God and a garage door

 

 

How many thousands of times heading out of our neighborhood, I wonder, "Did I close the garage door?"

I am trying to combat that urge to turn around and check yet again (yes, I did close it) by being more attentive as I push the remote, by repeating out loud, "Closing the door."  Unless I verbalize it, unless I say it out loud, I am rarely mindful of doing it.  As soon as I back out of that narrow garage opening, my mind races ahead to something else.  Two minutes later, now navigating on the main road, I think, "Did I close the door?"  I have no idea.  I am plagued by doubt.

In my scripture reading this week, I came upon yet another verbal repetition: 

"O give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever."  

It appears as the first and last verses of Psalms 118, a profound truth at the beginning and end, past tense and present, and then again tomorrow, engraved a little deeper each day.  The same phrase is repeated in the Old Testament scripture over and over again.  It was not just a rule, ritual or required refrain by the people.  Nor as mindless rote of words, but as a repeated acknowledgement of a promise.  It was a reminder front and center throughout their day and recited again in the evening-tide.  Not a once and done, but a pattern of acknowledging what they have observed and experienced by trusting God in the now and next.

They did not have to dig out that truth in the midst of crisis, because they did not just believe those words but knew them to be true and staked their lives on that good and loving God.

As little as I am conscious of closing that garage door, how mindful am I about God's Presence in my life, front and center, nothing random but enormously eternal, walking with me, guiding me, aligning my heart with His, not in prevailing circumstances?

Do I forget as easily?

And how different would I see God, see others, see myself, and respond in the midst of the situation at hand, if I recited and repeated out loud each morning and night:  

O give thanks to the LORD,

for He is good,

for His steadfast love endures forever.

Not as some kind of mantra or magic motto, but reciting and repeating scripture, the very word of God.  Not to appease God, or remind Him, but to engrave those sacred words of His faithfulness into my day, my heart, my thoughts, my response to what is before me, and remind me out loud Who is with me.  Even in this.

Out loud.  Over and over again. Lest I forget.

When our children are young, we often said, "What do you say when someone gives you something?"  "Thank you."  We guide them to be attentive, not just to accept, but to respond out loud.  Lest they forget.

And what does it this passage and promise start with?  "Thank You so much."   A grateful heart recognizes and acknowledges that He is good and He loves us forever.  And that resets my mind and aligns my heart with His.

Recite.  Repeat.  Not just in crisis, but grasping the reality of His Presence and His faithfulness even in the ordinary. 

And that changes everything.

Start and Finish - part 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Between the start and the finish lines, a lot of stuff tries to cram its way into our days.  Some things are in our control and some things are not.

But what we can decide is how we respond to it.

One of our grandsons loves reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  As a result, he recently picked author J. R. R. Tolkien for a school project.  The report allowed him to see the experiences that formed Tolkien's heart, his worldview, and his faith.  Even in childhood, Tolkien endured some really hard steps that shaped his astonishing fiction. 

He concluded his presentation with a quotation from the beloved character Gandalf:  "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

In this hour.  In this day.  In the rest of our lives. "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives," once stated author Annie Dillard.  

During that visit with our grandchildren, we played more than a few rounds of Scrabble.  At times, the words seemed to rise up and connect triumphantly by themselves.  But sometimes -- well, what do you do when all you have been granted are 4 letter U's?   For that impossible situation and other unappreciated letters, we humorously re-quoted Gandalf:  All we have to decide is what to do with the tiles that are given us. 

God has granted me this day, this situation, these particular "tiles"  What is my response to them?  I don't have to have everything figured out, know the outcome...or even all the steps.  I just need to remain faithful to God, in the ordinary, extraordinary, and the unexpected, and even when nothing appears to be happening at all.  Because being faithful is never just nothing, devoid of sacred purpose or hope.  We just cannot see that time ripening yet.

My biggest concern is not the enormous philosophical "what am I doing with my life?"  But what am I choosing to do with these next few available minutes?  Not limited to achievements, but what kind of person am I choosing to become?

It is no mistake that God opens the dawn with splendor every morning and closes up the day with a spectacular sunset every evening, whether we witness it or not.  Because that is how God sees every one of our days.  Not just another start and finish line.  Never just another day.  Not just another blank page to fill.  But celebrating every minute, precious in His sight.

I learned when our daughters were so small -- at one point with three children three-and-a-half and younger-- that life is divided into 10 minute increments.  I am still amazed at what I was able to do with the tiniest pockets of time when I knew that was all the time I had, or all the time I was going to get that day.  Order my day, I would pray.  Not to cram as much as I could in the day, but to be intentional with my time and mindful of God.  In that incredibly busy season with toddlers, just getting the laundry folded was like winning a gold medal.  But even more so, sitting on the couch, reading stories with a child in my lap.  Not making time for that too, but seizing it.

Bring Your glory into this day, O LORD.   Start to Finish.  

         Knowing in Your sight,

                  there are no insignificant moments.

But the life-changing is for us to be faithful

      with the time

                --and the tiles--

      that we do have

                 right now.

What am I choosing to do

         with what has been given me? 

