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We are just about midway through Lent. Perhaps we started off Lent with some good intentions about steps we wanted to take to be more intentional in our spiritual lives, and maybe at this point we are feeling discouraged because we failed to carry out our good intentions.

If this has happened to you as it has happened to me, take heart in the fact that you have yet another confirmation (if you needed one) that you are, indeed, a fallible human being. The Gospels record repeated instances of the disciples stumbling off the path in their attempts to follow Jesus. Fortunately, Jesus never gave up on them. He won’t give up on us either.

Here is the thing to remember about stumblings: Don’t allow your stumbling to turn into an avalanche. Don’t indulge that part of yourself that wants to take advantage of the spill you’ve taken to award yourself with the title of “biggest loser” or “worst sinner” of all time.

Simply acknowledge your stumbling, take advantage of yet another opportunity to surrender your arrogance, and move on.

Simply try again.

Try again.

Lord Jesus, long ago the disciple Peter failed to carry out his pledge to stand with you in the darkness, and was tempted by despair. When we likewise fall, remind us that your hand is perpetually offered to us to help get back up again. Save us from the pride that would revel in the mud and refuse the gracious offer of your out-stretched hand. Amen.

Last week I was driving down Rt. 46 headed towards the recycling center when the familiar rumble of a flat tire forced me to pull over to the side of the road.   My tire-changing equipment in my trunk looked woefully inadequate to the job, but fortunately, I have AAA, so I called and was told someone would be by within the hour.

Finding myself in a place I’ve driven through literally thousands of times before, it was odd to be just sitting there, waiting, watching.    Most everybody else in that space was just “passing through” as I customarily was.

Perhaps because it is Lent and I was intentionally trying to be more prayerful, I figured I should take the opportunity to do so.  I resisted the urge to feel annoyed about being “stuck” there, and tried to open up to God — to be a blessing, somehow to all the people rushing by.  

Curiously, within a minute or so of consciously beginning to pray, some sort of delivery truck pulled up in front of me.  A man who looked like he was newly immigrated to this country got out of the van and walked up to my window, offering his help.   I thanked him, but said I had someone on the way to assist me.   He nodded and got back in his car and drove off. 

I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a connection between my praying and having this man stop to offer help. 

My mind is often in an altogether different place, feeling rushed and “put upon,” and at such times, help doesn’t seem much in evidence.    It gets me thinking about the impact our mental states have on the world around us. 

Jesus sent his disciples into the world with specific instructions to travel light.  He seemed to assume that help would be there when they needed it if only they were willing to be open to it.  “Ask,” he said, “and it will be given.”    AA talks about the “higher power,” with the assumption that unless you consciously, humbly reach out for the help, you cannot avail yourself to the assistance that is offered. 

Loving God, you have far more help to provide than we are willing to receive.  Slow us down when we are tempted to rush through life, and remind us, as best we can, to open our hearts and minds to your grace.    In Jesus’ name.  Amen.  

A sermon based on Luke 13:1 – 9 and preached on March 7, 2010. 

At our first meeting of the Lenten group that is focusing on the words of the Lord’s Prayer David began our time together by asking us to share some kind of work we’d always imagined doing, but hadn’t had a chance to do.   Al was sitting to David’s left and was the first to speak. I’m taking liberty here repeating what Al said, because David had us pledge to keeping the words spoken there to ourselves.    But I trust Al won’t mind. 

 It happened to be his 61st  birthday.   Al said that he was presently working as a nanny, and that there was nothing he’d rather be doing at the moment.  (Al has been on disability for the last couple of years because of a heart condition.  He works three afternoons a week taking care of three-year old Kathryn, a time that gives him much pleasure.)

These were remarkable words coming out of a man in our society.    For most men, the conversation regarding what we do for a living is something of a competition with a definite hierarchy, with things like being CEO of a Fortune 500 company, playing for the Yankees, and leading safaris for dangerous wild game being at the top of manliness.  For a man to say he is working as a nanny and content to do so is definitely counter-cultural, and it was liberating for the rest of us men present in the room. 

