The Life of Faith

A couple weeks ago my husband and I rented the movie, The Lake House, in which a man and a woman discover that somehow they are living two years apart in time but that they can communicate through the medium of a mailbox at the lake house. She is living in 2006. He is still back in 2004. OK, don't try to analyze it too much...it's just a movie. Anyway, at the climax of the movie, Sandra Bullock's character reaches out to Keanu Reeves' character and tells him that he will die on Valentine's Day 2004 if he continues on the course he is heading. (Remember, she knows his future because she is in the future.) She tells him what to do to avoid this premature death and that she loves him and will be waiting for him at the mailbox on Valentine's Day in 2006. And of course, the movie ends with their joyful meeting at the mailbox in 2006.

The final scene is shot pretty much from Sandra Bullock's perspective. She puts her warning message in the mailbox, hopes that the man she loves has acted upon it and then he drives up about 30 seconds later and all ends well. But you have to ask yourself, what was Keanu Reeves doing while Sanda Bullock waited those thirty seconds? For him the waiting lasted two years. Did he begin to doubt that he had ever really received messages from the future? Did his friends tell him he was nuts to be waiting for this unseen and pretty much unknowable woman? Did he get lonely and wish he could date women who he could actually see right now? Did he wonder whether she would really be at the assigned place in 2006 after he had given up two years of his life just waiting around?

Essentially Keanu Reeves had to live a life of faith for two years. He had escaped death only to feel like a stranger throughout 2004 and 2005, waiting for his real life to begin in 2006. How did he get through it? Well, presumably he reread her letters a lot. When he began to doubt, he replayed in his mind all the "coincidences" that had happened which could only be evidence that this woman who loved him was waiting for him in the future. He probably also made any major decisions through the filter of "I want to be in this particular place in 2006" and he probably avoided any entanglements that would hinder his relationship with Sandra Bullock reaching its fruition in 2006.

It's actually a pretty good illustration of the life you and I live waiting for unseen and pretty much indescribable realities to occur in the future. Sometimes people think we are crazy; sometimes we ourselves wonder if we are crazy. We sacrifice certain things today because we believe we have something much better waiting for us in the future. We hang on. Patience. Perseverance toward the unseen goal. Believing that what we will surely have later is better than anything we could possibly have now. The life of faith.

Small Steps to Spiritual Transformation

I'm currently reading Revolution of Character by Dallas Willard and Don Simpson, so, as always when I'm reading Dallas Willard, expect a lot of quotes:

I believe one reason so many people fail to immerse themselves in the life described in the New Testament is that is so unlike their own experience. This is true even though they may be quite faithful to their church and really do have Jesus Christ as their only hope. But the New Testament presentation of the life they are offered in Christ only discourages them. Instead of inspiring them, it makes them feel hopeless.

Why is this? Surely the life God holds out to us in Jesus was not meant to be an unsolvable puzzle! I suggest that for all our good intentions and strenuous efforts, we don't approach and receive the life Jesus offers us in the right way.
....

Jesus invites us to leave our burdensome ways of heavy labor--especially our religious ones--and step into the yoke of training with him. His is a way of gentleness and lowliness, a way of soul rest. His is a way of inner transformation in which carrying our burden with him is easy and light (see Matthew 11:28-30). What we thought was so difficult about entering fully into divine life is entirely due to our failure to understand and take the small steps that quietly but surely lead to our transformation.

What are these small steps? In large part they are simply the habits we have been talking about in this blog. So don't get discouraged. Keep reading. Keep praying. Keep attempting to create oases of quiet in your life. These are the little things that will quietly but surely lead to your transformation into the image of Christ.

Holiday Crush

You can see from the infrequency of my posting this month that I am already feeling the rush of the holidays. What I want to know is, how many years do you have to do the family's Thanksgiving dinner before it becomes routine?

If you are as busy as I am, you probably don't have time to read blogs anyway, but if you find yourself with time on your hands you might want to check out the November 2005 archives for Mary and Martha's Entertainment Survival Guide: 5 Ways to Stay Sane Through the Holidays. It's all about focusing on that one necessary thing that might not even have made your "to do" list yet.

Interruptions, Delays and Inconveniences

Elisabeth Elliot's daily devotional from Back to the Bible today is entitled Interruptions, Delays and Inconveniences. Hmmm...sounds familiar. I think I was trying to write about that topic yesterday. Elliot quotes several missionaries:

--One who learned to regard trivial and annoying chores as daily practice that would eventually qualify her for bigger and better work

--One who trained himself to welcome interruptions as opportunities to present the gospel in true missionary spirit

--One who viewed an upset to her plans as an indication of God's guiding hand securing the accomplishment of His will (rather than her own will).

Check it out in Back to the Bible's Devotions archives and, while you're there, sign up for daily email excerpts from classic devotionals.

Keeping Priorities Straight When Life's Little Disasters Strike

Last Thursday morning I was in the kitchen—the start of a normal day I thought—when I heard an ominous sound. It sounded like water dripping in the family room. Sure enough, water was dripping fast through the first floor family room ceiling from a shower on the floor above.

And so began a home repair odyssey that has not yet ended. I rushed upstairs only to discover that when the previous homeowners had installed shelving in the linen closet they had screwed it into the access panel to the shower. The entire shelving system had to come out of the closet—and ultimately a hole larger than the access panel had to be cut into the closet wall in order to get to the problem. That meant a lot of Thursday was chewed up getting ready for the plumber and triaging to save the family room ceiling. Then I spent five hours on Friday dealing with the plumber. Saturday and Sunday the wall had to be repaired and spackled. While we were at it, we figured we might as well spackle numerous holes in the closet apparently left by homeowners past. Monday I repainted the closet. Now some sort of shelving needs to be reinstalled and the linen closet contents, strewn about the spare bedroom, put away. Basically a week of disruption and unexpected chores, one thing leading to another as always seems to happen.

And the scary part is, this is just one example of how time dissolves. My life is filled with similar examples. A couple months ago the IRS told us we owed them more taxes. We spent two full days unearthing three-year-old papers to explain why we did not. When the IRS later wrote us a sunny letter telling us that, oh yes, we were right after all, I felt like asking for a refund of my two days.

I know your life is the same as mine. We all deal with these unexpected, time sucking problems and, if we are not careful, we move from crisis to crisis until we wake up one day and realize weeks and months have gone by and we haven’t done anything we really wanted or set out to do. It’s a sobering thought--especially today, November 1, when we realize the year is fast waning and the next two months will be especially busy with holiday preparations and celebrations.

Keeping our spiritual lives as a priority amidst busy days is not some new problem. The book of Haggai tells us God's people got side-tracked for 14 years by home improvement projects. God told them to carefully consider the way they were spending their days and get their priorities back in line. Hebrews tells us to deal with this problem aggressively by "throwing off" everything that hinders us and running the spiritual race with perseverance lest we kind of just drift off course.

Take some time today to think about how you can keep God at the top of your to-do list when life’s tiny crises hit and the busy-ness of the holidays begins. Personally, I’ve discovered that rock solid habits are the only way I can do it. I actually write a list every single day: “Read Bible. Pray. Exercise. Shower.” Then I add other things to the list like “repaint linen closet” or “look for tax papers.” And I do the reading and praying first so that, hopefully, it will already be done when the family room ceiling caves in. This, plus weaving little layers of God time in throughout the day (like listening to a sermon on tape while I repair the closet!) helps keep my priorities focused and, as the author of Hebrews would say, my eyes fixed on Jesus.

...Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus.... Hebrews 12:1-2