Sometimes life can feel stale, like the scenery never changes, and drudgery can set in.  But I am a firm believer that perspective and our ability to master it, is one of life’s best kept secrets to contentment.  I know Christians who are wealthy and healthy and completely without peace, and I know a Christian who has spent her entire life in a nursing home, even as a very young girl, who is now getting up towards old age herself, who is never without a smile.  I am not saying that doesn’t come easier to some than it does to others.  I do believe some have been blessed with a sunny outlook and disposition, where others have to work pretty hard at it.  But what I am saying is that it is an accomplishment worth pursuing, even if you do have to work hard to get there.

As much as we might sometimes think we are on a well-worn path so familiar we need not even look around, the truth is, this life is a one-way march.  The terrain may seem much the same, but  time is always passing and something is always changing.  It is often when we are in that mental rut, lulled by the familiar, that some major upheaval can take place and we find that we have become so dulled in our complacency that we are very ill-prepared for the changes.  Life does tend to have a “hurry-up-and-wait” rhythm to it.  When we are young, we can’t wait to get old enough to be finished with school and with being young so “we can do whatever we want without always have someone telling us what to do all the time”.  Ha! Remember that?  (Never grow up, it’s a trap, I tell you!).

The only difference between being young and having someone tell you what to do, and being adult and having someone tell you what to do, is that usually, when you are young the ones telling you what to do, are at least doing it with your own best interests at heart, while as an adult, there are any number of interests that might be at play, but likely the only one concerned about yours will be you!  That brings on the next phase of adulthood, which might be referred to as disillusionment.  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” has no reciprocal clause attached.  There is no guarantee that when you do what is right, good things will come your way.  As a Christian, there is a good chance that your “good” will be repaid with evil, non-gratitude or indifference at best.  A choice is in order at that point.  Will you continue in obedience, loving those that hate you, doing good to those who harm you?

So as adults we have to find some other motivators than we had as kids.  Granted, the bills are motivation to keep us going to work and keeping our figurative “nose clean”, but the cycle of working to live, and feeling like we are living to work, is not conducive to getting us out of bed in the morning with a spring in our step or any enthusiasm in our heart.

I love Ecclesiastes.  Solomon, writing Ecclesiastes, just brings to mind Eeyore of Winnie-the Pooh fame.  I can almost hear Ralph Wright’s or Peter Cullen’s voice as I read it.  (Try it!).  Woe is me, I’ve come undone.  It’s not much of a tail, but I’m kind of attached to it”.  Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.  What profit hath a man of all his labor?

I don’t mean to make light of this scripture.  It just shows human nature so well.  Solomon, declared the wisest man who ever lived, and even he tried to live life by worldly wisdom and worldly means, only to conclude at the end of his life, that had he not strayed, had he remained on the straight and narrow, had he NOT had all his heart desired, he would have been much better off, because God shall bring every work into judgment.  I don’t care who you are and what you claim to believe, you know it in your heart, even if you will never admit it.  God will judge you.

Sometimes God gives big tasks, life work with huge implications for most of mankind.  But sometimes, and most often, God simply asks for faithfulness in the mundane.  Which is harder to accomplish?  A steady climb toward an awesome pinnacle, or faithful and whole-hearted fulfillment of daily nitty-gritty tasks done repetitively for days, weeks, months, and years on end.  The mom who raised eight kids, over 25 years of her life, went through 3 washing machines, wore out 4 vacuum cleaners, and one very tired minivan, said bedtime prayers 365 nights per year with each individual child, with no real time to call “her own”.  The Dad who worked shift work in a factory for thirty years, retired, and continued to work part time for the sake of padding the nest egg to take care of his wife after he is gone.

Be careful in wishing for a new path.  You may find yourself longing for the familiarity and comfort of the old one.  At any moment your life can change in any number of less-than-ideal ways.

If your fulfillment and your contentment are based on what takes place any given moment, you will never have peace.  There is a certain grace that comes in accepting what is.  Despite “conventional wisdom” which always seeks to “empower you to create your own destiny”, there is one immutable fact that contradicts this assertion, and that is, you are not God.  We have a great deal of ability to forge our way, but as Solomon has so eloquently stated, human wisdom is vanity.  We are better off to yield to the One greater than ourselves, accept that there are things we cannot and will not change, and pray for the ability to recognize which is which.

That sounds counter-intuitive to most folks.  I generally, most of my life, felt like it was better to “Do Something!” than to be still and let things unfold in most cases.  My thought was “God can’t steer a vessel that isn’t moving”.

But if we move, and it is in the wrong direction, God will have to work against us, to turn us around.  Ever felt like God Himself was working against you?  He probably was!  The scriptures say that He resisteth the proud.  Pride is assuming we know best.  Striking out based on our own “wisdom” often ends badly.  For the Christian, it can be evident in short order, while for those who live with no thought or regard for God, it may seem their bad decisions never “come home to roost” but they will, and the consequences for them will be eternal.  What’s a little disappointment and eating crow now as a Christian, by comparison.  Our pride is not worth that.

The most successful people in business are the ones who are willing to admit that when they have taken on a bad investment, or moved in a counter-productive direction, and who is willing to stop everything, take stock, and take a significant loss if that is what is necessary to get back on track.

