It occurs to me…

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  Matthew 11:28

Oswald Chambers addresses this passage today in My Utmost for His Highest and it is one ouf his toughest lessons.  “As long as you have the tiniest bit of spiritual impertinence, it will always reveal itself in the fact that you are expecting God to tell you to do a bit thing, and all He is telling you to do is to ‘come.’”  That is, of course, the dilemma.  I have to do things His way, not mine.

I have mountains my life (I suppose all do, and I should remember that), big-ass, troublesome mountains that are long established.  Mountains I can’t move.  Well, I suppose I could, but doing so would be like getting a little red wagon and a shovel and taking on the mountain.  God on the other hand, has the keys to the bulldozer, the dynamite, the earth mover that can take down the mountain, or heck, the keys to the Jeep that can take me on the trail around it.  Ah, but Chambers puts his finger on the problem: “He cannot budge it unless you are willing to let him.”  Come!

After spending a long weekend in prison with the Kairos prison ministry I have been thinking a lot on one word — Grace.  The more I think on it, the more I come to realize that I can’t really say I understand it.  I can’t really explain it, yet it is obvious that I am a recipient of it and that I depend on it a great deal.  The attempt at a definition or description that sticks most in my mind is one from Anne Lamott: “I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”

Grace – it accompanies us on the journey.  Sometimes I recognize it as my traveling companion, other times I am oblivious to it.  But each night we walked out of the prison and I head the gates close behind me, grace slapped me upside the head and got my attention.  Maybe, just maybe, I’ll recognize it more easily.

Reading today from A Generation of Faith by Randall Balmer, I am reminded how much uncertainty there is in faith.  Rationally, this seems obvious, yet it is easy to lose sight of, I guess in part because there are so many people of faith who profess to know all the answers.  And while I project that knowing role, in reality I feel most often like Abraham who, Balmer reminds me, “when called to go to a place…obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”  Hebrews 11:8

That is more or less Balmer’s point in his essay – while some may have all the answers and know on their first step of a journey exactly where they are going, he most often feels like he is (my words, not his) “winging it.”

So, I guess the question is how one keeps going in face of the uncertainty, even when he/she does not know where he/she is going.  Balmer provides insight:

“And yet, what sustains me is a sense [or at least a hope] of divine presence, a sense that I am not alone in this pilgrimage but in the company of friends who will pick me up from time to time and point me in the right direction….  I believe because of the epiphanies, small and large, that have intersected my path – small discrete moments of grace when I have sensed a kind of superintending presence outside of myself.  I believe because these moments – a kind word, an insight, an anthem on Easter morning, a hill in the spine, are too precious to discard, and I choose not to trivialize them by reducing them to rational explanation.”

Onward.

This text jumped out at me this morning: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”  Romans 8:22. Angst comes easy for me.  There is, I suppose, this tendency to compare, contrast, and link together like things, and angst is apparently no exception.  In contemplating Angst A I compare it to Angst B, and before long I have an A to Z angst chain that has me bound quite well.

Paul of course, offers the anecdote – hope.   “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”  Romans 8:18  Then, a bit later: “For in this hope we are saved.  But hope that is seen is no hope at all.  Who hopes for what he has?  Romans 8:24

That’s perhaps the best I can do for now.  It occurs to me that sometimes that is the best I can do in any troubling time – hope and wait, well, and pray.  In these thoughts I was reminded of a quote (this one by Vaclav Haval) I have written on a scrap of paper stuck in my Bible:

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

Flipping through some notes stuck in my Bible today I came across this in Psalm 37:12-13:

“The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them; but the Lord Laughs at the wicked for he knows their day is coming.”

Initially, I see that as a statement of a belief in, or at least a hope in, comeuppance.  But this concept of comeuppance, us resting assured that “their day is coming” is dangerous, kind of like grabbing a double-edged sword by the blade.  Of course, from where I sit or stand I am the “righteous” and the “wicked” is always THEM — “the Lord laughs” at THEM, not me.  THEY are the ones whose day is coming!

