My life is complacent and it frustrates me.  I desire to pursue my passion to battle this complacency in my own life and, more broadly, in the Church as a whole.  This blog was one way to “move forward” and begin something that could potentially make a difference.

The problem is that once I got into it a few weeks, not only did I lose much of the initial excitement and drive to post weekly or even bi-weekly, but also my friend who was to post on this joint venture lost all motivation  for it as well.

A pattern has revealed itself.  Several times in the past few years my friend and I have barely started various ventures like this only to quickly find our motivation and excitement for the idea to fade.  And thus we abandon the project, figuring that it wasn’t “it.”  We still find value the process of testing various “doors,” even if the conclusion has been “this isn’t it” every time so far.

So some frustration sinks in as the search for how I am to work out my passion continues.  Various questions arise: “Am I trying to ‘do’ something when at this point I really need to simply ‘be?’”  Similarly, “Am I forcing it?”  and seemingly contradictorily, “Am I lazy?”  But also, “Do I already know what I should do, but am ignoring it?”

So now, after much discussion, thinking, and praying, I’ve decided to pursue my doctorate in order to teach at the college level and/or work with the Church in some capacity.  Again, it is a process of testing, with many, many steps even before acceptance into a good school.  Through this process, I pray that God further directs me either by confirming or redirecting my path.

So this blog, or at least how it was originally intentioned, will be abandoned.  I will still check it often for other replies and posts.  If there are none, then I’ll check it much less frequently.  Maybe it’ll morph into serving as a “documentary” of this journey I’m on of sorts.  And maybe it’ll take on a different shape through replies and postings.  We could run with that. 

But that’s up to you.  I have no desire to post simply to post.  But to carry on a discussion is a different matter…

The past few weeks (sorry for the large gap of time between postings!) have highlighted the spiritual significance of ordinary stuff in ordinary life as well as thoughts on how to then view the classically termed “spiritual disciplines” and their affect on us spiritually.  But perhaps the greatest potential individual heart-throb of them all has not yet been mentioned, even though it has had incalculable effect through countless ages.  For better or for worse.  Generally for worse.

Yeah, its money.

A sense of panic enveloped me after first reading the beginning of Jesus’ most famous sermon as recorded in Luke 6.  It is hard hitting and direct, leaving me with a bruise.  My first response was to find a way to justify why it does not pertain to me.  Surely some interpretive tricks exist to forge a path out.  And from my various reading, it seems that it is most Biblical interpretors’ response as well. 

The bruise-maker is a list of blessings for the poor and corresponding woes to the rich. 

Woe to the comfortable, well-fed, entertained, socially desirable rich. 

But wait a minute.  I’m comforable, well-fed, entertained, and certainly not ostracized.  And in comparison to most of the world’s population, I’m rich.  Woe to me??  WHY??  What is it about those who have money that garner such indictive chastisement, even a sense of lament?

In short, I believe the answer is based upon the enormous effect money has upon the heart. 

The list of woes began to pop out at me: woe to me because I’ve invested so much in comfort, the satisfaction of my hungers, the entertainment of my mind, and my appearance.  Jesus lists the exact things I typically pursue with my excess money.  Temporary pleasures and possessions.

I’m literally and tangibly investing in stuff with little to no eternal value.  When I’m dead, these “investments” will vanish.  But I want to be about so much more.  About what’s actually important.  And invest accordingly with my “richness.”

Unlike some Christians in centuries past, the call here is not to sell all my possessions and become literally poor.  The call is to protect the heart from the snare of money.  To take the enormous responsibility of having money seriously, that my wealth does not exist for personal satisfactions beyond my basic needs, but to be used for eternal significance.

When the poor in Jesus’ day tithed, it was a sacrificial statement of their hearts.  In addition to feeling the intense hunger pains of every famine and the oppressive taxes owed to the Romans, the rich high priestly class (epitomized by the Pharisees) required a 17%-23% tithe of the poor’s total salary.  Often the dilemma the poor faced was to tithe or to eat.  Later in Luke, Jesus praised the tiny amount given by a widow in comparison to the large sums given by the rich.  The widow gave sacrificially.  And sacrifices hurt.

How easy it is for my heart to be wrapped up in pursuits of pleasure and possessions that don’t really matter while I appease my conscience by tithing and giving to charity out of my excess.  The heart is the issue.  Actions are secondary and proceed from it.  God wants my heart.

Now I’m realizing how extremely difficult it is to protect my heart from the snare of money.  It is hard to say no to things I can afford for the sake of giving money to less tangible yet more worthy causes.    Evidently my heart has been shaped too much by materialism.

How do we claw out of the strangle hold of money in a healthy and responsible way?  How do we foster a love of God rather than money and all its implications?

Jesus makes this call an imperative.  We could ignore it and be like the rich.  But woe to us if we do.  Or we could choose to push on into deeper life.  Such a push will take profound courage, surrender, and a supportive and intentional community. 

