A Party Today

Heidi Dru Kortman's blog

My friends here at the retirement complex reserved the formal dining room, and gave me a party. The desklamp will be very much appreciated, and I'll find a place of honor for the flower embellished poems they framed.

I may eventually buy Mark Buchanan's The Rest of God, but for now, I'll consider several small sections of the exerpt.

"Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Ps. 90:12.

"...only those who number their days aright gain a wise heart. Only they become God's sages: those calm unhurried people who live in each moment fully, savoring simple things, celebrating small epiphanies, unafraid of life's inevitable surprises and reverses, adaptive to change, yet not chasing after it."

I want this, and I see that there will be no avoiding reverses and changes. As I said a couple of days ago, I don't usually institute changes, but wait until they collide with me. That might be okay, if at the moment of collision I were not in the habit of internal panic. Externally, I go into what I call 'crisis mode' and tackle the situation with the gifts and talents God loans me. Though my actions make sense and ameliorate the circumstances, there are other parts of me that object, and fuss and fret. It's embarrassing to know how long it has taken in my life for me to even recognize the pattern, much less to admit how sinful and how distrustful of God I am.

Mr. Buchanan has written his book while many congregations speak of being purpose-driven. He requests caution. "Drivenness may awaken purpose or be a catalyst for purpose, but it rarely fulfills it: more often it jettisons it." He goes on to state, "Truly purposeful people have an ironic secret. They manage time less, and pay attention more....They're fully awake."

This sounds much like advice frequently given to would be authors of fiction: "Pay attention to people." It appears that by God's providence, I'm the sort who needs a complete change of location to prompt me to be attentive. That's embarrassing too.

"What matters, Jesus concluded, isn't being rich in stuff: It's being rich toward God. He explained the essence of such richness elsewhere: It's having eyes to see, ears to hear. It's to notice, to pay attention to the time of God's visitation....To live on purpose means to go and do likewise. Purposefulness requires that we pay attention, and paying attention means, almost by definition, that we make room for surprise. We become hospitable to interruption. To sustain that, we need theological touchstones for it--a conviction that God is Lord of our days and years, and that his purposes and his presence often come disguised as detours, messes, defeats."

I am not yet hospitable to interruption, though I do confess that He holds my days and years. I think he sits and shakes his head in dismay at the detours, messes and defeats I've collected in my life, as his righteous response to the few things I do do, because I'm more inclined to label those failures my fault, than I am to propose that messes and defeats outline his purposes for me.

"Think a moment of all the events and encounters that have shaped you most deeply and lastingly. How many did you see coming? How many did you engineer, manufacture, chase down? And how many were interruptions?" (More Later)