Solitude

Meetings. Problems. Phone calls. Questions. Chicken Littles dashing in to report falling skies. People running up with their hair on fire (some needing only an eye-dropper to extinguish, others needing the Mississippi river). Demands for reaction, not reflection.

At times I wonder, "Is this why Jesus so often went away, alone?"

Perhaps it is one reason, but I must avoid thinking that it is the reason, must avoid the trap of seeking escape as an end.

I believe that Jesus used solitude as a means: a means to prayer, a means to have time with the Father, a means to recharge in order to re-engage. When I look at the big picture of His life as a whole, or at the big picture of the Bible as a whole, I am drawn away from the smallness of my everyday perspective. I realize the foolishness of equating:

• my self-focused yearning for peace and quiet with His God-focused preparation for the next step toward the cross,
• my petulance and impatience toward others with His righteous outrage toward hypocrisy and profanity,
• my limited view of surfaces and symptoms with His eternal view of purposes and causes.

The solitude of a cave in which I can lick my wounds is no substitute for the peak on which He met the father, whether the mountain peak of prayer or the hilltop of Calvary.

Rip off the tag!

Someone recently described to me a conversation between person A and person B:

A: "Oh, you're a __X__. Then you must think __Y__."

B: "Where did that come from? I don't want A to think that I think __Y__!"

I don't like being labeled and dismissed. I don't think anyone else does.

It's hard for me to talk to you when there's a tag hanging off the front of my hat, dangling in my face, regardless of which of us put it there. It's even worse when I see myself in terms of the tag that someone else hung on me.

I can't allow myself to be what somebody else imagines me to be. I must be what I am as God has blessed me, and as I serve Him in ways that are uniquely mine.

I'm walking on a Trail.

Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's very rough. It goes uphill and downhill, through clearings, woods, thickets, and jagged rock.

I believe that there's a Trail, although I know that it is often hard to follow; I believe it has a Destination, although I may not see it from where I am.

These are a few of my notes, written as I walk.