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eliminate

"You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life."

Imagine for a moment that someone gave you this prescription, with the warning that your life depends on it. Consider the possibility that perhaps your life does depend on it. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. Hurry can destroy our souls. Hurry can keep us from living well. As Carl Jung wrote, "Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil."

Again and again, as we pursue spiritual life, we must do battle with hurry. For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.

From The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for
Ordinary People

by John Ortberg

Any comments or testimonies today?

there

Possibly the most powerful way to show you care about a child, and to establish yourself as someone he or she can count on, is by being there. Yes, our busy personal and work lives often make this very difficult. Yet children notice, and thrive, when mom or dad shows up.

It's been thirty-five years, but I still remember how I felt when I spotted my dad at my weekday elementary basketball games. He had to leave work early to be there; in fact, he was one of a few fathers in the stands. He didn't cheer real loudly; my mom took care of that. But his presence in the gym clearly announced his reliability and support.

From Words Kids Need to Hear: To Help Them Be Who God Made Them to Be

by David Staal

Any comments or testimonies today?

God and His Daughters

by Carolyn Custis James

Throwing out a baby girl to die on the dung heap or burning a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre are among some of the most appalling value statements the world has ever made about women. Negative statements about women run from these extreme atrocities to milder, more polite forms. But they all belong to the same fallen value system. The Bible’s view of women rejects that entire system and introduces a whole new way of thinking. God’s views of his daughters and his large vision for their roles in his kingdom are on a collision course with the world’s view of women, and that collision is showcased in the book of Ruth.

In a way, the Ruth story reminds me of the prophet Elijah, who poured gallons of water on an altar he actually wanted God to ignite. To make sure no one missed the point of what God was doing, Elijah stacked the deck, so to speak, before he started to pray. The book of Ruth achieves a similar effect by juxtaposing God’s view of women against the harshest possible backdrop.

The story begins by taking us into the patriarchal culture — a world that advantages men by birth and automatically sends women to the back of the bus. But reducing women to second-class citizens isn’t nearly a dark enough setting for God to make his point. The situation gets much worse.

The two women God selects as Exhibits A and B are thrown off the bus. A series of tragedies, deaths, and disappointments evict Naomi and Ruth from hearth and home — the one sphere a woman could count on for safety and purpose. No longer wives or mothers, they are cast out on their own, stranded in a culture that works against them, deprived of tools, resources, and opportunities they need to get back on their feet. Ground zero is their home address.

Although the ancient Israelite culture didn’t burn widows alive, it was still a brutal environment for the disconnected woman. Widows were discarded as though they didn’t exist. Had these two widows lived in a culture that observed sati, both women would have perished in the flames. Instead, they lived as outcasts in circumstances far worse than sati according to a Vrindavan widow who knew what she was talking about. Against this blackened canvas, God splashes the vivid colors of a totally different view of women. Instead of losing interest in these two useless widows, he makes them the center of attention.

Instead of erasing them from his story as noncontributors, he colors them into mission-critical roles. These were the dark days when the judges governed. God’s chosen people were losing their way. God’s strategy involves recruiting two women to carry his redemptive purposes forward into the future. Ruth and Naomi do not let him down. With all of the heady things that were going on at the time — in palace throne rooms, at city gates, and on international battlefields — Ruth and Naomi capture the headlines.

These women are Yahweh’s image bearers. Even their ordinary activities are laden with significance. They represent his interests in this world and a lot is riding on what they do at this crucial juncture in Israel’s history. What looks from their vantage point as simple acts of loving and caring for one another will actually take on cosmic proportions. They labor and sacrifice to bring blessing to each other, and simultaneously bring blessing to the world.

As a quick aside, it’s worth noting that God did not raise up women because there was a shortage of capable men — an explanation we often hear that’s intended to qualify what God is doing through women. But that doesn’t apply here. Bethlehem is not suffering from a vacuum of male leadership. To the contrary, Bethlehem boasts at least one man (and probably more) who epitomized everything you’d ever hope to find in a godly male leader. Boaz has a strong reputation as a leader. His subsequent actions prove he is a man of action and a masterful leader, not the kind of man to shirk responsibility or retreat from a challenge. God could easily have chosen to work through men. He chose two women instead.

