4/17/2022 0 Comments Easter - Are You Coming With Me?On Good Friday, when Jesus was dying on a cross, many of his followers were long gone. Death wasn't capable of taking out the savior they'd been waiting on. So the man hanging on a cross - he couldn't possibly be The one.
And I know they had to be asking, with sadness and disappointment, where is he going.... Then Jesus did what he said he'd do. What he said he'd do and they didn't believe. He rose from the dead. Not to tell them I told you so, but to make so what he had told them. Then Jesus, finally having their attention, took His turn to ask a question: are you coming with me? When authorities asked Peter - one of Jesus' disciples - if he knew Jesus - on three separate occasions - before Jesus hung on the cross - Peter said no. I don't know that man. Peter was caught up in 'where is he going?' Then Jesus rose from the dead. And he was eating breakfast with Peter. Jesus asked Peter three times, do you love me? When Jesus asked him that, he used the Greek work for love - Agape - which means unconditional love. I think this was Jesus' way of asking Peter - now that you know where I was going, are you truly ready to follow me? Now that you know where I'm going, are you coming with me? Each time Peter said yes - I love you Jesus - Jesus responded with a challenge: then take care of his people. Feed my lambs. Tend to my sheep. Feed my sheep, he told Peter. You know, I see a lot of Good Friday posts that talk about the story isn't over with the darkness of Friday because we know the light of Sunday is coming. But I think Sunday is a good day to remember - the story isn't over with Sunday either. Jesus didn't rise from the dead to put a big exclamation point on Easter weekend. He rose from the dead to ask us - are you coming with me. He rose from the dead to say, I saw your post on Good Friday proclaiming you knew Sunday was coming. Well it's here. And I am here to ask you: Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? I'm not a bible scholar by any stretch, but I'm not sure of any other place in the bible where Jesus repeated a question three times. Is it possible he saved his big three question moment for the resurrection for a reason? Is it possible Jesus waited until he'd answered our big question - where are you going - to pose his big question - are you coming with me - as part of a plan? Easter isn't an answser. Easter isn't the end of the story. Easter is the beginning of the story, and it starts with a question. Are you coming with me? Do you truly love me without conditions? Are you going to take care of my people? If so, if the answer is yes - I think Jesus would say, today isn't a day to celebrate that I rose from the dead. Today is a day to celebrate that you're coming with me. Jesus went through an awful lot to ask us a question. Easter is a great time to unconditionally thing about our answer.
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Good Friday. It always feels like the greatest contradiction ever. A day that marks one of the most notorious murders ever - and yet, we call it a good day.
Maybe more than ever this year, I am leaning on the ever-present truth, the ever-present comfort, that comes from knowing we call Friday good because we know this day feeds right into our best day ever. Because for Christians, Easter was and is and always will be our best day on earth. Easter is the day that once and for all says, we don't have to let fear determine how our story ends. When death can't dictate how your earthly story ends, nothing can. When Jesus was enduring his anything-BUT-good Friday, he looked at a thief hanging on a cross next to him and said, "today you will be with me in paradise." A thief who hadn't been baptised or celebrated communion or stepped foot into a temple - Jesus looked at him and said, you're coming with me. And he did. The thief went with him, simply because he believed he would. A thief's worst day ever became his best day ever, simply because he believed it was so. I think about Jesus in that situation too. How much comfort did it bring his discomfort to know, with some of his last words, that he was assuring a thief that he never had to wait for one more good day to call any day good again. How much comfort did it bring a Jesus, who KNEW the story wasn't ending on that cross, to promise a thief that his wasn't either. How much hope did it bring Jesus to know that I - Keith - would one day read that story, and I too might come to know - and embrace - the truth that I no longer have to wait on a good day to be reminded that my anything-BUT-good days are leading to my best day ever. I don't have to wait until I get to see my boys again. This IS a good day. I don't have to wait until loneliness isn't lonely again. This IS a good day. I don't have to wait until the house sells or until the economy improves. This IS a good day. I don't have to wait until the right person is elected. I don't have to wait until I'm healed. I don't have to wait on the sun. This. IS. A good day. We are all wise enough to know that Friday always comes before Sunday. Every week, that's that pattern. Well, maybe Jesus was helping us know, with some help from a thief, that our bad days almost always come before our good ones. In fact, sometimes - maybe many times - our worst day ever comes just before our best day ever. If you believe that this Friday, if you cling to that promise, then this indeed is a Good Friday. It is for you. And it is for me. *** Jesus, I thank you for the reminder of Good Friday. I thank you for the reminder that you were certain YOUR Friday was good so a thief - and me - and all of us - could feel certain all of OUR days are good. It's not easy to remember that some days, I confess. Especially on the days that feel anything-BUT-good. But I look to the Cross, and to the thief, and to your promise to him that his best day ever was right in front of him. And I am re-assured; this IS a good day. Thank you. ~me I think our dreams about the future can be limited by what we've done in the past.
