Showing posts with label Faithfulness. Show all posts

Sure, she looks real innocent in the picture above.  Pretty dress.  Wonderful smile.  Playful pose.  One would never guess from the above picture that Abigail is our "different" child.  By "different" I mean that she's willful.  She's different than our other four kids in that she can be defiant and manipulative in ways that the others just haven't been.  And with four other kids we think we've had some experience.

A week or so ago I took "The Short Louds" -- Abigail and her twin sister Bethany -- to a coffee shop on one of our Daddy Days.  Honestly, it was their choice.  I had offered a bicycle ride but was overruled.  So we walked on down.  We ate and drank and they played.  We checked mail.  And we walked on back.  This was a pretty long walk for the two of them but they could handle it.  Bethany complained about the walk but she bounced along beside me.  Abigail didn't bounce.  Abigail dragged behind, whining, moaning and generally being disagreeable.  There was a lot of yelling.

I could tell, as she dragged her feet and kept falling farther and farther behind, that SHE KNEW I wouldn't leave her behind.  And, SHE KNEW that by dragging her feet and fading and complaining she was getting on my nerves and she was getting her way.

Abigail's a smart four year-old.  She, already, is a master at manipulation.  She's always been the kind of kid that was very sure where the boundaries were.  And she was always very intentional about testing those boundaries...whether it's "stay in bed" or "don't hit your sister" or "no you can't have a chocolate."

Look, she's not a horrible child.  She can be so generous at times.  She can be bubbly.  She loves to snuggle with me.  She can be driven and competitive.  She's her own girl.

This comes through in the clothes she puts on (even though we've said it's too cold for shorts) to being very sure she doesn't want to eat the mashed potatoes or whatever it is on her plate.  She marches to the beat of her own drum and getting her to march to ours can be a struggle.  Even tonight as we got the young ones ready for bed and she always seemed to have one more thing to do...anything to delay the process...we were left with nothing left in our "bag of tricks."

She certainly makes life interesting.

But as I walked home from the coffee shop last week, Abigail whining and moaning behind me, I just shook my head.  Actually, I shook my head...and laughed.  I love that little girl so much but she is so good at making it difficult on Julie and me.  She's a conundrum.  And she's all ours.  We'd do anything for her.  But, boy, she makes parenting challenging.

This made me wonder if God, when faced with our willfulness, out of a mixture of love and frustration, just shakes his head.  Maybe he laughs a little as well.  He loves us so much...so much that he sent his son to die on our behalf.  He'd do anything for us.  And yet we disobey.  We test the boundaries.  We cross over them.  We drag our feet.  And we're all his.

May I live in such a way today that I don't give God any reason to shake his head at me today. And if he does...I hope he laughs a bit, too.

Image via WikipediaI sit here in the local coffee shop, Girdwood's "The Grind," music playing in the background, coffee at my side, laptop on...well...my lap.  For four days in a row I got up at 5:30 AM to get my son up and see him off to the High School bus at 6:10 AM.   And, for four days in a row, I went and got some exercise, at the gym or at home, before the others were up.  For days!  It's good for me.  I only need to do that about a billion more times and I might be in marginally better shape than I am as I sit here.

But, this morning, I didn't get up early.  I knew last night going to bed that I was tired.  This 5:30 AM thing was hard.  And it is made harder that I don't go to bed early enough and am known to be a horrible sleeper (waking up in the middle of the night each night).  So, at 11 PM last night, I knew that I needed some extra sleep, particularly if I had to be in Anchorage tonight and then early tomorrow AM all over again.

So, I slept. 

And I slept hard.

And I slept well.

But I find myself here at 9:11 AM in the morning and I've not exercised.  The day is coming on.  It's still dark, but that sun is going to come out over the mountains within the hour or so.  And I will not have exercised.

Will I be able to "squeeze it in?"  Will I "find the time?"  Will "something else come up?"

I really didn't make any official "resolutions" this year, but as I look at myself and my health and my future, I'm pretty well aware of the fact that getting into shape would be a good thing for me and all those who love me.  It's true.  So, I kind of unofficially resolved to lose 20 lbs in the next few months.  Vague, I know, but with some willpower I'm sure I could do it.

