Pride…or Obedience?

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13 ESV

As I write this commentary, my society here in America is in the cold, dark depths of the Coronavirus outbreak. Times are frightening, and things may not improve for weeks or months. Medical supplies, the tools our healthcare ‘troops’ use to fight this invisible enemy, are in critically short supply. Testing materials, physical protection equipment, are all being used up at phenomenal rates, with no supplies left with which to replace them. Respirators in particular, which can under the right circumstances carry us through the hardest hours of an infection, are very hard to come by, and some of us are using the shortage to generate increased profit. “Supply and demand”, don’t ya know?

We are physically separated from one another, one in every six of us has lost his or her job, around us our economy crumbles away, and all we can do is watch it go. And be afraid. Many of us can’t pay our bills, may not have jobs to go back to when this is eventually over, and through no fault of our own face the loss of everything we have built for ourselves; our home, career, possessions, whatever ease of life we have been able to scratch out. Waves of stress pound on our rocky cliffs like never before, and as we stand on that precipice with nothing else to do with our time but watch, too many of us feel like the earth under our feet is turning wet, slippery, beginning to give way to those waves.

This feels……..biblical, in its scope.

Jesus’ words in John are hard words to live by, especially in times like now, when a few days from today any one of us could really, truly face the gut-wrenching choice of ‘do I go on a respirator, or allow someone else to take that slot?’.

What does my faith require of me? What might my Lord and my King want from His servant? 

We can debate who is a ‘friend’ in the eyes of the Lord. It’s also important to point out that Jesus doesn’t command this, He merely states it. But there it is, nonetheless.

I think the question every person of faith needs to consider is, ultimately….how will you live out your faith? Is God more important than your own life? Your life has always been in God’s hands, and surely if He wishes He can save you through the fire, respirator or no. The Bible shows us this. But this choice is at the heart of Christian faith. Is me first, you next…acceptable?

How will you choose to understand Job 13:15? “Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face.”‬ ‭ESV‬‬  It’s not honest to just look at the first part of that verse, and ignore the last. Will you trust God all the way to death and beyond? Or will you argue with God, protesting your innocence before Him and disagreeing with His perfect will?  God never directly responded to Job’s arguments, He just forcefully reminded him which of them was God and which was not.

What do you take from that? If God allows you to become infected, will you choose to potentially save your own life, or potentially save someone else’s? A terrible choice to face to be sure, but it could happen. For some of us, it will happen. Your own life over another’s? Or faith in God’s saving hand, His miracles?

Even in the theoretical, that choice looms. The boastful pride of life…or sacrificial obedience?

Am I old?

Am I old?

I don’t feel old, not really. But have I grown old?

As I write this, I’m in my late 50’s. That fact alone may answer the question, for some. I have more health issues than I used to, that’s true. I find I look at some things in terms of the value of what I receive versus the energy I have to expend to receive it. Some may tell me that this answers my question as well.

But here’s the thing: I don’t feel ‘old’. I feel as though I’ve experienced a fair bit of life, and that’s a different feeling. I feel like I’ve learned a few things, about living life, about what’s important and what’s not, about how to let go of things that earlier in my life I refused to. And that’s what makes me ask the question. Am I old, or have I just begun to understand the long view of life?

If I’m honest -and I am, or try to be, always- I have to admit that there are times when my energy for a given day becomes exhausted, and that didn’t used to happen. Maybe once a month, I’ll find myself dozing off for thirty minutes or an hour in the evening, and that didn’t used to happen, either. So it seems clear that the boundless energy reserves of my youth are ebbing, and that’s probably a sign of the lengthening stream of years which have passed beneath the bridge. I can’t deny that truth. Does that make me old?

I understand now that hate and envy are blinders, which keep me focused on the wrong parts of life. I understand that rage burns me, not the other person. I understand that for all my filth and sin, Almighty God still wants me in His heaven. That makes me feel young, and valued, and loved. I understand that things are going to get worse, because God says in His Word that they will. So I don’t worry as much about the way my American society seems to be crumbling around me. I carried that burden throughout much of my life; I don’t feel it nearly as much anymore. My understanding of the things around me, of the way in which life unfolds, has grown, and continues to grow.

