Lawn Maintenance vs. Life Maintenance (or "Why Moses Was Kind of an Idiot")

Ah.  The birds are chirping.  The trees are blooming.  The squirrels have resumed running out into the road.

And the grass is growing.

That's right, what many of you have feared seeing, the grass is growing once more.  Our perennial friend, the green green grass of home, has again started poking it's little verdigris head out of the ground, and it is our job to once a week decapitate the little punks.  And we do it with gusto.  Because we can.  I choose to do it with a John Deere 720 Z Zero-Turn hunk of a lawn tractor (or as I call, "The Pod Racer" as to how similar it is in design to the pod racers of "Phantom Menace" fame/infamy).

Well last week I was out on the Pod Racer cutting the grass when this idea occurred to me.  It went something like this: "You know, I used to hate cutting the grass.  Now, I kinda look forward to getting out here on the Pod Racer.  And I take pride in cutting this grass.  That seems really grown up of me."  It was something like that, except probably less formal and more blurb-esque.

But its true!  I used to absolutely despise cutting the grass.  I would take Dylan Thomas' sagacious advice and rage, rage against the machine (haha) that was the lawnmower.  But I would do it.  Now, ever since I've graduated to the big-boy toy and get to use the riding mower, I've calmed down a bit.  And, as I said earlier, I have even learned to take pride in cutting the grass.  When I finish the job, I look out on it and say, "My, that looks good.  I should do this professionally," and then I kick myself for ever thinking such a fool-hardy thought.

But right now, if you're a regular reader here (in which case I should say hi, two of you), you're asking yourself and me the obvious question.  "Where's the metaphor, Adam?  Where's the brilliant insight you gained from having this mystical thought whilst killing grass?"  And, if you're at least half astute, you'll have noticed what I said in the title.  But if not, here it goes.

When I thought about this transition in my life, this change from the immense hatred I felt for cutting the grass to the newfound joy I have in seeing a lawn well mowed, it occurred to me.  We do that with our lives.  A lot.  When we're kids, we have these grand dreams of what we will accomplish one day and what we can be.  We dream of being astronauts and we dream of being Presidents.  Or someone truly great, like a writer.  We dream of the grand things we will achieve in this world, and we envision the day that this world shivers when it sees us coming, because it knows that something powerful is about to happen.

Then, time goes by, and life falls a little short of our expectations, so we bide our time doing something else.  We bide our time as accountants or lay-people.  Or we take jobs that are not exactly what we envisioned ourselves doing.  We say it will just be a temporary thing until we get our life on the road, or until our ship comes in, which is odd because those are two completely different forms of transportation employed in that there metaphor.

And do we ever break free from the temporary confines of average citizenry?  No.  We find comfort there, and we learn to take pride in our work done.  We start performing life maintenance.  Now I get it, people grow, their dreams change, and they gain responsibilities.  They have to do certain things.  But I have to wonder.  In what order does that happen?  Do our dreams change, leading us to step down out of the batter's box and into the score keeper's booth, or do we accept our place and try to fit our goals to match it?

Now speaking of the title, let me bring up a little fellow named Moses.  Some of you, especially those of you who may have been in my Bible Study groups in the past, are probably familiar with my love for Exodus Ch. 3 and the story of the Burning Bush and God speaking to Moses through it.  Here, we move one chapter to the right and look at Exodus Ch. 4.  This past Wednesday night at "The Loft," Hebron's College and Twenty-Somethings ministry, our college pastor (there's that shout-out you wanted, Rando!) talked a little about this chapter and the lunacy of Moses' response to God.  Let's take a look.

Here is Moses talking to God I AM through flaming shrubbery.  If that alone wasn't awesome enough, God had already told Moses that he was standing on Holy Ground, turned the staff in his hand into a snake, then almost simultaneously struck Moses with leprosy and instantly cured it.  So Moses had seen the Power of God at work before his eyes, as potent and obvious as I'm sure the putrid presence of sheep smell was on Moses' cloak.  Yet look at what he says:

Exodus 4:10-13

But Moses pleaded with the Lord, "O Lord, I'm not very good with words.  I never have been, and I'm not now, even though you have spoken to me.  I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled."  

11 Then the Lord asked moses, "Who makes a person's mouth?  Who decides whether people speak or do not speak, hear or do not hear, see or do not see?  Is it not I, the Lord?   12 Now go!  I will be with you as you speak, and I will instruct you in what to say."  

