The last couple of weeks have been stressful. Work stuff piled up as an ever growing to-do list was at war with two very firm deadlines. Stress built, tension built, and I was an emotional wreck. One day last week I started working at 6:00 am and largely sat in the same place steadily working until 10:00 pm. And I didn’t feel any closer to being done than I did before.
I’ve learned that one of the ways I relax is to spend time in our garden. Life can be going a million miles per hour and it all slows when I crouch or kneel next to a bed of vegetables.
The chores of having a garden are fairly simply and repetitive. Fertilize the soil. Plant things at the right time. Water when its dry. Pull weeds. Harvest. Repeat.
The back-to-basics simplicity is what brings me so much joy. Fresh, organic fruits and vegetables are merely the by-product of the primary benefit.
Each weed I pull it releases a little bit of tension. In the past couple of weeks, the warmer weather arriving forced me to water more… which resulted in weeds springing up everywhere. That was perfect! Because I had plenty of tension, frustration, and anxiety to pull out with each weed as well.
Pulling weeds has a strong tie to my life with Jesus, too.
Here are a few things I’m reminded of as I weed my garden:
You can’t just weed once per week.It’s better to weed a little bit each day.
Weeds like fertile soil just as much as crop producing plants. Where there is growth there will be weeds.
Sometimes you have to be gentle when you pull out a weed. It’s roots my be intertwined with roots of a good plant.
Some weeds have thorns and smell bad. But others are pretty and you’re tempted to keep them. Don’t.
Bugs eat your fruits and vegetables. For some reason they leave weeds alone.
Even the best gardeners pull weeds. You never get above it… you just get better at it. And some just get better at hiding the evidence.
Weeding the garden is work. It’s an easy skill but it is always going to get you dirty and always going to make you sweat.
What are some other parallels between taking care of your garden and your walk with Christ?
Photo by Cindy Seigle via Flickr (Creative Commons)
I’m from Indiana. A big part of my childhood involved playing basketball in driveways.
From the time the ice melted until we could hear the band playing and crowd cheering from Notre Dame stadium all we did was play basketball. We’d get off the bus and play 21. We’d have breakfast on Saturday then play 21 until lunch… followed by 15-20 more games of 21 until dinner.
When we could get 6-7 people together we’d play half court, make it take it to 10. Usually, it was 3-4 guys playing 21 until our fingers cracked or palms were white and the rest of our hands were black with dirt.
Everyone in the neighborhood knew everyone else’s moves. They knew who to guard from outside and who to push to their left hand in the lane. We knew who had an unstoppable jump hook. And we knew who couldn’t make a layup. There was even a kid so good at free throws that we had to make a new rule, after 7-check-up.
But the biggest rule of them all? Put up or shut up.
Photo by DonkerDink via Flickr (Creative Commons)
It never failed that the kids who didn’t play very much ran their mouth the most about how good they were. You’d hear them in the hallways at school trying to convince everyone that they could play. And you’d hear them on the bus all the way home.
Then we’d all get off at their stop, take their ball out of their bushes, roll it to them and say… Put up or shut up.
We’d call their bluff. Maybe they really could play? But usually not.
What does that phrase mean? Simply put, let your actions speak for themselves. It’s easy to run your mouth and tell people how good you are. But can you deliver?
In my neighborhood the best players didn’t have to tell people how good they were. They let their game speak for itself.
And chumps like me? We just kept out mouths shut.
All talk, no show
This same principle applies today.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to someone running their mouth about something. They know how to do my job better than me. Or they know how to do someone else’s job better than them so they are just trying to prove how smart they think they are to me.
They know how to minister to my youth group better than me. They know how to parent, to budget, to garden, to _____ [insert verb] better than I do.
And sometimes I just wish we were back in middle school so I could follow them off the bus, go fish the basketball out of their bushes, pass it to them and say “Put up or shut up.”
Looking in the mirror
My dad says a phrase that I think about all the time, “Don’t write a check that you can’t cash.” I think about that a lot. Especially when I run my mouth about what I can do, want to do, or should do.
I need to make sure that I’m not just talking about things for the sake of talking about them but that I’m willing to “cash those checks” with my life.
