A Little Help from my Friends

If there's one thing I know I need to grow in it's being open to community.

Maybe it's got something to do with where we grew up. You could only see one house from our porch, and the only communication we had with those people consisted of my dad and the guy hitting golf balls back and forth from our hill to his.

Maybe it's got something to do with being a twin. It doesn't take a genius to tell you that twins have pretty solid built-in community that doesn't require a lot of intentionality to build.

Whatever personality traits may have conspired to create a natural barrier to sharing my life with others, and whatever effect the sleugh of John Wayne movies I've watched and Johnny Cash songs I've listened to may have had on me, this much I know: My God values community and He's shaping me into a community-valuer too.

This challenging and refreshing truth has come to me in two parts over the past couple of weeks. The first deals with a 2000 Nissan Sentra, and the second deals with a Psalm I like to refer to as #16.

Sentra first. This post is only one removed from the story of my 1989 Bimmer dying a year ago this February, and whether or not it's becoming an annual activity to get a new car every year I don't know, but I do know that I needed to ditch the Bimmer's replacement, and that right soon, about two weeks ago.

Said replacement, a 1999 Corolla that had been badly damaged in a wreck involving one parked vehicle and one vehicle in motion (that's all I have to say about that), began making the same hideous wheel-bearing noise it had made in October, that at the time had prompted me to give a temporary fix to the problem that I'd hoped would last longer than it did.

Well, it didn't last quite long enough, and so when the wheel-bearing noise reared its ugly head, I decided right then and there to get rid of the 'Rolla and locate a new car pronto.

Enter the Blakeys. Our good friends since before we were married (their wedding day marked the first day we Hobbs officially started dating), who had also been in our wedding, Billy and Cory had recently bought a car that made the Sentra their third car.

Short story kept short, the Blakeys made us an offer we couldn't refuse on the Sentra, and we are now the proud owners of the fine Japanese automobile.

Friends come in pretty handy around here, Bub.

But the functionality of friendships is never the goal. Otherwise, your friends become contacts and you become the pan-handler going down your contact list and offering your friends a chance to buy in to your deal-of-the-day goof ball product. Friends become contacts, which become alienated.

No, friendships serve a higher purpose, and I was reminded about that today while reading through Psalm 16.

Verse two struck me like a thunderbolt: I say to the Lord, "You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you."

No good. No good apart from the Lord. Do I live that? Can I come close to saying that apart from the Lord, I have no good, no rest, no solace?

I don't think I'm there yet. I want to be there, but I know I'm not when I overreact at a situation that threatens my dependance on comfort, like I did first thing when I walked through the door last night.

The claws come out and the fangs get sharp because I'm not finding all my good in the Lord, instead, I'm finding it in things that make me comfortable.

Reading through the Psalm, I thought that maybe I was done being challenged. But I read on to verse three:

As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.

Okay, no good apart from the Lord, check. All my delight in--the saints of the land?

How does this fit together? I think it has everything to do with community, that is, actually caring about our brothers and sisters, having a stake in their lives and making ourselves vulnerable to them.

When we find friends who help us to see that the Lord is all our good, then we've found the saints. We've then found the excellent ones.

I'm so grateful to my friends for helping me to find all my good in the Lord. Real friends do that. They're always bringing Jesus before us, always bringing us before the Savior's feet.

I want to be a friend like that. I want to be one who points everyone I come into contact with to go away refreshed and renewed to look upon the One in whose presence there is fullness of joy, pleasures forevermore.

At Ease, Soldier

"Resolved, never to allow the least measure of any fretting uneasiness at my father or mother. Resolved to suffer no effects of it, so much as in the least alteration of speech, or motion of the eye; and to be especially careful of it, with respect to any of our family." (Resolution #46, Jonathan Edwards)

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when we remember one great Christian leader and the changes that took place (and are still in process of changing) on account of his courage, I'm reminded of the above resolution by your friend and mine, Jonathan Edwards.

Throughout the past couple of years, I've tried to make a point of reading Edwards' resolutions as the new year approaches, and this January was no different.

While I've read through these resolutions, #46 has struck me as a bit out of place, to be honest. It seems clear enough that Edwards would want to fight against "fretting uneasiness" with his family in particular, but it seems out of place.

I mean, in a list that includes such lofty statements as to "live with all my might while I do live," and to never do anything "but what tends to the glory of God", a resolution to not sweat his parents seems a little bit trivial.

But as I've thought about this more and observed myself and the world in general, this resolution has started to make more and more sense.

I could be wrong, but I think that this resolution is as broad in its application as it is deep in its meaning.

Consider Resolution #46 in light of #25: "Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it."

Bear with me now, I think I may have just lost myself in a fit of Edwards-quoting that I'm not soon to come out of.

The fight to overcome uneasiness around authority figures, and parents in particular, was, for Edwards, a fight to find his rest in the love of God.

I can see so much of this fear-of-authority, fear-of-man idolatry in myself. Why is it that I care so much about peoples' opinion of me? Why is it that I can become so undone when a co-worker says something negative (true or false) about the quality of my work?

The answer gets right down to the core of my being, and it gets right down to the core of Edwards' resolution.

The anwer is that at that moment, when I'm rattled by someone's perceived low opinion of me, or when I am rendered nervous because my boss enters the room, I am failing to believe the love of God as my source of life and meaning. Something else has taken its place.

When I'm nervous and fidgety around authority figures or become undone by someone's perception of me, I'm dethroning the God who has won me back at the cost of His Son.

When this other god--who cannot satisfy and always holds its victims in slavery--sits on the throne of my heart, I'm dethroning the Son of God who has set me free, free indeed.

When I go to the temple of Man Fear, I'm missing out on the true temple, where I'm encouraged to "draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith" because of the "new and living way that (Jesus) has opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh."

Let's stand firm with confidence in the love of God. He won't waver and He won't fail us. His opinion of us won't change if a professor gets ticked at us, or if we spill food on a patron or if all of our game stories are boring and similar.

His love--His perfect love--casts out all fear, and it's His love that gives us true, God-centered and Christ-exalting confidence.