Forty-One

I go into every Christmas break with lofty goals of reading several books, writing several blog posts, and working out several times. With little basketball and no teaching, I see an opportunity to catch up on some of the activities I love doing most. This year, like many others, I accomplished almost none of that.

Christmas break is busy. Perhaps a better word is eventful. From December 22-30, my family had some event or gathering in which to participate every day except for one. There was some down time here and there, but we really never stopped traveling, preparing, visiting, cleaning, etc. until today. One anniversary, five family Christmas celebrations, and two dinner parties later, and I'm beat. While many of you are out ringing in the new year this evening, my plan is to nestle snuggly into bed by 10 and consider myself a lucky man.

My accomplishment-driven nature tempts me to chide myself for the "lost opportunity" to read, write, and exercise more in the last week and a half. Starting Thursday this week I have 6 games in 12 days and two weeks left in the school's semester to get all the last minute grading and planning done. Unscheduled time will be at a minimum. If I can't accomplish my goals when I don't even have to work, how can I expect to the rest of the year?

But that's foolish thinking. A calmer, wiser me sat down last night to count my blessings. I sat down and tried to run through everything I'd done over the past 9 days and all the people I got to talk to. I made a list. In those nine days, I counted 41 people with whom I'd had meaningful conversations. Opportunities lost? I beg to differ. Forty-one times over, my life and time were enriched with boisterous laughter, penetrating questions, competitive banter, quick hugs, Nerf-gun wars, and several bottles of wine. 

Part of being a coach is being a numbers guy, and I've decided to put some numbers down for the new year as goals for certain areas of my life that I see as a priority. Having numbers for the year that I'm aiming to hit, with weekly and monthly averages to chase, is the equivalent of challenging my players to get a certain number of rebounds per game, or holding the opponent to a certain shooting percentage for a time. The goals are important; therefore, I've put firm numbers out there to shoot for. However, if people "get in the way" of achieving those numbers, so be it. Forty-one is a pretty good number too. I can celebrate that.

Thanks to all my readers this year, to the 41 for the past week and a half of smiles, and to all those I hope to smile with soon. Celebrate well, and thanks for reading.

Notes on Advent

A few notes on Advent from the book Good News of Great Joy: Daily Readings for Advent by John Piper:

1. Every year I love going home for Christmas. So do many of you. I know what to expect, I know I will be loved, and I know someone is there waiting for me. The meals, the downtime, the not-so-downtime: all of it beckons me with comfort and familiarity. This homecoming feels right, according to Piper, because it is a foretaste of the ultimate Homecoming to our eternal home, with eternal comfort, to be eternally loved by One waiting for us.

A warning, though: "All the other homecomings are foretastes. And foretastes are good. Unless they become substitutes. O, don't let all the sweet things of this season become substitutes of the final great, all-satisfying Sweetness." May all our homecomings be blessed foretastes that remind us of Home, not distract us from it.

2. When Christ was born, there were two kinds of people who didn't worship him, just as there are now. First, there were people like Herod, who didn't worship because they saw Jesus as a great threat. Today, many refuse to worship out of fear of the same thing - the fear of Jesus threatening their autonomy, their sovereignty over their own lives. Seeking to avoid being dethroned, they refuse to worship.

The other kind were the chief priests and scribes who knew exactly what was going on and did nothing anyway. In Matthew 2:4 it is these individuals who are asked by Herod where the Messiah is to be born. They know the answer and tell him. They know the Messiah is being born and they know where it's happening. That's a pretty big deal. Imagine knowing and doing nothing. Unfortunately, it doesn't require much imagination. For we know what happened, we schedule an entire season to celebrate, and often we make Christ an afterthought, a nonentity in Christmas.


3. For many, Christmas is a time of mixed emotions. While there is abundant celebration,the time brings sorrow for those who are missing those they often celebrate with. Rather than attempting to ignore the feelings or brush them away, Piper suggests embracing them, for Jesus came to love us in a way that amplifies life and love: "Many of you will feel your loss this Christmas more pointedly than before. Don't block it out. Let it come. Feel it. What is love for, if not to intensify our affections - both in life and death? But, O, do not be bitter. It is tragically self-destructive to be bitter."

This will be my last post before Christmas. I'm off for about 5 straight days of celebrating starting on Saturday. Merry Christmas, thanks for reading, and I hope you'll check back in after your own celebrations. 