Church leadership culture is quick to celebrate the person with the loudest megaphone who says the quote worthy thing that gets retweeted all over the heavens.
That’s a whirpool of “put up or shut up” that I want no part of. Eventually, someone is going to ask them to cash that check.
Instead, I’d rather just keep my mouth shut and do my best to let my game speak for itself.
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” ~ William Arthur Ward
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” ~ Sir Winston Churchill
“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.” ~ Steve Jobs
I don’t pretend to know what today’s problems are for you.
But this much I do know–
The best ideas comes from those on the front lines. That’s the great joy of innovation. Today’s heroes count their riches while tomorrows heroes work all night.
Avoiding failure is a failure in itself. The trick to creating new stuff is to fail fast. Risk isn’t the enemy, comfort is.
Celebrate every milestone. A step towards your ultimate goal is still a step forward. Plus, moving forward will gain you momentum.
Every person has a creative mind. Don’t sell anyone short. Rarely are the best things innovated alone. Your best idea might come from listening to another person talk about the same problem.
Look at your problem from every angle. The best putters in golf walk all the way around their shot.
I have a knack for getting an empty seat next to me when I fly Southwest.
On more than 60% of my 2010 flights I sat in the window seat and had an empty middle seat. In January 2011, I flew with Southwest 11 times and had an empty middle seat 7 times. (The other 4 were completely full flights with no empty seats.)
As I bragged about this to my friends, they began to wonder: How in the world is Adam doing that?
Sit in a window seat, then place a book or your iPod/headphones in the middle seat.
It’s the book detail that my friends bring up and eventually resulted in the graphic you see above. More often than not I am reading a non-fiction Christian book like Kenda-Creasy Deans Almost Christian or John Ortberg’s Faith and Doubt. For some reason those types of titles tend to cause on-coming passengers to continue moving towards the back of the plane more than the latest issue of Sports Illustrated or Wired.
That’s the genesis of this fake book cover. My friends and I hypothesized, “If people won’t sit next to me because I’m reading a book with a Christian title, what would happen if I made a fake book cover with an overtly Christian title AND made the book about evangelism?”
That’s how this was born.
How to Share Your Faith on a Plane: 25 Scenarios for Converting This Flight from Transportation to Transformation
Instructions:
Download the pdf.
Print/cut it to the size you need. (The original size is the size of a standard hard cover book with a jacket)
Replace the jacket your book came with and follow the tips on the back cover.
This week we taught our kids about lent. So now that lent has begun, we wanted to make sure that we kept the long 40 days in front of us.
With that in mind I made some sweet signs to hang up around the house. That way, if we see someone cheating we can kindly remind them of their commitment to fast from the thing we have chosen as we prepare, as a family, for Easter.
If you’d like to download your own sign, I’ve added both a generic pdf and the original Photoshop files to my free downloads page. (Click the image below)
[download id=”14″]
For the record, here is what our family is giving up:
[Abram bounces his head to the song as he pulls the phone out of his pocket.]
[Abram’s glances at the caller ID and stops cold. He raises his eyebrow for a brief second, thinking about letting it go to voicemail.]
Abram: Ah, man. I don’t really have time for this today. Give me a break… OK, whatever.
[Abram swipes to take the call]
Abram: [With a little frustration in his voice] Hello?
God: Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
Abram: You don’t even say hello anymore? For once it’d be cool if you would at least say who it is. [pause] OK, OK… what do you want me to do? Leave the country and go somewhere? What do you mean by “leave?” You mean go for a little trip? Or do you mean I need to pack up my house, quit my job, and move? Are you OK? Have you been creating planets again? A little more clarity would be nice here.
God: I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.
Abram: [pausing, looking inquisitively at his dog, who just raised his leg to pee on a bush.] What does that even mean? You don’t even say hello, you tell me to leave the country…. and now, a great nation? All I ever asked you to do was to help me be a better dad. A great nation? I’m not into politics. I don’t want to become a great nation… I just want to now how to talk to my kids about the tough stuff… you know… sex and why the Cubs suck. Stuff like that. [Pause, catching up to the reality of who he’s arguing with.] Any way we can talk a little bit more about the blessing part of it and a whole lot less of this moving somewhere else bit? I mean… I’ve got my kids in a great school. There better be one heck of a blessing for me to talk about pulling the kids out of school. You know, I’ve got a wife. I’ve got to sell her on this idea. Blessing, yeah… talk about the blessing some more.
