The Feather in My Hair

Not too long ago I visited my hair stylist for a facial and a haircut come color session.  The new rage, it seems, is to add feathers to your hair. They come in all shades, from bright yellow to shades of natural hair colors.  You can get them striped or solid.  You can make them long or short.  You can wash them, blow dry them, and even use a curling iron on them.  Most of the younger folks in the salon had several in their hair.  I wasn’t sure it would work well on me.  I mean, really, who am I trying to impress anyway?

But I went ahead and had one put in – purple of course.  I wondered if anyone would notice.  I also wondered why I’d agreed to it.  I don’t normally go for that kind of thing.  For example, I don’t try to dress like Brittany Spears or Jennifer Lopez.  I simply don’t have the body for it and I think it looks stupid to try to act an age I’m not.  I let the younger folks have their styles and seek my own fashion, which includes being modest and covering things up instead of displaying them for all the world as some do (even some who shouldn’t because they haven’t the model’s body for it).

Truth be told, I’d like to be like the character Penelope Garcia on the TV show “Criminal Minds.”  I’d like to be quirky and make people wonder what I’m up to.  I’d like to wear a bizarre mixture of colors and have people consider me “out there.” I just don’t think the real business world would care much for that look on me.  They’d think I was odd, eccentric, and a little crazed.  But I let them put a purple feather in my hair without really knowing why at the time.

Then, on a Wednesday night, Pastor G begins the Bible study by giving us the title of his sermonette – “Stop Hanging on to the Feather.”  Hmmm.  Apropos, don’t you think?  Only I don’t think he even noticed the feather in my hair.  It isn’t all that visible since it’s a muted tone and mixed in with all my other real hair.

He talked about eagles, how they build their nests and what happens when it is time for the eaglets to take to the sky.  For the longest time, the eaglet is fed by the parents in a nice, warm, soft nest.  But eventually the parents stop coming with food and the nest becomes something of an evil thing, no longer comforting and safe.  Because eagles tend to build their nests high in the sky, it begins to get cold in that nest left all alone without any food. Parents fly by with tantalizing meals but don’t offer any to the eaglet.  Eventually, the eaglet either has to learn to fly and catch her own meals or die in the nest.  She comes closer and closer to the edge of the nest, but can’t quite seem to let go. 

Finally, the eaglet has no choice but to step off into the sky.  Sometimes, it seems, the parents will bear them on their backs to the sky.  Soon the eaglet finds out that hanging on isn’t easy, especially given that the parent swoops hither and yon, up and down, and all over the place.  It isn’t until the eaglet stops hanging on to the feather that she learns how to fly.  Like Bilbo Baggins said in the Lord of the Rings series, “It’s risky going out your door.”  But if you never take a risk you never go anywhere.  Moving forward requires risk.  So it is with eaglets, and so it is with human beings.

Trouble is, risk isn’t safe, neither is it comfortable.  It is, however, absolutely necessary.  God never moves backwards, he always moves forward.  As Pastor G says, God never lets you get comfortable where you are.  It’s risky believing in God.  People call you stupid, crazy, out of your mind, and just plain wrong.  Once you begin to move forward with God, things get a little harrowing.  You are attacked from every side, sometimes not because you believe but because you frighten those who do not.

God says in Exodus that he carries us on eagles’ wings to bring us to him. We are always going to be God’s treasured possession but he isn’t going to let us simply sit in a pew and vegetate. He’s always going to be in there stirring the pot and making us move, sometimes where we definitely do not wish to go.  For example, it isn’t easy living for Christ in many workplaces – people make fun of you for your beliefs, belittle you for them, plot against you because of them, and beat you down if they can to prove you are wrong to believe.  They are often afraid of what God’s children can do.  Out of all the chaos God always brings order and with the order comes blessing.  Some folks don’t much like that.

