That Skill (poem)

A Thorn has entered your foot. That is why you
weep at times at
night.

There are some in this world
who can pull it
out.

The skill that takes they have
learned
from him.

Daniel Ladinsky -Love Poems from God

Finding God's Will for Your Career

How can we figure out what God wants us to do?

I know people who are lawyers and who drive big machines and who are school teachers and who are coaches and who are selling insurance and who are accountants and who are science research professors and who are dentists and who are pastors and who are missionaries. What each of these people does matters. I kept thinking about this word—matters. I’m unconvinced that some jobs —the so-called “spiritual” ones—are valuable while others are “secular” and therefore not as valuable.

Many are struggling to discover a career that matters. Perhaps the reason so many today flounder from one job to another is because instead of examining what they do in light of the Kingdom, they fail to realize that what they are doing really does matter. (Unless they are paid to be professional spammers, which can’t be Kingdom work.) It is time to reconsider what we do in light of the Kingdom dream of Jesus, and I believe His Kingdom vision can turn what we do into something that matters and can give our life purpose.

See Your Vocation 
through the Kingdom Dream

Your vocation, which in so many ways is unique to you, can genuinely matter if you keep your eyes on the Kingdom of God as your guiding North Star. Teaching matters when you treat your students as humans whom you love and whom you are helping. Coaching soccer matters when you connect kids to the Kingdom. Growing vegetables becomes Kingdom work when we enjoy God’s green world as a gift from Him. Collecting taxes becomes Kingdom work when you treat each person as someone who is made in the image (the Eikon in Greek) of God and as a citizen instead of as a suspect. Jobs become vocations and begin to matter when we connect what we do to God’s Kingdom vision for this world. Sure, there’s scout work involved—like learning English grammar well enough to write clean sentences and reading great writers who can show you how good prose works. Like hours with small children when we are challenged to make some mind-numbing routines into habits of the heart and Kingdom.

It is easy to see missional work in the slums of India as something that matters. Perhaps the desire to do something that matters is why so many of us get involved in missional work like that. But most of us don’t have a vocation like that, and that means most of us do lots of scout work as a matter of routine. We have to believe that the mundane matters to God, and the way to make the mundane matter is to baptize what we do in the Kingdom vision of Jesus.

It’s Not about Money (Completely)

Only 15 percent of American households have a six-figure income, and only about 5 percent of Americanindividuals have a six-figure income. Instead of focusing our lives on a six-figure dream, followers of Jesus need to focus on the Kingdom life, which turns the six-figure dream inside out. Jesus’ dream involved a radical detachment from possessions:

But seek first his kingdom
and his righteousness,
and all these things [clothing, food, shelter]
will be given to you as well.
Matthew 6:33

It involved a willingness to contribute to the needs of others and virtually to renounce a life soaked in making money:
Sell your possessions and give to the poor.
Luke 12:33

While many in the history of the Church have given up everything they owned in order to serve others, and I think of St. Basil the Great and St. Francis of Assisi, the rest of us are challenged to cut back and to tone it down so we can take from our abundance and provide for those who are in need.

When the Lord of the Christian is a poor man, the wealth of His followers is brought into embarrassing clarity. When the Kingdom dream of Jesus shapes our vocations, it turns us from folks who strive for wealth into folks whose vocations are used for others.

Do What You Do Well

I grew up with the idea that I could only be happy if I found “God’s will.” People do weird things because they think they are doing God’s will.

There is a reason why so many people quote Frederick Buechner’s famous line about God’s will: because it tells a deep truth. Buechner said God’s will is this: “The place where God calls you is where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.” This beautifully combines the Kingdom dream of Jesus and your own personal dream—find that place and do that.

If you keep your eye on the Kingdom of God, if you keep in mind that deeply personal nature of all you do, then you can pursue that place where your deepest gladness and the world’s deepest needs meet, and in that place your life will speak. You are asked merely to discern the intersection of what God is doing—Kingdom of God—and what you are asked to do in what God’s doing.

Just Say No

There are too many places where we find the world’s deepest hunger, and many of them appeal to us as the place where we might find our deepest gladness. When we try to do too many good things, we burn out or we tune out or we leave out someone we love. Ten years of chasing all of the world’s deepest hungers can almost ruin a life.

Jesus said this so well when He told some would-be disciples that Kingdom dreams take priority. One man, distracted by his family, asked Jesus if he could stop following Him and do something else. Jesus said, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).

Those are strong words; they are also true words. The focus, Jesus teaches all of us, must be to do the thing we are called to do as something swallowed up in Kingdom work.

In order to “do that” one thing well, one must guard from trying to do too many other things. Saying no to other things is what keeps life balanced. Andy Crouch, a well-known and very smart Christian thinker, said we shouldn’t try to “save the world” but we should play our part in the redemptive work of this world with a small group of friends. I completely agree with Andy on this. I’d put it this way: the way to “save” the world is for everyone to do the one thing God calls them to do. When we start trying to do everything in an enthusiastic dash to save the world, we neither save the world nor do what we are called to do.

