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Known By Our Actions

December 2, 2020

When a referee is watching a challenge for the ball in soccer (football), she is not reading the mind of the players to judge intent. She watches actions. She can see where the players look and what they do. If a player glances back to see where the opponent’s head is and then jumps bringing back an elbow that “just happens to” hit the other player in the eye, we all know what that action was. A deliberate striking action. Not an accidental act.

We are in the Advent season. We may not be going to stores quite so often as usual, but we still hear messages and songs of peace and joy. We may receive greeting cards proclaiming peace and joy. We may see people on the streets and in the stores who may greet people with peace and joy greetings.

However, people not in your club, the Christian church club of choice, are not really listening to you. They are watching you like a hawk eyeing a field mouse. Intently. Do your actions belie your words?

Or perhaps some words slip out that betray inner conflicts. Perhaps words of condemnation, derision, racism, sexism, even hatred slip from between your lips undermining that earlier proclamation of peace and joy. Perhaps you pushed someone aside in the rush to grab that toy in the store. Perhaps you sounded your horn aggressively at someone in the parking lot while trying to butt in to a better parking place or to exit faster.

People watch. People know. They know you not by saying you’re a Christian, but by whether you act like one.

On the other hand, we do know that you can change your manner of thinking by how you act. You have choices. You can choose how to act.

In the words of that old Christian folk song, “They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love; they will know we are Christians by our love.”

We have the entire Advent season to change how we act so that our actions may be congruent with our words.

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Waiting

December 1, 2020

I must write about waiting. The word has popped up several times in my reading over the past week.

Advent is about waiting, anticipation, and perhaps preparation.

A child waits (meaning anticipating gifts to come), but she does not wait with patience. Rather the patience is enforced. Leading some to give in. My wife had a tradition of opening one gift on Christmas Eve, not able to hold out 12 more hours.

Whenever I hear the word, I think of Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot. Didi and Gogo engage in a number of discussions while waiting for Godot to arrive. He never does. The curtain falls while they are yet waiting. I suppose they are waiting yet today.

Some people are like Didi and Gogo. They wait for God to show up. In their minds God never shows. They are left in eternal waiting. Maybe they wait silently with inner pain. Maybe they are like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin and wait publicly only to suffer the derision of their peers.

My studies of the varieties of grace (one grace, many aspects) lead me to believe that often God is actually waiting for us. God laid out so many paths and hints and put so many experiences before us. Our job is to see and act.

That is spiritual formation. That is the reason for inculcating spiritual disciplines into our life continually.

It’s like a dance where the man and woman are at different tables, each waiting for the other to make the move, do something to reach out. In a 50s or 60s movie, some incident would happen, they’d make the connection, and everlasting romance would blossom.

God has made a move. The perceptive can see it. Perhaps we have it wrong. We aren’t supposed to wait. God is waiting. We are supposed to open our eyes to that and act.

[My link to the play goes to Wikipedia. That site is free to use, but there are many costs to maintaining it. Perhaps you could visit and leave some money there. I have donated for years. It is one of the best resources on the Web. Thank you.]

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What Do We Love?

November 30, 2020

“Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so thatd we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”

1 Timothy 6

Yesterday for Americans, we left the season of gratitude. We entered Advent, the looking forward to Christmas—for many the season of “I want…”

I sympathize with businesses. I’ve spent a fair share of my business life trying to figure out how to increase sales and profits. But the way 140 years of experience have taught them the tools of manipulation of emotion blurs the lines of ethics.

And the target is not just kids. We target kids to bring them into the desire emotion with toy cars and their parents with a big luxury car with a bow in the driveway.

Look at Paul’s key words above—desires, love (of the wrong things), plunged (into ruin), wandered (from faith), pierced (with pains).

It’s about the heart. Is our heart set on the things of God? Is our heart set on objects of desire?

As we enter the Advent journey, let us maintain focus on what matters.

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Gratitude Affects Your Health

November 26, 2020

Years ago I was obsessing over a problem and read everything I could find on brain research. One thing I discovered is that we don’t only think with our brain. Our entire body joins in the fun.

The brain mainly operates on electrical connections. However a number of chemicals originate from various parts of the body that add information to the brain and the rest of the body. It all works together.

Gratitude, what we think or focus on, affects chemical reactions in a variety of areas of the body. Research reveals the health benefits of that gratitude mindset I talked about yesterday.

Your brain gets the benefit of hormones that make you feel good.

Your gut settles down and the various digestive systems operate better.

Your heart benefits from reduced tension.

And, your spiritual life finds additional space to grow.

Mind, body, spirit–all the parts of your self benefit.

This is Thanksgiving in the US. We won’t be meeting in large family groups, or even smaller family groups this year. Most likely community Thanksgiving dinners have been placed on pause. But we can still change our outlook to change our health by concentrating on those things for which we’re grateful.

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Develop a Gratitude Mindset

November 25, 2020

Peter Diamandis is an interesting character. He’s an engineer and physician, founder of the X-Prize, and founder of the Singularity Institute. His passion is to develop an Abundance attitude in people in place of a scarcity mindset.

However, his recent newsletter included a portion of his class called Abundance 360 called developing a Gratitude Mindset. This seemed appropriate since we are discussing gratitude in this Thanksgiving week. Try these on for size.

With a Gratitude Mindset…

(1) You know that being grateful enhances your mood and makes you feel genuinely happy. Expressing gratitude causes our brain to release dopamine and serotonin, the two crucial neurotransmitters responsible for our emotions. They make us feel “good.”

(2) You recognize how incredibly lucky you are on both a personal and professional basis, and you take the time to feel and express thankfulness and appreciation.

(3) As a leader, you understand the power of encouraging your team to be grateful. You know that being thankful and appreciative improves the relational well-being for both individuals and the overall group.

