“THE GOD OF GREAT REVERSALS”
I was reading Psalm 113 this morning, during my devotional time, when I noticed an intriguing comment in the NIV Study Bible (page 1141). “This psalm highlights the Lord’s character and nature, especially his ability to accomplish great reversals.”
Have you ever had “a great reversal?” There are certainly bad reversals that are huge. I have had a few of them in my lifetime. Some (no, most) have been caused by own bad choices. Such reversals are painful. But, as someone has said, you can learn a lot more from 10 minutes of real pain than from ten years of pleasure. Still, pain is pain.
But there are also good reversals that are quite large. You lose a job, and immediately find one that you love that also pays more. You lose a close relationship, but come to realize that it was not healthy for you, and that your present relationship is exceedingly good for both of you over the long haul. You are pretty sure that you have a life-threatening health issue, but find out that it is something that can be treated by a course of antibiotics.
The Bible has stories and teachings that deal with both kinds of reversals. Kings in the Old Testament start off well, and then go off the rails. Slaves are liberated, and then start complaining and remembering “the good old days”—when they were slaves!
But then, there are also a lot of great reversals that are also good. Joseph is sold into slavery (by his brothers, no less), but eventually is second in command in Egypt. Eventually, he is even reconciled with his brothers—sort of.
Daniel is thrown into a pit with hungry appetites, but strangely enough, they are fasting that particular night. Come the morning, Daniel walks out of the lions’ den unscathed.
The New Testament is full of reversals as well. Saul (a.k.a., Paul) hounds believers in Jesus to the death, but Saul himself is stalked by the Hound of Heaven, until Saul is run down on the road to Damascus. Paul now became a leading proponent of the very Jesus he had despised.
But the greatest and best reversal of all was Jesus himself. Tortured, crucified, dead, and buried. A few days later, Jesus was alive.
Now, that is a grand reversal! What great reversal do you need in your own life?
“The Four-A Approach to Handling Emotions and Everything Else”
Today’s blog post is brought to you by the letter “A”!
A friend of mine and I were talking about handling anger. He made some very helpful observations. Between the two of us, I have come up with an interesting way of handling anger and other emotions—or anything else, for that matter. It may or may not be original. However, it might be helpful, and helpful is so much more important than original.
So, here is my Four-A Approach to Handling Anger, Other Emotions, and Whatever Else.
A-1: AWARENESS.
Be aware of what you are feeling and what is happening within and around you. Slow down, and become increasingly aware of what might be underlying what is happening within you and around you.
A-2: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.
Acknowledge to God, to yourself, and to another human being what you are feeling and what is happening within and around you. This will help you to become even more aware.
A-3: ACCOUNTABILITY.
Make yourself accountable to at least one other human being. This should be someone who accepts you as you are, but doesn’t put up with any crap.
A-4: ACTION.
People are made for action. However, it needs to be purposeful action, and the purpose needs to be a good purpose. What good, purposeful action are you and I going to take to manage and appropriately express our feelings, thoughts, words, and actions today?
Of course, none of these words that start with the letter “A” is easy. For example, just try being aware for one day or one hour. It ain’t easy! However, I suspect they might work.
I think I’ll try practicing these things, and find out!
“Fully Engaged with Life”
My twelve-step sponsor made an intriguing comment a week or so ago. He often does. But this one has gotten stuck in my heart: “Be fully engaged,” he counseled me.
Sounded good, but I didn’t know the origin of the word “engage.” So I did what modern people do when they don’t know something: I googled it! Here is what I found out about the origin of the word.
“en·gage . . .
late Middle English (formerly also as ingage ): from French engager, ultimately from the base of gage1. The word originally meant ‘to pawn or pledge something,’ later ‘pledge oneself (to do something),’ hence ‘enter into a contract’ (mid 16th century), ‘involve oneself in an activity,’ ‘enter into combat’ (mid 17th century), giving rise to the notion ‘involve someone or something else.’
gage1
ɡāj/
archaic
noun
- 1. a valued object deposited as a guarantee of good faith.
verb
- 1. offer (a thing or one’s life) as a guarantee of good faith.”
So, being engaged involves putting yourself or something you value into something. Being engaged means that I am not a bystander (innocent or otherwise) in my life.