Coworkers may wonder why you are always getting to the next level and why they are always left behind.  Maybe it’s because they’ve never learned to fly.  Maybe it’s because they’re too scared to believe.  Maybe they don’t believe that risk is necessary or that it gains them anything.  Certainly our current total engagement in self-entitlement is an issue.  We are always looking out for number one without realizing how that affects everyone with whom we come in contact.  If someone says something you don’t like, just go get a gun and shoot that person and anyone near you who had nothing to do with your conflict.  Talk is apparently so cheap no one bothers to discuss things anymore.

Hebrews tells us that we have to throw off everything that hinders us and any sin that entangles us, and that we have to run with perseverance the course that God lays out for us through the Holy Spirit.  It is therefore imperative that we stop hanging on to the feather, whatever it may represent.  For me, especially at work, it’s always been the worry that they will think me odder than I already believe I am.  I will be made fun of and held up to ridicule. I won’t be accepted or liked.  Except that it’s not about me – it’s all about the blood of Christ.

So, okay, maybe I’m not meant to be a missionary.  I’m not a great singer.  I’m no preacher.  I’m not being signed up to speak in front of thousands.  According to some I’m not worth a whole lot – I can’t even get me a man.  (Interestingly enough they never ask me whether or not I really want one. It is simply assumed that because I am female I must have one to be happy and content.)  But God must think I’m worth something, and he must have something for me to do, otherwise he would not have brought me out of the fiery pit of cancer.  The question is, what would he have me do? I don’t want to flash decide on any old thing, since it may or may not be what he wants.  I have to be sure it’s from him and not just a personal whim.

I also know that once I begin to move I will be at my most vulnerable.  God must have thought I'd forgotten because he made sure Pastor G reminded me. More than likely, he said, I will soon be under attack. It happens almost as soon as you take the first step off the platform of "pew Christianity."  You have to go through mountains and valleys to get to the blessing God has in store for you.  Blessings sometimes come at a high price (like going through cancer).  They often require sacrifice.  You can’t keep thinking only of yourself.  You have to think about others and the impact your life has on them, whether good or bad. 

Many times, Pastor G says, the feather you’re holding onto represents the control you need to have over your life, even though it doesn’t belong to you in the first place.  You have always been God’s; he knew you before you were even conceived.  Like it or not, if I want to move forward, I’m going to have to let go of the feather I’m clutching, whatever it may be, and let the Holy Spirit guide me as he will. 

And, so, I now know what the feather in my hair is for – it’s a constant reminder that my life is God’s to control, not mine.  I believe it is, in more ways than one, time to fly.  Maybe the teacher in Karate Kid was right – do or not do, there is no inbetween.

QUO VADIS?

Not too long ago I watched an old flick (circa 1951, starring Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, and Peter Ustinov) of that title, based on a book of the same title (written by Henryk Sienkiewicz in 1896).  I wondered what the phrase meant, so, being a certified geek-ette, I Googled it. 

“Quo Vadis?” is a Latin phrase that means, “Where are you going?” or “Whither goest thou?”  In John 13:36 Peter asked Jesus:  “Lord, where are you going?”  Jesus replied:  “Where I am going you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”  Read through verse 38 and you will find Peter swearing he will lay down his life for Jesus and Jesus telling Peter that he will deny him three times.  It was a lesson Peter never forgot.  Later in Rome, Peter does lay down his life for Christ and is crucified upside down.  All because he followed a man named Jesus.

Paul, a Roman citizen, was beaten several times, had stones thrown at him, was bitten by a viper, and eventually beheaded because he refused to stop preaching the Gospel to whoever would listen.  He never stopped being kind and gracious to those around him, even his captors.  He tried to bring the Sanhedrin, soldiers, market-place sellers, prostitutes, all manner of depravity, and even King Agrippa to Jesus.  How is it that I think I should do anything less?

