What To Pack

What is the longest trip away from home you have packed for with only a suitcase? How do you choose what to bring and what to leave behind?

We have moved many times as a family, but with a truck, or trailer, or a PODS. In the Army I used a duffel bag and a foot locker. How do you plan for the needs of 90+ days!

Well, the suitcases are coming out this week. The loose ends at the house are being wrapped up. Sixteen days until we catch our first flight.

And we each pack so differently. I could probably fit all I need in one medium suitcase. She needs a few more things, a little more variety, a few more options. So we will each take a large suitcase to check, and a small one to put in the overhead bin. Essentials in the bin. Extras in the cargo compartment.

Life is filled with choices about what is important. We constantly have to choose what we will leave behind, and what we will carry forward. When difficult things happen to us, we must choose. We can keep getting bigger suitcases to carry life's burdens, or we can sort through and discard. Some things are not worth the burden of carrying.

So you might wonder, why the two suitcases if you could fit your stuff in a medium sized one? Well, we want the option to bring a few things back for kids, grand kids, and of course a couple things for ourselves, as a way to remember our ministry there.

You see, life's suitcases carry more than just the negative experiences we have endured. They can also carry the joys and exhilaration. Life is more than just one bad event after another. There are good moments as well.

Maybe we need to spend more time putting some of those positive things in our suitcases and dumping the heavy burdens. Let's lighten our loads.

For those who want to support our endeavor, here is the link. No pressure, just an option.

Life-Changing Moments

Mark 2:12

      Have you ever been blow away by something you have seen? Some things in life are literally life-changing experiences. They have such an impact on our lives that it is as if in moment you walked around a corner into a different world. I have had a number of those moments in my life. I have also had the privilege of working with people whose experiences in those moments changed their lives in some very painful ways. Their new corners were very dark indeed. I am thankful that the LORD can bring light into the darkest rooms.

      We have one of those moments recorded in our passage today. A crippled man was carried by some friends to Jesus in hopes that Jesus could heal his physical body. He became an object lesson by Jesus to prove that He had the ability to forgive sins. Nothing could have prepared him for the moment Jesus spoke those words to him. It was life-changing.

      The moment Jesus told him to get up, take his mat, and go home, he did. There was no hesitation in his actions. This is what he had come for, and this is what he had gotten. Jesus told him to do three things, and three things he did. This was obedience.

      If I put myself in this man’s shoes for a moment, I can imagine that my expectations might have been low when I was being carried to this stranger’s home where Jesus was preaching. I can imagine a bit of embarrassment and anticipation as I was lowered into the dust filled room in front of the crowd. Maybe a bit of confusion as Jesus talks about forgiveness of sins. But when He tells me to get up, I move. Something happened inside this man in that moment that changed everything, and he was about to let that moment pass without his response.

      And as the crowd sees the man stand up, immediately pick up his mat and work his way out through the crowd, the crowd that would not let him in a few minutes ago, the place must have exploded with excitement. And the excitement isn’t aimless. The excitement is directed toward the LORD in praise. This is where excitement of this kind needs to be directed.

      But not all life-changing moments are positive ones. Many soldiers in combat turn a corner and there is horror smack in their face. And this horror often haunts them, as it does just about everyone who turns such a corner. And people who have been sexually assaulted have often been forced around a corner they didn’t want to turn. In moments such as these, it can be very difficult, if not impossible to gain enough perspective to see beyond that moment. We get stuck in such moments.

      Fortunately, Jesus wants to enter those moments and speak just as powerfully to us as He did to the cripple. And for hundreds of folks over the years, a new corner, a brighter corner, a more hopeful corner has been turned. We often need someone to walk with us through those dark spots and back into His light. I want to encourage you to find someone to help you walk through your moments.

My Motorcycle

Proverbs 14:29

      It can be difficult to be patient. I know, I drive to work on a highway populated with twenty-somethings who have a death wish! They weave in and out of the three lanes of traffic like they are trying to weave a tapestry with their movements. But, I have to admit, it only takes one person on the on-ramp talking on the cell phone and not paying any attention to the fact that the traffic is going 70 and they are going 45, to get me weaving and passing. Yikes!

      Maybe traffic doesn’t get you going, but I can bet there is something in life that pushes your quick-tempered button. I wish I only had one button. How about you?

      Sometimes the reactions seem to come from nowhere. The look on someone’s face, a loud bang, a sudden movement and it seems as though a point in the past is pulled into the present and takes over. We all have these types of reactions to one degree or another.

      As I sat here writing these words I was reminded of a moment in traffic in San Antonio, TX. I was riding my motorcycle and someone crossed two lanes of traffic and got right in my lane, right next to me, six inches from my handle bars. There was nothing I could do. I was on a curve and I didn’t have the ability to do anything. I was afraid if I made any change, I would get sucked under his car and killed. As I sat here, the memory of that moment triggered the same tightness in my body and feelings of “I’m going to die.”

      Our proverb today contrasts patience with a quick-temper and understanding with folly. When we are patient we demonstrate a degree of understanding. As I think about that other driver, talking to his friends, unaware of my presence right next to his head, I would like to politely knock on his window and ask him to kindly move out of my lane. Is that really what I want? You are right! I want to smash his window and scream that he is trying to kill me!

      One part of me understands he was not trying to kill me. He didn’t even know I was there. The other part wants him to understand the terror he caused deep within me. Patience can grow out of this understanding. But if I let my perception of that moment rule my understanding of the event, impatience results. When I feel like someone is cutting it too closely, in that moment my body reminds me of the motorcycle over twenty five years ago.

      For me, patience has so much to do with not taking things that other people do personally. They are not trying to “get” me. They probably have no idea what their actions did inside of me. When I understand that, and own it, I can then choose in that moment to realize they are not trying to kill me, and I can relax.

      Patient responses have positive long-term consequences. Quick-tempered ones are almost always train wrecks beginning to happen.

      What pushes your buttons toward impatience?