New Life'n

The death of Ticklefly

Oh, not yet.  Maybe not ever.  But I got a hint of the end as the twins were loaded into the minivan ready to go home Sunday morning.  Ticklefly had been mostly quiet during their visit, but Ava wanted to say bye, and as he fluttered and flitted around her giggling face it hit me:  One day they won’t care.  They’ll be too big.  Maybe they’ll even forget, and we’ll be talking sometime in ten years when they’re 16 and I’ll make reference to Ticklefly back in the old days, and they’ll say, tickle-what? 

Which is how it all started – once they say tickle-what you’ve got ‘em and he bolts into existence and becomes part of the family forever.  Maybe.

Here’s Ticklefly being pursued in his prime a couple of years ago by Ava’s sister Stella.

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It’s Tuesday -- Emily's built-in day day to make sure you take time to notice the important “little” stuff that really makes up life.

The divine artist

And he makes things by hand.  He doesn’t crank things out on an assembly line.  Each is made personally by him; no heavenly elf helpers in a cosmic workshop.  Do you want or expect life to be predictable and controllable with straight lines?  I do.  But very few things in the nature he has created have straight lines.  And he doesn’t seem to like to repeat himself.  You think about that, and about the kinds of things he lets happen in your life, and you start thinking maybe crooked and unpredictable are by design, signed by him.

Leaves and clouds and rocks and mountains and rivers and people are consistent – each is clearly what it is, different from all the others that aren’t what it is.  But each is also different from the others like it.  People are clearly not rocks, but every person is different from every other person, every rock and cloud from every other rock and cloud. 

When man does what God does – creates -- then each thing he creates is unique; each song, story, movie, painting, sculpture.  There’s only one Phantom of the Opera book, and even though there have been over 15,000 performances of the play in the U.S., each is a sole performance never to be repeated in exactly the same way.

But most things man makes are unlike how God does it.  Buildings have straight lines and corners, and urban and suburban landscapes are groomed, tame and orderly.  But every tree in that landscape is different, even within the same species.  You can plant trees all in a row or cluster them to be esthetically pleasing, but you can’t make each tree exactly like all the others.

Left to themselves, meadows and deserts and forests do what they want and that’s our expectation – natural.  But give humans oversight and the expectation changes.  When we moved to Austin, Texas I hated that they left the medians on many roads un-groomed and uncut -- natural.  I was used to clean lines along curbs and evenly mowed grass; I wanted to tell someone, just mow it!  It didn’t fit my expectation.

Hot dogs are all the same.  Line a hundred up and it’s monotonous.  Line up a hundred coconuts and you won’t even be able to get them to sit up right – they’re all consistently coconuts but each size and shape and color will vary a bit.

   

Picture frames and pencils are straight and square.  Clouds and rocks?  Unpredictable – each is unique.

 

When you see God’s made-by-hand approach to creating, his love of one-at-a-time, it can help your expectation for what a day, or an experience or a relationship (or a life) should be: As unpredictable and unique as a cloud or thunderstorm.  No straight edges.  No formula.  Every experience and challenge a one-of-a-kind, made-by-hand event, signed by the artist.

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This is more of The God Show.  We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.  The previous post is HERE.  You can find out more HERE.

The divine drummer

Ever watch an entire sunrise?  I mean the whole show, not just the highlight of the moment when the sun breaks the horizon.  Technically, it takes about 90 minutes from what they call Astronomical Twilight until the official sunrise, but the beginning is so quiet and imperceptible you can’t see it. 

I’ve only noticed about 45 minutes from total dark to glaringly bright.  It’s methodical – like a slow, powerful drama.  Watching, you’re reminded that God’s pace is not rushed.  He doesn’t skip any steps.  You can’t capture the highlights.

A sunrise is subtle and raucous – it ends up blazing and attention-getting but it gets there slowly.  It has a very different feel from my life.  Inside me, I hear Max with the E Street Band, or sometimes the TWO drummers of the Allman Brothers.  A sunrise is Bolero – you have to hear the whole thing or you haven’t heard it.  And there aren’t any single videos of Bolero on YouTube; they’re so long they have to be divided up. 

The divine drummer’s rhythm seems old fashioned, not modern.  As out-of-date as a fifty-year old jazz quartet.  But unless I get in step with God’s pace, I’ll never see a whole sunrise.  Or have his expectations of what the pace of living should be.  And that pace fills the whole earth, everyday.

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This is more of The God Show.  We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.  The previous post is HERE.

The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You.  Really, he's all over the place. 

You can get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”

The work of quiet

Emily is unwrapping small gifts in the midst of the mundane again.  I have to leave in a few minutes and don’t have time to notice any small gifts (is time the qualifier for experiencing appreciation?) but I clicked over to Justin and saw one:

I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room – Pascal

I think the quietly is the thing there.  I can stay in my room.  And work, or try to, or feel guilty that I’m not.  Quietly can seem wrong when there's things to do (there's always things to do) and you’re not accomplishing anything.  Or are you?

Be still and know that I am God – Psalm 46.10

Credibility isn't everything

Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.  Can this be the Christ? – John 4.29

If a lady who had been married five times and who was now living with another man ran up to you excitedly and said, Hey come and see a guy I just met who I think might be the savior of the world, would you go?  Or would you think, like I would, that she’s not really the one to have any discernment on who the savior of the world is?

The people she said that to, went.  A whole bunch of them.  They believed her and followed her and found out for themselves it was true.

Sure, you want credibility.  You do everything you can to get it.  Without it, people have an excuse to not listen.  But this lady had none, yet for some reason, at least here, that lack did not get in the way of people hearing what she had to say.  And apparently it didn’t occur to her that she might not be believed because of who she was. 

It’s natural to let lack of credibility stop you.  It’s supernatural when it doesn’t.

What unbelief looks like

Early on Friday one of my favorite devotionals reminded me my soul has a shepherd who is always speaking, I am with you, I am with you, and whose voice is meant to be heard during the mainstream of life.  This was not new and I totally agreed.

Later in the morning I took Brenda to the doctor.  She didn’t ask me to go but I think she was a little nervous and hoped I would and I’m her man and wanted to help.  It’s a small office uptown off Providence and since we hadn’t been there before I got directions off Google maps -- I thought knowing exactly how to get there would give her one less thing to be preoccupied about.  Also, I’m kind of a control freak and like to plan out where I’m going.