Child care isn’t a high status position in our society, and it certainly isn’t compensated well.   But there is nothing more important than children receiving good, loving care.   At the heart of good child care, is paying attention – noticing the little things in the little one’s life.  It requires great patience.  

It just so happens that these are the same qualities that are required for the cultivation of our spiritual lives.   It was Mother Teresa who said, “We can do no great things, we can only do little things with great love.”  Or, as the Apostle Paul put it, you may be a mover and shaker with a Fortune 500 company, you may hit for power with the Yankees, you may have the balls to take on lions and tigers, but if you have not love, you are nothing.  The Gospel lesson from Luke is a surefire Lenten one, focusing our attention on death and the way it shows up unexpectedly.   People tell Jesus about recent news of sudden, violent death.   A bunch of Galileans have been killed by the Roman Governor Pilate and his men.   Those recounting the story may have had two reasons for telling Jesus about this violence.  First, perhaps they hoped that it would move him to get behind a violent revolution, throwing out Pilate and all the Romans.  And second, perhaps they’re looking for some reassurance.   There is a strain of thought in the Old Testament, found most notably in Deuteronomy that puts forth the notion that if you do good and follow the Law, you will be rewarded with a good and happy life, and if you do bad and break the Law, you will be punished with misery.   Did these Galileans receive their violent death because of some kind of bad behavior on their parts?  Can we stay clear of such violence for ourselves by keeping our nose clean and keeping on the straight and narrow of God’s Law?

Jesus disappointed  both motivations.  He didn’t take up arms against the Romans. And he says that they had all fallen short of God’s glory and they all needed to repent – turn around, start walking with  God, and if not, the same fate would likely befall them as well.  (It is also worth noting that Jesus was the holiest man who ever lived, and all his righteous living didn’t save him from dying a terrible death nailed to a cross.)  

On the Monday following our first meeting of the Lord’s Prayer group, Al started feeling quite sick while working at the church to provide hospitality for a bunch of clergy who were on hand to hear a speaker about Spiritual Formation.  Gail took him to the hospital, and within a matter of days, Al had a diagnosis of acute leukemia, a life threatening disease that requires a stiff inducement of chemotherapy to knock the leukemia cells into remission.   Following the chemotherapy, if all goes well he will recuperate and prepare for a bone marrow transplant that could hold out the possibility of a cure.  

This is heavy stuff indeed, bringing to the consciousness of us all how assaults on our health can strike us out of the blue, threatening our very life.   Jesus proceeded to tell a little parable about gardening, another favorite activity , along with cooking, of Al’s.  Said Jesus, a man owned a vineyard in one corner of which a fig tree was planted.  After three years, however no figs had appeared on the tree.  The owner of the vineyard is angry with the fruitless fig tree, taking up as it does the space and nutrients.   He wants to cut it down.  The gardener, however, pleads for more time for the fig tree.   He will plant some extra manure around the fig tree, and with a little extra attention and tender care, well, who knows, maybe next year the fig tree put forth figs.  If not, says the gardener, you can go ahead and cut it down. 

In my experience the parables of Jesus are wild and open to insight in surprising ways from a variety of perspectives.   The commentators I read on this parable, however, tended to reduce it to an allegory:  The owner of the vineyard is God the Father, demanding justice; the Gardener is Jesus the Son, tempering the justice with mercy.   We are the figless fig trees.  But what if find we can identify with all three?   How easily we feel condemnation for parts of ourselves, as well as of others, that strike us at a given moment as useless.    But can we also identify with the gentle gardener, who like a good nanny, attentively pays attention to the places in ourselves and in others that seem to be barren, hoping instead to cultivate fruit heretofore unimagined from the tree?

