9/30/2020 0 Comments Where are you god?Where are you God?
Where are you God? Where are you God? I ask that question a lot lately. Over and over and over. The thing is, I can get so demanding with that question, I can get so obnoxiously loud with it, that I can become deaf to God's answer. Because the reality is he always answers. He never leaves me hanging. I'm right here, he says. Over and over and over. I checked in on my son doing online school yesterday. There was a video playing of a woman doing a stretching routine. My son was plopped back in a chair with a blanket over him taking it in like a Netflix movie. It took all the restraint I had to keep from asking him if he wanted me to pop him some popcorn. I asked him, what class is this? Gym, he said. Well aren't you supposed to be joining in with that routine - I mean, if it's gym and all. He told me "the teacher said we don't have to." She said you don't have to, I repeated, with a wee bit of skepticism. Well, it's not like she can see if we're doing it or not.... I processed that for a second, then gently reminded him that not being completely on board with what someone says is not exactly the same thing as that person never having spoken at all. This morning, as I'm reading through my devotionals and spending time reading God's word, oh I can hear God so loud and clear saying I'm right here. It aggravates me a bit, to be honest, and I ask God, but where were you yesterday? Where were you in the noise and in the struggle and in the brokenness? I can feel God processing that question for a bit. Then I hear him answer: "You not being on board with what I say to you is not the same thing as me not being here." I'm reminded this morning that not hearing and feeling God in my life is not a function of his absence, it's a function of me choosing to listen to and feel something other than God.
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I have this view about life in heaven. I can't point you to the pages in the bible that fully support it. But neither can anyone point me to the pages that paint a much clearer picture of what our days and nights will be like there. Or even if there will be days and nights. So I tend to roll along with this view of mine.
What I picture is us spending our days watching our lives grow fruit long after our lives have departed the places where the fruit is actually growing. I picture us getting to see with great clarity our lives making a difference in people we never met, in the lives of people who weren't even born the day we moved from earth to heaven. I think we are all believers at some level in life's ripple effect. The idea that the choices we make and the things we contribute to this world affect others. Well, in heaven, I think we get to see all of our ripples with miraculous clarity. We'll witness the beauty of where our ripples have been; we'll watch with excitement as our ripples carry on like magic, giving birth to the future. I picture rows of us leaning over a giant heavenly rail peering down into the arena of life. We're sipping iced tea or Coke Zero. Maybe we're snacking on pieces of fancy bread and sipping some fine wine 🤷♂️. There are smiles as people fondly relive interactions with people they've long forgotten. There are mouths wide open as those same people witness how those interactions went on to change lives in life-breathing ways they never previously knew about. There are tears and cheers and high fives as the mysteries that power life's ripples come alive for the very first time. There is also sadness and emptiness. I see faces of people who can't find their ripples. They are seemingly left out of the high fives. They hear silence instead of cheers. They stare blankly down at the still waters of their lives that somehow never found the heart to ripple. They are the still waters of self-centeredness, waters that surround a self like an island, waters that never gave thought to even the slightest drift toward others. I wonder if in those faces I see hell. The look of revelation that life was about ripples and not islands. When I picture heaven that way, I walk out the door today a little more intent on stirring waters, creating ripples - maybe even a few waves. Sure, there is a calmness that comes with still waters. Maybe even a safety. But what is the cost of calm? What is the true value of playing it safe - or the unknown harm? I hate wrapping gifts. Nothing speaks more powerfully to that truth than seeing my gifts next to other gifts under a Christmas tree or on top of a table at a birthday party. Talk about weeds in a beautiful bed of flowers.
I remember growing up. My Aunt Molly was always a great gift wrapper. Looking back, I'm sure wrapping gifts was a skill of hers. But I think she acquired that skill because she had such a big heart for giving. I think making the outside of the gift beautiful was her way of helping us feel how excited she was about giving us what was on the inside. Bob Goff said this morning that God is the gift and we are the wrapping. That instantly made sense to me because contrary to how we see God some days - God is not a far away thing from a far away place - God is a living and loving spirit making a home inside each of us. I know not everyone believes that. I know not everyone sees it that way. I wonder this morning, though, if some people don't see it that way because of the way I wrap up my personal gift of God. Is it possible that I put as little thought into wrapping the gift of Him as I do wrapping the Christmas gifts I wrap with random newspaper and duct tape. Maybe a poorly wrapped God looks like anger. Maybe it looks like resentment or unforgiveness. Maybe God quickly shoved down to the bottom of a repurposed gift bag and covered with random tissue paper looks like selfishness and a complete and total blind spot for others. Is it possible that the way I wrap God up on the outside doesn't make people excited, or even the least bit curious, about the God I have living inside me? Because it's true, the first hint anyone has of what is inside a gift is how that gift is wrapped. As Christmas approaches, maybe this year I'll be a little more mindful of how I wrap my gifts. At least trade in my duct tape for something a little more invisible. More importantly, though, as I go through the world today, I'll be more mindful that the first hint anyone has of the gift living inside me is the way I have that gift wrapped. Psalm 139 is often at the center of a Christian's pro-life stance. The idea that God knew how beautifully made we were long before we were actually made becomes the evidence many people use to speak to the value of the unborn.