We got near the place a little later than I wanted.  And I wasn’t sure exactly where it was.  It had to be close.  Then I realized I have no idea – there’s no street numbers no nothing – we’ve probably passed it.  I zipped off Providence and into a parking lot to turn around.  We’re about to be late and this just doesn’t look anything like I expected.  I’m doing the guy huff – that gruff exhale that says, It’s gotta be around here somewhere!  Brenda doesn’t really need her man-comforter acting like that and adding to her stress but I don’t think about that.  I zip down the road all bummed and finally call the office.

It ends up that parking lot was it – we had to go back to it.  So I got all flustered because I thought I was lost, but pulled straight in the right place without knowing it.  And then left.

Later, my inner Jesus that I wasn’t listening to in the mainstream of life reminded me again: I am with you, I am with you. 

Even if it had been the wrong parking lot.

Being sure

A few weeks ago Brenda couldn’t find a small block of wood that went with a table we bought at a yard sale.  “I put it right here in the corner of this box in the garage.”  We looked all over.  Looked in the garbage can.  Maybe the grandkids played with it and lost it.  Are you sure it was there?  She totally remembered putting it in the corner of that box. 

I looked up and down the driveway anyway, then opened the hatch on the 4-Runner – there it was.  In the corner where the wheel well bulges up.  I could picture her putting it there and then seeing the box in the garage and being busy and just thinking, corner.  Really, she was totally sure.  I was glad it happened to her – now I’m not the only one.  Lately, when one of us thinks the other is a little too confident in some matter of judgment or memory, we say, “and that block is in the corner of that box, too.”

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I was sure the balloon boy thing was NOT a hoax.  I heard the whole 911 call – it was way too real.  When you’re acting, most people try too hard and add too much drama.  This was convincing because it wasn’t trying at all to convince.  I’m pretty discerning on this kind of thing.  Most people didn’t take time to listen to the entire eight-minute 911 call – I did.  Plus, you could really picture a kid messing up, getting scared, and hiding.  Even when the kid made the comment about doing it for the show, I thought it’s just a kid saying a thing that people misinterpret – happens all the time. 

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We all knew Michael Jackson was all drugged up.  Abusing pain medication, right?  And who knows what else.  Friends, doctor acquaintances, everybody in-the-know, knew.  Even his sister said when the toxicology results come back all heckaroo would break out.  When the results did come, all that talk stopped.  He may have been all messed up using an anesthetic to sleep, but only the drugs the doctor gave him for that and to try to revive him were in him when he died.  No illegal drugs or evidence of abuse.  He was a normally healthy 50-year old.

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I’ve been around awhile and you’d think your confidence in your ability to be right would grow as you get older.  It’s not working out that way.  Maybe it’s best to not let your conclusions put down roots when it comes to being sure about people, events and your own performance.  It could get embarrassing.

Fun, fun, fun

The barber said the shiny old Thunderbird out front was maybe worth $30-40,000.  “It’s a fifty-five.”

We laughed about how old things in new condition can be worth more than new things in new condition.  There aren’t that many really old things in new condition – you get one, it’s valuable.  You’re paying for overcoming the natural law of deterioration.  You can do the restoration yourself and pay with your work and time, or you can pay for someone else’s work and time.  But someone pays and works for restoration. 

It’s the same with people, but different.  Your body’s the T-Bird and there’s deterioration – you see it and feel it if you’re anything over 30-years old.  You can restore things and hold off the deterioration, but only to a point, and even that requires work and constant oversight.  Diet,  Denial.  Exercise.  You can shine up the outside with lifts and tucks but it still doesn’t look like new.

Your soul and spirit is a different deal.  It’s born a wreck, so wrecked it can’t be restored.  It’s condemned and needs to be replaced.  That’s what Jesus does, when you agree you’re a hunk of junk doomed to the scrapheap and trust only him to restore you.  But once that’s done a whole new dynamic gets started.  Your spirit never deteriorates!  You can ignore it, reject it, starve it to where you may not get the full benefit from it.  But no matter what you do or how many decades pass, your spirit will not stop being what it is with the potential to roar like that T-Bird when it was brand-new. 

You see it in front of the barber shop, in your mirror, and in your Bible:  Outwardly wasting away but inwardly being renewed day-by-day.  Putting on a new self and taking off the old -- the perishable putting on the imperishable.  Transformed, from one degree of glory to another.  A new creation and birth, with a new heart and spirit.  The path of the righteous is like the early morning that gets brighter and brighter until the sun fully blazes.  

A kid's-eye view of a dad's 60-hour work week

The dad worked those 60-hour weeks for 35 years with no vacations. Years later the son wrote that if he had worked eight hours a day instead of ten, the dad would

have had in those years many days amounting to two or three years of time for work of his own choice, for rest, for play and talk with his children and friends, for his accordion and his Bible.  In those added two hours a day across those years his personality would have reached out and down and up, would have struck deeper roots in the good earth and sent higher branches toward the sky.

He never knew his son, Carl Sandburg, grew up to win two Pulitzer Prizes, meet Presidents and become a world-wide celebrity -- he died before those happened.  He never knew the son had any of that kind of thing in him. 

Just enough

Brenda was changing channels and the very end of Entertainment Tonight came on.  Have you ever seen how they do the credits?  They fly by – they scroll up at 100 mph at least.  No way you can read any of them.  Maybe you recognize a logo or two – you think.

Brenda said, “Legalistic.”  She’s joking but she has a point.

You don’t really mean it.  You just want to be able to say you did it.  But you got no interest or passion or caring.  It’s all external.  Fulfill your legal obligation as minimally as possible, and if anyone challenges you, you can always say, Hey, whadyamean?  I did what I was supposed to. 

Lots of things you can do that way:  Work.  Parenting.  Marriage.  And of course religion.

Access

Somehow we hooked up with Missy a couple of hours before the race last Saturday at Lowes Motor Speedway.  She works with Motor Racing Outreach.  She wanted to take us to the chapel that happens before the race.  So we followed her.  She walks us thru the infield and thru a gate in one of the chain link fences.  There’s an official at the gate and she tells him we’re with her and he waves us in.  The crowd is thinner here.  Then another fence with another gate and official and she draws big circles with her hand over us and says, “They’re with me.”

We walk past trucks and RV’s, but not the campers of the fans elsewhere in the infield -- these are really big, clean, modern homes on wheels.  Gee, are these driver RV’s?  Then we’re waved thru another fence and gate.  And then thru doors into one of the long pit garages that’s empty of cars and filled with people.   

