Priorities

Today on the radio I heard the DJ talking about how life can get so busy.  He started listing things that commonly occupy our time saying, “…with everything going on with our family; like sports, tai kwon do, dance class, class projects, church, the dog needing this or that…”  I honestly can’t remember what he talked about after that, because I started pondering this idea of what we do with our time and how it’s so very centered on ourselves.  I also noted how he listed church near the end of his list and it made me think about how little relevance God really has in so many of our lives.  Like He is either an afterthought or someone who is an add-on to what we are already doing.

I read a book recently where the author posed a question: “If you knew that heaven was going to be a place free of pain and suffering, with all of the nicest things you can imagine, and all of your close friends and family present, but Jesus was not there, would that matter to you?”  I would actually guess that for many people it would not matter.  God, the one who created us, longs for us to want Him, trust Him, and look forward to the day where we will see Him, is an afterthought.  We think about Him on occasion or when we are in church, but our lives do not reflect that He really matters.

If our own children acted towards us the way we treat our relationship with God, our hearts would be crushed.  God is our creator and our Heavenly Father, so when we set Him aside I imagine He must feel the same way.  What if heaven isn’t going to be all about us and the good things we will have?  What if it’s going to be all about Him and finally being reunited with the One who loves us most of all?  Shouldn’t we be living our lives here on earth with that at the forefront of our minds and hearts?  And if we do, our priorities and how we spend our time will surely change.

Urban Butterfly

A little over a week ago my foraging 6 and 3 year old discovered some caterpillars eating milk weed on a grassy median between the parking lot across from our building and the street.  Every day they begged me to go back and check on them. 

Each day we saw them munching away on the leafy plants.  About five days ago we discovered one of them hanging in this cocoon:

We have a mesh “butterfly garden” that I purchased a few years ago so that we could watch the caterpillars you can order from a bug catalog go through their life cycle.  We decided to transfer the cocoon into our little mesh cage and watch it hatch out.  Yesterday after realizing that three of the caterpillars had probably been eaten, we rescued the last remaining one and transferred it along with some milkweed into our makeshift butterfly zoo. 

This morning J. watched it expectantly and was fortunate enough to see the first butterfly emerge in it’s new state.  A monarch butterfly!

We decided to take it out back to our building’s garden and release it.  As we watched it hesitantly crawl around on our hands and finally flap it’s little wings and take off, I was just taken by how amazing the life cycle of a butterfly really is.  I mean a bright black and yellow wiggly worm wraps itself up in a tight little suitcase hanging upside down, and a few days later an insect looking nothing like it’s former self emerges, with beautiful colored wings and a body that looks nothing like it once did.  That’s just incredible! 

I’m literally in awe that God does things like that in nature.  Things that just defy logic and understanding.  Better, I love how the caterpillar to butterfly transformation mirrors what God is able to do with our own lives when we realize we need Him to.  A similar process, with the same beautiful result: a transformed life!

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  “ 2Corinthians 5:17

Eleven Years Since 9/11

9.1.01 I moved to New York City.  It was the city I swore up and down that I would never live in.  I didn’t like the lights, the hustle and bustle, and the crazy subway system that made no sense to me.   I’ve learned since “never say never” should really be my motto.   I ended up here because New York City happened to have the best masters degree program in my chosen field and I came knowing no one, hopeful I could finish up my program and get out. 

Ten days later I was student teaching in a school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and saw the horrible events unfolding on the television set of the teacher’s lounge.  As I walked up Broadway heading back to my tiny graduate school dorm room, I looked at all the stunned faces around me, people desperately trying to get in touch with someone who might have some information about what was going on.  I felt like I was in a daze.

In the days to come I remember seeing the faces of missing people everywhere, plastered on the walls of the subway, on school yard fences.  I remember the winds shifting north and the horrible burning stench of the wreckage blowing in my dorm room window, while I cried on the phone to my mom, begging her to give me the advice I wanted: “Leave.  Come home.”  But she didn’t and I stayed. 

Eleven years later I’m still here.  

