Never more than

 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. (Matthew 16:25)

What do you really "want" today? I have to ask myself this from time to time because I forget quickly what it is I am working toward or attempting to see accomplished in my life. I get off-track soon enough and you know what that means - - - a whole lot of back-tracking. If you have ever left a room in search of something you needed, then midway stopped short totally forgetting whatever it was that you set out to find, you know how back-tracking can sometimes actually show you where you got off-course and re-establish your goal. Sometimes we just need to take those steps back in order to take the right steps forward.

Whoever wants - I think this means if we 'set out' and somehow get distracted along the way, there is a way back. There is always a way forward, even when we don't think there is any hope of ever getting back on track. It may not be all that hard to find our way back, either! We sort of attempt to do all the work of coming back to 'right-standing' with God, don't we? It is like we expect he won't be happy with us for having left the track we were on with him and therefore we must have to convince him we are sincere this time! If we lose our lives, we find them. It is at the end of loss that we find life!

Let that one sink in a bit, my friends. At the end we find the beginning. We don't lose anything really - it is all there waiting for us just as though we never got lost along the way! As long as what we 'lose' is our self-righteousness and self-interest, we are going to find his righteousness and become enthralled in the things that mean the most to him. As you may have realized already - to grow one needs to actually allow a little death. Death indicates loss, doesn't it? We may not want to admit it, but when we allow some of the weights that have burdened us for so long be shed, we become immensely free and are transformed.

Want to see God's best in your lives? Lay down you life. Want to get freshness in life - don't be afraid to take the steps back into his graces. Allow death to occur - as uncomfortable as that may sound - it is essential. The way we think our lives should have 'played out' may not be the way they actually did, but that doesn't have to be the place where we live forever. The journey doesn't always look like the destination - sometimes we take a different journey and find we are now in quite a different destination than we planned. Whenever we trade the pleasures of the moment for the enjoyment of eternity, we will always be disappointed 

Today, there might be some need to lay down the destination in order to figure out where we were headed and what it was we were seeking to find in the first place. We want to quit when it is hard and we cannot figure out where it is we got off course. God says it is time to commit even when we don't see how God is going to work within our lives. Don't jump out of his grace - stay there, my friends. As you lay down that burden, allowing death to be a place of rebirth, you won't be disappointed. Just sayin!

S.O.S.

I came across this quote this morning and just had to share it with you: "It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way." (Rollo May, Psychologist) While I don't subscribe to many of the beliefs of existential psychology, this thought just captured my attention because of the simple observation May made about us 'running faster'. Those who have lost their way often are like little gerbils in the proverbial wheel - running, running, running. All the while, they are getting absolutely nowhere. It doesn't matter how fast we run - we are still lost! The more we run, the deeper into the place of 'being lost' we find ourselves. Sometimes the best thing we can do is just to sit down, admit we are lost, and prepare to be rescued!

God rescues good men from danger while letting the wicked fall into it. (Proverbs 11:8 NLB)

In situations of survival, one of the things they teach you is not to wander from where you find yourself at the point of 'being lost'. The more you wander, the harder it will be for you to be found! The more you wander, the deeper into 'lost-ness' you actually become. To be rescued, one has to stop long enough to prepare the signs that they need to be rescued. For example, they tell you to gather kindling and wood to be ready to start a fire to alert search planes of your location, or place a bunch of driftwood or stones together to spell out SOS so it can be seen from above. You find something shiny, like a piece of glass or a mirror to signal using the sun's light to reflect your location. You 'do' something, but it doesn't involve running!

The 'running' comes when we realize we are not where we are supposed to be - we panic and we want a quick way out of where it is we find ourselves. We run because we are scared - we are not excited about where it is we find ourselves at the moment. The place isn't 'right' for us and this causes an emotional response of 'panic' - that sudden, overwhelming fear that causes us to do things that would otherwise be considered irrational. Panic has a way of getting us into circumstances that aren't going to make things better - they are just going to compound the issues we face! I had three cats at one time and when one would get startled, jump and run - all of them would. They had no clue why they were running - they just panicked because the first cat was running!

We have a tendency to 'run' with a sense of panic because we see others running. This might be fine in nature when the gazelle is attempting to escape the lion pride on the hunt for their next meal, but it isn't going to cut it in our day-to-day actions as humans. We might experience overwhelming fear on occasion, but running from that place of fear doesn't usually deal with what it is we feared in the first place. It just gets us very, very tired! Did you ever stop to consider why the SOS signal is placed on the beach or the fire is lit to signal one's whereabouts? It is because rescue oftentimes comes 'from above'. While rescue is possible from the ground level - the line of sight is much greater when it is from above. This is why they use search planes and helicopters to attempt to find lost hikers and downed wreckage of crashed planes. 

The view from above has a different perspective of what is below. In life, our rescue isn't so much on the same parallel plane on which we 'got lost' in the first place - it is from above! We need to not run away from our 'lost-ness', but admit it, prepare for rescue, and be alert to our coming rescuer! Those who are rescued the quickest are those who don't run away from the place of their first discovering they are lost! Just sayin!