Our “Buts”

If we imagine living a life of complete, unhindered pursuit of God, many different images come to mind. We think of taking greater risks, positing less weight on other’s opinions, participating in daily uninterrupted communion with God and His Word, and giving more freely of ourselves.

Yet we don’t live that way. Why not? What are those things that keep us from following hard after God, with abandon?

We saw how Jesus targeted a few such fetters (Luke 9:57-62)…self-inflicted restraints that tie us down to something less than full discipleship. Something less than full LIFE. Something less than, in Jesus’ words, suitable for the Kingdom of God.

We pursue this foreign, twisted, partial discipleship as soon as we say, almost always unconsciously, “I’ll follow you Jesus, but…”
“I’ll follow You, but I won’t move.”
“I’ll follow You, but don’t infringe on my time. Or possessions. Or…”

What are our “buts?”

Jesus confronted directly the fetters of comfort, concern of social status, the past, our own timings, and cultural expectations. We also saw how good things, without proper spiritual discernment and discretion, have the ability to actually draw us away from God…things even like family responsibilities/obligations and other good works and ministries.

The Bible calls these fetters, these “buts,” idols. Ouch.

This is hard stuff, especially practically. To consciously rid ourselves of those things that hold us back hurts. Sacrifices hurt. Yet this is part of our call. And true deep life is not found elsewhere. Do we REALLY want to live? Do we REALLY desire God?

Jesus tells us it’s all or nothing. Now, not later. Leave it and follow.

Thankfully, God has given us the power for these sacrifices through the Holy Spirit. And we have each other.

What are you learning as you take steps to more fully pursue God? How are you succeeding and where are you struggling?

 

Coming Alive…

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.  Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Howard Thurman

We live in a world that where passion is often sadly absent.  Financial realities force us to take jobs that slowly drain passion from our lives; we learn to be efficient and productive, but we forget to be passionate.  Responsibilities beyond our jobs frequently siphon whatever passion remained.  Cleaning up kids’ messes, mowing the lawn, vacuuming the house, sorting and washing and folding laundry: the list only stops when we are urged to sleep by Ambien or valium.  The modern American life is one where highs are experienced vicariously through the television or internet.  It is a corporate culture that judges success on helping the corporation; it is a consumer culture where our biggest and most monumental decisions are what washing machine to purchase or what new pair of jeans to buy.

Our faith community has been talking about passion.  We have been looking at an ancient writing from an early follower of Jesus named Paul, who wrote to another faith community in the cosmopolitan city of Rome.  Rome, at this time, was the New York City of today.  It was a center of commerce and government and culture.  Paul’s letter to this community is a passionate letter, and it details his thoughts on God and life and freedom.  

Toward the end of this letter Paul encourages the community in Rome: he tells them that they have different strengths, different gifts, different passions.  And he tells them to live out these passions.  He ticks off passion after passion: if you love to lead, do it with zeal; if you love to show mercy, do it with cheerfulness; if you love to encourage others, then encourage to no end…  He is saying to the community that passion is paramount, and life without passion is not really living.

Almost two-thousand years later another man, Howard Thurman, further articulates this idea.  Dr. Thurman is not well known, though he was a mentor to a much better known man: Martin Luther King Jr.  Thurman reminds us to live lives of passion, to do the things that make us come alive.  He reminds us that the world will constantly ask other duties of us, and we are constantly aware of our individual needs, our family needs, and in today’s society, even needs from the other side of the world.

But what if we dropped our “needs” for a moment.  Do not misunderstand me: I do not mean to ignore financial realities or care for loved ones.  I mean what if we did not worry about getting a cleaner house or nicer car or more presentable children or edge at work or latest sports news?  What if our biggest concern each day was coming more fully alive, living more passionately?  What if we took time everyday to foster our life, whether it meant painting or writing or running or praying?  

Paul advocated this — living out our passions — and it sparked a movement still growing today.  Dr. Howard Thurman advocated this, and at least one person listened.  And Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement still moves and grows today.  Movements start not by looking at needs and duties, but by coming alive.  

May we be people who are coming alive.

 

Life according to Tetris…

I just finished having coffee with a good friend.  It was serendipitous, really, how we met and started hanging out.  Conversation flowed easily, like rainwater off a roof. 

We talked this morning about life and music — two of our favorite subjects.  Ben looked a little more tired than usual, and his white mocha did little to his appearance.  He’s a prodigious talent — musically and spiritually (if you can be a spiritual talent) — and has his hand in a growing church, school, forming a band and cutting a CD, as well as managing relationships and friends.   But I seemed to have stumbled into him on a day when it felt like a little too much.

With planning a wedding and working two jobs I sometimes feel like life is coming a little too fast.  It’s like playing the old game of Tetris: you’ve made it to a high level and the shapes are falling down so quickly.  For a while, you manage to fit them together but start to get a few gaps, and they’re backing up higher and higher and you can feel the game slipping away.  So it is with life.  The shapes — finances, or friendships, or fathers-in-law — come dropping down and, for a while, they fit together.  No gaps.  But, inevitably, they start building up and you can see that a few more wrong placements and your game is over.  Not that the game of life ends quite as easily.  The analogy breaks down.  Wrong placements in the game of life mean that it simply takes more work to go back and re-place the block, to try to get it to fit with all the others.  Sometimes blocks never fit. 

What if I always stayed on the easy level of Tetris?  What if I refused to go on, what if whenever the blocks started speeding up I turned the game off?  Would this be wrong?  Would I be refusing to challenge myself?  Again, the analogy breaks down.

