I remember reading Eugene Peterson's book several years ago entitled, A Long Obedience In The Same Direction. Translated this book is about faith living slugging it out one day at a time. I'm old enough to say that I believe in both the thesis of the book, and my translation of it. I wished it was true that our life of faith, the journey of faith, was smooth and always ascending. I wish there were no dark times...no dark nights of the soul. I don't like difficulties, and I don't like having to make choices that bring denial to my flesh. In otherwords, I wish we could always eat steak, mashed potatoes, fried foods with pies and other desserts to end it all with.
Life isn't always easy to navigate. Some of the things I have discovered is that it's a long journey...one for me that is now 56+ years and counting. There have been many times I failed...much more failures than successes! Which is why I'm more grateful for the words "Grace and Mercy" today than I've ever been before.
It was 34 years ago while a new believer struggling with walking it all out in faith, that my professor said the immortal words I've never forgotten: Any dead fish can float downstream. Not too eloquent, but profound. It is this never give in, never give up, never stop picking yourself up off the floor after failing again and again that counts. It's a marathon of faith we're running...the secret seems to be to just keep running!
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3 comments:
that is the truth! thanks for letting me peer into the window of your life. i admire you from a distance. i want to be like you in your faith. Keep writing!
elliott, i was thinking about this same thing over the weekend ...
remember that game "don't break the ice" where the little purple ice fisherman sits in the middle of these white "ice" cubes and you have to hammer out the cubes around him so as not to let the man fall to the ground?
anyway, i feel like my mind looks like a bunch of those white cubes blocking a bigger picture. and i know the white cubes well because that's all i see. and i think i understand it and then god starts this incessant hammering on one of the white blocks. and sometimes it takes forever. and it hurts. to the point where i want to scream, "god! put down the hammer! the block won't break through!! give up!!!"
but he goes at it, and i with him (sometimes happy to be co-laboring with him, sometimes begrudgingly so). and then, somehow, he breaks through this one block and i get to see SO MUCH MORE. it's WAY WAY better than looking at a wall full of plastic white blocks.
after 4 years of me sluggishly doing life, trying to believe by faith that something bigger is going on, something better than what i can see, i feel like god hammered out a block and let me see something of him.
THAT, that little hint of promise, makes me so excited to get older, to turn 30 with god, to turn 50, and 70, and 90 and then all those eternal ages.
kind of like we can hammer out all those plastic white "ice cubes" and dive into this great wide sea below that only god knows. oooh, amen.
This weekend I had been meditating on the beginning of Psalm 55. David is troubled and in a pressured place in his life and he feels overwhelmed as he is calling out to God. And since I don't have enemies running after me to kill me with arrows and spears, I always translate my enemies and life rough spots as those places of "denying flesh" and "those dark nights of the soul". And Oh, how I can relate to Vs6,7,8
"Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest--I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and the storm."
It is funny that when life deals me a poor hand how my initial desire is to flee and how I assume my rest would come IF i were in a place far, far away. But when I take a good hard look at my life-it is in those places of "Long Obedience" where my maturity has been challenged and squeezed out of me and where my character has been beaten so much that the only option it has is to build itself up again and in a stronger way (like our muscles when we lift weights). And it is good to note that God didn't give David those wings he wished for-God delivered David through the failthfulness of the moment by moment ground level rescue of God commanding and David obeying-even when David wasn't sure of the outcome.
There is a type of rest that comes when I am surrounded be steadiness of life-no big shaky changes or pressures- and palm trees with a nice view of the beach and a massage scheduled for 3pm. But those are not the places that I grow from-and I get bored there. But when life is rocky and pressured I watch as somehow Grace and Mercy from God's faithfull hand come to aid me and rescue me and I extend myself in ways I thought weren't possible. And that is a moment when i grow up a little more and see myself change in a godly way. And truthfully, when I see growth in my life, the kind of growth that resembles sanctification (becoming more like Jesus), even if it is in the midst of chaos and bad things happening to me, there is more peace in my heart in those moments. There is peace because I realize that I am right in the middle of where God want me to be-right in the middle of one of his greatest plans for me-transforming me into the likeness of his most favorite person-Jesus.
Watching Him reveal His glory in me, even if it is painful, or even if the ice cubes have not been chipped away and I can't see the full picture and even if He dosn't give me wings to fly away with, is the most amazingly peaceful place of rest that I know.
When life hands you lemons make lemonade or:
"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." 2 Cor. 4:17
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