Everyone here either belongs by NASCAR birth or they have credentials or they’re with the right person.  In the old days in Israel there was a temple with outer courts for the regular folk and inner courts the more of an insider you were.  In the very middle was the ultra-exclusive holy of holies.  This is it.  It’s like we’re with Jesus and as long as we follow him we go anywhere he does.

The pre-race drivers meeting is happening at the other end.  I’ve heard of this -- I didn’t know humans were allowed in.  Most of the people inside are lining a walkway waiting for the meeting to end so they can watch the drivers leave.  We hear Richard Petty and Bill France introduced.  It’s like being on the mountain with Jesus, and Moses and Elijah appear.  I felt like building them all a little shelter thing.  The meeting ends, most of the drivers leave thru the crowd and we go take our seats for the chapel.

Missy is next to me and whispers that Bobby Labonte is sitting on her other side.  She says behind us on the left is Bill Elliot, and Mark Martin and Matt Kenseth are over our right shoulder.  I don’t look – I might be struck dead.  The band Mercy Me is standing at the back.  Because we’re with Missy, we sit.  A mix of drivers, crews, family members, NASCAR people and don’t-really-belong-here’s like us all listen together to a message on who Jesus is and what he’s done, and we sing Mighty to Save with a lone guitar player at the front. 

Surrounding this garage are 150,000 people with a variety of beliefs and lifestyles, all living out those beliefs and lifestyles their own way before the race.  You see some loud and sloppy and rude and crude.  Most don’t realize that in the very heart of the speedway, the place where access is most coveted, in the middle of all the power and business and money and competition, an hour before all the gentlemen start their engines, there’s a quiet little holy place where some insiders and outsiders have come voluntarily to bow their heads.

What if all the outsiders could get in?  No guards, no gates, no credentials, no passes, no connections, no family birthright.  What if all you had to do was acknowledge your total unworthiness to be in that garage, put all your trust in only one person to get you in, and agree to quit living your own way?  Would it need to be bigger?

There are invisible eternal things going on around us daily that you’d never suspect.  Once in awhile you get to see one, and it reminds you there are others you might notice if you were sensitive. 

Do you ever hear, 'Psssst?'

I think buying a book because you feel like it has something to say to you is a good reason to buy a book.  That’s why I bought this one – Penelope Niven’s biography of Carl Sandburg.  Used ($8.50).  I think it has something to say to me from reading a bit in it and from visiting Carl Sandburg’s home in Flat Rock last June.

All we knew then was he was a famous American who wrote that big Lincoln series a long time ago and won Pulitzer Prizes in poetry and history.  Sounded like an interesting fellow, and it’s only a few hours drive.  At the entrance to the long hike up to the house there’s a restroom building.  On the walls outside are photos and stories and quotes of Sandburg.  I saw these words and was hooked  -- I even had to go back to the car to get my notebook to write it down:

There is a place for me somewhere, where I can write and speak as much as I can think, and make it pay for my living and some besides.  Just where this place is I have a small idea now, but I am going to find it.

Then this:

It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in a forest and ask of himself, ‘Who am I, and where have I been and where am I going?’

Well, hello.  Maybe that doesn’t say ‘pssst’ to you, but it does me.  What kind of life did those words come from and lead to?  Getting to the house, we began to find out.  Self taught.  Eighth grade drop-out.  Owned 17,000 books.  Rejected by academic critics.  Most of the things I like reading are spiritual or leadership biography or business -- this guy was none of that.  It was the start of a growing little curiosity.  

You may not know what a book (or a life story, or a sunrise, or a piece of music) has to say to you, but you know what it feels like when you’re asked to listen.  It taps you on the shoulder and you tilt your head and give it a second.  If after a few taps you’re still listening, there may be something there for you.

"Hurting people naturally hurt people"

John Maxwell said that in a devotional I picked up at a used bookstore last week.  So think: When you see dysfunction in family, marriage, workplace, church – do you see contentment, security and peace in the individuals? 

I don’t think hurting people say, “I’m hurting so I’m going to make sure everybody else hurts, too.”  That’s a cliché.  Hurting people hurt for a reason, and the reason makes you act the way you do.  If I’m confused or scared or feel insignificant, I might be short tempered and protective and act in selfish ways that hurt others.  If I feel unloved, I might feel lonely or bitter, and I might do unreasonable things to try to get love.  Fill a family, marriage, workplace or church with hurting people and hurt gets multiplied.

But if your need for love and acceptance and approval is met, you can stop grasping desperately for it.

When you know you have a soft place to land, when you know your need for love and comfort and significance is met by someone who is able and eager to fully meet it and who will never reject you, it does something to the hurt.  It stays where it belongs, away from others.  And it’s replaced by something that bubbles up the same way hurt does:

Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.  The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life – John 4.14

Earth got rhythm

This is more of The God Show.  We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.  The previous post is HERE.

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So on the nature channel of the God Show, the whole earth is filled with God’s separateness (or holiness); the whole earth is filled with people adjusting to God; the whole earth is filled with birth, growth and death.  And the whole earth is filled with cycles and rhythms.

Cycles of storms and peace, and life and death.

Thru the nature channel God gives us our basic division of time: The rhythm of days and years.  The earth spins once a day and each day has a morning and evening – our life is built around it.  A trip around the sun makes a year and each year has seasons – our lives are built around that, too.

There are tornadoes and hurricanes and thunderstorms and blizzards and floods.  And calm, beautiful days.  In living. there are seasons and times of storms and peace.  Sometimes the storms are big.  In the middle of one it seems never-ending.  But when the storm’s gone, you move on and often forget what it was like.  Between storms, especially if it’s a long between, can fool you into thinking the season of storms is over.  And it is – for a season.

There are droughts – will it ever be normal again?  In the Bible it’s a deer panting for water, a soul panting and thirsting for God, tears as food, taunts of “Where is your God?” and a downcast, disturbed soul within you.  And that’s just in one psalm (42).  

Nature proves itself stronger than we expect.  The Mount St. Helens eruption was supposed to ruin the area for decades.  But nature ran riot within a few weeks as plants and animals began returning.  The Crepe Myrtles in my backyard were hit by a long, hard freeze a few springs ago and looked dead and black.  My brother the landscape expert said we’ll just have to see, they could be goners.  Then slowly – pop! – flowers.  As long as it was alive it was going to do what a tree does.

Life is resilient.  Think back to a time of drought, fire, freezing, death or hopelessness.  Most of those episodes you’ve forgotten but at the time you felt they’d never end and life would never be the same.  Can’t you now look back, amazed at how some of those were resolved?  He restores what the locusts have eaten.  Nature is a constant reminder of the power of resurrection life.

