Perseverance, The Finale

Well, the infamous "They" say that: "All good things must come to an end." It is comforting that it's not just the good things that come to an end, but also all things (with some exceptions, of course). Now, I have no idea who exactly "they" are, but I think I've met them once. They were shorter than I had imagined.

Regardless, the series on perseverance must conclude so that I can think deep thoughts about something else.

I think an important thing in perseverance is having a goal. When enduring the hurricanes of life I think that it's hope (as I wrote in Part 3) that keeps me going. Without the horizon I don't believe I'd sail. What would be my motivation? So I wade through the brambles and shrubs to get to the end, often times not exactly sure where the end is, but pressing on none-the-less because it's my faith in knowing it is there that keeps me going.

In the United States of America our Declaration of Independance includes the ambition of the right to: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I feel that as a whole, "happiness" is exactly what is pursued. People flood their lives with careers, to give them money, to give them the car, house, and living situation that they want. Their horizon is what the infamous "They" has told them is the "American Dream." But as things are achieved they find that there's something more...so they look for it in relationships (often broken), fame (often fleeting), and momentary thrills (often leaving a painful mark).

I want more. I don't want to be a "They" or a "Them."

Jesus Christ said, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

School, career, and family are things that reside in my mind, but somehow they are not my horizon. If those things are not a reflection of my destination I hesitate to let them become part of the journey. Life is a journey, not the destination. For the Christian, Heaven is home. This place is merely a shadow. So I trek on as a journeyman, hopefully leaving a piece of Heaven behind.

It may happen in a moment. Like the sun catching a piece of glass and blinding your eyes. All of the sudden your breath is taken from you, but you are not suffocated, rather, you are realizing that your lungs are being filled with something more viberant and real than air. As the harsh light dims, you are able to make out the ground below your feet, and as C.S. Lewis once wrote, "you will be able to see the grass through your feet. Not because you are any less substantial but because that place is so much more real than you are." You know somehow that you are home, but in a home that you could never have conjured up in your own imagination. Someone calls your name. You know the voice...it's your best friend, your savior, your Lord. You look up as best you can. You can barely lift your head, you cannot (with all of your strength) lift your head in the least, not because of shame but more out of the power of the Person's being. Like trying to charge a large waterfall, you get pushed back from the powerful glory of His character. You reach towards the figure not being able to push any further, and you feel a strong, gentle hand take hold of you and draw you into the brilliance of Himself. Like a father or a best friend He embraces you, as you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are at your destination. In that moment you know that this is where you've put your heart. In that moment you know that nothing else in all exsistence matters. In that moment "They" are proven critically wrong: "All good things" do not "come to an end."

Perseverance, Part 6

I like thinking about deep and meaningful things. In a sense of the word, I'd like to consider myself a contemplative. If I had the money, I'd buy an island and I would make it to be a community of contemplative thinkers. I'd call it "No Man," so that it would be physical reality to the truth that "No Man" is an Island. People would wander around thinking about the deep mysteries of life, and about God who is the greatest Mystery of all. The prayer before meals would start out as a blessing for the food, and would end up being a 2 hour intercession for the hungry. Food would get cold...but nobody would care because their hearts would be broken for the poor.

...But I walk outside and face the reality that not only I am not an Island, but also that I am not on an Island. I don't live in a warm-fuzzy wonderland where I'm at all free from the strife of every single arrow that can fly at me. On the other side of the wall that I'm sitting next to is a violent, angry, selfish, hateful, and spite-filled world that would assume me as useful gone as present.

I believe in purpose. I believe God has me here for a reason, and while I don't know absolute specifics, I have a strong sense that His reasoning for keeping me around is because "He just wants to." Frederick Buechner wrote,

"The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you." 

I know there's a God, I know He loves me, I know He revealed Himself to the world in bodily form (Jesus of Nazareth) somewhere around the turn of B.C. and A.D., I know Jesus died the death of a criminal because mankind separated itself from Him, I know He rose again, I know He's coming back again, and I know He's put His Spirit inside of me. I know I'm not on earth to be "in limbo" before I go to be with Jesus. He has a plan for me, and it's a plan that I often have no clue what it is. But sometimes I see Him use me to give love to other people (not the fake kind, but the kind that's unconditional). So I know He's all-powerful because He can even use me :-)

I want to tell people about Him, but for centuries people have claimed to be His "associates" and they've ended up really hurting other people. I don't want to hurt people, and I don't want to be a plastic version of a human. I want to be a regular person who is best friends with the Creator of the Universe. If your best friend created a universe (or a plethora of them), let's face it, you're gonna' brag a little. I want to tell others and introduce them to God because they can be best friends with Him too, and that would rock. But as I said, this world is violent, and actually would rather kill God (if they could) than be His friend.

This is the pickle, as well as the application of "Perseverance." I'm best friends with God and some people wouldn't mind treating me the same way that they'd treat my Friend if they had the chance. It's hard. I try to do my best to show others love in the midst of perversion, gossip, hate, and greed. But I can't do it alone.