I remember several years ago when I completed my first half marathon. I had just recently taken up running. When I crossed the finish line of that race, I was sure I had just reached the pinacle of what my body could do as a runner at my age. Thinking about running races further than that - well at that time - I just didn't think about it. When you've reached what you believe is the ceiling, there is little to motivation to look above it. I've come to understand, when I crossed that first half marathon finish line, I was being introduced to my potential, not my limits. I've since run a dozen races further than that one - a couple of them a few times further. The key was I had to stop basing the possibilities in my life on what I'd already done in my life. If I'm not careful, my prayer life can fall into that trap as well. I can get caught up asking God to help me repurpose my old life - one filled with challenges and habits and hurts - instead of trusting God to introduce me to a brand new life. A life I'm not capable of imagining. I shouldn't fall into that trap. I shouldn't because there are many days I walk through moments in my life and think, I never imagined I could be here. I never imagined it, because my imagination is largely shaped by where I've already been. But God's imagination - His imagination is shaped by where he knows I can go. There is something liberating about that. So much of the angst in my life is because I'm not where I think I should be. I'm not where I think I should be with my job or relationships or writing or my health. Well, when you come to realize you're not fully capable of knowing just where you can go, you come to realize you're maybe not the best person to decide exactly where you should be. You come to realize you're creating stress by measuring yourself against measures that aren't really true. These days, I'm trying to spend less time talking to God about where I want to go and who I want to go there with and what I want to be doing when I get there. These days, I'm trying to spend less time asking God to amaze me with his power to deliver on my dreams, and more time asking God to amaze me with his power to deliver on dreams I don't have the capacity to dream. These days, I'm spending more time walking with God toward my potential, and less time clinging to the life I've alread done. Some days, it's helpful to just say 'point me to where you know I can go' instead of 'deliver me to where I think I should be.' We too often want delivered to places that have ceilings, but with God, the sky is the limit.... 4/13/2022 0 Comments Don't miss thisI am a Christian. Because of that, this is a big week in my life. This Holy Week leading up to Easter is a week of big sorrow and big gratitude.
It is a week of big reflection. I listened to a message in church this past Sunday. The pastor recounted with great passion dozens of miracles Jesus worked when he was on earth. His passion drove home a point: Jesus didn't come to interrupt lives; he came to disrupt them. I looked up the definitions of those words. Generally speaking, an interruption brings about a pause in the flow of things. A disruption brings about a change of course - often a radical change of course. This week, the story of Jesus represents the chance to have your life disrupted in a most beautiful way - even if through the most tragic of circumstances. The pastor knows that. Which is why he said, "don't miss this." When he said those words, I found myself immediately reflecting on the day Jesus disrupted my life. A few years into one of the darkest periods of my life - in my mid-twenties - when everyone around me knew I was living in rock bottom but still bouncing around trying to make a trampoline out of it, I went to work for a carpenter. This carpenter built large houses; I hauled large loads of lumber and shingles around on my back all day to make building houses a little easier. That carpenter was always smiling. He was possibly the biggest smiler I had ever met. I assumed it was because I was carrying dry wall and he wasn't. Turns out there was more to it than that. You see, I wasn't fond of how happy he was. Most days I showed up to work hung over and broke, which made grunt work miserable work. I'm not 100% sure misery loves company, but it despises being within a thousand miles of joy. One day there were a few of us sitting against the two by fours of an unfinished wall inside the frame of a house we were working on, eating lunch. I was devouring a bag of chips and a 3 day old sandwich I bought at the 7-11 in town as I raced to make it to work on time that morning. I don't remember what the carpenter was eating, only that it must have been fresher than my lunch, because he joked and laughed while he ate. That was the day I couldn't take it any more. So I asked him a question that would change my life. I asked the carpenter, not really intending that he bear the brunt of my frustration with God, but he was the ever present happy one after all. I confronted him - why are you always so happy? For a question that represented so many complications in my own life, his answer flowed from a disrupting place of simplicity and calm. He said, "My happiness comes from my relationship with God." I knew people who were pretty caught up in their bibles. They loved quoting verses to the rock bottom guys like me. Like that would somehow float me to the top. But I'd never heard anyone talk