The miracle birth of Obed [King David’s grandfather] is truly the most joyful moment in the book, hailed by the women who celebrate with Naomi. This child renews Naomi’s life. Instead of the dead end she had reached, Obed creates for Naomi a brand-new opening into the future and a vital new kingdom assignment. Naomi would be poorly equipped to do the job of raising the king’s grandfather with an untested faith and a shallow knowledge of God that was derived from hearing the Scriptures read in corporate worship and picking up secondhand information about him from other believers. She can’t coast on Elimelech’s theology either or the teachings of her parents. Vital as all these other resources and influences are, Naomi’s participation in kingdom building is seriously impaired if she doesn’t know God for herself.

She has to experience him, not just learn about him. That means walking with him through storms, adversities, disappointments, and losses. For Naomi, it involved spending time at ground zero — getting angry, feeling betrayed, abandoned, and forgotten. She had to ask the hard questions, cope with unanswered prayers, and endure countless sleepless nights filled with doubts, fears, and anxieties. She had to find God’s hesed [kindness] in the middle of the mess. The dark night of the soul is an awful place to be, but that’s where God trains his best warriors. Although Naomi looked and felt as if her life was being dismantled and she was being put out of action, God was actually raising her up and equipping her for a mission-critical assignment in his kingdom.

No psalm bears the name Naomi as the lyricist. But traces of her theology are scattered all through the psalms of David, for it is certain that Naomi’s influence reached the sweet psalmist of Israel, whose theological roots can be traced through his father, Jesse, to his grandfather, Obed, the child Naomi holds in her arms. Obed learned deep lessons about God at the knee of this female Job. Ellen F. Davis captures the scene: “The book ends in a way that we do not expect. Boaz and our heroine Ruth are gone from sight, a clear indication that this book is finally something other than a romance. In the end, only the old woman is left, holding the child who is her future and that of her people.”

The birth of Obed is a picture of the gospel — suffering and sacrifice, the joy of renewed life, and hope for the future all mingled together. This is the Gospel of Ruth.

From The Gospel of Ruth by Carolyn Custis James

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It All Boils Down to Your Values

My experience has confirmed the wisdom of so much of what the Bible teaches. In my career I have seen how often ego and selfishness are the root of conflict in people's lives. Too many people are more concerned with their reputations and what other people think than they are about the best course of action or what risks they really ought to take.

It all boils down to your values. If your priority is to look good in front of people, your life will take a different direction than if your priority is to use the talents God has given you to make a positive difference in the world. Such values will influence what risks you choose to take.

—Ben Carson, MD, Take the Risk: Learning to Identify, Choose, and Live with Acceptable Risk

Any comments or testimonies today?

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Burning Cargo to Win the Race

by Mike Breaux

What makes us run so fast? What makes us work so hard and compete so intensely? Part of it has to do with the God-given drives within us—and channeled in a healthy way, those drives can help us get the most out of life. As I look around, though, I see way too many people whose success-related drives are way out of balance and completely out of control. And I think that’s more than a simple desire for success. I think it’s a hunger for acceptance. I think it’s a longing for the elusive “Atta boy” or “That’s my girl.” I think it’s yet another way some people try to satisfy their hunger for unfailing love.

In my experience, I’ve found that most workaholics grew up in homes that were pretty much performance driven; where they were taught as little children that love and acceptance are earned. And because the love-need in kids is so strong, if they have to perform, produce, compete, excel, and climb to get acceptance and approval, that’s exactly what they’ll do.

Fast forward and you’ll find that boy or girl has become an adult who is still producing, striving, and performing to hear, in their adult years, what they so seldom heard growing up: “You are loved. You are appreciated. You are so special. You are brilliant. You are good. You are important. I am so proud of you.”

Their starvation for unconditional love can produce a perpetual message that plays in their mind, one that goes something like this: "I feel like a nobody and I hate that feeling. I am going to be somebody, and I’m gonna prove that to everyone. I don’t care if it takes long hours, or even if it takes seven days a week. It doesn’t matter if it costs me my health, my marriage, my relationship with my kids, or even my very soul. I will pay whatever price is necessary, because I can’t stand feeling like a loser. I will compete, claw, perform, produce, earn, accumulate, strive, drive, and win until I am appreciated. Until I am accepted. Until I am admired. Until I am finally somebody."

And this kind of overpowering need to impress others complicates their lives. They can’t say no because they crave feeling “in demand.” They love to feel indispensable, so they overextend themselves, getting involved in all kinds of projects and causes (often good ones) and spreading themselves incredibly thin. But most of the time they are motivated, not by their personal passion for the cause, but by the fear of not living up to someone else’s expectations. Subconsciously, they’re saying, "I don’t care how frayed and frazzled my life becomes, because I will be liked. I will be admired. I will be accepted, respected, and loved. I will win."

