examination

New Years Worksheet

Yesterday, we continued a discussion on the Story we find ourselves in, as well as our role in it. I can’t think of any better day than New Years Day to look back, reflecting on what has past, and look forward, considering the future. Where have we been, where are we going? What have we learned, where have we grown, where have we fallen, where have we soared?

Where Christmas was a discussion of THE GIFT, New Years is one of response. As we move through Advent and Christmas, we enter a new season: Epiphany. The significance of Epiphany, The Christ child is here, what does that mean? He has come, so what now? Our lives are our answer to the question of Epiphany, our answer to His coming, our rescue, our salvation.

A great, meaningful life (which we can also call a faithful response) doesn’t happen by accident. We don’t get where we’re going without an idea where we want to go, or a knowledge of where we’re called to go. Again, this conversation is about the call, what Story, Whose Story, we’re in and what our part is.

Each person’s individual calling can be different, but one thing is always certain: It’s God’s Story, and He gave us all a call in common.

This common call is found in the words of Jesus in Matthew 28:18-20 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

GO and MAKE DISCIPLES. We talk a lot about the first part (“As we’re going”), not as much specifically about the 2nd (“make disciples.”) How exactly do we do that? How do we make disciples? With our words (1 Peter 3:15 “Worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to give an account”), song, beliefs, doctrine, time, $, energy, and I’d suggest, most importantly, with our lives.

So, what kinds of lives are they? New Years is a great time to ask these questions and set path forward. Years ago, a woman opened my eyes to the value of a ‘word for the year’ to set my focus upon, to set this path upon.

What’s important with any path is that we’re on it. We need to start, take a step, move, join, jump in. Where is yours? Where are you being called to take steps? What do you think?

Here are our questions to ask: What kind of life am I living? What needs attention? What needs to change? What needs to be fed?

The cool thing about living a life WITH Jesus is that no one has to give us much direction here. You are probably feeling something very specific to you and your circumstances, listen to that. God is speaking, we simply aren’t listening too much. Or we’re ignoring what we hear, for whatever reason, usually fear. We just might need to stop and be quiet long enough to listen to the Spirit moving within our souls.

We are the artists of our lives, what sorts of lives will we create???Where do we start?

Zechariah 10 contains the idea of a plumb line. A plumb line is a string with a weight designed to set a straight line to build walls. We’re not building walls, we’re building something much more important. He is our plumb line. He is (according to the scholar Creasy:) “the straight line by which we measure our crookedness.”

The idea of a plumb line is to have a YES – something to look & move towards.

What makes your heart sing? What excites you? What stirs your heart? What are you being called into? As you answer, let your community help, encourage, spur you on, and love you as you go out from this awesome Dinner Table.

There is one more idea in Zechariah 4:10, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin…”It is NEVER too small, God loves when we start, when we take a step towards Him and His Story. The greatest achievements all have 1 thing in common: somebody started. How do you build a temple? A brick at a time. How do you build a life? A brick, a step, a bite at a time, on purpose.

1 last (not always obvious) thing before we get to some more questions; To use a plum line requires we have one. To line ourselves up to Him, we need to know Him and what He says. We need to walk with Him, read His Word, pray, spend time, let His Spirit guide us and speak to our hearts.

The word of the year for the Bridge is “Love.” What does it mean in our lives to love Him? To love each other? What does it mean in & for this community?

So what’s yours? (And no reasons why not!! Who knows what’s possible when nothing is impossible?) What kind of life are you building? Where will you give your attention? (And tell someone – tell me;)

What I do know is that we’ll keep our eyes on the plumb line, dreaming, praying, listening, building this Bridge, and getting our love all over everybody. That’s the thing that set apart the early church and it’s same thing that sets us apart today.

Plumb Lines

As we race towards the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, it is my practice to reflect on where I’ve come from and look to where I’m going. I pick a focus word or 2 and make a plan to move forward (in pencil). There have been times when what is in front of me is intimidating in its scope, like staring at a smooth, slick wall stretching up into the clouds. Where do I even start?

If you’ve ever watched the show Hoarders, as the houses fall into such a state of disrepair, the people fall into a state of apathy. The work is so vast, it’s hard to see any way out. They have no idea how to clean what used to be their home but is now just a storage space for dirty dishes, trash, and junk. There is no end in sight, no light at the end of a massive tunnel.

