Autopilot Off

Man! It’s super easy to get sidetracked and completely forget to write anything here. Well, maybe sidetracked is the wrong word. Busy may be better. Between work, weekend excursions to flea markets and antique shops, books, movies, and Netflix series, sometimes the days seem to evaporate. Then I look up and realize a couple of months have gone by.

Even in the midst of the busyness of the past few months, in the last couple of weeks I’ve tried to slow down a little bit, turn EVERYTHING off (a major feat in this day and time, I’ve recently realized! Ha ha!!) and just spend some time praying and reading in my bible each morning. No time table, no “Make It Through the Bible Three Times in the Next Ninety Days” reading plan, just kind of camping out, without a plan for where I’ll be going beyond the next few days, taking my time, and trying to really digest what I’ve read. Admittedly, this is the first time in recent memory that I’ve done this with any passages in the scriptures outside of Psalms. And honestly, it’s because I tend to look at the Bible too analytically and intellectually as a book that should be read as many pages at a sitting as possible. Kind of like a novel where you just want to hurry up and get to the POINT already. I know, I know, that’s kind of jacked up, which I realized when I finally just came out and said it. But once I did, it brought to mind the question, “ How much do I gloss over and miss what’s there when I do that?” Turns out the answer to this question is A LOT!

My wife has had this amazing Life Application Study Bible for, oh, probably a decade, and I’m only just now realizing what a treasure trove of thought provoking, true soul-searching questions it contains. Questions that, when answered truthfully, tend to make me adjust my thinking and my attitudes fairly quickly. It’s been a bit of an “aha” moments factory for me.

Sometimes I feel like I’m just kind of floating through the day to day humdrum of life because I’ve stopped being intentional about what I focus on and what I spend my time thinking about. Turns out, my autopilot function is all out of whack, and tends to put me into a holding pattern that says, “What are you doing HERE?”, “You’re 40. What have you been doing? Look at all the things THAT GUY has accomplished. You haven’t done anything even remotely close to THAT!” Hanging out in this holding pattern tends to make me start comparing myself to other people, which has absolutely nothing to do with my own personal journey. If I measure success by looking at other people, people who don’t have NEARLY the same path, plan, or purpose I do, and who I have absolutely NO WAY of knowing what they’ve gone through on the way to where I PERCEIVE them to be, it’s easy to get discouraged and stop following the path that was made for ME.

All that to say that I’ve become a bit more intentional with just slowing down and hanging out with God in the mornings. And it seems to me that this makes the humdrum stuff seem quite a bit more bearable. Apparently, I don’t have to accomplish gigantic things each day. I just have to take enough time to slow down and be reminded of who I am and Whose I am. And it seems the less I plan where I’m going next, the more the passages I read on any given day relate to what I need to hear or focus on. And every single time I read the perfect words that apply to what I’m thinking about or struggling with, it makes me stop and say, “Thank you, Father.” Because the more I learn, the more I figure out that all God wants from me is time and trust.

Basically, it’s gonna be another “Autopilot off” day. And that’s just fine with me!

Perception

I was reading Psalms 29 this morning, which is about the power of God. Here it is in its entirety:

Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty, give unto the Lord glory and strength.

Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

The voice of the Lord is upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the Lord is upon many waters.

The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.

He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.

The voice of the Lord divideth the flames of fire.

The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.

The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests; and in his temple doth every one speak of His glory.

The Lord sitteth upon the flood; yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever.

The Lord will give strength unto His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace.

Verse 2 is the one that really gets me, personally. “Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” What glory is due unto the name of the Lord? What kind of glory should we be giving Him? Charles Spurgeon put it better than I ever could when he commented on this particular verse in his book about the Psalms called Treasury of David. He says, “A third time the admonition is given (to give glory to the Lord), for men are backward in glorifying God, and especially great men. Unbelief and distrust, complaining and murmuring, rob God of His honor.” As believers, we have something within us that others lack. We have Christ in us, the hope of glory. We’ve been rescued from ourselves and from our separation from relationship with the Creator of the universe. When we complain or murmur about our situation, our job, the country, or the crazy things that happen in our society every day, we’re basically saying that the hope that is in us actually isn’t enough.

Doesn’t this cheapen the sacrifice that rescued us? I think this makes it look like nothing is really different about us here and now, and that we’re just waiting to be rescued from this earth at some future point in time, but we just have to hold on and struggle through long enough to make it there. Why would the people around us who are hurting and need help want what we have, when we’re right there beside them whining about what’s wrong with the company we work for, the rising prices of fuel, utilities, taxes, and food, or who is (or isn’t) currently in offices of power? What kind of hope is that portraying?

