Stepping In It

It's a beautiful fall day. The sun is beaming down, warming your face against a cool autumn breeze that would chill you if there were a single cloud in the sky. But there are none. The sky is as clear as a fresh glass of water, and the air is so crisp you can see for miles. You are walking at the park, savoring every bit of the season, listening to the laughter of children and enjoying the sense of energy in the air; as if nature herself is pulling together to make you feel alive. Then you step in poop.

Somehow dog poop seems to end up exactly where you want to walk. It's like the soles of our feet have some sort of natural magnetism that draws us to the exact spot where a dog has made a fresh mess. It's awful. For me, it's usually the smell that tips me off first. "What is that? Did you...? Oh no!" Then the wiping of the shoes on the grass, which is completely discouraging because you will never get it all off. The worst part is that it's not just a one time mess up that you can just move on from. When you step in dog poop, it has a way of traveling with you. "It's in the tread of my shoes! How do I keep it from getting in the car? I can't wear these into the house. I don't want to track it up and down the stairs."

Life has a way of directing us toward the messes. You are driving along just fine and your car dies. You are writing an important paper for school and your computer crashes. You are living a healthy life until a small cough turns out to be cancer. You are building a great career and, out of nowhere, you are let go and have to leave everything behind to get a new job in a new city. You were moving forward on what you thought was an easy road through life and, all of a sudden, you step in it.

It's easy in those moments throw your hands up and think that the train of your life has been derailed one too many times. It can seem as if God can't or won't help us in our impossible situation. We can become frustrated and angry at the pointlessness of our needless suffering, because, really...when we take a look at the mess we are in it is nearly impossible to see any purpose behind it. All we can hope to do is not track that mess through every other area of our lives, right?

How can we understand the road we travel? It is the Lord who directs our steps.

Proverbs 20:24

When you are in the middle of your "dog poop moment," it can be really hard to hear a verse like this. On the surface it sounds like it's saying that God directed me right into this mess; he made it happen. My point in this in not to dispute God's sovereignty over our lives, but to point out that we can't fully understand the road we are walking in life. We can't see around every corner or know what the best routes to take are. God does. And what does he do for us in our ignorance of the best way to go? He directs our steps.

I enjoy playing Would You Rather, so here's a question for you. Would you rather walk through a minefield of dog droppings to get a million dollars or keep your shoes clean on the sidelines? We'd all choose the million, but what if you didn't know about the money? Would you still choose to walk through all that mess? Probably not. The good news is that God knows what lies ahead for us. He knows there are million dollar moments waiting for us, and he knows what we need to walk through to get there. Even when you can't understand the road you travel, you can trust God. He knows where you need to be and he will direct your steps to get you there. You can trust him.

Keep Complaining

As a parent, there is one sound above all others that makes me want to break things, and when I say things I mean anything! I would break almost anything to make this sound stop...an ipad, a Faberge egg, a priceless Van Gogh painting or an intact dinosaur egg. That sound is complaining. When my children (or anybody's children for that matter) go on a complaining binge it is like ice picks in my ears. Whether it's the piercing tone or the constant whining that embodies all compaint, it is a horrible thing for anyone to have to put up with.

When my kids complain, my response is to send them away. "You complaining? You're done. Go to your room. Do not pass go. Do not go to the bathroom. Do not get a drink of water. Do not take a breath of oxygen. Go directly to your room." To me, it is an undisciplined, ungrateful and selfish response to circumstances, and I won't tolerate it. But I do know someone who puts up with it.

I cry out to the Lord; I plead for the Lord’s mercy. I pour out my complaints before him and tell him all my troubles. When I am overwhelmed, you alone know the way I should turn.

Psalm 142:1-3

God cares about the details of our lives. Not just the, "going to church, giving in the offering, not telling lies," details, but the nitty gritty, daily issues of life. God cares about your headache. God cares about the fact that you don't know if you can pay all your bills. God cares about your car that is barely running. In short, God cares about the things that affect you. And more than that, he wants you to bring those cares to him.

Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

1 Peter 5:7

Sometimes when we approach God we come to him as if he is some angry being in the sky that we must appease with our polite contrition. We treat him like a rabbit in our back yard that we must approach very slowly and carefully because if we offend him he will dart off too quickly for us to catch. We see God as a petty being who won't give us what we want if we put him off in any way. Those views of God couldn't be any further from the truth. God cares about our problems and wants us to bring them to him. If we hurt, he wants us to tell him. If we are broken, he wants us to bring our brokenness to him. If we are angry at God and want to throw punches at him, he wants us to address it with him because he can take our punches and more.

God wants the real you. He doesn't want the job-interview you. He doesn't want the first-date you. He wants you...warts and all. So are there things in your life that you don't understand? Are there hurts that you are suffering? Are things just not going your way? Cast your burdens on Jesus because he loves you. And when you do, don't be surprised to find that God is in your corner.

Middle School Minotaur

You just gotta love Jr. High students. They have the perfect balance of knowledge and personal restraint that create some great moments. One such moment happened today at Epic JV, our middle school service:

Teacher: Who knows what a mentor is?

Middle Schooler: Isn't that something from Greek mythology?

Teacher: No...that's a minotaur, a creature with a human body and the head of a bull. Although a minotaur mentor would be pretty sweet.

I talked to the Jr. High student later. He'd been reading the Percy Jackson books. It was a window into the middle school mind.