Tag Archives: Answers

Chapter-a-Day

Moving Upstream

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The simple believe anything,
    but the prudent give thought to their steps.
Proverbs 14:15 (NIV)

My friend, Matthew, likes to say that “everyone is having a conversation with life.” He describes it as an “inner conversation with your center as external circumstances beg for a response.”

Along my journey, I’ve come to believe that the quality and depth of that inner conversation is critical to my progress in Life, health, growth, and relationships. I’ve also observed along the way those who appear to choose not to engage in that conversation. Maybe they don’t know how to have that conversation. Maybe they really don’t want to have that conversation. The result, from my perspective, are lives that seem to run on uninterrupted cycles of appetite, impulse, reaction, and habit. Tragedy and/or life becoming unmanageable become the only way a conversation with Life might possibly get jump-started.

This morning I find my heart and mind still mulling over yesterday’s post and thoughts of introspection. I’ve always been a bit introspective, but I know many who aren’t and who don’t even know where to begin. Many years ago, when I worked with young people, I always tried to teach them both to be introspective and how to have conversations about those inner conversations. The lessons I learned I now apply in my relationships with clients, team members, friends, neighbors, and even strangers.

Typically, I would start with a simple ice-breaker type of question:

  • Good/Bad: Name one good thing and one bad thing from your week?
  • Where have you been? Where are you now? Where are you going?
  • What’s your biggest pet peeve?
  • If you had five other lives to live, what would you do/be?

Then, I would listen to the young person’s answer and begin what I call “moving upstream.” Moving upstream is really the process of introspection, but I find that one typically learns how to do it first by being led by a parent, friend, counselor, teacher, therapist, pastor, or mentor.

You know how the mouth of a river pouring into the ocean is usually really wide (and usually not very picturesque)? That is what a general answer to a general question is. That’s where introspection begins. Conversations with Life, for those who’ve never really had one, begin with a simple ice-breaker with yourself. But the really good stuff, the scenic views, the waterfalls, the natural springs, the crystal-clear mountain stream can only be reached by paddling upriver, then up a tributary, through a few locks and dams, then up another tributary, and another, and another. There will be a portage around a rapid or three, maybe some smaller dams, and then up yet another small stream. You keep moving upstream towards the Source.

Here’s how it sounded with one of the kids in my youth group as I tried to guide them upstream:

Me: “Name one bad thing from your week.”

Them: “Um, (young people always begin with “Um”) My bad thing this week was getting grounded by my parents.“

Grounded? Okay, there’s a story there. Let’s move a little further upstream and find out what it is.

Me: “Ouch! How long are you grounded?”

Them: “Two weeks.”

I keep paddling. With each answer, I move a little farther upstream by taking what’s given to me and exploring further.

Me: “Two weeks!? That sucks! What on earth earned you two weeks?”

Them: (Head is down. Eyes stare at the floor. Shoulders shrug.)

We’ve reached our first dam. Sometimes the lock to a conversational dam is humor.

Me: “What did you do? MURDER SOMEBODY?“

Them: (laughs) “No.”

Me: “ROB A BANK?!“

Them: “No.”

Me: “Well, being late for curfew isn’t a two week offense. So it’s got to be somewhere between getting in late and murder.”

Silence. Silence is okay, even when it’s painful. Silence is a necessary part of introspection. As my friend Matthew says, “Let silence to the heavy lifting.”

More silence. Finally…

Them: (Mumbling after a sigh) “I got caught smoking weed.”

Hey! There’s a new tributary! Let’s move up that stream and see where it leads.

Hopefully, you get where I’m going. Keep asking questions. Look at the answer to those questions and let them lead you to the next question. The strings of questions and answers are the conversation with Life. The better I’ve become at having those inner conversations about my external circumstances, the further I get towards the Source and the more rewarding the journey has become.

In the quiet this morning, I’m whispering a prayer of thanks for the many friends, family members, teachers, professors, mentors, pastors, and therapists who helped guide me upstream at different stages of my journey. They taught me how to be introspective. Over the course of 50 plus years, my conversations with them taught me how to have a conversation with myself, with Life. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.

Hope your own conversations with Life are leading you to good places, even when the portages, paddling, and dams are a pain.

Have a great day, my friend. Thank you for reading along with me on this journey.

Chapter-a-Day

“From a Distance”

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All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance….
Hebrews 11:13 (NIV)

Yesterday morning a woman came up to me amidst our local gathering of Jesus’ followers and shared with me some things that God has been teaching her of late. These things dove-tailed with some of the very insights God has been revealing to me in my contemplation.

“I just wonder why it’s taken me 35 years to see these things,” I laughed, shaking my  head.

“Because we didn’t need to see them until now,” she answered matter-of-factly. “They are for this time and place.”

I find it equally fascinating that I can read God’s Message over and over and over again, but there are certain things which leap off the page as if I’ve never seen them before. That’s what happened as I read this morning’s chapter, which is a very famous chapter about faith. The author of this letter to  early Hebrew followers of Jesus is a Hall of Fame walk through of the ancient heroes of faith. From Cain and Abel through Rahab, the prostitute of Jericho (I love that Rahab was included in the list), the writer shows how each of these ancients embraced faith.

What I had never seen clearly until this morning was that twice the author acknowledges that in many cases these heroes of faith did not receive what was promised during their earthly journey. First it’s mentioned (vs. 13) that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob believed that their tribes would become a great nation and have their own “promised land” to call home. The “promised land” was never established during their lifetimes. They lived in pursuit of a promise that they would not realize in their lifetimes.

At the very end of the chapter, the writer reiterates [emphasis added]:

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

I have learned in my own journey, particularly as Wendy and I have walked through the long valley of infertility, that there is a certain depth of faith that one only realizes when what is promised is not received (or not received as expected) in this lifetime. I have never understood why God answers the prayers of some and not others. I don’t know why some are healed and some are not. I don’t know why some get pregnant and we did not.

