Focus

Focus

Growing up I was a Boy Scout and spent a lot of time camping, which includes camping in the dark. Invariably there would come a time where I’d have to go some lengthy distance in the dark but being a good scout (one who is always prepared) I had my flashlight. But it didn’t take me long to learn that even with a flashlight walking in the dark was no easy task. In fact, in order to get where I was going I needed to make a choice. I could shine the light up ahead of me to make sure nothing was coming at me; say like Big Foot for instance. The problem with this method is that I’d often trip because I couldn’t see all the rocks and branches on my path. The other option was of course to shine the light right at my feet so that I didn’t trip.

I find that experience repeated time and time again in my life. I seem to cycle between moments of focusing on my life in the future (what will it be like when my daughters are teenagers?) and moments in which all I can think about is how to accomplish the next task before me (fixing the closet door for the 397th time!). When I try looking into the future I often get tripped up by the day-to-day stuff of my life. When I only focus on the day to day I get surprised by the future; tax day, my anniversary, little things like that. But try as I might I can not seem to focus on both at the same time.

That’s why I’ve always been fascinated by one small verse of the Bible, Psalms 119:105. We’re told that God’s Word is a lamp for our feet AND a light for our path. And that is kind of amazing to me. That God would be concerned not just about our future but also about our everyday stuff. Yet as amazing as it is I still wonder how? How do I focus on two things at once?

Perhaps the answer is in the third and most common method I found my way in the dark as a scout; I never walked the path alone. In Scouts you are to always use the buddy system and it worked really well trying to walk a path in the dark because one would shine the light at the feet and the other would shine the light down the path.

It makes me wonder if my inability to focus on both the immediate and the future is because I’ve ditched my buddy. God has sent me someone to shine his light on my next step but I’ve ignored them because I like to be in control. God has sent me someone to flash their beam down my path but I don’t trust them because they’ve hurt me before. Maybe I can’t focus because I think of my relationship with God as just that, MY relationship with God apart from everyone else.

The disciple John tells us that Jesus once said, “"I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." (John 8:12) But later in life that same disciple would write the early church and say, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” (I John 1:7) Jesus is the light; yet we walk in that light with each other and not alone. Maybe the problem with my focus is that it is always on me…

Read 1 John 1

A Little Lost

A Little Lost

I’ve been feeling a little lost lately. Not physically lost as in I don’t know how to get to my destination (and I won’t stop to ask for directions). And it’s not really the Big kind of lost, not “lost in the middle of the ocean”. It is more of a little lost - like when you come out of a parking garage downtown and you’ve done so many circles that when you emerge you’re not sure where to go. So I don’t feel lost as if my life has no meaning or purpose, not lost like a midlife crisis. It is more like I’ve been going in circles - from one thing to another - for so long that I’m temporarily disoriented. So sure, it is certainly not the worst kind of lost to be. But it is a little disconcerting nonetheless. I don’t like to be lost – even a little.

And of course the Bible has a lot to say to those who are lost but I’ve always read the Bible as if God is always talking about Big lost. Lost sheep, lost coins, lost sons. One of my favorite Old Testament promises is found in Ezekiel 34:16 ”I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak…” So when I think of God finding and guiding the lost I always think Big lost.

But today I suddenly stopped and asked myself, “why?” Why do I assume that God is only interested in helping me when I’m Big lost and that little lost is not so important? After all, speaking about his sheep Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.” And I’d think full life means that God cares about both the Big lost and the little lost.

Indeed, when I’ve been Big lost nothing has meant more to me than the knowledge that God seeks and saves the lost. That no matter how far I’ve gone from home, no matter how much I’ve wandered and wondered, God is seeking me, following me, chasing me down in order to bring me home again. That I can never forget.

But I do wonder if I have made some artificial distinction in my own mind, drawn a line and said, “Things on this side God is worried about and he does the extraordinary in order to fix them. But the things on this side are not that big a deal to God, not worth the worry or his time.” Then I read the stories about Jesus that begin this way, “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Or “Then Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.’” I read stories like that and realize Jesus seems to care about everything.

Read Luke 19:1-10

So perhaps there is no Big lost or little lost. There is just lost… lost, looking around for a purpose, a sign, some direction. Something to guide us, someone to take us by the hand and say, “this way.”