I am sitting in a hotel room at Myrtle Beach, watching the waves coming ashore. The sun is up. It is, of course, easy to be engaged at this moment. I am here with my sweetheart, enjoying a few days of vacation. It is wonderful.
Yet, even here, it is easy to disengage. After getting settled into our room last evening, my wife and I went for a walk along the beach. It wasn’t crowded, but there were some folks enjoying the late afternoon. There were kids playing in the sand, and some kids were wading in the shallows. It was wonderful.
But, of course, me being me, I thought of our trips to the beach when our own children were little. And, at that point, it was only a stone’s throw to regret for the dad I was and the dad I was not. The past is sand in the cogs of being fully engaged.
The future can also mess with being fully engaged. I worry. I worry about retirement. Will we have enough to live on, and enough to do some fun things? I worry about health—my wife’s and my own. I worry about how much longer I will be able to teach, to wait tables, to mow the grass. I worry because the strawberries may be ripening (and rotting) while we are at the beach. I worry about the fact that we only have a few days at the beach. I worry about whether the weather will be nice. I worry about . . .
Well, listing these worries is making me more worried (which is one more thing to worry about), so I’ll stop. You get the point.
If the past and the future can interfere with being fully engaged, I now know what full engagement might look like. It means being completely present.
I started this blog post at home, looking out my window on a grey April day. I was looking out the window, watching the maple seeds twirling toward their destiny. I think that I was fully engaged.
I am finishing this post at the beach, with the sun streaming through my window. I think that I am fully engaged.
Thanks, sponsor, for the very needful reminder!
“My To-Do Lists and God’s Priorities”
Sometimes, I confuse my to-do list with what should be my priorities.
Take this morning, for example. My affirmation to my sponsor (as well as to myself and God) was as follows:
“Today, by God’s grace, I will spread mulch, do some (hopefully) creative writing, and work at Bob Evans. I will do these things because they are fun to do, because they need doing, because they may benefit other people, and because they will glorify God when they are done in the right way with the right attitude.” (Down to Earth Believer, affirmation sent to 12-step sponsor.”)
But then, I turned to a daily retreat sponsored by the Jesuits and Loyola Press, and read the following reflections on 1 Corinthians 13:13, which says “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
“This scripture passage offers us a chance to reflect on our priorities. It tells us that, at the end of the day, it won’t be the school we graduated from, our annual income, or our zip code that matters. Rather, we will be judged by our fidelity to God, our hope in Christ and the power of his Resurrection, and the love that we show ourselves and our neighbor. It’s as simple as that.” (Excerpt from the “3-Minute Retreat” for today, April 27, 2017, http://www.loyolapress.com/retreats/love-lasts-forever-start-retreat.)
This invited me to do a little probing of my to-do list. Here is the question: Do my priorities match up with and reflect God’s priorities for all believers? In other words, am I going to choose to spread mulch in a loving, hopeful, faith-filled way?
This is one of those questions that I can’t always answer, and don’t want to answer. I don’t always like other people’s answers to my questions. I often flat-out detest my own answers.
My answer will not come in the form of this post. It will not come primarily in terms of my feelings or thoughts. My answer will come as I put each shovelful of mulch in the wheel barrow and spread it around our flower beds.
Ultimately, only God can decide how lovingly, how hopefully, how faithfully I mulched the flower beds. But I can at least live with the question.
Postscript: I wrote this blog yesterday, so that I could post it early this morning. I got the mulching pretty well done. I’m going to the chiropractor this morning.
“Overcoming ______________ (fill in the blank): Breaking the Wizard’s Wand”
Years ago, a Bible study group that I led was discussing how we tend to let other people define us. This is especially the case when we are little. In particular, parents, siblings, school classmates, teachers, and coaches have a huge influence on us.
One of the members of the study group used the analogy of a wizard. Wizards have wands, with which they can wield a lot of power for good or for ill. When we are little, we don’t have much (if any) choice about who has power over us.
However, as we mature, we ourselves actually are the ones who give people their wands, although we may not realize that we’ve given them power over us.
Then, this member of the group went on to say something I’ll never forget: “When we are adults, we have the right to demand that a wand be returned to us, if the wizard hasn’t used the wand for our good.”
So, here is what I sometimes do: I visualize a certain person to whom I have given a wand. If I do not like the way in which they are practicing their wizardry, I visualize myself saying to them, “I need the wand that I gave you back.”
