Month: January 2016

sacredness of small moments

My little post from yesterday about the meteorite struck a nerve. A number of people shared it, liked it, and commented on it. I appreciate the encouragement. I also had to laugh thinking about what the experience of writing it was like compared to how it came out and was received. As I wrote Monday, I’m committed to writing more this year, including daily blog posts. The idea is that by making myself post something everyday, I will get back into a writing mode and be more productive overall like I was in 2013. Putting that idea into action means finding time to actually sit down and write. With everything else I have going, I think the best time is early in the morning (which is also when I wrote many of my Red Letter Year posts). The only problem so far is that my boys, who are early risers anyway, are getting up earlier and earlier, nearly matching me. I’m writing this sitting on my couch and Isaac has just curled up beside me, arm in mine, watching the words appear as I type. He’s up a good 45 minutes earlier than usual. I’m not noisily waking them up or anything. Somehow, I think they just sense an opportunity for a few extra minutes with dad so they’re taking them.

Yesterday, I wrote the first few sentences before Isaac came downstairs. Unlike today, he was immediately hungry. So I paused and made his oatmeal and sat back down to write. Then I had that moment of enjoying watching him enjoy his breakfast. If I accomplished nothing else yesterday, I wanted to capture that moment, to preserve how special it felt in all its ordinariness. A few sentences later, Ian (my 3 year old) came downstairs heartbroken from a bad dream and missing grandpa (who visited us recently). A long hug on this same spot on the couch and a cup of orange juice made things better, though he wanted to play quietly before his breakfast. I managed a couple of sentences before he was ready for cereal and raisins. Soon, two boys were full of breakfast fueled energy and into their morning play. I had to bear down mentally at the end but that’s also when I cleaned up a few messy sentences and made the whole thing a good deal tighter.

Why am I giving you the play by play from yesterday? Because I suspect that you might be like me, trying to do creative things and have an actual life at the same time. It’s not easy to keep all the balls we’re juggling in the air. I used to think I had to get things just right (total quiet, clear desk) to write. But I have found in recent years that I do some of my best writing in far less sterile conditions. I can recoil from real life as a distraction from my creative work or I can find my inspiration for it in all those everyday moments. I can try to bend all of my life around my writing or my writing can take the shape of my actual life. I’m learning to revere the sacredness of the small moments.

The Long Game

Image: Jonatan Paxman, Desert Fireball Network
Image: Jonatan Paxman, Desert Fireball Network

Geologists in Australia tracked a meteorite that hit in the middle of nowhere and found it just before heavy rains would have washed it away from where it landed and buried it deep. Their hard work paid off as the rock turns out to be 4.5 billion years old and they are able to tell where it came from in space (between Mars and Jupiter) since they tracked its flight to Earth. It’s a lot of trouble to send probes up to retrieve such samples. When they fall to us, it’s worth the effort to find them. Like a telegram from the distant past in an old, coded language, studying that rock can help scientists further understand how our solar system formed and took its present configuration. Very cool.

When I hear about something this old, I am always struck again by how patient the universe is, how elaborate and extensive the plans of God are. This whole yarn has taken a long time to thread, ravel, and weave. We are part of something much larger than us, much more patient with us than we are with it or ourselves. The modern world is desperately impatient. The rise of ‘young earth’ thinking capitulates to this impatience. Quick and easy creation, God, salvation, life. Fast food theology recreates its god after the likeness of our modern way of life.

As that Australian meteorite demonstrates, God isn’t about the quick fix. God plays the long game with the universe and with us. Of course, our time is only a moment by comparison. What is 50 or 100 years relative to 4.5 billion?  The modern world flows fast around us and pushes us into its fleeting, quick, meaningless pace. On the other hand, the days and moments of our lives stretch out before us innumerable. I’m sitting here writing this as Isaac, my 6 year old son, slowly enjoys the bowl of oatmeal I made him for breakfast. He is savoring every bite. No, he doesn’t do this every morning. Sometimes, he inhales his bowl in a blur. And yes, I cooked it in the microwave. 2:30 to hot morning goodness. And there it is. We live in this frenetic culture and it pulls us along relentlessly. We have to dig our heels in when we can and enjoy our oatmeal. And enjoy the still, quiet moment of watching someone we love enjoy their oatmeal.

More than digging our heels in, I hope we will hear the regular invitation to slow joy and growth from the God who has made all this slowly and carefully, taking billions of years to craft a beautiful, wonderful creation. God isn’t rushed for time. Specifically, the resurrection of Jesus shows us that God has all the time in the world – and beyond. I preached about this last Sunday at Vineyard North and Eugene Peterson  wrote a book you should read, called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. A main part of following Jesus is waiting. Waiting on the Holy Spirit to move. Waiting on each other – and ourselves – to grow in maturity and holiness. I’m convinced that feeling rushed, that urgency of now, that we feel often (many times a day) is an enemy of our souls. Worst of all is when we’re impatient with each other and ourselves regarding matters of faith. That’s like an asthmatic puffing an inhaler and a cigarette at the same time. There are times to demand immediate change, like when Paul called out Peter in Antioch or Dr. King insisted on civil rights, but those are exceptional cases. In our everyday relationships, it’s the slow work of growing together that counts. Those crisis moments will come but we can’t force them or simulate them. Like our God, we’re playing the long game. We may as well enjoy it.