When Life Outside Of You Happens

"With so much drama in LBC it's kinda hard being Snoop D-O-Double G," Snoop Dogg proclaimed once.  It is a telling statement of how the world around us has an affect on our lives. 


Think about it:  there are things that we know that we can control, mainly our personal responsibilities such as our health, money management, or time spent on personal relationships.  But, there are things that we cannot control in which we have to manage, like the weather, traffic jams, or Russell Wilson throwing an ill-fated interception in the Super Bowl.


The things we can control, we probably strive, or at least hope to strive at bettering those things.  The things we cannot control, we wish we could bend them to our will, it is human nature right?  Those are just minor things.


A question I want to bring forth to all of us is, what happens when are directly confronted by things beyond our control?  What is our responsibility then?  Although I live in Georgia, when 9/11 happened, the way I would travel in the future, my perspective on Islam, the way I looked at my role as a Christian was directly impacted.


So what does it mean when our life gets interrupted by a major event?  If you allow me to go to the Bible on this, Isaiah 6:1-8 gives us some perspective.  "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple....Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”  And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” 

It would seem as if when things are outside of our control impact our lives, it is a way of God calling us to action.  It is our knock at midnight if you will.  And I know we get this feeling of helplessness with starving families in other countries but there are schools and community centers closing nearby and maybe there is something we should do for those kids.

Maybe there is a family on our block having a rough go at it and they could use groceries for a week.  Maybe there is a coworker who needs to carpool with us or they might lose their job if their late one more time.  Or there could be a married couple that needs a babysitter so they can go on a date because they have been on the rocks for a bit.

There will always be things beyond our control.  But when we are faced with things that we cannot control, will we step up and answer the call.  We all have a choice, so we should choose wisely, and we should choose with love.

Willing To Wait

Recently, I mean very recently in December 2012, I saw a line begin to form one evening in front of a shoe store on Candler Rd in my hometown of Decatur, GA and the next early morning, the line got even bigger.  One can assume it was for the Jordan 4 or the D Rose 3 shoe; in any event, it was cold and the store was not going to do a midnight sale so those people had to wait.  It made me think, people can discipline themselves to wait for anything and go to any lengths if they think it is worth it.  We can hardly wait for the dinner to get done or for microwave popcorn to finish or even for a friend to hurry up so that we can get to where we are going; we have to build up patience for those things because in reality, those things are not of great value to us.  But things we really value and want to happen, we become very patient for it.  So I think that is an approach we should to take to our dreams and goals as well.  In Luke 2, Simeon was promised to see Christ before it was over and so he waited.  Abraham, in Genesis 12 and 13 was promised to have essentially, a nation of children but he had to wait on his first child with his wife, Sarah.  And there are so many other examples I could give.  The point is, we must have patience for things to happen because, like those customers that waited for about 15 hours in the cold, anything of value is not going to be given over night.  In the book, Outlier by Malcolm Gladwell, he gives us the "10, 000-Hour Rule," which is to work on your purpose, your dream, your goal, for a long period of time, working out the kinks and the wrinkles so that it and you are perfected.  It takes time + dedication (patience in other words) = to get perfection but you have to be willing to go through whatever it takes, good and bad, cold and hot, sun and rain, days and weeks, months and years.  In this smart phone and facebook/twitter/instagram society we tend to think that things should be done in a blink of an eye and that our dreams and goals should get presidential treatment (never having to wait on anything); but if you look at what it took for the person to become president, all the years of hard work plus the amount of the babies kissed, its no wonder he or eventually she, does not have to wait for an elevator or an airplane or limo.  So remember to go for your dreams and purposes but remember that it takes patience to keep going after them, and if you read Hebrews 11, you may not see the full completion of it in your lifetime but that does not mean you give it up.  Run with patience until your task is complete.