for the birds

As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.  –Matthew 13:4

The single direst weakness of the human race is a short attention span.  For all the encounters I’ve had with God, one would think they would stick in the mind from sheer saturation.  But it seldom works that way.  I find it is very difficult to hang on to the inspiration gathered from Sunday’s sermons until Sunday night, let alone Monday morning.  Here is my attempt to cultivate, water and protect some of the seed of the Word of God I heard today.

This morning Chris Bunch of The Jar spoke about the importance of grieving and its role in healing.  And I realized that in some things that had happened in my life, I wasn’t grieving, but was instead still trying to work them out.  And I realized that in other areas I had grieved, and that I was starting to heal.

When I was divorced, when I lost my health, when I lost my job and got into debt, my life tilted sidways (from my perspective).  I see now that I’ve had secret plans to fix all those things.  I was unwilling to live the life I woke up to every day.  I wanted to tell my friends, my family and everyone I met, “this isn’t me, this isn’t who I am.  This is not my life.  Stay tuned, folks, because I’m going fix this very soon.”  But the false hope of a great comeback will make the heart sick.  Tragically, ironically, the constant focus on the comeback leads me to neglect the very things that might lead me out to a better place.  And while I schemed my comeback, the years began to slip by.

Bottlecap from a delicious, refreshing bottle of Honest Tea First Nation Peppermint

Chris Bunch spoke about the invalid who lay by the pool of Bethsaida for 38 years, waiting for his chance to get in the water first.  Jesus asked him, “Do you want to get well?”  What a crazy question.  But it is the right question.  I can imagine what would be going through my head if it were me that day lying by the pool.  “Do I want to get well?  What I want is to have my f***ing life back!”  Do you doubt the invalid felt something like this?  I don’t; his answer wasn’t “Yes I want to be healed.”  Instead he recounts how he’d been done wrong, passed over, neglected like so much human compost for so many years.

Was he healed before Christ told him to get up, or was it as he attempted to get up?  John doesn’t say.  But however Christ healed him, and whenever it happened, the only thing He said to the invalid was essentially this:  “Get up, gather up your stuff, and move on.”

We don’t get it in writing (not even from the Gospels) that life after tragedy will be as good as it was before.  The words of Paul don’t sit well with me at the worst of times; he told the Romans, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” [Romans 8:28]  It is in my nature to look back instead of forward.  “I don’t want this present situation to ‘work together’ for some vague, cakey future good, I want the old good back.”  But today Chris has me thinking that what I’d really like to do is to gather up my stuff and walk the road on which I find myself.