I saw what you did

 When I was a young teenager, my brothers and I scrolled through what was on television one evening, back when there was a selection of only three or four channels.  They decided on a movie that had originally been released in theaters in 1965 about two teenage girls making crank calls, entitled, "I saw what you did, and I know who you are."  I can still remember the fear that lingered in my thoughts afterwards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought about the title of that film a few weeks ago during the memorial service for a dear friend.  One of her sons spoke so lovingly about his mom, her passion as a nurse, her faithfulness as a mom, her faith in God evident no matter where she was.  He watched her respond to the needs around her.  He observed how she loved people.  He saw how her faith was not just something she believed, but lived.

And then he turned to his dad who had loved and served his wife so well during her long battle with cancer and took such good care of her in those last months, always by her side, loving her every which way he could.

The son said those same words, "I saw what you did, Dad.  You lived out your wedding vows from 42 years ago.  For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part."

But it was far beyond wedding vows he saw in the every days and in the crises.  But who his mom and dad were in Christ.  "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."  Galatians 2. 20

What profoundly impacted this young man was not just what both his mom and dad had said about their faith, but how he saw them live it out, in the ordinary and extraordinary.  It was not just stuff he remembered seeing, not just how they modeled faith, but how they faithfully lived and followed God.  

I saw what you did.

And I know Whose you are.

 

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name,

               you are Mine.

                       Isaiah 43. 1

Others are continually watching us, not to see if we are perfect, but to see if God is real.  God changes our hearts.  God radically alters our lives. 

Knowing Him.

Known by Him.

Known as His.

Tour de Life

Today is the last day of a long narrative. 

For the past month, a large group of cyclists have been peddling furiously through several European countries in the famed yearly Tour de France.  Even though it may appear on the course that each of the 176 riders are battling it out for himself, there are actually 22 teams with eight riders per team.  And a lot of strategy, both visible and under the radar of the spectator.

The race is not random maneuvering, struggling, beating out the next guy, determining who is fastest, who is strongest, who is the best, but relies on intricate details of planning and striving and strength built up in layers during years of training.

The teams are actually that:  teams.  Working together not just for personal individual glory but for the team.  The winners have not risen to the top on their own.   The strongest rider on the team --even in the whole peloton-- may not be the winner of the race, but those who are called a domestique, the one who uses his strength to get his leader across the line. 

The leaders cannot do it on their own.  And they know it.

But do we?  How do we serve in God's Kingdom?  How do we come alongside others to help and encourage and support others in their own faith journey, struggles and story?    This is the gospel story on wheels.

But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, 

and whoever would be first among you must be your slave,

even as the Son of Man came not to be served,

                 but to serve

and give His life as a ransom for many.

                                      Matthew 20. 27-28

After the triumphant entry into Paris today, at the end of the Tour de France, watching that continuous colorful ribbon of riders, what will these men remember most?  The privilege of being part of something much bigger than themselves.  What we do, how we respond, how we see others and love them does not just change the outcome, but the journey.  Ultimately these riders will remember the stories and how their lives are inextricably woven together.

It is not a matter of who gets to the line first, but the camaraderie is what we most cherish.  And what we most need.  That kind of fellowship and community is only created by loving and serving each other.    

God, make me a domestique today.  Help me to see differently, be sensitive and responsive to the needs of others around me.  And sweat for the well-being of the saints.  Not just to get someone across the line, but that we may all know You more by simply helping someone on our course.  For Your glory alone, O God.

 

And let us not grow weary of doing good,

for in due season we will reap,

           if we do not give up.

So then, as we have opportunity,

let us do good to everyone,

and especially to those

    who are of the household of faith.

                  Galatians 6. 9-10

Get Rid of the Couch

Someday has arrived.

We wait for something to change, as for a belated Amazon delivery.  Someday it will land on my doorstep, fully formed and gift-wrapped.  Someday I'll have the resources.  Someday I'll have the time.  Someday it will "just happen."  Someday I'll get around to it. 

But someday has two radically different meanings.  In all future tense, someday presents the biggest, most justifiable REASON in the world, all capital letters, one really legitimate excuse after another.  This someday owns the largest Laz-E-Boy recliner in the living room, equipped with a remote and two strategically-placed drink holders.  On the calendar, it is always tomorrow.

But in the present tense, someday is working toward something, one step at a time.  This someday double ties on its shoes every morning.  And ready, set, move another inch, another choice, and another day toward it.  What singular step can I take toward it today?  

Like wanting to run a marathon, but not yet even purchasing the shoes.

In the past few years, instead of filling notebooks with short stories, I have been talking about it, filling a notorious U-Haul trailer with one excuse after another.  All beginning with the word someday.  As if someday, something will change.

An opportunity arrived in my email in early June to join a short story workshop at the end of the month.  It caught my eye.  It pulled on my leg like a whining toddler.  It wouldn't let go.

