Navigating Change

My Son, Cole, is continuing to teach me through his learning to drive. Recently, I noticed how we change lanes differently. He, being the thoughtful careful one, slows down whenever he changes lanes. I, on the other hand, speed up when I change lanes. Now I suppose a good logical argument could be made for either approach, but the real lesson has more to do with life than driving.

 

I hope I am not simply attempting to defend my actions. My aim is to help all of you with whom my life is so beautifully connected to better understand how and why I behave the way I do. I speed up when I change. It doesn’t matter what change I am facing, when change is necessary I move faster. The increased momentum provides me greater balance. The reason for change, to me, comes from looking ahead and seeing the need or necessity to be in a different place. Looking ahead you can see what is and what isn’t there. The danger, the uncertainty, for me, of change is not in the future it is in the moment or even in breaking with the past. In other words, the risk comes from what is gaining on you from behind or what lays hidden beside you. So I speed up as I change to keep from hitting the hidden things around me. The rapid forward progress pushes me past the blind spots toward the open space out front.

 

For many people, perhaps most, the tension and uncertainty created by change makes slowing down the only logical option. To speed up seems reckless and dangerous.  So to those who for whatever reason have ended up riding through life with me, buckle up because I speed up when I change.

 

Do you speed up or slow down when you change lanes in life?

Lost

Lost is an interesting word to me and the concept even more complex.  I looked it up and there are a wide range of meanings and usages for the word. It ranges from referring to the inability to find ones way to implying meaningless as in “his jokes were lost on me”.

 

Even if I limit the scope of my reflections to lost in the realm of navigation it still stretches the limits of my mind. When you’re lost, I think it obviously implies you do not have the ability (knowledge or skill) to get to the destination you desire.  But are you lost if you don’t even know what the destination is? Are you lost if you don’t know where you are going? Or even more interesting to think about, are you lost if you don’t know where you are? Think about that for a moment. What if you are so focused on where you are going you fail to remember how you got where you are?

 

Why not take some time this weekend to read your old journals and reflect on how you got to where you are today. See the patterns, discover the progress, note the tendencies, celebrate the grace, remember the friends. Get lost in looking back and you might discover where you really are and in so doing find where you are heading.  

I am starting to see God is bigger than I thought!

God is doing some retooling of my thought in a deep place within me. I am living in Job 35-42 these days. I try to read it as often as possible and simple allow the logic to sink into my understanding.  Here is my reflection from my time with God today:

 

Job 36:26 “How great is god – beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out.”

 

“God can be known BUT He can not be fully known. To simply not seek to know him is foolish and displays a lack of understanding, love and appreciation. YET to even imagine that you “know God” is an arrogant error, which reveals not only ignorance but also a very limited scope of understanding.  To view what we know of God as “knowing God” demonstrates a view of God, which is very small.”

 Perhaps I am splitting hairs, but it is where God has me right now. Perhaps another time I will need and He will reveal His nearness to me. But for this season I think I need and He is allowing me to discover His completely otherness, His set apartness, His holiness. God is unaffected by me.

When it is all said and done!

I just walked back in the door from a funeral for Rev. Carlton Carruth. He lived a legendary life and left a great legacy. He ran the race well and finished strong. As I listen to my Dad give the eulogy it made me think that we are all writing our eulogy right now by the way we live our life. The choices we make the things we do all determine the legacy we leave.

 I hope when my life is done it can be said “He made it hard to stand in comfortable places and he stood with us in difficult places.” At least that is what I would want said today, tomorrow I will probably want something else.  What do you want said about you when it is all said and done? Are you living it out now?

Your Best

A while back a bunch of us worked on an old house in down town Brunswick to restore it so we could use it as our offices. A lot of different people did a lot of different things to make the project work. My main two jobs were to work with Jeffrey hanging some sheetrock and with David laying the Hardi-board. To be the amateurs that we obviously were I thought we did a pretty good job. I mean sure there were some fairly significant gaps in the sheet rock and the holes for the boxes might have been a bit large, but nothing a little mud and tape couldn’t fix. All in all it was “a okay”! 

I had never even heard of hardi-board, but basically it is like sheets of cement that you attach to the floor so Wesley can come back later and lay tile over it. David and I were to cover the floor with the hardiboard and we did a descent job if I may say so my self. I mean technically there may have been some spots that the stuff didn’t fit just perfectly, but I mean it is all going to be covered up by the tile anyway, so what does it matter if there is a gap here and there.

Good is the enemy of great

Okay prevents OutstandingAlright is not excellent

2^nd best keeps more people from God’s best than worst ever dreamed of.

 

Settling – becoming satisfied with less than God has for you.

