One day at at time

It’s early. Outside the rain drips past my window.  I’m on Lake Huron at a debriefing for a mission team that just spent a month in a difficult place. There’s no internet, so I can’t post, but I’m sitting in a cabin room with paneled walls, just a few feet from a shore acting like an ocean, boasting tides and water that goes on forever. Yesterday the weather was perfect. I napped on the beach while the rest of the group played beach volley ball and waded waist deep in the lake to cool off, and then we all went to an ice cream shop with pure 50’s décor. After a supper of homemade spaghetti at a full table, the team reflected on their trip, and, between a few more “social naps,” I reflected on a trip I have been taking into a very old book.

The book unsettles me. It’s a devotional book, a compilation of the meditations of medieval monks, and was the number #2 best seller, right next to the Bible, for five hundred years. It was mentioned over and over in Heretics and Heroes, so I thought I should read it, but it was slow going. I’m still processing it. It’s called The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A’Kempis and is Oswald Chambers, Charles Spurgeon, and A. W. Tozer all rolled into one.

Here is a taste. “Think often about why you have renounced the world. Keep yourself from all temporal care. Let nothing be great, nothing high, nothing pleasing, nothing acceptable to you except God himself, because the soul that loves God doesn’t look at anything beneath God. Sometimes it’s necessary to use violence to strive against the sensual appetite, which ought to be chastised and compelled to undergo slavery, until it’s ready for all things, contented with little, delighted with simple things, and never murmurs at any inconvenience. Bow humbly under the hands of all men, and take special care that, if anyone requires something of you, or even shows a desire for it--whether it’s your superior, your inferior, or your equal--you fulfill that desire with good will. Rejoice only in the contempt of yourself. Learn perfect self-denial, living in My will without contradiction or complaint. If you want to be perfect, sell all that you have. If you want to be my disciple, deny yourself. O Lord, grant me the ability to imitate you by despising the world.”

Heavy stuff. And some of it seems to imply that next to God, the people around you don’t really matter much, which of course doesn’t square with God’s portrayal of the body of Christ. Sometimes the monastic life of the ancient saints ignored the rest of God’s family working regular jobs, so I’m glad the reformers reminded us that all believers are priests, not just the ones in “full time service.” But still, my first reaction to this book was guilt, because at my age, I feel like those old guys setting their stones back on the ground and walking away from the adulterous woman crumpled at Jesus’ feet, because I know what’s in my own heart. As much as I want to be completely sold out for God, and as much as I know this is the best thing in all the world, I also know it’s more than I have in me right now. The chasm between what I want to do and what I can do is galling.

So I started writing this post to say, hey, we should all try harder. We should be more monkish, renouncing everything and living closer to the soil. But something stopped me, and I lay the thing aside.

Later in the evening, the group started singing a song with these words: “You’re a good, good Father. You tell me that you're pleased and that I’m never alone.” And when the evening ended with a commissioning for these people as they asked themselves what comes next, I realized that like them, I live with this tension of wanting to be somewhere, but not being able to get there…at least not today. And that is what this journey is all about, getting there, yes, but one day at a time. I have a year of treatments and changes and unknowns ahead of me. I’ll get there, but I’ll be a wreck if I try to manage more than just this one day, three days after my last chemo, when the food just won’t settle, and the tiredness won’t stop. 

A few months back, I was at a retreat, and my friend Lori was speaking, and she related this vision to us. She was playing basketball, and trying her hardest, and she glanced over at the bench, and the coach wasn’t there. Just wasn’t there. She felt her stomach drop. She thought, that’s what it’s like; always trying, and feeling like it’s not enough, and he wants more, and where do you draw from to get there? And then she realized he wasn’t on the bench, because he was with her, on the floor, teaching, guiding, helping her get there. He was a good coach, after all. He’s a good Father, after all.

I’m a teacher. I teach six different grades. Sure, I have high expectations; just ask my kids. But when I have a new 7^th grader who has never turned in a paper longer than six lines, I don’t demand much. Sure, I know where this kid will be in a few years, creating polished, college-level essays by the time she graduates, but that is not where the kid is right now. Right now, she’s writing one paragraph. And I am content because she’s moving one step farther than she’s ever been before. As a teacher, that makes me smile. As a teacher, a coach, a father, it makes God smile when we move one step closer to Him in obedience. Just one step. Just one day at a time. Sometimes today’s step seems too big. Sometimes we even ask for a bigger one, because we’re ready. But sometimes it’s ok to listen to waves lap a shore, and fall asleep gently, and know that he’s a good, good Father, and he’s pleased with the one faltering step we took today.