What and When

I am in a season right now where I am more aware than ever of my need for God's guidance.  I have a lot of decisions to make and things to think about, more than it seems I ever have.  Maybe becoming a man just brings that stuff with it, and maybe I should have been feeling like this a year or two ago while I was determinedly avoiding decisions and (to be honest) real life.  Whatever the case, anything that reminds you of your dependence on God can't be too bad of a thing; it's just that the uncertainty can be unpleasant.

I don't feel afraid about it all, though... not really.  This past year has been a year of immense change and I know God has guided me through it all.  As I approach another birthday, I feel like the coming year is going to be much the same in that respect.  The hard thing about change, though, is that while you can sometimes see it coming, it's pretty much impossible to tell what it's going to be.

Really, I think that's where we get in trouble a lot in life: trying to decide what changes will come to our lives before they happen.  Even worse, sometimes we try to tell God what changes he should be making and when they should be happening.  I know I had a whole plan for my life when I was 18-- according to that plan, by this present time in my life I was supposed to be a full-time pastor happily married to the woman of my dreams and thinking about when and how many kids to have.  Thankfully, God knew I wasn't even close to ready for any of that.

Funny thing is, a lot of that horribly mistaken adolescent vision was based on things that I really do feel like God wants me to do.  My heart is to minister to people, to be married someday, and to be a good father.  I feel like these desires come from God and even honor him.  What God has been showing me recently, though, is that just because he has spoken something, doesn't mean it has to happen right NOW.

I've seen a lot of people bring themselves pain like this-- God gives them a vision for something, and then they get ahead of the plan and wear themselves out trying to make it happen, only to end up questioning God when the plan fails.  My question is, whose plan was it?  We (I include myself here) have an alarming tendency to grab the plans out of God's hands and make them our own.  God should fulfill this vision this way, and (usually) right NOW.

The Bible paints a very different picture of how God fulfills his plans, even once he has revealed them to us.  The lives of Joseph, Paul, Abraham, David, and many others reveal that God doesn't always do things right NOW.  After God revealed some of his plans to those honored individuals, they ended up being imprisoned for years, preaching on the backside of nowhere, wandering about in foreign lands, or being chased by the very king they had been anointed to replace, for example.  And Jesus, who clearly knew that God was his father at age 12 (see Luke 2:49), had eighteen more years to wait before he began his ministry!

But who would have followed a 12 year-old rabbi?

It just wouldn't work.  My point, I guess, is that any attempt at carrying out God's plans before their time is just as ludicrous.

As for those people I mentioned, all they kept on doing was the next right thing.  Joseph never lost faith in prison and served with distinction no matter where he found himself.  Paul just kept on preaching the truth. Abraham was even willing to sacrifice the son of the promise if it meant following God's commands.  Maybe part of David being a man after God's heart was the way he knew that God had anointed him king in Saul's place but continued to serve him and refused to kill him even when he had the chance (twice!).  He was waiting for God to do what he said he would, and he refused to take it into his own hands.

As for Jesus, he just continued to grow.  That's pretty incredible, considering he was God in the flesh.

Now, none of that is to say that we should just passively wait for things to happen.  All those men walked in great purpose and initiative when the time was right.  It's just to say that finding out what God wants to do is worthless if we won't wait on his timing to make it happen.  We also have to keep growing in the meantime.

So that's where I find myself.  I know God wants to do some things.  I'm just trying to find out what they are and, just as importantly, when they are.  The constant battle of life is to let God's plan be the one I follow.  This plan is not just destination, but timing and method as well.  God's revelation, no matter what it is, awaits its appointed time to be fulfilled (see Habakkuk 2:3), because God fulfills it--not us.  Jesus knew that it was his Father who was the one doing the moving.  I want to know what the Father is doing, and then (and only then) join in doing that thing myself.  That's how God's will is done. 

And if we'd all do that... that's how his kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.

Goals, past and present

Well, I've been writing like a madman all week (and last... and next), so I want to keep this short.  I just thought I would give an update to the small world of my blog on how I did with my New Year's "resolutions" last year.  As you may (or more likely, may not) recall, last year around this time I wrote a post denouncing the idea of New Year's resolutions and then made two of them in that same post.  It seems only fair, seeing that I shared them with the world, that I let everyone know how they went.

First, I resolved to drink more water. I think it's safe to say that I definitely did that, but it happened fairly intermittently and not as consistently as I would like.  It did result in me buying a nice water bottle that makes me much more likely to drink water, so that's definitely a positive.  I think what really happened is that, toward the end of last year, I got really overwhelmed and all these high-minded resolution type things I was thinking about just went right out the door.  I'm doing pretty well with this one this year so far, though.

The second resolution was to be on time for things.  Keep in mind that when I wrote that one, I was completely unemployed.  It's amazing what wonders having somewhere you have to be on time to or get fired will do for your punctuality.  It's nothing like college, that's for sure :)  Anyway, I feel like I've come a long way in this area.  There was a momentary setback when I moved and didn't know how long it was going to take me to get anywhere for awhile, but now I think I'm back on track.  I really like how life feels a lot better when I'm not constantly running late!

