Living Rarefied

I had a conversation last night that brought up some things I had been thinking about heavily in the last year. I had initially started waiting for the signal in April of 2004, thinking about leaving my job and wanted to wait for something to come along behind it so I would be ok financially during the transition. So I stuck it out for 6 more months, sitting, wishing, waiting for something, for a sign…

I have been thinking about it lately again, trying to see if I did the right thing. I know I did the right thing in leaving my old job. It didn't bring me life, only death… But I was thinking about the way I handled it.

I was sitting, wishing, waiting for a sign.. That's where the problem was. I wasn't listening. I think we all wait on decisions until we are hit in the face with the next step or answer to the decision at hand because we want to make sure we'll be ok. I think that if we sit, wish and wait, we will go nowhere. I think if we listen, we will find God speaking to us each day, giving us nudges of what he has in store for us. With that comes the trust, that acting on those nudges with an open ear and heart can only build upon. WIth business of daily life, it is so difficult to take the time to listen. So we sit and wait to be hit in the face with our next step of the journey. I think God is constantly trying to teach us to trust him and we can if we only listen. I know this because each summer of the past 3years I have gone on Young Life camps with kids, last summer I went to El Salvador. On these trips, you are pulled away from your cell phone, internet, TV, iPod, job, car, newspapers, family, friends, and everything else that makes up your comfort zone. All the distractions of your daily life that keep me from listening to God are left behind. It becomes easy to listen to God there, when you are out of your comfort zone, I tend to rely more on God because I have nothing else to comfort me. So the challenge is keeping up that trust in your comfort zone. Not only keeping it up, but building it.

What is harder? Following Jesus in your comfort zone or out of it? I submit it is harder in my comfort zone. I am falsely led to believe I have the strength to do it on my own. Until something extremely difficult comes up, I can manage on my own, I can tune out from the world by strapping my earbuds into my pod and fall into the peaceful world of music.

I liken it to having an intern. Interns can't do much, but they are eager to learn so they will do the small stuff you give to them. It is then once the small stuff is out of the way that you can get a foothold and really gain some ground and make progress. Start by giving God the small stuff, it will free you up to realize life is easier when you don't have to worry, stress about the details. Bit by bit, I hope my trust builds so there comes a point where it isn't even a question where my trust/strength lies.

I hope to become his tool, not a new power tool, but an old fashioned tool. Where I am useless without his efforts, that I realize I am useless without his strength… I feel like a semi-automated power tool. Maybe like a 10" COMPOUND MITER SAW with EXACTLINEâ„¢ that I was using last night. Where I still try to do most of the work, but cannot function without somebody pulling the trigger to get the saw going and pulling the saw arm down to cut the wood and do the work.

I didn't talk about the power tools with my friend. She may have thought I was crazy…

Ethan testing