Rhythm

Everyone has some annoying habits of which they are unaware. Some of us have more than others. I think my most obnoxious habit (if you know of something I do that is more obnoxious, I guess you're free to let me know in the comments) is that I'm often tapping on something. I'll get a beat or a song in my head, and I have the unconscious urge to play it out on whatever is handy--my knees, a table, a soda can, the space between my knuckles, a pretty girl's shoulder (smooth, I know). I'm a walking percussion section. I'm just sad that sometimes, other people don't enjoy my fat beats quite as much as I do.

It's somewhat of a little-known-fact that I play the drums. When people learn that about me, they often say something like, "Really? I never would have figured that." (They say the same sort of thing when I tell them I like to play basketball, or when I tell them I had a girlfriend once.) I think that's why I'm often tapping on things. I feel rhythm. I notice patterns, and I play those patterns out in my mindless movements. 

I've been thinking about how my penchant for rhythm shows up in other ways in my life. Lately I have been struggling with the fact that, in my present situation, my life feels out of sync. My job requires that I work on a rotating schedule, meaning that it always changes. Some days I'll work in the morning, some days in the evening. Some days I'll work four hours, some days eight hours. Every day is different, and every week is different yet. There isn't any continuity. No rhythm. 

I've noticed that when that large of a chunk of my time lacks rhythm, it's really difficult for me to be productive with the rest of my time. If I have X number of open hours in my week that I can use for homework, chores, or other responsibilities, I tend to misuse when they are scattered randomly throughout the week. I need the routine, the consistency, in order to maximize all of my time.

Even though I enjoy routine and rhythm, I would still consider myself a flexible person. I think of flexibility as the ability to divert from the routine. A good drummer must be able to play a consistent beat, but he will still throw in a few aberrations to mix it up. That's what a flexible person can do. He doesn't mind stepping away from the routine for a moment when circumstances require it. 

To divert from a rhythm, however, a rhythm must first exist. That's been my frustration. Each week is like being in a boat at sea during a storm, and I never get a chance to step onto dry land.

I write all of this simply to point out that it's important for each of us to understand how we best use time and to create systems that allow us to use it to its fullest potential. Since much of my scheduling is out of my control, it helps me to make a daily schedule at the beginning of each week. I break up each day into various activities that I need to get done and find a place for them. Then I hang the thing on my fridge, and it helps me stay on track and not get carried away by distractions. So, for 9:30 on Tuesday this week, it tells me to write a blog post. And here I am.

I'm interested to hear--how do you prefer your time to be organized? Are you like me, with a preference for routine but willing to mix it up when duty calls? Or are you even more attached to routine, so that any diversion upsets the order? Or maybe you're on the other complete other end, and you hate routine, and you want every single day to be different? Comment it up.

The Road of Waiting

Jesus healed a lot of people during his ministry. All over the place in the gospels, we hear about people bringing him people who are blind, mute, paralyzed, demon-possessed, etc. It's maybe one of the most distinctive features about his ministry. But because I read about these healings so often, it can be easy for me to just skip over them in my study. It becomes same old, same old.

At my small group Bible study the other night, we were talking about the healing of the official's son in John 4, when an idea came running through my mind that I had never thought of before. In John 4:46-54, an official comes to Jesus and asks that he would heal his son, who is ill and near death. Jesus tells the man to go home and that his son would live. As he's on his way, some of his servants meet him and inform him that his son is beginning to recover, noting that his turnaround happened at the same time Jesus was speaking with the official.

In our discussion, we were talking about why this story is included in John's gospel. Every healing that Jesus did isn't recorded in the gospels, and John includes less miracles than the other three. So why pick this one?

There is something unique about this story about the official's son, and it's something that I think can teach us as well. The official gives us an important lesson in faith. The way in which his son was healed is a little different than most of the healings Jesus did. In most cases, there is no time between when Jesus declares healing and when we see the person healed. If I bring my demon-possessed kid to Jesus and ask him to cast out the demon, he does it and I see right away that what Jesus said has come to be. But in the case of this official, there is a waiting period. Jesus announces that his son would be healed, and then the man has to turn around and walk home, not really sure if Jesus had actually healed his son or if it was just an empty promise. He's on the road for an entire day before he finds out that his son is recovering. He's walking that road without confirmation that what Jesus says actually happens. But the text tells us that, while he was on the road, this man believed that what Jesus said would be true (Jn. 4:50). He had faith in Jesus' promise, even though he couldn't see its fulfillment quite yet.

I find this interesting, especially in the context of John's gospel. John tells us about some other promises that Jesus makes. For example, in the fourteenth chapter, Jesus says that he is leaving to prepare a place for his followers. He says that he'll return and take us there with him. He promises to send his disciples another Counselor, the Holy Spirit, in the meantime. He says that if we remain in him the way a branch remains connected to the vine, we'll bear much fruit. He says that we'll have trouble in the world, but that we can be confident because he has overcome the world.

