of his life – like we all do. When our schedules or circumstances shift, our days look different, our routines & practices are altered, and we adjust. When we finally adjust, things change again, and we return to GO.
What you may notice is that these 3 clear, easy to remember points require a tremendous intentionality. As far as I can tell, intention is the opposite of reaction. It’s hard to be thankful when work is upside down. And when the storms are raging, who has time to wonder what we think, or how we feel about it? Right? That’s why it’s so vital that we don’t just coast during the ordinary time.
We dive into Ephesians so that, when life flattens us, we either already have our helmets on, or we know to put them on right away, before we do anything else. We become the kind of people who see beauty, not for the perfect days like today, but for when it’s cold and rainy, so that our souls know to keep looking around for the divine. Our identity is deeply imprinted on us in practice, so that we don’t waver on game days, when we’re 0-4 with 4 strikeouts.
So now what? As always, the “now what?” is to love somebody. Reaction happens, there are sometimes entire seasons where we have to play defense, but maybe we can remember to turn the offense loose from time to time.
“Gifts”
The Buddhist saying, “the world is divided into those who are right,” is really tearing me up this week. A general rule of ministry is that we are given the “gift” of attack in the spaces we are most vulnerable, in those hard to reach places where we will be wildly uncomfortable. AND that these “gifts” will be given at the worst possible time.
I used to not really believe in spiritual warfare or the devil or demons or anything like that – I thought it was fiction to excuse our own poor decisions and behavior (which, of course, it is, sometimes). But I was wrong, I believe all of it now. I also believe that God can, and does, take these moments and transform them. We grow in/through the battlefield. And most importantly, in the fight, we see that He is there, that He has never left us alone.
Division is probably the greatest tactic of the enemy, constantly whispering our right-ness, our superiority, into our ears. Our heads and hearts are filled with “how they are,” or how to view “them.” That’s why humility is so important, and so impossibly hard.
Socrates says, “wisdom is, above all, knowing what we don’t know. He taught an intellectual form of humility that freely acknowledges the gaps in our knowledge and that humbly seeks to address our blind spots.” What we don’t know?? It’s hard to remain arrogantly superior with gaps in our knowledge, or blind spots.
And Aristotle understood humility as a “moral virtue, sandwiched between the vices of arrogance and moral weakness.” Like Socrates, he believed that humility must include “accurate self-knowledge and a generous acknowledgment of the qualities of others that avoids distortion and extremes.”
Division based on our being right is not generous. Instead, it ignores the qualities of others. And our supremacy thrives on distortions and extremes!
These “gifts,” and attacks can produce a result that is in direct opposition to the one intended. We can see them as the biggest & best evidence that we have much more work to do. We won’t need to prove or defend our imagined superiority, because we will be secure in our identity in him: loved, accepted, forgiven, and made holy. This knowledge will give is the courage to be vulnerable and uncomfortable. We won’t want to build any walls, because we will be too busy tearing them down. And we can keep taking a sledgehammer of love to the fear and inadequacy that draws these silly lines of division. And we can open our eyes to the peace of Jesus Christ, and as we do, we can encourage others to do the same.
This is (and we are) a New Creation, it’s time we act like it.
Todays
Last night, we went to a nearby Catholic school to watch a high school girls softball game. It was my first since I was at college, but that might not count. I was only there to see the Angel, so maybe a game happened, maybe our school won, maybe they played with NERF balls or in ball gowns, maybe, but who could possibly care? Not me, that’s for sure. I had been away for 2 months in California, wasting time post-graduation, and spent most of those 2 months with my brother, sister and their cats, listening to music, writing, and missing my special lady.
Anyway, last night. After an extra inning, our school won. How did I end up at a high school softball game? For a very similar reason to the one in which I previously found myself at a softball game; a girl. My son has a girlfriend who is a star. I know she’s a terrific athlete, but it’s one thing to hear it and another altogether to see it. In the extra inning, with runners on 2nd and 3rd, she came to the plate… I can’t remember anything in baseball being as much of a foregone conclusion. Baseball is a very difficult game, a “high-failure” sport, where nothing is certain. Except this. These runs would score, everyone there knew it, and a bases clearing triple later, we were all proven right.