Creation also reminds that resurrection life comes after death.  Without death, there’s no new life.  If you’re alive and following Jesus, you’re always being given over to things that feel like death so that Jesus’ life can be revealed in you (1 Corinthians 4.11).  Unless a seed dies to being a seed and falls to the ground, it remains only one seed – but if it dies it produces fruit (John 12.24). 

We hate death and failure and confusion and hopelessness.  And trees may hate dying leaves in the fall.  But the death of the old makes room for the new – there’s no new life without death.

When we see the cycles and rhythms of storms and peace and life and death in nature, it can help us have the right expectations of what life is like.  Storms and death are as normal as peace and life.

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The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You.  Really, he's all over the place. 

You can get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”

For the teacher in you / me

For some reason in the Christian world there’s this tendency or urge for many to be little teachers.  It’s beyond the individual calling that some have to preach or teach.  Regular, everyday (is there such a thing?) Christians (like me) will start teaching in the middle of a conversation, complete with upraised finger, repeating things they’ve heard as if you’ve asked.  The most common tip-off that this is happening is the phrase, “We as Christians should…”  Since I know that phrase is the tip-off, I avoid it to keep astute hearers from knowing I’ve just gone into teaching mode.

We like to impart knowledge and wisdom.  We like to be needed.  Maybe we also don’t mind letting people know how much we know and how wise we are.  For the less mature of us, it becomes more about me than you – I’m looking for an excuse to teach and you’re it. 

For the more mature ones – well, it will take you awhile to recognize them; they tend to hold back and pick their moments.  They use teaching in conversations sparingly, like seasoning.  Like a NASCAR driver who knows how to go 200mph in a race, but on the interstate he holds back and you don’t notice so easily what a great driver he is.

Much of Christianity is podiums and lectures and seminars and classes and conferences.  There’s analyzing and pondering and scrutinizing and controversy.  The Christians we really respect do that.  So if you were a serious Christian, wouldn’t you teach every chance you got?  Isn’t that what Christians do?

I’m thinking of all that after seeing this quote from John Piper, about the impression he had of God speaking to him when he was called to preach 30 years ago this week;

I will not simply be analyzed; I will be adored.

I will not simply be pondered; I will be proclaimed.

My sovereignty is not simply to be scrutinized; it is to be heralded.

It is not grist for the mill of controversy; it is gospel for sinners who know that their only hope is the sovereign triumph of God’s grace over their rebellious will.

One of the sneaky sins

Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? – Numbers 12.8

Like most families, and especially in the Bible, sooner or later there’s a family mash-up.  Moses’ brother and sister have a little gripe against him, and they expand that to, “Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses?”  If they leave it at that, you might be able to dismiss it, but they give themselves away with, “Has he not spoken through us also?”

Moses is the meekest man there is and would never say anything like that – he even tried to avoid letting God speak thru him.  He also won’t take up for himself. 

But God hears it and he’ll do the taking up.  He calls the three together and he’s angry and has his way of making the point that oh yes I have indeed spoken only thru Moses.  And a little leprosy should help them remember.

Moses was one-of-a-kind but the idea of God deciding who’s in charge is all over the Bible.  And finding a fault is not evidence that God hasn’t put them there.  He says he gives authority to even the lowliest.  He does it on purpose.  They’re not there because they’re better (although they might be). 

It’s so common it seems normal -- the idea that finding faults and weaknesses releases you from respecting a boss, parent, pastor, husband, teacher, president…you know the ones.  Yes, you can have disrespect for a person and still respect their position.  But once there it’s a very short foggy step to rejecting their authority over you.  And an even shorter step to the unspoken attitude: I could do better – it should be me.

David knew the difference and stayed far this side.  He even had the added motivation of knowing he was the chosen new authority once Saul was gone.  But when presented several times with the chance to fix the problem of an unrespectable overseer (with friends telling him these opportunities were signs it was God’s will to take Saul out), David will not touch what he calls ‘God’s anointed.’  When someone else does, David asks the same question God did – How is it you were not afraid to destroy him?  Then David takes him out.

The insecure, persecuting, rebel Saul chased David for 10 years with the seeming intent to kill him (protecting yourself is not the same as disrespecting).  Is your authority worse?  If not, speak against them and you may be speaking against God.

Do you just want an excuse?

I’m kicking myself for missing out on those new LP Aspire bongos on eBay.  Forty-six bucks delivered.  I watched the bidding for days (only 2 bids) but never bid myself.  They sold for $2 more than they started.  They’re worth at least $90. 

I don’t play the bongos.  But I could; really, I know I could and I want to for some reason.  Have wanted to for a long time.  I’ve looked at cajons and djembes and congas on YouTube videos and I think bongos are most me.  But I haven’t actually played any.  And if I did it would be private -- in the garage by myself.  I think it’s a primal thing.

So I’m kicking myself because I refuse to pay $90.  Even the $46 I don’t like.  But I want to do the banging.  ‘Cuz I got the music in me.  And it’s just gotta get out.

Yeah, right.

If there’s something in you trying to get out, it can get out.  Unless you just want to talk about it and stop it with excuses and insist it look a certain way or have a certain reception once it gets out.  If these girls can do this, you can find a way.  Maybe there’ll be a video soon of me pounding the turned-over plastic car-wash buckets in the garage.

Presuming without realizing it

Delly’s our dog and like all dogs she loves sniffing.  The few times she’s out without her leash she doesn’t go far because running would waste valuable sniffing time.

We take 25-minute walks every day.  I march pretty brisk for 15 and let her sniff at her pace the other 10.  But, if I pause anytime during my march – bang – that’s her cue she can stop at every tree, every lamppost.  Her whole body language shouts , “Hey, we stopped at that other one, why can’t we stop here?”  A moment of mercy becomes not only permission but presumption. 

So for the next minute or two after the exception I keep snapping the leash as she stalls trying to get her way.  It’s almost not worth giving her a break if she’s just going to take advantage of it and not be grateful.  Oh yeah, she probably can’t be grateful in a thing like that – she’s a dog.

It’s easy to forget that a moment of mercy or permission or even an apparent alteration of God’s will may only be applied to that one time.  You can’t assume or presume or demand for the future.  Unless you’re a dog.

The quickest way to be rescued

for they were too mighty for me -- Psalm 18.17

You have to know you need it.  Let yourself exhale in the hopeless place.  Feel it.  Admit it.  Be hopeless and desperate and convinced there's only one person who can help.