God: I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
Abram: [Letting out a little doubtful snort] You want me to tell that to Sarai? Have you met her? [raising eyebrows and envisioning getting punched when he tells her.] She’s pretty comfortable in our neighborhood as it is. She loves our house. She’s got a whole bunch of girlfriends. Our kids our happy. We’re safe. And you want me to go home and tell her that leaving all of that is going to make our name great? She’s gonna throw that back in my face, you know? And I don’t think I like the sound of “you will be a blessing.” I can’t sell that to her. She’s going to want to here that you are going to bless us. Not be a blessing, get a blessing. Work with me here, G.
God: I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.
Abram: [turning his heart from despair, slowly to more of a realistic tone.] Well, now we’re talking. Sarai’s gonna dig this part of it. So when our kids start at a new school and the other kids tease them because they don’t look right, don’t dress right, and live in a neighborhood they clearly don’t belong… you’re gonna have their back. And you’re going to make it pretty obvious that people are getting blessed because they bless my family, right? I’m getting the idea that you aren’t asking me if I’m willing to do this… so you’re starting to speak my language.
God: And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
Abram: [long pause, having been stunned into thinking deeply about those words] Whoa. OK… so what’s you’re saying is that if I go home and convince my wife to move from a house we love to a place to be determined later… that every person on the planet will be blessed through me? I’m not even sure how to respond. I guess I get to respond just by doing it, right?
[Abram realizes that God has hung up]
Abram: Hello? You still there? Yeah, I’m out here walking the dog… this canyon must have a dead zone or something. You’re breaking up.
[Pulling his phone down, he sees the screen displaying “Call ended.”]
[By this time, the dog has gotten tired of standing on his walk. So he’s laid down on his side. Abram puts his phone back in his pocket, stares off into the distance some more.]
Abram: [under his breathe] Yeah, easy enough for God to call me like that. Now I’ve got to go home and try to convince Sarai. How would God know? Not like He has a wife.
[Pulling on the leash and getting the dog going.]
Abram: Come on. Let’s go. Good dog.
[Light out]
Narrator: So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.
These were the words of Paul to the Colossian church. He was wrapping up his letter to them with a few tidbits of sage advice. Like bits of dessert after a Holy Spirit inspired meal.
Those words have stuck with me and become part of my self-talk. You know, the little words that run through your head all the time. A lot of people label me an optimist or a glass half full guy. In fact, I label myself an opportunist. I’m constantly asking myself, “Am I making the most of this opportunity?”
Maybe that’s a spiritual or ministry opportunity? (Paul’s original intent of those words) But maybe that’s an opportunity at work? Or a business opportunity? Or an great idea? The possibilities are as endless as the food combinations at a buffet.
The Opportunity Stomach
I’ve found that there is a strategic difference between waiting for the right opportunity and and jumping at every opportunity.
Think of opportunities like a meal. You are either hungry for it or you aren’t. (Most people aren’t. They just pass on opportunities without even thinking about it.)
But if I jump on too many opportunities my appetite for really great opportunities wanes. Then, because I waited for the perfect opportunity I tend to lack the experience to know the difference between a choice meal and a cheap rip-off.
I notice that most people tend to approach new opportunities like they approach their favorite restaurant. They like what they know and they know what they like. So they turn their nose up and almost all new opportunities.
Whereas, I tend to nibble at a lot of opportunities and save room for the big ones. That way I know what a great opportunity tastes like when it comes along.
With that said, the only problem with nibbling is that sometimes you get too full for the big meal.
Photo by Laura Burlton via Flickr (Creative Commons)
My favorite story in the Bible, hands down, is that of Joseph. I’ve read Genesis 37-50 about 100 times. It never gets old!
From the first reading of the story until today, I’ve always wanted to be like Joseph. Dream on, dreamer!
Take it from this dreamer… dreams do come true.
May God grant you the opportunity to chase dreams like I’ve been fortunate to chase dreams.
