Coming alive at the right time

          Sixty years. Gone in a flash. Done. Over. No-refundable, these things. Tomorrow I'll turn the big 60. Rod Steward sang, "the morning sun when it's in your face really shows you age," to Maggie May once. I guess it really does. I've aged, lost hair, gained weight and gone on.
          I've been a journalist and a pastor, and the two paths somehow co-existed for a long time.
          God has walked with me even when I was far too unlikeable for most folks. This I know for I trigger his being by triggering my own.
          I've lived through the death of both adopted parents and never knowing my birth parents. I've lived without siblings, but with the thought I might have them. I've lived through Columbine and the Challenger explosion, through moon landings and war upon war. I've seen the impossible be invented. I've dialed rotary phones and texted on my I-phone. I've seen Wolverine's claws come out of his hands in a motion picture, and I've read stories about heroic dogs and even Martians invading earth. I've breathed life and lost 20 years to addiction.
          I've lived to the very extent of life, and I've lived mundanely, piecing together all that stuff as best I could..
          But I've lived. Never going where I imagined, never living with much of a plan. Always being pulled by the desire to be loved and pushed by the ego that comes with that.
          I suspect I'll continue to live after I write this, but what I've learned, especially after losing a son-in-law to a motorcycle way, way too soon, is that we never know. None of us.
          Beloved pets die when you're in Israel and can't say goodbye. Friends die when you least expect it, as well. Jobs, plans, they all die. A proper goodbye I think from time to time.
        There's a time for it all, Solomon wrote.
          But till I don't, I guess I'll just have to live.
          There was a real long time when I was ashamed of who I was, what I was, and would have done just about anything to give up the years I wasted. I was in such a hurry to replace them with something good. But the fact that finally made itself known to me is that in the long run every thing I ever did led me to this place. Without the bad experiences, I might not be able to absorb the goodness and forgiveness and especially the grace of God. Father, and maybe especially the Spirit of our Lord.
          Today, my 60th birthday, is lit with kilowatts galore burning in the background.
          Let me be mindful of those who are lacking...lacking in food, in finance, in health, and let our prayers enter the throne room and be heard by you, a God who cares, who listens, and who acts.
          And like one of the two greatest songwriters of my life, Bono, wrote once,

I have climbed highest mountain
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire
I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

          I've found a love in Mary I can't begin to describe, a love that surfaces and sustains in ways I neither have time nor wisdom  to do.. I have had wonderful children, a charmed life when I'm with them, and the grand kids continue to empower me to be more than I am. I have had loss, but I've had gain.
          And the most important thing I've learned, the Apostle Paul taught me.
          He wrote a couple things that I need to share before I go.
          First, Paul wrote to the church in Rome, "But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.:
          Then to a church in Phillipi, he wrote, "I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am. I don’t mean that your help didn’t mean a lot to me—it did. It was a beautiful thing that you came alongside me in my troubles."
          It absolutely was a beautiful thing that God did. He saved me in many more ways than one, and I'm grateful, eternally grateful.
          Am I now perfect. From the hard-fought time of birth to a date far, far from it, my imperfections  created real, imperfect, and dastardly. My addictions will never go completely away, it seems. They will snort, paw at the ground in a frigid winter. But go away? Nah, not completely away.
          But I've learned that the recipe for happy is taking whatever I have, whatever I need, pouring them together like frozen yogurt and bananas, and redeeming them for what they are, with whatever I have.
          Taking all we have, blending them together, pouring them into each other, mixing them as if this actually is what we meant to do all along. There perhaps is a plan to even the grandest of notions. We walk this road as if we knew what we were doing, a plan for the outcome devised as if it were known to all.
          It has taken every bit of 60 years to find that out. But I have, found that out, I mean..
          And I'm not exactly ready to stop looking. I passed 25,000 page views on this website while I was doing this 10-day look at my life. I think I'll go to 60,000 and be done.
          Emerson wrote, "Getting old is a fascinating thing. The older you get, the older you want to get."
          I reckon that's about right.
          The Boss will finish this up by reminding  me what my dear friends Tommy and Ricky said when I was seven and we tried to dig a hole all the way to China,

 "Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim
The walls of my room are closing in
There's a war outside still raging
You say it ain't ours anymore to win
I want to sleep beneath
Peaceful skies in my lover's bed
With a wide open country in my eyes
And these romantic dreams in my head
Once we made a promise we swore we'd always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Blood brothers in a stormy night
With a vow to defend
No retreat, baby, no surrender

          We go on, friends, till we can't. We face life and death with the same set of principles instilled by a love of God and a love of the impossible.
          That's life ...
          And beyond. ...
          Let me close with this prayer for all of us:
          Today let us be mindful of those who are needful, needing a cool drink of water on hot summer's day.
          Dear one, as we go for a walk on a heated Summer's day, let us be mindful of those who are seeking, love they've never known, seeking answers they've never found, seeking to meet desires they can't understand.
          Let us today, Father, be thoughtful of those around us whose names we've mentioned, whose hearts we've thought of and of those to whom the Holy Spirit is reminding us of even as we pray.
          Your love is unstoppable. Your power is without precedent. Your will is what we seek in our prayer time today.

Father,

As we re-start this journey together, (the people of your) church and pastor, congregation's family and pastor's family, let us always be thinking of others first. Let every decision we make be made with the thought of how do we transform this community in the name of Jesus? Let every desire we have be met with the thought of how we bring new life into the church. And let every need we seek to meet as a collective body be seen through the prism of love.

We seek you today, Father God.

We need you today, sweet Jesus, Son of God.

We call on you today, Holy Spirit of God.

          I've been just about everything I've ever wanted to be, done just about everything I've ever wanted to do except maybe see the Grand Canyon or the Rocky Mountains. Still...
          I've had hundreds of pets, saved dozens of animal lives, preached somewhere in the hundreds of sermons.
          I've been loved, and I've been out there somewhere that love has difficulty going. I've felt the hand of God on me when I was a kid, and I've sought that hand as an adult.
          And through it all, through it all, I've found love that can't be explained, can't be shared on page nor with pen.