Unforced Rhythms of Grace

When I want to do good, I don’t. And when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway (Romans 7:19, NLT) A few days ago I was hanging out with my friend and her two and a half year old son. After a little bit of an event where he thought he shouldn’t put his pajamas on, he came out of his room crying a little bit. He said to me, “I’m sad.” I said, “Why are you sad?” He said, “Because I am not cooperating.” Now it could be that he was just sad because he figured that his un-cooperative attitude meant that I wouldn’t be reading a story for him. That was probably part of it. But I think that there was also a struggle within him. He wanted to please his mom but he also wanted to assert his will. He was frustrated by that process. Oh boy do I ever identify with that. I so want to please God. Sometimes I mess up badly. I don’t listen. I don’t do what I am told. I come out grieved. Not just because of the consequences of my actions but because I have sinned. It is a really terrible feeling. I think...

I have been thinking about the importance of the phrase ‘me too.’ It is amazing how when you share something about yourself or what you are experiencing, many times you will hear a ‘me too.’ Think about how important that is for you. If you take a risk and share something about who you are, don’t you want someone to say ‘me too?’ The problem with ‘me too’ is that someone has to go first. Often it is very hard to share what you are going through. We usually assume that the other people we are talking to will not understand. I have had a number of experiences when I am being vulnerable that I have been shocked when someone says something to the effect of ‘me too.’ I have also been touched when someone else goes first. Some of the most profound experiences of my life have been listening to someone else’s story when they are sharing something I identify with. All of a sudden I am not alone in my experience. Whether or not we hear ‘me too,’ I have found it rewarding to share my sto...

I was watching a program about the things we should do to take care of our bodies. One of the suggestions was that we should go out with friends six times per month. It turns out that laughter is the best medicine. Of all the health ideas, this is my favourite. It seems like this should be relatively easy. But how many people do it? In order to go out with friends or a friend six times per month you would need to go out with friends more than once a week in the average month. In the summer that isn’t very hard but I think that in the fall I would have to work at it. In our busy lives have we lost perspective? It seems like we all spend so much time ‘doing’ stuff that we have lost the experience of just living together. Now we need to make appointments with each other. And we struggle to fit six play dates into a month. I mean think about it. Somebody had to put it in a book.

I think that God has been teaching me about being content. For the last little while I have felt a somewhat stuck. I don’t know if you understand what I mean. It’s not like anything is wrong. Nothing is particularly right either. Not much is happening. My faith life isn’t moving forward. My fear is that unless things are moving forward I am moving back. I met with a friend and we talked about this feeling. Maybe it is just okay to wait for God to lead me. I can work to make sure that I am open to God’s leading. Other than that perhaps it is okay to be in the same spot for a while if that happens to be where God wants me to be. I prayed that evening and I believe that God told me that being content is not the same thing as being complacent. I got the sense that God was trying to teach me about being content. Perhaps I need to learn to wait for Him. I need to learn to be in the same spot for a while. Today I came across this verse: Each time he said, “My gracious favor is a...

Do frogs really turn into princes? Yes, they do. So now you are waiting for the anecdote where I met someone who was ugly on the outside but turned out to be beautiful on the inside. Or maybe you are waiting for the story about an annoying coworker that I learned to like when I found out the reason they were annoying was because they stayed up late every night taking care of the sick in hospital. Nope. I am going to tell you to look for your inner frog. Inner frogs are the things you keep hidden from others. They are the parts of yourself that you don’t think are good enough for other people to see. You keep them hidden because someone taught you need to be perfect or at least fairly competent at something in order to attempt it. Or maybe you don’t want to look foolish. I think writing is something that was an inner frog for me. One day someone asked me to write about one of my experiences. I did that and people kept asking me to write things for them. It took a long time for...

I have been thinking about expectations lately. Many people don’t want anyone to tell us how to act. I am one of those people. I don’t want anyone to expect certain behaviour of me. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be a good person. It just means that I want to decide. Then I thought about it a little further. Think about the people you don’t have any expectation of. What are those people like? I know for me when I think of people I don’t have expectations of I think of… well… losers. Do I want to be the type of person no one expects anything of? As uncomfortable as it is to put myself in a situation where people have permission to hold me accountable for my behaviour the alternative seems worse. I don’t want to live in bondage to other people’s expectations. I won’t let people hold me accountable for things they shouldn’t be. I also know that even when people have reasonable expectations of me I might not live up to them. But I want to be worthy of other people’s expect...

Every day I take the bus I past this house. The back yard is mostly vegetable garden. Predictably the garden gets cleaned up and the plants go and they start to grow in uniformed rows every spring. Once the plants are growing visibly, an older gentlemen seems to enjoy sitting there watching them grow. Each afternoon when I go by the house after work I notice the man sitting on a lawn chair in the shade that his garage affords watching his garden grow. I am not the only one who thinks this. I have heard other people on the bus mention this phenomenon too. Part of me thinks this is sad. This poor older man has nothing to do but sit there. Another part of me romanticizes this notion. Perhaps he gets joy out of watching his garden grow. I think that maybe there is something inherently cool about watching something you created mature and grow. I also think that taking the time to enjoy the process of seeing the fruits of your labour is awesome. I know he is probably watching us ...