Carousels and Comparisons

Recently, I was standing alongside my three year old son as he was riding the carousel in the food court of our local mall. As we were going round and round, Zach looked at the kids on the horses behind us and said with a sly little grin, "we're beating them". I love the way that boy thinks. Not only were we beating them, but there is no possibility of them ever threatening our position. He is already turning out to be an eternal optimist. He wasn't comparing his position to the kids ahead of him with whom he could never catch up, he was comparing his position to the kids behind him. That's a smart kid.

I think for a three year old, comparing his position on a carousel to others is innocent and cute. The problem is that many of us, in our spiritual journey, continue that habit and it becomes something altogether different. We either go before God with a heart of complaint because of who is ahead of us on the carousel or we allow ourselves to get really puffed up because we look behind us to see how many people we are beating. I wonder if, while we whip our plastic horses so that they'll speed up, God is up in Heaven shouting, "It's not a race! It's a ride....would you just learn to enjoy the ride!"

90 degree angles

Genesis 1:14-18 "and God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.' And it was so. God made two great lights - the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to seperate light from darkness. And saw that it was good." The NIV Bible

I have recently been learning the construction trade from a friend of mine. I work for him on Fridays with jobs that he is being hired for and on Saturdays, he comes over and helps me with some re-modeling projects that I am doing at my house. Through this learning process, I have come to understand how crucially important the 90 degree angle is to quality construction. Every wall should be perfectly perpendicular to the floor and every board should be perdendicular to the one that it is nailed. Pretty much everything that is built hinges in some way on the use of this angle. Let me re-phrase that...everything that is built by man hinges on the 90 degree angle.

In my obsession with the ninety degree angle, I was struck by a profound realization. I could hardly find anything that God has created that uses ninety degree angles. I don't see them in trees, clouds, grass, humans, animals....I just don't see them. I guess somewhere in creation there may be a ninety degree angle but for the most part, you just don't see a lot of hard angles or even straight lines for that matter.

The things that God makes just seem to explode into place with free movement and life. Trees look as if bark, branch, and leaf just erupted out of the ground. Mountains have a rugged unsubmissiveness to any appearance of order and symetry....and humans, I can't really explain what we look like accept that we are a beautifully raw mix of order, chaos, and symmetry that is still entirely organic.

It's funny how man applies hard angles and lines to pretty much everything we put our hands to. When man makes something, it almost always devolves into industry with smoke and fire and regulatory specifications. (I say 'almost always' because there will always be the artists among us). When man puts his hand to religion, it becomes a system of rules and regulations with sub-rules and sub-regulations created by committees and sub-committees.

With God it's just different. Everything that God makes resembles......life. Each creation has its own pattern and it's own chaos that is submitted only to its Creator. Even the 'religion' (or the title that men with angles and lines would give to it) that God has given us to know Him is organic and relational and wild. Jesus clearly stated why He came when he said "I have come so that you may have life and have it more abundantly" and He lived a life for us to model that was undomesticated and beautiful and perfectly organic....and he was a carpenter by trade. I wonder what his take would be on the ninety degree angle?

Greatness

Recently, I have been wrestling with the issue of greatness. More specifically, wondering if God will use my life to accomplish some great thing and what that great thing is. Amazingly (I know I shouldn't be amazed...but I was) on the very day that I was journaling about that question...God answered it through a friend that I had just met. He was sharing his story and mentioned a very obscure passage of scripture that God had used in his life.

The passage is Genesis 5:24 "Enoch walked with God and he was no more, for God took him", New American Standard Version.

That's all it says but it spoke volumes to me as soon as I heard it. It doesn't speak of brave and heroic feats of faith or even benevolent acts of sacrifice....it just says that Enoch walked with God. What if for the rest of my life, all I do is walk with God? In Enoch's case, it was apparently enough to please God so much that he couldn't stand not having Enoch in His physical presence....so he just took Him. There are very few great men in the Bible who achieved that distinctive honor. In fact, the only other members of the "ascension club" are Elijah and ...Jesus. Everyone else got into God's presence the old fashioned way.

To be honest, it really takes the pressure off. But, I have also realized that I have just simply become aware of something that has been in front of me all along. When describing God's approval or dissaproval, Jesus uses phrases like "depart from me, I never knew you" or "well done, my good and FAITHFUL servant". These phrases are relational in nature. The "great things" that were done throughout the Bible were simply acts of obedience to the voice of God and that voice was recognized only because the hearer's had been walking with God.

The simplicity of this truth is so freeing for someone like me who is 35 years old and is on the verge of a mini-midlife crisis. Up to this point, I have walked with God as best as I know how, and as far as I know, I am where He has called me to be. I may or may not accomplish some "great thing" by the world's standards (and even by Sunday School standards) but I'm not responsible for that. I am simply called to walk with God and if that's all I do for the rest of my life, then that will be my "great thing" and I will get to hear words reserved for people who do great things...."well done, my good and faithful servant".