Happy Saturday Friends,
We all have problems we’re trying to wade through and this morning I was pondering some of my own challenges and how prone I am to trying to spend all of my energy figuring out ways to solve them and make them go away … and I’m wondering if that’s the best use of my efforts?
Time for another cup!
Glenn || PATREON / BUY ME A COFFEE
My friend Alexander John Shaia wrote a book called "Radical Transformation" where he looks at the 4 Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and shows how those 4 Gospels were used in early Christianity to mark 4 phases of the cyclical journey that we all take during our lives - a journey that happens over and over again as our lives change and grow and evolve.
Matthew is the call into a season of change.
Mark is the rough waters of that change.
John is finding peace and joy and rest.
Luke is about taking what we've learned and bringing it back to our larger community or tribe.
... That's an incomplete and, likely, terrible explanation, but you get the general idea.
Anyways, I tend to read from this book a few mornings a week and right now I'm reading through the section on Mark (all about trials and problems and storms and turmoil) and this morning I read this line that really made me think. Alexander says this ...
"Faced with pain and conflict and left to our own limited resources, we tend to overuse our intellect. We attempt to think our way out of the dilemma. ... We must pray to enter our necessary trials more deeply, rather than to be rescued from them. We need to accept and accept and accept some more, even though we often don't understand exactly what is happening."
This is so true, isn't it?
When a problem arises, to be honest, I do very little more than lean on my brain to try and figure out a solution.
"There's a problem? Let's lay it out on the table and figure out the best way to solve it."
My goal is to use my mind to figure out a solution so that the problem or the issue or whatever it is goes away as quickly as possible and any pain or turmoil or stress that it might cause is avoided at all costs.
I want to rescue myself and my loved ones from the problem.
I want God to rescue us.
I want the fires to go out.
I want the holes in the boat to be plugged.
I want the problems fixed.
I want the puzzle solved.
I want the ambiguity gone.
Alexander has taught me a lot of things, but one of the biggest things is that the troubling waters of Mark's Gospel are a necessary part of the journey and trying to avoid them and wanting nothing more than to be rescued is a very "Peter-like" and "immature" faith (see yesterday's #CoffeeThought). The reality is that troubling waters cannot be avoided, and if we try to avoid them and spend all of our energy trying to harness our intellect to make them go away ... we may very well rob ourselves of whatever growth might have come our way as a result of opening our hands and welcoming the problem to the table.
Yes.
I'm learning that I can CLOSE my fists and swing them left and right and up and down and grab on to this solution and that idea and that plan in an effort to fight my way through the problem and come out the other end victorious OR I can OPEN my fists, welcome the problem into my life, give it a seat at the table, meditate on it, accept it for what it is, and ask the Spirit to be with me in the middle of it as I row my way through and come out the other end having learned whatever it is that it has to teach me.
Alexander goes on to say that "every time we attempt to avoid a situation, we only reduce our opportunity to grow, to learn from the journey."
Plans are good and when a problem arises we need a plan and we need other mentors and people who have been through the storm before to help us navigate through it. I'm not saying this is an either/or thing - we either fight the problem OR receive some sort of growth from it.
BUT.
What I am saying.
Is.
That.
If we spend all of our time swinging our closed fists, we won't have much room in our hands to receive whatever gift of growth the problem might have for us.
Swing your fists. Fight your way through. Don't give up. If you fall overboard, swim. If the boat is filled with water, bail - we need you, and we need you alive! ... But make sure to make time in the midst of the problems to just be, and to ask the Spirit or the Divine or the Universe or The Christ or whatever, "what will you have me learn from this? Help me, give me eyes to see and ears to hear. I refuse to come out the other end of this looking like the same person who went in."