I have done this in my own life at times.  Rather than keep going even after something has proven that it can have no happy outcome, sometimes we have to count the cost, absorb the loss, go back to square one, and start all over again.  I’ve done it in big ways and in small ways.  I have always strived to live a life of awareness and discipline.  But the stakes get higher the longer one lives.  It is a little like one of those game shows where you can quit and go home, settle with what you have, or stay in the game for the prospect of the whole jackpot, and yet doing so might mean losing it all.  Will you play it safe, or risk it all?

As a person who has survived some pretty harrowing things in life, my choice more recently has been to try and coast a little for a while.  Maybe it’s been necessary.  When fatigue is a huge factor, the quest to maintain a balance between exertion and rest, is always ongoing, as is walking the very fine line between doing and over-doing.  But as the new year approaches, I do have some areas I would like to see myself do better in.

Unlike a lot of people, announcing those things to others in hopes that might spur me to follow through, is not a tactic that works well for me.  I have always been my own worst critic, and put too much stock in what others might think of me.  Not that it is easy to admit that.  My own pressures on myself are intimidating enough, I don’t really need to add the potential of causing others to be disappointed in me as well.  What is that, though, when you put it under the microscope?  It is probably inverted pride.

The most difficult task that I have before me, is to take better care of me, so that I will have something to give to others in my life.  That may sound selfish but I’m pretty sure those who know me well, will understand and also agree it is something I should work on.

Sometimes life can take such a toll as to leave you like the trees and crops after the locust plague in Egypt long ago.  But God in His grace, designed the Earth’s flora with the ability to replenish and come back more lush and fruitful than before.  I would like that to happen in my life.  Those trees and crops couldn’t have done that if that ability was not programmed into their DNA, but they also needed for the sun to shine,  and for the clouds to send rain.

I didn’t program my DNA, but I have faith in the One who did.  I need to believe He will be faithful to help me accomplish the things I need to do be it in the physical realm or the spiritual disciplines.

No matter what our contribution, it is always God who sends the increase!  Accomplishment, busy-ness and doing have their place in this life, but submission to the One who created us, and His laws, methods, and plans for us, is the fastest way to accomplishment and success of eternal worth.

I wonder what would happen if every Christian stopped what they were doing “for God” and just asked “is this what You would have me to be doing right now?”.  How many of us would be shocked to learn we are miles off the mark?  And how many might be surprised to find out that the humble, lowly, repetitive, mundane things they do day in and day out, please the Lord exceedingly.

What pleases the Lord in what I do on a regular basis, and what would He like me to stop doing, do differently, or change?  One never knows what the new day will bring, much less the new year.  We are living in precarious times, and I don’t know about you, but knowing the Lord’s return could be very near indeed, but also knowing that to Him a thousand years and a day are one and the same, I am finding it difficult to both live in the present and in this world, while my thoughts are so often on a much anticipated Home-going.

I took my son’s JROTC uniforms to the local cleaners one day over Christmas break last year, and in looking at the calendar that day, the man behind the counter commented that, “just think, ten more years from now it will be 12/22/2022!  I responded with dismay; “Oh, Lord, I hope not to be here that much longer!”  He went to school with me, and is the same age.  He was shocked.  But he is also a Christian.  He said “that’s only ten years from now.  You don’t want to live to be sixty?”  I said, “I’m hoping to be in a better place by then!”.  He sort of stopped and thought about it and said, “Oh.  Yeah, that”.

You know, it doesn’t necessarily mean someone is not looking forward to heaven, it’s just not something a lot of Christians spend much time thinking about before the age of fifty, anyway.  But it’s not old age itself that causes ones thoughts to head in that direction.  It is the limitations that come with old age.  That is what my favorite chapter of Ecclesiastes is about, and I guess I understand it better than most my age because of the fact I have suffered these losses earlier than many people do in life.  Chapter 12 of Ecclesiastes is all about this lament of the decline which comes with aging under the curse of the fall of mankind that occurred in Eden.  (See my previous post on Ecclesiastes 12).

It’s the thoughts of still being here ten years from now, that I have a hard time wrapping my mind around.  After my twenties, I didn’t think I’d get to be a Mom.  After the attempts at deconstruction of America that have taken place in recent years, I am not sure that I want to be a grandma, given the hardships those grandkids could inherit.  But that is the nature of life, and those are chapters not yet written.

Just some uncommon thoughts as the season of “New Years Resolutions” rolls around.  One thing for me is certain, I’d like to get less interested in the expectations of others, and gain clarity on what God expects of me personally. I know it in theory, from the Word, but sometimes figuring it out in terms of daily execution is a little trickier.  I guess that is a daunting task particularly for me right now due to the convergence of several things.  I will turn fifty next August.  I was a later-in-life mom, and my middle age will coincide with the kids coming-of-age and leaving the nest, at a time when we already have lost my Dad and my husband and I have 3 aging parents now to think of and just about everything about this nation’s future is up in the air.  Folks who have not yet experienced significant difficulty in life, will find it hard to cope when things they count on start to disappear.  I am thankful the stripping-away process has already been ongoing for a long time in our lives.  I thank God for the recent reprieve, and plan to continue asking Him to prepare us for whatever lies ahead, to  recommit myself to prayer over all these uncertainties, and face the future with all my faith in Him, and nothing else. That is the one and only basket” that it is always safe to put all your eggs in!  There is nothing and no one else in life that you can always count on.  And if it takes removing everything that we do count on to show us that, I speak from experience when I say that God has no qualms about going that route if that’s what it takes.  So if you have prayed for God to do something huge or amazing with your life, and all you can see is what looks like a battlefield littered with debris and failure, take heart.  God sees things you don’t see.