13 But Moses again pleaded, "Lord, please!  Send anyone else."

So let me get this straight.  The Voice of God had just literally and audibly (and I guess pyroverbally?) spoken to Moses and told him of the great thing he would do.  There was no question.  God had told Moses exactly what He was going to do through him and how, even going so far as to provide him with miraculous signs to show the people.  And what does Moses do?  He asks God to "Send anyone else."  Moses has spent the last four decades herding sheep up in the mountainous deserts, and he is not interested in taking on this great and wonderful task that God has asked him to do.  He has gotten so comfortable in just maintaining this life that he is not willing to step out and follow the call that God has placed on his life.

And I think we do that all the time.  As Rando said, God has called all of us to do great things.  Have you ever heard the saying, "What would you strive to do if you knew you could not fail?"  When we are acting in accordance with the will of God, moving as He has called us to do, we cannot fail.  And we will not fail.  We will not fail because the God of the universe has willed our actions to success.  God will not call us to do something that we will fail at, because He is calling us to succeed.  He is calling us to fulfill his plans, so why would He want us to fail?  If you still need convincing, look what happened when Moses stepped out and followed God's call.  He lead the people of Israel out of bondage, slavery that they had been kept in for over four-hundred years.  He was the toast of the town (until they got stuck at the river banks and the people doubted him and God again, but that's another story) and he was the heralded man of God.  Heck, we're still talking about him today.  All because he eventually was willing to follow the call that God had placed on him.

So what does this look like for us?  We're not all bound to be famous.  Surely not.  We are not all bound to be great statesmen or voices of healing to the masses.  Some of us will be, yes, and if that is your dream, and if that is the dream to which God is leading you, then my stars, go out and do it.  But if not, what should you do?

The simple answer is that you should seek God's call, and you should seek your heart out for it.  But the more complex answer looks something like this.  I graduated from the University of Georgia with two degrees, one of them in English Education.  For a full academic year, I spent day in and day out with people who dreamed of being HS English teachers.  They knew that they had been called to teach, and they were going to work their tails off to do it.  And they were going to be the best English teachers they could be.  It was their dream. For me, however, it was not.  I won't lie, I eventually came to the point of understanding that I was in that program where I should be, but it was not God's call that I spend my life as an English teacher.  I fully believe that my calling is to write and to let my words reach people and hopefully help them.  Does that mean that my calling is better than theirs?  Or that I am more important than them because I don't plan on teaching?  No.  Those people have dreamed of this day, when they would be called teachers, and they are going to be great.  It is on them to be the best teachers they can be, and they will change lives if they do it.  I did the math, even as an English teacher.  With an average classroom size of 30 students, spending a full 30 year career teaching, you will directly reach over 10,000 students (assuming you're working in a school where you teach five periods a day, as I was at the time).  That doesn't even take into account the other random students you will see on a daily basis but never teach.  With that alone, you have already been in contact for a serious amount of time with as many people as experts say most of us will have as acquaintances in an average lifetime.

But we don't want an average lifetime.  We want a great one.  We want a life where we are reaching people and changing their lives.  We want a lifetime where we are seeing things happen that defy human experience and expectation.  That is what we are to be striving for.  Moses grew up in the seat of royalty, expecting to have influence over countless numbers of people.  In time, however, he gave that dream up for the hills of the desert where he was walking around with sheep all day.  Now I'll admit that God had brought him to this place for a reason, and that Moses was even doing his best with the task God had given him, but it was not where he was supposed to stay.  And when God called him away, Moses was about to give up his true calling to be just another sheep herder.  Do you ever wonder how many chapters of the Bible could have been written about the people God wanted to do things who flaked out on them?  Do you want to other side of Moses' coin, when you have been asked to lead the people out of Egypt?  I sure as heck don't.  I don't want to spend my life knowing that God asked me to do a great work and I instead chose to do an average one.  I am not content with just maintaining, with cutting the grass.  To borrow a quote, I want to live deeply and suck out the marrow of life, if that is what God calls me to do.  I want to soar over the rooftops of the world and sound my barbaric yawp, and do it to the best of my ability as God calls.  I ask you to join me in doing whatever it is God has called you to, and doing it the way that only you can.  With gusto, and with greatness, engage the life God has for you.  Move beyond maintenance and into majesty.

Author's Note: Adam Wynn enjoys staring out into the fog of a mountain morning and sipping warm glasses of sweet tea over hot scrambled eggs breakfast.  He also spends time writing, blogging, and cutting the grass in his Dacula, GA home.  Except for that last one, which he actually does outside of his Dacula, GA home.  He is currently unemployed and spends his time editing the Southern style mystery thriller, Will Baker is Dead, which is available in part on this website.  He also spends the time working on other short stories and looking for work as a writer, a newspaper page designer, coffee barista, or whatever someone feels like paying him to do within reason.  He also tweets and would encourage you to follow him on Twitter at @42Cobras, or you can just connect with him on Facebook  at Adam Wynn (his name, shouldn't be hard to find).  He is a huge Georgia Bulldogs fan, along with most Georgia sports teams including the Braves, Falcons, Thrashers, Gwinnett Gladiators, and the like.  Adam also enjoys answering fan mail, so please feel free to leave messages on the blog saying what you think about it.  Also, please forgive him for typing this note in third person, as it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.  