Purpose in the “ordinary”

The further we get into the ordinary realities of our work, the harder it is to keep the Kingdom of God in focus. So we return to our opening point but this time with a slightly different focus: Let God’s Kingdom work swallow up what you do. It’s easier to be theoretical about the Kingdom of God than it is to let the Kingdom swallow up what you do. If the Kingdom of God is about justice, love, peace, wisdom and moral commitment, then you are summoned by God to let your life speak justice, love, peace, wisdom and moral goodness—wherever you are and whatever you do.

But does this “do something that matters” really matter? Does it matter ultimately or to God whether or not we follow Jesus? Does it matter whether or not we take seriously His words about Kingdom—justice, love, peace, wisdom, Pentecost and give Him our total life? Does it really matter?

In one word: yes. For Jesus, what you do with your life matters—both now and forever.

Scot McKnight (PhD, Nottingham) is Karl A. Olsson professor in religious studies at North Park University, Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of several books, including The Blue Parakeet, Galatians and 1 Peter in the NIV Application Commentary series, and the award-winning The Jesus Creed. Taken from One.Life by Scot Mcknight. Copyright © 2010. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.

Are u infected by Moralistic therapeutic deism?

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism--the New American Religion

wiki

Time

Time

is a plate.

The swiveling chair

The wooden little chair since childhood

milk drops and bursting laughter stains

lego echo, underneath gaze

I saw little snow cobwebs and the forgotten

big blue sky

Nicely in table's aging arms, it sits

And so i pulled it out and sat, rocking it till I close my eyes

And when my feet went into the air, it swivels

Like a swing on the tree of life.

M, an excuse for melancholy

The drawbridge going up..

Dear Lady Georgiana,

Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done—so I feel for you. Here are my prescriptions.

1st. Live as well as you dare.

2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.

3rd. Amusing books.

4th. Short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea.

5th. Be as busy as you can.

6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.

7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.

8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment.

9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.

10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.

11th. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.

12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and every thing likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.

13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.

14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.

15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant.

16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.

17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.

18th. Keep good blazing fires.

19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.

20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana, Very truly yours,—Sydney Smith.

— 1820.