Just once in your life… it’s my prayer that you wake up in a cold sweat with an idea that won’t let you go. And you realize that in order to shake the dream, you need to chase it. So, not knowing how else to get rid of it, you set out to fulfill it.
Maybe that dream takes a day or a week or a month? (Like building a treehouse for your kids or running in a 5k or recording a song.)
Or maybe that dream takes years until you see real progress?
Both timeframes bear the same satisfaction.
Here’s my encouragement today:
Just chase. Be a dreamer. Get after it. Geek out on it. Own it to the point where people call you Joseph. Invest yourself to the point that your friends mock you like they mocked Noah. Enjoy the satisfaction of getting fired for dreaming too much.
The results will come. And seeing things happen in your life will give you a glimpse of something heavenly. As you chase dreams you’ll see God do things you’d never thought possible.
The world is full of perfectly ordinary people like you or I doing extraordinary things.
They are dreamers. And membership in the tribe of dreamers is open on only one prerequisite.
God has dreams for you more wild than you could ever imagine.
Since before you were born, before your fertilized egg implanted in the womb of your mother, before she peed on a stick and knew you even existed… God knew who you’d be and what kind of person you could become! Could is the operative word. It is the opportunity placed before you if only you’ll act on the impulse to chase recklessly.
Contrary to the pessimists in your life chasing dreams is not child’s play.
The world needs more dreamers. Not fewer. We have big problems that need big dreams to fix.
Chasing dreams is horribly inefficient. It takes time to make the impossible possible.
The bottom line is simple:
Your dreams will never be fulfilled until you do something with them. A dream is just a dream until you do something with it.
Kristen and I are completing our first year of transforming our backyard into an organic garden. The first year has been full of fun harvests and humiliating defeats.
If we’ve learned anything about gardening in the first year it is this principle: To eat more, you need to guess less.
We’ve learned that when we planted things is as important as what we want.
We’ve learned how to adapt our watering to the weather as opposed to just setting a timer.
We’ve learned how a baby weed is just as dangerous as a major one.
We’ve learned that is something gets bigger than you wanted, prune it right away or it’ll take over the garden.
We’ve learned that if we want to keep our harvest coming, we need to be patient in spreading out when we plant so it doesn’t all come at once.
We’ve learned that planting something in the wrong season really doesn’t work.
We’ve learned that your yield is directly proportional to the quality of soil where you plant at.
We didn’t know anything walking into this. So we guessed a lot. And we let our emotions get the best of us a few times.
But heading into the second year, we’ve learned a lot and documented what we did, we hope to eat a little bit more with less mistakes in 2011.
Isn’t this the same as with any other endeavor? You might guess and get something right by accident. But experience always yields a better result.
Awesome is one of my favorite words. While my day is full of moments of awesome there are only a few moments in life described by the word awe.
Here’s a few…
Hearing the words, “I’m pregnant” from your wife. (Trust me, as much “awe” is created the first time at 24 as at 34 when it wasn’t expected.)
Seeing the sunrise over the mountains or the sunset over the ocean for the first time. (Whoa, there are colors I never even imagined!)
Meeting a starving person who asks if they can pray for you. (Whoa, you mean you can really praise God even when you aren’t comfortable?)
The birth of your child. (Whoa, you and me doing that can result in this?)
Witnessing 50,000 worshipping God in a city where hundreds of thousands just died in an earthquake. (Whoa, how is that possible?)
A young lady sharing her deepest fear and how God showed up in front of her peers. (Whoa, her words are more powerful than mine.)
The realization that Jesus died for me. (Whoa, the son of God… was perfect… and gave his life for me?)
A jet-lag induced early morning walk through a crisply cold city in a foreign country. (Whoa, discovering this place is amazing!)
Riding the Maid of the Mist deep into Niagara Falls to feel the full force of gravities simplicity. (Whoa, I’m soaking and exhilarated at the same time.)
The moment you realize you both feel the same way and knowing you’ll spend the rest of your life with her. (Whoa, there really is someone just for me.)
There are moments in life so full of awe that words truly defy them. I think that’s the history of the word awe right there. Something happened and a persons jaw dropped and said, “Awe.”
Getting back, recreating them, and remembering them creates years of inspiration.