Christians in the days after Jesus was crucified had to hold services in tombs and caves and other hidden places to avoid being put to death for their beliefs.  They had their businesses taken from them, their families killed, had little if any food to eat, were harassed on every side, and yet they clung to faith in Jesus and went forward, through many storms and trials, giving up the riches the world had to offer.  They were fed to lions and burned alive at the stake.  Cancer?  It’s nothing.  God is everything.

So, the question is:  Quo vadis?  And are you willing to go?  God will never ask you to go somewhere or do something for which he has not already prepared you.  Be aware that it often takes a while for God to get you ready.  Sometimes you have to go through some stuff before you are ready to face the next challenge. It’s taken God nearly 60 years to get me to pay attention. God never promised the road would be easy, he only ever promised to be with you all the way to the end – even if you’re crucified upside down or had your head severed from your body by an executioner’s axe.

Had you asked me ten years ago, I would have sworn that cancer was not something I would ever face.  No one else in my family ever had – we died of old age or heart attacks but not cancer.  “So,” God says, “You believe I am the way and the truth and the light.  How far are you willing to go in proving that belief?”  Truth be told, I wasn’t really ready to go very far.  If people knew I was a Christian they’d expect me to, well, act like one.  They’d make fun of me for being a Christian instead of gorging myself on a secular world full of lustful and damaging things.  Surely it was enough just to be a “good person” and not have to sacrifice anything on the altar of my beliefs. No, I didn’t want to go there!

Big mistake!  Big lesson!  God never does anything halfway.  Cancer teaches you a lot of things but the biggest thing it teaches you is how utterly dependent you are on God’s mercy and grace.  It’s a lesson you never forget.  I’ve stopped apologizing for my faith.  I’ve learned to give credit where credit is due – to God and God alone.  I’ve stopped being afraid of professing my faith because I don’t want to be made fun of – go ahead, laugh, belittle me and my beliefs – in the end God wins, and because I am his child, I win too.

In the times the film depicts and the book tells of, Nero was emperor of Rome – and he was stark raving mad.  He burns Rome and blames the Christians.  He writes very bad poetry and turns them into even more awful songs.  He kills people who get in his way or who are of no use to him any longer.  He feeds the Christians to the lions and burns them on crosses. Most Romans don’t think they are doing anything wrong – after all, Nero decreed it so. Yet, for all Nero’s machinations, for all that he tries to destroy the Gospel, it survives far beyond his little empire.  “Quo vadis?” you ask of the Gospel?  “Into all the world,” it replies. 

I’ve stopped expecting people to fill my needs and started expecting God to do what he has promised.  I don’t have to guess whether my church is going to explode with people who need Christ because I know God will do it.  Pretty soon it’s going to take me two hours to count the offering instead of five minutes.  Pretty soon we’re going to need a bigger nursery and more room for the youth and lots more help with children’s ministries.  We’ll have to hold classes every evening for discipleship and clear more space out for community missions.  The past is over and done with – now is the time of the Lord!

It’s not only the preacher’s job to go out and minister to others – it’s yours too!  True, you can sit in your pew and watch the world go by, but wouldn’t you rather be a vital part of the church body that gives Jesus to the community around it?  For me it was a question of whether I’d rather be dead or alive.  I could avoid God and blame the church for my inability to accomplish much, sit around feeling sorry for myself and being bitter about the hand God had given me, or I could throw all that aside and plunge headfirst into the work of the Kingdom.  You probably think I’ve lost my mind, and so I have – to God, the author and finisher of my faith.  His Kingdom is all that matters.  Cancer is of little consequence.

So again I ask you, “Quo Vadis?”  Where are you going and what will you be?  Who will you follow and who will you lead? 

EXPECTATIONS

I was struck today by the number of people at work for whom life seems to have no expectations.  They come in and go home without any real hope for anything – it’s just a job that sometimes pays the bills.  I often wonder if that’s how they treat their life – it’s just a life and it will end. It’s just the way life is and I have to put up with it.  Doom and gloom – bitter and depressed – no hope for anything beyond a paycheck that doesn’t seem to quite cover all the costs of living in the world.

