Some Goals for the New Year, Two Weeks In

Wow, I’m behind…

I’ve had several important thoughts and connections running through my mind regarding the daily office this week.  Well, actually there’s a whole comedy of errors in regard to the daily office, at all, as I began this year, so maybe I should share that first.

Last year, I received a Sacred Ordinary Days Planner for Christmas.  I absolutely loved it!  It was an excellent place to keep track of… well… everything going on in life.  It provided me with ample space for reflection and vision casting, and it also included daily quotes and the Daily Office Scriptures from the Book of Common Prayer.  I asked for a new one, this Christmas, and I found it under the tree!   Yay for Christmas lists!

Well… several days into the new year, I was like, “I don’t think this is the daily office.”  Other bloggers who tend to follow the BCP daily office were blogging about stuff that didn’t add up, and there were not enough Scripture references in my planner.  As it turns out, the creators of Sacred Ordinary Days decided to go with the RCL daily office references, this time around, so I wasn’t crazy… I just had a different list.

It took me until a few days ago to figure out how I was going to handle this, and right now my plan is simply to read both the BCP and the RCL, so if I’m blogging about Scripture that doesn’t line up with your version of the daily office, please note that I’m not wrong.  I’m just diversifying…

Anyway…  This one struck a chord, this week, as I frantically tried to pull together the most poorly planned party I have ever thrown in my life…

Galatians 1:10, “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

I don’t fancy myself as a people pleaser, but lately I am literally, physically sick when I feel as if I have disappointed anyone in any way.  That stinks, because the chances that I can get through a single hour (let alone a single day) without disappointing someone are close to non-existent.  I have a lot of people.  I can’t make everybody happy, even though I try really hard.  Did you catch that?  Turns out, I am a people pleaser.  I don’t even know when it happened.  I used to be great at offending everybody!  I think I’ve lost my edge.

If I’m honest, I don’t really want to be offensive, but I also don’t want to back away from being who I was created to be in every situation.  There’s a fine line.  Actually, I’m not even sure there is a line.  Sometimes it all just gets garbled together and the best I can do is to pray I’m a little more like Jesus than I was yesterday and to look for ways to put that transformation into practice.

One thing I’m trying to work on this year is intentionality.  I’m trying to spend my time, energy, and resources on things that make a positive impact on the lives of others—not to please them, not to gain any kind of accolade for myself, but to minister to them… to meet needs… to serve Christ.   It’s super hard.  It’s expensive.  And other people don’t ‘get it.’  Guess what?  That’s totally OK.

So here’s to nonconformity, intentional living, and more daily office Scriptures than I ever thought I’d try to incorporate into my life at one time…

L.

PS  I would love to hear about practical ways my readers are impacting the lives of others, especially ways that I could support/promote with FGT in coming weeks.  Please feel free to comment!

The Cost of Winning

Ecclesiastes 2:11, "Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun" (NIV).

Sometimes I think to myself, "Wow, self, you are way too negative!"  Then I read Ecclesiastes, and I reconsider.  I mean, at least I'm in good company, right?

Galatians 1:15-16, "But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being" (NIV).

Matthew 13:44, "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field" (NIV).

Here's the thing: nothing that you or I can achieve on our own is going to count for anything in the end.  This is a very hard teaching for me to accept, because I like achieving.

Yesterday, I was playing with toy airplanes with my four year old nephew, Noah.  Mostly, I got to be the "bad guy airplane", which was just fine with me.  We battled and raced, and in the end, the "good guy airplane" would take me out, and Noah would say, "I win!  One more time!"  I quickly learned that, "one more time," in Noah's world, actually meant that we were going to play airplane battles until we died.  I should not tell you about the moment when I was crawling up and down the living room floor, racing, and losing badly, when my fourteen year old daughter looked at me and said, "Mom, I don't think you know what you've gotten yourself into."

At some point, we switched planes, and I thought to myself, "Surely I will win now, since I have the 'good guy airplane'".  It's been a little while since I have had a four year old boy.  It seems that I had forgotten how this works.  Even as the "good guy", I lost.  So I said, "Noah!  The good guy is supposed to win!"  And Noah just laughed as he informed me, "I like to win."  I paused for a moment before acknowledging that this child certainly belongs in this family.  We all like to win.  Sometimes at any expense.  And frankly, sometimes the cost is far more than a good guy/bad guy airplane battle.

I was going somewhere with this...

Oh yes, Paul...

A Pharisee, best of the best...  And then God calls, and Paul is on his way, preaching to the Gentiles, without even asking!

