Where I Needed to Be
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
—Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
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music :: worship :: life
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
—Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
A footnote to last week’s Messy Meditation on Discipline and Stuff. This doesn’t sum it up; it merely adds another point of view. Maybe it only contributes to the messiness, but here goes:
When we love and care about someone, we care about the things that are important to them. Relationships are built on communication and caring. We want to share the things that matter to us with the other person. And we want to hear about the things that matter to them. We may not otherwise care about those particular concerns at all. But because we care about the person, what concerns them concerns us.
This is one of the primary reasons Christianity won over the Roman Empire. A tiny foreign religion from a remote, backward province completely displaced thousands of years of paganism in a relatively short time. The notion of a god who loved and cared about humanity, who wanted a relationship with each person as an individual, who called his followers friends, and adopted them into his family as sons and daughters and heirs—such a god was completely unheard of. To call this idea revolutionary is a drastic understatement. Despite millennia of tradition, despite deep entrenchment in the culture (Mediterranean and Mid-Eastern culture was built on paganism from its prehistoric inception), despite all the power and authority of establishment, government, wealth, and law— Despite all this, paganism could not compete.
Why? It was all about love. The pagan gods did not care about human beings, and certainly didn’t love them. The only thing those gods cared about was being propitiated with the proper ceremonies and sacrifices. At best, they viewed humans as amusing pets or playthings, and at worst, as vermin to be eradicated. The notion of a god that loves and cares for people as individuals was a very new thing upon the earth, and it was an irresistible force that conquered the Roman Empire. “No weapon forged against it could prosper.”
God went to a great deal of trouble to tell us about the things that matter to him—to communicate his message over the course of 1500 years, and to preserve it for the next 2000 years. As I said above, when we love and care about someone, we want to share the things that matter to us with them. This is what he has done. And he wants to hear about the things that matter to us.
When a little girl comes home excited about how yellow and blue make green, and gleefully demonstrates that over and over, her parents get excited, too. Not because it is any new revelation to them, but because they love their daughter, and what she cares about matters to them. When a little boy falls off his bike and skins his knee, his parents know it’s no big deal. But they care about it because they love their son, and it matters a lot to him.
When we truly love God, we want to hear about the things that matter to him, about the things he wants to share with us, and studying scripture is not a burden, but a natural response stemming from our love. Likewise we want to pray and share with him the things that concern us, because we know that he loves us and wants to know what is on our hearts and minds.
A final thought: “Love your neighbor” is not so much an additional commandment, but a logical corollary of the premise, “God loves us.” The Bible tells us over and over that God loves us. For example:
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
—1 John 3:1a (NIV)
If God loves all of us, then everyone you meet is God’s beloved. To despise your neighbor, no matter what his or her relationship is to you—friend or foe, family or stranger—is to despise God’s own beloved child. Much of 1 John 4 is devoted to the development of this theme. Matthew 25 also drives home the connection between loving God and loving your neighbor. But nowhere is the direct logical significance made clear. Perhaps it seemed self-evident at the time, but it is not so obvious to today’s readers.
Look at it this way: If you have a child, how do you feel if somebody despises your child? How do you feel if someone rejects your child? How do you feel if someone hurts your child? You take it personally—very personally! It wasn’t you that was harmed, but it affects you a great deal—perhaps even more than if they had done it to you. Remember that every person you meet is God’s dearly beloved child. How you treat your neighbor, or how you talk about your neighbor, matters a lot to God. He takes it very personally.
If you were stupid enough to throw a rock at a lioness, she might just ignore you, or even walk away. But hit one of her cubs with a rock and see what happens! Don’t mess with the Lion of Judah.
We focus so much of our attention on the things that make a visible difference, and the maintenance things tend to get squeezed out. As someone said, “Something has to give, somewhere.” And usually it’s the things that don’t provide immediate payoff.
I remember a house my dad bought when I was a kid. He had found it abandoned. The house had been framed, but the deal had fallen through and construction stopped. The skeleton of the home and stood for several months and because the builder had so much sunk cost in it, he was eager to get it off his hands. My dad got the house for a fraction of what it was worth and had it finished.
I remember that he didn’t like the way they were insulating it. He had a load of insulation delivered and spent a weekend putting insulation up himself. I spent part of a weekend over there helping. I was about 13 or 14 at the time. Like most kids that age, I was smarter than anyone else. I thought the insulation stuffing was sheer idiocy. Why waste all the time and money on this insulation? You’re not even going to be able to see it. His explanation didn’t register with me. If you get too hot, just turn the air-conditioner up. I couldn’t see the point.
If you built a house and left out the sheet rock it would be immediately obvious. It would make a visible difference at once. But if you skimped on the insulation it would not be obvious right away. And once the walls were in place and painted, adding more insulation would take major surgery. They only time to insulate is before the walls are up, long before the insulation will be needed.
This is what is wrong with our busy lives. We concentrate on things that have immediate effects. We focus on what yields visible results right now, and the things that don’t show get squeezed out of the schedule. But those things often make a huge difference over time.
At work, a few months ago, I spent about a week going through the bins, pulling out all the materials, sorting, eliminating tons of it—materials of limited use, old, outdated stuff—counting and measuring all that was left and reconciling the inventory, modifying the storage bins to keep materials better sorted, and reorganizing the arrangement of it all. I had been putting the job off for a long time, because it wad so time-consuming. But the outcome has been that it is much easier to find and store materials, and to maintain inventory. The inventory is more accurate. I know right where everything is. They don’t get jumbled up together, or damaged because they are better supported. In just a few months, I have already saved the time I spent reorganizing.