It occurs to me that this us “us and them” thinking that leads to a world of trouble.”  In this I am reminded of Dylan Thomas’ statement: “An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you.”  This is all a matter of perspective.  Others have offended me.  I have offended others.

Comeuppance?  It occurs to me that I should be careful what I wish for – I just might get it.

Stubbornness

I had a good laugh at my own expense this morning.  My laptop sat on my desk and I was prepared to “write,” in fact I stated to write, but then I realized I had forgotten to plug in my mouse.  This is significant because I truly hate using the touchpad, and so have a wireless mouse, but to make it work I have to pull the small USB dongle from the mouse and stick it into the USB port on my laptop – which takes less than five seconds.  Still, I just left the mouse sitting there, and every time I needed the mouse function I was reminded that I had not plugged in my mouse and struggled to use the touchpad – the touchpad I hate and was, a minute into my writing, frustrated with.  Finally, out of frustration I grabbed the mouse, stuck in the dongle, and could now use the mouse.  Putting my hand on the mouse and watching the cursor move I had one thought – What a stubborn moron (pronounced “mooo-ron”) I can be!

Immediately I thought of the Prodigal Son after his flame out, sitting in the fields feeding swine (Luke 15:16), “and he would have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him.”  Undoubtedly, his stubbornness was keeping him away from the obvious answer – go home!  But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, until, finally, “he came to himself” or in some translations, “he came to his senses.” (Luke 15:17)  We all know how that turned out.

No, I am not equating by degree my unwillingness to connect my mouse to the Prodigal Son’s reluctance to return home, the stakes in his internal battle were much greater, but it occurs to me that they are both evidence of stubbornness that holds us back, keeps us from being what we can and are meant to be.  Stubbornness is an affliction, the ugly cousin of persistence.  I sometimes confuse the two.

The phrase had never really settled in to me no matter how many times I have read Luke’s parable of the Prodigal Son.  The son comes to his senses and heads back home to seek forgiveness:

“But when he was a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and rell on his neck and kissed him.” Luke 15:20

It occurs to me that the father did not see his son by happenstance.  No, I suspect that shortly after the son “took his journey into a far country” (v. 13)  the father began frequently looking down the road in that direction, hoping to see a familiar silhouette against the sky, walking back home.  That day it happened.  Such is God’s love for me.

In reading today I was reminded of an old commercial Michael Jordan narrated:

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career.  I’ve lost almost 300 games.  26 times I have been trusted to take the game-winning shot…and missed.  I’ve failed over and over and over again in my live.  And that is why I succeed.”

It occurred to me that this sounds a lot like Romans 5:3-5: “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Nearly two-thousand years, the same message, whether Jordan or Paul.  We fail, we suffer, we keep trying.  That last part, the “keep trying” part, is the important part.  Well that and the fact that sometimes, at least every once and a while, we succeed.  Sometimes, yes, sometimes, we succeed.  Sounds a whole lot like golf – and life.

I suppose one could ask 100 people what heaven is and get 100 answers (including answers that there is no such thing).  I think there is a heaven, but I am not sure just what it is.  Is it a physical place?  Is it a state of mind?  I don’t know.  But one definition of heaven caught my eye today.  This from Anne Lamott, in Traveling Mercies: “Heaven is just a new pair of glasses.”

My worldly glasses, of course, help me see more clearly, but Lamott is of course going beyond that.  The “new pair of glasses” she is referring to would help me NOT see, or at least help me “see past,” certain things.  For instance, the “new pair of glasses” in heaven might not let me see short or tall, skinny or fat.  I am fairly sure the “new pair of glasses” in heaven would not let me see skin color, tattoos, clothing, hair color and styles, and other things commonly used to profile people and put them in pre-determined categories.  Or maybe the “new pair of glasses” would allow me to see those things, but see them for what they are – of little meaningful significance.

Of course, going down this path, it occurs to me that I need not wait.  I can get this “new pair of glasses” here, now, quicker than Amazon can deliver them.  Heck, it occurs to me that I indeed HAVE that pair of glasses already but don’t pull them out and wear them as often as I should.  Often, I see them as are a little out of style, and they don’t always fit quite right.  Still, I need to wear them more often.