Green Lights on the #NarrowRoad

I believe that the world is divided into two kinds of people. Those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't. With that in mind...

For many years the following was true- if I was in a car I was driving it. I love to drive. In addition to personal vehicles, much of my life was spent compiling hundreds of thousands of miles driving church vans. But over recent yeas I had not been driving as much. Watching other people drive was a unique experience in many ways. You learn so much about them. And today I want to focus on one aspect of driving that has a lot to say about the #NarrowRoad - What do you do when you come to green light?

My research had led me to the belief that there are two kinds of drivers when it comes to green lights. There are the ones who see a green light and approach at full speed, unconcerned that it could change at any moment, never considering that they might not make it through before the dreaded yellow light appears. These driver are bold and confident. They expect good things to happen to them. They refuse to be negative.

The other type of driver approaches a green light by slowing down. They immediately doubt that the green light will hold long enough for them to make it through. There are negative thoughts in their minds, and caution in their foot- often tapping the brakes (or at least removing their foot from the accelerator) even as the light is still green. They EXPECT to have to stop. And because they slow down and hesitate, they often do stop, thus reinforcing their own expectations for the next traffic light.

Each of these styles comes with built in issues. The Green Means GO drivers like myself often accelerate through lights, occasionally running them when they are bright yellow- or sometimes pink. The more cautious crowd tends to occasionally clog up intersections and draw the ire of people like me, who scream into their windshields things like, "the light is green you moron!" Although it drives me crazy, there is no right or wrong way. It's just part of who you are, part of your personality as a driver and human being. And thus we reach my question for us all today...

Which style best defines the way you live life and your approach on the #NarrowRoad? Are you a charging bull, unfazed by warning signs or doubts that you could be wrong? Do you see life as opportunity to go for it and grab all the gusto you can? Or are you more the "slow down and see what awaits you" type? Do you not even need warning signs to make you cautious? Is every situation one that needs to be approached with care and thought? Bottom line- are you more an optimist or a pessimist when it comes to the road of life? 

Me? I not only believe the glass is half full, I believe it comes with free refills! This attitude gets me in trouble quite often, and leads to the occasional broken dream and bloody nose. I leap before I look far more often than I should. I know I should pray for guidance and wait for wisdom more that I do. On the other extreme, those who slow down for the green lights of life are often paralyzed by fear, too seldom taking chances or those sometimes necessary "steps you can't take back." Sometimes God does say "wait." But other times God just wants us to GO! Like most things in life, it's all about finding balance and finding peace with who you are and with the God who made you this way. 

So today pay attention to yourself or to your driver. What do you do at a green light? It say a lot about who you are...

Because of Jesus,

Waiting

In this life we spend a lot of time waiting- and almost as much time complaining about waiting. We, as a species, hate to wait! Lines at Walmart makes us crazy to the point that we cheat and get in the express lane with 21 items. We get impatient with traffic lights, yelling at them to change. We despise when it takes FOREVER (2.3 seconds) for a website to load. Even being put on hold ticks you off a little- admit it!  We hate to wait.

Growing up Quaker should have taught me a lot about waiting. The Friends Meeting I grew up in had periods of silence in which we waited on the Spirit to speak to each of us individually- and many weeks nothing happened. The Quaker camp I worked at for many years had quiet evenings on a hillside waiting for both the sunset and the presence of God. There were many lessons to be learned about patience and calm. But apparently I failed to learn them.

Nearly 30 years as a youth pastor should have gifted me with the patience of Job. In the church, people seldom do anything on time or in a timely manner. Parent's sign kids up late, kids show up late, church elders respond to your requests when it is too late- the list goes on and on. And then there is the matter of being patient with God's little puzzles that we call teenagers. They often surprise you when your expectations are low and often disappoint you when they are high. Without patience, the natural instinct would have been to abandon all hope. So you wait, and trust that God will use your efforts to make a difference in the long run. It has been said (often by me) that when you are in student ministry you never know if you had an impact on a student until after they have been gone from your ministry for 10 years. So you do your best...and you wait.

But all of that practice- all of the waiting- doesn't make it any easier to wait on God when we need answers. Scripture tells us that "they who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength (Psalm 8)" - which is a wonderful promise- but what are we supposed to do while we wait? Lately I have spent a lot of time in God's waiting room, and it has been a stressful experience. There have been prayers and waiting for signs of healing in a friend with cancer, and there have been no such signs. She is fading. So now we pray that God would release her from her pain and suffering...and we wait on that as well. Another friend with cancer is in the early stages of her fight, and we pray and wait and hope that the chemo treatments will work and she will be made whole again. I pray for miracles. We believe in God and we have faith in the doctors, but we still must wait for results. And it is just so hard. Many of you know that I find more theology in music than in theological teachings, and in this case it is Tom Petty who speaks the truth:

The waiting is the hardest part

Every day you see one more card

You take it on faith, you take it to the heart

But the waiting is the hardest part

So what should we do while we wait on the LORD? How do we survive something we hate doing so much? First of all, we need to wait expectantly. We wait on answers to prayer and on God's movement in our lives because we expect it to happen. It will seldom be in what we think is a timely matter- but it will happen in God's time. If we trust in the God who loves us and have faith in the people who love us and who love the people we love, then the waiting becomes much more tolerable. We must wait with the grand expectation that God has an answer- even when we have no idea what that answer may be. Secondly, we need to wait with a willingness to learn. We learn to persevere when things don't seem to be going our way. We learn that we worship a crock pot God, not a microwave God. We place things in God's hands with the understanding that it often takes time to learn the outcome- no matter how crazy that makes us. We learn that we can very seldom "fix" the things we wish could be fixed and that we are NEVER really in control of anything outside of our own actions. Solutions require help, often in the form of faith in something or someone else- or both. We don't like that, but we must learn it. Waiting can be frustrating, painful and scary. But it is also necessary. We wait for answers and we wait for new strength. And we hate every minute of it...

My son is coming home from college for the weekend and is arriving this morning. So I suppose I should get ready for his arrival- and then wait on him to get here. It just never ends, does it? Have a blessed weekend, my friends!

Because of Jesus,