The Sea

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine De Saint Exupery

How often do we as Christians wrap ourselves in the details of building the ship instead of casting the vision of the endless immensity of the sea? If God's endless immense love is not communicated then the acts of discipleship in ones life will never find their target. I blush at how often I have beat the drum of reading the Bible or finding your quite time or getting involved in service but spent too little time kendeling a desire to be like Christ.

What is it like for even a small moment in time when my heart is touched by God? Why does the creator of an entire universe allow me to draw near? Where does this amazing peace come from when everything seems to fall apart around me? What happens when my eyes open to see what God is really doing around me? What does it really feel like when God connects my heart with another heart to share their load?

That is what I need to find out how to say. Then reading the Bible, quite time, service, solitude, worship and prayer will be joyous simple tasks that build the ship to float along on God's endless sea.

Yes, Lord

When you give your life to Jesus it really is just your first ‘YES’. It is the beginning of a life of saying ‘YES’ to God. Saying I trust you with my life. - Erwin McManus

A true Christian life is a long series of yeses to God. We should always be ready to say YES! The first yes means very little without the next one and the next one and the next. Aren’t the acts of discipleship simply preparing a heart to listen and respond ‘YES’? If I sit back in the glow of my first yes to Christ and never listen for God’s direction or follow the path Jesus laid out, what purpose have I served? The hard heart is one who refuses to say yes and rejects that God’s infinite understanding of life can be trusted to do what is right for me.

O Lord, prepare me to hear without doubt and act with out stipulation.

Beyond the Sun

This week, I will start leading a group through a look at Tommy Nelson’s study of Ecclesiastes (A Life Well Lived: Living with a Perfect God in an Imperfect World). Always love this book of the Bible even though it seems so bleak. I guess it because we get a chance to share the wisdom of Solomon and who else has received God’s gift more abundantly. Solomon had more wisdom, wealth, influence, power and everything else then any of us will ever have and he comes to one conclusion over and over and over again…it is all meaningless. No matter what we do under the sun we end up right where we started, dust.

Life is a treadmill.

Get up, cup of coffee, breakfast, shower, brush teeth, drive to work, …, repeat, repeat, repeat. Even when we break up our routines with the special things like holidays or vacations, those are really just repeats done on a less frequent basis. No matter how much I cut my hair, do the laundry, trim the lawn or rake the leaves, I am relegated to repeat.

Ah, but maybe we live for the pleasures of life. Solomon walked through the world of pleasure on a truly epic scale. He blew the doors off with countless parties, a thousand women, grand building projects, multitude of servants, along with more gold and silver then he could count. Everything his mind could conceive - he did. He had the resources to do anything his heart desired. He undertook one of the world’s great experiments and actually tried it all. And yet his words still echo, meaningless.

The chase for more and more and more and more never reaches the conclusion we are after. The consuming focus on this momentary visit to this place called earth has never changed the results. Wise or fool, rich or poor, driven or lazy, all come to the same outcome. We die, our friends gather and remember us for an hour, grab a sandwich on the way back to the office then by the next morning everyone has returned to the treadmill. Our stuff is handed off to someone else and the wind blows through and it was as if we never existed. As Solomon found out, everything under the sun is meaningless.

So why do I love this depressing look at life? Because the wise Solomon did find an answer in his experiment. He shares with us an antidote other then a leap from the nearest tall building. He tells us simply - Enjoy!! Enjoy what God has given you. The simple things like eat, drink and work. These really are where the physical world actually makes sense. Then spend a moment and find God in these gifts. The answer is found when we look beyond ourselves, above the horizon and beyond the sun. John 10:10 says it best, Christ brings the difference between just the existing and the chasing of the meaningless, to how we were truly created to live. He removes the futility from the soul and brings about the purpose we are actually dying for. By removing love of creation and focusing it instead on the Creator, we quit settling for the temporary and reach for the eternal.

Go beyond the sun.

Change

Another New Year. Why do we use the change of a calendar to motivate change in us?

Perhaps there is benefit as we move toward a specific point in time to reflect and prepare if any real difference is going to be made from a resolution to transform. The end of each year stirs the need to evaluate where I have been and seek guidance on where I should have gone instead. I have to say 2007 seems to have been almost a year of “Spiritual A.D.D” for me. Any long term development was frequently interrupted by the next bright shiny object that distracted me. Ironically, I may have been more consistent in starting each day with Bible and prayer but where was the growth?

Discipleship, spiritual formation, Christian maturity, what ever one names it, requires a pattern of focus that seems just beyond my reach recently. Was it beyond my reach or was it really just my failure to stretch? This is not a science, nothing to chart or measure growth like the marks on the door frame when I was getting taller as a child. Just a question, “Am I different then I was last year at this time?” My heart aches at the answer.

Just Another Day

Woke up this morning in a new world. The world of 49. It’s my birthday. That day of the year that passes like any other day for everyone else but is cause for me to reflect on my life. A look backward to all the great memories and blessing that have been provided but also feel a pang of guilt due to the volume of time wasted. Then I turn and look forward to thoughts of what I will do with the remainder of my time.

I do not know if God has it planned that I live to 49 and one day or another 30 years. However, I do know that number is out there. Should I scramble to accomplish as much as possible or is it a part of my life where I become comfortable in being who God has made me to be. I see no large world impact from my being here. No buildings or structures taking my name. My success will be limited in the views of this world but should I not be focused on significance instead of success?

What can I contribute to others that will make a difference after my time is gone? Are there lives that need just a touch that will show the face of God in a new light? Is there a kid that needs to see one person that is not self-centered but is actually other-centered? Is there a person that can see a glimpse of Christ because I traded in some time to follow the leading of the Spirit? Is my impact to cause a difference in the life of others, who then will make their own impact in the lives of others and so on and so on. Is that not the true meaning of significance?

What opportunities have been laid out before me but my weak eyes and ears were not open to comprehend? Lord, open my eyes to let me see, open my ears to let me hear, open my heart to let me feel. Show me the moments I need to step outside of this skin and make a difference.