perseverance

Stew v. Destiny

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 1 Comment

I make some pretty good food sometimes. Last night I made chili on the stove instead of the instant pot because one of my sons observed that the instant pot prevented the sauce from thickening the way it did on the stove. Despite the Texas summer heat, I fired up the gas burner for an hour and made a killer pot of chili. He was right, it was better on the stove.

I could see how a really hungry guy might trade a lot for a bowl of my chili because I have two teenage sons. They can pack it away when they’re hungry and I love that times haven’t changed.

Thousands of years have passed and not much about humans is very different. Hunger drives us today like it has from the time Esau traded his place in the family line for a bowl of his brother’s stew.

When reading this story yet again, it finally sank in a little deeper what it means that Esau despised his heritage, his birthright, his place as the first son in the line of Abraham. I didn’t really get it much until now what his tradeoff really reflected about his character and beliefs.

Esau was first in line from Isaac, the miraculously late coming child to Abraham and Sarah. That family storyline we know was told and retold. We tell stories in our family about surprising events over the table again and again. How many times did he hear how beautiful his grandma was and how she and Abraham left their ancestral home at the direction of an unseen God to go to a land that God promised them.

All the adventures they had along the way laid out at the family meals over the entirety of Esau’s life. Isaac’s birth to Abram and Sarai when all hope was lost for a male heir. Sarai laughing at the visitors and then holding a baby a year later!

The promise and destiny of this strange nomadic family that would have descendants like stars in the sky and grains of sand. The family that the would bless the world. The familial aspirations to greatness laid out before the next in line…Esau. Esau was the one that carried the responsibility to continue the story of the future God showed Abraham. He must have known. There’s no way he couldn’t know what was expected of Him.

Then he got hungry and Jacob offered him a trade…give up the right to the lineage to get this bowl of stew. Give up the inheritance due the firstborn materially and also give up the lineage that would bless the world that God promised. Step away from being the one that God worked His plan through. Step away from your family story given by God that you heard from the moment you could remember…for a bowl of stew.

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What must it take to do that? Maybe Esau just didn’t believe it, thought Abraham was crazy and God doesn’t reach down and interact with humans? Maybe Esau just didn’t want the pressure, he wanted to hunt by himself, be left to himself? He didn’t want to lead and didn’t care about material wealth though later he had plenty.

Whatever the reason, we don’t know from the biblical account. We just know he set his entire family story given by God, lived out for a century by faithful parents and grandparents, aside for an immediate and passing physical desire. Missing the bowl of stew wouldn’t kill him.

He didn’t care enough to say no to his desire for food after a long and taxing day of work.

Hebrews, the book of the Bible that brought me face to face with this story in a deeper way, is all about perseverance and endurance. It’s all about saying no to the immediate desire for comfort and compromised peace to live for the bigger story God is working out right now.

I notice my tendency to despise what God has for me when I dream about retiring. That desire to not have the burden of leadership, the desire really to live for myself creeps up and I think that would be so nice. But it’s an escape from walking by faith in the path laid out for me. It’s a manifestation of my inward belief God isn’t giving me the life of peace I want, peace for myself that isn’t true peace because it’s selfish. It’s just cutting myself off from God.

I’ll say there is nothing wrong with retiring, with laying aside your job. I’m talking about the desire to live just for myself. So many retire from their day job to live for Christ with more hours of their day and energy. That is perseverance and endurance.

I’m talking about the desire I can have at times to bow out of the race because it’s hard. So I get Esau and I also get why it’s so tragic. He never really embraced God’s plan for his family and God’s plan for him so he gave it up in a moment of pressure.

He despised it. So today I reflect a little on that tendency in me to give in when the pressure is great and sell out for a bowl of metaphorical chili. I’m not better than Esau, we all have the temptation.

The answer? Look to Jesus the pioneer and champion of my faith who, for the joy set before Him, endured excruciating pain and shame to win the prize…us with Him. And He understands our pain and invites the needy to come to Him for grace and mercy.

It is compelling and it is enough for today.

A Reminder to Myself Upon the Advent of Another Senior Year

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 2 Comments

School supplies stock shelves at stores, emails arrive about schedule pick ups, senior photo sessions get booked, google calendar dates beckon to be added…they all tell me it won’t be long at all until the pace of my life quickens.

I’m not ready.

It’s a senior year for one of my kids which means lots of extra…stuff. Lots of extra questions for them. Lots of extra questions for me. Lots of coaching through a year of persevering through what they are ready to let go. Constant conversations extending hope for a future that is still murky, the outlines forming but the substance unknown.

Accolades and awards offer less and less motivation and the goal, in our home at least today, is to just cross the finish line. To press into resources still forming in the soul to live life that is truly life. Time will reveal what gets borne through such seasons of endurance.

I know there’s hope in the chaos and uncertainty of the senior year. I’ve walked through it already with one child and dozens of college students.

