Round and Round We Go

Control - we all have issues from time to time, don't we? If we want control, we struggle every time is out of our control - like when traffic comes to a screeching halt on the highway and we have places to be right then. If we don't actually want control and it is thrust upon us, we wanna turn tail and run - like when we get put in charge of a project way out of our comfort zone. We all have times when our days just seem to spin out of control. It is not an easy thing for many of us - we just don't like to have control in the hands of anyone else, or to be told we need to control things! Whenever control shifts, we feel "out of control" - anxiety creeps in, frustration mingles with our anxious thoughts, until we end up on the edge of wanting to just scream, "Give me back the reigns, fool!" or worse yet, "I give up, I'm done, I am out of here!"  Okay, if this has never described your day, don't read on! If it has...maybe you'd benefit just as much as me.

God, my shepherd! I don't need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction. (Psalm 23:1-3 MSG)

Most of us associate the 23rd Psalm with funerals - it is the one most common passages of scripture read at the graveside. Why on earth am I directing our attention to a psalm about "death" today? Well, read it again - the very first three words say it all! "GOD, my shepherd." It isn't about death - it is about who is really in control. GOD - you may remember as I have shared the meaning of these names of God in our Bibles written in all caps. LORD and GOD both stand for the name Israel knew God by - Jehovah. It is translated, "The unchanging one". In fact, whenever we see the name GOD or LORD in all caps in scripture, we can count on the passage speaking something of his being totally unchangeable in his promises, permanent in every way, and becoming all we have need of in the moment. It is his intense compassion as a loving and unchanging God which moves him into action within our lives - controlling what is out of our control.

So, as this psalm opens, it starts with what we all have need of in our lives when things seem to be spinning out of control - a shepherd! What does the shepherd do? He guides the sheep. Not only does he guide - he protects. When things are spinning out of control - we need not only wise guidance, but we certainly need protection from what others can do to us AND what we can do to ourselves. "I don't need a thing". Hmmm...let's see....we stand in need of so much...but when we recognize the Shepherd of our souls is in control...we can confidently say, "I don't need a thing". Pretty awesome, if you ask me! As if being in control is the aim, the next part of the passage settles this little misconception we might have. In fact, it is God who "beds us down". I don't know about you, but as a mother, whenever I managed to rein-in the kids, get them all washed up and ready for bed, those first moments of peaceful sleep I'd observe as I looked in on them before I turned away and called it a night just melted my heart. Those peaceful little ones, all innocent in their rest, just took away my breath. I imagine this is a little of what God feels whenever he finally gets us to rest in what he has provided for us!

He provides lush meadows - because we don't know our lack of comfort until we experience it as perfectly as he provides that comfort. He gives quiet pools to drink from - simply because we don't know how parched life leaves us until we drink deeply from his grace-pools. Spinning out of control takes its toll on our physical bodies, but also on our spiritual reserves. No one appreciates comfort until the pain gets too great to handle. We don't appreciate a cool drink until we experience thirst on a hot day. I guess we need to realize pain and thirst are really early warning signs of needing to look for the Shepherd! The purpose of the rest and the refreshing is in order to catch our breath so we can "live to fight another day". But...we fight from a new vantage point! As we let God take us into his rest, we learn from the master planner of our lives. The next step we take is in sync with his. It is in yielding control where we find the best "control" we could ever bring into our circumstances. Spinning? Maybe it is time for a little rest. Just sayin!

Waiting doesn't mean we won't move on

"I waited, and waited, and waited for God..." Have you ever been in the position of just waiting, and waiting, and waiting - all the while growing more fearful and frustrated that nothing is happening - at least nothing you can see? If you have walked with Christ for more than an hour, I think it is safe to assume that you might have experienced this kind of agony in waiting - not because he wants us to experience agony, but because we might just not realize all that is going on behind the scenes to get everything ready for the ultimate answer! We don't understand the delays and we don't remember the next time how long of a wait it was the last time!

Now God, don't hold out on me, don't hold back your passion. Your love and truth are all that keeps me together. When troubles ganged up on me, a mob of sins past counting, I was so swamped by guilt I couldn't see my way clear. More guilt in my heart than hair on my head, so heavy the guilt that my heart gave out. But all who are hunting for you—oh, let them sing and be happy. Let those who know what you're all about tell the world you're great and not quitting. And me? I'm a mess. I'm nothing and have nothing: make something of me. You can do it; you've got what it takes—but God, don't put it off. (Psalm 40:11-12, 16-17)

"At last he looked; finally he listened." When the answer is delayed, we come to that "FINALLY" moment. I don't want us to miss something else contained within the text of this psalm, though. David really gets down to the crux of things in the middle of the psalm - when he begins to describe what he had come to realize about his own personal condition of heart. Here's just a taste of what David had been through: "Doing something for you, bringing something to you—that's not what you're after. Being religious, acting pious— that's not what you're asking for. You've opened my ears so I can listen." Like us, he had been in a place of "doing" - being religious, acting pious - perhaps it is he has been doing all this with a lack of genuine heart devotion behind those actions. In fact, he goes on to say that it was when he actually took time to read what God wrote about him (from the Word) that he made the turn-around. I think that is a natural response to the "waiting". We sometimes experience waiting with whatever it is we expect God to do, how we expect he will answer. We "fabricate" all kinds of "doing" in order to see if in the "doing" God will take notice and act on our behalf! All the "doing" in the world really does not move the heart of God - our heart devotion is what moves him!