An elderly friend of mine used to say, “Boy, if you’re burnin’ the candle at both ends, you’re not as bright as you think you are.” He’s right, you know. It’s dumb. But stupid is as stupid does.

Many years ago, I heard a story about a steamboat race on the Mississippi River. These two paddleboats were carrying cargo down the river along the same stretch of water, and the competitive juices of the two crews began to flow. The “battle of the paddles” was on! They started racing down the river, throwing coal on their fires to make more steam. One boat would edge in front of the other; then the other would inch into the lead.

Just as one of the boats was about to take the lead for good, it ran out of coal. So you know what that crew did? Lost in the heat of competition, they began to throw their cargo into the fire, stoking the flames and building the steam. They did indeed pull ahead, leaving the other boat in their wake. (You can almost hear them yelling, “Eat my steam!”) They won their race. They burned up all their cargo in the process, you understand. But they won their race.

Now, please hear this from an extremely fallible dad, who has battled his own workaholic tendencies and an out-of-control competitive spirit. Moms, dads, you know, don’t you, that God has entrusted each of us with extremely precious cargo. I think all of us might pause here to ask ourselves this question: Just how much of my precious cargo has to be burned up in order for me to feel like I’m winning, to feel like I’m somebody?

I guarantee you that somewhere out there is a kid who is reading this and crying deep within, “God, please help my dad see this. Please help my mom understand what this guy is trying to tell her.” Likewise, there is a spouse right now with a knot in his or her stomach, saying, “If only I could get my wife to realize this. If only this could get through to my husband.”

I have a blue and red Tupperware ball sitting on my office shelf. I keep this toy in my office to remind me how many empty, frustrated people there are in this world. The second reason I keep it is to remind me how empty and frustrated I was when I was a workaholic. It takes me back to a time when I tried to cram all that success stuff, all that image stuff into the round hole in my heart. It’s a constant reminder that I never want to go back to that place again—and that I don’t have to, because the love of Jesus Christ was the perfect fit to fill up that heart hole.

I’m already accepted. I’m already somebody. I don’t have to strive or perform. I don’t need to keep a crazy schedule so people will like me. God already likes me—with an unfailing like. So I don’t have to be rewarded, regarded, or recognized. I don’t have to be the best; I just want to be my best—to the glory of God.

So I keep the toy on my shelf as a reminder that trying to fill up the hole in my heart with anything other than the unfailing love of God will not only frustrate me, but will also frustrate those closest to me. I want to be filled with the unconditional love of God so I’ll have something of real value to pass along to my family.

Someone once told me, “Failure is to succeed at something that doesn’t really matter.” I’ve never forgotten that. We have to figure out what matters most and then go after that.

From Identity Theft by Mike Breaux

True Pennies from Heaven

by Shauna Niequist

Before I started collecting pennies, I used to throw them away, along with gum wrappers and used Kleenex. No one accepts them anymore, really. I keep hearing that they’re going to take them out of circulation. Bank tellers glare at me when I try to hand them several hundred and ask for dollars and quarters instead. The man at the Mexican restaurant where I eat doesn’t want them. I get the same thing every time. It always comes to $6.04. Six-oh-four. I hand him six or a ten or a twenty and then dig in my pockets for the pennies, but he shakes his head. No pennies, no.

I went through a toll booth once and paid the whole thirty-five cents with pennies. My friend and I giggled as I threw them in the basket one by one (plink plink plink) and the cars behind me honked. When I worked at a little surf shop in junior high, at the end of the day, we would balance the register to the cent, to the penny. But no one does that anymore.

All of a sudden, the loss of these pennies seemed tragic to me. So I started collecting them, in a pale blue bowl that my cousin Georgia gave me for Christmas. I sort them out of the more substantial silver coins in my pocket and set them in their new place, the smooth blue bowl. I don’t know what I will do with them, but there is something satisfying about watching their numbers grow, a little army of copper coins. It soothes me to think that if there is a place for them, then there is a place for everything. It seems immeasurably mature of me to do this, like having dish towels and stamps and spare light bulbs all in their respective places. It feels to me that if these worthless little coins have a place, then they have a meaning. And then if I have a place, I have meaning.

In a world where less and less actually exists, where you can spend money without actually having any in your hand, and you can chat in a room without actually chatting or being in that room, these smooth copper pennies are rare, curious things. They are the real thing.

