Rich in all things

Last night, while trying to figure out what we're doing and where we're at and how we got here and where we're going and, you know, the deep questions of life, I had a couple things happen that can come only from God.

This isn't just a journal, although there are times when that occurs, but last night was worth noting. My dear wife is visiting her mother for a couple days, so I was able to re-assess things (see above). I have been stressing over a fund-raising dinner in December, worried about not enough RSVPs and such, and I have been stressing over things in general.

Then came an email that told me they were giving $600 to the dinner's costs and were seeking more donors and were giving three items to the silent auction. The thing was, I didn't know this person, and this person was being so very gracious. Wow, I was stunned. Seriously stunned. I wrote her back thanking her, telling her that her email came when I most needed it. That I had been down, and how this lifted me up again with her graciousness.

This morning, she sent me a wonderful devotion about an Olive Tree. Again, I do not know this person.

So, last night in the final hour I lay awake, I went to my go-to guy. I watched the late singer-songwriter-preacher-teacher Rich Mullins on You Tube. I'm always struck with a sadness that God took him and left me, an unfair exchange by any stretch, but I always come away thinking that without Rich in my very early spiritual life, I wouldn't be writing this missive right now.

I just listened and reflected. And what I came up with is this:

It's a long road for most of us, this life thing. It's hard, and it's easy, and it's good and it's bad and it's fair and it's unjust and it's all of this things.

The first song I ever heard Rich sing came via Christian radio, an entity I didn't know existed 19 years ago when all this started.

The lyrics for Damascus Road are these:
I say I wanna give You glory Lord, and I do
But everything I could ever find to offer comes from You
But if my darkness can praise Your light
give me breath, and I'll give my life to sing Your praise
On the road to Damascus
I was hung in the ropes of success
When You stripped away the mask of life
they had placed upon the face of death
And I wanna thank You, Lord
More than all my words can say

And from that song came an understanding that perhaps wouldn't have come to me, an understanding about who God was and is and will always be.

It is absolutely unfair of me to have my moments of, er, sinkage, but I still do. I still sin. I still fail. I still fall. All this stuff about instant success and greatness and such is, as far as I can tell, worthless dribble.

What is life is giving of a life, the good and the bad and all that stuff in between to Him and let him sort it out and give back to us what He loves, which is us. He LOVES us. As we are. As we are. I can't say it enough. He loves us as we are.

Without Him, well, I suspect this would have been a shorter life. I am not able to fix myself, still. I never will be. But with Him, with Him, maybe I can do more than I believe I am capable.

The song I want played at my funeral is Rich's Elijah. Look up the words sometime. I give you just one line: This life has shown me how we're wounded and how we're torn, how it's okay to be lonely as long as you're free, sometime my ground was thorny, sometime covered up with stones, but only you can make it what has to be.

That's life. As I know it. As I've known it. As I will probably continue to know it.

I pray that God uses me, uses you, uses us all to bring His kingdom on this earth, as it is in heaven. That's all.

That's life.