It happens every morning. I’m sure it does; I just don’t see it often.
Missed opportunities. They used to haunt me. Really. I’d try to get to every music concert, every church meeting, every coffee get-together—you name it; if it was happening and I could be present, I was there.
Driven by guilt. And maybe a little bit of obsession.
Perhaps, I should finish the first thought before I get on my little soapbox, huh? I’ll do that.
The shadow stood at my bedside in the dark room this morning. 7:05, the clock read. 7:05!
The shadow spoke.
“The sunrise is spectacular this morning!”
Other than a quick hug and a mumbled “goodbye, I love you,” that was it. I was alone on the queen-size bed in the darkness. Back to sleep. Life goes on as usual.
That’s not what happened. I rolled over, hugging her pillow close. But, I didn’t go back to sleep.
Sunrise! It happens every morning; so what’s the big deal? Sleep is better—especially when my head didn’t hit the pillow until 2:30 this morning.
The thoughts ran through my non-sleeping brain.
I got up.
A few minutes later, I was standing at the upstairs window, looking out over the rooftops in the neighborhood.
Wow! This happens every day?
Every day?
“Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
I snapped a photo or two to save the moment in my memory. I sent one of them to the Lovely Lady. Some things need to be shared.
She sent me back a photo of the gecko under her desk this morning. I guess she felt that some things need to be shared, too.
But, I’m wondering about the bigger picture now. What about all the other things I’m missing out on? While I’m sleeping. And when I’m awake, too.
I remember when my oldest grandson was an infant and he refused to go to sleep in his crib. My son-in-law introduced me to the term we’ve all become familiar with as he described the phenomenon.
“FOMO. He’s afraid we’re going to do something while he’s asleep and he can’t stand to not be part of it.”
Fear of missing out.
We laughed. We still do.
But, it’s true. We want to be included in whatever’s happening. And sometimes, we feel guilty when we don’t participate in all of it.
Why are we so driven by that guilt?
I want to blame my church upbringing, citing those verses in Ephesians I heard so often growing up.
So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise.Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do.
(Ephesians 5:15-17, NLT)
I want to blame my guilt on that. But, words are just words until we understand them. The Word of God is the same. His Spirit gives clarity as we study them and then live them out.
Yes, we make the most of every opportunity. But we don’t act thoughtlessly.
Trying to be involved in every good activity is acting thoughtlessly. And, being consumed by guilt when we don’t show up for all of them is harmful. To us and others around us.
I’m going to miss out on a few sunrises. And, concerts. And, coffee breaks.
But occasionally, I’m going to stumble out of bed, climbing the wooden stairs in my bare feet to stand at the window in awe and gratitude for another day and a beautiful re-creation of the dawn.
Just, maybe not tomorrow morning.
Morning has broken like the first morning, blackbird has spoken like the first bird. Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning! Praise for them, springing fresh from the Word!
(From Morning Has Broken by Eleanor Farjeon, 1931)
The pallet of pavers sits right outside my office window. It is a reminder of joy.
Hmmm. I suppose that’s not something you hear every day.
How could a stack of red brick-like pavers symbolize joy?
That, I suppose, would depend on your perspective. It’s not really the pavers themselves that turn my thoughts to joy, but merely my recent experience with them. It’s possible by the time I’ve done the labor necessary to utilize the rectangular chunks of concrete, I may have a completely different frame of reference for them.
Life is like that. Today, joy. Tomorrow, toil. After that, who knows? Joy again. Or, pain. Perhaps, even sadness.
But, what about the pavers?
And, the joy?
Not my joy—well, not exclusively mine—but I was there to get a taste of it.
Perhaps, I should explain.
A friend, who lives next door to my grandchildren (yes, to my daughter and her husband too, if it comes to that), offered to sell me the pavers a couple of weeks ago, so we made a deal. I would need to pick them up myself, no small feat, since there were more than three hundred of the heavy little bricks.
By myself didn’t sound like such a good idea.
I recruited my grandchildren to help me load and count them. Since they live next door to the fellow with the pavers. And, since there are four of them and only one of me. You know—by myself.
So it was that on a recent afternoon we found ourselves in the mid-July heat counting and stacking. Ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit sounded less furnace-like when I was in my air-conditioned living room than it did at the tailgate of that pickup truck.