And this guy in the parable that Jesus tells...

He sells all his stuff and buys a field, and only he knows the value.

I just can't imagine any of this goes over well.  It costs everything.  Paul's friends must count this a huge loss.  The field guy's family must think he's crazy!  This is upside down thinking, but Kingdom values almost always are.

Don't get me wrong.  Winning is great, but sometimes losing is better.  Sometimes what looks like losing is actually the big win, in the long run. 

L.

PS  There was this one brief moment when Noah looked at me and said, "We both win!"  I told him that I love games like that best.  Then he went on to beat the life out of my airplane over and over again...

People Pleasing

Galatians 1:10, "Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ" (NIV).

Well, there's nothing like Scripture to smack you in the face first thing in the morning.

If you don't know me (or my family) personally, you have no idea how many times I have heard this verse quoted over the past nine months.  Thank you quiz world.  You see, Galatians 1:10 is the first memory verse in this year's quiz material.  My oldest three children have it memorized.  Many of their friends have it memorized.  Dozens of times, I have sat behind a table and announced, "Question number 11 is a quote question, question number 11 coming, question.  Quote Galatians, Chapter 1, Verse 10." 

An entire school year has passed, and it was not until this reading that it occurred to me that this verse is speaking to me.  I suppose this might be further proof that Scripture is, indeed, a collection of living words and that there is great value in reading (and hearing) the same things over and over again, even ad nauseam...   

The truth is, I don't want this Scripture to speak to me.  Seriously, has this ship not sailed?

But also, this quote:

"At least one day in every seven... Stay home, not because you are sick but because you are well.  Talk someone you love into being well with you.  Take a nap, a walk, an hour for lunch.  Test the premise that you are worth more than you can produce - that even if you spent one whole day of being good for nothing you would still be precious in God's sight.  And when you get anxious because you are convinced that this is not so - remember that your conviction is not required.  This is a commandment.  Your worth has already been established..." -Barbara Brown Taylor

This is really difficult for me.  I have come to measure my days by how productive I have been, and I compete with myself on a regular basis to do more... to be more.  I hate to disappoint to a degree that it has become an unhealthy driving force.  I thought I had kicked it some years back.  Apparently old habits die hard.

But I know what it is to have healthy rhythms.  I have lived this chapter before.  Interestingly, when I put myself in the best position to please God, I often find that the people I love are happiest, as well. 

I Kings 18:21b, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him..." (NIV).

Following...

L.

I Wonder if We Have "Justice" All Wrong

Why do we seem to place "love" in tension with other attributes of God?

"God is love, but God is also holy..."

Isn't love holy? 

"God is love, but God is also righteous..."

Isn't love righteous?

I feel as if we are creating unnecessary contrast.

If someone were to say, "God is love, but God is also hate," I would understand the need for the conjunction.  Clearly, I think this would be an untrue statement, but people do use it, if not in their words, than in their actions.

If someone were to say, "God is love, but God is also indifference," I would also understand the need for the conjunction, and ditto to my sentiments above.

Undoubtedly, in the English language where I can love my husband... and pizza... and glitter... and Star Wars... and my kids... and messy art projects... and my pet fish... and that inspirational quote I just read... and your new hair color; we have some difficulty defining what love is, but I'm starting to wonder if our bigger issue is that we want it to conflict with its very properties, for our own sake.

Justice is a hard one.

I think we often equate justice with karma, and karma is a... difficult concept to explore...

From a position of self-righteousness or power we look at others (often others who have done legitimately horrible things or have hurt us in some way or are simply different than we are) and we postulate that all is still right with the world, because someday "those people" will get what they deserve.  After all, God is just.  Is God love?  Well... of course.  But, God is also just.  There is a point at which God draws the line.

That's too bad, because by that definition, you're going to get what you deserve, too... and so am I.

So, I quickly looked up the definition of "justice", today, and I found the most interesting little piece of information in the section that listed the synonyms for "justice".  Let's try "impartiality" on for size.  I think that might be a good way to go, since Scripture is pretty clear that, "God does not show favoritism" (Acts 10:34, Romans 2:11, Galatians 2:6... take your pick...)    

Sin really sucks, but as it turns out, the same God that forgives me for mine will forgive you for yours and will also forgive all those other people we really don't like for theirs.  As it turns out, none of us are going to get what we deserve.  There is something very humbling about this, both because it is a reminder of my own unworthiness and also because it is a reminder that God cares about all life, even when I am limited by my own pain, anger, or idiocy (it can go any of these ways).  Maybe justice has a lot to do with recognizing how precious life is.

L.