The Spiritual Signifgance of Recycling

As I sat on the lovely capital beltway this morning waiting as I sometimes do for traffic to move past a crawl my mind began to go over the morning activities.  Wednesday is recycle and trash day for us. I usually try and put the stuff out the night before but sometimes I forget or just don't want to go back outside in the cold.  So I had to put the stuff out this morning.  I am constantly amazed at how much less trash we make now that we recycle.  On a regular basis there is a half full can for the garbage man if that.  I'm not totally sure why this was going through my head but then I started to think about life in general and the garbage that clutters our lives.  Many times we let the trash hold us back we let the mess and the ugly that is or was, depending on where you are in your journey at this particular moment,  be the thing we focus on.  We point to some past problem, or transgression, or relationship and say see that thing right there, that's why I can't get past where I am with my relationship with God, my family, my parents, my fill in the blank.  We let the trash pile up and then just give up.

Most people in religious authority will state that we have to get rid of the trash in our lives, "let it go, give it to God, leave it at the altar,"  Christians have all kinds of ways to sound spiritual about the muck that's in our lives, and while I totally agree that we do need to get rid of sin in our lives,  I think we are at times way to quick to try and get rid of the lessons learned.  We want to walk on in our lives forgetting the things that we learn from falling down and getting back up, worse yet there may be no sin involved in the trials that we have gone through or are going through,  it could just be that God is trying to show us some things about our self that keep us from being wholly his.  They are not necessarily sin just stuff that is allowed in our life for a reason.

Rom. 8:29  God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.

If God is going to shape our lives around that of his son then we need to realize that some of the stuff we may be trying so desperately to forget needs to be recycled.  We need to recognize it for the tool that it is to bring us into a better relationship with God and to the place he ultimately wants us to be.

While God hates sin he can use the consequences of sin in our life to bring us to the place he wants us,  while he loves us he can allow the pain that comes at times from sickness, or loss or fill in the blank to work something in our lives that will make us more pliable and ultimately more human.

Humanity was designed for relationship,  specifically relationship with God, I know a lot of people want to point to what happens when the whole thing is over, some people think we are going to be some hyper X Mannish beings.  We'll be able to communicate without opening our mouths or be some self contained star trek transporter telling Scotty to beam us wherever we want to go.  I don't buy that.  I believe there will be no sickness no pain all that stuff but I think when the whole thing is over for us, when we shuffle off this mortal coil, we will be shuffling off the copy the thing that keeps us from being what God designed us to be,  when we stop existing in the corporeal we will begin to be what we were designed to be.

So instead of trying to forget all about it, instead of pushing it under the rug, it may be time to recycle what you were trying to learn, in doing so you will find that the things that got you here can be great to help you keep on moving.

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Who Has a thousand years? Who has a day?

I'm a big NLT and Message guy when it comes to my preferred translation or transliteration or whatever other educated word a Bible college graduate is supposed to use.  Mainly because I think God want's more than anything humanity to actually be able to understand and relate to all the things He had people write in that book.

37 years of Bible and yes dear reader I can safely say that even though I am just 37 years old, mainly because I know my parents and I know where I was the first Sunday after I was born.  37 years of Bible and I can still say that I have no clue about some things.  I don't get why you would think it was important to put all those geneologies in.  I don't understand how God who is a God of Love and Long-suffering,  a friend to sinners in the New Testament would decide it was a great idea to put in the Old Testament full of what seems to be violence and aggression toward sinners.  I will never begin to try and explain why Revelation is in the Bible, or why in the middle of all the destruction that is the Old Testament there would be the need to include an entire book about a man who tried to get away from the specific call that God placed on him because he didn't like the people God was trying to save, even harder to understand is how God could save them when he did only to destroy them later on anyway.  All of these things are hard enough to understand without adding in some antiquated verbiage and language that I have to have the Oxford old world Dictionary next to me to understand.  I'm no slouch when it comes to stuff I kow, J will ask me some obscure reference and for some reason I can give her the answer.  I wish this had worked to my advantage in school but hey whatever it takes.  Anyway I say all that to say I love reading NLT and the Message it makes sense and I really recommend them to you, especially if you have a hard time focusing on regular reading of scripture.

