the older I get

The older I become I find what truly matters…and what I really want for my birthday.

If you watch people you can see what they value. For many you would have to conclude that there is a constant need for the new, better, and more…things. The insatiable desire to prove oneself through accumulation. Success is making sure my mountain of stuff is the biggest, or at least as big as the Jones’. “If my house doesn’t get bigger, what will people think”? “If I can’t have a new car, what does that say about my success.”?

I’ve lived long enough today (oh yeah its my 44th birthday) to begin to see how empty this is…maybe not today, maybe not for a long time. But one day when I get “old” my values will surely change. That new car that I can’t drive will mean so little. That 4000sq ft house where I can’t climb the stairs just won’t matter. And if I have spent my life amassing the more, I will sit in a cold room full of what I treasured and find emptiness all around.

Too many people forget to buy stock in life’s most precious commodity – people…relationships. Instead we trade people in like we trade in cars, about every two years we are on to the next person. Leaving behind us a wake of unforgiveness and broken relationships. “Well you don’t know what they did to me. I can’t forgive that”. But one day you will wish you had.

Beyonce is right, “I can have another you in a minute”. The difference is that I want to keep them all. So I will choose to love and rejoice, and in the end maybe an “enemy” will come to say, “Thanks for loving me, even when I didn’t love you”. 

I want to be that guy who won’t leave you. And even if you leave me, I want you to know that I’ll always be waiting.

So as I sit here at 44 I am evaluating life and success by a different standard – How many people?

How many lives have I purchased with the currency of love?

How many debts have I written off in forgiveness?

How many service calls will be available because way back when I was there?

How many customers will be in my shop when it is time to close this store?

How many hands will hold my hand when I’m letting go?

This is where my treasure is…Happy Birthday to Me.

“and the sea was no more”

Right now I am gazing in wonder at the vast Atlantic. One of life’s great views is of the endless ocean as it relentlessly seeks to come ashore. Each wave tells a story of having come from some far far away land. What mystery she hides, what separation she creates, what stories abound never to be told.

And then with the stroke of a quill John pens those words -                                                                                                                              ”and the sea was no more” Revelation 21:1.

I must say, these words bring to me a strange sadness. I know that I will not be sad in that day, but today as this salty breeze brushes my cheek and this washing sound repeats, it seems like something will be sadly missing. The ocean only brings me happy thoughts and a relaxing mood. So why take it away?

What do you think?

The Call to Prayer??

I spent three days in Srinigar, India. This is in the far north just East of Pakistan – so its major Muslim territory.One of the things that gets your attention while you’re there is the “call to prayer”. Islam dictates that worshippers should stop to pray five times a day. Therefore, in Srinigar there is a mosque on every corner, because they don’t just stop to pray, they stop what they are doing and go to the mosque to pray there. It is an amazing sight.

The first call is at 5am! Each mosque is equipped with with a sound system to boom the call across the community. So at 5am you hear 30 or 40 voices delivering this call in a prayer chant type manner:

“I bear witness that there is no God except the one God Allah
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah
Hurry to the Prayer (Rise up for prayer)”

President Obama called the call to prayer, “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

I found it to be sad and hollow and empty call backed by some of this world’s deepest commitment. It was sad to think of an entire people wakening to what would best be described as a daily expression of spiritual death in religious action.

Father, please energize your missionaries to win these souls.