Corners

I work with the most generous server. Her heart is just… BIG. Full of giving. A true servant, through and through. The problem is this – my friend’s heart is so long and deep and wide that she feels compelled to help… everyone. Need $20? Need $2,000? Again, beautiful quality to possess; however, it also leaves her poor… somewhat frustrated… and ironically unable to pay her own rent. She has these people in her life [like me] who say to her, “You can’t save the world.” It’s true, right? I mean, look at all the pain and poverty and hardship in the world. You can’t fix it all. You can’t bear the weight of the world on your shoulders. So… what do you do?

Once upon a time, I had a ‘Messiah complex’. It’s this very common disorder in which you believe you can heal the masses. Yes, like Jesus. The Messiah. This disease is quite prevalent, especially amongst those in ‘helping’ professions i.e. teachers, mothers, fathers, plumbers, social workers, waitresses, ministers…

This girl I know used to work at this church. From the beginning, she wanted to meet everyone’s needs. All 250 church members’ needs. She was a helper… with a complex. After only a few months of being there, she began to feel very, hmm should we say, overwhelmed? She would make lists of people to call, people to visit, people who ‘needed’ her. Her lists grew… and grew… and grew. She had very poor boundaries. 

One day this very cool/fun/journal-making friend on the phone said something that changed her whole perspective. “You’re taking on way too much. I think Jesus himself even kinda focused on twelve!” And that’s when it clicked for me, ahem, I mean ‘this girl’. I had been trying to invest myself into the lives of 238 more people than Jesus did! Yeah… I had a complex.

There’s this fantastic story in the bible about this man who is paralyzed. [Doesn’t sound great so far but I promise it gets better.] At the same time that this man is paralyzed, there is this other man walking from town to town healing people! [His name is Jesus… if you didn’t see that coming.] Well, obviously, this man wants to get to Jesus cuz he wants to be healed! Problem is, Jesus is total paparazzi-candy. He is surrounded at all times by a gazillion [another term for ‘lots’] of hurt, bleeding, broken, disease-stricken people. This guy can’t walk, much less stand/push/wade through a crowd. So… he gives up… ha, totally kidding. What a bummer of a story that would be, right?! No, this guy who lived a few thousand years ago had something most of us would die for and/or take for granted. Four friends. Four friends and a mat. With four corners. So these four friends, maybe they take the day off work or skip out on lunch that day. They devise this plan to lower their friend through the roof, basically right on top of Jesus’ head. And Jesus heals their friend, while they each hold a corner.

Four friends. Carrying the four corners of a mat. I don’t care who you are, that’s powerful stuff. That guy, he could count his closest friends on one hand… and look where it got him! Healed. We’re not made to have a gazillion superficial relationships. Seriously, Facebook is awesome, but let’s be honest – the majority of you seven hundred and something are my acquaintances at best. Aside from the occasional fbook stalking, you don’t invest in me, and I don’t invest in you. And you know what? That’s okay. We’re not wired to invest in everyone. That would just wear us out! We are wired, even Jesus, to have a close-knit circle of friends, friends that will hold our mats when the time comes.

You can’t save the world. And, though we all struggle with the complex, I can tell you with the utmost certainty that you are not the Messiah. If this really bums you out, if this makes you feel as if your actions are useless and futile in this world then just remember that paralyzed guy. To some people, picking up a corner wouldn’t seem like a lot - menial work really – and yet, it led that guy to Jesus! How sacred, how significant, how life-giving was the mere act of holding a corner of a mat!

Nobody can help everybody, so give yourself some grace. Realize that you are not called to help everybody, but you are called to help somebody. Chances are, it’s probably somebody right in front of you. Who matters to you? Who do you invest in? Who needs you to pick up a corner? God has entrusted certain people to you for a reason. Do what you can with what you have.

May you be a person known for carrying the mats of others. Not 250. Just a few… and they will make all the difference.

And to my dearest, closest, most beloved, fabulous corner-carriers [you know who you are], I’ve got your mat. ;)

Two Words

My brothers are a lot older than me. Eleven years. Eight years. Because of this fact, learning to play by myself was a necessity in my childhood. What can I say? I talked to a lot of imaginary people. Very frequently, however, amongst the hundreds upon thousands of art supplies, movies, and Barbie clothes, I would find myself uttering two words. These two words would strike instant rage into the eyes of my mother. To my mother, these two words triggered more exasperation and displeasure than all four-letter words combined. These two words were banned in my home; and, to this day, I cannot speak these two words without feeling the cringe of my mother’s face deep within my heart. “I’m bored.”… … “How can you be bored?!” she would say. Instant rage.

These two incredibly sagacious guys [‘sagacious’ means ‘intelligent’… excuse me, I just took the GRE], one who teaches at Duke and one who is equally as cool but I don’t know where he teaches, wrote this book awhile back about the Christian life. What do Christians look like? What do our churches look like? What should they look like? You ever sat in a church pew and rehearsed every item on your grocery/work/personal/weekly to-do list? Did that hour in the pew ever seem like four… or five? These two smart guys, in their book, wrote something that made me cringe deep within my heart. They said, “[Christians] shall die, not from crucifixion, but from sheer boredom.” So I ask...

Is Christianity boring?... I thought about asking, “Is Jesus boring?” but then I thought about him and his life and the stories we have, and Jesus is without a doubt NOT boring. He’s wild and crazy and radical and funny! The problem is, maybe no one sees that. Maybe we listen to Jesus’ words and hear nothing but a 98-year-old preacher’s voice on an uneventful Sunday morning, sitting in a hard wooden pew with unbelievably thin cushions. I guess we could blame this on the ministers, the preachers, who don’t tend to project a personality onto the bible when they teach it. An absolute shame, huh?

Long ago, people died. People always died. There was this valley, in fact, filled with their bones. Dry bones, really dead bones. The Lord God came to this prophet named Ezekiel and told him to speak to the bones [way weirder than speaking to imaginary people, btw]. When he did, guess what happened? They came ALIVE! That's right. These brittle, useless, lifeless bones grew flesh. [which is gross to imagine but miraculous nonetheless] All of a sudden they were transformed – living and breathing, with purpose. They were dead, really dead, and then they were alive. God just made them alive... again.

All that is to say…

WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!

Following Jesus is meant to make you come ALIVE! MORE alive, in fact, than people who don't at all follow him - cuz God breathed into you TWICE!! Once to live and once more to LIVE! [See John 20… “And Jesus breathed on them…” See? Meaningful and yet bizarrely awkward and funny.]

We are part of something huge, this underground revolution of change and love and acceptance and justice and peace and grace; you are alive in order to set right the broken things. You are alive to remind the world of what was forgotten in that garden – that we don’t have to hide anymore, that God is all we need.

You are alive to give the world what it doesn’t know it needs the most [read that again, cuz it confused even me and I’m the one who wrote it].

Jesus is not boring, and following Jesus… wow, yeah, that’s not boring either. I hesitate saying this but if you are bored... maybe you’re doin’ it wrong. I mean, it’s not like there’s a lacking of stuff to be done here – lives to help, pain to mend, families to reconcile. Seriously, it's not like we've run out of things to do.

I want you to have a wild life, an adventurous one. A life that takes risks and jumps out of boxes and defies norms. That’s the kinda life Jesus had – and we’re called to follow him. So follow him… and may you walk in his wild and crazy footsteps. Wherever they lead you.