The sun beat down and the sweat poured from our faces and various other locales. Still, there was nothing but good-natured teasing and joyful banter from the kids and their mom. Black widow spiders and crickets galore did nothing to change the mindset.
Perhaps it was the hundred-dollar bill I offered beforehand that set the mood. No, it couldn’t have been that; there was no such offer.
Maybe, it was the ice cream and pizza I had promised them. Again, no. All I promised them was the chance to help an old man move heavy, dirty pavers from one place to another, all while keeping track of how many they had each moved.
They worked with joy! With no promise of any payment whatsoever, they labored in the blasting sun for over an hour. Joyfully. And then, they offered to come to my house and help me unload every single one of the despicable things.
I don’t understand it. Whatever happened to the carrot or the stick? Shouldn’t they have been either offered a reward for their work, or conversely, a punishment should they refuse to comply? Isn’t that how children learn?
Joy. Simply in achieving a task and spending time with people they love. This is a mystery to me. Really. A mystery.
Perhaps we can work this out.
I am a follower of Christ, also known by the title Christian. We Christians talk a lot about joy, sometimes scolding folks who are unfortunate enough to call it happiness instead of by its proper title. I wonder if that’s the right way to go about demystifying joy.
Possibly not.
Still. What about this thing called joy?
Maybe we could start with, since I am a Christ-follower, well—Christ. You know—the author (the initiator) and editor (perfecter) of our faith. Come to think of it, there’s a passage that says just that. And here’s a surprise; the verse talks about joy, too.
We look to Him, the author and the finisher of our faith, who, for nothing more than the joy of completing the thing, gave His life on the cross, discounting the shame, and sat down beside God in heaven, at the right hand of His throne. (Hebrews 12:2 ~ my paraphrase)
Our Savior, the One who set us on the road of our faith and who will bring it all to completion, came for the joy of doing just that!
I’ve heard it suggested that the joy which was set before Him was being able to sit down beside His Father in Heaven. But He already had that before He came. If that was the joy talked about here, He needn’t have come at all (Philippians 2:5-8)
Yes, He was elevated to that position again, but He wasn’t working for that as a reward. Simply for the joy of accomplishing the task before Him, He came in love for the whole world.
I don’t need to tell you His work conditions weren’t the easiest. Early in life, His parents had to flee their homeland to find safety for Him. As an adult, His people rejected Him. The religious leaders hated Him, persecuting Him and His followers endlessly. He had no place to sleep. He was hungry. He knew the sorrow of losing loved ones. And finally, one dark day, the humans He came to save killed Him.
Joy? It’s still a mystery to me.
And yet, there is something…
Oh, yes! The children. My grandchildren. They did that. For the joy right in front of them, they endured.
And, there it is.
He said to them, unless you become like this little child, you’ll not see heaven. (Matthew 18:3 ~ my paraphrase)
As a little child, with joy and humility, we are to serve. In heat, sweating and thirsty. In cold and rain and floods and sickness and poverty and turmoil and…
He calls us to joy. Always.
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ…
Joy. In the journey.
And, while we move the bricks.
A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love.
(Mother Teresa)
I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.
(Romans 15:13, NLT)
It was the first thing I thought when the words came out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere, since my friend spoke them with his own mouth, but I wasn’t sure what the catalyst for the thought had been. I’m still not sure.
“Why didn’t you become a preacher, Paul?”
I’m certain in that moment I looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights. You know, wanting to keep going and get off this highway altogether, but on the other hand, perhaps a fast retreat in the direction from which I had come might be better.
How did we get here?
We weren’t talking about preaching or anything like it. We hadn’t even been discussing professions or callings at all.
I sat for a second or two and then, headlights no longer in my eyes, suggested that I was never supposed to be a preacher. I was glad the red-headed lady who raised me wasn’t sitting nearby. She had always wanted a preacher for a son. It didn’t happen. Still, I don’t suppose she was all that disappointed. Not that she would have told me if she had been. Moms are like that.
For all moms know—and, they know a lot—the road doesn’t always lead where they expect. For that matter, it doesn’t always lead where we ourselves plan. Mine surely didn’t.
I spent nearly forty years in a music store in a small town. You could be dismayed at the thought. A life wasted—what’s not to be sad about?
But, that’s just it. I’m not sad about it.
Can I be bold here?
Any life lived in following Christ cannot be wasted.