When life comes too quickly, what if I dropped the ball?  It would mean my appearance would have a little tarnish on it — as it should under the grace of God.  It would mean that my money or my honeymoon to California wasn’t as planned out as it could have been.  I imagine, however, that the trip would still be great, that the money would still be there.  What if I acted like Mary in that famous story with her sister, and sat at the Master’s feet instead of preparing the house for Him?  Could I do that?  Wouldn’t that go against most of what I’ve been told from childhood?  But what if I did it anyway?  Would life, like Tetris, pile up shapes and finally end?  Or would it go on for another day?  Would I — gasp — even be more content and fulfilled?

What would a conversation with Ben look like then?

 

Juggling…

I’m sitting in the library.  Sunlight drifts in through the window, falling silently on my desk.  Library attendants shuffle quietly about the carpeted room, and the familiar click of keyboards resonates from thirty feet away. 

Oftentimes, I feel like I’m juggling.  I feel like it’s taking all my effort and concentration to keep these four balls, or bowling pins, or maybe even knives, in the air.  And people are watching me.  People are watching me juggle these balls with amazing poise and concentration.  I’m probably somewhere like Venice Beach or Key West late in the evening, and the sun is almost down but long arms of light still embrace this part of the earth.  Twenty yards from me is the silver painted robot dancer man, and Michael Jackson is blaring next to him.  There’s a bigger crowd down there, but right now I’m juggling my knives and eating an apple, and a few families show interest.  These families have young kids who are spooked by the robot man. 

My girlfriend Brooke says that when you juggle you don’t look at each object but at a fixed point right above you, where the objects pass. 

So I’m juggling and have a small crowd when the robot man ends his dance and his crowd breaks up.  Since I’m closest at least two-thirds of the people start coming my way, gawking as they pass or stopping to watch.  My apple is almost gone and I’m going to stick the core onto a knife while keeping the other knives in the air.  I’m also shouting something between mouthfuls about my need for a little crowd noise for this next part. 

All this is happening when I suddenly realize something greatly embarrassing – like my pants are inexplicably unbuckled and ready to fall to my ankles.  And I didn’t have clean boxers so I’m wearing tighty-whities.  I’m mortified at the idea of my pants falling, at the idea of the toddler in the pink dress with a happy birthday balloon forever scarred by the unexpected appearance of my pasty-white thighs, of parents shaking their heads in disgust as they walk away, shrieking young ones in tow. 

I feel like this juggler because often it seems that most of my life looks great, is going great, except one small thing sits there on the horizon, or the in back of my head, or in this case, the pit of my stomach.  I think of how well things are going and it all would be perfect if only something else took care of itself.  Something like I know what I’d be doing in two months, or where I’m going to get the money to pay back my parents, or if I would ever write thank-you letters on time.  Usually this something is a thing I need to do and put off, or know I want to do but refuse to draw on the disciplines needed to do it. 

I find it odd that most people I talk to about this think the same way.  Maybe they don’t realize they’re juggling.  But they say things such as, “After this, life will get back to normal,” or “Once I start ______, then things will be a lot better.”  The sad thing is that life doesn’t become normal.  There is no normalcy to life. 

Life is ugly and beautiful.  It spills out over the edges and onto your paper.  It leaks like a bad pen, or doesn’t write at all.  And we all try to juggle our way through it, fitting it neatly into time and space, letting the knives fall neatly into our hands without ever getting hurt.  But oftentimes we take our eyes off the knife, if only for a split-second; we lose our perspective.  Our timing is off.  And I watched the knife because I got nervous since my pants were ready to fall down.   

The tip of the knife blade touches my hand before crashing to the ground. 

For a moment, nothing happens.  Nothing.  Then, a sudden flow of blood fills my palm and I instinctively squeeze it closed, blood dripping onto the pavement.  The crowd gasps.  Or sighs.  Most people begin to hurriedly move away – knowing that blood is not part of the show.  Knowing a toddler in a pink dress doesn’t need to be near knives on the ground, or the man with the bloody hand.   

And then my pants fall down. 

There I stand, in front of an ever-more-hurrying crowd, a few laughs emanating from the robot man 20 yards away.  I stand unadorned, uncovered, unentertaining.  I stand with life literally spilling out of my hand.  I wonder why I kept juggling. 

Why did I keep going instead of stopping, apologizing, fixing my pants?  Why wouldn’t I let people know that life spills like a toddler carrying a bucket of paint?  Why should it surprise anyone that I’m not perfect?  Why do I think that life should play by my rules, according to my time, where I have complete control?  Why do I so often take my eyes off that fixed point that I know I need to gaze at in order to keep things up in the air? 

Because that’s what attracted me to juggling in the first place – the fact that while everything seems haphazard and out of control it’s really all orderly.  It really all makes sense.  All you have to do is look in the right place, and things suddenly don’t appear as daunting.   

I sit here in the library knowing I can’t juggle and probably never will.  But I can imagine it.  I sit here knowing how it feels to let the knives come crashing down.  I know how it feels to be confused and not in control.  I know that life will spill over and throw me up and down – will make me bleed. 

And somehow — not that I’m completely okay with this life running around as it does — I nod my head and accept it.  Even embrace it.  For standing there with a bloody hand, just having pulled my pants up, a young girl in a pink dress slowly totters up to me.  She smiles and her dimples wink at me for a moment before disappearing.  Slowly she reaches forward, holding her balloon.  I look blankly at her.  She thrusts the balloon closer to me.  Slowly, unwillingly, I reach for it.  I grab the string and the balloon nods gently in the wind.  The girl looks at me with large brown eyes, a pink dress with ice cream on it from earlier that day, and hair that falls to her shoulders in tight curls.  She turns and toddles off, leading her father away.  And I stand there, dumbstruck, holding the balloon tightly.