4 Horses

It is said that there are four kinds of horses; excellent ones, good ones, poor ones and bad ones. The excellent horses will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver's will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will run as well as the first one does, just before the whip reaches its skin; the poor ones will run when it feels pain on its body; the bad ones will run after the pain penetrates the marrow of its bones. This is how most of us view ourselves and the world. When we hear this story, we want to be the best horse, the one who has the easiest time changing, improving and succeeding.

But what if the measurement of the horses is wrong? what if instead of running, they should be measured by which horse experiences the run the most? Because the "bad horse" actually has to feel the whip deep inside of him, he knows the sacrifices needed to run. The excellent horse never thinks it has to sacrifice. This is how I believe God sees us and measures us. It is not how easy it is for us to live the Christian life, but rather how much we sacrifice to do it.

Happy Birthday

Today, Christmas day, is my mom's 60th birthday. Being at my parents home the past few days has really got me thinking about what my mom has taught me and how our relationship has been redeemed in the past 5 years or so. It is inevitable that parents will wound us, and my mom has been no exception. But what is amazing about my mom is how she has been an instigator of change and reconcilation in the same areas that were such wounds to me. So I decided to make up a quick list of the most important things I learned from my mom in the past few years.

1. You are never to old to completely change your life for the better.

My mom will freely admit that this time of her life is the best time of her life. She is more alive and more of who she was made to be than ever before. Most of this process of change started in her 50's.

2. The more secure you are in who God made you to be, the easier it is to express grace and kindness.

Over the last year or so, my wife and I have been amazed at how kind and giving my mom is. I never noticed it before. She was always a nice person and willing to sacrifice for others, but now she has the confidence to be abundantly personal, and I have benefited from the intention of this. I have begun to see this in my own life, that I really am much nicer and more giving than I thought I was.

3. When you are with someone who is fully present, everyone benefits.

My mom has become a person of intention and candor. She is less afraid to share her opinions, and she is never slow to acknowledge goodness and growth in others. Her presence in a group of people, has opened up conversations and relationships in ways I didn't know mothers could.

Should we pray?

I just read something I wrote a long while back that really shook me up. I was going through an old notebook and found a section called crazy prayers, written May 7^th 2003. I wrote out a bunch of prayers I had that were very fantastic and large, and in any logical sense they weren’t things that would naturally happen in my life. They weren’t needs I had, but rather far-fetched desires. I remember thinking a lot about abundance at the time, and coming to the realization that God is not working against me but rather for me. God wants to bless me abundantly, and at least according to many verses in the bible, is waiting for me to ask. So I asked.

On my list I prayed that God would give Stacy and I a huge house that we could minister from, bringing people in and always having it be a place of healing and hope. I prayed that we would become people of great influence and that people would want to be apart of whatever we were doing. I prayed that we would have many great people around us, people desiring great things and making them happen. And maybe most implausible of all, I prayed that I would become focused and manage my time well. But all of this still sounds great to me, and seeing this list again made me hunger for the place I was then, really believing in the abundance of God and waiting expectantly for it. What did surprise me was that I prayed that I wouldn’t have to work fulltime by the next two years.

If I remember right, what I was thinking was that God would provide some surprising blessing where I could spend more time ministering to others. What I got was very different, and until looking at the list, I never realized the connection. Within a year and a half of praying for this specific request I started to get headaches every day. By January I finally told Stacy that I have had a headache non-stop for a month. A month later I went in to the doctor, hoping he would give me a better pain reliever than what I was used to. He was hesitant about that; sure it was my new glasses. But I persisted, and he ordered me an MRI. A month later when that came back I had a brain malformation, and the only possible cure would be surgery. I am still waiting for that surgery.

Soon after that I had to quit work because the pain was too much. Since then I have tried to find ways to alleviate the pain, but it is still very bad. I have learned to work around a lot of the pain, and am in graduate school with at least decent odds of being able to pull it off and graduate. But what do I do about this prayer? I prayed that God would pull me out of fulltime work within 2 years, and I haven’t worked fulltime since. This is why I have a hard time praying such huge prayers. I am afraid of the size of God. I am dealing with someone who has a very different sense of what I can handle than I do. If I open up to God, I have no guarantee that I will end up okay on the other end. So this is where I am now, a part of me scared out of my mind at the otherness, the unpredictability of the creator of the world that I have never seen or heard, and the other part of me saying what the hell.

To Wonder

I am learning how to wonder. Not just about other things, but about me. This might not sound like a huge deal to you, but it is for me. I didn’t know that I could wonder about things. I didn’t think I had the time or the permission. I thought I better get things figured out pretty quickly, or I will get behind and never catch up. And others will leave me behind. Sounds exhausting just writing about it. I don’t know how I did it. I know I didn’t do it very well, that is for sure.

But I am finding out that I can wonder and that is good. I don’t have to find a solution to every problem in my life. All I have to do is not flee from my problems. So if I don’t flee and don’t find solutions, what is left? Everything. And that is what wonder is all about. It is about possibility and openness. It is realizing that I do get anxious with people, and I don’t have to fix it. I just get to think about it. “It is interesting that I am feeling anxious” I say to myself, “I wonder why”.

Lately it has come to my attention that much of my motivation comes from the desire to make others approve of me. I have been afraid of this realization for years. I have fought it, denied it, tried to make it not be true, and worked really hard to change my motivation. None of this worked, and finally I just sat down, exhausted, and admitted to myself it is true. And then I stayed there. I didn’t come with an action plan. I didn’t over think it. I didn’t even try to find the reason I do it, the point in my story of my life where it all came from.

