I Want It
I Want It or Do I Need It?
Just last week I walked into Wal-Mart and I saw a surround sound system for the TV, which was on mark down. It was $200 a week ago and now it was on clearance for $150.00. Ok, my mind was running. I was thinking to myself “We really need a surround system” and this was a really good one for a decent price. We could be watching Jurassic Park tonight and let the windows rattle. It would not take up that much room.
Then I walked away to think about it and came back to look at the speakers again. My goggles were off now and when I looked at the speakers, two of them stood 3 feet tall next to the TV, then there were 2 bookshelf speakers, 1 center speaker that was 16” long, and then the two rear speakers. So I would need to run the wires to the rear speakers, which meant getting in the attic and mounting the speakers on the rear wall. At that moment, I was so glad I turned my back and thought about it before buying them.
Is this a Want or a Need? Ok in my mind it was a Want. Something I did not Need. The sound has been working on the TV for quite some time and we will be just fine without it. When I saw the sound system the second time the speakers looked massive and it would have been overwhelming in our TV room. Again it was a want, not a Need. Now honestly, years ago I would not have had this mindset. Thankfully, now I can step back and re-evaluate the situation.
One thing my wife and I are pretty good at is car shopping. We have had cars break down and had to purchase a new car. I cannot count how many times we have turned our back on the “TODAY ONLY DEAL” and walked out of the dealership. Sometimes we do not even get out of the door before the manager comes to us and asks how can we do this deal today. Or we get home and the phone rings from the sales manager telling me they can NOW do the deal we asked for. When we look for a car it has not been a want, rather we need a car. But in the process we do our homework to determine what is good and fair for us. Not what is best for the dealership’s quota?
How many times have you said to yourself “I WANT THAT”, whatever “that” is? Or even after you got the new car, TV, Phone, truck, boat or relationship you find this is what you thought you wanted but it is not what you needed. It did not bring you the satisfaction, joy or peace you thought?
I was told years ago be careful about praying for patience because the minute you do, God will place some one in your life which really tests your patience. This scripture rings true for all of us.
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” Colossians 3:12
When I get I-want-it-itis, I try to take a deep breath, evaluate and ask for guidance.
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my loving eye on you. Psalm 32:8
This scripture is just not for the WANTS we have, but in all situations step back and ask the Father for his guidance. Over time you will find when you ask for God’s guidance and you align yourself with his will, you will find satisfaction, joy, and peace.
Snowy Days
Somewhere along the way, Christians decided that you are supposed to be happy. My guess is that it has something to do with our affinity for scriptures like “the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace…” and songs with lyrics like “nothing gonna steal my joy”. I’ve heard people say they knew someone was a Christian by the way they smiled. It seems like if you aren’t happy the assumption is that you are having faith issues.
Maybe it’s because of those expectations that so many church leaders, myself included, rarely talk about the very real struggles that we face. My go-to description of what living with depression is like came out after Anthony Bourdain committed suicide last year.
“When you have depression it's like it snows every day.
Some days it's only a couple of inches. It's a pain, but you still make it to work, the grocery store. Sure, maybe you skip the gym or your friend's birthday party, but it IS still snowing and who knows how bad it might get tonight. Probably better to just head home. Your friend notices, but probably just thinks you are flaky now, or kind of a jerk.
Some days it snows a foot. You spend an hour shoveling out your driveway and are late to work. Your back and hands hurt from shoveling. You leave early because it's really coming down out there. Your boss notices.
Some days it snows four feet. You shovel all morning but your street never gets plowed. You are not making it to work, or anywhere else for that matter. You are so sore and tired you just get back in the bed. By the time you wake up, all your shoveling has filled back in with snow. Looks like your phone rang; people are wondering where you are. You don't feel like calling them back, too tired from all the shoveling. Plus they don't get this much snow at their house so they don't understand why you're still stuck at home. They just think you're lazy or weak, although they rarely come out and say it….