On the third Thursday of each month I go over to Troy Hills Nursing Center to lead a worship service.  I usually get about a dozen old women present who are really appreciative of my presence there.  It’s curious, but a number of the women come at this little parable from a different direction.  They look at their lives in the terms of this world and they judge themselves useless.  They cannot walk, nor do any of the things they have always thought of as “work.”   They feel like figless fig trees, and wonder what’s taking the gardener so long to get on with chopping them down. 

I say to them, “Try to take a breath.”  If they can, then that is the most concrete sign that God wants them to go on living.   They do indeed have a holy purpose.  They’ve been missing it because they’ve been looking to high up at the things the world counts as important.  What they can do, and do better than most, is pray.  They can host in their bodies the holy presence of God, and in doing so, their very bearing becomes a blessing to whomever they come in contact.  They have the capacity to bless a troubled world in ways they will never be able to know the extent of.   All that is required is that they trust, and open their hearts in love.  In the end, this is the kind of fruit that truly matters – the fruit that the whole creation longs to taste.

A couple of days ago I talked about the parallel between the disciplined training of the Olympic athlete and the spiritual disciplines that we are called to engage in to form our inner life.  Jesus would have been shaped by a life time of praying the 150 psalms.   In turning again and again to these words his inner life was shaped in obedience to his Abba (Daddy) God, in whose hands he daily placed his life.

We can only imagine, for instance, how many hundreds of times Jesus prayed these words from Psalm 139:

Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’,
even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you.

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
   Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
   intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
   all the days that were formed for me,
   when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
   How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
   I come to the end —I am still with you.

There is something both comforting and unsettling about God’s knowledge of us.   We are here by God’s will, not by mere chance.   On the one hand, this knowledge means there really is no need to stress over our lives; God already knows where our lives are headed, and God will be there with us in every step we take.   And yet there may well be times we might want to flee from such knowledge; to be allowed to simply live our lives as though nothing much mattered.   

But our lives truly do matter.   God attended to every aspect of our formation in our mother’s womb. 

And we cannot be taken out of God’s light, no matter how dark the world’s darkness may seem, or how deep our own personal sense of darkness may become.    We still belong to God.

God whose knowledge is infinitely greater than our little knowledge, we would ponder your greatness, and trust in your grace.   Give us the courage to embrace your presence in our lives,  that instead of our lame attempts at fleeing from you, we might instead walk consciously with you.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen. 

I spent the better part of the day at the hospital with Al and Gail.    The hospital – especially the oncology ward — is a place we all would rather not be, but you certainly meet some truly good souls there.   The woman in her eighties, for instance who came by as a “volunteer patient advocate” handing out shawls made by other volunteers.  In the course of the conversation she mentioned that years earlier she had undergone a mastectomy, and that she had lost her husband to cancer.   But here she was giving three days a week of her time to provide some comfort to people dealing with cancer,  using the empathy and knowledge she had accumulated to help others.   There was the volunteer who came by handing out Daily Records, who offered a “joke of the day” as well.  (Al gave her one as well to pass on as she went about her rounds.)    There were the competent and compassionate young nurses and the therapeutic touch specialist who provided care for caregivers as well as patients.    The oncologist gave out complex information regarding the dire diagnosis while at the same time conveying hope,  providing  a hug when needed as well. 

The light shines brightly in the darkness.    There are signs of God’s grace if you watch for them, and more often than not they come in the form of simple human kindness.  

Dear God, thank you for all those persons we meet in the course of our lives who make the rough paths gentler.  Give us strength to be such signs for others as well.  In Jesus’ name.   Amen. 

Sometimes there is little to do but to remind ourselves and one another of the great affirmations of our faith; old familiar verses of scripture such as the 23rd psalm:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.

He leadeth me besides still waters.

He restoreth my soul.

He leadeth me in paths of righteousness for his name’a sake.

Yeah though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me.

To hear again that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Lent reminds us that Jesus has gone before us into the dark valley. He is the pioneer and perfector of our faith.  He will not leave us orphaned; his peace he gives us.  “Be not afraid,” he said. “Believe in God, believe also in me.”  Believe that he knows what he’s talking about, having seen the darkness up close and personal.  

