“For many are called, but few are chosen.”
“Daddy, are you wearing your wedding shoes?”
Those were the sweet words of my precious little girl when she was just 5. To help you comprehend with this question completely, I had bought a new pair of black dress shoes for a wedding ceremony I was conducting.
So in her mind there was a significant association between the fancy Steve Madden’s and a wedding. So everytime I wore those pointed toed high fashion footwear came the question if I was sporting my nuptial kicks.
It’s really a great question. Jesus tells a parable of the great wedding feast in Matthew 22. Slid into the story wear none of the invited guests show up is a short snippet about a man not dressed for the wedding.
In Jewish culture this was a big deal, even an insult to the host. The invited guest was suddenly revoked of his invitation and kicked out into the darkness. Which makes me think: “am I wearing my wedding shoes?”
The Polaroid picture of the wedding feast we get from Jesus is a parable about the kingdom of God. It’s the celebration of the Son of God marriage to our hearts for eternity. Which is longer than just til death do us part.
Not being dressed properly exempts you from the dancing with the groom. Not being fashionably prepared procludes you from dining as the guest of the groom.
So the question becomes “are those your wedding shoes?”
The day I quit
“There is no striving in your love.”
Matt Stinton
I have a theory about church leaders: most pastors desire to be cool enough to wear skinny jeans and lead worship. And most worship leaders want to drip words of l knowledge like the church’s primary communicator.
I honestly got caught somewhere in between. Fearless flaunting skinny jeans with an ability to speak from the platform coupled with zero ability to continuously clap on the 2 or the 4. It’s closer to 3 and half at times. Yet in my soul is this deep connection to music.
Honestly, God knows if I had an ounce of musical ability I would have lived in a van down by the Tennessee River in Nashville trying to break into country music.
Maybe I’m not alone living in my love and lack when it comes to music chops. Just somewhere in my soul is the heart of a Biel Street music maker.
With that love and lack came a Sunday sucker punch a few weeks back. Our extra-skinny jean wearing worship pastor was introducing a new cut from the folks at Bethel Church. The first power chord strum was chased by the chorus “there is no striving…there is no striving in your love…”
Like the quick peeling of a bandage over an exposed wound I found myself ripped open. It was as if the pen and guitar of the songwriter had peered into my soul and found the perfect blend of lyrical melody to tear the veil off my life. In that moment the words to describe the constant chasing of discontent finally had language. I had for years been “striving”.
All my consistent and constant striving had led to a life of strife. My soul and life had been poisoned by a self induced dose of bitterness and anger. I had been chasing all the right things for all the wrong reasons. I was striving with God, in relationships, in trying to reconcile my career with my calling. And here is the thing no one will tell you, striving never leads you to the places you want to go.
While, I would set my destination for joy, peace, happiness and contentment, I constantly found my arrival point as a place of unsatisfied and distant. No matter the chasing, I just found my soul emptied of the things I desired. I had become a hostage to my own struggle.
In that moment of finally feeling exposed I started walking out of the cave of discontent. I knew that in order to arrive somewhere different was going to require going about it a different way. The striving had to stop.
I would love to say it was miracle moment with Jesus that I just walked away and never went back to. But like most things in life that we get tangled up in, it takes time to untangle. So I went to work on unwinding the tangled mess I had made.
The outcome of leaving behind the insecurities of all the striving was coming to place I had always wanted. A discovery of peace and truth and acceptance. I no longer had to live in the lie that I was not enough. I no longer had to face the man in the mirror that saw only imperfections in the master design of a creative God. Suddenly I saw through the eyes of a loving Father who’s love I did not have to work for.
James the brother of Jesus penned it best when he said “come near to God and he will come near to you.” All the striving got me no closer to the one who was chasing after me. It is when I realized that I did not have work for his love, that it was freely given I found freedom to be Just Be Jeff.
It's Time To Go
“ The Lord our God said to us at Horeb, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Get ready, and go..” Deuteronomy 1:6-7
It should have been a day of celebration. Moses’ declaration should have kicked off a party. Put the fattened calf on the barbecue, slap some Sweet Baby Rays on that thing and starting dancing!