There are answers out there. My spirit sees them “from a distance” as the author of Hebrews wrote.

I have faith in that.

Chapter-a-Day

A Time and Place for Particular Discussions

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source: Phil Renaud via Flickr
source: Phil Renaud via Flickr

He replied, “Go your way, Daniel, because the words are rolled up and sealed until the time of the end. Daniel 12:9 (NIV)

When our daughters were small, they had all sorts of questions. They had questions about life and death, about bodies and babies. As a parent, there was wisdom required in answering appropriately for that particular time and place in their own cognitive and emotional development. Some questions received answers in simple word pictures. Other questions were deferred for a more appropriate time and place in their maturing life journeys. It is with great joy that we now get to have adult conversation with them over a great meal and a bottle of wine. And still, some questions have yet to be fully asked or answered.

There is, I believe, a parallel with how God reveals things prophetically throughout the Great Story. In today’s chapter, the phrase “everlasting life” is revealed for the first time:

Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.

It is the only time this particular phrase, “everlasting life,” is used in the stories and writings of God’s Message before Jesus appears on the scene. God has waited to reveal it at this moment in the story. How fascinating that it makes its appearance at the end of Daniel. The time of the prophets is coming to an end. There will be a 400 year silence before the miraculous events surrounding Jesus’ birth.

When Daniel, like a curious child, asks for more information he is put off. “Go your way,” he is told. “Go play,” I told my daughters when I had revealed all I had for them in the moment and it was time for them not to worry about the subject anymore. Daniel is told that the words are “rolled up (like a scroll) and sealed.” In other words, “this isn’t the time or place for the answer to be revealed.”

When Jesus’ follower, John, is given his vision on the Isle of Patmos some 500 years and several chapters of the Great Story later, the subject comes up again:

Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David,has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”  Revelation 5:1-5 (NIV)

There are appointed times for certain things to be revealed. This is true in life as we discuss things with our children. This is true in any good story, play, or movie. This is true in the Great Story as well. Faith is believing that things will be revealed to us at the right time. Until then, it’s okay if we go play.

Chapter-a-Day

Asking and Seeking Daily

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ch_david…so David inquired of God: “Shall I go and attack the Philistines? Will you deliver them into my hands?” 1 Chronicles 14:10a (NIV)

Wendy and I spend a fair amount of time in conversation about our lives. We give consideration to where we’ve been, where we’re at, and where we’re going. In our prayers we ask for guidance and in our day we attempt to be mindful of seeking answers. We are sometimes surprised by the result.

In 2007, Wendy and I purchased my parents place on Lake of the Ozarks. It has been a special place for our family for many years. Wendy and I wanted to continue that legacy for the next generation. We prayed about building a new house on the property that would be large enough for larger gatherings of friends and family, and began making plans. By the spring of 2009 the plans were laid and we were ready to proceed with construction, but the great recession had hit the economy hard. The banks cinched up their purse strings. Timing and circumstance seemed to provide a resounding answer of “No” to our prayers for God’s blessing and provision for the project. Disappointed, we scuttled our plans and moved on.

Several months later, on a rainy October morning, I was driving to a meeting in Des Moines when my cell phone rang. It was a loan officer from New Century Bank in Belleville, Kansas and he said he’d received a loan proposal from our contractor at the lake. He liked what he saw, he said, and he was presenting it to the bank’s loan committee that afternoon. On the drive home from Des Moines that afternoon, my cell phone rang again. This time it was the bank President. “I’ve got your proposal for a construction loan to build a house on Lake of the Ozarks,” he said. “We’d like to loan you the money to make this happen!”

Not believing what I was hearing, I mentioned the recession, the plummeting housing prices, and all the other excuses we’d heard from banks who’d found the proposal for a second home too risky amidst the worst economy since the Great Depression. “What happens if we get this house built and the housing prices have fallen to the place that it’s not worth what we need it to be worth?” I asked the bank’s president.

“Well then,” he said without skipping a beat, “We’ll just have to live with each other for a while, won’t we?”

When I arrived home, I pulled up the website for this little bank in nowhere Kansas that I’d never heard of. I read:

The name New Century Bank is taken from the beginning of the first century AD from the event that changed the world, the birth of Jesus Christ. The star in our logo represents the Star of Bethlehem that announced the birth of Jesus. Faith gives us Life” What is faith?… It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. (1) Conviction is Faith in the Present and Hope is Faith in the Future. Our Hope is for your life in the future and that of our Community. If we help you build your life our community will benefit. “It is through faith that a righteous person has life. Our purpose is to be an example of this Hope by standing for something greater than we are… by being a servant to you and the community. We can model our banking services with this purpose as well. Our emphasis is not on the banking product, but how it is delivered and how it benefits you. We offer hope for our customers through Faith Based Financial Counseling.

The loan papers were signed a few days later and construction began immediately.

One of the things that marked David as a “man after God’s own heart” was the fact that he was constantly mindful of God in his decisions and actions. In David’s day it was common for kings and rulers to claim themselves to be gods and make their people worship them. David was the antithesis of that. He lived by a different set of rules. While not perfect, David consistently humbled himself and sought God’s guidance and blessing.

Wendy and I have tried to emulate that spirit in our own lives. The story I’ve just shared is an example of how God can dramatically provide the answer we sought after. The truth is that often the answers don’t make themselves so readily apparent. Sometimes we are left waiting for an answer that never seems to come. Other times the answer is not at all what we wanted or wished for, and that creates intense internal struggles.

We still keep seeking. We still keep asking. We still keep trusting.

That’s what faith is all about.

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