I’ve watched so many people get hung-up by all the things they didn’t get that they think they deserve just by showing up for work.  I hear it all the time – “How did she get that job, I’ve been here longer and I deserve it.  What’s he got that I don’t have more of or am better at?  No one ever gives me a chance. She didn’t write that report, I did, but she got all the credit. I work harder than he does. I never get recognized for what I do. I’ll always be right where I am – nowhere.”  They’re all bound up in power, position, and acclaim.  I suppose they think that’s what life is all about. Oh ye of small expectations …

I wonder if people like that ever notice that they created a lot of the rejection they feel on their own accord.  As humans we’re really good at justifying our feelings.  I can be bitter because it wasn’t my fault.  I can be mean and hateful because that’s how life has treated me and that’s just the way I am, so you’d better get over it.  I may as well hold my breath until I turn blue since no one is giving me what I want. Quick!  Run as fast you can the other way!  Don’t stay around scornful, negative, life-draining, depressed, darkness-oriented, unfortunate people who refuse to let God speak life to them.

God is the only one who can deliver us from what we’ve done to ourselves.  He’s the only one who can bring us out of a terrible darkness into the light of life in him. We need to walk away from the secular world and stop adopting their negative, self-focused ways.  Grow up, God says, and learn to live in the light.  Stop running for darkness every time you run into hardship or hurtful situations.  If you want to work for the Kingdom, you can’t remain bitter, jealous, and scornful.  You can’t serve others if you can’t let go of the bitterness you’ve allowed to enter your life because you didn’t get what you wanted.

I know I’ve played that game.  Poor, poor, pitiful me – no one sees my worth and no one gives me a chance.  Instead of wallowing in my own bitter mud, I needed to get up and get out of there and start doing something about it. Like the prodigal son, I need to come to myself, realize that even the servants in my father’s house are better off than I am, and run back to the Father as fast as I can for deliverance.  His mercy and grace cover a multitude of sins and I’ve probably committed far more than I’ll willingly admit.

My sister Renee says that sometimes we don’t get much because we don’t expect much.  I think she’s right.  If you expect the church to stay small, it probably will.  But if you ask God to bring in the harvest and to bring in people to disciple, and expect that he will do just that, you may need a new building inside of a month.  Stop being your own worst enemy and start expecting God to bless you – your family, your business, and your church.  And then get out there and do something about it.  Don’t just sit there and whine about what you don’t have.  Stand up for Jesus, you soldiers of the Cross!

If you want to change your world, you’d better get moving.  Search God out and pray for his guidance.  Read the Scriptures and look for his promises.  Believe in his ability to do all that he has promised he will do.  God is waiting for you to believe and he is waiting to bless you beyond your ability to conceive.  But if you don’t believe, you won’t be blessed.  You have to be totally and absolutely sold out to God’s plan and his purpose for your life, even if you don’t really know exactly what that looks like.

I mean, really, look at me – I’m not so much.  But little IS much when God is in it.  I may look like a plain, ordinary nobody to the world, but God sees me as his beautiful child, who he loves more than anything and wants to bless more than anything, if I’d only let him.  The person stopping me from getting God’s blessings is me.  If I don’t receive, it’s probably because I didn’t ask and didn’t do.  It’s no one else’s fault, especially not God’s.  It’s all about me and my selfish, small-minded, no expectations thinking. 

I need to ask God to refresh my mind and my Spirit daily so I don’t end up living in bitterness, remorse, and regret. I need to raise my expectations and living out God’s plan for my life.  I need to start distributing some of those gifts of the Spirit instead of trying to hoard them for myself (where they won’t do much good).  I need to stop whining and complaining and start being a positive influence, speaking life to others, and giving them a window into the holistic, healing, beautiful Kingdom God is offering them.