A life can feel exactly the same. I remember many times, for seasons or years, where my soul was one of those houses. There were behaviors that didn’t serve me well, destructive habits, the worst tape loops playing in my head, self-sabotage, all buried under an avalanche of unhealthy perspectives. The task, cleaning me up, creating new pathways, was so enormous, I ended the next year with, at best, the same work ahead as the previous.

What I so clearly see now is that the answer is the same, put a few dishes in the sink today. Then a few more tomorrow. In the Bible, the exiled Jewish people return home and work begins to rebuild the temple. The old temple that had been razed was so grand, fantastically ornate and glorious, how could they ever possibly rebuild that one? The prophet Zechariah wrote, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.” (Zech. 4:10)

There is a Japanese concept called kaisen, where continuous small, almost imperceptible changes compound, leaving the company, or process, drastically transformed.

I think this is what Zechariah is talking about, kaisen, or small beginnings. Set a plumb line – in this case, set our eyes on God and His vision for the temple, or our lives, families, communities, nations. This plumb line stays static, not swaying to meet the popular, convenient, or comfortable, and we begin to build with that as our guide. One block at a time. One dish. One moment. One lie in the tape loops that screamed in my ears. Just one. One step. We don’t need to know when the tunnel ends, or even where it will lead. We have a plumb line, and that plumb line is trustworthy and certain.

I know one step seems insignificant. We want to lose 100lbs by working out for 7 hours a day every day, but the next time that works will be the first, and we end up doing nothing. If we eat a bag of Oreos every day, maybe instead of eating none, we eat a bag minus one today. Or we do 1 pushup. Or read 1 verse.

We set the plumb line, don’t despise the small beginnings, and know that Our God, Our Creator rejoices to see the work begin. Then, the next year, we look back and barely recognize the person who began the work. We are increasingly new. We can see our bed and sleep in it without risk of suffocating under all of the ways we harm ourselves.

There is an old adage, an answer to the question, “How do you eat an elephant?” One bite at a time. Maybe this year, we start taking bites.

If You Do Or If You Don’t

There’s a passage in 1 Corinthians 10 that has taken up residence in my head & heart, and to tell you the truth, I hope it stays and makes a home. (This is in the letter we’re studying on Sunday mornings, but it is in chapter 10, so that means we’ll only get there in 2 or 3 years. You probably won’t remember if I make this post the message, word for word. Of course, I won’t. The me that writes this will not be the me that gives that message. You can’t read the same book twice, right? You’re a different person, so the book takes on a different personality through the lenses of your experiences, thoughts, ideas, and passions. I’ll be different then.)

Here it is: 1 Corinthians 10:31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

Right? It’s a mind bomb, a seriously illuminating and convicting verse. We might spend 2 or 3 years on that alone. Or it might just take me 2 or 3 years to unpack.

It’s in a chapter about idolatry and the food dedicated to idols, in a bigger section asking Why do you do the things you do?

So, here we are, in a place (Corinth, America, Earth) where the answers to that question are “because I want to,” “because I like it,” “it feels good,” a million variations of the real answer: “ME.” Paul is writing to ask us to change that answer.

Maybe this is the main point of this letter. Maybe it’s the main point of allllll the letters. Maybe it’s the main point in living any sort of obedient life of faith.

That thing you’re doing (whether working out, doing the dishes, taking a Zoom call, sleeping, making dinner, putting a puzzle together, singing, working, driving to the grocery store, eating, having sex, watching tv, listening to music, writing emails, playing video games, playing the guitar, posting on social media, and on and on and on), do it for the glory of God.

Now, am I? Whatever I do? Everything? Really? Are the things I’m doing for His glory? Or mine?

Maybe the things don’t have to change, just the intention.

It reminds me of the Great Commission – “As you’re going, make disciples.” We don’t have to add a million things to our schedules, just inject purpose into the things already there.

Whatever we do, do it with intention, with purpose, for something, for someOne.

Of course, maybe the thing has to change, but that doesn’t seem to be the focus here. He just said, “Eat that thing…or don’t.” “Do that thing…or don’t.” “If you do OR if you don’t, make it for His glory.”