The thing is, when it snows all the time, you get worn all the way down. You get tired of being cold. You get tired of hurting all the time from shoveling, but if you don't shovel on the light days, it builds up to something unmanageable on the heavy days. You resent the snow, but it doesn't care, it's just a blind chemistry, an act of nature. It carries on regardless, unconcerned and unaware if it buries you or the whole world.” (full description here)
As the Church, we have to do a better job of talking about mental health issues. Too many people put on a fake smile when they walk through our doors. They pretend everything is fine and that they are too blessed to be stressed when really they are surrounded by a blizzard no one else can see. Instead of pointing out the 267 times the word joy is mentioned in the Bible, maybe we should spend more time talking about how there are more lamenting psalms than thanksgiving psalms, or how Jerusalem’s wall was rebuilt because the king noticed Nehemiah was sad. We glance over the times that grief and anguish overcame Jesus, Elijah begged to die, basically the entire book of Job, the fact that we have a “weeping prophet”, and David’s several low points. We unintentionally alienate those who struggle with mental illness by our avoidance of the subject.
But more damaging than ignoring mental illness in the church is trying to “fix” people. Depression is not a spiritual issue but a psychological and health issue. We can’t tell someone to pray the sad away anymore than we can tell someone who just had a root canal to pray the pain away. And that’s the rub. We believe in prayer. We believe that God still heals people, but we also know that God also doesn’t heal every person that’s been prayed for. The apostle Paul asked three times for the thorn in his flesh to be taken away, and God’s answer was “My grace is sufficient”. I pray that we all find God’s grace to be sufficient, that we learn to embrace our weaknesses for Christ’s sake, and that we never point to someone else’s weakness and think ourselves better.
Keep It Simple
Welcome to 2019. Many of my friends told me they were glad to see 2018 go away. Actually when I was on the road playing music NEW YEARS EVE was a big deal! With all the excitement and anticipation of ringing in the New Year, I never felt excited about New Year's Eve, I was always sad about the year, which had just passed. And to be completely transparent our family had a rough 2018, so this year I was ready to move on to the New Year.
Everyone seems to make resolutions in January and we normally break them by February. I decided this year I would keep it simple. I would start walking, drink water instead of soda and watch my portion size on my meals and I could lose weight. Ok we are the third week in and my alarm clock goes off at 6am and I walk 5 days a week for 2 miles and have been drinking mostly water and I have lost 10 pounds. I have found myself at peace walking /praying in the mornings and I do feel better, the 6am alarm is annoying but I have gotten through it. Now the trick is in a month will I still be doing it?
Do you have a goal or a resolution you are trying to keep? Many of the new resolutions consist of going to church more often, read more of the Bible, lose weight, be healthier and start exercising or maybe learn a new hobby. Whatever it is you have got to keep a goal in mind and try to reach that goal.
Psalm 32:8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.
The challenge to myself for this year is daily. I want to be a person who says, “ I am glad I did that” rather being the person who said, “I wish I had”. Now, just to be clear I am not signing up for skydiving or anything like that. It can be as simple as opening the door for someone or helping my neighbor. When I end my day I want to be able to say there was more “I am glad I did that” than “I wish I had”. If I can say that I feel I have won that day. Never have more than two days where I did not “Win the Day”. If I can just keep it simple I will become a better person.
Good luck with your goals for this New Year. How many “I am glad I did that” will you have?
The Other Book In The Pew
I was trying to make space in my garage over the winter break and came across some boxes labeled “downstairs books” that had remained unopened since we moved to Florida. When I opened them I found, amongst many other books, several hymnals from the Church of the Nazarene. It was at that moment that I realized I probably had a problem. For whatever reason, at some point, I thought it was an excellent idea to collect hymnals (Marie Kondo would be so disappointed in me). I would have collected United Methodist Hymnals too, but there’s only one and it was published in 1989.
Yep, 30 years ago the UMC received it’s first and only(ish) hymnal. Several things have contributed to the lack of new hymnals. The prevalence of good projectors that can display lyrics and liturgy, the cost of physical books, the availability of lyrics and information online, and the increasing number of new songs. In one sense, as soon as you publish a hymnal it’s already out dated. While the UMC hymnal was published in 1989, it was approved in 1988. The latest song that mad it’s way into the Hymnal was “Hymn of Promise” by Natalie Sleeth in 1986. (For a modern comparison, if we released an official hymnal this year, Good Good Father would be just as old).
