A Long
Obedience...
I was cleaning out the garage
recently, and I found something.... Gary’s Seminary diploma!
Seminary! One of the most trying times in the story of
Gary and NIki.
That was the chapter where we had to figure
out if the fairy tale would have a happy ending, or would be just chuck it all
and move on.
Honestly, it could have gone either way.
I was so shocked. That was a definitive
chapter is our life. We can’t deny that it happened, or the cost incurred (and
I am not just talking about money) but now 20 years later, it was just a piece
of paper.
It was a worthy endeavor, a treasure
of life lessons, a great memory…. but it is a monument.
Lately, I
have had two images thrown into my face almost every single day.
Monuments vs.
footprints.
A monument
represents an event. A footprint
represents the journey.
A monument; a
testimony to the past. In the Bible God would tell people to
remember. He instructed people to set up a monument to look back to on those
days when they couldn’t go any further. A remembrance, a record of what once was.
These images have really started me
thinking.
What IS more
important? That it once happened, or
that you are doing something with it?
I had a
wedding. vs. Marry me everyday.
I gave birth
to a child. vs. I am a mother.
God told me
something then. Vs. I heard Him today.
Even something
as important as Salvation….. if it stays where you found it and you never do
anything with it….Did it change you?
I see people
everyday who are living the present on what happened in the past.
Every single decision is colored by
something that was once, but is no more.
Blessings, tragedy,
heart-break or ordinary, the life we live today, dictated by life then. Let’s
get real here; I have been guilty of making today’s decisions based on
monuments from experiences in my past. For whatever reason,
the once was….. overshadowed the what is.
But,
God called the Christian life: a race, a path,
a forward motion. He never once told us
to set up camp. There is nowhere I can
find where we are told to “Stop.”
A footprint represents the
journey.
Why would
God tell us to set up markers, but keep going? I have struggled with these two
images until God finally cleared it all up for me at such an odd place:
Children’s
Camp.
I actually went to a few this
summer. While I was there, I found
myself reading a book about Footprints or Monuments. I didn’t want to read it. There
was no shaking it. There was something inside the cover that I needed. It was
just one of those times when I just had to take it with me.
The title: A Long Obedience in the Right Direction.
At
camp, I sat in the back. I saw them raise
their hands in worship. They were soaking
it all in: the adventure, the fellowship, the fun. I got to see them worship The Creator in the
middle of HIS Creation.I watched them set up monuments in their
memories; places to return to from time to time to try to recapture…. a
feeling.
God began to
show me that this journey is a long obedience…. A lifetime of steps …….in a
single direction. Some steps are slow, some are painful, but the nature of the steps is that they are continual.
Sadly, I have seen so many stop walking when the monument is out of sight. It gets hard to do the daily, to continue the journey when the way gets
hard or (let’s just get real here) when
you don’t want to anymore.
We are living life on
what happened then. We articulate God from the past. We say– 20 years ago I did this, or I saw God
do this.
We can testify to a monument, but no record of a current journey.
Monuments are just
moments. They have a purpose, but can't be the focus. Important to the story, but
not the whole picture.
When I look back on the events that I feel define me. I can’t help but see how if I had just stayed at any one of those places, I would just be a stone.
When I look back on the events that I feel define me. I can’t help but see how if I had just stayed at any one of those places, I would just be a stone.
God has called us to a LONG
Obedience. A journey that ends at the Heart of God.