How am I choosing to respond?

God is doing a mighty work

             in our lives that is

             beyond our comprehension.

     Never just an ordinary day

          unless we treat it that way.

Never just a random set of Scrabble tiles,

    but opportunity spelled heroically

              in a thousand different ways,

                    with a triple word score.

God does not just fill our time

                     but fulfills it.

God redeems

      not just our moments,

                      but our lives

      start to finish.

         

O LORD God,

You have only begun to show Your servant

    Your greatness and Your mighty hand.

                            Deuteronomy 3. 24

Start and Finish -- part 1

 

I start my run each day in a particular place.  There is always some sort of starting line, rarely marked on the asphalt.  Whether an out-and-back trail along the river, or a hilly loop or two through the forest, I always come back to where I started.

But I always return a little different, no matter the terrain or how much time has passed.  What have I seen along the way, what have I thought about, how have I prayed?  I have been changed by that passage between start and finish. 

Something has changed, even incrementally, by what I have chosen to do in that pocket of a few minutes or an hour or whatever time I have that day.  As Tish Harrison Warren says in her book Liturgy of the Ordinary, "...very subtly, my day was imprinted differently."

There is no wasted time.  Just what we do with it.  And how we are changed by it.

It is not our place to label or distinguish between the significant or insignificant -- because everything we do is a game changer in some astonishing way -- whether writing a book or folding someone's laundry who won't even notice, speaking before thousands or making a little child's lunch  (which in the Bible fed five thousand hungry strangers.) 

My times are in His hands.... Psalm 31. 15   

I have only to be faithful.  Faithfulness may not change what I am doing.  But I can't help but be changed by it.

How do I choose to spend these moments today between start and finish?  Invest them?  Or catch up on instagram?   I had a short span of unconnected minutes this morning, like unexpected loose coins in my pocket,  not very long, about a cup of coffee's worth, but I was conscious of using them, not losing them.  There is always something I can do.  But what do I choose? 

We often start and finish the day in what only appears as the same place.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

                                   -- T. S. Eliot 

What takes place between the start and finish may or may not be in our control.  We cannot accurately know the path we are on today.  But what we can decide is how we respond to it.

Vocabulary Lessons

God has been working on my vocabulary lately.  I feel like I have an arsenal of inadequate words -- a kindergarten spelling list -- to describe His glory.

Words for wow:

Beautiful.

Stunning.

Incredible.

Awesome.

Epic.

Almighty. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we come to know Him more, we come to recognize Him more.

Not just in the exalted vistas, but in our every days.  Which are never so ordinary after all.  There is something wow in this very day.  May we recognize God Almighty in it.  May we learn a new language to worship Him.

O LORD, our Lord,

how majestic is Your name

         in all the earth!

You have set Your glory

        above the heavens.

                 Psalm 8. 1

 

 

In Our Midst

We have been hiking our way through a few national parks, trekking through the wonders of God's creation.  We are amazed by the intricate design of the hand of God, each kind of tree and plant and animal interconnected and dependent on each other.  Not an eco-system that just happened, but a universe designed that way. The wilderness is never barren, but embedded with beauty around every bend in the trail. The awe that is stirred up within us is simply a call to worship, to enjoy the creation and worship the Creator.

A snapshot cannot capture the immensity.  Nor words can describe it.  One day as we ascended a trail to some alpine lakes, we could go no further because of deep snow.  We had to turn around.  The hike was not for naught, nor a failure on our part.  Because before we headed back down, I looked up through the trees and saw the blueness of sky that defied words in any language.  It was not even the color or beauty that energized me, but the glory of God breaking through and taking my breath away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was not a matter of trying to see the divine in this, but realizing His magnificence face to face, His Presence in our midst that cannot be explained away, His fingerprints that say, "Do not fear.  I am with you." All along.  In our midst.  Even in this.

May we see life not just a series of rolling hills, ascents and recoveries, deep gullies to scramble through, unmarked trails and trials that we have not chosen nor understand, nor the steepest mountain paths that never seems to end, but God's redeeming in the present tense.

As author Wallace Stegner described more than sixty years ago, "We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.  For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."

The geography of hope --I love that phrase-- reassures us that God is, and He has spoken.  Hope is not wishful thinking, but that on which we can stake our lives. He is God.  And we are not.  God is here among us.  The immensity of the sky uncovers His steadfast love and grace toward us, no matter what.

O LORD, our Lord,

   how majestic is Your name

   in all the earth.

                   Psalm 8.1 

 

As we walked through a sanctuary of mammoth sequoia trees, I thought about the third day of creation when God was bringing forth the beauty of this earth.  And as He was forming the trees, those huge pillars of every type that defy gravity, when He was designing the sequoias, He must have said, "Now watch this!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No matter where we go today, or what we do, walking through the ordinary and familiar, or through a wilderness which we do not know, may we be aware of God's wonders embedded in this day.  As blatant as the mammoth sequoias, may we not just see His wonders way off someday in the distance or in the rear view mirror way in our past, but realize His Presence in our midst.  He is bigger still.

Even today, God says to each one of us,

       "Now watch this."