about a relationship with God. That sounded thumpier than anything I'd ever heard out of the thumpiest of bible thumpers. Relationships were between people, not between people and an invisible creator of the world. In the days ahead, I tried hard to shake his claim. It wouldn't disappear as fast as some of the scriptures I'd heard and since forgotten. I became obsessed with finding a more logical reason for his persistent joy. I thought maybe his sobriety was to blame, but I'd met a lot of grumpy sober people in my life. Over the weeks and months ahead, I began to ask him a little more about this relationship he had. Interrogate might be more appropriate. As he described it to me, I came to realize that his relationship with God was as real to him as any other in his life, and I had witnessed firsthand how much he loved the real people in his life. To him, his relationship with God was more powerful than all others combined. Today, I know it was no accident I crossed paths with the carpenter at the most desperate time of my life, because suddenly I wanted some of what he had. There was an unheard whisper that day. It said, "don't miss this." I am beyond grateful I didn't miss it. I'm grateful I didn't miss the greatest disruption of my life. Because I know today that encounter not only DISRUPTED my life - but in far more than an eternal sense - it SAVED my life. I'm pretty sure I haven't lived with as many smiles as that carpenter since Jesus became the most important relationship in my life. I'm a work in progress. But I've never again had to wonder where true happiness and joy and contentment are found. Maybe this week you find yourself wondering where those things are found. Maybe this week there is an unheard whisper happening in your life. Maybe it is saying, "don't miss this." Well, I used to hear "don't miss this" as a threat. Miss it and you'll go to hell. Today, I know "don't miss this" became the most beautiful invitation I was ever offered. In accepting it, I didn't avoid hell. In accepting it, I found a way to climb out of it. Don't miss this. It truly is an invitation. 4/12/2022 0 Comments Just do the damn thingI was sitting in the lobby of my office at the college last week. It was late afternoon; I was slouched back in a comfortable chair. I told our Coordinator of Counseling Services - "this is what I do when I get to the part of my to-do list I just don't feel like doing."
The greater truth is, "don't feel like doing" was just another way of saying I'd gotten to the part of the list I'd made a whole bunch of excuses for. Running has taught me the absolute truth in what Mel Robbins says - when you just do the damn thing, all of the excuses disappear. Yesterday morning, I told myself I'd go to the gym at the college when I ran some stuff to my son he'd left here over the weekend. That's always a dangerous conversation. Because over the course of a long day, I can come up with a lot of excuses why running in the evening doesn't sound as good as it sounded the morning when I declared I'd run in the evening. And sure enough, on the drive over I told myself it's later than I thought it would be. I told myself I don't sleep as well when I run in the evening. I told myself how hungry I was after a long day. I told myself what a hassle it was going to be to have to shower before I drove home. But this is a routine I've practiced a lot in running: make excuses just do the damn thing - watch the excuses disappear. I've mastered that routine with my writing as well, but there are a lot of areas in life where I am still struggling with this truth. I read recently, "the most unprofitable thing ever manufactured is an excuse." It's true - not just financially - but when considering the overall benefit to our lives - excuses are one of the most useless things we do to ourselves. Because be sure, excuses are something we DO do to ourselves. When we run, we do running to ourselves. When we don't run because it's too late, we do an excuse to ourselves. When we get up and write, we do writing to ourselves. When we decide I'll never write anything worth reading today, we do an exscuse to ourselves. Maybe it's one of our more amazing superpowers? This power to instantly make excuses disappear. I had no less than five of them last night before I ran. When I was done running, they were all gone. Every single one of them. Poof. The bonus? I had done running to myself. I felt better. And I didn't have to wrestle all evening with "I should have" or "I wish I had." Because it's not like excuses shut up once you've decided not to do the thing the excuses talked you out of. Excuses like to taunt you after the fact. They are relentless and evil. So make them disappear. Today, when you find yourself talking yourself out of something you know you would be better off just doing, well, just do the damn thing. And then sit back in a comfortable chair and celebrate your magic. Celebrate the poof. Celebrate as you watch one of the things that holds you back most in life go up in smoke. It's magical, you know. When you get busy doing life - it gets much harder to hear your life trying to talk you out of life. Today go be living proof of that poof - of that magic. No excuses.... 4/11/2022 0 Comments We Are our own story tellersWe are all building something with our lives today. Whether we plan to or not, we are using every moment and every breath to make something. To make something of ourselves.