As Christians, we really don’t have the legal right to be complainers, or to have a “bad day”. We are called to be content when we have much, AND when we have nothing. When things look great, AND when the outlook may not appear to be rainbows and unicorns.

We’re supposed to be the light. We’re not called to sit in the darkness and bemoan the fact that it’s so dark in here. Light shines. So why aren’t we shining? Have we lost our focus and forgotten who we are? Or are we simply afraid we’ll run out of oil if we share what we tend to think of as what little we have with others? I guarantee you, the more we share and give what we have within us away, the more we’ll have. We weren’t called to be stagnant lakes of water. We’re supposed to be conduits of rivers of living water. We should be raging rivers. Think Niagara falls here! All the time, we’re open 24/7, and we never close, the lights never go out, and the spigots are always turned up to eleventy (aka: full blast plus three notches). THIS is the only way we’ll ever have a life worth living that will touch EVERYONE around us, and will be living PROOF that Christ is the only living God. Proof that EVERY person was created with a purpose. Proof that God loves EVERY person. Proof that EVERY person is an eternal being. Unless we see people that way, we won’t break the valves off of our spigots. The only person that can talk you out of who you truly are is yourself. So, c’mon, people! You got this. Give it away. Starting TODAY!

What If?

        What if the typical follower of Christ was supposed to look more like Jesus? What if we were called to perceive people and their circumstances the same way Jesus did? What would that look like? Jesus looked on people and was moved with compassion. He somehow saw beyond the physical, obvious, outer appearances and immediately and fearlessly addressed the core issues of the heart. When he saw sick and hurting people, He never left them in the same condition in which He had met them. Several times we read in the scriptures that He healed ALL who were oppressed of the devil (Acts 10:38). Or that many were brought to Him and He healed them all (Luke 4:40). He never held back anything that He had to give to people that would help them, as long as they actually accepted what He was offering. What would the world look like if we acted like that?

Jesus never judged people for where they were. And He had a way of asking questions of people even when the answers seem painfully obvious to us as outside observers. When a blind beggar named Bartimaeus came to Him in Mark 10:46-52, Jesus actually asked him what he wanted Him to do. I think He did this to measure the man’s level of faith, trust, and belief in Him. The blind man could easily have asked Jesus for food or money, since that’s what he asked everyone else for. But when he asked for his sight, Jesus gladly and immediately gave him what he had asked for.

John 14:12 tells us that we will do the things that Jesus did, and even greater things. We’re also told in John 21:25 that tales about the things Jesus did couldn’t fit in all the books that the world could contain. What would the world look like if every believer acted as though they actually believed that they will do even more than Jesus did? Elsewhere, in Proverbs 3:27, we are told that we shouldn’t withhold anything from people that we have to give them at the moment we encounter them. I think that if we actually lived by that without exception, we could change the environment around us. If we would take a moment to actually stop and pray for people every time we heard them say, “I really don’t feel well today.”, or, “My knee is giving me fits today and I can barely walk.”, we would accomplish amazing things for the Kingdom of God. How many millions of lives would be impacted on a daily basis if EVERY believer behaved in this manner?

I think this type of behavior was integral to the explosive growth of the first century church. The early believers fearlessly told EVERYONE about the amazing things Jesus did to show us the way things are meant to be here on the Earth. Not only did they tell them, but they SHOWED them by not withholding anything they had within themselves to give.

Many people would say the first century church grew like it did because it was just easier for those early believers to do the things they did. That the culture and society we live in makes it harder to fearlessly pray for people on the street or where we work or in our neighborhoods. If that was actually the case, then why did the vast majority of the disciples die for their faith and the bold actions they took to advance the gospel and the Kingdom? Several of them were thrown in prison when they healed people or told people about Jesus. When was the last time that happened here in the United States? So how, exactly, was it “easier” for the believers in the early church to obey the COMMANDMENT Jesus gave every one of us to go into all the world and preach the good news to every creature?(Mark 16:15)

Really, and this may sound harsh, but it sounds to me like many modern day believers have gotten lazy, selfish, and comfortable. That seems to be the only reasonable explanation for the current state of the church at large. I’m not saying there aren’t amazing churches that are filled with phenomenal believers who are doing crazy cool things for God. But sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the norm. Those who are actually doing the work we were commanded to do are even looked down on and ridiculed by others within the church. Why is it that those who follow the examples of the great men of faith we read about in Acts are perceived as being “radical” or “on the fringe” in the church today? Something has gone terribly awry. My fear is that only those on the fringe won’t hear Jesus say, “I never knew you” on that fateful day we all meet Him face to face. How frighteningly sad. So, what can be done to fix the state of affairs we currently find ourselves in?