When I am organizing, sorting, preparing, culling, etc., I don’t feel like I’m being productive. I am a light switch: I’m either all the way on, or all the way off. I’m not a dimmer. And all that routine maintenance stuff feels like wasted time to me. I’m champing at the bit to be out the gate and down the straightaway. I need to reeducate myself to the truth that those activities are productive. The payoff is not immediate, but they yield immense dividends over time.
Famed Polish pianist, composer, patriot, and statesman, Ignacy Paderewski said: “If I don’t practice for one day, I know it; if I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it; if I don’t practice for three days, the audience knows it.”
Last week a friend wrote me with a prayer request, saying, “I am trying to stay focused on Bible study every day and keeping up with my prayer life. I am so worn out at the end of every day I sometimes let it slip and I should not.” Then this morning another friend whom I met for breakfast was talking about how much he liked everything to be orderly, but that his life and environment doesn’t reflect that. He said his wife told him it was because he was over-committed. He didn’t set aside time for those things. He agreed to do so many things, and felt like he had plenty of time for them, because he had not accounted for the time it takes to do routine maintenance. (After breakfast, we stopped to look at a house he was building; thus the inspiration for this meditation.)
One of them suffers from neglecting routine maintenance of his physical environment, the other from neglecting routine maintenance of her spiritual environment. In both cases the cause is the same: focusing on the things that payoff now, and squeezing out the things that yield long-term results. I am often guilty of both. My environmental maintenance routines are atrocious. (Translate: I am a slob.) I have finally developed a study and prayer routine that is comfortable. If I don’t do it, my day doesn’t feel right. It’s like going to bed without brushing your teeth. Yucky. Nevertheless, I expect to do more as I work myself up to it. I am a long way from the kind of discipline I would like to have.
In my early 20’s I had a friend who owned a vintage European sportster—basically a high-performance race car. It was awesome to ride in that thing, winding through the Hill Country west of Austin with the top down. But the car required constant maintenance. The timing, the carburetor, the spark plugs—it seemed practically everything had to be adjusted almost every day. Without maintenance it quickly became a coughing, rattling heap. But when the maintenance was done right, it purred and it roared like the cat it was named for. Sheer ecstasy! So with our lives.
It would be nice if I had some pithy remarks about diligence and discipline here to wrap all this up and tie it neatly with a bow. This is a rambling narrative that aims at its subject from several directions, and never really closes in on it. Still, it’s the meditation of my mind today. It’s kind of messy, like my life. But I got it done.
Chrysalis was wonderful. Some of the events are a little different from Emmaus. And some of the special chapel services may be even more powerful than their Emmaus counterparts.
The kids on my team did a great job, and all the caterpillars seemed to get a lot out of it.
I’ve grown increasingly suspicious of ministry activities that seem to benefit those doing the ministry more than those they are ministering to. Emmaus has often been afflicted with this. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say, “I need to work another Emmaus Walk. I need a spiritual boost.” I confess to doing this myself in the past. But that’s completely backwards. And I think it is the source of most of the trouble that has plagued the Emmaus community over the years. The sad fact is that many of our churches are not feeding their congregations. Some leave, looking for better churches; others give up on the church altogether. But many stay, as I did for years, and are forced to search elsewhere for their spiritual food. So I know what it’s like to devote major resources in time and money to find ways outside the church to get spiritually filled, and then bring it back to church, only to be sucked dry in no time flat. I spent years like that, so I sympathize with those who are stuck in that position. I thank God I’m no longer at a prodigal church, but there are many who for various reasons are stuck where they are, often due to family, or commitments. So there is no condemnation. It’s a shame, that’s all.
There is always a secondary gain, though, and I did benefit from the Chrysalis this weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was relaxing and fun, but it wasn’t any big “spiritual boost.” As far as what new revelation I carried away from it, when somebody asked, I said “I think I’ve finally overcome my compulsive need to know what the hell I’m doing. I was totally clueless all weekend and it went great!” That’s freedom. It felt wonderful.
So does that mean that cluelessness is the key to freedom?
I have not been able to sleep for the past two nights because of this toothache. The whole roof of my mouth hurts, and now it has spread to my throat. Here it is just a few days before the Chrysalis weekend, and I already have more to do than I can manage. This is so typical of Satan’s tricks. Sometimes I just have to laugh at his attacks. It’s as if he doesn’t even bother to try coming up with something new. It’s always the same old stuff over and over again. There’s no subtlety to it at all.
I keep thinking about C. S. Lewis’s depiction of Satan in Perelandra
Deep within, Lewis said, there is “nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness.”
So a part of me looks with scorn on the childishness and monotony of his attacks. And a part of me is thankful that I am not dealing with some grand and subtle design. But another part of me is disgusted and somewhat chilled at the thought that something so petty and childish as giving me a toothache before and important event could be so damned effective.
I’m glad that God knows what I need. He knows my thoughts even as I am thinking them. He knows my feelings better than I know them myself. Anytime I turn my thoughts toward God, no matter what time, night or day, God is already thinking about me. And long ago, he prepared for this day. Satan was defeated once and for all when those nails pierced my Savior’s flesh. Is that awesome or what?
I hate to admit it, but it reminds me of an old Willie Nelson song. Remember “Always on My Mind
I was just thinking of a conversation I had 2 or 3 years ago with a friend who said, “I’m completely self-sufficient. I can do everything for myself.”
I remarked, “You can’t bury yourself.” She laughed. It was a bitter kind of wisecrack. It diffused the mood.
I didn’t think she was prepared to hear the meaning hidden behind the humor. This was a person so thickly shielded that she couldn’t even feel her own pain. I know what that is like: I wore a shell like that for a long time. It is hard to take off.
Even after you have taken it off, it is hard to keep it from growing back.
People may be unfaithful and unjust, but you cannot live a fulfilling life without them. I think it was Andrew Marvell that wrote:
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Not only can you not bury yourself, you can’t live inside your casket.
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