When the rubber hits the road, let us remember that the Lord is our rock.

Lord Jesus, wherever we find ourselves, no matter how deep the darkness, help us to remember that you have been there before us. When we find ourselves rocked by the storms of life, let us hear again your strong word that calms the waters. Remind us once more that we are in your arms, come what may. Amen.

The things that cause people to be afraid varies from person to person.   Sometimes our fears are irrational:  spiders don’t bother me much, but they cause others to freak out.  A mouse, however, darting along the wall  makes my heart race.  What’s the rhyme or reason to this?   

If I know what I have to say, then public speaking doesn’t cause me any fear.  For others, having to speak in front of crowd is the scariest thing they can imagine.  If, however, I’m obliged to enter a room full of strangers and make small talk over refreshments, well then my blood pressure will rise dramatically.  When we are tempted to mock others for their fears, we should take a moment to own up to our peculiar terrors. 

Courage is something we can easily get confused about.  Somebody who feels no fear in the face of a truly threatening situation isn’t courageous.   Maybe  they’ve moved beyond the point of caring, or maybe they’re just plain stupid and don’t realize what’s at stake.   Courage isn’t fearlessness; it’s the capacity to get yourself to do what needs to be done even when you do feel afraid.  

Courage is a basic theme of the story of Jesus making his way to Jerusalem.  Jesus goes knowing that when he gets there he will die violently.   His disciples follow along, but do so reluctantly; they don’t have the courage that Jesus has. 

It isn’t that Jesus has a death wish, nor that he is immune to fear.   Rather, his clarity about the necessity of his offering up his life allows him to find the courage he needs to go forth in spite of his fear. 

If we think that we are supposed to be fearless, we will either go out of our way to avoid confronting  the things that frighten us so as to appear fearless, or, we will despair when we discover our hearts are full of fear.  

To be human is to deal with fear.     The question instead is whether our fears will have the final word in our lives.  Can we step forward in spite of our fear?  Can we conquer the fears that would shrink our world and keep us following where Jesus leads?

The hymn “God of Grace and God of Glory” contains these words:  “Fears and doubts too long have bound us; free our hearts to work and praise.  Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days…”

Lord Jesus, help us both to acknowledge our fears, and to turn to you for the courage to overcome these fears.  We would meditate upon your courage to set your face towards Jerusalem, that in doing so we may receive strength to bear our own crosses.  Amen. 

If you have watched any of the winter Olympics, you can’t help but marvel at the countless hours of training that the athletes have had to put in for years in order to come to a place where they can perform with such remarkable skill and grace.  Beyond the extraordinary conditioning of their muscles is the training their brains have undergone.   Through years of endless repetition, pathways have been so deeply established in their brains that when it comes time to compete, they can essentially turn off all conscious thought and simply let their muscle memory take over.  

We admire what discipline and commitment has made possible for these athletes.   We are less inclined to appreciate what is possible through what are called “spiritual disciplines.”   For centuries, people of faith have “practiced” disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, Bible study, fellowship, singing and shared worship that have quite literally shaped the pathways of their brains so that their mental energy flows more readily in life-giving directions.    They have trained their minds to react to stressful situations not with “fight” or “flight” responses but instead in ways that express faith, hope and love.  Through daily routines of spiritual practices they train their minds to pay attention to their blessings rather than to obsess over what could be interpreted as the shortcomings of their lives.  By daily attention to the word of the Lord they have learned to respond to others with mercy rather than judgment.  

What such people accomplish through their spiritual disciplines doesn’t get them on television admired by millions of fans, but surely the path their training has allowed them to travel is far more important in the ultimate scheme of things.  When the great athlete ages, and their days of competing at that extraordinary level comes to an end, hopefully they can transfer the things they have learned about discipline and focus to the realm of the spirit.   

