Reflections of a 32 year old
I’m not there yet but I am certainly glad to have left the station. Last year I got to send the week’s blog on my actual birthday and again this year I get to write in close enough proximity to call this a birthday message. Ageing is one of those cool things that we sometimes forget to appreciate while we are still here so I decided a while back to be as excited as a six year old about my special day.
No matter how bad it looks or how depressed I’ve been I have this extra burst of enthusiasm and child like joy that no one can take away from me. If you know me personally you know that I break out into a little random birthday jingle every now and then, that goes a little like “It’s my Bethiday..it’s my bethiday,” after which I may do a little kadance and wear this ridiculous little smile because it really is my bethiday and that’s all that counts for me at that moment.
In my short three decades plus two I have done a lot of living but also a lot of wishing it wasn’t so hard to do so. There have been years where it just didn’t make sense what all the drama was about and many more years where I asked God if I was really His or I had kind of been an experiment conducted secretly behind his back and just kind of launched onto the Earth like the mutant/alien creatures from the many sci-fi movies I’m so fond of.
That was mainly around my teens to my late twenties and then something started to change the closer I got to 30, it was like a sense of awakening that had eluded me all this time. Some call it maturity but I’d like to call it divine rescue, because some people have this same great sense of awakening from as young as they can remember so I don’t think it’s really an issue of age more than it is an issue of timing. Anyway my time came and suddenly I met this Being whose surname I had shared (Human Being) but only known about through other people’s interpretations and insinuations.
Stop worrying and start living
We all like to think that we know God so well and that we are so in tune with what his word says and we are at least trying to be as he wants us to be, but I can tell you from my own experience that we don’t know God as well we think if we are still worrying about the details of our existence.
Now understand I’m not trying to say we must ignore our feelings and the circumstances that bring about those feelings, because the very fact that something like worry exists is a clear indicator that it was made along with us however it was not made to have dominion over us more than we were made to have dominion over it.
You see, we can sing real loud on Sunday and convincingly encourage each other to keep the faith but when no one is looking we retreat into our drug den and get high on doubt and worry. Like a functional alcoholic we hide it very well from others but inwardly taka sticker, paralysed and incapacitated by our need to control everything, distanced from God because we don’t really believe his is the best solution for us.
There’s this book “How to stop worrying and start living” by Dale Carnegie which I stumbled onto when I happened to be reading up on my kryptonite. In it he gives several accounts of how worry almost cost people their lives and how overcoming the worry gave them back a fighting chance.
Personally, worry has been one of those things that stop me dead in my tracks the same way it would Superman and all his muscle. The book is an old read but it has that practical and eternal relevance vibe similar to the bible. Matthew 6:25-34 is one of those frequently quoted scriptures but I encourage us to read it slowly, just kind of chew on it like special gum and let it reform our minds.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire , will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying ‘what shall we eat?’ Or ‘what shall we wear? For the Pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own”.
We often think that we can just programme ourselves not to worry and that will somehow end the scourge but that’s a sure recipe for failure because we can’t just programme ourselves without that divine inspiration that comes from keeping our eyes stayed on God. When we spend time learning about and admiring all he has done we begin to see that he really is our Shepherd and that we really shall not be in want.
If anything it’s this insatiable wanting in the world that drives politicians to horde the resources we entrust to them, that drives our daughters to hunt blessers for sport, that drives successful celebrities to suicide, that drives people to obtain talismans for riches and finally that drives this unsustainable self reliance as if we could ever add a cubit to the finished work of Christ.
My birthday prayer is that we put worry in its place and start living the lives we were always made to live. Amen
