by Charles R. Swindol

March 31, 2011

A Reflection of Christ

Read Genesis 43:33-34

Joseph's life offers us a magnificent portrayal of the grace of God as He came to our rescue in the Person of His Son, Jesus. So many come to Him, like Joseph's guilty brothers, feeling the distance and fearing the worst from God, only to have Him demonstrate incredible generosity and mercy. Instead of being blamed, we are forgiven. Instead of feeling guilty, we are freed. And instead of experiencing punishment, which we certainly deserve, we are seated at His table and served more than we can ever take in.

For some, it's too unreal. So we desperately plead our case, only to have Him speak kindly to us---promising us peace in our own language. We then try to fend off His anger by bargaining with Him, thinking our hard work and sincere efforts will pay Him back for all those evil past deeds we're guilty of. But to our astonishment, He never even considered our attempts important enough to mention. What we had in mind was earning just enough to silence our guilt, but what He had in mind was overwhelming us with such an abundance we'd realize we can never, ever repay.

What a beautiful picture of Christ at the cross, bearing the sins we committed, forgiving us in the process. Isn't such grace amazing? The One who was rejected is the same One who goes the limit to get us reunited with Him.

Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you,
And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you.
For the LORD is a God of justice;
How blessed are all those who long for Him. (Isaiah 30:18)

Play Your Part...

"Ambition! If it means the desire to get ahead of other people then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn't wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one."

A $10 bargain buy, and this is what you get - brilliance. Every time really, with C.S. Lewis. You read something that seems so simple, and when he spoke it probably rolled off his tongue with some ease we never dream of having, but do more than read it. Apply it. By now your thinking about your goals, ambitions, and desires. What is their purpose?

Maybe you're driven to earn the title "MVP" just so you can hang a plaque in your office and stare at the gold letters, inscribed by some automated machine made in China. But my hope is that our desires will be to see out the tasks in front of us to completion, working as hard as our minds and bodies will let us.

A word from Paul

"In light of all this, here's what I want you to do. Get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don't want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don't want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences."
- Eph 4:1-3

"I've got shotgun."

Sit on your hands if you'd like, you're not driving. Just keep telling the other person how to drive, constantly thinking to yourself how horrible and miscalculated each turn they make is, they've got a heavy foot (and we all know it), every time they hit the breaks the outcome is whiplash, and you're pissed that they took the long way to get here. You'd probably do better, if you were driving, but you're not. It's not even your car. You're just moving along..."Never mistake motion for action."

More to the story...

I've recently finished reading A million Miles In A Thousand Years, and I find myself in a rare place. I wish it wasn't over.


Memorable scenes make for a good story.

I think I understand why we are called dust, vapor, and mist in the Bible. It's because our story, our life, is nothing but a scene in a much larger and greater story. Among the billions of people around the world, there are little scenes being created. Some are vibrant, attractive, and exciting, while others are dull, slothful, and plain. What I've learned is that we have the creative authority to make our scene memorable.

Our story, being less about the destination and more about the journey has never made so much sense to me. This journey changes us.

Our journey changes the way that we think, the way that we feel, act, and speak. A good journey changes these at the roots. Our feelings are responsive to the scenes in our life, they make us feel things we never new existed. Throughout our story, our character changes the way he acts. Things he once loved, he doesn't even acknowledge, and others he never wanted to be part of, he begins to write into his story. Our story makes us more conscious of the words we speak, knowing that words have, before, cut us or brought joy to our lives.

Our story brings meaning to life, to our thoughts, feelings, actions, and speech. Real meaning - the type that doesn't just mutter the words, but knows the character and depth of each letter, speaking them with care and perfection. In caring for each moment and each word, we learn to write a story with precision.

When I get to heaven, and my story is over, I hope that I have a good story to tell God, also. I hope it goes something like Donald Miller imagines it will be. "I'll tell these things to God, and he'll laugh, I think, and he'll remind me of the parts I forgot, the parts that were his favorites. We'll sit and remember my story together, and then he'll stand and put his arms around me and say, 'Well done,' and that he liked my story. And my soul won't be thirsty anymore."

Don't take the bus...

When Donald Miller writes about his story hiking the four-day Incan trail to the top of Machu Picchu, I already feel some sort of connection. I never made it to Machu Picchu, nor Peru for that matter, while I was in South America, but I understand his story, and more than that, I feel it.

"...you can take a train and then a bus, and you can hike a mile to the Sun Gate [the top of Machu Picchu]. But the people who took the bus didn't experience the city as we experienced the city. The pain made the city more beautiful. The story made us different characters than we would have been if we had skipped the story and showed up at the ending in an easier way."

