There are things good for food, and there are things
That would poison: and they are all mixed together.
– The Kingdom Manford Guztke
There are certain stories that plan themselves, but occasionally you get swept up in one bigger than you.
In each good story, there is a moment where the main characters have something spectacular thrust upon them. A moment where everything comes to a head and the story reaches a peak, and I always wonder in those moments:
…What now?
What about the day after The Day? And then the day after that?
If the whole point of it was to reach that moment, after you reach it, what do you do then?
It feels a lot like the next time after great times.
Think about the last time you have had a great time. Maybe it was a bonfire, a night out with friends, the beach, a wilderness hike, or a conversation late one night.
Whatever moment you have, they all seem to transcend don’t they? Those times when you and good friends and Jesus all get wrapped up in this ball of incredible clarity and good.
Each moment feels as though you have torn a glimpse into Heaven. That in that moment, we are seeing a sliver of what we are all meant for. A life that “no eye has seen or ear has heard,” but we feel the pull of Another World.
And our souls burn.
But each time after those moments carries with it a subtle temptation.
We loved it so much, we try desperately to recreate each subsequent time we are together, but the moment was then and this is now. The two don’t mix because if we could have brought the moment about on our own power, we would spend our time doing nothing else.
There is the mountaintop, and then there is the day you have to go back home.
But what you do after is much more important than I usually realize. How you act in the aftermath, when it all goes back to normal, is almost more important than the moments themselves. People say that the Devil is in the details, which sounds all well and true, but I think God is in the details with much more frequency.
A well-known pastor once noted that there is no distinction between the Spiritual and Everything else. “Everything is Spiritual because Everything is God’s.”
I really like that because it helps me make sense of my lists, planning, Monday mornings and budget reports. God is hovering around, pushing us all to get the small things right because the people that change the world are never the ones that say they are going to go out and change the world. The people, the heros, that make a difference are the ones that take “whatever your hand finds to do” and they try to do it well. The world changers are the ones who do the little things right. Just as a gymnast creates an amazing routine through hundreds of hours of training in each detail of each skill, making a difference is not about a spectacular one time moment of triumph. It is about waking up each day and trying to do the small things well. It is about practicing, practicing, practicing and then when it is all on the line, having the confidence to go out and stick the landing.
It is about doing the little things right even when the course, even when the story leads to there.
Maybe especially when our story leads to there.
The greatest twists of my story have always happened when God came, not just once, but over and over and dusted me off, held my hand tight and brought me back. Not because I deserved it in anyway, but because Love always brings things together.
I don’t get it. I hope I never do.
The mystery of Love and Grace is so utterly enthralling.
“You really see all of me and yet You think that in me is something great?”
“No. I see in you what will make Me great.”
We are all being swept into a story bigger than any of could have ever thought to put on paper. A story in which there are no endings because it was and is still being written by an Author who has no box. We can’t contain Him, and it makes most of us afraid.
We should be.
He is crazy…
…But the best brand of crazy.
“He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD. “Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. “Thus you are to know in your heart that the LORD your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son… “
Deuteronomy 8
Chasing The Wild Beast 