October 29, 2010

Be Full of Care!

I am spending the weekend praying for students at a area conference in Pittsburgh, PA. The whole conference is about moving away from the things that entice us (sex, money, power) and moving toward Life in God. They are spending the weekend in Deuteronomy 6. Tonight the speaker just spent time in the first 4 verses of the chapter, so I spent most of my day in those verses.
These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD you God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD you God as long as you live by keeping all His decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. Hear O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with mild honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you. Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God the LORD is one.
Two ideas that stood out to me today as I was praying. They were "ENJOY" & "BE CAREFUL."

My sweet friend Cindy Holt use to tell her son Jackson as he was leaving the house, "Jackson be careful. That means full of care." I don't know why that has always stuck with me but it made an impact. I take the statement be careful so flippantly. I don't take it seriously.

When I started my prayer time I was feeling hesitant about spend time with the Lord and about coming on the weekend at all. I started reading in the passage and the end of the first sentence grabbed my attention. I normally focus on the adjective long when thinking about life, but today I saw the verb: ENJOY! I was meant to enjoy my life with God. To enjoy the beginning of a weekend spent with Him in prayer. So I asked God why I was not looking forward to time with Him, why was I was not enjoying our time together? After a few minutes I felt a leading to read the passage again.

Then it hit me in the face. "Be careful to obey so that it may go well with you..." These two ideas are linked. Enjoying God to the fullest comes when I am careful to obey Him. The main problem is that I am least careful when it comes to my relationship with God. Grace has won me, the work Christ accomplished in my life, my new creation status (see previous post) makes me abuse my relationship with God. It makes me reckless and lazy, prideful and entitled. It makes me apathetic. This is the stupidest part of myself.

I spent a good part of my week being reckless. It was full, busy, distracted. I didn't spend much time connecting to God. I didn't spend much time putting others before myself. I didn't spend much time being full of care to obey the God who loves me, won me, and is making me more and more like Him.

So I spent some time confessing; washing that gunky week off and then reflected on this question: What are some realities about who God is that would demand me to take more care? I didn't get very far with that thought because the worship team had a sound emergency which I moved toward in prayer, but I want to revisit. I want to be different. I want my relationship with my Creator, my Papa to be THE THING I spend the most energy caring about & enjoying.

I need Cindy to call me each morning and remind me, "Lee be careful. That means full of care."

So help me think through this. What are some aspects of God's character that inspire you to obey Him (and therefore enjoy Him)?

October 19, 2010

Mind-Bending Quote of the Day: Anne Lindbergh

The more I read about Anne Morrow Lindbergh and the things she wrote the more I want to be her close friend!
[It] is a strange paradox. Woman instinctively wants to give, yet resents giving herself in small pieces...What we fear is not so much that our energy may be leaking away through small outlets as that it may be "going down the drain." . . . Except for the child, woman's creation is so often invisible, especially today. We are working at an arrangement in form, of the myriad disparate details of housework, family routine, and social life. It is a kind of intricate game of cat's-cradle we manipulate on our fingers, with invisible threads. How can one point to this constant tangle of household chores, errands, and fragments of human relations as a creation? Is is hard even to think of it as purposeful activity, so much of it is automatic. Woman herself begins to feel like a telephone exchange or a laundromat.
I am reading this quote and blogging while I am surrounded by dirty dishes, messy rooms, 5 loads of laundry needing to be sorted, washed, dried, folded and put up. I have yet to play with the kids and haven't spent any time pointing them to the Lord today. I have little energy for home life.

I do have energy for staff life, and friend life and for my bible study, and my home group. I feel excited about the partnership I'm experiencing with my pastor as we work on resources for Home Groups to use and feel creative as I am building the Regional website for InterVarsity in the Blue Ridge. I love writing talks and praying through the sessions of our winter conference, CornerStone.

All of these things are good, but they are not all I'm called to. I'm called to my Home. I'm called to my kids and to my dishes and to my dirty clothes. And the kicker is this--that as I press into this calling, into my call to make a home for my family and pursue excellence in that calling, I can know God. And know Him as fully as I can when I'm prepping a talk, or leading a Bible Study.

I read this quote from a book, "Finding God at Home: Family Life as Spiritual Discipline". My friend Becky suggested it when I was ranting to her about my frustration over having to serve my family through chores and neatness. And the quote helped me verbalize why home stuff feels so draining, so meaningless. But I have hope that it doesn't have to be. I have hope that God can break through the frustration and despair and give me closeness to Him, give me joy at being made more like His son, give me perspective and freedom from the curse of a life centered in my self.

The author of the book puts it like this,
This spirituality [of the home] offers something subtle. . . but awesome--a recognition of the patterns of eternity. This is probably the oldest of humanity's perceptions of the divine. . . In a community, especially the community of the family, it is the human seasons that come to be known so well, and it is through them that it is possible to discover the eternal. Living human life in the context of the family produces an understanding that discovers in every change the element that never changes. (24)
So I guess I'll stop blogging and get to cleaning my room--maybe the breakthrough will be today.