I’ve been around long enough and through enough to see
patterns. Like when God has something
for me to learn from and grow in, He doesn’t let me simply drop it. It’s a thought I can’t quite let go of…I will
see it EVERYWHERE and in everything and it will spin until I act on it and do
something about it. Such is this
blog. A post of processing, in process
for quite some time. Words perhaps,
again, for me alone, but words that demand a post none-the-less.
So, to begin…Three Vignettes…
First…It was one of those crazy days in the middle of March.
(I could look back at some dates and posts to figure it out for sure…) But it
was a day that started out almost warm…at least in comparison. It was definitely above freezing…but
barely. And then it started to rain. And it rained. And of course the rain felt cold at 35
degrees. But it was still just
rain…until it froze. My golf cart…which
had its wind shield up for the rain was now frozen. Not that I saw it right away. I flew out of the Program Office on a mission…somewhere
(really, I was ALWAYS on a mission) and put the golf cart in reverse…only to
realize I couldn’t see anything. I got off quickly (I was on a mission after
all!) with cold slushy rain falling all over my med bag and tried to break off
the ice really fast but it was literally like a solid inch of hard rain slush
frozen in a sheet of ice. And, not only
that, but it had also frozen the shield up so I couldn’t get it down without
breaking the plastic. So I climbed back in and kept driving. With my view being what I could see by
leaning my head out the side of the cart…and what I could see by looking
through the non-plastic covered crack just above the steering wheel (a inch or
two, maybe). Either way I could basically only see like two or three feet in
front of me. I had to slow down. I had to drive a yard at a time to get to my
destination and back again…
Second vignette…it was a week later. Week of St. Patrick’s
day. And we had an exceptional camper at
camp with us. Now there have been several
students over the last four years, especially those who are more medically
“needy”, who have melted my heart and made an impression on me in notable
ways. But none as much as this one. It was the week we had “Alex” with us at
camp. My coworkers too would remember
Alex because Alex is a hard student to forget.
Alex was completely blind. He was
born premature and had multiple health problems – not the least of which was
his lack of sight. He was small in stature and walked with a limp among many other
things…but talking to him you would never guess. Not only because he was the most normal
student you would ever meet but because his disabilities never came up in
conversation. He never talked about what
he couldn’t do. He never used his lack
of sight as an excuse. He was hungry to
have information about the world around him but he would ask for it and never
demand it. I remember being blown away
by the question “what does my apple look like?”
How do you describe what something looks like to a child who has never
seen the color red? Has no concept of
“shiny?” I had to change the way I saw my world. And when it came to Alex, he trusted
absolutely. He recognized voices and
knew who they belonged to and who he could trust. And if you said “okay Alex, let’s go,” he
would grab a hold of your arm and let you lead him to wherever he needed to
be. Alex had this profound way of embracing
the journey and not worrying about the outcome…
Final vignette… My grandparents have been married for 55
years. They are an incredible couple. A
couple with their faults, definitely, but after five decades you see two people
who were and are more than two married people.
A deep friendship and absolute partnership. And when I lived with them for a summer I
watched and I was able to also see their insecurities. After all of this time… Grandma
still wanted to please Grandpa. Was
still careful to change menus and clothes to whatever Grandpa liked the
best. She wanted his acceptance. And Grandpa, after all this time Grandpa was
afraid of being alone. One of the
reasons I believe he was drawn to marrying my grandmother (via the stories I’ve
heard) was for her companionship and friendship. And Grandpa always wanted Grandma near. That was two and three years ago. It is even more so the case now. My Grandpa – the same man who scared the snot
out of me as a child – can be seen with flecks of fear in his own eyes as
Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s begin to claim him.
Grandma will tell me how hard it can be.
How much attention Grandpa demands – simply because he doesn’t want
Grandma out of his sight. Always as if
he’s afraid if she’s not close, he’ll forget her too or lose her in the
recesses of the mind that used to be so incredibly sharp. And Grandma writes that this has been a
challenge but is so thankful that the Good Lord is with her and hasn’t given
her more than she can handle and that He is teaching her still...
So where do these three stories come together? For me they have been spinning in a revolving
circle for quite some time. And they
come together in the word “FAITHFULNESS”.
Faithfulness. The ability to have
faith, to be faithful. And while I’ll
probably come back to these three vignettes, I also believe together they
provide a picture of what faithfulness is…
With my grandpa and grandma we see dedication, longevity, resilience,
and reliance…on each other, in their marriage, and on God. We see that being faithful is about facing
forward “no matter what may come.” With
Alex, we see absolute trust. And we know
that trust comes with surrender.
