(Sort-of-random thoughts after an oddly-shaped holiday season, complete with the Princess and her seven miniature companions… oh, and that reminds me… a trip to Disney, along with other uncertainties of life.)
Nearly every New Year’s night during my growing up years, I would find myself howling at the moon or somebody because of the insanity that was the college football bowl setup. Finally I have seen with my eyes what for years I had only seen in my dreams – a true semblance of a playoff. My team didn’t win. But it had a chance to compete, and that’s all anybody can ask for (unless you’re TCU, but I digress…).
Did you feel the earth rumble from all the photos taken at the Detroit auto show? Have you picked out your favorite auto eye-candy yet? The whole idea of a “concept car” fascinates me… slick looking ideas that get people all excited, only to be told they’ll never actually see that vehicle.
I started to get all huffy and offended, until I realized that the world I move in has its own version – the “concept Christian.” Sleek and slick, shiny and sexy-for-Jesus. But it is only in concept showrooms. How to get it into “real production” remains a mystery.
I know you have been waiting for word, so I thought I would let you know here. I could go on and on about the reasons, but after serious consideration I have decided I will not be a candidate for President of the United States in 2016. That leaves about 2,143 potential candidates still either declared or considering… and you thought the election was far off.
I just gained yet another new appreciation for Rudyard Kipling’s “If” when I came across this: If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run… How’s that for a new perspective on New Year’s (and new day’s) resolutions?
Sometimes the best insights from the Bible are in the white spaces between the verses. They can teach us powerful things if you have the time and patience to come to the Bible with an unhurried heart.
I’ll show you one example… In Exodus 14 as Pharaoh’s army is closing in, Moses courageously steps up and says, “Do not fear… the Lord will fight for you!” In the very next verse, God says to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the sons of Israel to go forward.” What was happening in the white spaces in between? Moses looked like he was on his feet, but in his heart he was on his knees, crying out to God for help.
If you’re somewhere near average and American, you’ll eat around 6,000 slices of pizza in your lifetime. Seems far too low to me, but maybe I’m just hungry. Just remember, wherever you consume your favorite pizza, make sure you are wearing your fitness tracker so it can count the steps you make to and from the buffet.
Pay attention to the little discomforts and anxieties you may experience. I believe that often these are gaps in the heart or your life through which the Spirit is calling for your attention. How you respond to those cries for attention does matter. Go on and deal with it before the little discomforts become screaming fits.
Once more, in case you missed it, Congress won’t be getting a pay raise this year. In fact, they haven’t had one since 2009. See? It is possible to get things done in Washington.
One of the things I have learned is that often the Lord is about to open the door of blessing and give new anointing and ministry at just the point where you’re completely content before Him here in the daily realities and disciplines of your current assignment.
So much of Christian discipleship is about the principle of alignment – of bringing my heart into alignment with reality as defined by scripture. For example, I recently was meditating on Colossians 1:17 – that Christ is before all things, and in him all things hold together. In this case alignment would mean exalting Him in my heart to His rightful place before all things and trusting that He will hold all things together in His love, grace, and wisdom.
Your turn. Go to the most recent place in the Bible you have read or studied. (Blow off the dust if you have to.) Find a statement of truth. Now… what adjustments would you have to make in your life to stand on that truth and bring your life into alignment with it? With reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit, you can experience tremendous growth with that simple process.
I love what can happen when a touch from God greets us in the form of a simple truth, beautifully revealed or reminded, one step at a time. And I especially love it when it’s sometimes the last thing we’re expecting. Thank God for a lifetime of surprises and adventure. It’s never boring unless we let it become so.
If you go to the Land of the Mouse without any children in tow, you will discover things there you never knew existed. I guess I never knew what fun was till I saw two zebras fighting at Disney. Fighting! I think it was over a girl. And that was just at our hotel. We’re definitely going to have to try that again sometime… we’ve always gone with kids (or were kids) in the past.
Remember when Martina sang that love was the only house big enough for all the pain in this world? Now with all the anxiety-ridden news about mass-murders and terrorist plots, when Americans are watching from the sidelines as “those who dwell carelessly in the isles” (Ezekiel 39:6), we have the prospect of one terrorist group threatening another terrorist group. I don’t know what to say about that, other than Martina (and Jesus) has a better solution.
I used to read Jesus’ prediction about a day when men’s hearts would fail them because of fear, and for the life of me couldn’t imagine, really, how that could happen. I no longer wonder. But I still take comfort in the fact that we serve a Christ who loved you and gave Himself for you, the One for all, true one time for all time. That’s a promise I can hold on to in the anxieties of my life, and a peace that really can pass all understanding.
We’ll always have something to be afraid of, wish we had, or need to fix… the news media will go on seeing to that. I just want to be able to say at the end of this day that I knew where (or Whom) my hope lay, and that I filled the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds of distance run… and a minute’s worth of crazy love and joy.
Join me?