For the longest time, what I made of myself today looked an awful lot like what I made of myself yesterday. Mainly because I spent a lot of time convincing myself I didn't have what I needed to make anything different of myself. It's easy to make of yourself today what you made of yourself yesterday. You simply wake up today and go with the flow of yesterday. Patterns are easy to do, they just aren't always easy to live with when you're doing them. Tim Timberlake says, "Even when the mundane mindset dares to dream, its perceived reality can seem like a malicious jailer determined to thwart your every chance." I think we forget that some days. That the mind that dreams is the same mind that says dreaming is a waste of time. The mind that says I can become something new and beautiful is the same mind that reminds us of all the old and haunting. The mind that says you can do it is the same mind that says, how? - you've never done it before. It's the same mind, different stories, controlled by the same person. Controlled by me. Controlled by you. So much of our lives is controlled by the story our minds tell us. We fail to excercise the contol over our lives that we actually do have because we think it's a jailer telling that story. Or maybe, when life goes well, we think it's a magician. Or God. But God tells us often to take captive our minds. He frequently challenges us to renew our minds. God reminds us that he's given us a lot of freedom to tell ourselves the stories we want to live out. When we tell ourselves a different story, that's us, not anyone else. So it's Monday. You WILL build something today. And it will be you who tells yourself the story about that building. Today, you can tell yourself all you have available is the same old crumbling bricks you've always used. Or, you can grab a new brick. Even if only one new brick. You might be surprised at how new a story starts to feel when you use just one new brick. You might be surprised at the story you'll wake up telling yourself tomorrow. Because you are the story you tell yourself. You might as well tell yourself one of hope and renewal. 4/8/2022 0 Comments I have enough is a choiceIt's easy for us to believe that more is better or better is better or new is better or different is better. It's easy to believe that, because we have a commercial system built on selling us that belief.
I stopped at a gas station on the way home from traveling the other day. I was thirsty. I wanted a bottle of water. Bottled water. I stood their staring at the dozens of choices I had for water in the cooler. The water I drank out of a faucet as a kid, often out of cupped hands collecting it as it poured out because I was too lazy to grab a glass. I mean, the water did wash my hands prior to it going into my mouth, right? But there I was. There was a $1 bottle. And a $2 dollar bottle. Even a $3 bottle of water. The more expensive bottles had more and larger letters on them explaining why that water was better than the other waters. And it worked. I bought the big bottle that was pH balanced and had electrolytes for taste.... and very pretty lettering. As I sat in my car, opening my bottle of water, I caught the image of a garden hose out of the corner of my eye. I guess it was there for folks who needed water for their cars? I used to drink a lot of water our of garden hoses. Until someone convinced me bottled water was better for me. Many of us are easy sales targets. We're easy to convince the products we're using aren't good enough because too many of us believe WE aren't good enough. If I drink fancy water, maybe I'll feel like a fancier human. Until 20 miles down the road. The bottled water is gone and the feelings of inadequacy remain. Maybe it's my deodorant; I knew I shouldn't have bought the cheap stuff. Or maybe my car; it's too small. Or my job, I really need to check those job openings. Or social media posts - I haven't posted enough happy and successful stories and photos lately. Seth Godin says, "if you decide you have enough, then you do." Godin goes on to say, "And with that choice comes a remarkable sort of freedom. The freedom to be still, to become aware and to stop hiding from the living that’s yet to be done." I do believe that is what chasing better and more often is - it is often hiding. It is often hiding from the life I have in order to chase a life I've convinced myself will make me feel better. Or maybe one that big bottles with big letters has convinced me will make me feel better. Many times, choosing I have enough is choosing to believe I AM enough. Sometimes resisting an upgrade is resisting the idea that I the person needs to be upgraded. Sometimes, when we take a timeout from the chase, we discover there's an awful lot of good in us that requires no chase. It simply requires a timeout. I was sitting at the desk in my hotel room yesterday morning. I was listening to Steven Furtick start his weekly message to his church. He was talking about their upcoming Easter service.