nobody sees

Now for the Not-yet

Now for the Not-Yet

by Rachel Starr Thomson

I read a profound thing the other night — in a Charlie Brown cartoon, which is no surprise since I'm always reading profound things in the comics. Charlie Brown comes to Lucy's psychiatric booth to declare that he is depressed. Lucy takes him up on a hill, shows him the vast horizon, and begins to ply him with questions. Does he see all that room for living? Has he ever seen any other worlds? As far as he knows, are there any other worlds for him to live in? Her final question: "You were born to live in this world ... right?" "Right," he answers — and Lucy hits him with the punch line. "WELL, LIVE IN IT THEN!" Those are inspiring words. They really are. As a philosophical day-dreamer with a tendency to fatalistic attitudes, I relate very well to Charlie Brown. The idea that here I am, placed in this world for the express purpose of living in it, is almost revolutionary to me. That is, it was almost revolutionary to me. Sometime in the last 10 years, during the gradual transition from childhood to adulthood, it started to sink in that God wants me to live. To live fully. To live well. And to live not only for a distant future in a heaven that is still far away — that is, the ultimate Not-Yet — but to live in the Now, to live on this earth in the best way I can, recognizing every day as a gift from God. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish days to be as centuries, loaded and fragrant." I am here, in the only world that has currently been given to me, and I'm doing my best to live in it. But it's not as easy as it sounds. The apostle Paul described life as a race, as a wrestling match, and also as a battle: He recognized that living, really living as God wants us to, is hard work. We fight sin within us, evil around us, and "spiritual wickedness in high places." On top of all of that, we fight our own flesh. What do I mean by that? I mean that if we want to really live our days, loaded and fragrant, with purpose and holy joy, we need to fight our inborn laziness, our tendency to forget, our knack for centering on trivial, unsatisfying things, and our propensity to dig ruts and sit in them. I teach writing, so my years are naturally divided into three distinct seasons: Fall Semester, Spring Semester, and Summer. The breaks in the year afford me a perfect time to reexamine my life. Every four months, I take a hard look at the paths I'm walking. I look especially hard at my habits, for they are the real direction of my life, no matter how many grand pronouncements I may make. Management consultant Peter F. Drucker says, "Long-term planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions." In other words, what am I doing now? So. Here I am, at the brink of a new semester. It is time again to take stock of my life, to measure the worthiness of my goals, to see if I'm actually moving toward them, and to decide whether changes must be made. This every-four-month system is a good one, because it keeps my ruts from getting too deep before I see the need to leap out of them. In examining life, I want to measure the quality of the Now, but I also want to keep the Not-Yet firmly in mind. Am I living well today? And is the way I'm living actually going to lead to a good, God-honoring future — not just here, but in eternity? First off, there's my spiritual life. When I examine this, I have to remember that spiritual life is neither really predictable nor actually controllable, because any realspiritual life is a relationship — and the other Half of the relationship rarely conforms to my small-minded expectations. That said, as the small half of this relationship, there are things I can do to keep it healthy. Foremost among these is prayer. For many years I've had the nagging feeling that my prayer life was lacking. I prayed a lot, usually sporadically throughout the day, but I was always scattered and unfocused. I'd say "I'll pray for you," knowing that I'd probably forget to do so. Over this past summer, though, I made a change in my prayer life that has been revolutionary. I started scheduling prayer times. Short ones, just five, 10, or 15 minutes, five to seven times a day. I got the idea from aBoundless article, actually: Jim Tonkowich's "Hour by Hour: It's Always Time to Pray." I have already seen incredible fruit from this new habit in the Now, and I know it will bear more in the Not-Yet. This habit stays, and I'm making a renewed commitment to doing it diligently. Mental life is another area to keep an eye on. Are you familiar with the verse that says, "Teach us to number our days"? I always figured it ended with something like this: "So that we may make a difference in this world." Actually, the whole verse says, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom" (Ps. 90:12). This is about spiritual life; it's also about our mental lives. I've realized that I need to attend to mine in a serious way. I try to spend at least half an hour every morning reading my Bible with an open notebook and study references handy. I really want to tackle the meat of scripture, to wrestle with it, to ask questions and seek out answers, to learn how God sees the world and how I'm supposed to respond to that. I want to learn to think biblically. This isn't just for the Now — it's imperative for the Not-Yet. What I learn now, at this stage in my life where I'm able to invest time in study, forms my decision-making processes, my thought patterns, and my mental capabilities for the future. You can see why this is hard work! Reexamining my life on a regular basis means that I refuse to allow my flesh the upper hand. I don't want to let attitudes, bad habits, or forgetfulness prevent me from really living. Of course, I mess up in all these areas just as fast as I articulate what I want in them. But that doesn't ultimately matter. As long as I get back up, I'll stay on the right paths. Many other aspects of life bear examination. Work. Health. Recreation. Am I doing what God has called me to do? Am I doing it diligently, smartly, with joy? Are my current health habits going to help me in the Not-Yet, or are they more likely to land me with lifelong problems I don't want? Do I spend my recreation time actually re-creating — doing things that build me up — or am I frittering it away with activities I don't much care for? How about finances? Am I giving? Could I give more? Are my spending and savings in a healthy balance? Was all that Starbucks really necessary — a real blessing, or just a bad habit of letting money run out of my pocket every time I smell a latte? Then there are relationships: the heart and blood of life. "Thine own friend, and thy father's friend, forsake not," instructs Proverbs 27:10. There's something tragic about a life lived in pursuit of personal growth, goals, and passions, while the people who make life worth living are overlooked. In every season, I want to love my family, my friends, and my God wholeheartedly. Relationships matter for the Not-Yet, too. Not only does maintaining relationships now ensure that those people will still be there in the future, but it also changes me. Relationships shape us more than anything else. In the future, I want to be loving, loyal, diligent, and Christ-like toward others. That will never happen if I neglect the Now. I wish life to be not cheap, but sacred. God has given us life: God wants us to live it. Christians do not need to live defeatist, fate-driven, circumstance-directed lives. We can make decisions and choices that will shape our lives for the glory of God. I wish you the best as you reexamine the paths your feet are on. May they lead you through days that are fragrant, that are loaded, that present themselves to you each day as gifts from a glorious God.

Copyright 2008 Rachel Starr Thomson. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. This article was published on Boundless.org on September 24, 2008.

Yoke

It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.

-Lamentations 3:27

When i stand before You...

I'm not sure if u ever felt this way before, but once in a long while.. I really missed home. It's a longing felt deep within your heart, somehow knowing that you belong to eternity, knowing that one day you will meet your heavenly Father, the one whom you only heard but one day shall see face to face. There will be no more tears, it will be an ultimate dream come true, there will a big reunion, when everything comes together.

I long to see my Father, I can't wait to run into His arms, He knows who I really am, loves me with an everlasting love. All my hope is in You. Your beauty is indescribable. My heart aches for eternity.

i will sleep tonight hoping to dream of meeting You..

Endless Hallelujah

When I stand before Your throne
Dressed in glory not my own
What a joy I'll sing of on that day
No more tears or broken dreams
Forgotten is the minor key
Everything as it was meant to be

[Chorus]
And we will worship, worship
Forever in Your presence we will sing
We will worship, worship You
And endless hallelujah to the King

I will see You as You are
Love You with unsinning heart
And see how much You paid to bring me home
Not till then, Lord, shall I know
Not till then, how much I owe
Everything I am before Your throne

[Chorus]
And we will worship, worship
Forever in Your presence we will sing
We will worship, worship You
And endless hallelujah to the King

No more tears, no more shame
No more sin and sorrow ever known again
No more fears, no more pain
We will see You face to face
See You face to face

[Chorus x2]
And we will worship, worship
Forever in Your presence we will sing
We will worship, worship You
And endless hallelujah to the King

And endless hallelujah to the King
We'll sing
And endless hallelujah to the King