I read this illustration a while back about Icebergs. It is not what you see, but what you don’t see that will sink the ship.
I always try and pursue a full day of SPACE, quiet, and solitude during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. It has been a sacred time for me over the years. It has proven to be a rich time with moments of real clarity for the coming year. During this time, I often ask God for words or a phrase that He wants me to focus on for the coming year.
After a few hours of wrestling, slowing down, and being reminded that in order to hear…I first need to listen…really listen…eventually, the words started to come and the themes for my year began to emerge.
Remember
Stay Anchored
Keep Exploring
So much began to come to mind as I started to journal on those themes.
Then something unexpected happened. I was at one of my favorite spots about an hour from where I live. During a short hike, I began to wonder if there was anything that was blocking me from a deeper connection with God as I head into 2017. Soon, my hiking path came out behind a high school. It was a rival high where my youngest son had played many games and had many track meets throughout his high school years. It was a basketball gym where he’d had a couple of record-setting performances–a place where college coaches began to take notice, and the exciting world of recruitment began to happen. In the midst of this rush of memories, came this surge of emotion. Pain. Even anger. I could literally feel my body tighten up.
.jpg "unnamed (1)")
During Dylan’s junior year, his dream of division one basketball was becoming a reality. But then, life happened. Literally the day after his dream school began to recruit him, he fell with his first major injury. What followed were three, mostly unsuccessful, sports hernia surgeries, some crushing disappointment, and a four-year journey with physical pain that has not left him to this day.
As I stood behind this high school, all this emotion, disappointment and frustration emerged again, and all the questions came back. Why did God so clearly gift Dylan with the talents and life dream, yet seemingly block him from what he was so passionate about? Why did Dylan not get to enjoy his ultimate dream, even for one day, before struggle and disappointment came knocking? Why does he continue to struggle with pain? Why do I still feel so much disappointment and even anger over this?
You see, until this day of SPACE and solitude, I didn’t know how much I was still wrestling with the story Dylan has lived. The passions, the joy, the amazing memories, but also the anger and struggle. The memories of all those surgeries and doctors visits, and the deep disappointment with God came right to the surface. I can feel them in my chest as I write this. It seems clear that what was just under the surface is having impact on me, physically and otherwise, in a big way.
What followed that hike was some much needed honestly with God. We will see where it all leads in my own journey.
With a certain heaviness I continued my day of solitude and SPACE. When I get quiet and try my best to listen, I never know what is going to come to the surface…
 
 A few years ago, just before Harbor Ministry was launched, there was this moment…
I was on top of a mountain looking out over Quito, Ecuador. I was there to speak at a conference of youth ministry leaders from around the world, on what it takes to finish well. The crazy thing was, at the time I felt like my personal life and my leadership life were crashing down. My spiritual life was empty. I wasn’t sure I was going to stay on this faith journey at all. How could I deliver a message to these youth leaders on what it looks like to finish well? I just didn’t think I had what it takes to speak to the men who had gathered there. Everything in me wanted to bolt, and if I hadn’t been in South America, I may have.
Yet somehow in that moment clarity began to come. I decided to be bluntly honest and raw. As the hours passed, I had a very strong sense that I did have something to say, that my voice was needed, and I began to settle in.
Thoughts started coming. I need to help each of the men who had gathered in South America to remember:
- To remember the calling and mission that God had given each of them in the first place.
- To remember the key times in their own stories when God had broken through.
- To remember why they were doing the work and to reconnect with that initial calling.
- To remember the joy that was present in the early days of their spiritual journeys.
The night I spoke to those men was an incredible time of storytelling, and some moments of healing, restoration, and remembrance that I will never forget.
So, I am reminded again how powerful remembering can be. We must remember the places, the spaces, and the moments where God has intersected our own stories. Today it has kept me inspired, and I find myself wanting more of it. This thought comes to mind: “It is a good thing for the man that patiently waits, for the women who diligently seeks, It’s a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God. When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Wait for hope to appear.” Lamentations 3:28-29, The Message.
So all these years after that incredible trip to equator—a trip that in many ways changed the trajectory of my life—I again have this ache to find some extended quiet and to remember…
.jpg "Iceland2") The Celtics called them “thin places”. Places and moments where heaven and earth collide and, just for a moment, we get a glimpse and experience life as it was meant to be.
Last week I was on a long awaited spiritual pilgrimage in Iceland. The word epic is over-used today, but in this case it fits. It was a journey that was beyond words, and on several occasions, I did experience those thin places. There is this place—one of the very few spaces in the world—where the continental drift has caused the North American and European continents to collide. It’s incredible! Rock cliffs go straight up to the sky, and in-between those rock faces is a thin place. Standing there was very profound as I reached out toward two continents.
