Dan's
Thoughts
"Dan's Thoughts" will not always be sent out via email. Please frequently check the website for Dan's latest writings. www.christchurchnashville.org
Trish # 51 -May 17th, 2005
I was rereading yesterday’s email and noticed that the first line was, “the sage continues.” That should have been “the SAGA continues.” That’s a considerable difference! First of all, I am hardly a sage. No real sage would begin a note to his friends like that! (I am blaming spell-check and moving on!)
Anyway, yesterday I was writing about Pentecost. I had a bit more to say about the subject if you have a moment. A good thing about being raised Pentecostal was that we were taught to expect great and powerful things. The bad thing about being raised Pentecostal is that we often only expected great and powerful things. The problem with that, you may have noticed, is that life is about a few great and powerful things with a lot of ordinary and even boring things in between.
In a moment of spiritual fervor during Pentecost, Trish decided to run the Phoenix marathon. She was moved to raise money for a hospital in Haiti. Today though, after her therapy season, she said, “Gosh! What have I done? My therapist says I can do the run but I will have to keep working out, three days a week, for six more months!”
Oops!
Isn’t that how it works? In a moment of passion we pledge money, time or attention to some project or person. After we return to sanity though we have to face the implications! Sometimes, it’s too late to back out of what we have promised. Furthermore, the larger our commitment, the longer it will take to work out the implications, details or requirements of our commitment. That’s why the Bible talks about us having to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” We have accepted God’s offer of salvation but the effects and implications of salvation take us a lifetime to unfold. The power of the gospel slowly works into the fiber of our lives in good times and difficult times, through challenges and opportunities
Trish made a good decision in a moment of great joy and passion. Now she faces months of sweat and inconvenience.
What does that have to do with Pentecost? Well, the traditional church calendar begins with Advent, about four weeks before Christmas. It moves through Christmas to epiphany – the remembrance of the wise men’s visit to baby Jesus and on to Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of Lent. Lent takes us through to Easter, Easter on to Pentecost. The first half of the year is filled with feasts and celebrations, with big stuff! Then, from Pentecost on to Advent, that is to say from June to late November, the calendar moves through something called ORDINARY TIME.
During ordinary time we walk through week after week without any big celebration. We just do – well, ordinary things. But the idea is to take what we have learned and experienced from Advent to Pentecost and work it into the every day fiber of our ordinary lives.
No event, however great, really changes anyone. It is what we do with ordinary time that makes or breaks our lives. Do we keep our commitments and promises? Do we make and maintain good habits? How well do we do with changing diapers and hoeing weeds, with saying, “thank you” and with respecting ordinary conversation and ordinary people?
Most of us like big stuff. We even need big stuff, at least occasionally. So of course Pentecost is great. But we need ordinary time to actually work out what God has begun in us in the special times.
Now if I were really a sage, I would be better at practicing what I am preaching here.
Then again, this is a new season. Every spring we get another Pentecost. Then, after Pentecost, we get another chance at ordinary time. We have to help one another work out God’s plan for our lives during seasons like this. So the next time you see Trish, tell her that she’ll make that run if she will just keep on keeping on during ordinary time.
If she is in a good mood, she’ll thank you!
If not?
Well, I am too much of a sage to comment on that possibility.
Dan