We either believe His Word or we don’t. He makes all things in our lives to work in a way that is for our good. It’s true for all who love Him and are part of His family. (Romans 8:28)
I know it’s not popular to talk about that verse these days. And, perhaps it’s become too easy to use it to reassure folks who are in painful situations. We are, after all, a people who like pat answers—easy roadmaps.
And yet, the words stand.
Not so pat.
Not even so easy.
We want to know. We have dreams we reach for, plans we’ve laid out carefully. We look around and nothing about this landscape surrounding us resembles anything we recognize.
How did we get here?
Funny thing. When the deer stares into the headlights, what has transpired to bring the beautiful beast to this point is of no consequence. Well, not of no consequence. The information is simply not pertinent to the issue at hand.
What matters is where the deer goes from that instant. Decisions must be made. Options considered. Quickly.
The same is true for us.
We use the knowledge at hand, considering the doors before us, and move forward.
Forward.
If our hearts are set on God, steadfast and unwavering, what comes next will be exactly what we wanted in the first place—to be exactly where He wants us. (Psalm 37:4)
I answered my friend the other day with confidence (once I got my feet back under me).
God called me to the ministry of a music store. I’m absolutely certain of it.
I know it sounds strange, but it couldn’t have been a more blessed place to be. I never wanted to work in a music store, much less own one, but day by day, step by step, opened door by opened door, I walked into it until—forty years later—I walked through another opened door on the other side.
A rich man, I walked out. Oh, there wasn’t any large amount of money in my bank account. Still, the wealth is fabulous. Really. Fabulous.
Thousands of conversations, gifts given and received, memories stored away to be savored in the future, friends secured for a lifetime, and other folks who, like me, walked out with more than they walked in with—all of those are mine to hold onto.
I’m not sure what God got out of the deal. I just know, I did all right in the bargain.
I’m aware my story isn’t yours. Many find themselves in unhappy, seemingly dead-end lives and tasks.
I believe the words are still true for those folks as well.
As we make God our desire, our delight, we’ll look around and see His hand in our journey, His design in the open doors before and the closed ones behind.
There is joy in the journey, not least in the company of other folks on the same road.
How did we get here?
Following Him, we walked through the doors in front of us. And even if we jimmied open a few He never intended for us to enter, we’ll never be in a place we can’t move on from.
I’ve got a few more doors to walk through. Maybe you do, too.
There’s room for more than one on this road. We could try a few doors together.
Delight.
Good company in a journey makes the way to seem the shorter.
(from The Compleat Angler ~ Izaak Walton ~ English author ~ 1593-1683)
Some things just mess with my brain. I’m not the only one.
Selfies.
I know. It’s a foolish name, but it is what we call them. We want to see pictures, so friends snap photos of themselves, often while looking in a mirror.
One begins to wish there weren’t so many mirrors in bathrooms. I can’t help it. It’s my first reaction when I see the photographs.
The second is more enigmatic to me. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is always something that bothers me about the selfies taken in the mirror.
Things aren’t quite as they should be. Men’s shirt pockets are on the right-hand side. Belts are threaded through the loops the wrong direction. Oh! And most folks are holding their phones in their left hand, but I know most folks are right-handed.
It’s all backward. Mirror images are oriented in a flipped position. Sure, the person still looks like him/herself, but the little niggling details irritate me.
But, truth be told, I didn’t invite you to sit down and read about my pet peeves. There are more important issues to deal with here.
But, I do want to talk about mirror images.
Certain tasks—essential ones—have to be accomplished using mirror images. I know it seems strange, but it is a fact.
Just the other day, my patient brother-in-law spent some time explaining it to me—one of those tasks. I hope he’s not disappointed by what I have to say here.
The Lovely Lady has completed the painting job she began a few weeks ago. The new ceiling in the living/dining room area has several coats of bright white paint. The walls are covered in a beautiful contrasting color. But, right up in the corner where the two come together at a ninety degree (or a close approximation of it) angle, we need to tack up a crown molding.
I say we. I mean I. I need to tack up a crown molding.
It’s very simple, Paul. You take the measurements and then cut the trim pieces. Upside down. You have to put them in the saw upside down to get the cut and the angle right.
On inside corners, the long end is the bottom, so it’s the top end when you put it in the saw. It’s really easy. You’ll have no problem. Just flip it upside down. Oh. And, don’t forget to angle your saw in the opposite direction.