Earlier in the day, I gave communion to some friends in their living room. (This is something I hadn’t done before, and it’s something I’ll do again.) The man is ill, the prognosis is not too great, but we shared that moment in our sadness and our care, giving each other and God our presence, the most priceless of gifts we ever truly have to offer. I told them I loved them, and left a couple of hours before the eclipse.
As far as the eclipse, the schools closed early, so my family (all 4 of us) and the softball superhero stood outside in those ridiculous looking glasses looking up through the clouds at the sun.
I’m not sure I was overwhelmed by the eclipse, or what I was feeling, but it was big and heavy and significant. Saturday, we attended a funeral for my cousin. I had the honor of speaking, and I chose to speak about my favorite passage in the Scriptures: “Surely God was in this place, and I was unaware.”
Incidentally, I have quite a few favorite passages, but this one holds special meaning to me. You see, I missed so much of my dad before he passed. And I have missed so much of you, missed so much of my cousin, and missed so much of me.
This post is full of GREAT BIG MOMENTS, but our lives are made up of what is often mistakenly called “ordinary” time. This “ordinary” time is so easily missed, and only then do we realize that it was never ordinary at all, never common. It, and we, are wildly unique and spectacular. A ticket agent’s help in Dallas who was “just” doing her job, a softball dad’s handshake, a dog laying on the floor in a living room while 4 people share communion, laughing at the dinner table, and walking outside in the grass…when did we stop realizing these things were miracles of divine presence? Love isn’t only rose petals and grand gestures, and life isn’t always extra inning RBI triples, it’s sometimes pushing shopping carts & quiet nights reading in bed. It’s not always mountaintops, it’s simply ok. And I don’t have to tell you that other times, it’s heartbreaking.
But these are our lives, each of our todays are gifts, God is in all of these places, and it’s really time to stop missing them, stop taking them for granted, believing the lies that they are anything other than wonderfully, fantastically extraordinary.
Fruit
Do you know you can get married in AT&T Stadium (where the Dallas Cowboys play)? Or have a sweet sixteen party or quinceañera? These are just 2 of the things I learned on my tour of the stadium. And to answer your question, they never addressed why you’d want to.
My son & I went to Dallas earlier this week to see an NBA basketball game, except they had rescheduled the game (I’m still waiting for a response to my email that includes a heartfelt response from Mavericks owner Mark Cuban), so we just went to Dallas. While we were there, we toured the home stadium of everyone’s favorite football team, America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys – I wrote about it on my other blog, lovewithacapitall.com. The spoiler is that I didn’t really love it like I thought I would, but I’m not writing about that, specifically, here.
Something else happened, while I was there, that I am writing about. In last week’s post, I shared about our disappointment with the game. I have very many people (i.e. you) in my life (much more than I could ever deserve) who are beautiful and care for me in such lovely ways. One of them has a Good Friend in Dallas and offered to reach out to help us, with what I expected to be suggestions, directions for an aimless trip. I was mistaken.
We were met at a cool lunch spot by a young woman, who had arranged our day for us, booking tours and making dinner reservations. She spent the day with us, enjoying the experience as much as we did. As it turned out, she was also paying for everything (as representative for the person she worked for, the Good Friend). I can only guess what everything cost, an extraordinary sum, but the actual amount was actually sort of irrelevant, as far as we’re concerned.
What IS important, and the sermon they were preaching to us was on generosity, on our relationship to our money.
You see, Jerry Jones (the owner of the stadium) chose to use his money to create an obscene tower to the heavens, a monument to himself and his own desperate bid for “greatness.” The Cowboys might play there, but there is no mistaking that it is the home of Jerry Jones.
(You don’t have to worry, I will continue to love my Cowboys…but I will not be back to that stadium, unless I’m giving the Sunday morning Gospel message there;)
The Good Friend chose to use his wealth to give to my son & I, 2 people he had not, and still has not, met. He chose to give what he had earned to us, to give what he had been blessed with, he chose to love us. It speaks to the relationship he has with the person we do know, but it speaks more to the character of both. They are conduits. What they have been given, they will give.