So perhaps the answer depends on how I choose to define “old”. By many standards of my little world, by the larger society around me…I am, in fact, old. Shall I choose to let that define me? To some extent, that’s not up to me. I am at the mercy of those with power, with authority over me. But to the extent I have the ability to define myself, I think I will continue to choose to see most of my life as not old. I say ‘most of my life’, because I don’t mind not helping friends move to a new home anymore, or not changing my own oil, or not being expected to run anywhere. I’m not opposed to taking occasional advantage of some of the benefits of having seen as much of life as I have. I miss hiking, which I did a little of during the misspent days of my youth, and just wandering in the woods. (A friend of mine is a stringer, a person who takes photographs, typically of local high school sporting events, or car accidents, or fires, and sells them to newspapers or websites. He laughingly commented, “Years ago I’d steal a glance or take a quick photo of the cheerleaders. Then nobody thought anything of it, but now I’m ‘Creepy Old Guy’!”) It’s interesting, and sometimes depressing, how merely the passage of years has affected how I’m perceived. I’m still the same guy, more or less. But the way others view me is different than in the days when I was twenty-five.

I choose to view myself as experienced. Older in years, yes, but perhaps a better consumer of the years that are to come. Hopefully a little wiser, as a result of the days I’ve already lived. A little slower on the video game trigger, but smarter about how to battle the bosses. A better person because of what my Lord has taught me, and maybe less concerned about the things that happen along the way, because I know He is control. I know where my final destination is, and I know I’ll be welcomed with loving arms when I get there. And that’s something to look forward to.

God In My Life

I never intended this space to be about God, or Christianity, or -heaven forbid- religion.

I envisioned it to be nothing more than an organized place for me to write, to crystallize thoughts and then express them in, hopefully, an interesting manner. Not quite a diary -I’m a guy, after all. An exercise, then. Not a product, because as much as I feel a desire to write, I have no illusions that I’m any good at it. Even if I were, I have squandered too many years failing to practice the craft. So here I am, thinking and writing on the range of topics that reflect the facets of my life, as I am living it. My life, not God.

And yet…

And yet as I have lived my life, and as that living has brought me to faith, to believe that He exists, that He knows me and loves me anyway, He watches me always and has some kind of plan for my life, whether broad or focused… My faith has gradually had more and more influence on my life, on the many many details and activities that make up that life. And I like that. I actually wish I felt His guidance more, because it would make having to choose easier.

I don’t mind having so many choices these days. It’s the lurking suspicion that all those options are being offered to obscure the best choice, to allow the giver of choices to claim he (or she) gave me the opportunity to choose whatever I wanted, and thus place blame for a poor choice squarely on my shoulders. I don’t like having to educate myself so many times, especially about things I probably won’t care about once the decision is made. God knows what the right choices are, and I wish I felt His leading towards them more often.

But it occurs to me that a good father isn’t a ‘helicopter parent’, one who hovers over their child’s shoulder, essentially making their choices for them, eliminating their opportunities to make mistakes and then to grow and learn from them. So perhaps God wants and expects me to make mistakes, and to grow in Him as a result. For my own part I’m not sure that at this late age I’m a fan of that…but His will, not mine.

So as I write about the things that happen, the thoughts that occur, I strive to make the mundane interesting, to bring perhaps a new perspective on the already-interesting….and God seems to be a growing part of the life in which I abide and about which I write. It’s been several years since I wrote last, and in that time, my son has returned safely from his journey of personal growth, he’s found a good job, has a fiance, and seems to be successfully making his way in this world. He’s even making a few bucks on the side as a professional video game streamer. Who’da thunk it… My own life has been quite the roller-coaster ride over the last few of those same years. Perhaps one day I’ll write on some of those experiences, but not today.

So, if you believe, then you perhaps understand my growing trust in Him, my desire for His influence in my life, and why He will continue to appear on these pages. And if you don’t (yet) believe, perhaps I can give you a reason to consider Him, if your mind is open to the possibility of a better way of seeing this life. Either way, chances are good that God will be here.

Despite my original intentions.