Lessons...

Mom and I took a drive this evening. I haven't driven what I call "the loop" in almost a year. At first because of gas prices, and now because I've moved. But I used to drive this one little loop around the farms in Marion. In May and early June, if you drive shortly after the sun goes down, the fireflies are everywhere. I think, after June, it's too hot for them. Anyway...the milo is about ready for harvesting, and the color is spectacular. I'll post a picture soon. (My PC is on the fritz, and I'm having to use Mom's, and I don't have my camera's software on this computer.) Anyway...it was really nice to slow down a bit and enjoy the time. I have really been pretty busy lately, with work, play rehearsal, and running errands.
But I've been thinking alot lately. I think I mentioned memorizing James several months (sadly) ago, and I'm almost finished. I can't believe how much I have learned just by chewing over some of those scriptures. I guess the better way to put that is that I can't believe how much there is to be learned from those scriptures. Much self examination has taken place. I've been especially staying around chapter 4 in the latter verses. 13 "Come now you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we shall go to such and such a city, spend a year there, engage in business and make a profit.' 14 But you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. 15 Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live, and also do this and that.'"
As I was thinking about these words, my mind went to: "If the Lord wills, we shall live." And I realized that I'd never seen that before. In my mind, verse 15 had always read "If the Lord wills, we will do this and that." As if to say that God is only action and goal oriented. He only cares about what we do. But that is not true. He has plans for us for whether we live or we die.
I've been thinking alot lately about living and dying. I guess I can't seem to help it. I also feel guilty talking to people about some of what I'm learning and struggling with, because I get the feeling that people are uncomfortable talking about such things. I don't blame them. Unless I was going through or had gone through something like this before, I don't know that I'd know how to respond. Fear and discomfort steer us to avoid such subjects and people. A quick word about that, though, to anyone who's listening: avoidance isn't the way to respond. It makes that person feel even more isolated and alone. (I am still trying to understand the differences between a "load" and a "burden." One is to be born; the other is to be shared. I won't go into all of my questions on that tonight.)
Sorry for digressing...back to what I was saying earlier...I guess I have been listening for the first time and learning a great deal in the process. I have been learning about the battle that is prayer. I have questioned that often quoted verse in James 5 about the effective, fervent prayer of the righteous. I've been pondering God's promises and why He should even make promises to us, filthy and faithless as we are. There are some truths, which I'll call hurdles, that I've had to stop and examine. Hurdles that I never saw before. It's not as if I even remember stumbling over them...perhaps, I just wasn't even running in the race. I have been just standing somewhere between start and finish.
I have prayed that God would lead me out of the mediocre Christian life. I didn't, and don't, want to merely soak up the air conditioning and play my part in the hug-and-greet-ministry that is being a contemporary Christian. I have struggled with being in the world but not of it. I think I would love to live and work in a totally Christian environment, but then how would I grow, and how would the lost meet Jesus? I want God to use me and be glorified. Yet even with all the fire and passion of pleading to be used, when the messiness of life comes, I beg to be released. Did I not expect the refining process to be painful? Did I expect to be put into the fire, in order to purify my faith like gold, and for it not to hurt or surprise me, even just a little? Oh that this simple existence of mine would run untiringly the race set before me! That forgetting what lies behind, I would press on toward the goal. That I would cast off the things, little and large, that so easily entangle me and run. Lord, thank You for a second wind.