Analyzing the Practical God (The Faith of Abraham, and What That Was All About)

A few months back, sometime in August I believe it was, I posted an entry about the Patient God.  In there, I promised to come back later with something about another aspect of God that I had grown to fancy, and that was the Practical God.  In that time, this idea of the Practical God has really been at the back of my mind, tickling the Biblical receivers in my brain (hey, I only got a B in Psych 1101, so forgive me if my cranial anatomy is a bit hazy).  Tonight, I am here to talk a little about what I've learned about the Practical God.

The first thing I want to say is that for the last however long that I've been thinking about this idea, I have become more and more convinced that our God is the most practical being in all the Universe.  Some of you may disagree with me, pointing to convoluted ideas in the Bible or complicated signs and wonders you've heard about, but I believe it and will probably keep examining scripture with this mindset for a long time.  Feel free to discuss that with me or leave comments below dis/agreeing with my ideas, either way, but I believe it and will try to convince you.

Now over the past week, my Faith had been tested and shaken.  I was hurting and I was in need of something.  I was in need of a miracle of sorts, and I didn't even know it.  Well as you can no doubt imagine, I received said miracle, and it was much easier to swallow than my last big miracle.  But enough of that.  Something happened that really just got to me and reaffirmed my Faith, reaffirming the notion that my God has my best interest at heart, and that He is there to provide the best possible life for me, His life for me.

I met an old friend of mine for dinner, and in the course of conversation we got caught up on where each other was in life and had been and was going.  We talked about my student teaching experiences and her new job and I just saw how all of these prior experiences in life brought each of us to our present location.  I thought about how these loose connections all came to a point, how they came to this point, and how they will inevitably lead to a prepared and protected future.  I saw how God was with me in a difficult place, how He prepared the way for me at the school last year and had set things up from the beginning.  I saw how God had provided in my friend's life, and how He had brought her to the place she needed to be.  I saw God's plan in perfect hindsight, understanding how and why things had fallen the way they did.

Without going too deep into the details of the thing (because as the saying goes, you just might find the devil there...haha), I came away from this meal with a renewed Faith and a renewed spirit in a time of weakness and doubt.  So, after rocking out on the drive home to my new favorite song of the week, RelientK's "Devestation and Reform" (go look it up right now...or finish reading first, that'd be better) and a resulting Genius playlist, I opened up my Bible App on my phone and went to a reading plan on Faith.

Which, of course, brings me to Abraham.  Now Abraham, as most of you know, was an old man with a very special son.  His son Isaac would go on to be the patriarch of the Jewish nation (and, really, that means Abraham was also the patriarch of the Jewish nation, but let's not split hairs).  Now this one time, God asked Abraham to take his son Isaac and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.  I encourage you to go look this story up, too, in Genesis 22:1-14 (okay, do that one now, I don't mind waiting.

There are a couple of important things to take away from this story.  One of them that often goes overlooked is the fact that God told Abraham to travel to a place that He would determine to sacrifice Isaac.  Let's examine this first.  So Abraham and Isaac travel for three days with a couple servants before God tells Abraham where Isaac is to be sacrificed.  Three days carrying wood and supplies.  Not an easy trek by any means.  Then, when God does show Abraham where to go, it is at the top of a mountain that he then had to climb.  Abraham had to walk with his son up a mountain carrying all this wood (the physical burden he handed to the youthful Isaac) and a torch and knife for sacrificing his beloved child (the emotional and spiritual burden he had to carry himself).  That is not an easy challenge by any stretch of the imagination.  Now Abraham had already heard the command from God to sacrifice his son, so at any point he could have stopped and killed Isaac as commanded.  But it wouldn't have been in the place where God commanded.  And for those of you who know the story, you know how tragic that would have been, because God never wanted Abraham to kill Isaac.  At any point, Abraham could have decided that he had trusted God enough and would not progress in His plan, but would just kill Isaac then and there and follow through half-way.  But he didn't.  He followed God's plan until the end, and both Abraham and Isaac were rewarded for it.

But why?  I can understand you not seeing any practicality in that whatsoever.  You ask, "But Adam.  How is this practical?  Was there not an easier way?"  Let us look, then, at the reason God gave Abraham on the mountain.  Let us examine why it is that God told Abraham He had asked the man to go through with this.  Upon raising the knife to kill Isaac, Abraham heard a voice from The Angel of the Lord speak.