I’m old enough to remember singing out of hymnals on a regular basis. My dad was a minister of music for my entire childhood and I don’t think there was ever a Sunday when a hymn wasn’t sung in some form. I still love several hymns, and whenever I actually attempt to piddle around on the piano, it’s usually to the hymnal. But even with my deep connections to the hymns, I’m ok with the fact that my kids will likely never sing out of a hymnal in their life.
Even just typing that seems weird and like a violation of some deep, universally understood rule. But the more I think of it, the less sure I am that there will ever be a need for them to sing out of one. I’m sure they will learn the great classics, they already have been exposed to parts of the hymnal I never used as a child (the Great Thanksgiving was new to me when I became a Methodist), but I’m not as worried about them learning all the ins and outs of hymns as I am them appreciating the poetical and musical complexity of them (and whatever other songs we sing in church). Take lyrics like “Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise / Thou mine Inheritance, now and always / Thou and Thou only, first in my heart / High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art” (6th century) and compare them to “Jesus is the rock and he rolls my blues away / bop shoe bop, shoe bop whoo” (1974). We can do better than that. Which is why I’m grateful for the modern songs that still embrace theologically accurate, poetical, and beautiful melodies.
In the end though, it’s not even about the music or the poetry. It’s about the God that the songs are glorifying. It’s been 30 years since ink met paper and formed our hymnal, but we could sing for a thousand more years and still have new songs to sing about God’s love. Our worship isn’t limited to what is inside a book, but rather basking in the presence of a limitless God.
So That...
As a borderline millennial, I am in the unique position of seeing the humor in some of the crazy things millennials do and also the crazy side of what some of the older generations accuse the millennial of. One of my personal favorites are companies blaming millennials for killing the fabric softener and laundry detergent industry. One large company even said that millennials don’t know what fabric softener is used for and so that’s why they don’t buy it. Here’s a bit of a confession, I don’t really know what fabric softener is used for, so they weren’t completely wrong. But, if I were going to take a wild guess, I would say that it softens fabrics. I’m aware it probably does much more than that. I would assume it also conditions the fibers of your clothes, helps them to last longer, and because of the “softening” makes them more comfortable to wear. Confession #2- I have never bought fabric softener in my adult life. When I have used it, I can tell that the towels seem to be a bit more fluffy but that’s about it. And because having fluffy towels is low on my priority list, I (like most millennials) choose not to spend extra money on fabric softener. Millennials also are more likely to wear clothes more often between washing. This can potentially sound way more gross than it is, but according to cleaninginstitute.org you can wear a pair of jeans three times before you need to wash them.
In short, millennials aren’t against people using fabric softener or washing their clothes after every individual use, they just have a different expectation of how much money it should cost to wear clean clothes. It can get all sorts of confusing. There are some who have very different definitions of clean, there are some who make their own laundry detergent in 5 gallon buckets for less than $20 a year, and then there are some who are actually against the chemicals in some laundry detergent products. It’s not like millennials planned to take out an industry or to change expectations, but many of them came to the same conclusion for a variety of different reasons.
Why is any of this important? Well, it’s not. At least talking about fabric softener isn’t really that important (unless you’re in the fabric softener business). But what is important is that for all of their quirks, millennial are at least good at asking “Why?”. Why are we spending tens of thousands of dollars on a college education that no longer provides the job opportunities that it did 10 years ago? Why haven’t wages gone up proportionately with the cost of living? Why are kids eating tide pods? Asking why is extremely important.
Almost as important is the phrase “So that…” For every “Why” there should be a “So that”. Why do you brush your teeth? So that my teeth are clean, healthy, and more importantly so that they don’t fall out. Why do we have a thrift store as one of the ministries at our church? So that we can have money to pour back into our community, helping meet their financial needs and point them back towards Jesus. Hopefully you can see the pattern by now. For everything we do at the church, someone is eventually going to ask us why we do that. Why do we eat bread and grape juice once a month? Why are we doing a fall festival on Oct. 28th? Why do you need Jesus? These aren’t just trivial questions, there is a lot of complexity, depth, and beauty in them. There is a reason why we do everything we do, and ultimately that reason is so that we can be better followers of Jesus. But sometimes you have to work to get there. Sometimes you have to ask a lot of whys and get through a lot of so thats, but the important part is that you are thinking about it.