If the gym is to make me awesome so I can impress you, if it’s simple vanity – that cannot be for His glory. The gym has to change – either the going or the why. And that is something we can only work out WITH; with the Holy Spirit and with our trusted brothers & sisters. It’s a revolutionary shift in perspective, and revolutions happen in moments, in baby steps, and can’t happen alone.

Words Matter

Here’s something I read from an article written by Edward Klink III: “Let me state it plainly: it is impossible to have a faithful walk with Christ and Christian life—biblically or practically—without committed participation in a local church. To talk about Jesus and not his body, the church, is not to talk fully and rightly about Jesus at all! You cannot just have a spiritual relationship with Jesus without a real connection to his physical body. Even talk about a “personal relationship with Jesus” can be misleading if not properly defined. To say that a person has a personal relationship with Jesus is to speak about how a person becomes a Christian, not how a person lives as a Christian.”

I often read things pretty mindlessly, almost like skimming. I don’t know why I’m in such a rush that I can’t give a few minutes to engage wholeheartedly, I’m not that busy. Just today, my inbox had several weeks worth of email (that gmail helpfully categorizes as Promotions and files them away) needing to be addressed eventually. One was an expired invitation for a special virtual conference that I remember seeing and being interested in, but without immediate attention it became just another tap of the trash can icon.

Anyway. I keep them because of a well-intentioned desire to return & carefully read. Then on a day like today, I open and pretend to read them all before moving them to the garbage heap. But this article, this paragraph in particular, against all odds got stuck in my mind and brought the momentum to a screeching halt.

Is it really “impossible?” What does the subjective phrase “faithful walk” mean? Or “committed participation?” And “real connection?” What a fascinating few lines of text, right? All good writing asks something of us; to stop, to be here, to engage. To put aside the thoughts of meal prep or fantasy football lineups or the next item looming on the calendar. Even to put aside our own accepted positions that have not been re-evaluated in way too long, taken for granted as true (or if not necessarily true, they are our accepted positions, and should be defended as such.)

Do I think it’s impossible? Maybe. I used to think it was absolutely possible, even preferable, to be without a local church, which is full of hypocrites (like me) and other’s issues (like mine). I don’t so much anymore. Now I’m sure it’s not preferable, but impossible?

The answer to that depends on how we define “faithful walk,” “committed participation,” and “real connection,” I suppose. And as none of our definitions will be the same, it’s hard to use a word like impossible. If we use Klink’s definitions of “faithful” or “committed,” it’s impossible. Maybe not if we use mine. And my own definitions have changed over the years, even over the days or minutes, and will surely continue to transform.

I know, after a global pandemic caused a seismic shift in my concept of “connection,” I’m more convinced that a local church isn’t a luxury.

I also know that I’m very wary of using the word “impossible” in the context of a faith based on a God who became a man who died and was resurrected. It seems after all we’ve seen and heard, we should probably excise the word from our vocabulary.

So we could spend forever chewing on those words and how they play out in our own lives, but it’s that last sentence and the difference between “becoming” and “living” that is chewing on me. The point I’m trying to to make is that words matter. Becoming a follower of Jesus is different from living as one – becoming involves One Big Yes, living requires thousands of them. Can we do that – living – alone, without a community? I guess the answer is maybe, but the better question is, why on earth would we want to?

Hotels

One morning last week I woke with a physical exhaustion that has thankfully become quite rare. So when I came home from an unenthusiastic workout, I opened Netflix and crawled under a blanket.

In one of my searches, I discovered 2 documentaries that interested me and were listed to be streaming on Netflix, but were not! I scrolled and scrolled, past so many until I landed on The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel. A young woman named Elisa Lam left Vancouver in a familiar quest for answers to the question we all ask at some point; Who am I? This quest took her to California, first San Diego through Los Angeles ending in San Francisco. She would get no further than LA, no further than the Cecil Hotel.

It was an eerie story of conspiracy and perhaps the supernatural as she simply disappeared. There was a surveillance video of her in an elevator and then no more. It was also a story of homelessness, hopelessness, mental illness, depression, bipolar disorder, the police, a hotel’s history of evil/tragedy and a musician in Mexico. 

