I am tired. I would imagine that in the previous 420 posts to this blog I have I said this same thing a lot of times. How many times have I written that this week? Ah, I'm just too tired to look.
I am tired because of this burn business, the burn itself and the medication I am taking for it. I am tired today because I did not get home much before midnight last night coming back from the cabinet Christmas party in Columbia and then blogging. I am also tired because over the last two weeks I have often resembled a pinball---in the morning, pull that level and away I go to the office(eventually)--PING time to look at messages and talk to Barbara when I make HER feel like a pinball by giving her gobs of tasks; PING listen to my phone messages and sometimes scan my email before the first pastor comes for evaluation; look at his paperwork, pray before he comes in for him: PING do that again plus the actual interview four times, all of which have been rich with meaning and the leading of the Holy Spirit: PING-talk to Barbara about things she had not been able to ask because I was unavailable; PING answer message PING message PING message. Go home and the pings continue there.
This is really not unlike most folks' life, especially at this time of the year. My image of myself is like I am propelled into the game for that day, hit one bell, hit another, and another, finding Jesus in many of those bell places, but reacting to circumstances that I have been bounced to by another circumstance. And sometimes we just have to live like that for a time, but hopefully never too long.
About twelve years ago, when I was going through a very difficult time in my life, sitting and looking at those "redeemed trees" I wrote about a few weeks ago which were across the driveway from the corner window in my office at Community UMC in Columbia, an image emerged in my head as to how I believed God was holding me up in those days. And it's one that for some reason I remembered this evening. In that image, I am in the ocean, not very far, but past my waist facing the shore. Another person was with me, who was teaching me how to "ride the waves" which was very hard for me. To ride the wave, you have to allow the wave to buoy you up and let it carry you up, trusting it to do so. You should not fight the wave--because if you do, you will end up soaked and under water. With your back to the ocean, you have to trust that you will feel the moment when you need to let the wave carry you, and not anticipate too very much lest you jump at the wrong time instead of letting the wave come to you.
We do a lot of jumping at the wrong time, I think, at least I do. I jump wanting to make my life happen, I let my desire to control, and mostly my inability to trust my life completely to God jump too soon. And so the waves get me sometimes. The pin ball flippers are sending me flying to another one and I react only
Part of Advent is learning to trust God and his timing--He may not come when you want him to but he's right on time, the gospel song sings. Susan, and anyone out there in the blogosphere who may be reading, stop trying to save yourself from the wave--allow it to do the work and trust yourself to it. Erase that pinball game mentality. God gives you direction as you grow closer to him, you'll learn that you are not arbitrarily being bounced from circumstance to circumstance, but being guided in your way of discipleship. You are not powerless because you trust--you are more powerful when you trust that Jesus is walking the way with you, that God asks you only to rely on him, and to lose you fear and fatigue of trying to make it all right by you own power instead of trusting your life to him.
Lord, as I wait, let me not wait for my own longings to be fulfills, but for your will to be done. Let me grow in trust of your loving hand in my life, and help me to let go just a little more, Lord, so I might feel the thrill of trusting you and feeling you on the crest of the wave. Amen
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