The answer is simple, but simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy. We each have to individually decide that NOTHING will stop us from emulating Jesus in how we view and interact with those around us. We have to decide that our empathy, compassion, and love for our neighbors is going to outweigh our trepidation, fear, and doubts about what may or may not happen if we actually step out and leave ourselves vulnerable and exposed by proclaiming what we actually believe and then putting action to our faith. Great things can happen if we do this. Who knows what amazing things we will see?

We should all live by what could be called the “Mercy Rule” found in Jude 21-23:
Stay always within the boundaries where God’s love can reach and bless you. Wait patiently for the eternal life that our Lord Jesus Christ in His mercy is going to give you. Try to help those who argue against you. Be merciful to those who doubt. Save some by snatching them as from the very flames of Hell itself. And as for others, help them to find the Lord by being kind to them, but be careful that you yourselves aren’t pulled along into their sins. Hate every trace of their sin while being merciful to them as sinners. (The Living Bible)

Admittedly, I don’t always live this way. But I’ve definitely gotten better at just doing what I need to do to let people know about the love God has for them. We were called to impact our atmosphere and surroundings. So what are you going to do today to do just that?

Gary

Deborah and me

On April 24th, Deborah and I were able to go see a live production of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale in downtown Charlotte. If you’ve never seen Shakespeare performed on a stage right in front of you, you’re missing out. A Winter’s Tale is one of his more obscure plays, and we had no idea what was going to happen, so it was like watching a movie for the first time. The play had a few really good twists, as well, and even Deborah couldn’t figure out how the story was going to end. That makes it a great bit of storytelling, because she is the queen of figuring out how  movies and T.V. shows are going to end when we’re about halfway through them. As a bonus, we even got cupcakes at intermission, since it was William’s birthday, and all!


After the play, we walked a few blocks down from the theater to have dinner at Fuel Pizza. They have old gas pumps and rusty vintage advertising signs for tires, oil, and gas hanging all over the walls and dangling from the rafters. The pizza is pretty tasty, too. Some of the pizzas have names like Extreme Fuel, Whole Engine, or Brooklyn Bridge.

Entrance to the theater

One of the walls of the restaurant opened up into a huge window that was probably 15 feet long and ran from the ceiling down to table level. Since they had it open, we decided to sit there so we could watch the people walking by on the sidewalk. Even though it was almost eleven o’clock at night, there were tons of people walking around. Downtown Charlotte is a hopping place on a Saturday night!

Fuel Pizza, Charlotte, NC

While we were waiting for our pizza to finish cooking, a man stopped outside the window and asked if a pizza box that had been left on one of the tables had anything left in it. I opened it up and looked, but it only had a few pieces of crust in it. He said, “Thank you.”, and walked off. After he was out of sight, Deborah asked me to see if I could catch him to ask him if he wanted to eat with us. We had ordered one of the larger pizzas with the plan of taking the leftovers home for lunch Sunday afternoon, so we would have more than enough for three people.

When I went outside, he was still right outside the door to the restaurant, so I got his attention and asked him if he was hungry, and if he’d like to join us to eat. He said he was hungry, and asked me, “Can you tell them I’m with you, so they won’t kick me out?” I told him that was no problem. He introduced himself as Gary, and came to join us at our table. While I went back up to the counter to buy him a drink, Gary started telling Deborah why he was living on the street and what he tried to do for money. He had been trying to get work, but said it was hard, and that he refused to steal things to get by. He said other people on the street would take everything you had from you if you weren’t careful with your belongings. Just a few days before, someone had stolen his art pack, which had all of his art supplies in it. He said he was a portrait artist, and that was his “hustle”, what he did to make money when he couldn’t find regular work. While Gary talked, he wrote a lot of what he was saying on a napkin with a pen, like he was doing a presentation of his life, situation, and his beliefs. You see, Gary is a Christian, and he trusts God to take care of him every day. THAT’S why he refuses to steal to get by. He said the hardest thing about living on the streets is that the people who don’t completely ignore you treat you like you’re a piece of trash. Instead of helping a little bit, they say intelligent things like, “Why don’t you just get a job?”, like the job fairy is gonna come over, wave her magic wand, and instantaneously fix everything.

The week before we had gone to the theater, it was still pretty cold here in Charlotte, and it had rained a lot, especially on Thursday and Friday nights. Gary said the best way to stay out of the weather is to ride the bus, but unless you have a bus pass, you have to pay for every transfer individually. With a pass, you can stay warm on the bus all day by just riding around the city. Sadly, he hadn’t had the money to get a pass, so he hadn’t been able to use that plan for the last few cold, rainy days. After we were all done eating, I tried to get some cash out of the ATM that was in the restaurant so Gary could buy him a bus pass the next day. But it was broken. We searched on our phones, and found an outside ATM for our bank that was only about a block away. I had planned on just walking over there myself, getting the money, and bringing it back, but my loving wife, who tends to think more clearly than me in many situations, wasn’t too keen on that idea. So we decided to all walk over there together.