The series was 4 episodes and in the 4th, we learned what actually happened. I’ll ruin the suspense here, this is the 4th paragraph and there wasn’t a conspiracy or governmental coverup, there was a lovely young woman who had serious mental issues that caused her, ostensibly, to climb into a water tank on the roof of a hotel and drown.

I intended to make this a post about easy characterizations and a need to understand that lead us down all sorts of paths we don’t want to go, and which have been adding to our disconnect and division. Maybe I will, but it’s so much more in my head now, I just can’t let this one go.

Elisa Lam was a very prolific blogger, posting every thought and idea on Tumblr. I imagine anyone who read her work felt as if they knew her, that’s probably why the story was so captivating for so many. She was our sister, daughter, friend, co-worker, wide open about every thing in her life. We wanted the best for her, wanted her to find meaning and love. If you’re reading this, do you feel like you know who I am? Do you think we’d be friends? I hope so. In all likelihood, we would. It’s sure a new, interesting world, where we can become close to people we’ve never met, and in Elisa Lam’s case, never even had a conversation. 

I like that. I think it’s one of the most beautiful side effects of social media. We are closer than ever before, nothing separates us (except physical space, I suppose.) And we are farther apart than ever before, falling prey to the delusion that online relationships can take the place of relationships IRL. She traveled to California and slowly fell apart in public and no one asked the smallest question, if she was ok. Maybe she would’ve lied, pretended like we do, that yes, she was fine. But maybe she would’ve told the truth, that no, she wasn’t.

I wonder how many times I pass by a person in distress, too busy or distracted or too minding my own business to look or listen. I wonder if a human connection – even a tiny, superficial one – would’ve saved Elisa Lam’s life.

You already know I think we’re here to walk together. We’re made for just this sort of human connection, and we’ve wandered so far off that path that when we are asked, it’s jarring and we feel a sense of intrusion. When did that happen? And I wonder if we felt it slipping away. 

In this film, one of the main characters was Los Angeles and a part of LA called Skid Row. Apparently, the idea was to take the homeless and other “undesirables” and imprison them in a square of the city where they could be ignored and forgotten. Human beings were “undesirable” and systematically, purposely ignored and forgotten? It seems like we all have to ask the question that drove Elisa Lam to California in the first place: Who are we???? 

Her death obviously wasn’t the Cecil Hotel’s fault, but it sure feels like a metaphor. The Cecil was crafted with great care and beauty and over time, seems to have forgotten it’s original creation. Great care and beauty were poured into this structure so that it could take creat care of others. But without a clear vision or purpose, it fell into disrepair and became just another flop house where the people who interacted with it were seen and treated as disposable, which in turn made this once grand hotel disposable, rotting from the inside.

It was a super sad documentary, but as Black Widow says to Bruce Banner in the 1st Avengers movie, “No, we need a little worse.” Not paying attention, whistling through graveyards and hiding behind masks of the images we desperately try to keep, has gotten us here. Maybe we need a little worse, too, a few more cameras shining the light of truth on our increasing dysfunction, to force a course correction. And if we do that, if we start to care or listen or love, maybe Elisa Lam’s death would’ve been for something. Now, it’s just a senseless casualty of modern life. 

But it doesn’t have to be. We get to choose what it is, and we get to choose here, now, today.

Love & Contempt

A very good friend sent me this text today: “It is impossible to be increasing in our love for God and simultaneously increasing in our contempt for others. When our speech is saturated with contempt, our hearts are revealed.” (It’s from a post by Jen Wilkin)

I had planned to write about last week’s message and “As you are going” or changing “versus” to “and” or any one of the interesting bags we began to unpack last week. And I liked that, I wanted to write about that, it would have been easy and (relatively) comfortable. Then I got that text.

Later, on Facebook, I opened up the “Parents of (insert local school name here) Students” group and read the continuing dialogue (if you want to call it that) on masks in school. When I read this, (and I always do, under the guise of staying informed and on the pulse of the community in which I live), I always think about the Nine Inch Nails album entitled “The Downward Spiral” because that’s what it feels like. Incidentally, the album is aggressively hopeless and violent.

And I thought of this Wilkins’ quote.

