music :: worship :: life
God has chased us all the way from Eden. We’ve come a long way from Eden, running all the way. He never tires, never flags, never wavers in his pursuit of us: relentless, unbent, undeterred. Still we run. Eventually he catches us. We were well hid, or so we thought. But suddenly he was there! Right there! Where we least expected him. And we shout: We are found!
But soon we run again, and again he chases. Always. All our lives. What is it we fear? His love is overpowering. His love is fierce. When he catches us, it changes everything. Look at Paul. God pounced on Paul like a mountain lion on a kid, and tore him up. Paul never recovered. An authentic encounter with the living God will ruin your life. We run scared.
His love could burn us up from the inside out. His love is hot. His love is sticky. We can’t get free of it. No matter how we try.
We don’t want to be caught by God. It changes us. If God tags us, we’re “it.” And then what will we have to do? What does he want from us? Where will he send us? What will become of our comfortable lives?
How it hurts! — How it tingles! — When our foot’s been asleep and the blood starts flowing again. And how, when God enters our lives, pounces upon us from behind some rock beside the road we travel, how it hurts! When feeling starts coming back to our lives, where we’ve been shambling, numb, asleep. When the grace starts circulating again through our unfeeling hearts and minds and sets us tingling. Hot, burning, we jump and shout. We cry out: I’m alive, I’m alive! God has found me and I’m alive!
When I was little, we had a game in our backyard called a tether-ball. Everybody had one. It was like a volleyball tied to a rope, suspended from a pole about 8 or 10 feet high. To play, you would slap the ball in one direction. The ball would circle around the pole, and your opponent would try to slap it back the other way. The object was to get the ball completely wrapped around the pole in your direction.
A lot of people approach God with a misconception: they think that once they become Christians, they will have God on their side, and the world won’t get slap them around any more. Much to their dismay, the world keeps slapping them around as much as it ever did. So what good is it to be Christian? —To have God on your side?
The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is not whether the world slaps you around, but in what happens when the world slaps you around. It’s the difference between being a volleyball and a tether-ball.
When you accept Christ, he becomes your center-pole. The Grace of God tethers you to him with a strong cord. And as long as you cling to his Word, nothing can separate you from Christ.
When you slap a volleyball, it can wind up anywhere. But when you slap a tether-ball, it can only come right back toward the center-pole. As a Christian, no matter how hard the world slaps you, it only flings you back toward Christ. The more it slaps you, the more it wraps you tighter and tighter in his embrace.
You always hear the saying, “The optimist sees the glass as half full, and the pessimist sees the glass as half empty. Which one are you?”
My answer is, “Neither.” Both answers are correct. The glass is half empty and half full. There may even be several other correct answers. If you settle for the first right answer, you’ve seriously short-changed yourself. Always look for the next right answer. Then you have choices. You can pick the one that best suits the circumstances.
To promote the notion that it is best to see the glass as half full is foolish and irresponsible. It leads to the absurd attitude that things are getting better and better. But things are not going to get better unless you have identified the needs and are prepared to address them. The glass is not going to fill itself. Unless you have recognized that the glass is half empty and are prepared to remedy the problem, it will never be filled.
Furthermore, not only may there be more than one right answer, there may be more than one desirable goal. Do you want the glass to be full, or do you want the glass to be empty? Or do you want the glass to be partly full and partly empty? All of these may be desirable objectives for different people or in different circumstances.
And if you’ve been mowing the lawn on a hot day, will you be happier with a full glass of ice cold lemonade, or an empty glass of ice cold lemonade? If you have a full glass, you are still thirsty. If what you desire is relief from your thirst, then what you want is an empty glass. You want that lemonade inside you.
This is a common problem in American culture. People seem to be obsessed with having the full glass. What if we lived our lives in search of the empty glass? Think of the old Zen parable “If you want me to fill your cup, you must first empty it.” Why don’t we drink every glass that comes to us. Drink it to the full. Drain it dry.
How do we approach God. Do we come to Him with our glasses full, our glasses empty?
A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.
—unknown
Ever notice what people are buying in convenience stores?
Alcohol, tobacco, lottery tickets, junk food, porn. Today I noticed that they had Porn Cards for sale. They looked like phone cards, but they said Porn Card. I guess you buy it and call the number on the card and listen to porn. At any rate, the convenience stores are in the business of catering to people’s addictions. Alcohol is addictive, toxic, poisonous. Tobacco is addictive, poisonous. Gambling is addictive and destructive to your mind, your body, your whole life. Junk food is addictive and toxic. Porn is addictive and toxic. How are these convenience stores any different from the crack dealer on the corner?
“If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.”
-Me
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