Just when the battle is grim and I reach with all my might through the dark to capture hope, my strength gives way, my muscles fatigue, and I can't stretch any farther...but God catches me by sending another one of His best friends. These friends pick you up, dust you off, and are as determined to see you live in the reality of that hope as you are. They are oasises in the desert, they are lights in the night, and a sunset at the end of a long day.

So my heart does 3 cheers for my Best Friend and His friends that He sends my way.

"No man is an island." The oasises are worth the desert. The lights are persistent in the dark... And my sunset is beautiful.

Perseverance, Part 5

The physical manifestation of perseverance: waiting. I suck at waiting. It'd be easier if it were less like the lottery, and more like eating at Denny's.

Here's what I mean:

At Denny's you order something like a "Grand Slam" breakfast or Bullalo Wings. The waitress asks the required, applicable, "Would you like white, wheat, rye, or sourdough bread with that?" And you tell her what you want. 20 minutes later she arrives with your food and you take it and eat it. If it isn't what you ordered then you tell your kind (hopefully) waitress and ask for the correction to take place. And there you have it.
The lottery, on the other hand, is different. You buy your ticket and you have absolutely NO idea what you're getting. It could be a winner, it could be a loser. If you lose...then TOO BAD! No money back, you must take your loss and swallow your debt.
As a gambler I have bad luck, not that I make a habit of gambling. Sometimes, however, waiting feels like gambling.

Jacob leaves home because he deceived his dad, and took advantage of his jock big brother. He wanders out of town into a new town. He meets this girl, she's beautiful. He finds out her dad owns livestock, so he works out an acceptable deal with her dad. In the day it was cool to say, "Hey, I want your daughter, so can I earn her by working on your farm?" [If only it was so easy nowadays] So Jacob worked to earn the hand of the girl of his dreams, Rachel. But here's the catch: to earn her hand he has to work SEVEN years. So he does. He sticks it out. Then finally at the end of 7 years it's time to finally get married. Big wedding, all the bling that you could imagine. In that day the wife wore a vale until the wedding night. On the wedding night Jacob and his new wife checked in to their honeymoon suite, and to Jacob's shock he learned that he married the wrong person!!! The father tricked him into marrying Rachel's older sister Leah! AHHH! So, since it was acceptable in that day, Jacob worked another 7 years to earn the hand of Rachel...the girl he wanted in the first place. Jacob's experience in waiting is the most brutal instance. 14 years of hard work to get what he was waiting for, and the trail along the way was littered with disappointments and tears.

Why doesn't anyone like waiting? A traffic jam is not made up of people excited to wait, it's made up of people trying to get home (or to their destination) as fast as humanly possible. No one makes the pilgrimage to Disney Land to wait in line, and the purpose behind the grocery store is to eat dinner, not wait in line. Funny thing in waiting (that I'll repeat until the day I die): When we (humans) wait until the last moment it's called procrastination, but when God does it it's called perfect timing. I think waiting sucks because it means I'm not in charge. But it's funny, standing back and looking at the decisions that the waiting involves, it makes me NOT want to be in charge. I mean, do I really want "to be in charge" of my future? I'd rather trust the all-sufficiency of the Creator of the Universe for that one. And the point with waiting? I don't think waiting is meant to drive us crazy, I believe waiting is meant to develop trust and perseverance in our hearts. God used Jacob to play a significant part in birthing a Nation. See, God's plan was bigger than Jacob's. Jacob wanted a wife, God wanted to use the situation for something of historical proportions.

So my hand shaking towards Heaven gently opens to form a palm facing upwards, as I join the chorus in Heaven to declare that there's none like my Creator. He knows what He's doing. His ways are much higher than mine. And His timing is too.

Perseverance, Part 4

It goes without saying that I definitely want more perseverance. I want to rise above, I want to conquer, I want to run when others are hyper-ventilating, and walk when others are crawling. I want to push through when others give up, but I have to admit that I have a natural habit of falling instead of rising, surrendering instead of conquering, puking from the long run, and crossing finishing lines on all fours. I, my friends, am weak.

I'm encouraged today, however. It's not about me. I try and try, but it's hard to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps when your fingers are broken. Every single thing that takes perseverance are usually the things that mark an incredible life. And I want an incredible life, but every time I try to do something uniquely incredible it feels only halfway. I don't want a halfway life. But I read something today. It's funny, the only thing that is hard about perseverance to me is that it requires: patience, faithfulness, and self-control. In the Bible (Galatians 5) it says, "22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control..." I think I try too hard at the wrong thing. When you're led by the Spirit of God you act in those qualities, not because your smarter or stronger, but because your acting in the strength that God gives and not in your own delusion of humanistic idealism.

So with the morning I tie my running shoes as best I can, as I pray that today Jesus would work through me to be His hands today. I stretch my legs for a long run, that I'd run with vibrance and energy, as Jesus would take me into the places that He Himself would go. And I pray for His Spirit to work in me to fill me like a reservoir, filled, brim-full, of His love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. That while I might not be perfect, I may not give up.