 God is constantly challenging me to strive for maximum impact, to not settle for good intentions or half hearted attempts. God wants and deserves our best…. because He gave us His best.

Thought for the day

“from my daily planner” 

“We did not change as we grew older, we just became more clearly ourselves.” Lynn Hall

 

That makes me think about Eph. 4:1, which says, “Live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” 

I hope we all can begin to get our mind around who we really are and then start living into that reality.

Defeating Discouragement!

 

I think the heart of discouragement lies in unmet expectations or perhaps more specifically in the belief or feeling that expectations cannot be reached. It is more than simply not having obtained the desired result. It spills over into a feeling that ever reaching the goal is hopeless. This defeated state robs you of energy and deprives you of drive.

It was several campouts with my brother ago when I first start my battle to defeat discouragement and it began with a simply question around the campfire. How do you define success?

The Chapel was just getting started and I had gone from running large ministries with large very talented staffs to running a ministry where the entire staff consisted of just me. Lets just say my days looked a lot different and what I was able to accomplish over the course of a day was significantly different. I discovered that I had to redefine how I defined success. Previously, my subconscious measure of success was productivity or said another way results. Well, now a highly productive day might consist of carrying a letter through all the steps necessary to put it in the mail. I worked hard and I worked smart and I worked long, but the productivity – the results – were far less than I was accustomed and thus my subconscious expectations were unmet = discouragement.

Ministry is a difficult vocation to measure. Changing lives is our bottom line, but those results are ultimately out of our control. God changes lives despite our efforts not because of them. Yet we are called to be a part of the process.

To keep from belaboring the point, here is where I landed. My current definition of success is did I do what God said to do today?  I have found that to look at the outcome, the outward results either leads to pride or discouragement. I think what God really cares about is that I do what He says. If I simply share what he shows me my message will be successful.

 Discouragement derives from unmet expectations. Make sure your not operating from unrealistic expectations. Let God help you redefine what success looks like in your life and you will be amazed at how much better your life will become.

Whoop there it is!

I spent a night in the woods camping with my brother this past week. While setting out by a lake I discovered that my day timer has a saying at the top of everyday.

 

Apparently this wisdom, this insight, these revelations of life have stood before me each and everyday for the past couple of years and I have never noticed them.

 

So much Intel is pushed on me I fail to pull the info I really need in life.

 

So much screams at me I can’t hear the whisper of wisdom all around me.

 

But I’m just making excesses. I’m the one that allows my life to run at this speed. It’s my fault the insights are over looked. I and I alone are to blame for being too busy to celebrate my wife’s birthday.

And I alone can change!

FYI here is today’s thought, “All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.” Adlai E. Stevenson.

Flying Blind

“Flying Blind” is a phrase I have heard some of my friends who are pilots use. I am not quite sure what it technically means. It might mean flying when all your instruments have gone down or it might mean flying in very low visibility.

 

Apparently some pilots are sight flyers and others rely more heavily on the instrumentation. Not being a pilot myself, I am not really sure which is which but it would seem that one method relies more on facts and the other leans a bit more toward feeling. Most of the pilots I know would all maintain that they fly “based on a mathematical calculation of the facts”, or at least they would say something that sounded logical and smart. But I suspect they all fly more by feeling than they are willing to admit.  In fact, I suspect they fly because of feeling more than they are willing to admit.

 

Anyway I have been flying blind lately. Due to several recent tragedies my instrumentation has been short-circuited and my visual perception of the world challenged. In other words, my emotions have gone on the blink and my worldview is blocked. It is like I don’t know where I am. I think I am moving but I don’t know what I am heading toward.

 

This could be a really scary time, but I went out to go flying with a buddy in his plane and we couldn’t take off. We couldn’t take off not because we couldn’t see and not because the instruments weren’t working. We didn’t take off because the radio was on the fritz. We couldn’t hear.

 I once heard that people who loose one of their physical senses often develop a much stronger ability in another sense. My emotional radar is fried. My fact finder is on the blink, but my hearing seems to be improving. Maybe it is just because I am depending on in more, but I think I am hearing God more clearly and He just told me to tell you He loves you!  He also told me not to worry too much about “flying blind” because really I am just “riding blind” He is doing the flying.

Be A Bridge!

You are a bridge towering high up in the sky.

Proudly you stand, spanning form land to land.

 

Although many may not know

Without you progress would slow

For across you travelers must go.

 

You have a cause both noble and true

Your purpose is to allow people to walk over you.

 

Trampled under foot by people rushing past

Climbed by thrill seekers hoping to make a splash

Driven over by large trucks

Flown past by noisy plans

Run through by foreign Ships

Pounded by changing tides

 

You continue to thanklessly do what you were created to be

A bridge that helps people move beyond you and me!