Not long after that awful day, as we all tried to heal, I fell in love with this city and how everyone stuck together.   Eleven years later and some days I can’t imagine calling another city home.  I can’t imagine my children growing up anywhere else.  When I look around the playground and see the faces of all of their friends and neighbors, different colors, backgrounds, beliefs; I thank God for keeping me here.  I thank Him for every beautiful thing about this gritty, noisy, lovely place, and every person He has put in my path.  I thank Him for everything that makes New York City unique. 

I went jogging this morning on our waterfront promenade and looked out at Lower Manhattan, at the new tower rising into the sky.  The sky is blue and crisp and clear just like that day eleven years ago.  Unlike all of the pain and uncertainty I felt that day, today I can honestly say I would rather be in no other place!

"I Do it Myself!": Lessons from a spirited toddler.

Some of T.’s favorite treats are those applesauce pouches that they sell in the baby food section of the supermarket.  I didn’t discover these until recently and they are a complete hit with her.  Today I took one out for her and she wailed when I began to unscrew the cap.  Knowing that a complete tantrum would ensue if I actually opened the thing, I handed it to her cap on.  She proceeded to spend the next thirty minutes trying to get the top off her self.  She gnawed on it, attempted to unscrew it with her uncoordinated fingers, threw it on the ground, and stomped her feet.  Every time I tried to take it from her to take the top off, she screamed.  I knew she wanted the applesauce, but she wanted to get to it BY HERSELF!

As I looked at her and inwardly laughed at the mayhem she was causing for herself, I began to think how we’re all so similar to this.  There are so many situations where God wants us to trust Him to do something for us, and all we do is kick and scream and try to the things ourselves.  I’ve done this countless times.  In the end we give up and let Him do it and when we look back on the whole debacle we think, “It would have been so much easier if I had just let God work on my behalf from the get go.”

Eventually T. exhausted her efforts and let me open the applesauce.  Ah the sweet joy in her smile was priceless when she tasted the fruit after so much time trying to get to it!

In the same way I so badly wanted to help my daughter, God wants to lift the burden in our lives of trying to do things in our own strength.  He is our Heavenly Father and just like earthly parents do for their children, He wants to do for us. 

“Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden…” Psalm 68:19 NASB

“Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.”  Psalm 55:22 NASB

He wants to help us.  But we have to let Him.

Struggles as Blessings

I once had someone tell me that they had everything they could ever need, so they didn’t have a need for God.  While this made me sad, I know chances are their circumstances will change at some point and maybe then so will their view about God. 

But what has really gotten me thinking lately is sort of the flip side of that statement, or at least related to it.  What about those of us who have put our faith in God and seek to serve Him but at the same time seek to avoid struggle?  Meaning, we say we love the Lord, but our expectation of the relationship we have with Him is that He will bless us, provide for us, pour out His riches on us, and remove difficult and challenging situations from our lives.  We might say otherwise, but our hearts live with that expectation deeply embedded in them.

What are the implications of this?  I think when our lives look too perfect, too prosperous, and too easy we limit the testimony that God can use to draw people to Him.  Think about it.  If your life is easy breezy and you’re trying to show people their need of God, they might think, “Sure she loves God.  He’s given her everything she has ever needed and asked for.  But what if the bottom fell out?  Would she still trust Him?”  They probably with just reason, might doubt that we would.

I just started reading the book of Job that is written about a man who loved God with all his heart.  He had it all.  But one day Satan comes along and challenges Job’s faith by saying this:

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not  put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has?  You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.  But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse your face.” (Job 1:9-11 NIV84)

What happens after that is probably an example of someone who has experienced more pain, torture, and heartache than any man who has ever lived besides Jesus Christ. But the end outcome is that he continues to trust in God. God permits the circumstances to test Job’s faith and probably to give him needed credibility.   I bet people certainly took more stock in what he had to say after he went through all that.  I certainly do.

My prayer is not for poverty.  It’s not to be down and out.  But it’s also not to have it all.  Simply put my prayer is that God would pave the way for my life.  I wholeheartedly embrace the challenges and struggles that come with it as long as they build credibility in me as I share what God has done in my life with others.