(4) You invest in relationships. As my dear friend Joe Polish says: “Time is not money. Relationships are money.” You have to develop and nurture your relationships. Every day, you try to be as useful as possible to those around you. And in your leadership role, you focus on what positive results you can create for others.

(5) You have created daily routines that allow you to reflect on how lucky and thankful you are. And you share those reflections with others in your life in a way that brings you joy, and uplifts those around you.

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When God Speaks and We Don’t Hear

November 19, 2020

She was in rural West Virginia negotiating to buy a farm. She assured the sellers that she was not going to develop the land. She was going to farm it to grow pumpkins. Sarah Frey had purchased her family’s family farm in southern Illinois before she was 20. She grew pumpkins and watermelons. She had not yet been anointed America’s Pumpkin Queen.

Back in West Virginia, she was thinking about how some people get a sign from God about what they are doing. How do they get a sign? How do they know God is talking to them? She was asking God for a sign sitting alone at dinner in a cafe/tavern. It was some kind of theme night, and people were dancing.

Suddenly it happened. A big guy on the dance floor dropped his pants. Staring her right in the face were two large orange tattooed pumpkin Jack o’Lanterns–one on each cheek. Had to be a sign from God! She asked one of the girls with him to take a picture.

Sometimes God speaks and we aren’t listening. Like the times we pray for big things like maybe becoming the senior pastor of a megachurch. And we have ignored the opportunities God put before us to serve someone in the grocery store parking lot struggling with bags of groceries and two small children.

Then sometimes there are two pumpkin tattoos on some guy’s butt and you become America’s Pumpkin Queen.

It’s best to keep our eyes open and awareness tuned. Don’t ignore the little things or the absurd. God has a sense of humor. And sometimes we are surprised by his message.

Posted in Awareness, Disciplines, Listening | Leave a Comment »

To Listen Is To Lean In Softly

November 13, 2020

To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention completely and freshly to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

However, when I am giving myself to listening, I have expectations of the speaker.

I can rejoice with the joyful, mourn with the hurting, provide encourage the discouraged, provide an ear for those with burdens to unload.

Where I have trouble, and I perceive it’s not only me, is to listen to those who with belligerent attitude try to force lies, innuendo, deliberate twisting of facts upon me.

How do I keep my defenses and my BS detector and my wish to push back under control.

Perhaps those people feel like they are not heard, so they need to talk louder. Sort of like when you are talking with someone who does not speak your language and you talk louder thinking that then they will understand.

I am convincing myself that even then, it’s important to lean in softly. Maybe I learn something—maybe not from their words, but from their hurt.

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You Are To Blame

November 11, 2020

Andy Stanley likes to bring up this thought nugget, “Do you know who was present at every bad decision you ever made? You. You were present at every one.”

We learned something from Jeremiah yesterday that our heart is deceitful above all things.

Advertisers and marketers are geniuses at using this knowledge. They know how easy it is to present something in such a way that we believe it. And then we act.

And then later we wonder why.

Why did we buy that? Why did we call her back? Why did we go there? Why did we get suckered into believing her or him?

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a pause button? Before we decide to trust her; before we decide to go there; before we decide to send that note on social media that will make us look like a fool; before we buy that–we pause, breathe deeply, tell our deceitful heart to back off.

We are also present at our good decisions.

Andy never says that. But it’s true.

Wisdom comes from gradually recognizing situations and hitting the pause button and then making the good decision.

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Where Is Your Heart Pointed?

November 9, 2020

We watched a dramatization of an Agatha Christie Miss Marple story last night. The sub-plot behind the main plot of uncovering the murder mystery concerned the decision of a beautiful young woman who must choose a husband from between a man who does foolish things out of a deep love for her or a man who is a political climber, member of Parliament who has not the capacity for love.

She, of course, chooses love.

The Desert Father, Abba Poeman (the Shepherd), once said, “Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy your heart.”

We are in the aftermath of a hard-fought, yet strange, election season in the USA. Some who won are not positive they won all they hoped to win. Many who lost are mired in bitterness and despair.

If you give your heart to politics, you are doomed like Sisyphus to cycles of elation and despair.

Giving your heart to God is “like a rock”, stable, secure, dependable.

Life will provide you with plenty of cycles of up and down. God is always there to stabilize. Daily disciplines focus your heart firmly on that which never changes.

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Humans Haven’t Progressed Too Far

November 6, 2020

There was a cigarette advertisement (if American, are you old enough to remember those?) in the 70s that tried to play off the idea that women had progressed a long way in society–“You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” they proclaimed saying women deserved their own brand of death-in-a-package.

I’m currently reading in Augustine of Hippo. He talks of his teen years in what we’d call University.

These studies of mine also, which were considered perfectly respectable, were designed to fit me for the law so that I might gain a great name in a profession where those who deceive most people have the biggest reputations.
Augustine, Confessions

In America, as well as in many countries of the world, we have come through a season of political campaigning and elections. Sometimes we get the feeling that 2020 resembles 380.

Although Augustine did turn his considerable rhetorical abilities into working for good, so it is possible to change.

Augustine was discussing his past, the time prior to his focus on God. This is part of personal awareness, when we can look back and see where we were deficient and sinners. Then we can see where we’ve grown and where there is still room for growth.

Only when we see can we understand that we are not yet model citizens in the City of God.

A French psychologist once taught a phrase to repeat, “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.”

When we think we’ve arrived at our best, then we’ve turned those powers of deception upon ourselves. Augustine saw it 1,600 years ago. Ancient writing dating back 4,000 years also contain the same warning. It seems we either train to deceive others, or we are professionals at deceiving ourselves.

Coming to awareness brings us one step closer to living with-God.

Have we come a long way? Well, yes, and no.

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