In Your Hands*

... to follow-up on further thoughts from the last post over a holiday which has had a greater than normal amount of reflection time.

I think what I love most, or at least find most valuable, about the 'secret of life,' as cheesily coined below, is the change in focus, and that it is so darned applicable in most every situation.

One could be sick over Christmas break and wrenching his guts out and really start to pity himself. But that same person could have that statement posed to them?

Is there no way to make this worship and honour God or is there just no way to make this worship and honour your life; the life you think you should be living/ think you are totally entitled to?

And therein lies the rub! The truth is that the situation can be used to honour and worship God. In fact, and it's possible that this only works for me, but thinking along those lines seems to quash the logical leverage of most restless "I don't deserve this" (read "I am unfulfilled") frustrations! It is not, unfortunately, that it causes these thoughts to flee. But thinking this way does seem to expose the selfish humanity of it all.

Furthermore, it is possible that this line of thinking reminds one, surprisingly enough, that it really is about God. So if you are in a particular in-action/action which seems rather dull but is the action/in-action which glorifies God - than that is more than what you could ask for to experience in that phase of your life. As such, it really is the most fulfilling thing one could do.

The trick for me is seeking out those actions, in-actions, attitudes and places which glorify God, of which there are many available. [Edit 10 minutes later: Or in fact, simply just embracing them when they are given to me. My language in this last paragraph originally showed that I learned nothing. In fact that whole thing about glorifying God while being bedridden is about embracing the in-action as something just as fulfilling. There is a time for seeking and a time for embracing]


*title credit goes to my man Charlie Winston - whose album my sister was kind enough to get for me from England!

The Secret of Basketball?

I confess, Bill Simmons and his Book of Basketball has taken over half my commuting life. Last week I was reading this part of the book...

"Isiah [Thomas] smiled. I could tell he was impressed. He took a dramatic pause. You could say he even milked the moment. 'The secret of basketball,' he told me, 'is that it's not about basketball.' The secret of basketball is that it's not about basketball. That makes no sense, right? How can that possibly make sense?" pp. 39, The Book of Basketball

Bill goes on to discuss that there is a fundamentally important social dynamic to a basketball team; that teammates must care most about winning and about making each other better - and not about the basketball itself. But I could hardly pay attention to this ... because I had read Brother Lawrence's thoughts and opinions earlier in the morning as such:

"That in this conversation with God we are also employed in praising, adoring, and loving Him incessantly, for His infinite goodness and perfection." pp. 23

"That the most excellent method he had found of going to God was that of doing our common business without any view of pleasing men, and (as far we are capable) purely for the love of God." pp. 24

"That we ought, once for all, heartily to put our whole trust in God, and make a total surrender of ourselves to Him, secure that He would not deceive us. That we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed." pp. 24 - 25

"That the end we ought to propose to ourselves is to become, in this life, the most perfect worshipers of God we can possibly be, as we hope to be through all eternity." pp. 25, Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

It's possible that I have a particular problem with loving to find connections in these different sort of texts - but it all got me thinking on this a rare train ride home that i wasn't almost falling asleep...

"If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?" Jesus, Mathew 16:24-26

Could it be that,

the Secret

of life

is that it's not about life

... it's about God?

Please bear with me for a moment, because I'm sure you're probably either thinking that that sounds rather escapist or of course that is the case and how could it take me so long to realize it.

If its the latter - than I want to honestly thank you because you have most likely beautifully influenced me to finally come to this sort of conclusion. Even with being behind in the game - i've really liked dwelling on this thought a lot recently. I'll be in the car annoyed at the car in front of me who has to travel over the speedbumps at like 2 km/h WHEN ALL I WANT TO DO IS GO HOME - and i have to laugh - because isn't that me making it too much about life? In fact - this has come up an inordinate number of times recently, and each time I guess I just have to ask forgiveness for how selfishly I care about the stupidest little things in my life - just because it's mine! In that way, I'm thankful for God revealing this thought to me - because it's been very valuable.

If you were the former - thinking that its just way too escapist to think about something other than what is present here in front of us - I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. In the same odd way that Isaiah's '89 Pistons team cared so much about winning, and getting the group together and to another level that they were the best basketball team they could be without the focus being on basketball, Jesus lived the best life a human could live with his focus entirely not on life. It isn't that He wasn't present to where He was, on the contrary, God was where He was, with Him - so his focus on God showed Him where life was and how to redeem and fulfill it!

Lord please help me to get a place more resembling Isaiah as a player than as a GM!