I have been given a lot of good advice in my life and I'm a bit depressed by how rarely I took notice or, when identifying the value of the advice still failed to act more wisely by applying it. Sometimes I did not identify advice gently given as advice. Sometimes I did not like the source of the advice and let that color my willingness to consider its worth. Sometimes I identified the advice as valuable but either could not figure out how to apply it, or tried to apply it and, when it proved challenging, drifted away from the better path.
The Bible is certainly full of good advice a huge number of people either don't value or don't follow with much success. In truth, I have little success trying to do better for any sustained period when I try to do it on my own. I either charge directly up the steepest face of the mountain or I keep wandering around the base of the mountain looking for the elevator. The middle ground is just a challenging place for me to live and a moderate and measured approach has always seemed rather dull to me.
So how have I manage to embrace change that has colored my life in such delightful ways? I always need help.
Not family and friends, frankly, who often want to help but are really giving directions based on GPS coordinates that need updating or simply have the wrong software installed for my journey. Not professional people, who have helped me in amazing ways over the years, and for whom I do enthusiastically thank God upon every remembrance, but who, like all of us, have human limitations and their perspective too is colored by their own journey. Not the "popular culture" which seems more tawdry with each passing year. Not the successful evangelist who is both limited by his human nature and besieged with a broad array of temptation so that the church on earth might be damaged in the eyes of the world.
In seeking help, I have had the same experience of which King David wrote in the 121st Psalm: My help comes from the Lord. This does not mean that those of us who seek passionately to follow Christ will be exempt from hurricanes, floods, famine, war, theft, illness, anxiety or even murder. It means that in the midst of all those calamities and any other you can name, in the midst of the days in and days out and years in and years out of our lifetime, in times that feel like blessings and those that don't, God will sustain us, attend our deepest needs, heal our deepest wounds, always hear us, always love us, always lift us up when we stumble and even fall. always light our way.
Oh, God of 2nd chances, God of rehabilitation and redemption, God of forgiveness and love, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you ........... AMEN
The Bible is certainly full of good advice a huge number of people either don't value or don't follow with much success. In truth, I have little success trying to do better for any sustained period when I try to do it on my own. I either charge directly up the steepest face of the mountain or I keep wandering around the base of the mountain looking for the elevator. The middle ground is just a challenging place for me to live and a moderate and measured approach has always seemed rather dull to me.
So how have I manage to embrace change that has colored my life in such delightful ways? I always need help.
Not family and friends, frankly, who often want to help but are really giving directions based on GPS coordinates that need updating or simply have the wrong software installed for my journey. Not professional people, who have helped me in amazing ways over the years, and for whom I do enthusiastically thank God upon every remembrance, but who, like all of us, have human limitations and their perspective too is colored by their own journey. Not the "popular culture" which seems more tawdry with each passing year. Not the successful evangelist who is both limited by his human nature and besieged with a broad array of temptation so that the church on earth might be damaged in the eyes of the world.
In seeking help, I have had the same experience of which King David wrote in the 121st Psalm: My help comes from the Lord. This does not mean that those of us who seek passionately to follow Christ will be exempt from hurricanes, floods, famine, war, theft, illness, anxiety or even murder. It means that in the midst of all those calamities and any other you can name, in the midst of the days in and days out and years in and years out of our lifetime, in times that feel like blessings and those that don't, God will sustain us, attend our deepest needs, heal our deepest wounds, always hear us, always love us, always lift us up when we stumble and even fall. always light our way.
Oh, God of 2nd chances, God of rehabilitation and redemption, God of forgiveness and love, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you ........... AMEN
RSS Feed