What might it mean for you to think of yourself as a spiritual athlete who can’t expect to reach what you’re capable of without a commitment to training on your part?

Lord God, help us to run the race with perseverance that is set before us.   In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

The guest speaker at our church today told a little fable about a huge block of marble that a sculptor slowly chips away at over a period of several months, using only a chisel and a hammer. From time to time a child stops by to watch the sculptor at work. Gradually, the shape of a lion emerges from the marble. Wonder struck, the child ask the sculptor, “How did you know there was a lion in that block of marble?!”

Over the course of our lives as we seek to follow in the way of Jesus, God is chiseling away in our lives, shaping us in the likeness of Christ. Generally speaking, this is a life-long process, though there are moments of breakthrough in which the likeness begins to emerge from what previously had seemed like little more than an unseemly mess.

“God, how did you know there was resemblance to Christ deep down inside me?” If you are like me, there have been times in your life in which you looked at yourself and saw no reason to take delight — nothing that struck you as beautiful. For most of us, adolesence was such a time. Perhaps in our adulthood there have been times of failure and frustration that similarly seemed to reveal little within to cherish.

God, however, always knew that there was the likeness of Christ inside, waiting to be uncovered. For that reason, God has never, nor will God ever, give up on you.

This way of thinking about what is called “spiritual formation” is helpful because it implies that the Christian life isn’t about trying to be something we aren’t. It is rather a process of letting go of the things that block who we most truly are in the depths of our being.

The speaker also said that the primary means by which God chisels away at the raw material of our life is through partaking in shared Christian community, with the traditions that draw us closer to Christ. Life in congregations are often messy, but where there is the shared intention to let Christ guide us, rebuke us, forgive us, challenge us and heal us, over time the transforming grace of God brings forth the hidden beauty.

In the moment of death, this process, traditionally known as “sanctification” comes to fulfillment. The saints of heaven (many of whom we know personally by name) have let go of all the stuff that got in the way of their hidden beauty, and now they are rooting for us to cooperate with God in the midst of the chiseling.

“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the smae image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” (2Corinthians 3:18)

Thank you, Loving God, for never losing sight of who we are in our depths. Help us to trust that you will indeed bring your work to completion within us. Help us to let go of that which is standing in the way of your deepest intentions for our lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

After thought:  Cheryl called my attention to this youtube skit that is both funny and touching, and uses the same metaphor: 

A sermon preached on February 28^th, 2010 based upon Philippians 3:17 – 4:1 and Luke 13:31 – 35. 

The reading from Paul got me thinking about bicycle riding.  I know, I am probably the only the one who made such a connection.  Bicycle riding loomed large in my early life; there was a lot of meaning attached to it.

Relative to my peers, I learned to ride somewhat late.  I remember feeling some shame about not knowing how to ride; I avoided situations where attention might be called to this fact. 

My lateness learning may have had to do with the fact that my Dad didn’t know how to ride a bike, having had an overly protective mother who was afraid of him doing anything in which he might get hurt.  So I probably inherited some of that fear.  (My father did learn in middle age how to ride a bike.)

Nonetheless, I can still remember that moment when in third grade I finally learned – the ecstasy, the joy, the freedom of suddenly catching the mystery of how to ride a bike.   I had a big bike, and it was hard to stop, so I just road up and down the block for an hour until I finally crashed landed in exhaustion.   If you know how to ride a bike, you probably remember that first moment as well. 

Later on, when I entered adolescence, riding a bicycle was the means by which my world was expanded.  David Turner and I were childhood friends.  On Saturdays we would ride out of our suburban town, amazed by the fact that sitting on a bike we were able  to ride ourselves way out into the country where there were things to see we couldn’t see in our town; cows grazing by the roadside, for instance.

Later when I was fifteen, David, myself and another friend took a month long bicycle trip through New England.  It served as something of a “rite of passage,” for us. 