I'm not here to debate that view. I am here, though, to wonder out loud if that Psalm may have as much - if not much more - application to the beauty of the living as it often gets applied to the unborn. First, and I'm guilty of this almost every day, I think we sometimes forget that we are not a mistake. God didn't beautifully make each of us, he didn't know how intricately beautiful every single day of our lives would be before we ever experienced one of those days, only to decide a few months or years or decades into our existence that he'd made the biggest mistake of his eternal life. The author of the psalm wasn't talking about the unborn when he said this just before the verses I've referenced today: I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. So many days our souls get lost in the belief that we aren't so beautifully made. We see ourselves as broken. We forget how wonderfully God saw us before we were born; we forget his view on that didn't change once we started celebrating birthdays. Secondly, one of the real hazards I think of believing that it's possible God made a mistake with us is it makes it easier to believe the people around us were a mistake. It makes it easier for us to go through life trying to figure out who exactly ARE the ones beautifully made by God, and who are the people that make God wish for do-overs. I read Psalm 139 this morning as a reminder that in the midst of political battles, everyone around us is in a very real human battle. I read it and I am challenged to use the rediscovering of how beautifully God sees me as a nudge or a shove to love the people around me as beautifully as I know God sees them. All of them. I am not a mistake. You are not a mistake. I think starting with that belief makes loving ourselves and loving one another much easier than it would appear to be most days. Every morning when I get up I open up one of my newspaper applications on my phone and quickly scan the morning headlines. I don't know why I do it. Maybe I'm hoping one morning the headlines will miraculously pivot to a more hopeful narrative?
If so, that hope didn't come with this morning's headlines. This isn't something new I'm facing. For thousands of years people have been waking up reading headlines that paint a picture of war and hate and division. I'm always fascinated by the reality that the day came when God got tired of reading our headlines. He grew weary from waiting on us to create more hopeful headlines. And so, as Bob Goff put it this morning, God decided to paint himself into our lives. When Jesus came to earth, he was well aware of our headlines. He knew they were ugly and hateful and that they told stories of people treating one another very unlike they way we were created to treat one another. Here's the thing, though. Jesus didn't show up and start writing new headlines. He didn't show up and have the first big "come to Jesus" meeting where he called everyone to him to give them the business about how they'd been living. No - Jesus showed up and started marching town to town into our headlines showing people love where the headlines said there was nothing but hate. There wasn't one morning Jesus woke up hoping for a new headline. He woke up every morning reading headlines that said the world needed more Jesus - more love. So he kept on delivering it. There's a popular Christian song out right now written by Chris Tomlin and others. Yesterday I heard these words and they struck me: You're amazing, faithful, love's open door, When I'm empty You fill me with hunger for more, Of Your mercy, Your goodnessLord, You're the air that I breathe, That's who You are to me Who You are to me I was reminded with these words that Jesus not only wrote himself into the world's headlines - he wrote himself into my headlines. I was reminded that some days, when the headlines of my own life are telling me I'm empty and struggling and hopeless, that I need to just stop. I need to be still and breathe in - deeply breathe in. Breathe in and recognize God is in the air I breathe. With each breath, comes an invitation to walk through love's open door, to be filled with mercy and goodness. With each breath, I'm being invited to re-write the headlines of my life. With each breath, I'm being reminded that this morning's headlines aren't a reason for hopelessness, but an invitation for me to be loves open door in someone else's life. Maybe one day we'll all breathe that same collective breath. On that day, maybe the headlines will paint a much more hopeful picture. There are evil forces in the world that want to keep us forever divided. One of the most powerful of those forces is jealousy.