I haven’t cut a single piece. I may not cut a single piece.
A couple of days ago, while I was looking for excuses not to start that particular job, I conveniently remembered a plumbing job I needed to do under the kitchen sink.
Ah. Here is something I can do. What can be hard about screwing a shut-off valve onto the end of a threaded pipe?
Remember. Righty-tighty—lefty-loosey. It’s so simple!
There would be more to it on this day.
When I worked on the plumbing originally, we had no plans for a dishwasher, so I needed two shut-offs—one hot and one cold. This job would require adding another hot water shut-off for the newly arrived dishwasher. No sweat. Add a tee and attach two shut-offs.
I had turned the water off at the meter out near the street and had reconfigured the tee and valves. Now all that was left was to check for leaks. It was a perfect job for the Lovely Lady. Our son had stopped by to check on our progress, but he wasn’t dressed for under-the-sink. His part would be to keep an open line with me on his cell phone—just in case.
Just put your head under here, Dear. Watch those two valves and the pipe near the new tee and see if they leak. If you see any drips, have him (pointing to our son) tell me immediately. Oh. Make sure you look to see where it’s leaking before I turn the water back off.
Contingency plans in place and cell phone in hand, I went out to turn on the water supply. It didn’t take long.
Dad! There’s a lot of water coming out!
I stayed calm.
Make sure she knows where it’s coming from. I have to know where it needs to be tightened.
There was no hesitation on his part.
No. It’s a lot, Dad! Really. A lot. She knows where it’s coming from!
I turned the water supply back off.
The Lovely Lady was soaked. Really wet. And, not all that happy.
I had left one of the shut-off valves completely open. Turned on all the way. In the contained space of the cabinet, the stream ricocheted off the wall it was aimed at and splattered everything under there. She was under there.
How could such a thing happen? I followed the righty-tighty, lefty-loosey rule. I did.
I had, from my place near the new tee just installed, reached along to the end of the pipe, nearly a foot on and turned the shut-off to the right to close it.
How could that not have been clos. . .Oh! I was reaching from the underside of the valve! To the right from underneath the valve would have been left if I had been in the correct position looking from the top side.
I had turned the valve open all the way myself. She was soaked and I was to blame.
Mirror image.
Later, that problem rectified, and a few other minor drips eliminated, I finished up by plumbing the drains on the new sink, too. It was time to test it all out.
I turned on the cold water tap. Voila! Water rushed out and down the drain. There was not a single drip!
But, as I reached over to turn off the tap, I realized something odd was going on. The water—the cold water—was hot. Really hot.
Backward. I had them backward.
No, not the feeds to the sink. I had actually extended the cold water line to go to the dishwasher. It only needs a hot water line. It won’t work with cold water at all.
When I had planned the day’s project, I had access to the back of the bathroom wall, so carefully I selected the line I was to extend from there. Everyone knows the hot water is on the left of the faucet. I picked the one on the left and added the tee and additional shut-off valve to that one.
Mirror image.
It wasn’t a great day. I might as well have been tacking up crown molding.
Perspective.
The apostle, my namesake, knew about mirror images. He saidlife now is just like trying to see with a bad mirror. Now, he says, we see dimly through the mirror, the details jumbled and sometimes confusing.
Boy, do I get that! I turn one way when I should turn another. I flip the switch on the right when I needed the one on the left.
I wonder if I’m the only one?
Oh but, the day is coming! Twenty-twenty vision! We’ll see everything exactly as it is. We’ll see our Savior and know His perfect plan.
One day.
No more will we live life through the looking glass. No more hot when we wanted cold. No more confusion, no more wondering.
On the day we get up and take that short journey around to the other side, the side on which He’s waiting for us, it will come sharply into focus.
He sees it all clearly, right now. He’ll show us the way if we’re willing to listen.
Too often, I think I know all the facts. Too often, I take situations into my own hands.
But, I’m learning the things I want aren’t always what He has planned. I’m even realizing the things I’ve come to think of as His blessings are sometimes simply chains that keep me from what He really wants for me.
I don’t do that well with mirror images.
It’s time to surrender the job to the Master Craftsman.
I’m ready. Perhaps, the Lovely Lady will appreciate the change, too. It might be drier for her on the other side.
It happens every morning. I’m sure it does; I just don’t see it often.