Their money is a way to connect, a way to provide, to pass along their faith. Their legacy is gratitude, experience, generosity, care, ministry, and beauty. The legacy of Jones is a massive silver egg in Arlington.
In a story in the Bible, Jesus tells a rich young man to give away all he has and follow Him. The young man can’t, and walks away with only his wealth. He has corporations and empires to build, bank balances that need to grow. Money isn’t evil, it’s just a thing, a tool, that can be used to connect or to destroy. The love of money is the problem; that love is a ravenous monster that devours everything in its path in its insatiable quest for More.
I don’t pretend to know Jerry Jones, and to infer things about his character and his god may be unfair. I am not his judge, thankfully. But I don’t know the Good Friend, either. Sometimes, all others have is our fruit to express our hearts. Our time in Dallas was just a day, but the questions it asked and the contrast in the answers, will last forever.
Streaming Change Announcement
Good morning everyone!
***We are Easter people and tomorrow is Resurrection Sunday!!!!!! I can’t wait to worship our Risen Lord with you!
We’ve gotten to the bottom of the livestreaming problem (sort of), and it will remain a problem. Facebook has implemented some qualifications/regulations on some businesses that affect their livestreaming capabilities. (Now, as far as I can tell, this is only affecting small-to-medium sized churches, but we won’t be reading too closely into that;) Until we have over 60,000 streams of 5,000 followers, we will not be able to stream on the Bridge Facebook page.
We have a YouTube channel that we haven’t used since COVID, and I will upgrade our status on that, and that will be our primary livestreaming platform. But I won’t do that by tomorrow, then I have some responsibilities coming up, so we will, most likely, have that up and running by mid-April.
I may create a Facebook page in my name to stream Sunday services on, as well, but I think YouTube will probably be enough.
Our Facebook page will still be active, we will post there, written posts, and links to YouTube videos will appear there. So, continue to Like and Share.
For this week:
*The 7am sunrise 5 minute mini will be on Facebook, but it will be on Angel’s page (Angel Galloway Slabach).
*The Easter Service will be a Zoom ‘meeting’ and here is that link – just click on the link after “Join Zoom Meeting” and you’ll enter a virtual waiting room and we’ll bring you in:
Chad S is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Easter!!!
Time: Mar 31, 2024 10:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84167206082?pwd=U1pMWjVraERqZ21VNWdDSktPYWFwQT09
Meeting ID: 841 6720 6082
Passcode: 691894
[Social media can be a really beautiful way to connect, but sites sometimes change their policies, and we will need to be flexible to that as we move forward in an increasingly technological world. The best way around this is to show up in person, where Facebook’s nonsense won’t be an obstacle.]
I’ll see you tomorrow morning at 7am from my porch and hopefully at 10:30 at the Bridge!!!!! (…or on Zoom, if you can’t be there to celebrate with us in person)
Love. Peace.
A Heartbreaking Disappointment
For Christmas, the past several years, I’ve taken my son to an NBA basketball game. We live in Pennsylvania, so we go to a game when the 76ers play the Dallas Mavericks.The Mavericks are his favorite team because Luka Doncic is his favorite player by a mile. Last Christmas, I thought it would be amazing to take him to Dallas (his first flight) to see them at their home arena, to play a team other than the 76ers – in this case, Steph Curry & the Golden State Warriors. This was a bigger decision than it might sound, because we can’t exactly afford a flight, hotel, car, and game, but sometimes paying for a debt all year is absolutely worth it. The game is next week, and the season has gone in a direction for both that makes it a very big game. How exciting, right?
Well, apparently the Dallas Mavericks and/or the NBA thought so, too, so they rescheduled the game. The first, the one I bought and gave as Christmas gift, was Tuesday, April 2, Warriors AT Mavericks. Yesterday, I received confirmation for my tickets: Friday, April 5, Warriors at Mavericks. Tuesday, the Mavericks are now going to Golden State. My game tickets are still good, the game has just been moved. Just.