Looking back, it seems to me that learning to ride a bike is a great metaphor for the faith walk – the Jesus walk.  I played around in my mind with a fantasy world this week, one in which people are issued a bicycle at birth, but where nobody knows how to use one.   In my fantasy world they don’t know much about aerodynamics and such,  and so for generations the bicycles get used for other purposes – a place to hang laundry as its drying, perhaps.  

Or maybe in this fantasy world children instinctively know how to ride, but early on they lose the ability, discouraged perhaps by adults who consider the activity too dangerous… sort of their own personal “fall from the Garden of Eden” experience.   I don’t know. 

How long would it take before someone would have the vision and the courage to discover how to ride these peculiar things?  And once someone did, how would others respond?   The Gospel lesson provides a clue, where Jesus laments the age old tradition of Jerusalem killing the prophets sent to them.  Perhaps the bike riding innovator would get stoned to death.  I don’t know. 

Why don’t people catch on to riding the bicycles?   Is it because they are too weighed down to even to try – their burdens having names like “shame” and “guilt,” and “fear,” and the stuff that ripples out from these weights, like “resentment” and “hostility.”

So into this fantasy world Jesus appears after his forty days in the wilderness, and from the get-go he’s riding his bike for all its worth.  And many marvel in wonder at the extraordinary grace of his bike-riding, but others declared, “You can’t do that!” 

****

From the beginning of Christianity, there has been this understanding that something shifted cosmically when Jesus died on the cross.   In the religious practice of the day, the intricacies of the Law made it inevitable that people would accumulate piles of guilt as they went through life.  The only way to remove this burden of guilt was to make a long trip (without bicycles) to the Temple in Jerusalem, where they’d shell out money they couldn’t afford to purchase blemish-free animals to hand over to the priests to sacrifice, thereby “atoning” for the guilt they had accumulated.  In short order the sins would begin start piling up again, requiring yet another long trip.  This would just go on forever, making for a deeply-burdened existence, to say the least.

And so Jesus’ death on the cross was understood to have done away with this endless accumulation of guilt.   The “price was paid, once and for all,” the barriers to God and heaven permanently removed.   Good news indeed.  Without those heavy burdens, it was time to start learning the wonder of bike riding, which is precisely what those who following in “the way” did.  The Apostle Paul, for instance.  

Some of the language Paul uses in his epistles, however can sound rather oppressive — not exactly an invitation to soar. Take this line from this morning’s letter to the Philippians: 

 “… I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.  Their destiny is destruction, their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame.  There mind is on earthly things.”

Hearing this, a person might conclude that the Christian life is all about denying yourself enjoyment of the good things to be found on earth.  Christians, one might conclude, are supposed to avoid any sort of material pleasure in this life. 

But if we think about it, that doesn’t make much sense, because Jesus himself enjoyed the good things of this earth, like good food and good wine and good parties, which he continually is described as being at and talking about.   He was even criticized by the Pharisees for not being more like John the Baptist, who apparently was inclined to reject the pleasures of this world. 

The idea that faith is like learning to ride a bike is helpful here, because bike riding is all about learning the right balance.  You have to be focused, but not tight.  The possibility exists of “falling off the bike” in either of two directions.  The faith walk is also about balance.  You can err on one side by rejecting the good gift of life in this world, and the beauty and pleasure this life affords.   Unfortunately, the Church has often fallen off the bike on this side, making the faith walk seem pretty unappealing, to say the least. 

But you can also err on the other side, which is where you assume that your salvation is found in the pleasures of this world.  When Paul speaks of people whose “minds are on earthly things,” what I think he has in mind is clutching  the things of this world out of desperation.  Bellies and taste buds are good gifts from God, but as Paul points out, they aren’t god, and there’s is a significant distinction between the two.

