Less Waiting. More Doing.

 I heard this today.

“ Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” John 14:6-8

I heard it from the stage but it’s a story I know by heart.  I know because the very question that Phillip asked was the question that I am asking still.

As he says it from the stage, it makes sense, what Jesus says. That He is the way.  The truth.  The life.  If you really know Him, you will also know His Father.

How could Phillip have missed that?  How could he have been so blind?

How could he have been so dumb to ask?

Wait.  Was it dumb?  Or was he just asking what we all ask?  What I am still asking?

Was he brave enough to say the words that my heart hides?

Jesus tells Phillip that he has seen the Father because he has seen Jesus.  Because he has seen the things that Jesus has done.  

Because Phillip has seen, he should know it to be true.

And really, haven’t I seen it too? 

Haven’t I seen the miracles? 

The goodness.  The feeding.  The healing.   The love.   The saving.

I have seen those things.  Yet just like Phillip I still need more proof.

I used to think that it was God who needed to show up. 

That I had gone as far as I could go and it was up to Him to close the gap.

That I had done my part and now the only thing left to do was to wait.

Wait to feel it.  Wait to feel Him.

But maybe what he said from the stage today is the key. 

Maybe simply inching my toes up to the imaginary line that I’ve drawn and waiting for God to step over first will only ever leave me asking questions.

That in order to feel it I first have to live it.  

That in loving.  In giving.  In feeding.  In sharing.  In serving. 

That in becoming like Jesus I would come to see Jesus.

That if I want to know God in the way that I long for, I have to live in the way that God longs for. 

And so maybe today the answer to the question that I have been asking for the longest time becomes less about waiting quietly to hear it and more about doing something to find it.  

 

    

From This Stick

I found out this morning that another one of my cousins from my Dad’s side of the family was sentenced to 14 years in prison on drug related charges.   And I took the news hard.

So much so that I’ve been surprised with my own reaction.  To be honest, I wouldn’t know this kid if I saw him.  I don’t even know his real name.  We don’t have a relationship and I’m not even sure that he knows that I exist.

But I get him off my mind.

We are family.  We share the same blood and the some of the same genetic make up.  We share grandparents and great grandparents.  And we once shared a last name.

I’m not sure why I care so much.  But maybe it’s this:

De te palo, tal astilla.

In English we would use that phrase to mean “like father, like son”. 

But that’s not what those words mean.  Their literal translation is “from this stick, this splinter”.

Maybe that’s it. 

Maybe that’s why I can’t stop thinking about him today. 

Maybe it’s because I know that I was supposed to be him.  Maybe it’s because I know the research on addictions.  I know the genetic predispositions to things that are ingrained in a family’s legacy.  Their literal DNA.

Maybe it’s because the family name that we share has a literal translation of it’s own.   

Liar.  Cheater.  Abuser.  Thief.  Addict.

And maybe it’s because I spent so much time trying to convince everyone that I was more than the sum of my family’s sins that I forgot. 

 

Maybe I forgot until today that the reason why my life doesn’t look like his actually has nothing to do with me.  

Maybe it’s that, in my need for people to know that I was different from them, I forgot why I was different.  I forgot that I didn’t earn a better way of life.  I forgot that being “good” wasn’t what separated me from them.

Maybe I forgot until today that I didn’t deserve it. 

But that I was gifted it.  And in forgetting the gift, I ‘ve failed to give thanks to the gifter.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.  Ephesians 2:8 

Thanks be to God.