Of course, you’d also leave to God the timing of it and for what rescue looks like.  You might have to stare at it before you realize that’s it.  But maybe the biggest hitch to experiencing God’s rescue is something that’s good and honorable and so hard to let go of:  A flicker of hope that somehow you can work things out.

This makes me think of David Letterman

and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life – Proverbs 6.23

But I don’t want to wear a seat belt.  It’s restrictive.  Plus every time I hear that thing beep I hear the government telling me what to do.  I don’t like to be told what to do.  And I don’t want to wear a helmet or lifejacket.  And I don’t think I should have to secure my belongings and return my tray table to a locked and upright position.

But you’re actually free to not wear a seat belt or helmet.  You really are – no one will physically force you.  You’re not free to avoid the ticket or citation if you’re caught.  And the idea of those consequences is to spare you the worse consequence of being maimed or killed.  You could say the commands and the consequences are both disciplines for the good of your life.  Unless of course the consequences kill you. 

Most of the time you’re free to do what you want or like.  You don’t have to work.  You don’t have to go to church.  You don’t have to read the Bible.  Or trust Jesus.  You don’t have to eat – or restrict your eating.  You don’t have to pay attention to your kids or love your spouse or mow the lawn or pay your bills.  You can watch TV and cruise the internet all you want.  You can flirt or get angry or get drunk or have sex.  You don’t have to write the book or pursue the dream.  But you’re not free to pick what happens if you do or don’t do those things.  The only way you’re free to pick your consequences is by the discipline of restricting the choices that come before. 

Growing and dying

This is more of The God Show.   We’re noticing now how the whole earth is filled with birth, growth and death.  The previous post is HERE.

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In the birth, growth and death cycle of nature you also see that fruit doesn’t come from the branch that holds the fruit.  The plant or the vine does the producing thru the branch -- but only if the branch stays stuck to the plant.  If you cut off the branch, the fruit stops growing and dies.  It’s the same with your invisible life with God who says, I am the vine, you are the branch; if a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit.  Apart from me, you can do nothing (John 15.5).

And every living thing dies.  Life is long and short, and ends slowly or suddenly or violently or peacefully or unfairly or justly or publically or in solitude.  It’s final, irreversible and personal.  You can slow it down but you can’t prevent it.  It’s instructive in at least two ways: One – no one is stronger than death; funerals are filled with people realizing this.  Two – you should never be surprised by it, as if this wasn’t supposed to end this way.  It always ends this way. 

Every fall you watch and enjoy the death of billions of leaves.  There’s a smell that goes along with autumn, a musty, cool, fresh-dirt aroma.  It’s the smell of death – dying, decaying leaves.  But the removal of the old is necessary to make room for the new in spring.  Leaves can’t be born on trees already filled with foliage.  Death may be final, but it can also be the start of a new thing not possible without the end of what came previously.  You don’t get a new job or house without leaving the old.  It can be the same with a dream.

In creation the whole world is filled with the glory of birth, growth and death.  God shows us in the things he has made what expectations we should have about people being born again and growing.  We see the expectations we should have when nothing seems to be happening.  We see the need to depend on Jesus and trust him and not ourselves.  And we see that death is final and inevitable, but necessary to make way for new things, even when in the middle of winter it seems spring will never come.

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The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You.  Really, he's all over the place. 

We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.  You can get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”

Change

But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them…for he himself knew what was in man – John 2.24, 25

They say they trust him, but he doesn’t trust their trust in him.  It may look one way now, but he knows it can change tomorrow.  It does. 

Glitzy, shiny things are impressive and grab your attention.  You get a new car or house or job or relationship and everything seems better.  Six months or a year later and the new has become the old and you go wishing for another new thing. 

Short-term change can come from commitment or excitement or passion.  Another kind of change comes from gaining a new way of seeing or thinking.  Sometimes commitment and passion can lead to that new way of thinking and seeing.  Sometimes commitment and passion are a result.  But change that stays is its own evidence.  You’ll never have to prove it or convince anyone; it does its own proving and convincing. 

Two common words

I’m tired. 

I’m always trying to figure things out.  Always trying to improve, to do better.  You’d think you’d have something to show for all that always trying. 

There’s a fight in life, and to avoid it is to avoid living, but there’s something at the heart of the fight that changes it.  I remind myself of that by sitting and listening and catching a little inspiration that yes, people do this.  This lady did it.  And though there’s fight, the heart of it sounds and feels and looks nothing like figuring and trying and fighting. 

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Emily is doing that Unwrap the gift thing again.

Now you don't see it, now you do

And what you can’t see is important.  Something big and significant might be happening long before it’s visible.

Ever heard of the Longleaf Pine?  Some live for 500 years.  That long life leads to strength, weight, and resistance to rot and decay.  Two hundred years ago these trees became factories, bridges, homes and ship masts.  It’s been called “the tree that built America.”  The keel of the historic ship “Old Ironsides” is made from one Longleaf Pine. 

But for the first 5-15 years, you see almost nothing.  You’d never know the majesty that was to come.  It doesn’t even look like a tree – you see only a spiky grass bush on the ground.  You could walk past it, go home, have a kid, and walk past again when the kid was in middle school and you’d still be convinced it was a bush.  But during this time a deep taproot is growing that the tree will live on until it matures.  

When grass fires sweep the forest, other young trees are destroyed, but the Longleaf is designed to survive in its unimpressive bushy stage, continuing to grow its roots, waiting for the right time for a growth spurt.  When that moment comes the Longleaf Pine roars upward above the dangerous ground fire level.  Now it’s ready for long, strong, living.  It doesn’t matter how it looks for those first years; those years will be forgotten.

Longleaf forests need fire to thrive over other hardwood trees.  The fire wipes out the hardwoods, leaving great stands of Longleaf Pines.  The Southeast USA was dominated by Longleaf forests until 100 years ago – the forests disappeared because the wood was so useful in construction but took so long to grow that they weren’t replanted.  The thing that made it great also caused its demise.

Fire.  And time.  Lots of fire and lots of time.  Two things you’d rather avoid.  Who wants to live for years with the threat of everything being burned up and no visible results?  But if you knew what it could lead to, you might see fire and time as a friend instead of evidence of hopelessness.

Jesus served three years, had maybe a few hundred followers and was killed.  At the time, it didn’t look like much.  But the roots of a new life-changing reality for the whole world were permanently established.  Those roots began with Adam and Abraham and Moses and Israel and David and the prophets.

