no, i haven't died-
all 7 of you who read this can rest assured :P
it's just been one
of those… summers… where everyone else has all this free time and can't wait
until they can send their kids back to school and the heat backs off and they
are spending their time gardening and
cooking and vacations and tanning by the pool.
and then there's me, thinking "if only i could get people to
coordinate their heart attacks." because then i'd get a summer break, too. but i can't and so i don't. i've been working one or two nights, with one
or two nights in between, for a good number of weeks and it leaves little time
for things like blogs. or anything else.
but i have had just
enough time recently (like, the past week or two) to do some thinking.
(yeah...haven't had much time for that either until now). and because i'm probably going to have to
wait a bit before i do much of it again, my brain went from "oh-look! silence! let's think about something happy,
like flowers" to "let's re-evaluate everything in your whole
life. right now."
yup.
the problem: it's a
pretty short list right now. basically,
i have a handful of values and beliefs that just aren't going anywhere. but then there's me, and i don't seem to be going
anywhere, either. which just feels
weird.
we're chugging away
through the Bible and seem to be perpetually stuck in the OT histories, an
endless cycle of sin, prophets, judgement, redemption, and then right back to
sin. a ton of those kings never even got
halfway through the cycle because they were such jerks they got themselves and
their families executed in an extraordinarily short amount of time (like, a
week after gaining the throne).
but more than the
rebellious kings, what is getting to me this time is those prophets. daggum, it is not glorious. not at all.
i do not envy their occupation.
however, they didn't get to choose it.
they were told to go be a witness, to all kinds of people in ALLLLL
kinds of ways. and they didn't even stop
to say "Yes, Lord." the next verse is them talking to others, telling
them there's another way, a righteous way, to go.
now the problem
continues: in addition to those values and beliefs, there are a couple goals
and dreams. but for the most part….that
part of the list is already done and accomplished. the other few i don't have a whole lot of say
in, or else maybe i'll toss them out or cross them off.
elijah, jeremiah,
isaiah, jonah, ezekiel- none of them had too many plans that God thought were
more important than His. jonah disagreed for a bit, but he was overruled. every one of them were sitting around enjoying
daily life when out of the blue, God told them to drop what they were doing and
enter into a mysterious and insane mission with nothing to lean on but a
promise- and so they did.
couple hundred years
later, a couple poor fishermen and a tax collector and some of their buddies
make the same choice without even a promise.
two words, "follow" and "me" and they're all in. practically speaking, THEY'RE BONKERS.
fast forward a
couple thousand years and then there's us.
enjoying our daily lives, not worrying about too much, making our summer
plans… what if something random and crazy fell out of the sky and landed on
your front porch (if you have one). something telling you there's more out
there, and there are people on the other side of the globe that don't know
about it. and you're supposed to tell
them.
if that
"you" changes to "me" all of a sudden i hush up. i feel
like i'd want to be more like jonah than jeremiah. jackson, tennessee is not exactly the
promised land, but i doubt that i have the nerve to pluck up and move.
bonhoeffer, in his
eloquently composed "The Cost of Discipleship" had a section just on
this. we hold back- and we've been given
ten times the promises and guidelines that the apostles were. one of them was that it wasn't going to be
easy. but another one was that it would
be totally worth it. he lost me on a
couple of his general principles, but i kinda wanna go back and read those
sections before i decide to take on a guy like Bonheoffer.
right now, i
watching 3 of my favorite people on earth pack up and prepare to leave this end
of a very long state and move to the other end.
they were told to go and so they are going. part of me wishes that i had a place to go on
to, to feel like i'm moving forward and actually doing something….and the other
part really wants me to settle down here, get to the point where i'm more
comfortable with calling this place my home.
the other other part of me is confused and politely declines to make a
statement at this time.
what am i going to
do? well, i'm going to go to bed because it is almost 3 am. then i'm going to wake up and get ready for
work tomorrow night. and i'm going to
work as though tomorrow night will be the last time i see anyone there, knowing
that at any time it may actually be. i
might be headed the exact wrong direction, but i do have every confidence that
at the right time, God is strong enough to break through my brain and turn the
lightbulb on.
and if i get
swallowed by a beluga whale in the process, well, the life of an
un-extraordinary prophet ain't all blueberries and bubble baths- but what a
great story to tell later on!!