A Gift-Wrapping Lesson From My Daughter

I bumped into an acquaintance at church recently and asked how his week had been.

"Mostly good," he replied. He hesitated, then continued, "It's just been really busy. It will almost be easier when. . ." He paused. "I don't want to wish the Christmas season away, but to a certain extent it will be nice when everything calms down after the 25th."

He said out loud what many of us occasionally think. December is a busy month, full of duties, dates, preparations, and celebrations. There's so much to get done, and so little time to do it. At times it feels like we're trudging through, getting stuff done; and in the meantime, we don't have the energy to be excited about it and really enjoy it.

That's why I'm glad I came across the Christmas presents my 5-year old has been wrapping.

If you look at the picture, you can see what she does on most nights when she gets home. After asking my wife for some wrapping paper scraps, she rushes to her room for a while and reemerges with a newly wrapped masterpiece, labeled by a makeshift name tag, to enthusiastically put under the tree. Apparently they are pre-school projects that she's wrapping up for us. There are now more than ten packages that look exactly like this under our tree at this moment.

It's her spirit and enthusiasm in wrapping these gifts that reminds me of the right approach to all that's going on right now. Yes, I'm excited to see loved ones and celebrate Christmas at many family events. The getting ready, though, is not necessarily done in a spirit of "Christmas cheer." Elise can't wait to open presents at our house, but she's also really enthusiastic about getting ready. She wants everything to be just right, and she's willing to use whatever is available, whether it be perfect or not, in her enthusiasm. The pictured gift has 3 different patterns of wrapping paper and a mountain of scotch tape. But it was wrapped by her, thinking of us, and she put a big fat bow on top to make it even cooler.

In all of the last-minute hurrying going on at your house and mine, perhaps we can apply this lesson - not to quit hurrying, but to hurry with enthusiasm and love, anxiously anticipating and rushing towards all that's good.

Undistracting Excellence

I hear a lot of Christians worry about the best way to represent Christ to the world, especially a world weary of being beaten down by holier than thou evangelism (whether that be perception or reality). Just last week my Sunday School class was discussing the topic of the obstacles to sharing Christ or even of bringing Christ up in conversation. To inject the story of salvation or even to reference Jesus' name can make the best of conversations look like an agenda-filled setup or even a trap.

After reading an interview given by John Piper, I've added to my perspective on the topic. In the interview he uses the phrase "undistracting excellence" to describe the job of ministry leaders. I see an application in this for all Christians.

The idea comes in reference to how we should approach what we do in life. Piper speaks of more reliance on God and an understanding that the work of ministry is primarily supernatural in nature, not some professional club that is relying on the perfection of ministers to accomplish God's will. That fact does not, however, absolve those ministry leaders from doing their job as well as they can. His challenge: portray undistracting excellence. Says Piper, "The aim is for a kind of excellence that does not distract from God or the spiritual engagement with God in all our natural acts. Both fumbling and finesse distract. . ."

While I appreciate this approach in ministry leaders, I think this may be an important way to go about our daily lives as well and perhaps a more effective way to portray Christ to the world. If we display "undistracting excellence" in our jobs, relationships, and daily interactions, we "do life" in such a way that we are not a distraction from God. To me, it means performing in these areas with a quiet dedication, attempting to not create a distraction from the goodness that is God by representing him poorly. Our mistakes, failures, and weaknesses are amplified a thousand fold in a culture looking for reasons to reject a Sovereign God. At times unspoken diligence, consistent excellence, and obvious faith are the best ways to "speak" about Christ and allow focus on the supernatural beauty that He contains.

Today's Travels

In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape advises his nephew, demon Wormwood, to keep the following in mind about the moral backsliding of his human prey: “He must be made to imagine that all the choices which have effected this change of course are trivial and revocable. He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space.”

I’ve told my students that with every choice they make with their time finds them either borrowing or investing. They borrow from their future every time they spend time in something with little real reward, with something that is a mere distraction from what they must do or what they want to do. I don’t think they really want to hang out on social media for hours on end. I don’t think they really want to get sucked into video games for hours, night after night after night. Those mind-numbing, low cost-low reward, time-killing activities borrow from their futures.

They invest every time their actions improve their future. Reading, for instance. Taking difficult steps towards whatever goals they might have, regardless of who may be watching, who may be impressed, or what their level of comfort happens to be at that particular time. Building relationships and memories.