On the way to the ATM, Gary pointed out several areas that were the safest places to sleep. Most of them were ideal because there were 24 hour security guards right across the street, so you could sleep without worrying about anyone jacking with your stuff or hurting you. One was at the library across the street from a parking garage. Another was right across from a big bank. As we walked by a small corner park with several trees and nice benches, he told us he likes to sit there during the day. I was impressed with how candid Gary was about how he lived, without making any excuses. More than once he thanked us for not giving him pity. He said he doesn’t want people to feel sorry for him, but some help instead of insult is definitely welcome.

By the time we made it to the ATM, he had really opened up, and even started joking about old movies he liked. He thanked us for just talking to him and spending some time with him. During our conversations, he had mentioned that he had been thinking about tall bridges lately. When Deborah asked him why, he kind of ducked his head and said, “Well, you know…” He said it was hard to keep hope when everything was so hard. He just wanted to be able to get a job and find a cheap place to live. Before we parted ways, Deborah and I both prayed with him for God to protect him and keep him safe, and for him to have favor with potential employers so he could get a job. I also told him not to give up hope and that even though everything looks dark and hard right now, he can make it through this. When I gave him the cash, he hugged me and thanked me. Then when he put it in his pocket, he said jokingly, “You never count money someone just gave you in front of them.” As we parted ways, he told us to look for him if we’re back down there. I told him, “You better not still be down here the next time we’re down here. Not because I don’t want to see you again, but because I don’t want you to still be out here.” He thanked both of us again and walked off down the street.

While Deborah and I have helped people who are having hard times like Gary both before and since we met him, our experience with him was unique. This is the longest time we’ve been able to spend with anyone we’ve helped out. It felt like we got to know him a little bit, and I feel fortunate for having been able to do that. I’m sure Gary isn’t unique in how he feels and in what he thinks about living on the street and how people look at him and treat him. He doesn’t want to be treated as trash, a bum, or “homeless”. He just wants to be seen at and treated as a person. Simply because he is. His situation and circumstance doesn’t change who or what he is any more than your situation changes who or what you are. Just like you and me, Gary was created in the image of God, and God has called him to a specific purpose for this particular time in the history of the planet. We would all do well to remember that. So do me a favor today. Remember Gary. And if you have a few minutes, say a prayer for him. Because I know I do, and I want him to fulfill that specific purpose God planned for him before He laid the foundation of the world.

Kickoff, A.K.A., Let's Get This Thing Rolling!

     Hi there, Faithful Reader! Or at least, for the moment, Testing-Out-This-New-Blog Reader! Let me introduce myself. As you've already ascertained, I'm that guy, Aaron. But what exactly does that mean, and what kind of stuff can you expect to read about here in this blog? I'm one of those guys who believes Common Sense isn't common at all. Normal doesn't really have a hard and fast definition, either. I mean, who would be properly qualified to determine what "normal" is, anyway? I have no idea. I also have no set parameters for what I'll be writing about in this space in the future. Hence that "random musings" bit.

     I tend to catch myself wondering about things from time to time. Things like, "Who actually uses all of these Self Storage locations, and what kind of stuff is in there?" "Why is everything so disposable these days?" "Is that conversation really so earth-shatteringly important that this guy has to text while he's cruising down the interstate?" "Why does 'New & Improved' often seem to mean 'Different & Slightly Inferior?" (You remember New Coke, don't you?) You know, just random stuff like that. I also tend to shake my head as I wonder, "Did I actually just see that?!" on a fairly regular basis. One thing is certain, people will never cease to surprise you with what they say and do. Sometimes it kind of surprises me that we have made it as long as we have as a population in general. Yet here we are! At least people keep this life interesting!

     Basically, I'm pretty much a nerd at heart. I like researching the things that interest me to the point of near obsession. Things like history, rocket science, watches, geography, vintage razors (yes, I'm one of THOSE guys...!), travel, fishing, RVing, quantum physics, and TONS of other subjects.

     Maybe once I get a bit of a following, I can even take topic suggestions. "Hey, Aaron, what do you think about _______?" And then I can write about it and the three of us (You, that one other reader, and myself!...) may expand our knowledge boundaries about something new that we haven't REALLY stopped to think about before. I think I'll stick around for a while and see where this leads...