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Month: July 2019

Sometimes we find what we are looking for

July 13, 2019 /
seafoam car with wood paneling

After months of searching and agony, you finally find the perfect car. It’s seafoam green and paneled in wood. The day comes for you to proudly take it for an inaugural cruise down Main Street. People stop and stare. Children let go of their balloons and drop their ice cones as you glide by. Dogs are even distracted away from the squirrels they were chasing. Then, as you burst with pride, horrifying terror passes just in front of you. It is another seafoam barge with wood paneling gliding through the intersection. Choking on your triple-shot soy raspberry latte it is then that you see them. Everywhere you look there are cars just like yours. Dejected you struggle to come to terms with the reality that your thing of mechanical beauty will not be the singular object of humanity’s desire you had hoped it would be. Why didn’t you see them before? Simple. You were not looking for them. Now your perspective has changed and you see what has always been there.

This post really is not about freighter cars with faux wood accents, it’s about what seeing what we are looking for. Proverbs 1:27 says, “Whoever seeks good finds favor, but evil comes to one who searches for it” (NIV).

Every second of our world is flooded with thousands of images. We hear stories of doom, gloom, and demise. Daily we cross paths with people that speak, see, act and think differently than we do. In nearly every interaction we make a choice, most of the time without even thinking about it, to see good or to see evil. My challenge is to consciously choose to see the good rather than search for the evil. In doing so we find and give favor. Yet, when I seek evil, to see and think the worst in others, I will be sure to find it, even if all the evidence that exists is to the contrary. So today choose to seek and find the good and don’t be surprised if it is a lot harder than expected to carry out. We are all in this together, because, like all things we preacher types write and speak about, it is far easier for us to pontificate than to actually live out.

Blessings,
Stephen

Why won’t we do it?

July 1, 2019 /

This post is the final in the slow series on our summer of Sabbath rest. In it, I want to address the “why not?” of Sabbath. For all the benefits of the Sabbath, most of us will not actually engage in the practice of rest. I am sure the reasons are many, but I want to share two here:

First, we are afraid of stopping. Our identity is tied up in what we do. Want to know how much? Try going to a gather and never ask a person what they do and never say what you do. It is nearly impossible. Not being identified with our work causes us to feel lost and useless. Sabbath will confront your very sense of who you are and what you find your value in. Most of us, myself included, do not want to go there. Sabbath is not productive. We fear we are missing out. We fear we will be accused of being lazy or failing to carry out our responsibilities.

Second, fear of legalism. Certainly, there are many stories of excess rules and structures of the past. When children were not allowed to play and joy was looked upon with disdain. We are right to be apprehensive, but let us not avoid one excess by going to another excess that never stops, never delights in God and his good gifts to humanity. If your Sabbath has become a burden then it is time to change your Sabbath. Sabbath is a day to celebrate the abundance of God. A day filled with joy, laughter, beauty, rest, love, and delight. Jesus, says to come to him like a child. There is something winsome and childlike about the Sabbath. Jesus said the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. The Sabbath is God’s holy gift to humanity. It is a means of expressing his continual love and provision to each one of us. Sabbath is the invitation to be with God.

Blessings,
Stephen

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