The day of small things

“Faith is not about me getting what I want in my outer world; it’s about God getting what he wants in my inner world.”- John Ortberg

“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.”- Zechariah 4:10 (NLT)

John Ortberg continues Chapter 4 of All the Places to Go with a look at “some common myths about God and doors and the truth that lies behind them.”  The first myth is described today.

1.  God is not involved in my little life.  One of the most crippling myths is that we’re either not spiritual or significant enough to have great adventures with divine doors.  In other words, God is too busy with other things to pay attention to us.

Because we have no conception of what is small in God’s eyes, Pastor Ortberg exhorts us not to despise the day of small things.  Spiritual and physical sizes are not measured by the same standards.  John adds that our world is very small when we’re born and becomes increasingly smaller as we age.  We’ll never learn to find God at all if we don’t find Him in our small worlds, as the author concludes:

“We have no idea what is big or small in God’s eyes.  But for sure, I will never go through a ‘big’ door if I do not humble myself to the task of discerning and entering all the small ones.  Do not despise the day of small things.  For that, too, is the day the Lord has made.”

Today’s question: How do you fight the temptation to despise the day of small things?  Please share.

Coming Tuesday: the latest Short Meditation, “Braced for the future”

Tomorrow’s blog: “Making difficult decisions”

The day of small things

Make our lives count

In Chapter 4 of All the Places to Go, John Ortberg discusses statements people think are in the Bible but are not to be found there.  One is:  When God closes a door, he opens a window.”  Pastor Ortberg points out that Mother Superior from The Sound of Music says that.  The Bible says: “What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.”- Revelation 3:7

John theorizes that we like the “he opens a window” version because it gives us the opportunity to sneak back in so we can go where we really wanted to go all along.  Revelation 3:7 severely limits our options.  Gerald Hawthorne (Colossians) describes God’s open doors:

“unlimited chances to do something worthwhile; grand openings into new and unknown adventures of significant living; heretofore unimaginable chances to do good, to make our lives count for eternity.”

Pastor Ortberg add that our ideas about God’s open doors can be full of misconception and superstition- thinly spiritualized wish fulfillment.  Divine doors intersect deeply with our desires.  Yet we are not the master with God our genie in a bottle.  We cannot make getting the right outcome our idol.  We need to move forward toward the spiritual growth that is God’s deepest desire for us.  John concludes:

“God’s primary will for me is the person I become and not the circumstances I inhabit.”

Today’s question: How have you  grown spiritually following your vocation loss?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “The day of small things”

Make our lives count

How to fix a broken story

John Ortberg concludes Chapter 3 of All the Places to Go by stating that there are times when we become so obsessed with vocational open doors that we’re blind to relational open doors.

Yet, every heart comes with a door.  Pastor Ortberg emphasizes that one of the great gifts of life is having the door of a person’s heart open up to you.  At the church John serves, a group of senior citizens decided to get involved with low-income, high-risk students at a San Francisco high school.  Grant Smith, age eighty-two, is part of the tutoring group.  When Grant didn’t show up one week, his tutee asked. “Where’s my homeboy?”  John comments: “An open door can make a suburban eighty-two-year-old retired pilot somebody’s homeboy.”

My life is energized when I don’t regard it as my life; every moment presents an opportunity to connect with another person, to learn from them, to make them smile.  John summarizes:

“Anytime you step through the open door, your story and Jesus’ story begin to get mixed up together, and you become part of the work of God in this world.  The only way to fix a broken story is to embed it in a larger story that begins and ends well.  As is was once said, so it is said again. . . . ‘But wait!  There’s more.’ ”

Today’s question: How can you embed your broken story in Jesus’ story?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “Make our lives count”

How to fix a broken story

Open doors are everywhere

As John Ortberg continues Chapter 3 of All the Places to Go, he posits that actually noticing people leads to open doors.  He states: “Doors open when I actually notice and care about people I might otherwise overlook.”

Pastor Ortberg relates a story he read about a woman who locked her keys in her car.  The car was parked in a very rough neighborhood.  Frustrated by her bungled attempts to use a coat hanger, she prayed to God to send someone to help her.  Soon a rusty car approached, driven by a tattooed, bearded man wearing a biker’s skull rag.  The woman thought this a rather dubious answer to prayer.

