I used to think people who hung out at places like coffee shops were weird, but I have spent the past two hours of my Friday night at Panera drinking green tea and sitting by a fire and it has been great. I've been reading and writing, but maybe more importantly, I have been relaxing. As an introvert who works in a very extroverted profession of service, I need my alone time to recharge and gather my thoughts.
I have also been preparing for the men's weekend that my small group and I are staffing next week. When I attended the same weekend more than three years ago, I went into it thinking I would meet some guys from church and maybe make a new friend or two. I did make some friends, but I got much more than I bargained for. Since then, I have been meeting with about 10 of those men at least twice a month, plus the time we spend together just because we want to.
More than that, I saw the man God wants me to be and the obstacles that stood between me and that man. I'm still not there, but I believe it was Martin Luther King, Jr. who said something to the effect of “I’m not the man I ought to be and I’m not the man I want to be, but thank God I’m not the man I used to be.”
I now have a mission and a purpose that I am working toward. I spent a lot of this Panera time revisiting that mission and how I am going to live it out. I am going to love God, lead my wife and family to serve the Lord and share the gospel by living my life in such a way that God can not be denied.
MLK also said, "If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well."
Jesus tells us in Luke 17 that at the end of that day of streetsweeping (or for me, serving chicken sandwiches) "when you have done everything you were told to do, (you) should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’"
My desire is to pour myself out daily, serving God with all I am, knowing I have only done my duty in service to my Lord.
For someone who likes words: I just read this article and then read your blog, in that order - So you're the first person I'm passing this along to.
ReplyDelete"My husband and I don’t have a great “meeting” story. We met in a conventional way and had a conventional wedding. And in some sense, we lead a conventional life.
But my husband has seen me at my worst, at my most vile. And he has seen me at my best. He knows the things I don’t tell anyone, and the lies that I tell everyone but him. I have made sacrifices for him and been angry about it. Sometimes his flaws are so egregious, so blatant, they are all I see. And sometimes his kindness is so stunning that I am humbled.
And that’s love. Big, epic, fairy-tale love. The kind of love people write about. The kind of love that could inspire a poem."
-Sarah Healy