Walking up the Hill

I can't help it.  I want health, and love, and good fortune.  Whenever life alternatives present themselves, I prefer one outcome over another--the easier, pleasanter one.

God already knows what I want, of course, but I tell Him anyway.  When life gets tough, I pray...
"Please, God, let my son grow into a man, a man after your own heart."
"Please, God, let my husband not have cancer."
"Please.  Please."

And God can say "No."
He can say, "I will do with your son as I see fit." or "It's time for your husband to come home to me."
"No, please....No, God."

That's when the problem expands from the situation itself to the condition of my own heart. Is this my crisis of faith?  Am I lukewarm because I want one alternative over the other?

Then I remember Jesus:
My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.--Matthew 26:39

Jesus had a preference for outcome, too. His body did not want to suffer either, and we share the same kind of bloody, heartbeating flesh.  My humanity, like His, longs for ease and communion.

Wanting these is not the crisis of faith. The crisis comes not in the wanting, but in the response--the ability to say, like Jesus did,
Yet not as I will, but as You will.--Matthew 26:39

Ease and good fortune have their eyes focused on earth.  My sweet God wants me to look higher and when I do, I find, like Him, the joy set before me. Then, with Christ beside and my eyes fixed resolutely on my own Calvary, I can walk up the hill.

Looking Both Ways, Part 2

As pleasant as memories can be, God does not want us to look behind. God has prepared for us  another vision. Part 1

We are the temple of the living God..."Therefore come out from them and be separate," says the Lord.  Touch no unclean thing and I shall receive you.--2Corinthinans 6:16-17

On the day I first truly understood my sinfulness before God and was broken by it, He set me apart.  On that day, I walked, or more  correctly crawled or crept, into God's throne room  and I return there daily to be refreshed.  As I approach Him, He infuses me with Himself with the intent of separating me from everything and everyone who is not part of Him. 

He means to make me like Him, the way He originally created all men.
This is what He wants me to see.  He not only offers me healing, he offers me holiness.

I must concentrate wholly on God, seeking to please Him, soaking up moments with Him, listening to Him so that I can obey, repenting for my failures before Him.  Where I am preoccupied with other concerns, past or present, I do not let Him take hold.

All the people in my life are important, but not I cannot focus on them.  They are the platform upon which I demonstrate God.  That is why He brings them.  

As I draw near to God, He shows me His character for the purpose of changing mine to resemble Him in the way He originally created me.  My arena in which to accomplish this are the people and circumstances He ordains and, in the process, as I succeed, He is glorified. 

The Lord God not only fills the rearview mirror with His own dear face.  If we are looking, He fills the windshield, too.

Looking Both Ways, Part 1

There has come a point in life, now that I have walked pretty far down the road, when I know I have more years behind me than I have ahead.  Memories pile up and as they multiply, tempt me.

Memories exist always in the present tense.  They are always so THERE--prancing in anticipation of attention like a three-year-old.  I settle into them sometimes, reliving old days in either delight or regret, feeling every swell and twinge all over again.

But God does not exist behind us...He waits before.


When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it...the King must not acquire a great number of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord told you, "You are not to go back that way again."--Deuteronomy 17: 14,16

I am not to go back that way again. 

Memories fall into one of two categories:  sinful, that is, ones for which I must repent and allow God to put behind both our backs, and ones constructive in the sight of God, which I lay at His feet as a sacrifice of homage and thanksgiving.  In either case, I have to remember that, when I first walked into my Lord's throne room, He helped me close the door by which I entered. That door closed on many things, one of which was the power of those memories.

I am not to remember primarily what I did, good or bad, but what God did.  

This applies to my husband, my children, and my work, both in the Kingdom and in the world.  Reliving the day when my sons took their first step, or my wedding day, or the day I got my first car bring warm feelings, but I cannot attach too much affection or importance to them.  Remembering what God did through those and other circumstances...now, that has some value.

Our Lord's rear view mirror shows His face alone.
Part 2 

Double Vision

Roche-a-Cri State Park

We live in Southwest Wisconsin, an area called the driftless zone because the glaciers that leveled much of the Midwest missed us.  As a result, our local landscape undulates with rolling hills and rocky bluffs that give our long views a kind of romance.  They also make for interesting hiking.

Nearby Roche-a-Cri park, for instance, brags a 300-foot bluff that rises alone on an otherwise nearly level plain and can be climbed by anyone determined enough to conquer its 303 steps.  We have done this, and enjoyed it, even when we had to stop a few times along the way to catch our breath.  When we got to the top, we felt we'd done something worthwhile and the resulting view rewarded us amply for our efforts.

In thinking about it now, the stairs themselves made the climb easier.  Not only did they keep us off the dangerous and uneven rocks, but they more importantly provided a continuously rising path, constantly visible and with clear, progressive markers along the way to an easily recognizable goal.  Our life in Christ is not so neat.

God provides stairs, all right, but we don't see them clearly.  We stop and start, turn this way and that way.  The goal looks close one day, far away the next.  No wonder we get tired.  No wonder we just sit down some days, close weary eyes, and sigh.

It seems like God wants us to walk not hundreds, but thousands, or tens of thousands, of little insignificant steps, and the end doesn't seem to get any nearer.

Kind of like this climb--there's something entrancing at the end, but we can't seem to figure out how to get to it.

Frontenac, Quebec City, Canada

Jesus had the same problem, but He had an advantage we do not.  He had perfect double vision.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down before the right hand of God.--Hebrews 12:2

Jesus put His foot on the step in front of Him, regardless of its seeming insignificance or very real pain, understanding fully the importance of both that step and the culmination of all steps.

He did not forsake the small for the big, nor did He do the reverse.  He did not neglect circumstantial needs in favor of eternal heaven, nor did He concentrate so much on immediate situations that He neglected the everlasting.  He embraced the immediate need for the cross, but kept His eye trained on His heavenly throne.

A discipline to double vision gets us though life, too. 

On any given day, I have steps before me: some hard, some easier, some just plain mundane.  Do laundry, write, respect my husband.  But before my eyes God has also hung His heaven.  This is the joy set before me.  I have to keep my eyes on both the long view and the short.  This is how I learn to look squarely both at today's step and tomorrow's destination.