There is something deeply embedded into our culture that communicates to us that the cure for tension is to leave. That when the going gets rough, then it's time to uproot and find your dreams elsewhere.
We can find a million excuses as to why indeed we should leave.
We can even stamp the idea as God's will for our life.
Thinking and believing that we were designed for something greater. Something bigger.
My question would be
bigger than what?
Bigger than the community you are placed in?
Bigger than the real people that are really around you that are really
made in God's likeness?
I heard it once said that Satan's biggest objective was to take center stage in God's story, and since he's failed to do so, his biggest objective now is to convince us that the center stage belongs to us.
We all ask a lot of questions concerning our lives, and they are mostly legitimate questions.
I think the danger is when the question, "Where does God want me to be?"
trumps the question, "Who does God want me to be?"
When we focus so intensely on the geography of God's plan it can be easy to assume when things get rough that it's God's will we should leave.
If we were to take a closer look at the question
"Who does God want me to be?"
We might just discover that the kind of person God desires for us to be is the kind of person
who stays.
After all, God has an infinite reputation for staying. It's not hard to find in scripture. He stayed with the Israelites. He stayed with kings and prophets. Jesus stayed with his disciples. He stayed with sinners. With dirty people. People everyone else had left.
he stayed with you.
The parable for eternity that marriage is is one of permanence. Covenant.
So what sense does it make that we - being made in God's likeness, should be creatures who leave when things get hard?
When people get unbearable?
When jobs get overwhelming?
When relationships need
too
much
reconciling.
I'm guilty.
I'm guilty of leaving. Of looking for a bigger, better story.
Of trying to create for myself a world where I was center stage. I did it because
I'm
prideful
selfish
think and act like I'm better than everyone else
convinced I'm somehow special.
so when I left, I left some wreckage.
I left
relationships that needed words of healing. that needed apology.
friendships that needed investing. that needed commitment.
courses that needed better grades. that needed harder work ethic.
....
and a library that needed paid late fees.
In some fashion or another,
I made a lot of enemies here, and somewhere along the road I just decided that it would be
easier to leave than to
deal with it.
and now, through a lot of grace
and a lot of sovereignty
I'm back.
and I have a lot of work to do.
Stability has wisdom - and this is what she says -
when you are tempted to leave, remember that you are made in the image of a bigger God.
a God who stayed
with you.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
roots.
"Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; it's leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."
Have you ever been at a place in your life where you allowed yourself to plant roots deeply?
Maybe it's something that you don't really think about. Maybe you've been in one place for so long that you feel like your roots have gone deep, but the tree is withering away.
Or perhaps you are like me.
Perhaps you can't stay in one place for too long.
You get anxious.
You see,
When you stay in one place for too long, and start to plant deep roots, it's never long after that you begin to leave a trail of mistakes and messes. That ground that you once thought of as rich soil - soil that would heal you. Soil that would save you. It starts to look a little bit more like dust, and before you know it you are ready to leave. Ready to find the next spot of land that might cause you to bear fruit.
The problem is, you keep moving.
Once you begin to plant roots, you begin to see how dirty the dirt is.
It's never how you imagined it. Never how you wanted it to be.
The worse part of it is that due to your refusal to let your roots dig down deep - due to your constantly moving from place to place, you miss the beautiful things that are happening.
You miss the beautiful messes that are taking place.
And while you were busy moving from here to there
others were planting roots.
Others were saying, 'Yes, this is where I must grow; where God has planted me.'
And before you know it, you'll come back to the field that you tried to grow in, and it will be a forest of seed you used to know. Seeds that became trees while
you were too worried about where the right place to be a tree was.
You start to see that the geography of your growth was never important. It never was about you being a tree here or you being a tree there.
You were just
called to be a tree.
"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? 'I the LORD searches the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.'"
This week I was rewarded according to what my deeds deserved.
I am finally beginning to see the need for my roots to go down deep. To learn what it means to be stable - to learn what it means when everyone and everything else is saying 'GO', to listen to the Voice that is saying, 'stay'.
By nature, I'm a very desperate person.
What's discouraging is this time
I was careful.
This time, I didn't immediately act on my feelings.
I waited.
Despite the desperation that flows through my veins, I stayed put until I felt the time was right.
And then it happened. It felt right. I was ready to plant roots. I was ready to go into that forest where I knew no trees and commit to not uproot. I wanted to know the messes of the soil and learn to love and live with them.
but maybe a day too late.
I don't know why I never seem to learn that when God gives you a puzzle piece of wisdom, you can't build the rest of your own pieces to fill the picture, thinking that you know what it's going to look like.
So now,
I know I need to plant roots.
I thought I knew what that looked like... but I can't yet say that I do.
All I know is this:
in order for there to be a bloom, there has to be deep, deep roots.
And infinitely,
God's grace runs deeper than any roots.
But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; it's leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."
Have you ever been at a place in your life where you allowed yourself to plant roots deeply?
Maybe it's something that you don't really think about. Maybe you've been in one place for so long that you feel like your roots have gone deep, but the tree is withering away.
Or perhaps you are like me.
Perhaps you can't stay in one place for too long.
You get anxious.
You see,
When you stay in one place for too long, and start to plant deep roots, it's never long after that you begin to leave a trail of mistakes and messes. That ground that you once thought of as rich soil - soil that would heal you. Soil that would save you. It starts to look a little bit more like dust, and before you know it you are ready to leave. Ready to find the next spot of land that might cause you to bear fruit.
The problem is, you keep moving.
Once you begin to plant roots, you begin to see how dirty the dirt is.
It's never how you imagined it. Never how you wanted it to be.
The worse part of it is that due to your refusal to let your roots dig down deep - due to your constantly moving from place to place, you miss the beautiful things that are happening.
You miss the beautiful messes that are taking place.
And while you were busy moving from here to there
others were planting roots.
Others were saying, 'Yes, this is where I must grow; where God has planted me.'
And before you know it, you'll come back to the field that you tried to grow in, and it will be a forest of seed you used to know. Seeds that became trees while
you were too worried about where the right place to be a tree was.
You start to see that the geography of your growth was never important. It never was about you being a tree here or you being a tree there.
You were just
called to be a tree.
"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? 'I the LORD searches the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.'"
This week I was rewarded according to what my deeds deserved.
I am finally beginning to see the need for my roots to go down deep. To learn what it means to be stable - to learn what it means when everyone and everything else is saying 'GO', to listen to the Voice that is saying, 'stay'.
By nature, I'm a very desperate person.
What's discouraging is this time
I was careful.
This time, I didn't immediately act on my feelings.
I waited.
Despite the desperation that flows through my veins, I stayed put until I felt the time was right.
And then it happened. It felt right. I was ready to plant roots. I was ready to go into that forest where I knew no trees and commit to not uproot. I wanted to know the messes of the soil and learn to love and live with them.
but maybe a day too late.
I don't know why I never seem to learn that when God gives you a puzzle piece of wisdom, you can't build the rest of your own pieces to fill the picture, thinking that you know what it's going to look like.
So now,
I know I need to plant roots.
I thought I knew what that looked like... but I can't yet say that I do.
All I know is this:
in order for there to be a bloom, there has to be deep, deep roots.
And infinitely,
God's grace runs deeper than any roots.
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