I really don’t have an excuse… I mean, I could invent one using some advanced intellectual gymnastics to rationalize what can only be my embarrassment at the revelation of my heart. I’ve never met this woman, Jen Wilkins, but she quite obviously knows me. She’s heard my noisy internal contempt. You see, I would not have called it contempt, I would have called it something else, surely something that makes me sound super-spiritual and not judgy at all, more like the voice of reason seeing and remarking on this angry vitriol from a safe distance. She knows I haven’t prayed for us all to find common ground, to remember our shared humanity. She knows the downward spiral is in my own heart, not some online bulletin board.

I guess the truth is that it’s probably both. And I guess that’s where things get so quickly off the track, where the we becomes us/them. The nasty posts are easy to see and shake our heads at, and immediately there it is: Look at their posts. Why do they do whatever, why are they so whatever? And I’m absolved, pointing fingers, writing blog posts about the importance of eliminating the Other Mentality. But I’m doing it from the imagined safety of the Other Mentality.

So, my very good friend (who I will NEVER talk to again;) sent this text. Maybe she was trying to be the prophet Nathan, screaming “You ARE that man!!!” Or maybe she wasn’t at all. Maybe she was just sending a quote that moved her and wanted to share it with me.

I know we have to Philippians 4:8 a 2021 world, but we also have to expose hatred and violence, don’t we? Maybe we don’t, I’m not sure. Maybe the love we have will be enough. Maybe we all just need the new story, without a commentary on the old one that we already know doesn’t work.

I’ll keep asking questions and inviting the discussion, though, and keep trying to see only the new story.

The Point Is

I don’t usually do what I’m about to do, but we’re about to dive into a deep pool of self-reflection in regard to our own personal discipleship and those waters require a healthy bit of preparation. (Um. Maybe you heard me very clearly specify our own discipleship. We all know it’s super effective to wear a nice coat of self-righteous condescension, but just this once, let’s try to extract the logs from our own eyes first.)

Anyway, what I don’t usually do is simply reiterate some of the questions from Sunday to remind and re-focus our busy, end of summer/beginning of school, distracted minds. This year I haven’t heard the cacophony of “Can you believe the summer is already over?” In the world of COVID-19, nothing is ‘already’ and time doesn’t particularly fly. It’s hard to remember the time before quarantines and masks and angry internet battles.

We can be not salty and not light through contamination, compromise, mixture, misapplied strength, hiding our intrinsic human beauty under beds & baskets, cowardice, laziness, and the big 2 that always seem to appear in lists like this: Fear and it’s annoying partner, Passivity.

The unfortunately named website GotQuestions writes: It seems, then, that the role of the Christian as salt and light in the world may be hindered or prevented through any choice to compromise or settle for that which is more convenient or comfortable, rather than that which is truly best and pleasing to the Lord.

MyQuestions are: Where have we compromised? When there was a choice, where have we chosen convenience & comfortability? Where have we entertained what a writer calls “unclean thoughts?” When have we spoken less than the truth, for whatever reason? When have we taken our considerable strength and power and used it for our personal edification or the squashing of another’s humanity? Where have we remained sleeping in our beds when we have been called into conscious engagement?

I think the most difficult for me is the crackling menace of “Where have I settled?” Looming tall in the corners of my mind, this monster intimidates simply because it’s slobbery mouth is overflowing with answers. I’ve settled too many times, squandered the gifts I’ve been so generously given more than I can count.

We ask in the promise that we will be given the wisdom and strength to finally say, “No more.” We ask in the promise that the overflowing answers are forgotten and replaced with “I don’t remember.” We ask for lots of reasons, but the point is that we ask.

A Shadow

So that they brought the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and couches, that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them. (Acts 5:15)

That’s a strange passage, if you stop for a second to think about it for a second. I think that sometimes we think of the Bible as mere words on the pages of some old book. I know people that make fun of religion figure it as a work of fiction, like a science fiction novel, but when we read passages like this, do we really handle it any differently?

What I mean is, we read it every Sunday morning and (hopefully) a little during the week, we call it the Word of God, we defend it to our friends and teach it to our children, but does it impact our daily lives. It sits on our bookshelves or on our home screen, but have we allowed it to cross over into our cars and beds and schedules and lives?