He told his large congregration that most people have started going back to restaurants and to movies and to grocery stores and to most places people had stopped going to because of the pandemic. But, he said, there are still a lot of people who haven't started coming back to church. "You don't have to condemn them," he told his followers. "You can simply invite them to our Easter service." Sometimes, a really powerful part of a message comes before the actual message ever gets started. I wrote Furtick's pre-message words down and stuck them in my pocket and thought about them on my drive home yesterday. I thought about the woman in chapter 8 of John in the bible. The woman who had committed adultery and who had been brought by the pharisees to face Jesus. Pharisees who were trying to convince Jesus the woman should be stoned for her actions. In response, the bible says, Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. The bible goes on to say: At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” The bible doesn't tell us what Jesus wrote in the dirt, but twice it referenced Jesus bending down and writing in the dirt in the middle of this exchange with the woman's accusers. So I think we are at least supposed to wonder what he was writing. I wonder if Jesus was writing "how could you" or "I've got you." I wonder if Jesus was writing "please go away" or "please come with me." I wonder if Jesus was writing a condemnation or an invitation. I think we all have some values in our lives that are important to us. Values that make us believe other people should fall in line with our values - or at least - make us believe other people's values aren't serving themselves or the world well. I figure there are two ways to spend our energy in this case. We can spend it by displaying our values in a way that is inviting, or by letting someone else know just how uninviting their values are in a most uninviting way. I love this story in John. Because not only did Jesus NOT condemn the woman, he also did NOT condemn the pharisees. Instead, he invited them to take a look into their lives through the lens of their own condemnation. They accepted his invitation. And in turn, they adopted a value that Jesus valued. Every minute, I think, we are living lives of either invitation or condemnation. Condemnation is certainly a way to let someone know where you stand on a subject - and let you stone someone else for their stance - but rarely will it invite someone to reconsider their stance. I also get that not everyone accepts an invitation. But invitation comes with possibility. Possibility comes with hope. And so even if we don't get to experience the change we'd like to see, we do get to experience - and share - hope. Maybe that's what Jesus was writing in the dirt. Hope. Yesterday, I sat in a 3-hour meeting with colleagues from The United Way of Southwest Virginia and another dear colleague I work closely with in this region. Usually, when I say 3-hour meeting - I will quickly follow that with some expression of excruciating pain.
Me and 3-hour meetings don't do well together. But there was nothing painful about this meeting. I was with community leaders who believe early childhood experiences are the greatest predictor we have of lifelong health and wellness. Which means I was with people committed to making those experiences as loving and caring and nurturing as possible for every child. This afternoon, I will guest lecture at a Masters level Public Health class at Virginia Tech on this same idea. That the quickest way to improve public health is to do everything we can to improve the earliest experiences of every child. The thing is, just 7 years ago, I had very little interest in this connection between childhood experiences and public health. I literally stumbled into a breakout session on this topic at a conference. As I listened, I felt my work being redefined, I felt the story I told myself about my life being redefined, I felt the stories I understood about other people's lives being redefined. I felt a passion knocking at the door of my soul. Mel Robbins says we often get advice to go find our passion. Yet, so many people just can't find it. She suggests that sometimes we don't find our passion, it finds us. It finds us when we're willing to feel and follow. I get awed when I sit in a meeting like I was in yesterday. I get empowered when I realize I am there because I was willing to follow a feeling. A feeling that came over me in a moment; a feeling I've been following now for years. Today, I will stand in front of a bunch of students at a large college who are going to go out and influence the public health practices in this country. Maybe even around the world. As I share my passion with them, I will remind myself that I would not be there if I hadn't followed a feeling. I would not be there if I was still looking for my passion. Before I offer myself that reminder, I want to offer it to you. Feel and follow what you are passionate about. I'm afraid too many of us wait for our passion to define itself for us. When maybe the whole idea is we're suppose to be following feelings and defining our passion as we go. Seven years ago, I had no idea I was passionate about early childhood experiences. Today, there is nothing I'm more passionate about. Today I'm excited by the possibility that a young person might get a feeling as I talk - a feeling they just might follow - a feeling that will lead them to define a passion that makes a difference in their lives. That makes a difference in the world. Feel and follow, my friends. Just follow. We can get there for a lot of reasons - to this place where we live trying not to disappoint anyone. Maybe we have different reasons, but the exhaustion is the same. The exhaustion of juggling everyone else's satisfaction in an attempt to live our most satisfying life.
You wake up one day and you wonder - everyone seems pretty satisfied with me. Why is it then that I feel so dissatisfied with myself? There is something that gets lost along the way while you're taking inventory of what satisfies the people around you. What gets lost is the inventory of things that make you satisfied with yourself. We can get so wrapped up in not disappointing others that disappointing ourselves becomes an unspoken and reasonable sacrifice to make along the way. Until you realize you've sacrificed you. Sometimes it's not even you that is not disappointing others. It's a you that you create and send out to please others while you sit with yourself wishing you were better at liking you. In fact, I think that's how we come to know ourselves best. When we're in the middle of these moments of doing things we'd never do if the person we didn't want to disappoint was me. Life changes when you take stock of what is important to you. Life changes when you abandon the obligation to not disappointing others to pursue those things that are important to you. To pursue not living disappointed with yourself. It's Monday. You may disappoint some people this week. But at the end of the week the most important question is not going to be "how many people did I disappoint this week?" The most important question is going to be, "am I disappointed in me?" Starting your week figuring out how to say 'no' to that question is a great way to start the week. |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
May 2024
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