Why are we tempted to clutch the things of this world with such desperation?  Maybe we are driven to do so by an underlying shame, guilt and fear, which is another way of saying we haven’t taken to heart what Jesus accomplished in his death on the cross.  Oppressed by shame and guilt, we flee to food, or alcohol, or drugs, or gambling, or shopping, or whatever form of addiction we are inclined towards.  This, I think, is what it means to be an “enemy of the cross.”   It is living as though the liberation won by Jesus from ultimate source of the compulsions that drive us wasn’t really won after all.

We miss the “eternal lightness of being” that makes it possible to ride our bikes.   Angels, it is said, are able to fly because they don’t take themselves so seriously; they are not weighed down by the burdens we pile upon ourselves in our self-absorption.

Here’s some questions for Lenten self-reflection:  Are you, in fact riding your bicycle?   If not, can you identify the guilt, shame, fear and resultant hostility and resentment that is keeping your from soaring?  What would it mean for you to take seriously the freedom won for you by Jesus on the cross?

How big is your world?  Riding the bike of faith involves the discovery that your world is much larger than you had imagined.  You are a citizen of heaven, free to roam the endless expanses of God’s kingdom. 

For me, a clear indicator that I have “fallen off the bike of faith” is when I look at my heart and realize that I am faking compassion.  I am going through the motions of caring about other people, when in fact my world has been reduced to my little preoccupations.   It’s as though I don’t seem to have room inside my heart for the concerns of others.  

When I realize this has happened, I know that it is time to stop my frantic motion and be still for a while.  Usually if I do this, I gradually discover space opening up inside me again.  I discover again I really do in fact care about other people.  Their pain touches me. I don’t feel as though I necessarily have to take away their pain, because in a lot of cases this is just not possible.  But once again there is room in my heart for others.  And not only their pain, but their joy as well.  Their joy becomes my joy as well.  My world gets infinitely largely. 

Sometimes it can take a crisis to explode our tiny, trapped world open to the vastness of God’s graciousness.   I read a charming little novel a while back entitled, “The Memory of Running”, by Ron McLarty. (Thanks goes to Justin for tracking down the title; I’d lost my copy and couldn’t remember what it was called.) The plot line stayed with me.   This guy in his forties has been living in a world that over the years has been getting smaller and smaller.  He has a job that doesn’t use his gifts.  He lives with his aging parents, drinking himself to sleep each night.  

When he was young, he’d been connected to the girl who lived next door.  He’d had an older sister whom he looked up to and adored, but after she suffered a series of breakdowns, eventually disappearing altogether, his heart closed down to the girl next door and to everyone else as well.

Early on in the story his parents are killed in a car crash.  Hard stuff indeed.  But when an old life comes to an end, there is nothing left to do but go forth to created a new life.  The man  discovers that his long-lost sister has in fact died way out in California, and as the next of kin he must go to claim her remains.  

Hung over the morning after his parents’ funeral, he sets out on a whim on a bike he hasn’t ridden since his youth.   Without money in his pocket, he just keeps on peddling, slowly making his way across the country.  The pounds he has accumulated stuffing himself over the years are slowly shed.  Each night he calls the girl next door, describing to her what he’s experiencing on his journey, and the walls of his heart gradually come down as his world gets larger and larger.  It’s amazing what riding a bike can do. 

“Take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you,” says Paul to the folks in Philippi.  When it comes to catching on to the bike-ride of faith, what we need are people who can mentor us.   There is only so much you can get out of books; we need people who can model for us the wondrous freedom of faith. 

So take note of people you know who seem to know how to stay balanced.  Watch the way they appear to trust things will work out when troubles arise.  Notice how they have room in their hearts for others.   Ponder their ability to give themselves away without worrying about what they will receive back.  Marvel at their inner freedom and the joy they carry around.

Hang with them, absorb them, imitate them.   When you’re trying to learn how to ride a bike, it’s important to watch others doing it, so if for no other reason,  you know it really is possible to do.   Try doing what you see them doing, even if at first it feels like you’re just going through the motions.  Eventually you may discover that you, too are floating, and the training wheels have come off, and now others are watching you to see how it is done.