We’re studying the Beatitudes, and we don’t seem to value the poor in spirit as if the Kingdom of God is really theirs/ours. Or that the meek will actually inherit the earth. If we did, maybe we wouldn’t put such a premium on image, on looking like we have everything together, on winning. If mercy was worth as much to us as it seems to be to God, maybe we could relegate resentment and the grudges we feed & water to the trash heap of our pasts.

I ask these questions of myself often. I teach the Scriptures in a faith community, yet there are weeks when that is simply an intellectual exercise. My study might as well be of flowers or physics. The Bible becomes a textbook, which might be better than collecting dust on the nightstand. But maybe it’s not. Who knows? I know that both perspectives strip it of its life-changing power.

But then there usually comes a disruption. There always comes a disruption. And that disruption is either a distraction or an invitation.

For instance, yesterday I received this passage in Acts in my email and didn’t read it until an hour ago, maybe yesterday I wasn’t open or attentive. Maybe I was so miserably hot I couldn’t think straight. Today, when I did, my mind was flooded with observations, having nothing to do with a sermon and everything to do with phone calls, baseball practice, COVID vaccines, kisses, pop songs…in other words, it had everything to do with everything.

I don’t know if I’ve ever had the faith to take my sick friend out into the street in hopes that a shadow of a man I’d never met would pass by and fall upon him/her. Again, it’s the street and it’s A SHADOW! And I think of the many ways in which I display a faith that, essentially, believes that that friend is mine to heal or that a shadow couldn’t possibly be enough. Of course, there are lots of other very specific ways each of our spiritual lives show a depressing lack of faith.

So today this is the disruption that has stopped me in my tracks. Either I can treat it as a brief annoyance that takes my mind from my work or the responsibilities on my day planner, quickly chasing it out of my mind like a spider on the ceiling. OR. I could ask the questions, sit in the uncomfortable space between Q and A, and consider where the sick friends in my life are that I need to take to Jesus, for the impossible to be possible and the ridiculous expectations that sit on my shoulders to transfer to His infinitely stronger ones that are actually made for those same expectations. He is the One that saves, rescues, heals and gives peace & joy. Not me. Isn’t that great?

This gift of disruption is leaving me raw, soft, gushy, inadequate, loved and very grateful.

Where It Leads

On the mini earlier today, we began to tie the clouds of our lives together. It’s like that scene in The Karate Kid. After Daniel-san has been painting fences & houses, sanding the floor, and waxing on and off for who knows how long (it’s about 15 or 20 minutes of the movie), he begins to pout. Well, he doesn’t just begin to pout here, he begins to pout about this here. He pouts often in the movie. Probably, Daniel Larusso is the most unlikeable hero we’ve ever seen. Anyway. Mr Miyagi miracles the soreness out of his shoulders and unleashes a barrage of punches and kicks that Daniel-san expertly blocks with his surprising new ability. Given connection, context and application, the isolated moves have become skill and talent and will eventually win him the All Valley Karate Tournament and Elizabeth Shue.

We’ve been talking about weight, values, showing up, effort, energy, time, choice, quality, quantity, intention – and when Jen spoke this weekend, saying “Garbage In Garbage Out,” (she was talking about input to our hearts, but later the words themselves met me in a space where I was receiving so much stimulation from all directions) everything coalesced into a nice fiery ball of awareness for me.

What we give (the quantity and, even more so, the quality) can directly inform what we get and how we experience our surroundings and circumstances. If I pour in the very best of me to my relationship with God, my marriage, community, children, career, fitness, friendships, on and on (wherever I choose to spend my time & energy) the chances go up exponentially that whatever it is will be positive and fulfilling. If I don’t, it won’t.

(Now of course, it’s not 100%. If we’ve learned anything at all, it’s that we are not the ones who are in control, right? This is not our story.)

I have a very good friend with whom I used to spend an awful lot of time, we were tight and deeply connected. Then we stopped attending the same church community, didn’t see each other as much, the tight, deep connection loosened and now, though we still care for each other, the friendship is largely superficial. You get what you put in.

If I stay up late Friday night, eat a bunch of junk food, and wake up late Saturday morning, when I log in to the retreat I am tired and uncomfortable, and where I usually find the retreats very meaningful, this time it happens and leaves me unaffected. Garbage in garbage out.

Now, the million dollar question is, how do I know where to choose to give my time & energy? How do I decide what to give?

