A Marvelous Prospect

I’ve been in a bit of a spiritual trough lately. Maybe you’ve noticed I’ve not been waxing poetic in these pages very often, regularly and frequently providing you with bits of my wisdom and discernment. I could rant about the political news and its effect on me, but that’s the subject of another blog. No. this is a spiritual issue I’m dealing with, and it’s a very complex issue.

In the movie Finding Forrester, Sean Connery’s character advises the young writer – “write first with your heart, then with your head.” I take that to mean – get your ideas down on paper – from your heart – then go back and grammar-check it afterwards. Well, in this blog I’m giving you my heart without the grammar-check.

So here are some random thoughts that are loosely coupled, but which make a whole to my thinking.

1. The Centurions program is described as a “distance learning venture for transforming its participants, who can then transform their churches and turn the world right-side up.” Indeed. What’s published at Breakpoint is just the reading and movie list, so one might conclude that the focus is the books and the movies. Easy enough.  for me – I like to read, and I watch way too many movies. But they are only a small part of the whole. In fact, they are, if I might use an analogy, the furniture in the building that is the Centurions program. The steel trusses that actually make the building, providing walls and a roof are the 30 weeks of daily devotional reading (and writing). Not so easy for me; something I’ve struggled with most of my life. Something that requires discipline that I’m short of. Good. Important. Essential to life. But hard. (This is sort of the “flies” part of my blog post – rotten fruit draws flies.)

2. David preached yesterday from Acts 18 on commitment and turned quickly to one of his themes – there is no value in performing religious rituals. If I “spend time with God” because I’m supposed to, don’t bother. If I think that there is magic in a quiet time, I need to think again. Ritual performed for its own sake is empty and fruitless. I concur.

As an illustration, David told the story of the old tobacco-loving preacher who just loved his cigarettes and his chewing tobacco. Sometimes he prayed, “God deliver me from this stuff.” but he didn’t mean it. He loved it. Then one day he was honest with God – “God, I just LOVE tobacco. I love it. But if you want me to stop, then please help me to stop.” Within weeks he discovered that his desire, his taste for tobacco, was gone.

3. Today’s “My Utmost for His Highest” from Oswald Chambers is entitled “What’s Next To Do?” (Oswald June 8 – just Google it) It says in part, “Examine where you have become sluggish, where you began losing interest spiritually, and you will find that it goes back to a point where you did not do something you knew you should do.”

Mix and serve – fruit:

There are things I should do. (“Oughtness” is what makes us human. We understand there are things that need to be done, and we recognize that we’re not doing them. Animals have no such concept.) They are hard. They require discipline. Do I do them out of duty? Perhaps. What’s wrong with a sense of duty?

Here the idea of weight-lifting comes to mind – sorry, another analogy. I know some people take pleasure in lifting weights, though the idea is beyond comprehension to me. I like my ducks. (Stay with me.) Ducks like corn. Corn comes in 50# bags. Managing 50# bags is a burden for me. Maybe if I lifted weights routinely, caring for my ducks would be more of a pleasure and less of a burden. Finally, the more time you devote to lifting weights, the easier and more pleasurable it’s likely to become. And you will probably live longer.

Now, isn’t it the same in the spiritual realm? Who wants to “lift weights” in quiet times, in reading God’s word to us, in journaling? Not me! But then when I need to lift a 50# bag of “spiritual corn,” I’m ill-prepared. It strains my back and puts me in bed, useless.

Tying 1, 2, & 3 from above together – my despondency in the Centurions work is perhaps because I’ve just been re-arranging the furniture, not building the framework in a disciplined manner. Like the preacher and his love for tobacco, being honest with God, I’m easily distracted and can find scores of other stuff to do instead of getting alone with him – every day. As Chambers says in today’s lesson, growth comes through obedience (doing)  – obedience I desperately need God’s help to achieve. I’m glad he will provide it when I ask humbly.