I just stood still and took in that moment. I felt really small.. It was hard to deny a creator at that moment.
We encountered many other thin places on this journey in Iceland:
- The sheer power of towering waterfalls.
- The moment time stood still in a little church as we starred at a bible dated 1584, and we wondered what that missionary journey must have been like
- The journey through fire and ice
- And of course the continued pursuit of “the cliff”
And so many other places none of us wanted to leave. My son Dylan said it best; ”these were days that God gave our band of journeyers, just for us as a gift… just a days to be overwhelmed by his abundance.”
As I soaked in these thin places I was reminded again that God cannot be tamed, contained or boxed in and you just never know when these thin places open up. It’s hard to not try and hang on to those moments, even though you know it is not possible.. I find myself hoping for more… actually aching to experience those moments again…
How about you? Any thin places you have experienced lately? Keep your eyes and ears open…
Breakers off the coast of County Clare, Ireland This weekend, I am speaking about a crazy group of radical christians, that has intrigued me for years: The Celtic Christians. I have been captivated by their music, their customs, their close identity with nature, and their fiery and resilient faith through incredible circumstances.
A few hundred years after the birth of Christ, the Roman Empire had fallen and a spiritual darkness was overtaking Europe. It was actually one of the darkest times in human history. In the midst of the darkness, this bands of radical Christians emerged in northern England and Ireland. These enduring, mission-driven, resilient, faith warriors were later referred to as the Celtic Christians. They associated their spiritual journey with nature, and they referred to God/the Holy Spirit as The Wild Goose. That name has always given me pause. It hints at the mysterious, untamed, nature of God that has remained undeniable throughout history. It serves as a reminder that the spirit of God cannot be tracked, tamed, boxed in, or controlled.
Wild geese are…, WILD. They change course and move. They make noise. They fly in formation, yet they are free; free to change course, move and adjust. For me, wild geese are a reminder that when it comes to God, there is an element of discovery, adventure, intrique and unpredictability that seems to be absent from our spiritual journeys today. There is something about the idea of the wild goose that is compelling. It calls us out. It forces us to embrace the mystery of God that is so lost in our culture.
And it readies us for whatever He has in store…
I think the Celtic Christian had a sense for something we may have missed.
I wonder how I have tried to tame, control, or box in this wild goose. And as a result, I also wonder if I have just settled, and lost some of that passionate pursuit that has, at times, made me dangerous in my faith.
I hope that pursuing the wild Goose is the real thing. I hope and believe that it can truly be something different than what we are used to, or have been taught.. And I think it just may be way more mysterious and adventorous , un-certain and full of risk, than many of us may think.
So I was watching some of Batman Begins the other night. It was not the lame portrayal in the new Batman v Superman saga. It was the “real” Batman with Christian Bale.
Anyway, there is a point in the movie when Bruce Wayne, is contemplating the creation of the Batman character. Alfred tells him something to the effect that the people of Gotham will never understand, that they are lost, and that they may not be worth saving. At this point Bruce Wayne replies, “…Sometimes people need dramatic things…. they need big encounters that will shake them out of apathy.”
I was immediately reminded of the many apathetic seasons I have walked through in my spiritual journey. Seasons when I just felt flat, uninspired, void of any passion, and not sure if I cared enough to keep chasing this mysterious and often what seems like a silent God. As I started to think through some of those times in my past, I found myself remembering what it was that jarred me out of that spiritual apathy and the resulting doubt that had settled in.
Often, but not always, it was a crisis.
Sometimes, it was something more simple: music at the right time, or a scene in a movie (like what happened this week), a random conversation,or an epic moment in nature when God just showed up. But too often it has taken something significant like a crisis to really shake me up, and compel me back to seeking God with total abandon.
It happened on the heels of losing my dad in my twenties.
It happened in the midst of a long-term struggle that one of our kids has gone through.
It happened after a tough battle with depression years ago.
I wish that this did not have to be true in my life. I wish that it didn’t have to be true in the lives of others. But it does often seem to take significant, dramatic events to awaken us from our apathy. That seemed to be true in Gotham, it is certainly true in this country, and true in my own life as well.
Think through some of those times when you have just been coasting, settling, uninspired. Maybe you’re in one of those times right now. In the past, what did it take to get you moving? I know that being in an extended season of apathy sucks. I don’t want it for myself and I don’t want it for you. So even as I write this, I am more determined than ever to not let it go on so long. I need to get myself in a place where the emotions, the passion, my mind, and the pursuit of something greater, gets stirred up and moving.
|
