Letting Go Of A Rearview Mirror Approach To Life

-

I spent a lot of years wandering, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life.  

 There have been times when I have looked back on those years and wished I could have them back.  I have thought about all the things I would have done differently in order to expedite my journey and wished that I'd done them.  

 Over time, though, I've learned to love all of my wanderings and to see them as necessary and vital to the person I've become, and to my calling in life. Nothing was wasted, in other words.  It was all part of the journey.  

 I was reading through some of the Proverbs in the Hebrew Scriptures this morning and came across this one:  
Many are the plans of a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails. - Proverbs 19:21
It got me thinking about the fact that once I got my mind around the idea that God has greater purposes for me than I could ever imagine---grand ideas, wonderful things, abundant life... that's when I started to see all of my wanderings differently.  

 But far too many people never get past their regrets and spend their lives looking constantly in the rearview mirror, neither fully realizing their true purpose nor fully embracing it in joy.  

 And too many people live without being able to recognize that all of the good things in their lives would have never happened unless they had wandered.  

 I recently read this beautiful poem by Tiffany Aurora that illustrates this so perfectly:  

 Perhaps.
You do not,
need to wander
aimlessly
in order to be found--
&
it is just that
you have not yet made
what you hold
in your hands
into a true home.  

 May you embrace all your wandering and learn to love it.  May you also realize that in all your wandering, you were carrying your true home with you the whole time, and further...  that God was in it all along.  

 May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for leaving a comment! If you comment Anonymously, your comment will summarily be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

Wuv... True Wuv...

-
Image
Go ahead. Ask me what my favorite "chick flick" is. The Princess Bride , that's what.  The pic at the top of this entry gave it away, I know. There are three reasons why it is my favorite "chick flick." 1. It's not a chick flick.  2. The only kissing is at the end of the movie... where it's supposed to be. 3. It has Andre the Giant in it. Any of these reasons could stand alone in their own right as pretty dang valid reasons why The Princess Bride is atop my list of romantic films.  But when the aforementioned reasons are lumped together, I don't see how anyone could argue against it. There is a scene in The Princess Bride that makes me giggle a whole lot...the wedding scene where Peter Cook, playing a priest with a speech impediment presides over Princess Buttercup's almost wedding to the evil Chris Sarandon (and I hear he's still pretty evil).   Here it is. Wuv...  true wuv...  gotta love that. I've been reading and re-re...
Read more

Rapha & Yada - "Be Still & Know": Reimagined

-
Image
One of the most well-used verses in the Bible comes to us from Psalm 46:10, which reads like this:  He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;     I will be exalted among the nations,     I will be exalted in the earth.” That one line---"Be still, and know that I am God"---finds its way into greeting cards, wall art, church signs and the like.  And it sounds so nice, doesn't it?  But what does it actually mean ? What does it mean to be still  and know  that God is God?  Well, to dig deeper into that phrase to see what it's really saying, I'm going to have to bust out some Hebrew--so, don't hold it against me. The Hebrew word that's used here for the phrase "be still" is the word  rapha. And get this... It means "to hang limp, sink down, be feeble."  That's a heckuva lot different than what we usually take the phrase "be still" to mean, right? I don't know about you, but whenever I have heard that verse ...
Read more

The Lord Needs It: Lessons From A Donkey

-
Image
This Sunday is Palm Sunday---the beginning of Holy Week. It's also one of those Sundays when you can't ignore the church calendar and just preach whatever you want.  I am sure that some people do just that, but they probably aren't Presbyterian, and I am sure that the liturgical rhythm of the Church is not first and foremost in their mind. And they probably have had no trouble at all working on their sermon this week. I'm not one to blindly follow tradition, but there are some things that you just don't do---and you can't just ignore  the story of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.   But this leads to a bit of a quandary...  In the short time I have been doing this whole preaching thing I have gone through the Palm Sunday story a few times.  After a while you sort of wonder if your congregation has heard your Palm Sunday riff a few too many times. That sermon needs to get preached, though.  While we celebrate the che...
Read more