“… the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)

Broken

Few things are as frustrating to me as when something I need is broken. For some reason things break a lot around me. Perhaps what is an even larger blow to my ego, my wife and kids seem to think I should be able to fix things. They bring me stuff all the time and say, “this is broken.” What goes unspoken is, “so fix it.”

But to be honest now days it is usually easier for me to just throw it away. If it can’t be repaired with Gorilla glue or Duct Tape then I might as well just toss it in the garbage. Even recycling things has become a huge chore. I have to pay someone to recycle my electronics! No, much easier to just toss it to the curb.

That is one of the things I find so fascinating about God; with him nothing seems to be too broken. In fact, sometimes it seems like the more broken someone is the more God is with them.  King David once even wrote, “The LORD is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18) That to me is an amazing statement. It is like those people you see who go through other peoples’ trash and find something worthwhile. Something to take home and to use.

So I know it is a good thing that God is not like me. He doesn’t look around at all the broken people and decide to just throw them out. He goes through the streets of this world picking broken people out of trash cans, out of dumpsters and out of landfills. He looks into the garbage of this world and he doesn’t see just the broken, angry, hurting confused, addicted, deceitful, selfish hearts. He sees more, something worthwhile.

But that is still not the most amazing part. God takes these broken people, but he doesn’t only wash them clean and nourish them and then put them on the shelf. No, he uses them again. Even though they’ve made mistakes. Even though they’ve failed. Even though they’ve been broken.

Actually I’ve found out that God uses me more when I’ve been broken. Because often times that is what it takes to get through to me. It takes a broken heart for me to feel the way God does. It takes a broken heart to feel for all the other broken hearts around me. It takes God picking me out of the dumpster, not because I am so shiny and perfect but because he is a God who “heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds.” When God finds someone who is broken it is not the end but just the beginning.

II Corinthians 4:7-12

The Cry

Looking Behind
In Hebrew the word is “sa’aq.” Literally it is “the loud crying of someone in acute distress, calling for help and seeking deliverance.” It is the cry. It was a cry of someone in pain but also a cry of someone who knows things aren’t right. In the Old Testament the cry was heard by God and it caused him to act. That’s why I find Exodus 3 so amazing. Not because there is a bush on fire that doesn’t burn or because Moses backtalks God. All of those things are amazing. But the thing that astounds me is that God says, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them…” God hears the cry… and he comes down…
(For more check out the Podcast at www.familyofchristlc.com/media.htm)

Today
Exodus 19:1-6

I’ve been thinking about crying a lot lately. That will happen when you have 2 daughters who are 5 and 4. At least a few times a day one will make the other cry, more often they make each other cry. This usually leads to my wife crying in frustration. Lots of tissue in my house. What is kind of surprising is how much my daughters worry about the other when one is crying. They’ll do all they can to comfort the other, hunt down mom or dad to give a full report and even offer advice on how to fix the problem. It is enough to make a parent smile.

And it makes me think about God and how he hears the cry. As a dad I’ve gotten pretty good about hearing my girls cry, I can pick their cries out of a crowded room of crying children. And I can usually tell when it is a “real” cry and when it is an attempt for attention. But God hears all the cries of his children. He not only hears each and every cry, he also does something about them. God “comes down” to rescue his people.

Later, after God had rescued his children from Egypt he gathered them back at the mountain and he said they were to be a “nation of priests.” I think this is his way of saying that his children were to be about what God is about. The rescued were now the rescuers.

And that makes me wonder about all the times I see people crying out, people in need, people oppressed. I see them and I wonder, “when is God going to hear and come down?” Then it hits me… He has come down.

It is the night of his betrayal and in less than 24 hours Jesus will be dead on a cross. He celebrates the Passover with his disciples, he washes their feet, tells them of the new command to love and says that he is the way, the truth and the life. But then he says something that perhaps we skip over, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these…” And what if the “things” and “greater things” that Jesus has been doing is not the miracles but the service? What if those things are the healing and the compassion and the forgiveness?

Maybe we’re God’s ears to hear the cry, his hands to help, his feet to go and rescue? Is there any “greater thing” than that?