So now I’m amassing pennies like you wouldn’t believe. Maybe someday I will melt them all down and make a trophy. Maybe I will grout them into my bathroom tile. Maybe I will shellac them in tidy rows onto my kitchen cabinets or make jewelry with them. I don’t know yet. But when I walk by the blue bowl in the kitchen, I find myself absently running my fingers through the coins, sure for the moment that there are things that are real and understandable, and therefore good, things I can hold on to when my hands feel empty.

My friend goes to a spiritual director, and I was asking her about it, and she said, basically, Sister Carmen asks her to talk about her life, and she points out the presence and action and grace of God when my friend didn’t even notice it was there. So it was there all along, and the trick is learning to see it.

Each one of our lives is shot through, threaded in and out with God’s provision, his grace, his protection, but on the average day, we notice it about as much as we really notice gravity or the hole in the ozone. So what I’m trying to do is learn to see the way Sister Carmen sees. Because once you start seeing the faithfulness and the hope, you see it everywhere, like pennies. And little by little, here and there, you realize that all of life is littered with bright copper coins, that all of life is woven with bits and stories of God’s goodness.

When I look back now, with these new eyes, it’s like there’s a bright copper path I was walking on and didn’t even know it. And it’s the handful of pennies that I’m clutching in my sweaty hand that gives me the faith and the strength to move forward. What gives me hope is the belief that God will be faithful, because he has been faithful before, to me and the people around me. I need the reminders. I need to be told that he was faithful then, and then, and then. Just because I have forgotten how to see doesn’t mean it isn’t there. His goodness is there. His promises have been kept. All I need to do is see.

So when I’m on the edge, peering over into the unknown, trembling and terrified to move forward, devastatingly afraid to take that next step, I practice believing that full life is beyond the fear. I know that God’s voice has led me to this exact place, and I grab a few pennies. They are sacred reminders that God is God, that he is leading my life, and that he is saying to me, as he has been saying to his people throughout history, I will never leave you, and I’ve left reminders all around, if you have the eyes to see them.

From Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life by Shauna Niequist

What a Person Desires Is Unfailing Love

Accepted. Secure. Significant. What a person desires is an unfailing love. Isn't that what you're looking for? I know I was—and I found it. So with all due respect to Jerry Maguire, Jesus Christ completes me. He is the God of unfailing love who wants to complete you too, in a way that gives you back your true identity.

You see, deep within our hearts is a God-shaped hole. A perfect fit for Jesus in every way. No heart is too big, no heart is too small. Jesus is the answer; he fits them all.

—Mike Breaux, Identity Theft: Reclaiming Who God Created You to Be

Any comments or testimonies today?

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The Beauty of the Incarnation

This is the beauty of the incarnation—God coming down. But even on a human level, some people live as kings and celebrities, so Jesus took another demotion:
he "humbled himself" and was born in a stable as the peasant son of a penniless couple. But even that was not low enough. He kept going down by becoming "obedient to death." His ultimate task wasn't some glorious achievement. There was nothing glamorous about death. But his demotion didn't stop there. He went one rung lower: "even death on a cross" (see Philippians 2:5–8).

The problem with spending your life climbing up the ladder is that you will go right past Jesus, for he's coming down.

—John Ortberg, When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box

Any comments or testimonies today?

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Running Which Race?

The way in which we measure our standard of living indicates the race we have decided to run. The American Christian faces a true dilemma. We can choose the rat race, or we can choose to not love this world and "throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and...run with perseverance the race marked out for us" (Hebrews 12:1-2).

We each make our own choice, but the pressure to make the wrong choice is intense and should not be underestimated. As my first Bible study leader was fond of saying, "You can choose your way, but you can't choose the result." The cause and effect nature of our choice brands us.

—Patrick Morley, The Man in the Mirror

Any comments or testimonies today?

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The Legacy of Mr. Rogers

Apparently, Mr. Rogers, the maven of neighborliness for my generation, knew Jesus. The man who played Mr. Rogers for all those years had studied to become a Presbyterian minister; his full name was Frederick McFeely Rogers. Rather than participating in a ministry in which he spoke to adults at a church, he taught children via the television set. Honestly, I always felt that Mr. Rogers seemed sort of dull, but many others really enjoyed him. Regardless of what you thought of him, for anyone who ever watched this middle-aged man who slipped into a cardigan and changed into tennis shoes, Mr. Rogers reminded us of what was important: Being someone's neighbor meant becoming someone's friend.

—Eric Michael Bryant, Peppermint-Filled Piñatas: Breaking Through Tolerance and Embracing Love

Any comments or testimonies today?

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