Broke a leg, not a heart

I experienced a ‘first’ as a parent last weekend. I got to watch one of my children really ‘act’! My oldest son, a middle schooler, was in the cast of his first play, Snow White & the Disco Dwarves—-playing the distinguished role of ‘Loopy,’ the granola-toting hippie who hangs out with 6 other diminutive colleagues in the basement of a magic disco.

Like all the kids, he did a fine job—but then again, I don’t have a theatrical pedigree to be any kind of judge. My one and only acting gig was playing Charlie Brown in a 5th grade rendition of ‘You’re a Good Man.’ At the time, I thought I was pretty hot stuff, the marquis actor and all—until I realized the real crowd-pleaser was my best friend Dale, who snagged the Snoopy part! Apparently a dour, Dutch-boy haircut boy was no match for an athletic & charming dancing dog. Ah, live and learn! But back to Jeremy: My favorite part wasn’t what he said, which he did well, but how his face lit up with delight when the crowd laughed at his first spaced-out-sounding line.

I’m sure the same feeling has happened to you: you see your child doing well in a new environment you hadn’t seen her or him before, and you say a prayer of thanksgiving to God. I sometimes think that God must have fun watching us, His children, trying new things, gaining confidence, making new friends, marking up learnings in our search for meaning.

As Christ-followers, if we’re not constantly putting ourselves ‘out there’ on one of life’s stages, imagine how much delight we’re depriving our heavenly Father of! No loving worry before we try, no heart-patter of relief if we succeed, no parental love-pat if we need encouragment. If we say no to new challenges in our life and in our faithwalk, we steal from God some of the life-worship we profess to want to give Him.

But what if I fail, you ask? Well, what if your kids ask you the same thing? For healthy parents, of course, it’s not whether our kids win or lose, but how they play the game. Winning is just icing on the cake. Failing with class is even more gratifying. It’s refusing to play that’s the most painful, worrisome, and sad to the ones who love them the most.

A teenager in the Bible was confronted with the potentially fatal need to walk in on the King’s throneroom uninvited, in order to save her people from extermination. Being his young wife, she knew she had some possibility of avoiding his anger, but only just that – a possibility. Though she wavered at first, her uncle challenged her to see the big picture—both for the Jewish people, and for her life—and she did the impermissible but necessary thing. And both she and her people came out of the terrible ordeal victorious!

“Go and gather together all the Jews of Susa and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will do the same. And then, though it is against the law, I will go in to see the king. If I must die, I must die.”

Esther 4:16

Which of life’s stages are you stepping out on—for God’s sake and for yours? Have you tried a new challenge at work or church? Have you joined a small group to deepen your walk with Jesus? Have you volunteered to serve in a ministry outside your comfort zone?

If nothing come to mind, just imagine God’s heartache as He sees all the fun and challenges you’re missing. Just imagine your own regrets as He gets to show you, Heaven-side, the videotape of what could have been! --Pastor Dan

Biting the Apple

Some of you are aware I’ve had a laggardly laptop for some time now. The laptop takes about 20 minutes to turn on and boot up, the DVD drive is temperamental, the battery won’t recharge more than 25% of the time, and after inadvertently flicking the keyboard’s letter ‘D’ off the computer dozens of time, it has finally broken off (having spent years in heavy Chicago traffic, maybe my middle-finger muscles are over-developed?)

The extended warranty’s been expired for some time now—just before most of the above symptoms started presenting—and so the cost to repair any of these glitches far exceeds its value. But being a stereotypical Scotchman, spending the money has been hard to swallow. It’s funny how many workarounds I’ve let creep into my otherwise efficient workhabits to accommodate an increasingly unusable piece of equipment:
--I try to leave the laptop on my dining room table (aka KP work room), tethered to the AC cord, since the battery no longer recharges reliably—making it a charming, lap-size desktop unit.
--I’ve been emailing documents to our home desktop by the printer so I don’t have to unplug the laptop and carry it over to the printer (if the battery dies in transit up the stairs, I’ll waste another 20 minutes trying to restart it!)
--Now that the letter ‘D’ is officially off the QWERTY, I try to think of ways to write sentences that avoid it entirely (note: this article is being written on Laura’s computer!)

Actually, after flicking the D-key off the computer for the final time last Sunday night, I realized that God might be trying to tell me something (Laura suggested the message was “close the computer and come have dinner!”) But I heard a different message (with some strong encouragement from my fellow staffmembers)! So, with classic ‘grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side’-ism, and coinciding with clearance sale prices at the Apple store, the proverbial tree in the middle of the garden, I decided this week to give in to my temptation—and I bought my first Mac.

I’ve been too busy to actually take it out of the box yet (it’s personal—I want the mood & lighting to be just right), but I’m ramping down my old laptop and getting ready to convert it another less demanding church-use (German has a place we can use it in the AV booth).

But it’s also gotten me thinking theologically about something as everyday as, well, lifespan. I’ve had that once-shiny & new, now banged-up & bruised laptop for several years—and it feels familiar more than dysfunctional. And that’s how life feels for me sometimes: There’s an awful lot wrong with me—even more than with my old laptop—and my brokenness makes my life not only inefficient, but unenjoyable and unsustainable.

Jesus knows exactly how to refurbish, rebuild, and reboot each one of us—but the question is, will we let Him? If a type-A efficiency-craver like me can put up with a lousy laptop for ages, just imagine how I can justify all the more personal things wrong with my own body & soul. Maybe you’re the same way…

But there will come a point when my old motherboard won’t turn on anymore. My brain won’t boot up, and my harddrive won’t spin. I’ll overheat, freeze up, lose my flash, and be deposited in the ground for the great recycling. And if I haven’t claimed Jesus as my OS by then, it’ll be too late. All of us are on a collision course with mortality—and as Jesus-followers we know that by claiming Him as our programmer, we’ll not only enjoy eternity with Him, but earth with Him, too!

If you’ve treated your soul like I’ve treated my old Dell, I’d urge you to bring it to Jesus’ shop this week (8:45 & 10:30am Sundays at St James). There’s a shiny-new You ready to turn on, and it’s completely free. Granted, most of the rebate comes once we’ve logged off for the last time, but even until then, it’s a great ride here in the body of Christ! And this time, the fruit that looks so good—really is!

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5 NLT