WHEN GOD IS SILENT

Have you ever gone through a period of time when God is relatively silent?  When you don’t think you hear from him as often as you should?  When it seems that what you’re doing isn’t enough and is failing?  That’s me in recent weeks.  I want to jerk the reins out of God’s hands and say, let’s get on with it.  But just because a thing appears to be so doesn’t make it so.  Just because I don’t physically see his plan being worked out doesn’t mean that it isn’t.  Usually, it simply means I’m impatient.  And if I jerk those reins out and decide to travel on my own, I’m headed down a disastrous path.

Me, I’m an organizer.  I like everything to be just so, each item in its proper place, and everything neat and tidy and orderly. Good thing Dymo makes some excellent labelers – mine keeps wearing out! Nothing out of place, no surprise folders or files. I suppose that’s why I like tax law.  While it is often far more complicated than it needs to be, it does follow a certain order, or code.  It has rules and I like rules because they represent order. 

Unfortunately for me, the wild God I serve doesn’t abide by the rules of men. As a matter of fact, I don’t think man’s rules always live up to God’s expectations. We have created all kinds of rules for people to follow at church – women are only allowed to serve in the nursery or kitchen, women sit on one side of the church and men on the other, you must attend every service or you aren’t a Christian, you have to read the King James Version of the Bible or you are going to be struck by lightning and God will never forgive you, and so on and so forth.  You’re almost afraid to step inside some churches for fear you’ll break a rule you knew nothing about.

I’ve been in some services where if you made a sound or shouted amen, you were set upon by the elders and told to respect the sanctuary.  The silence is deafening and the service cold.  The Spirit has gone where there is warmth and life, leaving behind a sanctuary filled with people who are sure that feeling nothing is next to godliness. I think the people have forgotten that true worship does not come from being perfect and following all the rules.  Unless they do something to change things, the church will wither and die and be of little use to the community around it. 

It’s time to step into the next challenge, and apparently the challenge for me is to wait for God’s timing.  Time to trust God and submit to his will and stop trying to make him conform to my silly plans. To be blessed by God you have to be his – totally sold out to him.  That’s a hard thing for me sometimes.  I want to maintain a little control in case of emergencies.  I forget that real faith requires that I believe in Christ and his plan even when it looks like he doesn’t have one, or it is hard to follow the path, or I can’t see where I’m going to end up. 

I forget that it is by adversity that I may measure my blessings.  Sometimes you just have to go through stuff.  Being faithful means that I may have to go through a long period of sacrifice and endure hardship before I obtain the reward of God’s blessings.  Being blessed, says Pastor G, is the uncanny, innate ability to succeed over adversity.  I can’t do that by my own means, it takes God to step in and change the ending.  Ultimately, God overcomes.  I lose sight of that, especially when I let the world sway my thinking.

I Samuel 22:31 says: “As for God, his way is perfect:  the Word of the Lord is tried.  He is a Shield to all who trust and take refuge in him.”  If I expect to succeed I’d better be totally rested in him, else my plans turn to dust and I fall into sin.  My way certainly is not perfect.  Somehow, when God is in control, I always land on my feet.  It’s only when I depend on my own strength that I fall down and wonder what happened.

When God is silent, maybe it’s because I’m not listening and not paying attention to the Spirit’s leading.  Maybe it’s because I need to be still before God and wait for his timing.  In this world everything rushes by without stopping.  We think we have to fill every moment with things to do.  We’re so busy we’ve stopped listening for God’s still small voice and have forgotten how to slow down and take time to just be with him.  It’s hard for us humans to let go and let God take care of things.

Joyce Meyer says that faith means you have peace even when you don’t have all the answers.  I think we often equate peace with doing nothing and being lazy, when the truth is that it’s more about continuing to work for the Kingdom, remaining calm, and waiting on God. We don’t have to have all the answers.  We just have to trust in the God who does have all the answers.  When God is silent, seek him out and rest in his Word.