Sometimes, NFL games are “flexed” and change times or even dates, depending on the importance of the game. That is usually ok with me, because, like everybody else, I don’t think much about the impact of a dumb game on others. Things mostly only matter to me in direct correlation to their proximity to me. In other words, I only care if it happens to me. I recognize that isn’t something exclusive to me, it’s a human disease, and if we are interested enough to change, we spend our whole lives taking baby steps to open our minds and hearts to notice and understand the lives of others.
I did think of those poor suckers who have sports tickets to a game to only get it flexed, or rescheduled, away. Today, I am that poor sucker. I am not the usual poor sucker, I know full well that tv contracts drive sports leagues far more than ticket sales. And I know the ticket sales of once/year fathers & sons really doesn’t move any needles at all. Yes, I know these things, and today, I don’t care. I think it’s awful. And I think it’s awful I have to tell my boy the biggest part of the trip we’ve been planning for months has disappeared. I wonder if it’s worth it to fly to Dallas to rent a car and stay at some hotel to eat a few meals out? I wonder if the trees or sun look different there.
Of course, like everybody else, we’d like to see the stadium where the Cowboys play… Is it worth a year of debt? If they let us work out in the team weightroom with the team, maybe. But now that I think about it, I like the Cowboys because of the star on the helmet far more than the name on the back of the jersey (at least since Troy Aikman retired). If I don’t ever do curls with Dak Prescott, it’s not a loss I’ll regret.
When I say it’s awful, I do it in full awareness that in the eternal scope of things, a family missing an NBA game is very low. But relativity simply doesn’t matter when it comes to heartbreak. When a teenage girl breaks up with a boy, the tears don’t come less because the Middle East is in a perpetual war. The diagnosis of a 90 year old woman in Tennessee certainly isn’t as big as the bombs in Ukraine that will kill many, many more over a line on a map (yes, it’s an oversimplification, but you get the point). But it’s not inconsequential to that woman in Tennessee or to her family. It’s seismic and earth-shattering. The boy who has lost his first girlfriend will find another, we all know that, but it doesn’t make it better, it never has and never will.
Our pain is just that, ours. And it doesn’t have much at all to do with relativity. Yours is yours and mine is mine, and one moment spent comparing the 2 is pointless and disrespectful. A broken finger is not a fractured rib, but it still hurts like crazy. We talk honesty here, right? How many times has it made sense when a friend told you what they were walking through but didn’t want to tell you because others have it worse? None. Not one. Not now, not ever.
Because we hurt doesn’t minimize their suffering. We can hold them all in our great big beautiful hearts. I’m angry and disappointed over this ticket catastrophe, but in no way do I confuse it as being a monumental global disaster. Or even as any bigger than it is. But I do think the God that created and loves me cares. A LOT. And is disappointed withus (not in us). I bet He saw that reschedule and all of the fathers & sons who will lose the experience and was disappointed. I bet He saw me when I read that email and longed to hold me with His human arms and ease the storm inside my chest. And that’s good enough for me.
So maybe I’ll see you in Dallas, on Tuesday, at some awesome bbq restaurant or working out with the offensive line. And maybe I won’t.
One Word
I have another website I write on. It isn’t always explicitly spiritual. Of course, it is spiritual; It’s me, and everything is spiritual, but I don’t always use specific verses and I sometimes just write about songs or movies or books. Anyway, the platform that hosts both sites (WordPress/Jetpack) gives a prompt every day, in case you don’t have anything to write about and want to write anyway. This is not usually a problem for me, but it does sometimes set me down an interesting path I didn’t know I wanted to walk. Today I was going to write about a familiar subject, the painful freedom of boundaries, how hard they are to keep, especially as we are all such soft-hearted loving souls. We don’t want to set them, and we second guess, sometimes being terribly rough on ourselves, and go back on them frequently. You see, I have a very good friend… (this is the conception of so many posts – my filthy pens and the beautiful people that are in them with me.)
The site prompt today is “What is one word to describe you?” Or we can modify it into “What one word would you want to describe you?” because I don’t want us even thinking of going down some self-loathing path the enemy has paved for us.
So, who are you, in one word?