"I am so swamped by guilt - I could not see my way clear of it!" Perhaps, like with David, the "wait" is sometimes to bring us to a place where we see our need for heartfelt repentance. God allows his children to experience some delay in the answer they are seeking so they come to a place where they recognize unrepented sin in their lives, and when they begin to reveal their desire to be free of their guilt, God begins to intervene. For some, waiting results in an instant time of self-examination and repentance. For the rest of us, we wallow a while in our misery of sin's guilt and try to figure out why the prayers we lift are not answered! Yet, look at what David said, "More guilt in my heart than hair on my head!" He was pretty down on himself at that point, yet he acknowledges that if God would "unleash" his passion over David's life, his guilt would be lifted. It was God's love and truth that would restore him - hold him together when all else seemed to be working to tear him apart. This is true of us...nothing holds us together, puts the pieces back together quite like the passion of God unleashed in our lives.

There are always going to be men and women around us who are "stronger" than we are at the moment. We need to turn to them and ask them to proclaim the truth over our lives when we are unable to do so ourselves. Let this be our proclamation - God is NOT quitting! We may be a mess personally, but it is God that can take that mess and turn it into a glorious thing. You may be in the place where you feel that all you have to bring to God are the "messes" of your life. That is okay - God can deal with the total honesty of our repentant heart. He already knows about the messes anyway - at the moment we bring them to him, we begin to realize that he is NOT quitting on us! He has us in his sights and he desires to intervene right where we need the greatest interventions! We may need the strength of another who is walking this path with Christ to proclaim that truth over our lives until we finally "get it". That is okay! Let me be the first to proclaim it -- "God is NOT quitting!!!" He has you in his sights and he is at the ready to release his passion in your life once again! Open up to him and see him restore what your doubt, fear, fatigue, and wrong attitudes have destroyed! God is NOT a quitter - don't you be either! Just sayin!

Are you a settler?

"The years teach much which the days never know." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)  I believe we all have had those moments when we simply stand in amazement at how well things just "came together", even when we didn't quite know what to expect or how it would all get accomplished.  I have put many a "build it yourself" piece of furniture together in my lifetime and let me just tell you this - those pictures look good on the outside of the box, but when you see all those parts on the inside - eegads!  I set about building, in faithful obedience to the instructions so as to not end up with parts left over or having to "redo" my work.  Try as I might, I usually have to take something apart!  Why?  I followed the directions, but somehow I didn't quite see how that one piece was just subtly different than the other. In life, what we learn from having to "redo" some of the things we have experienced isn't all that fun, but the lesson learned in "redoing" the experience is what often keeps us from making that mistake the next time.  It isn't that we had some kind of super-power knowledge the second time around - it was just that the learning of the day ended up helping form a lesson for a lifetime!

Those devoted to instruction will prosper in goodness; those who trust in the Eternal will experience His favor.  (Proverbs 16:20 VOICE)

We often balk at the daily learning because we don't see the bigger picture of the lesson being taught in those moments of "redo".  Picasso was talking about his artwork one day and he made a very profound statement:  "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."  If we think about that in terms of how we make it through life each day, we might begin to see that every time we are made to "redo" one of life's journeys it may just be that we are in the process of learning a much bigger lesson.  Those moments of "deconstructing" whatever it is we tried and failed at accomplishing may actually be the moments when God's creative forces are at work within us.  He is in the process of making the past failure lend insight into what can become our present success.

In those moments of "redoing" life, we have a couple of choices.  We could just settle for how things came out - leaving us not really all that satisfied.  Even though we aren't extremely satisfied with the outcome, the "redo" may just be more than we are willing to handle - so we "settle".  There have been times when my store has been out of the one type of spray starch I use on my clothes.  I like that starch because it has proven to give me a nice look to the clothes without leaving all those white flecks.  It is a "premium" starch.  Whenever I have settled for the other version of starch on the shelf, I have always been disappointed and frustrated by the way my clothes appear and how the "pressing" holds up throughout the day of wearing them.  I settled and now I am paying the price.  I have a few partially used cans of the stuff just sitting on the shelf!  Why? I found out "settling" instead of either seeking out the type I really need to use at another store, or waiting for the timing to be right for it to be available to me at my store, really doesn't produce the outcomes I desired.  In life, settling doesn't produce the outcome we need, nor the one we really desire.

We could refuse to "redo" the lesson, choosing instead to dig in our heels and just ride out the outcome - come what may, we will just deal with it. I have also done this (more times than I'd like to admit), but if I were to be honest here - the "redo" would have been a whole lot easier!  Our stubborn rebellion is certainly "easy" for us up front, but on the tail end of that rebellion we find ourselves digging out of some mighty big messes!  The things we "deal with" because we chose to refuse the "redo" actually made it ten times worse "digging out" of the mess we found ourselves in because of our stubbornness.

The wisest choice in those moments of learning which become the lessons of a lifetime:  Acknowledge we didn't get it right, ask for God's help, and then open up to the reality of "taking things apart" so the pieces will ultimately "line up" in the end!  Just sayin!