Perseverance, Part 3

Tick. Tock. I sit in a youth center on the Fort Apache Reservation before opening for the school year. The hum of the ice machine sighs as the clock on the wall sings its own lullaby. The silence croons each inanimate object as I sit here and type. A bulletin board across from me catches my eye. With track schedules, autographed stuff from bands, and a couple of papers hanging, the jumble is relaxed but something has not just caught my eye, but my heart as well.

Tick. Tock. I'm caught by a missing person poster. Maybe I'm caught by it because I've seen the teen before. This page is a police department release. The poster includes description and contact info. What are his parents doing right now? What are they thinking? What keeps them sane when they've missed their child. "Missing." How did he end up missing? Was he misplaced? Did he lose himself (run away)? Maybe both. I feel worried for him.

Tick. Tock. When I lose stuff I freak out. I look everywhere. However, after a certain time if I don't find it I come to grips with the fact that it's lost. So I rearrange my life to make due.

Tick. Tock. Jesus said, "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?" When I stayed on the Navajo reservation I stayed on the property of an elderly lady named Bessie. Bessie had sheep. Bessie rocks. She could walk outside and know in an instant if one of her sheep was missing. One day one WAS missing, so she hopped on a four wheeler and went and found it. She reminds me of Jesus in that sense. Jesus always knows when one of His sheep are missing, and when one is, He finds it. I was lost...Jesus didn't lose me, it was me in my own sinfulness that lost me. But Jesus found me. Sometimes I get confused and lose track of my way, but Jesus leads me...even when I'm as dumb as a sheep.

Tick. Tock. "Jesus, thank You for finding me and loving me. Please help me to be more like You when it comes to finding stuff. And please help that teen to be found."

Perseverance, Part 2

Since the metaphorical can of worms has been opened, let's go fishing.

Perseverence. Before we wade into deep waters, let's talk about an aspect of perseverance that I feel is absolutely crucial to our staying afloat. This buoy is called "hope."

For me hope seems to be synonymous with trust. I trust God. (I'm not saying this as prideful arrogance, it's just the way it is) I have some friends who don't trust God. (Which is not judgemental in any way...it's just where they're at personally, and they'd probably be the first to admit it) Something escruciating has happened in their lives and they think that God's pissed at them. Even though in a few of the cases it was a bad decision that they made that caused the problem, they still find a way to make it fall on God, which, while I'm sure that God can handle it, it hurts to see my friends struggle. But even the ones that didn't "do" anything to cause the negative happenstance, feel that the problem is that God doesn't like them. It's interesting, there are people who claim to have all the answers, and whether it's right or wrong they think you should follow their "wisdom." (I'm in no way saying, "listen to me, I'm right!" I'm just throwing out my personal experience and hoping that someone can do something with it) I don't know why things happen to my friends, but looking at tragedies in my own life I see hope. Maybe not the warm, fuzzy kind that best selling, inspirational books are made of, but the kind of hope that picks me up off the ground when my nose is buried in the dirt. One of the reasons I trust God is that somehow in my darkest night the sun still rises. Or in other words, there's a light at the end of the tunnel...the tunnel may be long but not forever. Another reason I trust God is because when I need Him most He brings just the right people into my life. See, I don't live in a delusional world that is free of pain. I just know that somehow God will give me the strength to get through it. The world is a scary place: I know it, and Jesus said it (John 16:33), but somehow there's peace that I didn't conjure up on my own. Brennan Manning writes in his book "Ruthless Trust": "Trust means the willingness to become absolutely empty of all terrifying and comforting images of God that we have held, so that the gift of God in Jesus Christ may come to us on God's terms." I trust God. I know He'll come through, so I can stick it out whether the trial is a final exam, a tough bill cycle, the death of a loved one, or an honest fear that tomorrow might not come.

Hope on the other hand, boggles my mind. I trust God, but my hope in Him feels a lot deeper than my brain "power." C.S. Lewis once wrote: "Hope...means...a continual looking forward to the eternal world....It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next....It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither." While trust seems to be my strength for hard times, I think hope is my drive, my passion. Because (I mean) if the present circumstance is all I have to look forward to then: what's the point?
The first time I went snowboarding my goal was to get down the hill once, upright...without falling. For a half a day I hurled my body down the mountain, taking as many people with me as I could. (But not on purpose) My body was covered with bruises and while even my last run was far from perfection my determination was not. I contorted my body into more positions than a yoga guru on a twister mat, but loved my time there on the mountain. And the mountain may never forget me. I'm a dangerous snowboarder. I want to live life as recklessly in the love of God as I do in comparison to my unorthodoxed snowboarding technique. Sometimes I look foolish, but I'm determined. Falling's inevitable, but I'm still going to try to not fall because it hurts when I do. (And besides, there's hot chocolate waiting at the bottom of the hill)

Perseverence, Part 1

They (people) say that good things come to those who wait. Often, "they" are true. But what "they" often don't tell you is that it takes a chop at your sanity in the process. What inspired this series on perseverence? HTML. Gotta love it. Good news is that the blog's banner is up, inspite of my slowly fading patience. But this subject cannot be left here...so:
TO BE CONTINUED.

New Places...

new places are like old places...

except without all the memories.