God had miraculously moved over a million people from 400 years of bondage to the side of mountain. God put all of Israel on an 11 day hike out of slavery across a desert to lush lands of his promise. Only problem was the journey had been detoured for 39 years, 354 days. And now, finally, they were staring down the promised promise.
It is the very next words that are in the passage that seems to keep hitting me in the face. “Get ready”.
My first question is after 40 years of waiting how are you not ready already?
But it is the second question that requires me to peer deeper into my own soul: “am I ready?”
There are delayed promises in all of our lives. Dreams, visions, healing, deliverance and blessings that are still unrealized. This is the side of the mountain a lot of us stand on. In truth, my tent has probably been there for far too long.
I’ve often lived in long stretches of wandering in eager expectation of the God’s fulfillment of a promise, but the reality check is in if I am ready to walk into that promise? I pray and pray and pray some more for what it in faith I have believed God for. Then God in his infinite whacked out timing says “Okay, get ready.”
Then panic sets in causing me to ask “God am I really ready?”
The season between the promise and promise realized is a period of preparation. Often God’s “get ready” is a reminder of what he has already had you walking through to get you to the side of the mountain.
Then he says next…
“and go…”
All the “get ready” leads to this simple command, it is time to leave the mountain. God has prepared you, readied you, walked you round and round the desert so that when ready you walk into the promise.
Hesitation and disbelief cost the children of Israel over 30 years of not living in the promise. They did not make the same mistake twice.
And neither should you or I. God’s go is the moment to leave. God’s go is the very instant of the realization the promise. Don’t miss the moment of the “go”. If you do it’s gone.
It’s time to leave the mountain.
The Unveiling
“Come on. Maybe be two or three guys in history ever busted the guts out of a ball.
Must be an omen.”
~Squints Palladoras
I grew up dropping the expression “you’re killing Smalls” incessantly in any moment that conflicted with my prescribed expectation of the outcome. Scottie Smalls was the lead character in the generation defining film “The Sandlot” from which the expression was coined. Scottie is the new kid in a California town set in the 1960’s and has failed to become an All-American boy by learning to play baseball. In the course of one amazing summer Scottie learns the fine art of the Great American Pastime and what it means to be a friend.
In what can only be seen as turning point of the story is this moment. Benny “the jet” Rodriguez crushes a ball where all that remains is the rawhide cover somewhere in center field. As the 8 outcast ball players gather round the remainder of the baseball Squints Palladoras says these words:
“Come on. Maybe be two or three guys in history ever busted the guts out of a ball.
Must be an omen.”
Baseballs are composed of two pieces of leather rawhide, stitched with red string over the top of tightly wound yard that covers a rubber core. For years the ball has been composed of basically the same elements. To get to the center of the ball means unraveling nearly 1 mile of yarn to get to rubber sphere at the very core of that baseball.
The movie moment and the ball seem endlessly symbolic of so much in the life of Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez. And truthfully the symbolism spills over into me and you. Our core is often hidden by tightly wound circumstances that keep it unseen. It is only in the moments of unraveling that we truly let the core of our life be exposed and our true self gets seen.
Benny had been the best ball player on the sandlot oftentimes hidden away from the rest of the world. But in the unraveling of the story we begin the see the greatness of Benny “The Jet”. His epic outrunning of The Beast turns “The Jet” into a legend.
It makes me wonder if what has been hidden under the mile of yarn in my life and my core was exposed what would be seen. So often the unraveling of life seems destructive and painful. Yet it is so often in the unraveling that the core of who we are gets unveiled.
Each of us has a core being that longs to be seen. It is our true who, our real identity. Yet life in its tangling keeps it hidden. Exposing what is at your core is risky. Although it is when we live out that true who that exist behind the mile of yard we truly get to live as ourselves.
As the movie concludes with the ragtag bunch of boys who lived in fear of the beast behind the wall find The Beast to be not nearly as scary as they told themselves. And the beast you have been running from that tells you to not be who you are called to be has been nothing really ever to fear.
“You play ball like a girl” – Ham Porter