Speaking of that... well, first of all, I had a good talk with some friends recently about goals for the New Year.  I said how I don't like resolutions, but a friend of mine challenged me that living life without goals is really dangerous.  I knew I had to agree with him, and it led to a discussion about goals vs. resolutions.  In a resolution, people tend to just resolve to be different, which is what I bristled against last year.  Goals are more like a plan for long-term growth.  What I ended up doing last year, really, was setting some goals: by the end of the year, I want to be doing better in this area.

So, this year I'm setting a goal again.  I want to stop procrastinating.  This is huge for me, because I've been this way for a long time, but I really want to do things before the last minute at least some of the time.  The reason I've been writing like a maniac this week is because I let this enormous period of time I had to work on the huge project I'm under contract for elapse without doing hardly any of it.  The deadline is in a week and three days and I still have a long, long way to go.  Needless to say, this is dramatically reducing my quality of life.  Completely aside from the fact that all I have time to do is write, the whole thing is also very stressful, what with the possibility of failure, humiliation, and worst of all: not getting paid.

Mind you, I think I'm going to make it.  I have a plan for making it.  I will do everything in my power to make it.  The point is just that it didn't have to be like this.  Even a little bit less procrastination would have made this month a much more enjoyable one.  That's how I want to live in the future.

And one step further: I don't think I can be the things God is calling me to be if I won't learn to work ahead of time and get the procrastination under control.  I live on my own now.  If I won't get the things done that need to happen in my life, no one will (unless my roommate bails me out somehow, but that's different).  It's time to man up and live like I care about where I'm going.  Maybe this deadline crunch is exactly what I needed.  It could end up getting me on the right start for not just the new year but for the rest of, you know... life.

Christmas Traditions

A lot of my holiday traditions got disrupted this year.  The simple fact that I live in a different place now was responsible for a lot of it, but there were also some other changes for a variety of reasons.  For example, none of my Christmas ornaments got hung on any tree this year, probably for the first time since I was born.  Well, actually that isn't quite true; my parents were trying to steal a few of them by hanging them on their tree while I was separating mine out of their boxes.  I caught them :)

Anyhow, none of that is as important as what it all got me thinking about.  The holidays seem to me to be the time of the year most governed by tradition.  I mean, there are various traditional things throughout the year, but especially around Christmas there is this whole extra set of rules and practices that goes into effect.  Presents, decorations, music, shopping, cards, and all kinds of other things that no one thinks that much about the rest of the year suddenly become the main focus of life (or at least it seems like that).  Not that any of those things are bad (except maybe the music *shudder* that gets piped into stores like the one I work in constantly and makes me a little extra cynical-- not carols mind you, which are about Jesus, but just songs... meaningless, mindless, repetitive, and totally empty.  This has been my bah humbug Christmas moment. We now return to the regularly scheduled blog [and sentence] already in progress), it's just that I feel like they all get done without any thought involved.  This is what we're supposed to do now, so it has to be done.

I guess I just don't like it when Christmas becomes a to-do list.  No wonder people are so stressed out and angry.  There's a whole load of extra things they suddenly have to take time out of their busy lives to accomplish!  What's worse, the whole process has (in many cases) been so completely divorced from the deeper meaning it was supposed to have that it has to leave many people scratching their heads as to why they run themselves into the ground trying to do it all.  I mean, the only possible way you could find out the real meaning of all this stuff from our "Christmas culture" is if you happen to listen to Linus in the Charlie Brown Christmas special-- which by some miracle, seeing as how it contains essentially the gospel message straight out of Luke, is still aired on secular tv every Christmas.

I'm going to stop right there before I start ranting about how secular culture is ruining Christmas by looking for it in all the wrong places.  I did that last Christmas (and it can be found in the archives of this very blog).  What I want to do instead is just ask the question that has been on my mind.

What if we could just throw the Christmas to-do list away?

Perhaps better stated, what if we should just throw the Christmas to-do list away?  Would we be able to do it?  Would we want to?  What if we really spent Christmas asking Christ how he wanted us to celebrate it?  What would he say?  Are we afraid of what he might say, so afraid that we won't even dare to ask?  How would it feel to be the only one in your family to be stemming the onrushing tide of tradition?

I guess that was more than one question.  I didn't realize how much was in that thought until I was writing it, but it's all what I've been thinking about.  And really, please do not hear me saying that tradition is somehow evil.  I think it often has great value, and Jesus himself instituted some traditions, most notably the sacrament of communion.  Speaking of communion, it seems like community and fellowship were things that Jesus cared about a lot more than material possessions.  Perhaps his answers to the questions of how we should spend Christmas would be along those lines?

Anyway, tradition isn't bad, but it is made for us, not us for the tradition.  All too often, I think, tradition becomes little more than a euphemism for blindly doing what we always have and an excuse for not involving Jesus in our decision-making processes.  All I know is, I did Christmas again this year.  Very little of it did I ask God about; some parts of it I liked, some I didn't.  I know it would be extremely hard for me to give up presents if God asked me to do that.  I just want to know that I would do it, and to be honest I can't say for sure.  I'd give up the music in a heartbeat, I know that much.  But what if I just put the whole process in his control?

Above all, I just want to be close enough to the heart of God to hear how he wants me to spend my time and money.  I hate the idea of doing things for no reason.  I want God to put on my heart the gifts to bring, just like he did for the wise men so long ago. I don't know what (if anything) he would have me change in my Christmas traditions for next year.  I just hope I listen.