New Life'n

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.