My friend, CJ, told me one time that if she could have any super ability, it would be the ability to hear the most appropriate song for the given circumstances of each moment. I suppose you could turn off the songs altogether too. I like this idea... kinda like having a soundtrack for your life.
The track right now is The Five Stairsteps song "Ooh Child." There's something about that sort of Motown voice telling me "ooh, child, things are gonna get easier... ooh, child, things are gonna get brighter." It's soothing. Until I think, "Wait a minute... things may not get easier... I mean, that's just reality."
I come "home" and Skip looks at me with those forlorn, mournful eyes of his as if to say, "Ruth, this is really hard living in this little room. I'm cold and bored and lonely. I miss home. I want to run through your house and eat your furniture like old times. Is this worth it? Is the story unfolding here significant or is this just a major one year detour? These sacrifices are heavy... any sign that the 'Boston adventure' will really matter in the long run?"
I resonate with Skip. I feel it too. What exactly is the point to this whole "Boston adventure?" Will this story matter, in the long haul?
Take Frodo's situation. He was on an adventure, unsure of where he was going, unsure of how it would all turn out, and missing the Shire. And that's just the trouble with adventures, you never know how it's gonna end so you can't sit back like the reader and enjoy it in 3rd person... you have to really walk with the risk, the suffering, and the non-glitziness of it all. It's all very grand or very foolish, depending on the way you look at it (and your current mood about the weather).
It's very likely that I will return home this summer to a city that doesn't know and maybe doesn't care that I went away for a year to learn how to serve it. It's also very likely that I will be called to love it anyway because all true love is sacrificial. It's very likely that I will be called to serve it without the glitziness and with more personal risk. And it's there... in the hidden upside down-ness of God's kingdom... in His humorous and oh so beautiful ways... that He will be made known to the city I so clumsily love despite my deep selfishness. Maybe then, in that place, I'll understand the "Boston adventure."
And, maybe not. But, my not understanding of the significance of the "Boston adventure" does not negate the truth that God will use it, despite my "seeing in a mirror dimly." He uses everything. My story is unclear to me but I know the Great Story and in that, Motown signers (and all the rastafarians, for that matter), are right. "Someday, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun. Someday, when the world is much brighter."
So, like Abraham and Frodo, let's move forward as the scared, confused, and finite creatures we are and say "I don't know where I'm going, but I'll go." It appears foolish, but oh, is there beautiful truth in it. God loves hobbits. And he uses these little creatures to infuse his glory in a broken world. Redemption is both here and on the way... and it is hidden in the most ordinary, unlikely story of a carpenter from Nazareth.
"Yes, Skip. All of this is worth it. Someday we'll walk with a carpenter in a better Shire, a better Cannan, a better Asheville."
The track right now is The Five Stairsteps song "Ooh Child." There's something about that sort of Motown voice telling me "ooh, child, things are gonna get easier... ooh, child, things are gonna get brighter." It's soothing. Until I think, "Wait a minute... things may not get easier... I mean, that's just reality."
I come "home" and Skip looks at me with those forlorn, mournful eyes of his as if to say, "Ruth, this is really hard living in this little room. I'm cold and bored and lonely. I miss home. I want to run through your house and eat your furniture like old times. Is this worth it? Is the story unfolding here significant or is this just a major one year detour? These sacrifices are heavy... any sign that the 'Boston adventure' will really matter in the long run?"
I resonate with Skip. I feel it too. What exactly is the point to this whole "Boston adventure?" Will this story matter, in the long haul?
Take Frodo's situation. He was on an adventure, unsure of where he was going, unsure of how it would all turn out, and missing the Shire. And that's just the trouble with adventures, you never know how it's gonna end so you can't sit back like the reader and enjoy it in 3rd person... you have to really walk with the risk, the suffering, and the non-glitziness of it all. It's all very grand or very foolish, depending on the way you look at it (and your current mood about the weather).
It's very likely that I will return home this summer to a city that doesn't know and maybe doesn't care that I went away for a year to learn how to serve it. It's also very likely that I will be called to love it anyway because all true love is sacrificial. It's very likely that I will be called to serve it without the glitziness and with more personal risk. And it's there... in the hidden upside down-ness of God's kingdom... in His humorous and oh so beautiful ways... that He will be made known to the city I so clumsily love despite my deep selfishness. Maybe then, in that place, I'll understand the "Boston adventure."
And, maybe not. But, my not understanding of the significance of the "Boston adventure" does not negate the truth that God will use it, despite my "seeing in a mirror dimly." He uses everything. My story is unclear to me but I know the Great Story and in that, Motown signers (and all the rastafarians, for that matter), are right. "Someday, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun. Someday, when the world is much brighter."
So, like Abraham and Frodo, let's move forward as the scared, confused, and finite creatures we are and say "I don't know where I'm going, but I'll go." It appears foolish, but oh, is there beautiful truth in it. God loves hobbits. And he uses these little creatures to infuse his glory in a broken world. Redemption is both here and on the way... and it is hidden in the most ordinary, unlikely story of a carpenter from Nazareth.
"Yes, Skip. All of this is worth it. Someday we'll walk with a carpenter in a better Shire, a better Cannan, a better Asheville."