How do we do it?  How do we push deeper? 

Thoughts???

A Christian’s devotional life is a life devoted to God.  It is composed of every moment of every day.  So what of those traditional and special times of “personal devotions?”

“Quiet times,” “devotions,” “time spent with God,” or whatever we label those intentional times set apart to “focus upon God,” are a means to an end, not an end in and of themselves.  Like the rest of life, their purpose is to help us know and love God more.

We do not pray in order to pray better.  We do not read the Bible in order to read it better.  We do not meditate on God’s Word in order to meditate better.  We do not do any other spiritual discipline in order to do it better.  We exercise the disciplines in order to know and love God more. 

If we lose sight of the reason spiritual disciplines exist, we can easily become enslaved to them, feeling guilty if we skip them, immature if they bore us, or unfoundedly spiritual if we faithfully practice them.

The desire to better practice and grow within the spiritual disciplines is certainly healthy, as long as knowing and loving God more is the motivation and end.  Praying, reading, and meditating on truth provides an objective ground for our lives, serving to either validate or invalidate our subjective spiritual experiences and emotions.  

However, it is entirely possible to pray beautifully and emotionally, study Scripture responsibly and effectively, meditate on truth for hours, and yet remain far from God’s Kingdom.  The point has been missed.  Similarly in the end, Jesus will tell some who performed miracles in His name the He never knew them.  They had missed the point.  They focused upon the actions rather than the divine relationship.

My current devotional routine needs to be reconsidered.  Too often it is rushed, or shallow, or simply missing the point.  Too often duty or guilt motivates it.

Am I willing to recognize my current spiritual routine for what it is, knowing that means I must change something?  Maybe I suspend a certain discipline for a time in favor of another.  Maybe I simply go about the same disciplines differently, like praying out loud rather than quietly and praying honestly rather than pretending to be and feel more pious.  Like engaging my work as a spiritual discipline in itself by reflecting on it at the end to discover how it impacted my knowledge and love of God rather than simply moving on to the next thing.  Like meditating on a part of a Psalm rather than reading the entire song. 

The options are limitless.  But my yearning is the same: I don’t want to miss the point.

My part-time job for the 3 years I spent studying in seminary was physical and mindless.  My duty consisted of loading various types of semi-truck trailers full of packages as fast as I could, following the same method hundreds of times each day: read the package, scan it, load it.  Read it, scan it, load it.  Read it, scan it, load it.  It reeked of grunt work, a necessary inconvenience in my otherwise fragrant day of scholarship.  My ego politely demanded to be identified as a student rather than a package loader.  And students are about more important things.

Frequently, the pace of the work would get overwhelming.  My throat simply couldn’t stretch wide enough for all of the packages forcibly shoved down it.  I would grumble and occasionally throw packages out of frustration.  My mood turned dark and emotions boiled over.  The work soured from a simple inconvenience to an exacting chore.

Back in the spiritual and intellectual classroom, I encountered a fellow about 300 years old.  His way of life, encapsulated in the book The Practice of the Presence of God, revolutionized and simplified my thinking and spiritual life all at the same time.  His primary “part-time job” consisted of washing dishing for a monastery in Paris.  It defined mindless work.  The same chore, day after day.  Nothing special.  I could relate.

But for Brother Lawrence, cleaning the dirtied dishes was special.  He understood clearly the simple goal of life: to know and love God.  He basically echoed Jesus’ pronouncement of the greatest commandment.  Properly understood, all of life constitutes the means to that end.  “Special” devotional times such as prayer and Bible reading are not the only spiritual activities, the only means.  So is the mundane.  Perhaps especially the mundane.  Like washing dishes.  Or loading packages.

Ouch.  I grasped the point, even if the personal application hurt.  Perhaps my part-time job did not just embody the physical and mindless, but the profoundly spiritual.  And perhaps all of those past months of giving in to my natural reactions of the inconveniences of my job were lost opportunities for growth. Maybe they were lost defining moments in my life which could erase the wall between the so-called secular and sacred.

So I experimented with this truth at work.  And, unsurprisingly in retrospect, God met me there.  God made it clear to me how He wanted me to change, and He provided the power to do so.  Strangely enough, the mundane, secular chore of loading packages became the most effective means for building intimacy between God and myself during those months.

I learned about my true profession, that the more important thing I was really to be about wasn’t school or a later ‘important’ job anyway, but my relationship with the Creator of the universe within my everyday stuff.  I also learned about my identity, that I wasn’t primarily a package loader or even a student, but a lover of God.  And I learned about the details that make up life, that the mundane is spiritual, either for the better or worse, depending on how I interact with it. 

Now having been a couple years removed from my seminary graduation, I still struggle with implementing these truths in my whole life.  It is easier to just get through the day rather than moment by moment surrender to God.  But by God’s grace it is possible—to more fully live by more fully loving God in the midst of the common details of life.  To live within the worldly ordinary as the spiritually significant.