Exploding Whale!

Sunday, February 22, 2015

“An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.” - Winston Churchill (our way of thinking is what tells us what we see)

 “The greatest danger for most of us is NOT that we aim too high and we miss it, but we aim too low and reach it.” – Michelangelo (aiming high and missing is not failure)

How many of us love the experience of rush hour traffic?

Rush hour is an interesting phenomenon if you let yourself be present to what is going on. You can sit in your car and watche the faces of the people in the cars next to you. Most of their faces will exhibit an empty look like, “I am doing this because I have to do, but my heart is not in it.”

These people who are down and disheartened in daily life are our brothers and sisters. These are God’s children. What about the promise of fulfillment, the promise of great glory, the promise of God’s joy? What is happening to those promises, in regular, everyday ordinary life?

A lot of people do not feel joy in daily life... It can change.

It seems to me that the brother of the Prodigal Son did not feel joy in daily life. The story ends this way (Luke 15:25-32) ^“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

What I want to ask you is: Was that older brother, the older son, aware that he was always with his father, and that all his father had was his? Or did he carry his relationship with his father as a burden?

It sounds to me as if there was a lot of resentment there, a lot of the older brother comparing his life with his brother’s life, and feeling he was coming up on the short end.

We can feel this way in life, too. We compare ourselves with others and assign success to them but no success, or less success, to us. Then we’re not happy enough because we’re living an “ordinary” life, and we might try to satisfy ourselves with achievements, accomplishments, and things, and it does not work.

Maybe we become like Ziggy in the cartoon where Ziggy is coming around a corner. Heading toward that corner is a man carrying a sign that says, “Happiness is just around the corner.” Ziggy says, “Gee, I must have missed it.”

Is life like that for us??

My answer to that is, “Probably from time to time.” Spirituality is what you make of life, day by day, becoming FULLY awake to, and aware of, the Presence of God. Spirituality loves the regular ordinary days as much as the extraordinary.

Part of the problem is a learned behavior that we humans have that induces us to be overly critical. Some people call it human nature. They say it’s human nature to make mistakes. We look at the mistakes we have made and we say, “This is terrible! I call myself an evolving spiritual being, and yet I do things like this. I certainly hope nobody ever finds out about it!”

I wonder what life would be like if we could read each other’s minds, what things we would see. I tend to think we would see a commonality in the things we are ashamed of that would make us smile. We all make mistakes. And because we all make mistakes, and because we criticize ourselves for mistakes, I want to share with you a story about a mistake that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Let’s look at a video clip of a television broadcast from KATU TV Portland, Oregon. The year is 1970. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVVW8BferzQ)

God is present in the little mistakes and in the epic mistakes. God is present in the little successes and the epic successes. God is present in the exciting and in the mundane. God is Present. Period.

In the story of Jacob’s ladder, Jacob is travelling from Beersheba to Harran and he stops along the road for the evening. He lays his head on a stone, sleeps, and dreams of a ladder between earth and heaven with God at the top and angels ascending and descending. When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it.”

Where was Jacob? He was along the road (could we say, “on the path”?), sleeping with his head on a rock. In other words his surrounding was mundane.

The next verse is probably even more telling. “And he said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’”

I am going to give you a challenge. I invite you to take a thought and use it in some of the places you do not consider so particularly sacred.

I do not know what you are going to be doing today—whether it is something wonderful or something very ordinary and mundane—but I do know that whatever you are going to do, wherever and however you do it, God is there.

Walt Whitman said, “To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.” This is real life!

When we are out of this awareness we are experiencing only a part of life because we have left God out. I would like you to take the thought with you: How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

God is an experience. Spirituality is experienced in the midst of doing ordinary things.

William Shakespeare said, “All glory comes from daring to begin.”

Get personally involved with God.

I give you the invitation today, and the challenge, to remember this thought in those times when it seems like nothing much is going on, like nothing of any great value is happening, or like you are not particularly worthy of being called the child of God that you are.

How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

Spirituality is all about our awareness. The gift has been given. God has said, “Child, you are always with Me, and all I have is yours.” It is up to us to respond, to see opportunity everywhere – in the exhilarating and the seeming calamity to be aware of the Presence of God.

Aim High!

How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. Think about it! I wish you a regular ordinary day filled with the presence of God.

God bless you!