The Olympics

A number of times I've turned on the Olympics because, well, it’s the Olympics  - those epic international games that draw the world together to celebrate the ideals of sportsmanship, excellence and competition!  It's a cultural ritual... like watching the Super Bowl, wearing green on St. Patty's, apple pie and voting out incumbents.

So... several times I turn on the tube and the programming is coverage of some obscure sport (Skeleton? Curling? Ice Dancing? Biathlon?) or some event I’m not particularly drawn to like Men’s Figure Skating Short Program and I’m thinking “I could care less”,  but before I can find which cushions the remote is tucked between and switch channels they do the story/bio/human-interest piece on one of the competitors and suddenly... I'm captured... I'm now the featured athletes biggest fan, cheering like crazy and ultimately in tears whether they win or lose.

The power of a person's story still surprises me!

I remember a gal I viewed as pretty spacey. My read was that she was tethered to some other world that, in terms of social interaction and meaningful relationships, made her, essentially a martian in this world. She, astutely, picks up my "I could care less about you" vibe and initiates a meeting with me to talk about it. We're at Starbucks having a cup of joe and the opening ceremonies start with her telling me all about her work and weekend - yadda, yadda,  yadda and just before I find which hemispheres of my brain the remote is tucked between and hit the power/attention/"Who cares" button she has begun to share some of her story. In mere moments I'm captured by her biography of betrayal, neglect, dismissal and abuse. She, vulnerably and softly shares of a season in despair and speaks of God rescuing her and of an ever present craving for friendships she's never known.

My coffee is cold and I'm stunned by my sin - so ashamed of my unloving interactions with her - and I wonder, again, why I've judged a book by it's cover...

In the same instant I'm now one of her biggest fans, wanting to cheer her on like crazy!!!  It's incredible how quickly our hearts toward another can shift!

Story is the language of the heart. Listen to another’s story and you'll understand them… you'll feel compassion for them, you'll end up being one of their fans...

I'm so glad I didn't change the channel. - Craig McConnell

Pretending

  There comes an hour in the afternoon when the child is tired of ‘pretending’; when he is weary of being a robber or a cowboy. It is then that he torments the cat… - Gilbert Keith Chesterton   

Eventually we all tire, and it is then that things unseen while pretending, surface… and we torment the cat, our spouse, our children, or the gal behind the United Customer Service Desk at United O’Hare.

I think of the gifted woman who speaks profound as-if-they-were-from-God words to those gathered in the groups she attends… and then, wearied from ministry, returns home spent, short and all but absent to her young son and husband. Her “gifting” leaves them tormented. There’s the pastor, a true verse by verse expository preacher who carefully parses every verb preparing for his series on “The Biblical Mandate to Love”, while his wife is withering from the cold dismissive silence that’s marked their marriage for 20 years. He stopped pretending years ago.

We can speak, behave and appear to be something we are not yet… and while it may sound and look good/godly/holy... we're actually just pretending... something core, true, is missing. It looks like God but is missing the stamp of authenticity... and lacking that, it will not last long. Paul hits on this saying,

“If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing...” I Corinthians 13

It may be an hour in the afternoon or a season of life… and we’ll catch ourselves tormenting the cat! It’s in that moment of exposure, of embarrassment, failure and frustration that we can see it, own it and then... cry out to God for a deep true transformation that endures and deepens over decades.

Decades!

Why do we settle for pretending when the life, character, strength and love we yearn for, and often pretend to have, really is available? We don't have to pretend!

I’m thinking of a blogger who loves nothing more than to poetically write of an intimacy and life with God and yet startled by fear and in-some-way committed to self-protection can get through life only giving 78% of himself. Most don’t notice, but at times it torments those closest to him because they need and want all of him!

Oh how I long to tire of pretending.

- Craig McConnell

The Turn Out

Lori and I just celebrated our 34 years of marriage.

I remember when we were dating and occasionally drove up the mountain road to Chantry Flats in the San Gabriel Mountains that bordered our hometown. In a few quick miles there were several turn outs that provided a perch to view the shimmering evening lights of LA.

We’d go up there to pray over the city!

