Congruent

I hate math! There, I've said it. I remember a time in 7th grade when my math teacher misspelled my name on my report card. She spelled it "Brain" instead of "Brian". It was quite obvious by my grade that the misspelling could not at all be a happy coincidence. it was indeed a huge misnomer.

Nevertheless I find myself contemplating a mathematical term. Congruency. No, I'm not thinking about lines or triangles or doing equations (uuugh, yuck). But a different kind of congruency. One that is far more important than whether some lines "line up" or the numbers match. The congruency I'm thinking about has to do with whether or not my life is congruent with the lives I read about in God's Word. God has been putting that concept in front of me for a while now through His Word, books I've been reading, conversations, sermons, circumstances, etc. You get the idea. Which is precisely how God chooses to speak to us many times.

Anyway.... I'm looking at these stories of men and women of great faith all through the Bible. And I keep comparing their amazing lives and the choices they made based on "God said...", against my own safe, predictable, climate controlled, comfortable, hermetically sealed for your protection life. And the lines are incongruent. Francis Chan, one of my favorite authors/speakers describes a life incongruent with God's Word like this: "weird". I know. Deep right? But he's correct. If we hold up our homogenized, path of least resistance lives against those of say Abraham, who went, even though God didn't tell him where, and believed God when He asked him to sacrifice is only son. Or Gideon who trusted and followed God when He whittled down Gideon's army from thousands to a few hundred to win a victory over an army so large they "couldn't be counted". If we compare to that, our lives are weird. It doesn't line up. Nobody in the Bible has a story that says "they went to church sometimes, and hung out with their friends. Had great vacations and nice cars and homes, and that was about it". I'm not saying those are bad things. Not at all. i'm just saying I believe God wants us to experience more. In fact a LOT more. I'm also not saying that God is calling everybody to quit their jobs, sell their homes and all their stuff and move to Asia to serve God there. Although that is precisely what Francis Chan has just done. And no, this is not Francis worship. As nice a guy as he seems to be, and as godly a man as he may be, he's not worthy of worship. I believe God is calling me to lean in, draw close to Him. Raise my spiritual antenna a little higher. Listen for His still, small voice. I don't yet know what He wants to say. I'm not even one hundred percent sure I want to know yet. But I know from every indication in His Word that I can trust Him. God may not be safe, but He is always good.

So get out your graph paper. Check the lines of your life against those found in Scripture. I'm praying that God helps me make my life congruent.

Take that, math!

Where the Trees Stand Still

That's a line from one of my favorite songs. I love the idea of finding myself "where the trees stand still". It seems we many times find that we have painted ourselves into a corner of lost time and no wiggle room. While it's great to be busy and take opportunities to jump into life, we can easily cross the line and find ourselves gasping for air, trees whizzing by at light speed.

Looking back, I don't believe that folks a generation or two ago were any less fulfilled because of their lack of stuff to do and places to go. I'm sure they weren't lamenting the lack of technology to help them stay connected to friends and family instantaneously. In fact from my own memory (since I'm an old dude) and first hand conversations, I believe the simplicity they experienced perhaps made life even more fulfilling than our current "everything available at your fingertips all the time" state.

I'm not advocating we smash and burn all our technology and return to the 1800's, but I do believe that we would do well to limit our schedules and find times of solitude and serenity. To find ourselves occasionally where the trees stand still. The more time we spend in that place the more we can hear that still, small voice of God. He waits there, longing for connection and relationship with us.

I guess that's enough for now. Thanks for letting an old man ramble.