Then, I visualize myself breaking the wand over my knee.
A friend of mine (who is so insightful that he should be doing his own blog) said to me this morning, “Resentment gives other people a lot of control over us.” Indeed it does! Perhaps it would be helpful if I broke a wand named “resentment” over my knee. Resentment is a wand that places me under an evil spell in a hurry.
Above all, as I have said in an earlier blog, I tend to resent myself. I make a lousy wizard for anyone else. But I’m not good at being a wizard to myself, either. Paul said that he didn’t want the Corinthians judging others, and that he himself did not judge even himself (1 Corinthians 4:3). Perhaps if I stopped judging myself, I would stop having so many resentments against myself.
However, no matter what you want to overcome, whether it is resentment or something else, it may be time that you broke some wizards’ wands. That is why this post is entitled “Overcoming ____________.” You fill in the blank. Whatever evil spell you are under, you have the right to break the wizard’s wand. Indeed, you have not only the right; indeed, you have the responsibility to do so.
And then there is God. God is not a wizard. God does not wield a wand. Rather, God is a loving heavenly Father, who wants all of us to be free. I believe that God will help you to identify the evil, controlling wizards in your life. If you aren’t strong enough to break their wands, rest assured that God is able to do so.
“Preferences Become Cages”
I have a friend with whom I frequently talk on the phone. I find him to be a wonderful blend of kind and insightful.
I mentioned to him this morning that I am trying to get over my preferences. Could he pray for me about that? He said something that I immediately thought was profoundly true: “Preferences become cages.”
Yes!
I have noticed that when I get what I want, I am not necessarily happy. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I remember ever getting what I wanted, and being tremendously happy with it. Of course, I may just be getting old and forgetful. However, I doubt it.
But what’s wrong with having preferences, you ask? Probably, not much.
It’s just that, when I have preferences, pretty soon, the preferences have me. Any time that any material or emotional or relational thing possesses me, I’m possessed. And possession (demonic or otherwise) is not good.
Also, when I have preferences, they come prepackaged with resentment. The resentment may not kick in right away. It may lie dormant for years. But then, at some point, I don’t get my preferences, and the resentment becomes active.
Furthermore, preferences keep me from the happiness of surprise. One of the reasons very small children enjoy playing peek-a-boo may be that they have not yet developed preferences about when they will see you. (Some folks, by the time they are teenagers, prefer not to see their parents at all.) Whether preferences are met or not, the happiness of surprise evaporates.
Finally, preferences keep me from making new friends, learning new things, experiencing the moment in an open-minded way. Preferences turn me into a prisoner of my own expectations.
On second thought, maybe there is a lot that is wrong with preferences.
I don’t know what hell is like, and would rather not find out, thank you! However, I wonder if it isn’t a place where we are imprisoned with our increasingly precise preferences.
Stay out of hell! Okay? I’ll try to stay out of it as well.
“Sunsets, Ontology, and What Impresses Young Children”
We had a young couple and their family over for dinner last evening. There were two boys, about six and four, along with a baby girl. The ground was too soggy for the boys to play out in the yard much, so they played games inside. They wanted to see what was upstairs, but mom and dad put the kibosh on that. Just before they left, however, my wife escorted them upstairs for a look around. They were quite impressed.
What impressed them most were the whirlpool (which doesn’t work) and my window on the west. It had been a very grey day, but just as my wife was taking the boys on the tour, the setting sun broke through, and streamed through the red curtain at my window. The boys were quite taken with the sunset through my red curtain!
That may be, in part, because children are into ontology. Don’t be frightened by that word, even if you’re not a philosopher. Ontology simply means “the systematic study of the ‘is-ness’ of things—that is, of their essence or being.
Well, maybe it isn’t that simple after all. If a person is studying essence, perhaps—at that very moment, and by that very action—the person is missing the essence. The boys were not studying the sunset through my red curtain. Rather, they were experiencing that sunset.
Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet, observes that ontology is being completely outside oneself, and that small children are perhaps one of the best examples of ontology. “In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself. He has thrown himself completely into whatever it is that he is doing.”
I am entirely too self-involved to be into ontology most of the time. However, I think I’m getting a little better. As I write this, an achingly lovely day is dawning. New leaves on the trees are swaying. I hear my wife downstairs, running water in the shower. Lovely sounds.
The word for today is ontology.
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