a much-needed kick in the butt...

years ago, i regularly read Oswald Chamber's classic devotional, My Utmost For His Highest, and regularly [and by regularly, i mean daily], my friend Oswald kicked me in the butt spiritually.

this morning, as i sit here in calgary, the fact that i did not bring a devotional book with me, i found my old friend online, and read today's entry. here it is.

THE DELIGHT OF SACRIFICE
"I will very gladly spend and be spent for you;"

2 Corinthians 12:15

When the Spirit of God has shed abroad the love of God in our hearts, we begin deliberately to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ's interests in other people, and Jesus Christ is interested in every kind of man there is. We have no right in Christian work to be guided by our affinities; this is one of the biggest tests of our relationship to Jesus Christ. The delight of sacrifice is that I lay down my life for my Friend, not fling it away, but deliberately lay my life out for Him and His interests in other people, not for a cause. Paul spent himself for one purpose only - that he might win men to Jesus Christ. Paul attracted to Jesus all the time, never to himself. "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."

When a man says he must develop a holy life alone with God, he is of no more use to his fellow men: he puts himself on a pedestal, away from the common run of men. Paul became a sacramental personality; wherever he went, Jesus Christ helped Himself to his life. Many of us are after our own ends, and Jesus Christ cannot help Himself to our lives. If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no ends of our own to serve. Paul said he knew how to be a "door-mat" without resenting it, because the mainspring of his life was devotion to Jesus. We are apt to be
devoted, not to Jesus Christ, but to the things which emancipate us spiritually. That was not Paul's motive. "I could wish my self were accursed from Christ for my brethren" - wild, extravagant - is it? When a man is in love it is not an exaggeration to talk in that way, and Paul is in love with Jesus Christ.

there is so much in here, that i hardly know where to begin. okay, so maybe i do know where to begin: "We have no right in Christian work to be guided by our affinities; this is one of the biggest tests of our relationship to Jesus Christ." Ouch. How often do i even come close to passing this test? Has there ever been a day when i was completely free of my own agenda? If there has been, i cannot recall it. even when during missions,there i am with all my demands.

"If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no ends of our own to serve." This seems so elusive, having no ends of my own, but i have to work towards this. i have to learn to serve whether or not the people i am serving appreciate, acknowledge or accept it. i must learn to love and to always hope when i am dealing with people. i must push past my tendancy to be hopelessly jaded.

may Paul's attitude be reflected in me...

a new friend...

last night, quite unexpectedly, i discovered a poet who was unknown to me, and while our acquaintance is quite new, already his words have made an impact on my life.

here are some such words:

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

~William Stafford

"For it is important that awake people be awake..." so many of my struggles are rooted in my ability to not pay attention to what is going on around and within me.

it's time to wake up.

the choice

it is 6:39am. and while i have only been conscious today for a short time, i am already less than impressed with some of the thoughts that have been running through my head.

i want to kill the incredibly loud and annoying dog upstairs...
i've worried about what i will wear today...
...trust me, the list goes on, i won't bore you.

then i sat down here, and right next to my computer i left a book open last night. in this book, Simone Weil is walking through the Lord's prayer, going into detail through each phrase. This is what she says about the, "give us this day our deaily bread..." part:

"Christ...is always there at the door of our souls, wanting to enter in, though he does not force our consent. if we agree to his entry, he enters; directly we cease to want him, he is gone. we cannot bind our will today for tomorrow; we cannot make a pact with him that tomorrow he will be within us, even in spite of ourselves. our consent to his presence is the same as his presence. consent is an act; it can only be actual, that is to say in the present. we have not been given a will that can be applied to the future..."

i needed to hear this today. i don't think i would ever consciously say, 'okay Jesus, it's time for you to go, i've got other things i need to do now.' but unknowingly, i say it many times a day, with my attitude, the things i choose to let my mind dwell on, the times i choose to worry about what can only be considered trivial in light of eternity, and the list goes on.

i cannot worry about tomorrow, or even later today. i only have this moment to exercise my will and let Jesus in, and i only have this moment not to choose to ask him to leave. thoreau said, "i wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life and not when i had come to die, discover that i had not lived.” this is my prayer for this moment.

dreaming in french

i want to go back to paris.

i want to start my day by walking past notre dame on my way to the boulangerie.

i want to visit the l'orangerie. the rodin museum. the musee d'orsay. st chappell. the pantheon.

i want to get up early in the morning, and walk the streets of the latin quarter amidst the parisians on their way to work and school.

i want to rediscover the person i was when i was there.

flying into the wind

yesterday i saw a bird trying to make its way to a telephone wire. the wind was working against the poor guy, and he was flapping his wings madly in an effort to go nowhere.

sadly, this is how i have been feeling lately. being the beginning of a new year, it's naturally a time to look at life & evaluate, and i honestly don't like all that i see. when it comes to living a holy life, my life is still more of a 'don't' than a 'do'. there is still too much anger, pettiness and...well, me in me.

back to the bird...had he given up, stopped working to make his way to a place to land, he would have fallen, probably right in front of my car, and it would have been over. the only way for him to live to was to not give up, even though at times progress was no where to be seen.

this is where i must live. i must continue to wrestle, struggle and fight for holiness, even when the enemy i am fighting is myself.

the alternative isn't an option.

rejoice

it's christmas eve morning. everyone is still asleep, and i am sitting at dad's computer with a perfect cup of starbuck's ethiopia sidamo blend. all is well.

as a rule, the christmas season makes me reflective, and this one is no different. given the fact that i have watched the new version of 'miracle on 34th street' more times than i can count, the last time being just a week ago, one of the lines that usually strikes me, struck me again. richard attenborough, [santa claus], explaining why his role as the guy in red is important, says, "I'm a symbol of the human ability to be able to suppress the selfish and hateful tendencies that rule the major part of our lives." hmmm.

throughout this past week, i have been painfuly aware of the power of these selfish & hateful tendancies in my life, and how much control they have. and while i am not ashamed to admit that a small part of me still believes in santa claus, i know that nothing he, or his symbolic power can do can ever rid me of all that is dark inside, and make me deserving of anything more than a lump of coal.

enter Jesus. Emmanuel. God with us. Not someone far away who drops in once a year, bringing down a judgement on whether we've been good or bad and rewarding us accordingly, but God with us...seeing the small good we do, but more importantly, seeing all that is in us, including the dark, hateful, selfish parts, and who chooses to love us anyway. Chooses to save us from our worst enemy: ourselves. Who, all those years ago, could look ahead to his death, and beyond through all of history up to this moment, and determine that in spite of all the bad, horrible things that lay between his birth and here, that nothing is so horrible, in our world or in us that God would change his mind and abort the plan.

o come, o come Emmanuel.

a cage

"What do you fear, my lady?"
"A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire." (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)

today a friend of mine afforded me a rare glimpse of my life, as seen through his eyes, and part of what was revealed surprised me.

i am afraid. i don't want to be, and i don't want to admit it, but i am afraid. as i sat there listening to him, this quote from LOTR came to me, and i realized that if i don't move beyond this, and face down the dragon which daunts me, i will meet the end of my life with the realization that the cage that held me back was my own doing.

“Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.” ~Raymond Lindquist