Even with my desire to do it, the announcement was swallowed up by a tsunami of excuses. So many other things to do.  Do I really need that to write?  Not the right time.  The summer is busy.  It might not be any help at all.  I'm not very good at it anyway.

It was like being a contestant on the old game show Name That Tune, except with excuses.

But while I was pondering this, I overheard a conversation about why someone I know could not start rehabbing their house, but someday.  It was a litany repeated now for four years running, no end in sight.  If we do this, then we'd have to do that. Most of it hung on getting rid of a single piece of hand-me-down furniture that they did not particularly like.  They couldn't fix up the living room until they got rid of the huge, tired, sagging couch.  And if they changed things around in the living room, that would mean they had to start on the kitchen.  Moving the cabinets and taking down the useless half-wall would mean rearranging the appliances, re-doing the floor, re-plumbing the sink, patching up the backsplash, and painting the whole thing.  Way too overwhelming. Who has the energy for that?

One excuse always births a thousand more defenses.  But the truth is that just one little step loosens up the situation enough to get a handhold on it.  The entire dilemma is changed incrementally by even the smallest actions. 

Easy for me to tell them:  Get rid of the couch. It will get the ball rolling.

But I then realized my own huge proverbial couch of excuses blocking my progress.  I needed to tell myself the same thing.  What is keeping me stuck, crowding me out, and blocking my doing something? Doing anything? Someday is not just going to arrive on my doorstep.  If things are going to be different, something has to change. 

I signed up for the workshop.  I decided I would give this writing community a year.  I was very skeptical.  I still had excuses loudly clamoring on both sides of my desk like hungry dogs. But I attended the zoom meetings.  I did the homework.  I read the other members' stories.  I worked on my own.

And oddly enough, most of the work fit in the pockets of time of my day that I didn't know were there.

One morning just nine days later, I woke up encouraged.  Something changed.  And it was me.

It wasn't just about writing, because God never works in singular outcomes.  While one excuse births a thousand more defenses, one little step opens up a whole new layer of His strength and faithfulness we cannot yet foresee.

We can see our space with new vision. We can move toward someday, and not just think about it.

 

In all toil there is profit,

but mere talk tends only to poverty.

                  Proverbs 14.23

 

 

But where are the instructions?

 

 

Sometimes our personal situations appear like a 1000-piece puzzle of unrelated, broken, and odd-shaped parts.  It is hard to make sense of it.

We talk about details just falling together.  But the pieces don't just come together.  They were designed to fit that way.

Yesterday as we pulled out a puzzle to put together before supper, one of our five-year-old grandsons took a look at the pile of pieces and then looked back in the box.

"But where are the instructions?" he asked.

I chuckled.  Just take one piece, buddy, and start to connect with another.

I feel like sometimes we are waiting for printed-out instructions, and God says, "Take the nearest piece and see how it connects."

Our circumstances are not broken parts but puzzle pieces that actually fit together.  We just can't see the connections yet, nor the whole picture. 

And sometimes a really odd piece in our lives --that we question why it belongs at all-- shows up later as a vital link in an unexpected place.  God redeems even the oddest ones.

Take one piece and then the next one comes to the surface.  Turn it this way.  Turn it around.  And pick up another.  A puzzle in itself helps us to think and see differently.  Our little buddy sat looking at five or six pieces in front of him.  He reached for another that looked similar.  And suddenly, he screeched, "Grams! Grams! It fits!!!"  Not just one to another, but now a whole row of them.

Surprise!  It does connect after all.

 

But not all at once, lest anyone should boast.

"The thing that really testifies for God and for the people of God in the long run is steady perseverance, even when the work cannot be seen by others,"  says Oswald Chambers in his epic My Utmost for His Highest.

Our witness takes shape in faithfully navigating the ordinary and the really hard parts and how we respond differently.

We need not to always be concerned about where we fit in all of this, looking for a deeper meaning, or for that significant piece that has our face or name on it. Our essential part may be just making connections in a vastly bigger narrative. 

Sometimes the least noticeable, the most ordinary, the completely overlooked, is the key piece that pulls the picture together.  Sometimes we need to stand on the other side of the table to see things differently.  Sometimes the link that we are looking for just fell on the floor under the table, and we have not bothered to look for it.  Sometimes a piece is missing altogether, but overall it really doesn't matter.

And maybe the main point of this exercise, struggle, or dilemma is just the camaraderie of working side by side, the conversation, and encouragement of being together.  We can all use heaps of that kind of fellowship.

Where are the instructions?  Does God always have to print out the step-by-step directions?  Obedience is just following Him into His faithfulness, not even knowing where the next piece belongs. What doesn't fit together now may be not yet, just waiting to fit perfectly later.

As Kevin DeYoung advises in the title of one of his books:  "Just Do Something."

Pick up the next piece.  And watch what God does with it.

 

And He is before all things,

and in Him

    all things hold together.

         Colossians 1. 17