I googled the "opposite of jealousy" this morning. The first word that popped up was admiration. This last Saturday, I ran the longest and highest and downright most challenging race of my life. There is no close second. For over 13 hours, I was on my feet roaming 38 miles of Georgia mountains. At times it felt aimless. It felt like a life sentence. All day long I was reminded over and over why I'd signed up for this race twice before, but never once completed it. There's something else that happened all day long out there too. Something that made all the difference in my day. All day long I passed people who had reached the turn around points in their races and they were well on the way back to their own finish lines. Instinctively, I felt a deep sense of admiration for each of them. Every chance I could, I told them that. In turn, I felt an equal amount of admiration from those same runners for me. Granted, they were going to be finishing their races many hours before me, so there was little of my race to trigger jealousy in them. Still, those far more successful runners seemed to be on a dual mission on those trails: finish their race while admiring as many runners as they could who were battling to finish theirs. I've always wondered what life would look like if we turned it into a game of mutual admiration. A game of let's all run out there today and see who can catch the most people doing something right. Everyone report back here at the end of the day and brag about your findings. Fill Facebook and social media with stories of admiration for one another. Jealousy is one of the things that stands in the way of that, I think. For some reason, when we identify something good in someone else's life we too often start wishing that was something we had in our lives. Or believing it's something we SHOULD have in our lives. Even worse, at times, we start thinking of all the reasons people don't deserve those good things we spotted in their lives. That race on Saturday, as hard as it was - and I'll repeat, nothing has ever felt more daunting to me - it had the feel of a day long celebration. I'm not talking about the party at the finish line that celebrates the accomplishment. I'm talking about hanging out with people all day long who were intent on celebrating the way other people were attacking life. I want to tell you, as a testimony, that kind of celebration is fuel for life. When people celebrate the way you are doing life it helps you clarify and provide determination toward where you want to go in life. It got me to a finish line that had long taken up space and started gathering dust in the impossible dream closet in my mind. So today, if you're out there and you encounter people who may be struggling through life, consider it's possible they might need a little fuel. Maybe they need a little admiration. Jealousy of someone else will try to steer your attention elsewhere. Don't let it. 9/13/2020 0 Comments You are my friendThere's a scene in the bible where Jesus is about to be betrayed by Judas. It looked like this:
While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; seize him.” And he (Judas) came up to Jesus at once and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” And he kissed him. I can picture that scene. The politicians and the religious leaders all worked up in a frenzy. It's not an uncommon scene in our own world these days - some thousands of years later. The chaos. The violence. The agendas. Within the intensity of that scene, the high drama, it's easy to overlook the next line in the story. Jesus looks at Judas, right in the eyes, close enough to feel that kiss of betrayal, and says, "friend, do what you came to do." With everything that was going on around him, Jesus was making sure Judas knew one thing hadn't changed - Jesus was still about friendship. I can't help but wonder if Jesus wasn't sending a message with that powerful line, in the middle of that powerful scene. I can't help but wonder if Jesus wasn't giving us a forever reminder that nothing is more important than friendships. With social media, we all get a front row seat these days to watching friendships dissolve right before our eyes. Yet, there was Jesus, surrounded by clubs and swords, making sure his betrayer heard him say - you are my friend. I think in this world filled with all sorts of sides ganging up on one another, someone needs to hear you say, "friend." I think in the middle of a world that seems to make little sense, someone needs you to be the reminder that God created us because he wanted to be our friend. He wanted to hang out with us in a garden in the cool of the afternoon and help us discover the joy of togetherness. Sadly, Adam and Eve went looking for a joy outside of that friendship. In many ways, we do too. But even in the face of betrayal, Jesus never stops calling us friend. As we pick up our swords and clubs and fight for our causes, Jesus is hanging right by our side, close enough to make sure we can hear him call us by name: friend. How often do you look in the mirror without wishing you were looking at someone else? How often do you even approach the mirror with the intention of seeing all that is good there and not all that needs fixed?
The truth is, many of us go to that mirror not aiming to see something we love, but rather to figure out the best way to make what's there more lovable to someone else. So much of what we buy and so much of how we look after ourselves is motivated by having the best chance to look in that mirror and feel like this is the day - this is the day the world is going to love that person in the mirror. On my long drive home from Tennessee the other night, I ended up on the phone with a buddy of mine. We've been friends for many years. His is a friendship I've treasured. We chit chatted for an hour or so - talked about running and some of the fun surface level happenings in life that we always have fun talking about, they make it easy to laugh - that make it easy to feel loved. We were getting ready to hang up when out of the blue this buddy asked a heavier question about life. It wasn't as fun and it wasn't as easy to laugh at. It was a question that made me draw closer to the real me than the me who stares back at me from the mirror. Frankly, it was a question that almost 10 out of 10 times I'll find a way to laugh my way right out of ever having to answer. But I answered. And for the next hour we talked about hard stuff in life. For the next hour there weren't many laughs. Maybe there was even a tear or two. For the next hour I talked about a guy in the mirror that even at times the mirror rejects. Through the entire conversation, though, as it went on in time and dug deeper into my soul, all I felt was growing acceptance. There wasn't an ounce of rejection. In his devotional this morning, Goff says, "what all of us want are those few authentic relationships - and we'll trade who we really are for who we think we need to be." When I hung up the phone with my friend, I felt for a moment like I'd struck gold. There was peace, you know, in having that moment of knowing that parts of me I've worked to exhaustion to protect were parts of me another human being not only accepted, but embraced. They were parts that to my surprise didn't scare the mirror away, but instead had the mirror say come a little closer. I personally believe we are designed to have these people in our lives, every day, as a reminder that is how God sees us in every mirror we look in. These people are God's way of saying, I know you don't always believe me - because, well, you can't always see and hear me - but maybe you'll believe this person I've had fill in for me. I think mirrors are more often than not enemies in our life. We spend way too much time with them being told who we need to become in order to be loved. Throw your mirrors away. All of them. But if you have someone who sees who you are, who sees all the things you think need fixed but they think are things that simply need heard, spend some time there instead of in front of the mirror. And when you walk away from them feeling like you've struck gold, be reminded that God feels like he struck gold every moment he's with you. Be additionally reminded and comforted by knowing there is never a moment that God is not with you. Last week I was in Richmond delivering shoes I'd helped gather for Soles4Souls. While I was there, I had a beautiful conversation with my friend Stephanie who directs the operations at the Richmond facility.