“The longer the preparation, the deeper the work.  The deeper the root, the firmer the plant when once it springs above the ground.  I do not believe that any deep work of God takes root without long preparation somewhere.” – J.O. Fraser

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This is more of The God Show.  You can get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”  We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.

The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You.  Really, he's all over the place. 

We’re noticing now how the whole earth is filled with birth, growth and death.  The previous post is HERE.

Solomon looked around and wrote what he saw

The mouth of a forbidden woman is a deep pit; he with whom the Lord is angry will fall into it – Proverbs 22.14

Well I never thought of THAT as a root of adultery – that God could be angry with you and so lets it happen.  A deep pit would be dark and hopeless-feeling and a tangled mess to get out of; maybe that’s the kind of trouble needed to bring about a turning to God that will result in the Lord NOT being angry with you.  Is it an accident that the very next verse talks about the rod of discipline driving folly from the heart of a child?

I want to be Ernie

Ernie is 91.  He has cancer.  He just found out last month.  He knows he doesn’t have much time left.  But he feels fine – it’s one of those painless but fast-growing ones.

Ernie’s been married to Lulu for 68 years.  Do you know how he’s spending his last days?  Taking care of Lulu – running errands, “whatever she wants me to do.”  Lulu’s fine, Ernie’s the one dying.  But he says he still falls in love with her more everyday.  He says he owes her – she’s been so loyal and followed him to Detroit 50 years ago even though she never wanted to leave Baltimore. 

You might remember that when you hear sometime this winter that the famous baseball announcer Ernie Harwell has died.

You keep score in baseball.  Keep score in marriage and you may win, but your marriage will lose.  Unless the score you keep is the debt of love you owe them.  That’s the score Ernie’s been keeping.  And he’s still trying to pay her back. 

The constant fight to keep it simple

Maybe it’s easy for you.  Not me.  I’m a Master Complicator.  MC’s try to see and solve everything at once (in their heads), and end up not seeing anything clearly.  It’s about as smart as trying to cram a couple dozen eggs into a 12-egg carton.

If you love to follow formulas you always come against something the formula won’t fit.  And if you hate formulas (like me) and refuse to let them into your life at all, you end up covered with egg-yolks.  But, while thrashing around in several areas (home, work, church, self – you know, everything) I stumbled onto this lifeline:

1.  Trust – that God knows, cares, is in total control.  That he’s working everything for good.  That he loves you.

2.  Don’t grumble – not outside, not inside.

3.  Be grateful.  Can you walk?  Talk?  Breathe?  Eat?  Any of those?  Anything else?

4.  Be obedient.  Do what you think you should do, based on the Bible.  Don’t do what seems to bother your conscience.

So for now, I’m just asking myself as I go thru the day – Am I trusting here?  Am I grumbling?  Am I grateful?  Am I doing what I know I should?  If I keep those 4 in line, I might stay in a good place for awhile, and be more useful.

My fall wreath that's not a wreath

Emily is doing Tuesdays unwrapped again, noticing the gifts that are easy to miss.

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I’m a guy -- I don’t do wreaths or dried cornhusks with pumpkins and gourds.  Or those cornucopia things.  But I love fall and it’s emotion.  I think the emotion is nostalgia – you can feel the dying of something and you reflect on the life and days and summer and times and events and change that came before.  Leaves seem the perfect picture of that. 

My fall wreath on the door is my computer screen.  Webshots helps you compile albums of photos of different themes that you can turn on and off as a screensaver.  I just turned on my fall album.  My favorite pictures are the ones I’ve taken over the years in my neighborhood.  They’re not professional quality and are taken with a cheap Nikon point and shoot -- I don’t even look at the screen as I take them.  But they’re mine and are personal and they help me feel the emotion of fall. 

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Five feet from our back door, in the patio chairs – don’t touch a thing, just behold from different angles and lighting.  The Crepe Myrtle blooms from the end of May into September.  It deserves a rest…

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The sun loves to help them wave goodbye…

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A few blocks from my house, this exact scene on the sidewalk – I think there was a wedding at the park gazebo the day before and a plastic rose was left behind…

Then the cadavers without the rose.  Doesn’t get much deader than this.  But unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains but a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces much fruit…

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And some results of the death of seeds, at the roadside stand two miles from our house…

How to read those Old Testament books you hate

OK, you don’t hate them – you just avoid them.  All those names and numbers and details about sacrifices and building materials…what are you supposed to get out of that? 

You read ninety verses in Numbers chapter 7 describing the same dedication offering by each of the twelve tribe leaders.  After the first two or three guys, you realize it’s repeating.  The silver plate, the silver basin, the flour and oil, the golden dish, the incense, the bull, the ram. the male goat, the oxen and rams, and more lambs and goats.  Oh, and don’t forget the exact weights and amounts and ages – that’s described, too.  You’re tempted to go, “Yeah -- whatever.”  Why not just tell it once and say they all brought the same thing?

I think at least one reason is this: Your God is very precise.  In all those lists of people with funny names, in the numbing intricacies of sin offerings, and in the fastidious instructions for building the tabernacle, God is not wishy-washy or vague.  Some things are important and require precision.  Unlike me, God does not have a “whatever” attitude.  So, sure, read quick and skim, but don’t miss this:

People, sin, and connecting with God, matter. 

The most joyous spot on earth

It’s an unlikely spot for such joy.  Noisy, lots of concrete, chaotic, confusing.  And the joy only goes maybe 20 seconds before it moves on to other locations.  But those brief eruptions happen all day, every day.  You’re probably within a few miles of this spot.  Mine’s about 45 minutes away; I was there again this week.

The curb at the arrival level at your airport. 

Little mini-reunions occur constantly with quick handshakes, man-hugs, real hugs, smiles and shouts.  You toss the bags in the back, slam the doors and you’re off.  The joy continues down the road in all directions, gradually diluted from that concentration back at that 100-yard stretch of concrete. 

It’s a spot where the problems of separation and distance and time are resolved all in one moment.  Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing: A blurry little peephole into heaven.

Born. Grow. Die.

Birth, growth and death – they’re all over the place.

Things are planted, conceived, sprout, born, grow, reproduce and die.  It’s the same with life with God.  We get the visible, physical world right in front of us all the time, and as we understand it we’re helped to understand eternal, spiritual things. 

