Choices

After Luke 10:38-42 

We make them – choices,

that is. Like Martha and

Mary, sisters they were,

we choose what’s

important to us. Do we

serve or do we listen

and learn? Do we

prepare the meal, or

do we break convention

to hear the lesson,

the teaching, spoken 

by the voice like 

no other. If the choice

is to serve, then set

grumbling aside. Others

 have made other 

choices. Do what you

have chosen to do, and

do it well, with

your whole heart.

 

Photograph by Burst via Unsplash Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Competing Voices – Crystal Kershaw at Fieldstone Counseling.

 

His Christian Wish to God – poem by Robert Herrick at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

What Do Christian Writers Owe Their Readers? – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies. 

 

Hanging by a thread – poem by Martha Orlando.

The priorities of sisters

After Luke 10:38-42 

One sister invites the man,

his entourage as well,

into her home to eat,

to talk, to rest. She works

to welcome, to feed, 

to serve. As she works,

she sees her sister

sitting at the man’s feet,

listening to his talk,

sitting there among

the men, itself a scandal.

Her frustration grows,

turns to anger, until

it spills over, and she

tells the man to send

her sister to help do 

the work. He declines,

noting what her sister

finds more important.

We understand the point,

of course, but we

sympathize with

the sister who works.

 

Photograph by Roberto Nickson via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

C.S. Lewis on Neutered Drones – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Michaelmas: A sonnet for St. Michael the Archangel – Malcolm Guite.

 

Suffering Honestly: Philip Yancey’s Undone – The Rabbit Room.

 

Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age – Tim Challies reviews Digital Liturgies by Samuel D. James. 

The Discipline of Choices

When I became a Christian in my senior year of college, I was bewildered from the beginning about how I would go from “me” to something else. In other words, I wasn’t able to see how I was supposed to move from Point A to Point B.

To be clear, Point A wasn’t exactly the campus party animal, but my becoming a Christian shocked more than one person who knew me. What I instinctively grasped was that one thing – one very important thing but only one thing had actually changed – and that was my identity in my head and my heart. I was different, profoundly different, but I was also the same person – with the same weaknesses, sins, and attitudes. I might have become a Christian, but I was still the guy who had (literally) danced the heel off his shoe at a fraternity party.

What I also realized was that I had not been suddenly transformed into Joe Christian. No one waved a magic wand over my head to make me perfect.

In the meetings I had afterward, the path became clearer. There was this process called sanctification, which would last the rest of my life. Transformation would happen, and it would happen gradually. And the key point was that it might never be finished.

And I had baggage. A lot of baggage. And it wasn’t only things I had done but things I had thought and things I had believed. I wasn’t a living example of secular culture at its worst, but it often appeared that that’s what I had aspired to be.

The process of transformation started with reading the Gospel of John. And writing down questions that occurred to me as I read. Then I met with the guy who had led me to Christ and we talked. Eventually I joined a small Bible study group led by one of my fraternity brothers. I went to a spring break outreach program. I started attending church services.

Those were big changes from what I had been doing, but they were small steps in hindsight. Gradually I came to understand that it wasn’t only things that I did but also things that I thought and said. This process has lasted a lifetime, and it is far from finished.

In The Discipline of Grace: God’s Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness, Jerry Bridges says that “the practice of putting off sinful attitudes and actions and putting on Christlike character involves a constant series of choices. We choose in every situation which direction we will go.”

Some of these choices are obvious. Some aren’t. And some are downright difficult, like when you’re faced with doing the right thing or the expected thing at work, the thing that everyone else does without a second thought.

Choices can be hard. Very hard. But you still have to make them. 

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges. To see what others had to say on this chapter, “The Discipline of Choices,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Photograph by Karen Arnold via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Paths

So many paths to follow,

so many possibilities and

how to choose she asked,

why should I choose, she

asked, I can accept them all

for no one can say

which one is true

which one is real

because they are all real

and true, because they all

lead to the same end, she said,

as she convinced herself

to try everything,

to do nothing.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Cat’n’Camels, Big 40s and the Dead Bug

The Saturday before Father’s Day in 2011, I was working in the garden, digging a small hole for a small plant. It was not strenuous work, and took all of about two minutes. I patted the plant in its new home, stood up, and nearly collapsed as a sharp pain erupted in my lower back.

Welcome to the world of the ruptured disk.

The next nine months were not fun. Medication strong enough to control the pain kept me from driving for a while. Sleeping flat on my back on the floor. Using a cane. Parking in handicapped spaces. Physical therapy twice a week, including traction. Two rounds of cortisone shots in my spine. An anointing and prayer ceremony at church.

By February, I could lay the cane aside. In March, I started short rides on my bike. In April, I ended physical therapy. I took about two months off, and then started working with a personal trainer – to start reconditioning, strengthen the core, and hope to avoid back problems in the future.

We meet twice a week. My vocabulary has greatly expanded to include terms such as cat’n’camels, Big 40s, the dead bug, and the cobra. As in, “Let’s get warmed up with some cat’n’camels” (down on all fours, you arch your back and then push your stomach down, usually about 20 times). The cobra is keeping your hips on the mat as you push the upper part of your body with your arms. Big 40s is lying flat on your back and doing four different exercises with your legs ten times each.

And the dead bug – my favorite – is lying flat, arms extended on the floor behind your head, as you use your feet and legs to life a ball as your arms come up to receive it, move back down to touch the ball on the floor behind your head, and then back up to your feet. Twenty times.

All of it is hard work, but I’m feeling the improvements. All of the work and exercise is doing what it needs to do – strengthen the core and get back in shape.

In The Discipline of Grace, Jerry Bridges writes as length on the choices we have to make if we are serious about living a Christian life – and the importance of discipline in making and sticking to those choices. Like my personal training being aimed at increasing strength, there is a reason for what the Bible teaches – and that’s to change our conduct.

“The practice of putting off sinful attitudes and actions and putting Christ-like character involves a constant series of choices,” he says. “We choose in every situation which direction we will go. It is through these choices that we develop Christ-like habits of living. Habits are developed by repetition, and it is in the arena of moral choices that we develop spiritual habit patterns.”

Developing new habits is no slam dunk. It’s hard – and it’s hard work. You mess up, and you have to force yourself to get right back at it. But you know where you’re going, and you know the value of what you’re doing.

Every Monday and Thursday morning – early morning – really early morning – I’m getting put through the paces. It’s stretching, it’s weights, it’s core, it’s the bear crawl, it's the bird dog. I force myself not to look at the clock or my watch, because it‘s not about how fast the hour will be over but about doing the things I need to do in that hour. Sometimes my muscles are sore for a day or two afterward, because they’re not used to this kind of workout.

But I know it’s important. I’m feeling the change.

Even with the dead bug.

Over at Informing the Reforming, Tim Challies is leading a discussion of The Discipline of Grace. To see the discussion on this chapter, “The Discipline of Choices,” please visit Tim’s site.