This is where the hard work we’ve been doing on weight comes back to reward us. We’ve been praying, relying on the guidance of the Holy Spirit to discover our values. We explore what we think is important to us and examine if it actually is. This revelation of our hearts is painstaking but vital, and now we know why. We give our time & energy to what weighs more, we give the best of us to the most valuable.

If we don’t know where to focus, we’ll just give more and more pieces of us to everything. We respond to all of the personal emails, forwards, ads, and spam in our inboxes, unable to tell the difference. We’ll feel drained and used and confused as to why our relationships suffer, why our work suffers, why we don’t feel inspired, why we’re tired all the time, distracted, bored.

If we do, and don’t act on it, we can become angry and/or resentful because we aren’t doing the things that give us life, that we are made to do, that mean something to us. We’ll feel drained and used, our relationships will suffer, our work will suffer, we’ll feel tired, uninspired, distracted, bored, but this time, we know why and that makes us disappointed in ourselves.

The idea is that we listen and follow the Spirit into the depths of our souls, start to find out who we are and for what we’ve been created and called, then step (however lightly at first) onto that path, show up and give everything we have, and see where it leads. I bet it leads somewhere awesome, miles from where we thought we would be.

A Sock I Used To Have

Our holidays looked a little different in Pennsylvania as the Governor tightened up restrictions, which kept most of us at home. There is much to be said about this, and I’ll say none of it. Not that I think politics should be left out of spirituality or the local church (I don’t), but I want to make a different point here, today.

My gym closed down for a month. Now, this didn’t mean that working out was canceled, but there were some things for which I simply didn’t have equipment. I could do body-weight squats and pushups but not shrugs or deadlifts. Everything looked different, felt different, was different. When it opened back up on the 4th, I was inside doing masked deadlifts as if nothing had changed. Who has time for a step back, even if it is wise?

Maybe there are people who can take 1 month off and not miss a beat, like college kids, but I am not a college kid. I cannot take 1 month off and put the same weight on a bar. However, I don’t have the sense of the gravel in a fish tank, so I did just that, and now if I drop a sock on the floor, it’s lost. It is now a sock I used to have and go to the drawer and get another.

Of course, the thing to do was reintroduce slowly and work back up. Of course. The problem with that is that I am human being and we don’t reintroduce slowly and work back up for anything at all. Patience isn’t a strength. Ours is a culture where “immediate gratification” is the chief virtue. I skip breakfast, eat salad for lunch and dinner, and if my weight isn’t significantly lower in the morning, then it’s a failed experiment. I start a 2021 devotional, read 14 today to catch up for the year, fully expecting a fully transformed life by bedtime. If it’s not fast and easy, we call it not meant to be, and forget it and move on.

There certainly isn’t anything new about this, there are plenty of examples in the Bible. Saul couldn’t wait for Samuel and offered the sacrifices himself. Aaron couldn’t wait for Moses so he made a fancy metal cow. Abraham couldn’t wait for God and Sarah so he took Hagar instead.

In Abraham’s case, he waited 10 years, and it wasn’t quite long enough. Maybe he shouldn’t be judged by me, I haven’t waited 10 years for anything. Zechariah was an old man who had waited his whole life for a word from God and a son and got them both on the same day. I pray for a day or 2, maybe a week every other day, and then move on. Who can wait? On t he other hand, we can’t get stuck, right?

Is it stuck, though? Maybe. Or is it patience? Faithfulness? Again, maybe. I think we might not be able to tell the difference anymore. The lovely Veruca Salt once said, “I want it now,” and we seem to have taken that as a prescription for living a meaningful life. I can’t wait a few weeks to regain the weight on a deadlift, I want it now! I can’t wait for Samuel to arrive or Moses to come back, now now now.

My stubborn impatience has resulted in physical pain, but many other times it has left me in emotional or psychological pain, in spiritual agony. How many times have I left relationships, jobs, situations simply because it didn’t happen (whatever ‘it’ was) in the time I wanted it to be? When something didn’t immediately deliver? When my lack of control was too much to bear and I ran?

I wonder when I will learn to be present and patient. When I will no longer confuse patience with passivity.

My backache will subside, I’ll be deadlifting in no time (with much less on the bar;), but I’m left wondering when the lesson will stick. Hopefully today.