This quote speaks to that, as well as to every choice we make. We are headed in one direction or the other - closer towards God, or closer towards attempting to fulfill what only God can fulfill with something else. I read a great article the other day addressing the great moral slides of leaders, both in the church and outside of it. Those falls from grace were not immediate, one time “mistakes”; they were, instead, a series of tiny decisions that led to a long-term slide. As a result, these leaders found themselves one day in the midst of scandal, unable to recognize who they had become or who they once were.

This is true in our behaviors and our thinking, in our relationships and in our personal goals. Today we will either invest in our priorities or borrow against them in the future. How we spend our time will draw us nearer to joy and fulfillment, or nearer to accepting much less. None of us will wake up one day, all of a sudden, exactly where we want to be or a million miles away from it. Instead, one day at a time, we’ll slowly travel in one direction or the other.

The old hymn begs, “Nearer my God, to thee.” I can either wish for it, or take responsibility for where my daily actions take me.

Who is This?

Floundering to find time to write as the basketball season begins, I've come to realize that I've got several posts ready-made from some of my responses to the online C.S. Lewis course I'm leading. If you're in the course - sorry for the repeat material. I just need to get something out there. Here goes. . .

A passage from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity:

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

I like to believe that each year I get closer and closer to truth regarding God and faith. In my mid 20's I probably believed that I had it all figured out and that my growth was done, that the only thing left for me was to share all that I knew with those who hadn't attained the same level of enlightenment. A little more mature now (though perhaps, a very little), I just hope to get to more truth; and I understand much of my journey on this earth is that journey for truth about God and faith. That journey will never end.

Having said that, this quote is a pretty good picture of what I've come to understand in the past year or two. Christ is not the means to an end; He is the end to which we all strive. It sounds catchy and trite and simplistic, but I don't think many people get this. Most days I don't. Ultimately what this is saying is that Christ doesn't exist to make our lives better, we exist to find Him. He is the goal. If we're using faith to live a more successful life or have more successful relationships or to be a better person, we've got it all wrong. God doesn't exist to make us better: He exists so that we might know Him, desire Him, and delight in Him. He is what we aspire to.

I think the purpose of all Bible reading can be answered in a brief phrase found in Mark 4:41 (and in many other places). After the wind and waves obey Christ's admonitions, the disciples turn to each other and ask, "Who is this?" And this is what we must ask with each passage of Scripture and with books like this one: who is this? We shouldn't read the Bible focusing on finding ways to fix our lives; we should focus on finding ways to fix our attention on who God is. We shouldn't look to Jesus to find help with our problems; we should look to Jesus to find Jesus, the All in All.

When we find Him, we get all the rest thrown in. At least the stuff that really matters. We will become better, we will have better relationships, and we will have more success in our ventures. Get God, and you get the rest. Go after God as a way of getting the rest, and the God that you'll have will be a watered-down, Santa Claus deity, seeking to keep a whiny child happy. And there is no joy there.

Faker, Faker, Faker

Phony. 

Poser. 

Scam artist. 

Fraud. 

Imposter. 

Deceiver.

Listen to those labels. None are good. In our culture we demand that others are genuine (aside from our presidential candidates, apparently). Few are - lying has become an art form of sorts; however, get caught being less than yourself, and you risk being branded like this, with little way to repair the reputation.

I used to be in this boat, demanding accuracy in all my statements as well as those of others, refusing to pretend. I wanted to "get real" and "just be myself." I think I was wrong.

In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis encourages Christians to fake it sometimes. The goal, however, isn't to fool others; it's to fool yourself into becoming exactly what you're pretending to be. Writes Lewis, "Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already." Getting more specific: "Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him."

What I'm beginning to realize is that it isn't just sometimes that we ought to "fake it"; most of us would be better off if we faked it all the time. We are far less than we should be. If I behave as genuinely impatient and self-centered as I actually am, I couldn't function with others. My nature, my natural, fallen condition means that in my heart, daily, I'm out to get mine. I want to know what's in it for me. 

I can begin every day revealing how tired, grumpy, and irritated I really am, or I can decide to at least appear as if I'm loving and excited to be doing what I'm doing. When I remember to pretend, usually I become loving and excited. 

Some days you've just got to fake it, especially those days you don't feel like being good. So go be an imposter. Pretend to be disciplined. Pretend to be patient with your spouse and kids. Pretend to be dedicated to your job, whether you like it or not. Pretend that today, whether it's a Tuesday morning or Sunday afternoon, is going to be a good day. You might just end the day genuine after all.