Reach

Our pastor at church has a point he likes to hammer home about life: "Circumstances should not dictate our faith, it is our faith that should dictate our circumstances."  I have the hardest time with this concept even though I have no doubt that it's true.

No matter how much you do or don't believe in God, you have a life to live. For most of us life is hard. There's just no getting around that. There's no need to list all the challenges here but think back to when you were thirteen (when life was "care free") and start counting forward to today. From pimples and first loves in high school to career decisions after college, to job issues and finances, getting laid off or fired, to your first mortgage, the challenges came and came and came. I know someone who reads this blog who lost a parent in high school, another whose parents informed him they were getting a divorce the day he got accepted to college, someone else who lost a husband to cancer before they could start their family and someone else who struggled for years to have children. What's it all mean? It's not a happy thought but here it goes: pain and suffering are a part of life.

We can stop there and be totally depressed or we can ask, "Why?".  In the context of a universe that seems to show no mercy we can see that nothing could be further from the truth. Listen, we've all been nailed more than a few times but get this: we've all survived. We've lived through these moments. If you are reading this you're still here, which means you're still going, one day at a time. You have a choice now: believe that all the up's and down's of life are random and meaningless things or decide, once and for all, that they have a purpose. It's an important decision. Because if you decide they have a purpose the next question is, "What purpose?", which leads to hope and the ultimate question, "Who's purpose?", which leads to faith.

Faith is a good thing. It's what you had the first time you pedaled without the training wheels and it's what you need each time you reach out to a loving God who will never, not once, fail to reach out to you.

The Forest for the Trees

Within the word BELIEVE are three letters: L-I-E.  I can't take credit for that. It was actually one of the best "word effects" of the Achtung Baby tour U2 did in 1992. I was in my early twenties and I remember going particularly bonkers over this. It struck a chord in me. Deep. At the time I thought that was cool, and I still do, but I also think it's quite sad.

For me it hit on a personal truth: most of what people tell you to believe is a flat out lie.  The X-Files would come along later with a fantastic slogan that I also ate up: "Trust No One".  I added these slogans to my own favorite quote "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer", which came from my  personal "bible" at the time, The Art of War by Sun Tzu.  Do you get the picture? I was an incredibly dark minded individual with no faith in people whatsoever and a mindset built for war, of any kind, with anyone and for almost any reason.

I hope you don't see the world this way. If you do, take it from me: you are blind. You literally will go through life not seeing the forest for the trees. Flip those quotes around for a second and maybe you'll see why:

BElieVE: It's usually the liars who always think they're being lied to. What are you hiding? Or what are you hiding from? By believing in nothing and no one you will have nothing to believe in and no one who will believe in you.

Trust No One: A person cannot be trustworthy until you are first willing to trust them. By trusting no one you will condemn yourself to a life of complete loneliness.

Friends and Enemies: To keep your enemies closer than your friends is to short change your friends and to attempt to manipulate your enemies. Instead, Jesus tells us to love them. Why? Perhaps another U2 song gives us a hint:

"Choose your enemies carefully ‘cause they will define you,
Make them interesting ‘cause in some ways they will mind you,
They’re not there in the beginning but when your story ends?
Gonna last with you longer than your friends."

Es la Ley de la Vida

"Nothing to do but work and work some more, right?" I said.

"Es la Ley de la Vida," the McDonald's guy tells me this morning as I make my way through the drive-thru.  It is the law of life.

I laugh. In my forties I expect a comment like this to fly out of my mouth from time to time. Grousing is a right, not a privilege, after a certain age.  But my McDonald's friend? He's about nineteen.  The only law of life he should be adhering to is enjoying his youth.  We all come to the table with different life experiences. I'm sure he has a story that explains that weary look in his eye, but the drive-thru is a merciless place, with no time for chatting. So I pull away with the correct change, but feeling short-changed nonetheless.

I have just brushed up against another life. Not the same as the last one I brushed up against and not the same as mine, but a life it is.  If you really wanna trip yourself out stop for a second and contemplate the trajectories of all the lives around you; at work, on the freeway, at the Laker game. Each person is making choices: believing things, denying things, hoping for this, praying for that. At any given second they are stuck in the past, engaging the present or contemplating the future. We spend a lot of our lives looking for answers to a lot of things and contemplating the "laws" of our lives.


Isiah has a suggestion about the past: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past." (Isiah 43:18)

Solomon has a suggestion on the present: "So I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 8:15)


Jesus tells us point blank how to handle the future: "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own". (Matthew 6:33-34).


If God can track the trajectories of 7 billions lives and yet  provide us each with such simple advice in His law, maybe...just maybe?...we should listen to it.