Most of the time these translations or transliterations or whatever render different verses in different ways.  Same meaning different ways of saying them.  There is however one verse that has almost the same wording no matter what version you find it in.

2 Peter 3:8 (New International Version, ©2010)

⁸ But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

2 Peter 3:8 (New Living Translation)

⁸ But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.

2 Peter 3:8 (The Message)

The Day the Sky Will Collapse

⁸ Don't overlook the obvious here, friends. With God, one day is as good as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day.

2 Peter 3:8 (King James Version)

⁸But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

What's the point.  Simple.  I hate having to wait on God to catch up with me.  Hear me out.  I get it God is always on time and I understand that if you read on in this same passage you find that God is not late in His promises.

Several years ago God put a call on my life,  like many people I fought that call for a while, then embraced it and then messed it up by trying to be the one that called me.  I don't mean that I wanted people to write songs about me and sing them to me, what I mean is I put myself into this position where I was doing things for God so much, this place where I had to fix things, where I had to be the one that handled the problems that popped up, mainly because I was the one that God called, me Aaron the "man of God."  God gave me a helper like he promised he would and I left her out of it,  God put me in great places where I could learn and grow and be supported and help support others,  I decided that I had to be the man,  God put up blocks, He put people in my way,  He drew and drew and drew me,  finally he gave me some rope.  I ended up flat on my back without much hope of being able to fulfill the calling that so long ago had been given.

See I had been so busy doing things for God that I left God out.  I was a one man Spiritual Talos. Don't know who he is?  That's him do a Google search.  He was so strong and so great but he had a weakness that he didn't even understand.

So here I am years later,  finally ready and willing to be the Man that God called me to be, not the man that has so much to offer but the man that God made and gave talents and abilities to.  It's been a long journey, not a thousand years but a long one none the less and I have to say that as I sit here waiting to hear about how this calling can still be fulfilled I hate waiting,  I hate God's time.  I don't have a thousand years,   shoot I dont feel like I have a thousand seconds.   That's the thing.  along with realizing that God's promises are not late,  and realizing that His gifts and callings are without repentance,  I still have that human side that says,  hurry up.

If you're reading this and you are a Christ follower do me a favor and pray that God will allow me to have a calm about where things stand.  Pray that the door opens and that I get to go through it.

I have always said that God gives us the desires of our heart when they finally line up with what He wants for us.  I believe with all that is in me that I am finally moving closer and closer to those things being the same, and while I don't think anyone will ever really achieve that state until we shuffle off this mortal coil, I believe with His grace and mercy we can get pretty darn close. 

"Everybody's working for the weekend..."

Everyone has jobs that they love and jobs that they have hated.  I have in my lifetime been able to have more of the ones that I love than the ones I have hated.  Looking at life the way it is I have come to relaize that the blessings that God has given me are so much more than I have realized.  I also know that for the vast majority of the people actually reading my blog this is also the case.  Sure things could be better,  that's usually the case for most of us if we were to be honest, but the important thing to remember is that things being better are not as contingent on other people and our surroundings as they are on us.  Look what Paul says in Phil 4:11-14:

        11. Actually, I don't have a sense of needing anything personally. I've learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. 12. I'm just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I've found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. 13. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.
(from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.)

Pretty intersting.  Pauls happiness and contentment was  his responsibilty.  He could choose to look at life and circumstances through they eyes of eternity, realizing that his relaitionship with God is really all that matters.  That one choice makes all the difference.  It's a focus shift that enables us to live in a different way.

How do we apply that concept of being content, of making the choice to be happy to every day life,  How do we put ourself into an attitude and mindset that truely says no matter what in the end it's what I do and say that matters, It's my choice.  Thats just it it's your choice and my choice.  The best part of being human is being given the opportunity to choose   So while most people work for the weekend, myself included I think it's time to make the choice to be happy, to say I get to instead of I have to.  To look at our day to day life through the glass of our relationship with Christ and say.  I can be content no matter what.

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