It’s a coincidence (if you believe in that kind of thing – another very good friend calls them God-incidences) that I have been thinking about this, in a slightly different way. I want to be the kind of man who is taken for granted (I know that’s 3, but it’s my exercise, so I can use a phrase if I want). I want everyone to know I will always show up, give them my heart, my best, that I will love them, that they are safe and cared for. I want everyone to know I’ll make lots of mistakes, and say sorry & mean it afterwards, and then I’ll grow. I want my boys to forget to thank me when they have a game and I am in the stands, because I am just always in the stands. I want that to describe me. I want everyone to know I believe them, believe in them. That I don’t care who they think they were, but that I care a great deal about who they are, who they will become, Whose they are. I want everyone to take for granted that I am a Genesis 1 (and not Genesis 3) man.
But what started me down this path lately, is that when I am hurting and breaking, I begin to resent that I am taken for granted. It’s the big warning light on my dashboard. I consider closing the pen door, and opening it only for people who say “please,” and “thank you.” This is only for a second, maybe, or a day, but it magnifies who I am created to be, Whose story I am in, and quickly opens my eyes to who I want to become. Painful moments looking into a mirror are terrific teachers. There doesn’t have to be judgment, just conviction and a gentle invitation into this new creation I am. (That is a fairly new understanding.)
Who I want to be doesn’t change. The Gospel doesn’t change. I just turn a little, and I no longer like those sometimes smooth clean wide paths of the enemy. They are not for me, not even close. And I repent. (That is an example of a word I don’t use too much on the other site – I’d say “turn around,” but you know that’s what Jesus meant then, and what I mean now.)
So, what’s your word (or phrase)? Tell me what it is. I’ll show up, I’m safe, a terrific listener, and will be awfully careful with you. And you can take that for granted, please.
Colors
The youth group is going through some changes. (Sometimes, God answers prayers before you even know you have a need for the prayer.) A few weeks ago, the new leader asked a deeply profound question, and I’ll ask it here. We’ve asked variations of it a million times, but maybe that’s the point. Keep asking, seeking, knocking, until our perspective changes, until we change.
So, he says look around this room at all of the blue things. Then, after a few moments, he has them close their eyes, and he asks them, “Ok, what did you see that’s red?” Right?!!? Of course, nobody knows. There are plenty of red things, but none of them were looking for red things.
This is so important, because we find what we’re looking for. How many times have you been looking for that specific lost sock, and then, days later, look for a different sock, and remember that you’ve seen it, but can’t remember where? We find what we’re looking for.
Once, I went to a lecture/sermon given by a famous author named Shane Claiborne with some friends. He blew our minds with his talk of kindness, grace, simplicity, loving like Jesus in real life. His was one of those talks that left you different. You might not yet be sure how, but the you that walked out was very different from the you that entered. The 4 of us went out to eat afterwards and talk about what just happened, and ask important questions of ourselves: What did this mean, for each of us, how would we react tomorrow/next week/next year, what would our dreams look like now, and on and on.
One of us, though, stated, with more than a little offense, “I just wish he wouldn’t have slammed the Catholic Church like that.” None of us remembered anything like that, and when pressed, she referenced 1 line in the middle of a long story about something else entirely. We often find exactly what we’re looking for. We were going to be inspired, and she was going to be offended. We each got what we paid for, that night.
When you leave your house today or tomorrow or Sunday morning, what are you going to be looking for? Will the world be a dangerous place where people are selfish and untrustworthy? You will find that, to be sure, because some of us are dangerous, selfish, and untrustworthy. But what if your eyes were open for the opposite? What if you are searching for beauty and generosity and love? That, too, is there. I would suggest in far greater supply. But I would, wouldn’t I? Because, for me, that is always the “blue” of the exercise.
The question is, what are our blue’s and what are our red’s? Are they what we want them to be? Are they authentic, or are they simply reflections of someone/something else? Are they serving us well? Do they inspire us to love more and more, or limit us? Are our world’s bigger or smaller because of our blue’s? Do we need a shift in our perception?
Sure, it’s scary to reflect and question our tightly held ideas (that have become like our childhood security blankets, soft and comfortable), but we only grow when we choose to have the courage to turn the lights on and discover/re-discover the people we’re called to be. And things are much less scary with hands to hold.
The Bridge Faith Community 