I have done this in the past. I called it “checking out”. I would do everything I could to not think about what I knew was so painful to think about. But this time was different. I stayed there. I thought about it, but didn't try to fix it, or beat myself up, or come up with a plan. I thought about it, and then I thought about something else. The next time it came up, I wasn’t as anxious. So I thought about it then, and then thought about something else. Not purposely changing the subject in my mind, but thinking it through and letting my mind go where it needed to. A few days later, it came up again, and I wasn’t afraid of the truth of it at all.

But I haven’t just accepted it as me. I am not meant to be someone who needs other’s approval. God made me more glorious than that. I have approval from God and can find my worth in my own voice, my own identification with my placement in God. Knowing this keeps me from settling. Wondering about myself is never settling. Because settling is really no different than checking out. Instead of not thinking about the fact that I have a problem, I can just pretend that my problem is really no problem at all. Wonder takes it a step further. It says that I am going to change, but the process won’t happen through external effort. It will happen through the outpouring of internal change.

Now I can already see how I need less approval in my life. I have started to see the change in conversations, saying what I mean not to impress or get any reaction out of someone, but because it is more true of me. Being able to compliment people, give feedback and not worry that I will look dumb or that I am trying to hard. And the amazing thing is that I haven’t worked at all at needing less approval. I have just wondered about it.

Salt of the Earth

I have heard most of my life that we are to be the salt of the earth. It says we should do this in the bible. I know because I read it there. I just don’t remember where. Somewhere in the back.

Being the salt of the earth has something to do with standing out from others, and bringing flavor to the world. But I always thought that how we become salt in this word is to not do things. The best way to stand out, I thought to myself, is to not drink, not cuss, not sin, not gossip, not kill people, not have affairs, and not say God’s name in vain.

But I did all these things, and I didn’t really stand out. And most Christians try to do these things, at least for a while, until they get tired and do whatever their justification allows them to do. And then the non-Christian world looks at Christians and says that we are hypocrites. Which we are.

But what if saltiness has nothing to do with what we don’t do. What if we are to stand out for what we do? I am sure all my readers are agreeing at this point. But so would James Dobson and Pat Robertson and many other people you don’t agree with. They would say we should stand out by fighting for Christianity. I would disagree with them, and I hope you would, as well.

We don’t have to fight for Christianity, it is in good enough hands already. We don’t have to fight for anything.

But what should we stand out for? I think it is reconciliation. There is nothing weirder to a non-believing world than what happens when people reconcile. When people stand for justice, grieve the loss of relationship, ask for forgiveness and make steps toward a renewed relationship that is mutually beneficial. When we say to those who harm us “You hurt me, and I am sad and hurt. I am hurt because I am wounded and I feel less. I am sad because I have lost relationship with you. I want to forgive you because I miss you, I want reconciliation because I want you.” This is our cry for relationships, and this is very foreign to a world that labels people quickly, writes them off, looks at them only for how they are productive and generally discards people at the first hint of betrayal. What could stand out more to a world needing hope than a Christian community combined with perpetrators and victims, always looking for reconciliation, always pushing for restored relationships? This is salt, this is light, and this is exciting. Why aren’t you fighting for broken relationships in your own life? Where is your heart for reconciliation, for the relationship after the rupture, the chance to extend grace, to humbly risk yourself to another?

Peach and Peach

"Where have you been?" I said to myself.

"Oh, around, but mainly not around. I haven't been out much, just adjusting to new things and struggling though old things. I don't feel myself, though. I feel empty when I stay in. Days just seems to go by and nothing changes and I don't notice myself at all. It is as if I forget to ask about me. And I get discouraged, and that keeps me in." I responded

"Don't loose heart" I said to myself "You are out today, and it is good to see you. So be happy that you are out, and enjoy noticing yourself."

"I will" I said "And I do"

An Open Letter to a Dying Saint

Today you asked me to tell you again about death.

Death is glory. Glory so great that it requires more of you that you can give now. God has a new purpose for you. A greater purpose. You body is tired and used, it is fulfilled its purpose. But God is not done with you. He will need to equip you to live with Him in glory.

God has a purpose for you and He wants to put you to work. He wants you to build with your hands something that produces glory, something that reflects His incomprehensible beauty. But now your hands are old and used. They have suffered the age of this world; they have been worn down with toil and pain. You need new hands, hands that can craft the beauty of Heaven. You need hands of Gold, a perfect mirror that reflect face of God. Your new hands can make something beautiful because they radiate the only true source of Beauty.

Your eyes are too weak to see the beauty of your new hands. They are old from straining. You strained too hard to see God how your eyes thought He should look. You fought and fought for God to make sense and be visible. This wore out your eyes, and God wants to give you new ones. He wants to put diamonds in your eyes, diamonds that pierce through the truth of anything they see. Your new eyes will pierce through any box you try to put God in, they will not let you limit Him. You are now ready.

Your ears are not good enough. You need to hear all the words of God. God is huge, but he also speaks quietly, intimately. He whispers his love in poetry too intimate, to sensual for anyone else to hear. Your ears are tired. You need ears to hear the quietest whisper, the faintest breaths. God will give you ears of leaves, leaves that soak up the words, than grow and thrive only when they are fed words of life. God has secrets, and He wants you to know them.

Your feet are too slow. You need new feet. God created you to enjoy Him, and He has missed the sight of you in pure pleasure. Now God says it is time to play…