A Name In The Guestbook

 

"I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is." - Albert Camus

I went to a funeral recently where God was simply not part of the equation. I mean...at all. No minister, no pastor, no priest. Nothing. The deceased was a good person, about my age, a gentle soul who was kind as could be but who wrestled for many years with the twin demons of alcoholism and drug abuse. Those demons took his life and, when it was over, nobody ushered God into the picture. 

The eulogy was given first by the man's father, then by his twenty year old son. Bookends to a life. But no scripture was read, no spiritual viewpoint advanced, not even a mere mention of heaven.  Don't get me wrong, I am not criticizing anyone here. I respect the rights of all faiths, even the right to have no faith. This funeral was still about people who loved someone, going through the grieving process, saying goodbye in their own way. There were tears followed by the usual arithmetic of loss. 

I stood off to the side next to a business friend who is a huge believer. He prayed quietly the entire time. I did not. I hate to sound naive but I was just too stunned. The whole thing just did not compute. To live life, to face death, without God? That's one thing. But to say the final goodbye without Him being acknowledged, without an afterlife being hoped for?

As we left the funeral I went to sign the guestbook. Do you know what I saw? Dozens of people who had been in line ahead of me who had written their names, addresses and the word "God" in their comments; "May God Bless You", "May God Be With You", "May God Comfort You". Proving once again that God is always there, even when we don't realize it.

That young man will miss his father dearly in the coming weeks and months. When he does he may open that guestbook and see that one word, over and over. Maybe then his pain will start to ease and he will begin to find his way. I know another man who did, years ago, when his father died way too soon.

Me.

Dictionary Wisdom

Inspiration comes and goes as it pleases, kinda like a stray dog.  I know that's a rather rough way to start a blog but it explains my absence the past few weeks in posting here. Sometimes you only have so much energy to go around and between work, the kids and whatever other commitments we have in life we can sometimes forget to stop, be still and just...be.

The definition of "doing" is: action, performance and/or execution.

How much of your life is spent doing? Doing this, doing that or doing the other thing? Some things we have to do. Bills don't pay themselves, kids can't teach themselves and people we know and love sometimes can't really help themselves. Knowing who needs a hand and being willing to give it is a great thing but so many of us forget to allow others to help us or, even worse, we forget to help ourselves.

The definition of "being" is: the fact of existing, existence, a living thing.

I love it when man gets something right. Here we have a great bit of wisdom in a simple set of definitions. One does not become "a living thing" by doing. One does so by being. Often we confuse the two and convince ourselves that by doing we can forget about being. Our worries and concerns, you see, can easily be buried in our tasks and habits. This is how so many of us can be adults and still act so much like children; our bodies have evolved but not our minds and, far worse, not our souls.

So take a moment and find your inspiration. Turn off the phone and the television. Read. Pray. Ponder. Sit still. Recharge those batteries and be a living thing.

Let It Beat

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to their grave with the song still in them."
- Thoreau

"I can't believe that we would lie in our graves, wondering if we had spent our living days well. 
I can't believe that we would lie in our graves dreaming of things that we might have been, 
could have been, 
maybe." - Lie In Our Graves, Dave Matthews


How many steps do you take each day, pressed down and worn out? I marvel at the lives we all live, our painful moments of self-affliction or self-deflection. When it comes to the world around us we follow the same patterns. We either spend each day with the shields up or our hands down. It's all about the punches; we're either blocking them or taking them.

This is not how God created us to live. I guarantee it. I'm the worst example of living life to reflect this belief, but I'm trying.  It's Easter Weekend and I am reminded yet again that at the end of the day, it's not about me.

A living example of how life should be lived can be found in the very walk that Jesus took to die. He prayed. He took his beatings. He took up his cross. He carried it as far as he could, then he was willing to accept help (from Simeon, who was ordered to his side by the Romans). Jesus then prayed for those very souls who were persecuting him, including the thief to his left while, amazingly, hands and feet nailed to a cross, he witnessed and offered salvation to the thief to his right. Then, ever the teacher, in the ultimate act of education he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Not a cry of defeat but a direct reminder to those present of Psalm 22, written some 1500 years earlier, that predicted his coming, his life and this exact ending to it, including a ton of the actual details. His apparent moment of defeat was, in actuality, his greatest triumph.

And the rest of that Psalm? It's all about hope. So is the rest of the story that followed the cross and that empty tomb. That's all about hope as well.


Which means you and I should answer those feelings of desperation and confusion that come over us from time to time with that very same thing; hope. Hope is what your heart is made of. So let it beat.