I hopped on here to update my email address, and then realized that it’s been over a year since I posted anything. Trust me, I’ve had things to say. But I’ve been a bit preoccupied. Anyway, I thought to myself, “I should write a little something.” Just then the Audrey Assad cover of Jimmy Eat World’s The Middle came on. Look at you Holy Spirit, working through the pop-punk scene that shaped my identity. The middle. That pretty much sums up my entire existence right now. In the middle of writing papers that I’m distracting myself from by writing this blog. In the middle of having and infant and a toddler. In the middle of deciding if I want to start packing my house, because I’m in the middle of two jobs, two churches, two lives. In the middle of, well, a beautiful mess.
It’s like every day I wake up and I’m terribly confused about what I’m supposed to do next. And my natural inclination is to just start doing. Which makes sense, because there’s lots to do. But what I seem to be forgetting pretty regularly is to take some time to pray and reflect, to sit with God in this time and to beg the question, “am I ‘doing’ out of service to God or to myself?” Probably because I might not like the answer. Perhaps I’m doing better than I think (likely) but it still just reminds me of that time when the Israelites were camped outside of the Promised Land.
They were on the edge of something they’d been waiting for their whole lives. Moses had spoken to them and given them the rules and stipulations that they were meant to live by. They pretty much boiled down to choosing life by serving God, or choosing death by serving themselves and other gods. He closes out his final words to them by saying this:
Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Deuteronomy 30:19b-20
Then Moses went off and died. And I can’t help but think that the Israelites were just sitting around like, “now what? What are we supposed to do with our hands?
The Blessed Waiting Game
For Israel, well what they were supposed to do was hang tight, let Joshua (Moses’s successor) get his bearings straight, and then enter the land – which was going to be a daunting task. Oh and, like, don’t worship any false gods while you wait. For me it’s like, write a bunch of papers, keep a tiny human alive, pack, figure out how to teach the next person coming into my job how to navigate this cross-cultural ministry, and also prepare myself for a new role in a new place. Oh, and like, don’t worship any false gods while I wait. (You’d think that last part would be easy… but those suckers are sneaky in this day and age 😉 )
I’ve preached this sermon before, but the truth is that God is often deeply at work in the waiting. It’s just hard for us to slow down, be present, and see it. Whether our waiting time is drenched in absolute boredom and anticipation, or is filled with a massive to do list before we can get to the next phase, if we can’t be present then we won’t be able to see the ways that God is shaping our hearts and our lives.
So here’s what I’m proposing for myself, and maybe for you too if any of this resonates with you. Choose life. Like everyday let’s wake up and say, “today I’m choosing life” and then take some time to ask God to guide every moment, every decision, every check on the to do list. Ask God to hold our total allegiance and not to let go. Ask that everything that we do, every thought that we have might be inclined towards serving God’s purpose in our lives and God’s mission in our world.
See for Israel, choosing life was about choosing not to stray from the covenant promises they had made to God. And we live under covenant promises too, promises of eternal life and membership in the kingdom of God because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. For us, choosing life is about making eternal life and the kingdom of God a real thing right now – for ourselves and for the world around us. It starts with being, truly being, present here in the middle. In the middle of our changes, the middle of our messes, the middle place between the cross and the age to come, this is the place where God has chosen to speak to us now. Let’s listen.
oh and like, don’t worship any other gods 🙂
Grace and Recovery 