In both the physical and spiritual there’s a time of preparation and a time of sowing seed.  The farmer can scatter the seed and take in the harvest, but he can’t make the seed sprout or grow.  You can plant and water and try to create conditions for growth, but the results are out of your hands.  You can pray for your kids, family members and friends, but you can’t make anyone be born again or grow and mature spiritually.

And you can’t just throw seed anywhere and expect it to sprout.  If the soil is too hard or rocky or weedy, then there’s no growth or fruit.  There needs to be preparation.  It’s the same in spiritual things where hard hearts need softening and attitudes made receptive to receive a new thing. 

And what you can’t see is important.  Roots support everything that grows later.  Something big and significant might be happening long before you can see it.

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This is more of The God Show.  You can get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”  We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.

Isn't it great you don't have to be remembered for the worst thing you ever did?

You have not been like my servant David, who kept my commandments and followed me with all his heart, doing only that which was right in my eyes – 1 Kings 14.8

Kept his commandments?  Followed God with all his heart?  Did only what was right in God’s eyes?  What about adultery and murder and not confessing and repenting until caught and confronted?

In Ephesians God talks about your walk and your manner of life.  David’s sins were an aberration, not his manner of life.  You wouldn’t say they characterized the way he lived. 

If God doesn’t major on my aberrations in his opinion of me, I shouldn’t either in my opinion of myself.  Or in my opinions of others.  You're who God says you are, no more, no less.  But aberrations also can’t become a habit and lifestyle.  If David’s adultery and murder were repeated every few years, even though infrequent, you’d begin to picture it as a manner of life. 

Chronic sickness (or sin) is persistent, long lasting or recurrent.  Acute illness (or sin) is abrupt and serious, but of short duration.  God knows the difference.

No shortcut

There’s a long powerful arm that reaches far to pull things up, to raise and rescue people and predicaments.  But that arm mostly reaches into graves.

My problem is I don’t want to go into the grave first.

Jesus did.  Independent God becomes dependent man and lives like I have to live, dependent on the deity of another.  Not grasping for equality with God but giving it up.  Making himself nothing.  Taking the form of a servant.  Humbling himself.  Becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross where only really bad guilty people die – as if he’s saying, “Yeah, that’s me.”  He takes the blame for the sin of others.  All voluntarily while deserving credit and glory.

He has all the superpowers of God but won’t use them for himself.  I got nothing and then put my hope it it.   

“Therefore God has exalted him…” (Philippians 2) from the grave of surrender and hopelessness.

Maybe one of the hardest things for humans to do is voluntarily step into a grave.  As long as there’s a speck of hope in myself, I won’t.

What I didn't tell my friend

My friend wants to talk.  He's heard me listen and sometimes share with others, and now he wants me to listen to him.

He talks about church.  He's picky.  But biblically picky.  He just wants what the Bible wants in a church, at least as best he can tell about what the Bible wants.  He's thought about it, prayed about it, listened to others and read what others have to say about church and what it should be. 

Over about twenty years he's lived in several cities and has seen a bunch of churches and he's paid attention.  He's taken it serious. and as a result has gained some opinions, or convictions, about what's important in what a church is and what it does and how it does it. 

In fact, his "list" of what he's looking for is pretty meaty.  It covers things like Christ-centered, Bible-centered, worship, preaching, evangelism, discipleship, elders and church government, the role of women, and positions on marriage and homosexuality.  Traditional or rock & roll?  Church plants or multi-site?  People oriented or God oriented?  Continualist or cessation?  Covenant or dispensational?  And there's more!  Yeah, I'm not impressed, either, but see, he's thought about it a lot.  Get him going and he'll talk your ear off on some of these. 

He knows there's a lot of disagreement over what's most important.  Those he reads and talks with don't agree.  Any one of them, if you were in a certain church, would say, "how can you go there when they ____?"  Some would say that about church A, some about church B, some C.  But in every church you could be in, those someones would find some unbiblical "deal breaker" and be able to back it up.  And my friend agrees with most of them.  The last thing he wants is to be unbilbical.

And he's not picky because he's trying to get his needs met.  He wants to serve and be used in people's lives, but he wants to be as compatible as possible with the church, so he can serve with a "clear conscience." 

Did I say he's not in a church right now?  Well he's in church, he just hasn't committed to one.  Over the last six years he's visited about fifteen churches.  He's committed to two, and stayed in one for two years but ended up not having a "clear conscience" about it.  He almost committed to two others, but there were some things where he felt he wasn't in agreement enough to serve with, again, a "clear conscience."  This guy's conscience must be world class!

I didn't have to tell him what all this means if carried to the end of his logic:  It means in his large city with hundreds of churches, he can't find one "good enough" for him.  It means Jesus has failed to "build my church" like he said he would, or it may mean my friend's standards are higher than Jesus'.  It means he's not serving, has no connections, no church friends, that no one has spiritual authority over him, that he's not using his gifts in church.  And that's biblical?  He can have a clear conscience over that?

I didn't have to tell him he needs to decide as best he can where God would have him, and commit to it and serve.  I didn't have to tell him that no one else knows him and his situation and his wife (who told him she was sick of his lists) like he does, and that no place is perfect and that no way everyone is going to approve, or understand, why you are where you are.  And I didn't have to tell him it was pretty obvious he cares too much what he thinks some people might think.

I didn't have to tell him any of that because my friend is me, and he already knows it.

I did tell him he needs to stop talking to himself and DO something.

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This was written five months ago.  My friend has now stopped talking to himself and is doing something.

When everything is nothing

In the old days God gave commands but no power to accomplish them.  This was supposed to lead to frustration and misery and learning that you don’t have it in you to do it.  The Old Testament is a record of how wrecked up things can get during that learning. 

Today God empowers what he commands.  But you only get the power thru your humble dependence on the empowerment of another.  Individual lives today are a record of that learning. 

How to fool yourself

Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment. – Proverbs 18.1

Secrecy is the means to doing your own thing.  It allows you to fool yourself.  The elders in one of my former churches worried if they noticed a guy was suddenly not around much.  They knew from experience it could lead to trouble. 

You can isolate yourself while surrounded by people, too.  And your isolation may not result in secret life type of stuff – it might be an isolation that allows your ideas or thinking or effort or ways or assumptions to go unchallenged.

Maybe you intimidate people and they wouldn’t dare challenge you.  Maybe when you are challenged or talked straight to, it turns into an experience that isn’t worth it for them to repeat.  Maybe you send signals that people don’t have permission to speak about certain things.  Or maybe they just respect you too much.  You haven’t done this on purpose – but it’s still resulted in a sweet little deal where you don’t have to confront the reality about yourself. 