Nevertheless, when the man asked if he could be of assistance, the woman replied, “Can you break into my car?”  Replying that it was no problem, the man took the coat hanger and had the door open in seconds.  The woman hugged him and told him he was a nice man.  He told her that he wasn’t a nice man, that he’d just gotten out of prison hours earlier after serving two years for auto theft.  The woman hugged him again and shouted, “Thank you, God, for sending me a professional!”

To a reasonable person, this was not an ideal door choice for the man or the woman.  But what a blessing each received, far beyond the specific encounter.  John concludes:

“Open doors are everywhere, everyday.  And when we follow God’s leading, we receive the blessing of seeing the world and our place in it as he sees it.”

Today’s question: How have God’s open doors blessed you?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “How to fix a broken story”

Open doors are everywhere

Living with one foot raised

“When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there.”- Ruth 1:6

In Chapter 3 of All the Places to Go, John Ortberg reflects on the story of Naomi and her daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth.  Pastor Ortberg notes that Naomi has nothing to give them in terms of material or physical aid.  All Naomi can offer them is freedom from the burden of caring for her.

There are two doors in this circumstance: one marked Stay and one marked Leave.  Orpah chose to leave, Ruth to stay.  John notes that Orpah makes the “prudent, expedient, expected, and rational” decision.  In other words, she made a reasonable choice and lived a reasonable life.

Ruth, however, chooses to live an unreasonable life.  Although Ruth didn’t know this when she made her choice, amazing things now will happen to her.  Ruth made a simple decision to bet everything on love.

When the Jesuits first began, they chose as their motto the Lain word magis, meaning “more.”  Their founder, Ignatius Loyola, used the word to inspire heroic deeds.  In fact, Loyal described the ideal Jesuit as “living with one foot raised.”  John concludes:

“We were made for ‘more"; not to have more out of love for self, but to do more out of love for God.”

Today’s question: How are you living with one foot raised?  Please share.

New addition to the Crown Jewels: “I yam what I yam”

Tomorrow’s blog: “Open doors are everywhere”

 

Living with one foot raised

Little by little

John Ortberg continues Chapter 3 of All the Places to Go with a discussion of what-if? people.  What-if? people lead imaginative lives.  A what-if? attitude is their response to ideas and events.  Pastor Ortberg adds: “What-if” is a big idea, as big as God, for it is the practice of God.”

John adds that God still is looking for what-if? people because we were made for more and we are missing out.  But our hunger for more never will be satisfied if the “more” we want is for ourselves.  In the Bible, open doors are God’s invitation to make our lives count, with His help, for the sake of others.

In The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner speaks of what happens when we forget ‘for the sake of others":

“To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world’s sake when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death- that little by little we start to come alive.”

If we simply seek more for ourselves, more actually turns out to be less.  Rather than looking for  opportunities for self-advancement, we need to seek more opportunities to love.

Today’s question: Following your vocation loss, what opportunities have you had to be a what-if? person?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “Living with one foot raised”

Little by little

But wait! There"s more.

John Ortberg begins Chapter 3 (“No Mo FOMO: Overcoming the Fear of Missing Out”) of All the Places to Go with the statement that “ironically, it’s vulnerability, not invincibility, that leads to the human connections we really hunger for.”  In contrast, the epidemic of using social media sites to compare our lives to others has given rise to a new electronic disease.  An MIT professor, Sherry Turkle, calls it FOMO- fear of missing out.

Pastor Ortberg notes that FOMO is fed by comparison and is, in a sense, behind the very first sin- because Adam and Eve wanted to be like God.  Yet, John observes, FOMO can have a positive impact on our lives:

“And yet, for all its dangers, FOMO tells us something fundamental about ourselves.  We have an insatiable hunger for more.  We have a longing for life beyond what we are experiencing right now.  Handled rightly, FOMO can lead us to God’s open doors.”

John adds that fear of missing out is behind the man John considers one of the greatest geniuses in American history- Ron Popeil.  Ron’s infomercials always ended with this tagline: “But wait!  There’s more.”  No matter how tantalizing the featured product, the viewer’s imagination was fired by that promise of more.

Today’s question: What do you long for in life beyond what you’re currently experiencing?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “Little by little”

But wait! There"s more.