And I'm left with a quandary that many (or maybe ALL) of us find ourselves in.  It's a whole lot easier to make resolutions than it is to keep them.  You know.  Think of all the resolutions that never become habits...all those promises made internally that are not kept.

In the same way, as we look at our lives of faithfulness, it's a whole lot easier to say we're going to "read our Bibles every day" or "pray each morning" or "go to Sunday School" or work our giving up to "the Biblical tithe."  But, life happens.  Tough times come.  We feel sick.  We need extra sleep.  There's something better on TV.  It's too cloudy.  It's too rainy.  It's too sunny.  Whatever our excuse it.  It's a lot harder to keep our resolutions than it is to make them.  And we find ourselves in a coffee shop, alone with our thoughts at night, talking with our pastor or spouse or friend and realize that we haven't followed through on that faithful practice we had, at some level, convinced ourselves that we were going to follow through with.

Reminds me of the following scene from Seinfeld where he finds that a rental car company is better at "taking" reservations than "holding" them.

Here's the video:



And here's the text:

JERRY: I don’t understand…I made a reservation. Do you have my reservation?
AGENT: Yes, we do. Unfortunately, we ran out of cars.
JERRY: But, the reservation keeps the car here. That’s why you have the reservation.
AGENT: I know why we have reservations.
JERRY: I don’t think you do. If you did, I’d have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation–you just don’t know how to hold the reservation. And, that’s really the most important part of the reservation…the holding. Anybody can just TAKE them. [grabs chaotically at air]

I sit here in the coffee shop.  As the day goes on it's a lot harder to follow through with my commitment to get some exercise today. 

Will this post hold me accountable?

Perhaps that's the issue with our resolutions and our commitments to faithfulness.  We don't have any accountability.  So, how should we hold people accountable in the church?

I'm in Nashville, staying at the rather nice Renaissance Hotel next to the Convention Center for the School of Congregational Development for the United Methodist Church.  There's about 500 or so attendees, from what I've been told.  My guess is that there's more than that if worship last evening was any indication.  Lots of talks.  Lots of education.  Lots of worship.  And it's fun having a layperson from our congregation along as well.

My guess is that a lot of my blog posts from the next several days are going to include information that I've been given while here.   This is one of them.

One of the speakers (actually someone giving an introduction tonight) said the following:

AUTHENTIC ENTHUSIASM BRINGS FORTH HOSPITALITY AND EVANGELISM.

Anyone who has been reading any of this stuff knows that, with Shane Claiborne, and thinking missionionally, and talks of immigration and politics, a lot of my own personal conviction has centered on how we are called to be faithful with our finances.  We live in a world that tells us that we can't have enough and I'm still very moved by Compassion International's comment that the opposite of poor is not rich but enough.

I can't say I've come up with a lot of answers or what this all means for my life, but I'm asking the questions.  I was very happy to find the following comments from Stanley Hauerwas, Christian ethicist, over on Richard Hall's blog, Connexions.  The comments are from Hauerwas' article, "Can Greed Be Good?" at the ABC Religion and Ethics Site -- a site I'll have to look around a bit more.

Last Monday, as I drove Shane Claiborne into Anchorage for a meeting with some fellow clergy, he told how hard it is to keep families in his community in Philadelphia.  It's a rough place. There's gunfire most nights.  There's a constant battle with heroin in the neighborhood.   He recounted how a young man had died of gunshot wounds on his front steps earlier this year.  Oftentimes families come to his community and stick it out for a while...and then they decide to move...maybe a mile away...maybe two...maybe more.  But they move someplace a little safer, not quite so challenging.

But it's a place that healthy, wholesome families are needed.

I told Shane that our family has struggled with living in the privileged areas we've been able to live and that there's a part of myself that would find that wonderfully freeing...recognizing that it would be a challenge for myself and would involve sacrifice.  But, more difficult, it would be "forcing" a sacrifice on the part of my kids -- their scholastic education, their friendships, and perhaps their safety.  It would be asking a lot.  And while it may require faithfulness to make sacrifices in your own life, I think it requires a different level of faithfulness to require sacrifices by your children or your spouse.

Shane said, "Jim, if you and your family would like to come to Philadelphia to be part of what we have going on there, we'd love to have you.  We could always use some families who are willing to stay."

My answer was:  "That's an interesting offer, but I'm not that faithful yet."