The path is always loopy and fraught with uncertainty but through these big life transitions I look back and see:

a worthy image depicting what a senior year feels like for some

the next steps revealed as each step is taken

most of the questions of the fall somehow gain direction by spring

faith required even for those that are 100% certain of their direction

friendships deepen and form in seasons of transition for those that continue to cultivate them

these big moments always needing to yield to farther-reaching truths of identity

Because graduating is one milestone in a long journey of twists and bends. It’s easy to see it loom with more import than it deserves. It’s not the final goal of life. There are much bigger goals worth pursuing that involve integrity of character, perseverance, and hope.

May this milestone and all it takes to get to it yield more of what is required to pursue even loftier yet less celebrated vistas.

Frozen Green Tomatoes

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A woman thrust the tomato plant into my hands when I displayed a mild level of interest. The pastors set up a garden behind the children’s wing and these were the leftover tomato plants, a bit bedraggled and needing a good home.

I couldn’t promise them the good home, but we have dirt in our backyard. I came home and put them in a large planter on a lark. Growing things is new for me.

We left a few weeks later for a 6 week trip during which a turtle died but our tomato plant flourished. It was a stunning discovery. It was large and hanging over the edge of the planter!

In adjusting back to the U.S. after so long in our former familiar culture, I needed a project to focus my attentions on. I would see this tomato plant through until it produced tomatoes. Picture a woman making a solemn vow.

I bought a cage, plant friendly insecticide, tomato fertilizer. Every day I checked on the plant which continued to grow. I read blogs and did weird things like shake the tomato plant vigorously so it would pollinate itself. Bees are scarce and I began feeling mildly panicked about our loss of the bee population in respect to my tomato plant’s chance of success.

Imagine my joy when I discovered small yellow flowers! Flowers lead to fruit. Tomatoes are a fruit! Tomatoes should soon come.

They did not. The flowers wilted and died without fruit. I got mad at the plant that failed to grow under my helicopter gardening. I stopped watering it and left it to itself in the 90+ degree September heat.

It sprang a tomato. Then another. What a tease! Fine, I thought. You’re doing so well on your own, I’ll let you continue that way. So I did.

The tomatoes kept growing bigger and still green. I began checking on them again, these very expensive tomatoes.

Then it froze this week. 2 nights in a row of a bitter cold. I neglected the tomato plant. It lay out there cold and bare with no blanket to cover it. With Christmas and busyness beyond the norm, the tomato plant got the shaft.

I don’t expect any ripe tomatoes now. Just frozen green tomatoes turning to mush. May it yet surprise me.

About halfway through this tomato story, I began to wonder why I was writing this up? What does a tomato plant have to do with anything? Probably not much but its served as a visual reminder of principles my heart needs to know. A kind of wrap up on a fall of life and ministry.

So, here is what my tomato plant taught me…

  • Only so much is really under my control, and its a very little much.
  • Faithfulness in what is my part of God’s will is not promised to yield
  • Expectation of fruit is highly motivating, yet faithfulness is more steady a motivation
  • When fruit fails to come, its easy to get discouraged, resentful, and unfaithful to my task
  • God often chooses to remind me to trust Him for fruit by bringing it in unexpectedly and unrelated to the proportion of my efforts
  • Fruit purposely left on the vine and untended in harsh conditions is evidence of neglect and unfaithfulness
  • Yet, God can surprise and often uses harsh conditions to temper His children and make them hardier. He doesn’t waste anything.

Who knows, maybe I will get more than I deserve, more than frozen green tomatoes. It is supposed to reach back up near 70 this week.

But even if I don’t, my tomato plant experience revealed quite a bit about my spiritual life. I plan on trying again.

Gardening seems to be a God-given method to teach me His ways.

Teaching My Boy to Read

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 2 Comments

I’m teaching my boy to read these days.  Reading is a passion of mine.  If I was not so responsible I’d be up late with the light on to finish a book.  Who am I kidding? I’m not very responsible.

Luxury these days would be reading as long as I wanted rather than only as long as I could manage to put off other things.  I dream of the day when I will be the one at the pool with a book instead of the one with the bag of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

But my boy, he seems oblivious to reading. He’s compliant so he sits and participates in the lessons and he’s learning.  He’s also the one who told me quite clearly from the beginning that “some people read and some people build things.  I am the kind that builds things.” He thought that would get me off his back.  It did not though I’m pretty sure he will pursue a Bachelor of Science degree if he goes to college.

So, I sit five mornings a week and wait patiently for him to remember the sounds, figure out ways to help him blend sounds together, offer encouragement and correction, flash through cards.  It’s exhausting!  He even tells me to back off and not say “good!” after every successfully sounded out word.  Fair enough.  A guy’s got to maintain his dignity. I get it.

Recently, I noticed my son looking at some words and then trying to sound them out in his spare time. Up until that point, he’d been content to just see a jumble of words and let it be. Why try when Legos beckoned? Now, he looks, he assumes meaning can be found and he tries to unlock the code. I smile. It’s clicking. I’ve been waiting for it to click all year.

Perseverance.  That’s what it is my son does with such constancy in his learning that speaks to my spiritual life. Persevere. Keep sounding out what needs sounding out.  Keep reading the next word on the page even if I read it poorly and someone corrects me.  Even if I read it well and someone says “good!” in a way that makes me feel like a child.  Keep going until something about God, grace, and life clicks. Celebrate.  Then, move on to the next word and keep going.

Persevere.