Skip to main content

Pulling Your String

Give us help for the hard task; human help is worthless. In God we’ll do our very best; he’ll flatten the opposition for good. (Psalm 60:11-12)

Winston Churchill reminded us, "Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it." No matter how we live, or where we live, or who we live with - opposition is all around us. The blood might move freely toward your toes, but it faces gravity as an opposing force in order to return to your heart. Your arteries have no valves - allowing free flow outward. They have valves on the 'return visit' through the veins because gravity would pull it all back down again if there weren't some 'chambers' to catch it and move it along with each heartbeat. If God made our bodies with the ability to 'face opposing forces', what makes us think he would make our spirits any differently?

We 'rise' because of opposition - we don't rise going in the same direction as the opposition. We might not think about it, but the force exerted 'against' us isn't really pushing us down as much as it is driving us upward. Hard tasks surround us each day - from the words we will have to choose to speak to the actions we will choose to NOT take. As much as we may try to 'rise above' the 'hard tasks' in our path, we might feel like there is nothing within us capable of risking above them. We are not far from the truth on that one - without God's help, all those opposing forces will eventually weigh us down and keep us from rising above them. Could it be that God needs us to understand the benefits of 'small pit stops' along the way, much like our blood returning to the heart has to make?

Maybe the key to overcoming and rising above isn't so much that we ask for help, but that we take small moments throughout the day to stop, ask, and listen. In that short 'spiritual pit stop' we might just find there is strength to rise, a pull toward doing what is right vs. what is wrong. Maybe God's hope is that we will call out more, listen more, and rely upon him just a little quicker each time we take a 'pit stop'. Our spirit is refreshed when we do, much like the wind catching that specific pitch of the kite's fabric at the very point where the resistance is the greatest, causing it to soar high. 

If you have ever flown a kite, you know there are times when it seems to dip, almost like it is going to crash to the earth. At that point, what keeps it up? A hard pull on the string! The kite faces the resistance once again and begins to resume the position of rising. The one holding the string has the greatest control over the kite. Perhaps we need God to give us a hard pull on the spiritual strings of our life in order for us to rise above the opposing forces once again! Just sayin!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant.  In that day and time, a very taboo thing.  We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God.  Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated.  We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar.  The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish.  Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,