We talked about my upcoming trip to the Soles4Souls headquarters in Nashville. I was headed there in a few days to run the final miles of my 1,270 mile summer race to promote the work Soles4Souls does to fight poverty around the world. I was telling Stephanie what an impact my trip to Honduras had on me last year, and especially how much my heart had been transformed by my friend Raul, who I'd met while I was there. Friday, when I finished that race in Nashville and stepped into the Soles4Souls office to cool off, there was a surprise waiting for me. The team walked me over to a computer screen sitting on a desk. As I looked down at it, there was my buddy Raul in Honduras. He'd been videoed in to offer his congratulations and thanks. My friend Stephanie began arranging this ending to my race after we had our conversation last week. I was overwhelmed by my conversation with Raul. I love that guy. But as I reflected on it afterward on the drive home, I was equally overwhelmed by the way Stephanie showed love for me in that moment. She was on that video call as well, and you could see how much being able to make that connection filled her heart. The beautiful thing about Stephanie, and it's why she is such a great friend, she was motivated by love only. She wasn't looking for anything from me, or from her boss or from anyone at all. She just wanted to freely give love. You know, there are so many stories in the bible when Jesus goes into people's lives and just loves on them. After reading many of those stories I'm left wondering, what did the people he loved go on to do after those encounters? How did their lives change? What did they do to thank Jesus for all he did for them? I'm left wondering - what is the rest of the story? What Stephanie did for me Friday is a reminder that love IS the rest of the story. Maybe Jesus so often left out the part about how many lives were changed by his love to remind us love isn't all about changing someone else's life, it's about us living life with hearts on fire. Love isn't about what's in it for me, it's about what's living in me -and maybe - WHO is living in me. Some days I forget, God doesn't own a watch. This is a God who has been here forever and will be around forever, so he doesn't count birthdays. He doesn't panic at the end of the day when his to-do list isn't done, because for him, tomorrow has to feel very much like today or yesterday.
I think about the struggles I encounter in my life, and how time is often at the root of them. Whether it's a project running up against the burden of a deadline or a heartache that feels like it won't last one more day or a birthday that makes me feel too close to comfort to my final birthday - time always feels like a stressor. I read that Bob Goff devotional this morning and I pictured myself in prayer, my head bowed and I'm silently praying to God, all the while tapping my watch and making sure God knows these prayers have deadlines. God, I don't know about everyone else, but this is important! And then I pictured God on the other end of that prayer. I pictured him listening, but no signs of stress on him. He was simply sitting at a table drawing pictures of a heart. I think it was my heart. In the bible, in Matthew, Jesus is talking about the end of our time here on earth. And he says, “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." I wonder, does no one know because God wants this to be his big secret. Or does no one know because that's just not what God wants us to focus on. You know, I always say, the one thing college made me great at was procrastinating. If there's anyone out there who can procrastinate better than me, I want to see it. College was full of these high pressure deadlines, and I mastered how to live stress free right up until the moment a giant flood of stress triggered me to get done what needed done. Without a second to spare. What if God is saying, I'm not giving you the deadline because the work I need done is more important than a college essay. What if God is saying I'm not giving you a deadline because what I'm trying to accomplish here is more important than your project or your broken heart or how old you are starting to feel. What if God is trying to tell us this world is all about shaping hearts. God shaping mine and me shaping yours. What if God is saying I'm not giving you the timeline on that work because I can't have you all feeling like heart-shaping can afford even a minute of procrastination. Not because God is tired of drawing hearts, but because God is tired of seeing so many people do without love. |
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
November 2024
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