The best kind of accountability is from people who know you in everyday situations.  Meeting regularly with someone who asks you “accountability questions” isn’t the same thing.  You can fool them and fool yourself.  You can’t fool people who are with you daily and weekly.  They may be peers or in authority over you or they may be under you.  Or you may think they’re unqualified to be your challenger.  But they know – they’re just not saying.  And most won’t, unless they’re asked, and even then they may not say. 

Blunt honesty is unpleasant and risky -- people are looking for an excuse to avoid it.  And they know instinctively if someone isn’t open to criticism or correction, even if the someone has invited it.  So now they have the excuse they need to keep quiet.  And you can do your own thing.

Move the lighthouse

All that’s left at the old site of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is a circle of stones marking the outline of the foundation.  The beach nearby has places where it looks like someone took a big bite – you can hardly walk along one area where it drops like a small cliff to the water.  Piles of rocks jut out into the water and the torn remnants of what looks like huge submerged black plastic bags splash with the waves. 

That’s how it looked when we visited a few years ago.  It’s probably changed.  It’s always changing.  That’s why they moved the lighthouse.  The rocks and plastic debris are what’s left of the effort to keep from moving it.  Didn’t work.

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was originally 1,500 feet from the ocean but that gap shrunk drastically in recent decades.  It was closed for a time fearing the waves were about to take it.  Then there were all kinds of plans and efforts to hold back the water.  For awhile they either worked or the ocean just decided to go the other way for a season.  The lighthouse reopened and things were great but then here came the waves again.  Ten years ago they gave up and moved it.  The sea pushes everything out of its way. 

In nature the whole earth is filled with people adjusting to God.  Sometimes I ponder the debris left from my efforts to save things that are my ideas and not God’s.  You can put off the inevitable for a long time, but in the end you have to face it.  Just move the lighthouse.

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This is more of The God Show.  You can get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”  We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.

A world of adjusters

On our first cruise we got to where no land was in sight.  And Brenda says, “It feels like we don’t belong here; like we’re invaders.”  It was only the Caribbean but it might as well have been the middle of the ocean.

You do the same thing you do on land – eat, sleep, walk, talk with people -- but there has to be a big expensive boat with generations of development of proven systems to stay on top of the water.  You rarely forget you’re floating.  The ocean does not adjust to you – you have to adjust to it.

When the sea decided to get wavy and choppy there was nothing we could do about it.  We walked the halls like drunk people and noticed most were staying in their cabins.  Probably taking nausea pills and staring at the horizon like they tell you to do.  The ocean was not heard to say, “Oh, these poor people are nervous and not feeling well, I must adjust to them.”  We did the adjusting.

We have friends in Wilmington, NC – not on the coast but on the waterway that separates the islands from the mainland.  When they let us use their home for a weekend it took me a while to figure what those big steel doors were that slide and lock on the outside of the glass doors in the dining room.  Hurricanes laugh at glass.  Just being near the ocean requires preparation.

You can visit the coast as a tourist and get the benefit you want – the sun, the beach, the warm, the fun.  But if you’re going to live there, you have to make adjustments.  When you visit, those have been made for you.  There’s all kinds of maintenance and paint that happens to account for the wind and sun and salt and water.  And you always have to be ready for a storm or hurricane.  If you ignore things you can get hurt.   

God has not made people that he would adjust to them and he has not made his creation to either.

The world is filled with people adjusting to what God has created.  That’s another way you see how the whole earth is filled with God’s glory on the nature channel.

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This is more of The God Show.  You can get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”  We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.

The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You.  Really, he's all over the place. 

A conversation between Thinker and Soul

Soul:  We need to talk.  I’m hungry.

Thinker:  Yeah hold on a minute, I’m busy

S:  You’re always busy.

T:  I have to be busy – someone has to deal with all these issues and plans and steps and stuff.

S:  But that’s all you do.  Besides, you’re the one who came up with half that stuff; no one’s making you do it.

T:  Yeah, well, if you were in charge you’d say ‘Oh, all that’s not so important.’  What would happen then?

S:  I don’t know.

T:  Right!  Because you don’t think!

S:  Look, I have no problem with you leading.  I know that’s how you’re wired and you can’t help it.  But you have to listen to me and not decide on your own all the time..

T:  OK, I’m listening.  Oh, hold on I need to run over here for just a minute.

S:  (Sigh)

T:  OK, I’m ready.

S:  Listen, you’re very gifted.  You have tremendous energy.  You can go 24-7-365.  That’s good.  But you can be Johnny-one-note.  You need to aim yourself at some things that will feed me so I can help you -- look at me, I’m so scrawny I can’t help anyone!

T:  Well, you need to be more like me and feed yourself.

S:  I need you to feed myself!  We’re supposed to work together!  You can lead, but you have to listen to me.  You act like this is all about you.  You’re kind of selfish – but being selfish really ends up hurting you.  If you’d let me help, you’d be better off.

T:  I am rather tired.  Actually very tired. 

S:  If you’ll point yourself at certain things and use all those amazing abilities of yours to explore those things, I’ll be able to be who I am and then I can help you better be who you are.

T:  OK.  Like what?

S:  Well, you could start with this

On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate – Psalm 145.5
 

And when you understand that you can't...

Continuing The God Show.  You can find out more and get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”

The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You.  Really, he's all over the place. 

We’re in the nature channel, beginning to see how the whole earth is filled with God’s holiness.  Job has just been blown away as God uses creation to show how Job cannot understand God’s ways. 

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After all that, after being swept away with the tsunami of God’s creation, Job’s exhausted voice is heard midst the flotsam as the wave recedes.

I know that you can do all things: no plan of yours can be thwarted.  You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’  Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things to wonderful for me to know.

My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you,

Job, the most blameless and upright man around, now says his previous understanding of God was as if he had only heard of him.  But now God’s eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived as Job appreciates the unknowable majesty of the things God has created.

Job was already familiar with nature, but now he sees creation in a way he had not – now he sees God’s glory in those things.

When Job is sensitized to God’s creation, he sees himself compared to God – and Job’s whole expectation of his right or ability to understand or question God’s ways changes.

In nature, the whole earth is filled with God’s holiness.  Being awakened to appreciate his glory in creating the whole earth and universe can help us have humble and right expectations of things that God allows us and people we know to go thru.  It can cause us to hesitate and be fearful and respectful in trying to give answers and explanations for things we have no ability to fully comprehend.