Once we were cruising the twisty road and came up behind an older car dawdling up the grade piloted by an older couple - I was 22, they had to be in their 80’s. Once I got past the frustration of their slow pace bottlenecking a growing line of impatient road hacks I noticed how close Gram and Gramps were sitting. They were like two peas in a pod (do I sound like Forest Gump?), tight as could be right up alongside one another. In those days it was common for a car’s front seat to be a bench seat and the absence of mandatory seat belt laws made it easy to snuggle while you drove. He had one hand on the wheel and the other around her shoulder.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               We were mesmerized by an old married couple being so in love… after decades! Following them for a couple of miles I think a little cynicism I had about marriage was being dismantled by this pair of silver-haired lovers. Deeper than my cynicism was a latent desire for a marital intimacy and relationship that would thrive over the decades. Decades! I knew that someday, with someone, I’d say something along the lines of “till death do us part”, but long loving marriages weren’t a prominent theme in my world, and besides, the rapture was due in the next year or two making any long term commitment a mute point. Until that moment I don’t think I ever considered a long loving ever-increasing intimate marriage a very real possibility. Lori and I were captivated by the untold love story putzing along in front of us. When they pulled over into a familiar turn out, we couldn’t help but pull in right alongside of them. There they sat enjoying the city lights, there we sat enjoying them and began to believe and hope for ourselves. At the time I said to myself and then out loud, that’s what I want… I want to be that couple at that age… in this turn out, very much in love.

On many occasions since I’ve remembered that couple.

34 years into a marriage I hope lasts for seventy I think we have an incredible marriage... but, I know there’s so much more for us to experience, enjoy, offer and be, as husband and wife. Many times I’ve said to Lori, “I cannot wait till we’ve been married for 50 years… by then I will have become more the man who loves you as God intended you to be loved.”

We’re closing in on that older couple we saw 36 years ago, and I'm no longer a cynic. I know firsthand that a long lasting loving intimate marriage is possible! It is good!

If you see us pulled over in a turn out, pull up alongside, but hey, don’t flash the lights… we’re praying!

- Craig McConnell

Louder!

I’m listening to the live version of “Our God Reigns” * cranked as high as my system will go… and it is not loud enough!

Louder! Louder!

I’ve invited the angelic armies to join me in worship… for the Rockies to raise their voice, for rocks and trees…for all of Creation to join the chorus… and it’s still not loud enough!

I’ve listened to it three times now and am in tears. I am incapable of giving God the praise He is due. Worthy of. Justly deserves.

Perhaps that’s my greatest short coming… worshipping Him fully. I mean it… there are so many things I fall short of, yet it may be that none is graver than curbing my full heart’s adulation.

I know grace, I know I’m forgiven, cleansed, His, the beloved… and I know, I know… but in this moment  of adoration I simply cannot express all that’s in my heart to Him... and it is that which I most want to do!

I fall silent.

The song ends with the live audience applauding… and it is not loud enough, not long enough. 

Louder! Louder! 

- Craig

• The Chris Tomlin, Charlie Hall, Dave Crowder version on the album Everything Glorious

Sulking

“It is the ability to choose which makes us human.” - Author Unknown

Some huge part of what it means to be human is our ability to choose. Our depravity, woundedness, glory and our transformation are all seen in the choices we make.

Some part of me was sulking over the constancy of choice that fills my every day.

How many choices do we make in a single day? Is there no rest? A little break... a couple of passes... you know, like a "snow" day?

Good over evil, a serving of vegetables over the old-fashioned glazed donut, listening versus talking, saving instead of spending, stillness over distraction, choosing to love instead of dis-engaging, smiling, reading over the boob-tube, life over death, to worship God rather than euphoria, assume their good heart, serve, courage verses cowardice… (on and on it goes!)

Then I read a column by Dennis Prager in which he observed,

Every change for good must be constantly renewed, but changes for the worse are often permanent. Goodness must be fought for every day, over and over…

It caught my attention as being true.

I want change! I want to change! But often I want it to be easy… instant… entirely of God and requiring nothing of “Me” (note my hiding behind a pseudo-spirituality). 

Our lesser choices seem to have an enduring quality that our more noble choices lack. My choice to rage in hidden bitterness toward a cruel and former friend doesn’t seem to require the constant renewal, the regular reaffirmation that the choice to forgive, reconcile and love does. The choice to furiously follow God through the day requires a volitional strength and constancy that an extended spiritual malaise doesn’t.

Holiness and character displays itself in the thousand different choices I make each day. And there are times I am weary from the choices.

And then Paul speaks, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." - Galatians  

I will not give up!

“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely." - Author Unknown
- Craig