A rant against Walmart

I hate Walmart. Actually I hate what Walmart stands for. Nothing against Sam Walton - he really was a great man, and I'm not sure what the company has become would honor him. What I hate is the consumerism it represents.

I can drive by our local Wally world, night or day, and find the parking lot full. What on earth are people so in need of buying that they need to fill the parking lot (not to mention the isles) all day long? Our town isn't that big!!

And my own answer to that is "frills". I know that some people shop there to get cheap essentials. Food and toilet paper and diapers are things that we really need. But what about the frills? I have a sneaking suspicion that we have simply become addicted to buying. We like the buzz of new crap.

Walmart is a little like the church - we like the buzz, whether it was the founder's intention for that to happen or not. I think Sam Walton wanted to provide a cheap way for people to be able to live, not a cheap way for America to drown in its own consumerism. And I think Jesus started the church to love the world, not provide a religious feel-good for consumer oriented Christians.

It looks to me like we have taken that God shaped hole inside and stuffed it with anything that we can cram in there. How much longer do you suppose He will tolerate that?

Forever twenty

My friend Willie came to visit over the weekend. He is my longest standing friendship - almost 28 years. We went to college together when he was 32 and I was 21. That was a dozen lifetimes ago. Willie is 60 now. Of course I am still in my twenties.....

It struck me as he left today that when you are twenty, you think you will be twenty forever, like the line up of days and months and years will continue indefinitely and you'll always get the chance to do them over if you make a mistake or decide you want to take another path.

And then you wake up one day, and you aren't twenty anymore, and you make adjustments to your expectations of life, and you re-evaluate just how old "old" is, and you decide that you'll be thirty forever instead of twenty forever. And then you turn around and it is forty that you are making "forever". And the longer you live, the older "old" is.

I was out at the park yesterday, watching some hippies hanging around doing nothing, much like hippies have always done, only they were modern day hippies, in their twenties. I wanted to walk over to them and hang out, and I almost did. I knew I could relate and connect with them. Then I thought of looking in the mirror, and realized that I wasn't twenty, and that all they would see was an old guy with kids and a balding head. They wouldn't see me - they would see the shell of me that has gotten older and hopefully a little wiser. They wouldn't be able to see that I was still twenty inside.

When I step back and look at my life, I see that I traded being "forever twenty" for finally growing up, but it took me twice twenty to get there. I just wish sometimes that I could have both - "twenty" and "wisdom".

Pushing a rope

There is an old saying that I have heard to describe something that is tough. People say it is like pushing a rope. It is kind of a funny picture. It is particularly funny because I have tried it.

I notice at those rope pushing times that I might do better to listen to the obvious - you can't push a rope. But our world says 'try harder', and so I do.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we were to trust the timing of things. Those times when it feels like we are pushing a rope might just be times to trust that we should do something else for awhile. Because pushing that rope just plain goes against the laws of the universe. Yet I have to admit that to surrender my agenda and stop pushing something that isn't moving anyway takes a trust in the goodness of God that I find challenging at times. But almost always, listening to the obvious is best.

So I guess we are all gonna do better to pull the rope when it moves, and when it doesn't, let go, and let God move the thing.

Clinging to God

I find that my belief and faith in the presence of the Eternal is pretty temporary. I am ashamed to admit that. After all these years I should probably be a little more able to endure the times when God doesn't seem like He is working. But it takes about 3 minutes and I start wondering.

The blessed part of this whole thing is that He isn't bothered by my faithlessness. Papa is always working, even and especially when I don't sense Him. His function in my life really has nothing to do with me. How cool that I can't mess up His plans, regardless of how carnal and faithless I am. It allows me to rest in His goodness and presence when I don't feel His goodness and presence.

Ain't He cool!

Love and Pain

I have been visiting a new definition of love lately. It has been hard to sit with.

I am beginning to see that real love is really about embracing pain. Because love is about giving to that other person, and if it doesn't cost us something, it isn't really love. If there is benefit in an act that leaves us getting something from the act, that is about us, not that other person. To be truly selfless is to put that other person ahead of ourselves.

If I have a million dollars in the bank and I give $1000 away, it isn't love. There isn't really any pain in that. When I give the million away, that hurts. There is a cost to my gift. Remember when Jesus talked about the widow giving her two pennies away? He said she had given more than everybody else, because it cost her something. He says the money wasn't coming out of her excess - it was coming out of her need. She didn't have anything - it was painful to give it. That is why it was love.

When I stop along to the road to help someone with car troubles, it is kindness. When it cost me something - late to work, money to help them out, etc - then it is love. If it is convenient, it isn't love. I am not saying that kindness isn't valuable. I am saying that real love (not our 21st century definition, but the Jesus definition) costs. It can't not.

The Greek word in the Bible for love is Agape. It means that we aim for what is in the best interest of another person, regardless of the cost to us personally. I see so much of what we call love today is really about being nice to a person, not real sacrifice.

Jesus wasn't nice. He was love. There is a big difference.......

Walking in blessing

I am overwhelmed lately with the goodness of God. I don't know what it is, but He seems to be everywhere, doing things that I just didn't see before. And to be honest, I don't know what to do with it.

I learned earlier in the journey to be okay with the crappy parts of life. I learned that I would follow God even if it didn't make sense, and when there didn't seem to be much of His presence on the trail. I was able to get to a place where I would follow Him, regardless of the path.

But now, "following regardless of the path" has taken on a dimension I hadn't planned on. It actually was easier to follow when things were predictably tough. But now I am in a season where God is blessing and moving and working in ways I never imagined, and I am finding it hard to just be in it.

What a funny problem to have - to struggle being in the good stuff of life. But I know that I need to be willing to follow into this as much as I was willing to follow into the rough times. But I never imagined taking in blessing could be hard.

I find myself deeply thankful that I didn't give up this path when the going was hard. Thank you Papa for the circle of blessing and trial.