Growing in Gratitude

Why me? Why do I have to have a headache right now? Isn't what I'm doing super important, why let a headache ruin that? These are the kind of whining questions I asked God earlier today. I have become so accustom to the blessings that flow in my life, that I despise any deviation from my routine. I act as if I am entitled to a trouble-free life.

In reality, who am I to complain? I am truly blessed. I was reminded of how blessed I am, as I strolled through the nursing home earlier tonight. I don't know what my future holds, but right now I my life is full blessing. Everywhere I look, I see another reason that I should be grateful.

I don't say this to boast. I say it because I am so frequently reminded of my ingratitude. I'm learning to be grateful for all the small things. The process is slow, and punctuated with failure on my part. Even when I do feel gratitude, I'm not always sure the best way to show it.

The good thing about gratitude, it is contagious. The more you begin to think about what you have been blessed with, the more you blessings you begin to see. The more you see, the more you begin to thank God for. The more you thank God, the more people begin to see God at work around them. They begin to see, and the process begins again.

I'm grateful for the growth I see in my life, even if I complain it isn't as much as I wanted. Growth is a sign of life. And that is worth giving thanks.

Mental Wanderings

Do you ever let you mind wander when you are doing chores? I do. My wanders a lot during some tasks. Today, I was pruning blackberry bushes early this afternoon. As I snipped off dead branches and pulled up weeds, some things occurred to me.

The first thing that occurred to me is that we also go through pruning. The dead branches on a blackberry bush only make it harder to harvest the fruit. If you aren't careful, that deadness can spread. Jesus said, "I am the vine, and My Father is the vineyard keeper. Every branch in Me that does not produce fruit He removes, and He prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit" (John 15:1-2, HCSB). When we get the dead branches out of our lives, we, most likely, will see an increase in fruitfulness. Dead branches are the people, activities, and private sins we allow to draw us away from God.

Another thing that occurred to me is that the presence of sin in the world means that we will have to work hard and endure pain, if we are to enjoy the fruit of a well lived life. I love blackberries. I have worked to maintain the wild bushes in my yard. I enjoy being able to go out, right behind my house and harvest blackberries in the summer. But I seriously doubt that many have ever harvested a large amount of blackberries without also having to doctor cuts and pick thorns out of their skin. The blackberry, in all its yummy goodness, does not come without some discomfort (even tame blackberries purchased in a store put a thorn in your wallet).

It also occurred to me that crabgrass is a violent, invasive killer.  Its roots grow deep and wide, and entangle themselves in the root systems of more useful plants. As I worked to uproot the crabgrass growing around my blackberry bushes, I couldn't keep from thinking about Jesus' parable about the wheat and the tares. The tares were weeds that an enemy had sown. Jesus warned against pulling them up, for fear it would damage the wheat. They were allowed to grow together until the harvest, and then the tares were gathered into bundles and burned. Some of my careless weeding cost me precious blackberry plants, so I adjusted my strategy. The plants that survive will be stronger in the long run, since they aren't competing with the crabgrass any more. It reminded me that discipline must be practiced wisely, carefully, and with a gentle hand.

What about you, where do your mental wanders take you? What truths are you confronted with? What wisdom is passed on? Let me know about it.

Can Reading Fiction Help?

Me with Stephen Lawhead

I once that people who read fiction tend to have better interpersonal relationship skills. While I can't testify to the the truthfulness of the statement, I can say that my recent experience with fiction has thinking that it may be true. With fiction, as in life, you encounter a many types of people. Although it may be true that each is unique, there is also a lot of common ground between people.

In life, the first impression of a person often dictates the flow of the relationship. If they make a pleasing first impression, you may find yourself trying to build a friendship. If they strike in a negative way, you might find yourself avoiding that person. First impressions are often wrong, or at least slightly off the mark.

As you encounter characters in the works of fiction, you are given ample time to measure the person through their actions. You may not initial like a character, but through the events that change and shape them you come to love or admire them. Or you may find that your initial positive feelings for a character are unwarranted. These things can be said of life as well, but we tend to give real human being less opportunity to change our minds.

Fiction, then, can give us a framework to approaching the people that we meet. Watching a life unfold in a novel can help you to see the big picture. The future brings many twists and turns, many opportunities for change and growth, failure and betrayal. If a person reads widely in different genres of fiction, they will encounter many different types of characters. From that pool of characters, they will be able to more readily find common ground with people in the real world. Reading of this sort helps us to temper both our gullibility and our cynicism.

