Hey Everyone,
I heard some Bob Dylan on the way to work today – Shelter from the Storm, a great song, but for some reason it made me think of a more recent Dylan song called: Things have changed. Maybe it was my attitude or lack thereof that helped me make the leap from one song to another I don’t know.
One of the bridges to the song says:
Lot of water under the bridge, lot of other stuff too Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through People are crazy and times are strange I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed.
Things have certainly changed, they are changing, but it seems like change is ganging up on me this week. On Monday I think I probably cared but I’m not so sure now that it’s Thursday.
Thankfully my wife went back to work this week. Unthankfully, I haven’t seen her for more than 30 seconds in the last 72 hours. Welcome to life at Opryland hotel. One of my daughter’s is having a baby in 7 short weeks. The middle name is mine and not Marie and I’m sort of excited about that and yet sad because I live 7 hours away. My other daughter – Princess Slaya – made the Roller Derby team this week and that makes me laugh and the day before she and her husband were accepted into the Peace Corp so next year at this time they will be in the middle of Islam Territory either in North Africa or the Middle East and that scares me. I just got one child safely home from there and now another one heads off into danger.
I realize that danger is all around. The unexpected can happen at anytime. This week is proof enough of that and for all you sovereignty of God fans it is absolutely no comfort knowing that God planned it all – none. It is still unexpected to me. It is still life. And if you try to comfort me by saying it’s God’s will I just might punch you in the face. I am still bumbling around in the dark trying to figure out which way I’m supposed to go, surprised I’m still standing at this point in the race. It’s a heck of a plan from my point of view. Certainly not the same as MY plan. In my mind things were supposed to go so much differently. In my plan there is no pain, there is no frustration, there is no risk, there is no working 14 hours a day at two jobs to make ends meet – barely.
I heard on NPR the other day that middle class income is somewhere around 80 grand a year. I didn’t realize that a family could work three jobs and still be considered to be a part of the lower class but I guess it’s true. Today there is a part of me that wants to go back to say 1984 before reality had a chance to catch up with me and Jesus was still going to be stopping by in 1985 so I wouldn’t have to think about life in grown up land. Ah to be young and oblivious again, not.
I have this picture on my bulletin board of my oldest daughter and her husband standing in crowd on the streets of Amman, Jordan. I think they were watching a protestor burn something or someone; I can’t remember these days. I also have a name tag that I found on the floor a couple of days ago that says: Tony B. I had a friend by that name who died in a car wreck a few years back. The last time I saw him he was a personal wreck. I offered to help. He never took me up on the offer. Something always came up. Life got in the way and everything was more important than taking care of his soul, maybe not more important but certainly less painful and a few months later his car was in a ditch and I was attending his funeral. I put the name tag on my wall to remind me that it could all be over in an instant. NOTHING is guaranteed from our point of view – which is the only view that we have.
I have another friend who told me this week that he was having a real rough time. He is taking care of his aging parents with Alzheimer’s, he’s on disability himself and yet in the midst of his struggles he said: “But you know what? Even though I feel so bad and things are so rough I still don’t want to drink.” He lived in a bottle for most of his life. He lives in the wages of that now and yet he doesn’t have the urge to drink. That is salvation to me. God has (at least in this one area) saved him from himself.
I on the other hand feel like running – not far and not permanently- and in fact I won’t do it at all but the feeling is still there: So many things trying to beat me down from every side that I just wanna get away. This is life during wartime. I can still see the turmoil on Tony’s face all these years later. He was hurting, perhaps much the way I hurt but he was too scared of the pain that being truthful and honest would bring to do anything about it. He was ashamed of the truth of his life and so in one area of his existence at least he refused to be set free.
I know that some of you that read this will be concerned about my condition and want to fix me but the truth is there is nothing to fix. Some of you would probably want to fix Jesus since he was a man of sorrows and full of grief but there is a time for sadness in the midst of honesty. It is a sad world at this point in history. We are smack dab in the middle of a culture that is digging its own grave before our very eyes. And yet, I have hope that something great and glorious will rise out of the ashes. But that doesn’t mean that watching Rome burn is fun.
Even as I’m writing this the Supreme Court (if they get out of bed this early) is determining whether or not it is lawful for a group of people to spew hatred at grieving families in the name of Jesus. I grieve over that on a multitude of levels not least of which is the way we have skewered the freedom of speech clause over the last hundred years. The other is the fact that some people can get so bent out of shape over the sin of male on male sex (I refuse to use the H word) but at the same time advance the cause of self righteousness and murder through hatred. You either get to enforce all of the law or none of it. You don’t get to pick and choose.
I realize that spiritual warfare is all around us. We are gaining ground on the enemy even if we have a hard time seeing it. I will go so far as to say that the tide is beginning to turn at some level within the church and thus the reason for the conflict in my heart and life. The enemy knows that if I (we) can be distracted by the little things we won’t have time to do the big things. If I can by God’s grace learn to not care about the little things, the things that don’t matter, then I can spend time focusing on the important things. The trick is being able to tell which is which now isn’t it? I would love to be able to say about the unimportant things in life: I used to care but things have changed. Perhaps they will change. Perhaps one of these days I will be able to say I’m locked in tight to what God is doing. I’m out of range of the enemy. Perhaps.
Oh I know it will happen. I know that there is a happy ending when the story is done. What I don’t want to find out is how much sorrow and brokenness it will take to get there. So to help me focus on the big things I will look at my feet today. I will put one foot in front of the other and I will watch as I put each step down. I will do that because to get to the end of the race you have to take the next step. I can’t be dwelling on the steps I took yesterday or the obstacles that cross my path. All that is important is the next step.
Now if I could just find my feet.
Grace and Peace,
Brad
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