Faithfulness is almost always connected with the loss of self in the
continuous pursuit of where God would call us to be. And with my frozen window, we notice the need
for ongoing trust. For submission to a
path. The ability to continue with or
without answers, with or without knowledge of where or what lies ahead.
I’ve been kind of obsessed with this idea of what it means
to be faithful lately. The coming of
summer always means the coming of transition.
Especially for people like Outdoor Education Instructors…aka: people
whose lives change dramatically for just the summer month. The summer comes with transition for
“seasonal employees”. For some it’s a
transition to a new title or position for a few months to transition back to a
very similar position and title as now. For some, for me, that transition is
severe. It’s a series of micro and macro
transitions as I change perceptions of what life is supposed to look like. And in
anticipating transition of my own and being discouraged by what I have to look
towards, the idea of faithfulness has consumed me. The realization that in and amongst it all, I
simply wanted to be found faithful.
When I start thinking of faithfulness, I immediately start
thinking of God’s faithfulness to me as mere mortal and only one of seven
billion on the planet. Great is thy
faithfulness! Oh God my father. There is no shadow of turning in thee. Thou changest not. Thy compassions, they fail not. Great is thy faithfulness of Lord to me! “Yet this I call to mind and there fore I
have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his
compassions never fail. They are new
every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘the Lord is my
portion; therefore I will wait for him…’” (Lamentations 2:21-24). How great God’s faithfulness is to an
unfaithful people. An unfaithful
person... And as I continued to consider
God’s faithfulness I was stuck by the reality that, at the very least, we are
called to be found in the likeness of Christ, faithfulness is supposed to be
true of us as well. I started scouring
my bible for a definition of faithfulness.
What it means to be faithful. I
didn’t have to go far but it was long.
The bible is full of those who demonstrated faithfulness and those who
were the definition of unfaithful. But I
looked to those who were…names familiar.
Noah. Abraham. Moses. Ruth.
David. Nehemiah. Esther.
Job. Isaiah. Habakkuk.
Mary. Paul. Peter.
John…
I saw patterns. The
things that defined faithfulness…things I was able to sight earlier in my
vignettes . Trust, rooted in belief
and hope. Surrender and loss of self, rooted in the pursuit
of a will belonging to God and God’s
purposes. And obedience, rooted in commitment,
longevity
and perseverance
– but not a picture of the end. A long journey in a short direction…
I often want a picture of the end. I feel like that’s where I struggle the
most. I could be more faithful if I
could see the destination. But that’s
not true faithfulness. It’s not true
trust. Not true surrender. We’re good at making plans. James warns us about making plans. About boasting about tomorrow: “No listen,
you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year
there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will
happen tomorrow! What is your life? You
are a mist that appear for a little while then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If it is the
Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’...” (James 4:13-15). The picture of the end isn’t for me to
hold. Instead I’m asked, told,
instructed to embrace the journey and surrender the outcome. Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to trust in the Lord
with all of heart and lean not in our own understanding but in all of our ways
to acknowledge him and he will make our paths straight. Much as Jeremiah 29 tells us that if we seek
him, he will be found by us when we seek with all of our hearts. And we begin to understand that seeking and
following is at the core of the fact that God knows the plans he has for
us. At the end of our faithfulness is
Him. And we are to let go of everything
else in the pursuit…
“Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of
witnesses [those who have been found faithful], let us throw off everything
that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with
perseverance the race marked out for us.
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who
for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down
at the right hand of the throne of God [was found faithful]. Consider him who
endure such opposition from sinful men so that you will not grow wear and lose
heart [so that you will be found faithful].” (Hebrews 12:1-3 annotation added)
Faithfulness is many things but in the end, it is simply the
pursuit of God and the willingness to follow. One should always listen when
being called away from something (or to something… although I’m much less
familiar with what the latter feels like).
But one should never expect it to be easy. To be quick or to be painless. Faithfulness is a long journey in a short
direction… walking ever steadily closer to where God’s intentions are
waiting. Though the end be dark and
unknown, with the ability to see only feet or inches in front of me, may I
grasp hold of the hand belonging to the Voice which calls me to follow and be
faithful to trust wherever He may lead…
“May all who come behind us, find us faithful. May the fire of our devotion light the
way. And may the footprints that we
leave, lead them to believe; and the lives we live inspire them to obey. May all who come behind us, find us
faithful…”
Find me faithful…