Individual who have no difficulty with meeting new people may find this a bit odd, but introverts often struggle with developing relationships. Earning their trust comes at a great price. However, I have found myself a little less apprehensive about approaching new people. The opportunity for friendship and adventure is great to risk throwing it away. I think the Spirit has been using fiction to help me becoming more discerning and more caring.

The imagination can be a powerful ally to growth. It can also be a great ally to the gospel. The Scripture is filled with vivid imagery. That imagery pulls you into the story, connects you to the people in those stories. Scripture is not fiction, but it still takes advantage of the story format. Story is important on an instinctive level.

I encourage you to read the Bible for the truth it teaches. Get lost in the stories, connect to the character, and try to understand their motives. It will help you to grow. But also remember that other stories echo some of the great stories of Scripture. You'll read about the ruin of sin, the role of providence in life, justice, forgiveness, and redemption. Just as Jesus taught great truth in parables, so to fiction can teach us great truths. Most of the fictional character you'll encounter in your stories are composites of real people. And most likely, you'll run into someone who is similar in some way.

I encourage you to find some good fiction, and devote some time to developing your imagination. Realize the authors worldview shapes not only the story he tells, but how he tells the story. Reading authors who write from a distinctly Christian worldview helps to reinforce the biblical world view for you. Reading authors who write from a non-Christian worldview give you a peek behind the curtain, so to speak. They help you to see how they wrestle with the implications of their worldview.

I'm not an expert on fiction, and my tastes run toward fantasy and science fiction. Although, I also like historical fiction and literature some. Some of my suggestions would be C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, and his Space Trilogy; J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy); I loved the Song of Albion trilogy, The Pendragon Cycle, Byzantium, and The King Raven Trilogy by Stephen R. Lawhead (I'm a big Lawhead fan); Peter Pan was a good book; John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is a must read (even if you have to do it in modern English); and there are plenty of others. 

What works of fiction have you read and found helpful? Who are some of your favorite characters? What books would you recommend? Why not leave a comment?

Filling the Empty Cup

Sometimes I feel like a empty cup, yearning to be filled.  I realize that this a symptom of my shallowness, and not a sign of unfathomable depths.  David's cup ran over, and he was a man who lived deep and wide.  He knew that the inexhaustible riches of God's grace could never dry up.  There is no moment in David's life where he truly lacked confidence in God's provision.  Even in the moments where David appears to express doubt his immediate response is to call himself to renewed trust.

I can think of a few reasons we might feel "empty."  The first reason that springs to mind is grief.  It is natural to the human condition to feel a sense of emptiness in the face of a loss.  This feeling of emptiness is not sinful in and of itself.  If permitted to turn into despair of bitterness, it can become sin.  The second reason we might feel empty is that we have labored long and hard with very time for rest.  In these moments, feelings of emptiness are mostly likely symptoms of exhaustion.  The last reason for feeling empty is a failure to commune with God through prayer and Bible study.  The less time we spend with God, the emptier we feel.  Other reasons for feeling empty may exist, but I would like to look at the third reason a little farther.

There is a temptation to live in the shallow end of faith.  Because we lack self-discipline, we find Bible study to be dull and boring.  Often, Bible reading can take tremendous amounts of intellectual energy and yield meager results.  This experience generates frustration which in turn creates a pattern of neglect.  However, reading is a skill that diminishes with neglect.  The old expression, "If you don't use it, you lose it," applies to the skill of reading and its sister discipline, thinking. We read through passages without any sense of their historical setting, their relation to other Scripture, or how we should respond to these timeless truths.

Prayer is little different.  Most of our praying barely moves beyond the rote prayers of childhood.  We have lost the sense of majesty that prayer should instill in our hearts.  He have the privilege of speaking to the Creator of the Universe, our gracious heavenly Father, and yet we treat it like is inconsequential.  We reason that we don't really need to pray, because God knows what we are thinking anyway.  Although he does know our every thought, he still commands us to pray.

I think most people want to only want to wade into the mercy of God, because they are afraid that if they jump into the deep end of faith they'll lose themselves.  To a point, they are right.  However, it is only in losing their lives that they will find them.  The solution to this feeling of emptiness is to fill ourselves up with God.  Or rather, to allow God to fill us up with himself.  We do this by staying in the Word, not to learn about God, but know him.  Along with the diligent labor of studying God's Word, we must also make much work of prayer.  We must become the kind of people who move past simplistic praying, and who are instead transformed through prayer.

What about you?  Do you feel empty?  Are you spending time each day with God in his Word and in prayer?  If your cup is empty, pray: "Lord, here is my cup. Please fill it up."