[Gen. 22:12] -NLT-
"Don't lay a hand on the boy!" the angel said.  "Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God.  You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son." 

The first thing that jumps out at me, now, is the part where God says, "for now I know..."  Can anyone tell me why?  How many of you are familiar with the term, "Omniscience?"  Well, if you took Latin in high school or college, then you should immediately recognize a few things here.  Or, if you took a Bible class or attended Sunday School past the age of 10, you should just know the answer.  Omniscience is essentially knowing everything.  God is omniscient.  So when God says that this event proved Abraham's Faith to Him, how should we really read that?  I mean, God knew.  He absolutely knew what Faith Abraham had in Him.  But see, Abraham did not know.  He was clueless as to the potential for Faith he had, and so God asked him to partake in this impossible journey and commit this unthinkable action.

And even more than teaching Abraham what kind of Faith he had, it also taught him what kind of Faith he could have in God, in a God who will take you so far just to carry you the rest of the way.  Faith in a God who will ask the impossible of you, and then complete the impossible in you and through you.  That is the Faith that Abraham found when God stopped the knife in his hand from falling on Isaac.  That is the Faith that Abraham found at the mountain that people named "Yahweh-Yireh," or "The God Who Provides/God Will Provide."

Have you ever tried to tell someone that they were capable of doing something that they didn't think they were?  Most of us cling to our fears and perceived inadequacies like a wool blanket at a base camp on Mt. Everest.  They protect us from having to deal with the difficulties and responsibilities of pressing on to face the challenges at hand.  But when a person is tricked into realizing their own potential, like that scene in Shrek where the big green guy forces Eddie Murphy's Donkey across a rickety bridge, they are much more likely to realize what they are capable of.  God knows this.  He should.  On top of that handy little omniscience, he created us.  He knows our psyche better than we do (so he would probably have gotten an A in Psych 1101, excepting schools that offer the coveted A+, not that God covets).

And let us not forget, the patient practicality of God, as He did not just up and decide one day to task Abraham with an immense test of Faith.  For years, God had been preparing Abraham for this very moment and this very chore.  God was teaching Abraham and refining his Faith constantly, even through a few key mistakes along the road where Abraham learned that a lack of Faith would be most costly (SEE: Sister/Wife and "Call him Ishmael").  In steps, God showed Abraham the kind of Faith he was capable of, constantly building and improving the man he would ultimately become and the act he would become most famous for.  And this teaching moment was not wasted on an old man, either.  Isaac was present, and you can rest assured that no teaching moment is more permanently ingrained than the one that endangers and, simultaneously, saves your life.

So I pray that as you read this, God will restore your Faith.  Or if need be, He will refine your Faith.  As I tweeted earlier this evening (go follow me now: @42Cobras), "Faith untested is Faith unrefined."  We will face trials and difficult times, and we will often fail.  But, my God is Faithful to bring me through those times, and He will bring me through stronger on the other side.  And as long as He can be Faithful to me, surely I can manage to be Faithful to Him.

If you feel your Faith is faltering, take the chance and pray for God to refine your Faith.  Pray for God to show you what Faith you have in you and how He has been Faithful to you all along.

Adam W. "Is A 4-Point Letter on WWF" Wynn
Phil. 3:12-14

AUTHOR'S NOTE: So I recently finished "Will Baker is Dead!"  And by finished, I mean I wrote the concluding episode/chapter.  I technically am not done yet because I decided to go back and add two chapters, one of which will be only a few short pages long, so no big deal.  I am currently in the Critical Reading stage, or as I call it, the "Oh God, oh God, I hope they don't tell me my book sucks," stage, where I have friends reading it and compiling commentary for me to go back and figure out what needs to be changed and what needs to be kept.  In other words, yes, some people do in fact know the secret of what happened.  The chilling conclusion is now known to someone other than just me.  Too bad you will have to wait your turn.  In a few months, when I am hopefully working on the publishing process and we are entering summer, I will go back and publish the remaining chapters online.  Yes, that includes the as of yet nonexistent Episode 6 I always talk about.  The last published chapter on here was Episode 9, and the story will go up to Episode 13, so you only have five left to go when you remember Episode 6 (and how could you forget!).  I really do look forward to you all reading and enjoying the series, and hopefully buying the book when it hopefully gets published in a time period that is hopefully no longer than three years.  For now, tell me what you think of any other postings such as this one or any of the episodes of Will Baker.  And go follow me on Twitter!  Again, that is @42Cobras.  What else would it be?