I think that, often times, we choose to take the easier means to an end. Some may call it cutting corners, others may say it's strategic planning. After all, like sitting at the top of Machu Picchu, all end up at the same place. But I'm finding more, as my young life matures, about the importance of the often excruciating roads that change our lives. For me, the destination is nothing more than just an end point, but the journey along the way is turning out to mean more to me than it ever has. Maybe, these days, I'm giving more thought to the pace of life, the steps I take, and the adventures that can be present if we choose to omit the use of the sidewalks mapped out in our lives. "The pain made the city more beautiful."

When I get to where ever I'm going, I hope it's more beautiful today, than it would have been if I arrived yesterday.

Leave The Windows Down

This comes from a recent conversation:

"I was in the parking lot at work and debating whether to roll my windows up or not b/c it was super hot outside, but i had my GPS and ipod in the car, and my wallet, i rolled the windows up anyways but thought to myself "i wish people who broke into cars would say 'dont worry about going to the church parking lot to break into any of those cars, those christians just give all their money away so there wont be anything to take'."

"This comes from all the talk i had done about the homeless and how i wish i could just let people crash at my house. but then you think "well what if they steal something from me and take off in the middle of the night", and the answer is that it wasn't yours to claim in the first place, god calls us to give everything away. its so easy to understand but so hard to live. but i guess that's life and why there are so few that actually make it to heaven."

I responded:

Maybe it hurts a bit when i walk out of the service and I'm hit with pamphlets and posters of a million dollar, 5-year-plan, that the church is proposing, and followed by Lexus', beamers, and suburbans pulling fishing boats out of the parking lot...seems to be one be ironic situation huh?

Then again, I guess Shane Claiborne (author of a great book titled The Irresistible Revolution) does lean a lot further to the "liberal" interpretation of scripture (nothing wrong there). As he and many other consistently refer to Luke as the "Give-to-the-needy-manual" maybe they forget that the book was made possible by what most historians believe to be a very wealthy (today's millions) government official - Theophilus, who funded Luke as he journeyed, interviewed, and wrote the historical account of Jesus (Luke) and the first church (Acts). It seems there's need for both in our society.

It's all a paradox. Jesus made himself the least, yet he was the greatest. We are called to give away everything to become rich (in Christ). Thinking about it, and definitely trying to explain it is tough. ....and in the end, I think you are very right.

We should be giving away our money, our time, our couch, our bed, our car, lending to people because these things ultimately belong to God and we are called to steward them accordingly. The quote came from a book I'm reading 'Rescuing Ambition'. He mentions this: "Contentment comes as we satisfy the fierce ambition to move higher by reaching lower. We're filled as we choose to empty." ...'Christian contentment, is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord and to be totally at His disposal in the place He appoints, at the time He chooses, with the provision He is pleased to make.' "

I mean, think of Jesus, He showed us that humble service is the highest place of rank. Low = High has never made sense to the world...sometimes it doesn't make sense to me, but it's right. We have an invaluable advantage today, knowing that our worth, value, and importance is not wrapped in what we wear, own, or aspire to become, but our worth is wrapped in the blood of Christ. In this we are given the freedom to be detached and no longer enslaved to the things of this world (Our t.v., money, car, etc...) and that is why, I think, we should be able to give those things away...

How did we get here?

I've been hearing and reading a lot lately about story. We all love a great story, and the best ones do more than just entertain us for a night, they transform us.

I've always thought that a good story would be to end up somewhere special, to have a spectacular destination and closure, but I've discovered truth in what Yvoun Chouinard has told me, "You learn that what's important is how you got there, not what you've accomplished."

If you heard a story about a climber who reached the top of a mountain, but never heard about his hurt and joy along the way, you would be pretty bored. In a good story, we want to sweat with the character, feel the rock the he feels beneath our feet, experience the cold and windy nights, breathe the fresh mountain air, be troubled by his loneliness, altogether, we want to be part of the story with him, and when he reaches the summit the hair on our arms rises too, but it's only in knowing how he got there that makes the story so appealing, so real, and so meaningful for us.

We love great stories, from a distance.

We all have these stories, but for us, we want to hide the "how we got there" and just proclaim that we've arrived, because how we got there doesn't always seem beautiful. We couldn't bear to show others that we wore some blisters along the way, that we got lost at mile 14, or that we had to use a map and we couldn't do it all on our own.

The same stories that we love to hear, we hate to be.

I don't think that the story of life, your story, is about where you end up, it's about you're transformation. How you, as the main character in your story, have evolved is far more imperative than where you end up. Don't be too concerned with where you are going, but enjoy how you are arriving, because after all, "the journey is half of the fun."


In Christ we are, "...being transformed by renewal of the mind."