What do we do with all these promises? We adopt the attitude of the official in John 4. We believe. We have faith. Even when we can't see how or when Jesus' promises will come to fulfillment, we trust in him nonetheless. Of course, some of the promises Jesus makes in John have already been fulfilled. The Holy Spirit came to the church at Pentecost in Acts 2. But for some of those other promises, we haven't experienced the end result yet. We're still waiting for Jesus to come get us and take us to the Father's house. We're living in this time between the announcement of blessing and its manifestation. We're walking that same road the official walked--from Jesus to his son, waiting to hear that Jesus was right.

So my encouragement is simple. Believe. Jesus has made good on all his promises so far. And there are times when life seems too out of control, too tragic, for him to bring good into it. It tests our patience and our perseverance. But Jesus proves true. The challenge for us is to trustfully follow.

Twitterpated

A few days ago, I took a big step in catching up with my generation. I started a Twitter account. I remember a few years ago when I first heard about Twitter from my friend Blake. I told him I thought it was a silly idea. Facebook already had status updates. Why would I need yet another way to let the world know what I was doing at any given moment?

I also remember when I was a senior in high school and I first heard about Facebook from my friend Charlie. In a similar way, I thought it was a waste. I said, "So...you can get on this website, and people who are already your friends in real life will tell you that they're your friend." I even wrote an article in my school newspaper predicting that Facebook would be an obsolete fad within six months. Nostradamus I ain't.

Same thing when texting first started to get big in our culture. I figured, "Why would I take time to type out a message to someone if I needed to talk to them? Why not just call?"

Nowadays, I have texting, and I also have a Facebook and a Twitter. I spend way, waaaay too much time on each of these phenomena. And, in many ways, I like them. Texting lets me shoot quick messages when I don't want to get into a whole conversation, and it lets me stay in contact with some people whom it would feel awkward to call. Facebook lets me stay in touch with people I've met all over the country. Twitter gives me a platform for all of the little pseudo-thoughts that can't be developed into blog posts. So each of these advances in social technology has value.

However, I've been thinking some about the effect such things have on the way we relate and communicate with one another, and not all of it is positive. We have become a culture that is satisfied with sound bites. Don't have a real conversation with me; just tell me what's on your mind in 140 characters or less. Don't ask me about my trip to NYC; just hit "like" on my pictures. We want our interactions with one another to be short and sweet, to be to the point. We look at the bottom line without really caring about what it takes to get there. The great danger, I think, is that we can forget how to truly relate with others in a meaningful way.

Life isn't made of sound bites. It's made of emotions, dreams, frustrations. It's made of series of seemingly insignificant events: meals, traffic jams, stubbed toes, sunsets, and jokes. It's made of stories. And these are stories that can't be expressed in a couple lines of text. So if someone is really going to relate to me beyond a surface-level interaction, he needs to be able to see beyond the sound bite. We know how to broadcast highlights of our days through hashtags, but we may have forgotten how to have a 30-minute conversation over dinner.

Today I listened to a sermon by Matt Proctor, the president of my alma mater, Ozark Christian College. In it, he said that the danger for this generation is that we have traded the risks of reality for the safety of virtual reality. In the sermon, Matt is talking about how we turn inward instead of walking out in faith in the work God has for us, but I think the same observation applies to how we relate with one another. A real relationship is risky. A digital persona won't often reject me, and if it does, it really doesn't sting that badly. But a flesh-and-blood person...such an entity can do some real damage to my person.

Sometimes I think that I would have fit in better with my world if I had been born 50 years earlier. I would rather read a printed edition of a book than on an e-reader. My life would move along just fine if I didn't have internet access in my pocket 24/7. I think writing a letter on paper and sending it in the mail is classy. It shows that I care enough about what I'm communicating to take the time to write it out, and get a couple hand cramps along the way. It's romantic. (Do you think that when my generation is old, women will pull up files of "love texts" that they got from their husbands when they were dating the way women keep love letters?)

We have all of this information available, but we're not that informed. We know a little bit about a lot of topics, but we don't know a lot about much. And we have all of this social media, but we might be one of the least social generations in history. You can know a little bit about a lot of people without knowing anyone deeply.

What do you think? What advantages does social technology possess? What dangers come with it?

Discovering Beauty

Kansas gets a bad rap.

I'm from Kansas. And over time, I've been fortunate to be able to travel to a lot of different places all over the country. Whenever I tell people in another location that I'm from Kansas, they never say, "Oh wow, that's such a lovely area." Nope. Not once. Instead, they say things like, "Oh....it's so flat there," or "Yeah, I had to drive through Kansas once on my way to Colorado. Longest day of my life," or "Then I guess you're not in Kansas anymore!" Hilarious.

People get down on a place like Kansas because they don't think it has the same sort of natural wonder that many other areas do. It doesn't have great forests or mountains or beaches or waterfalls. People think it just have a lot of wheat fields. And their perception is true, I suppose. There are a lot of wheat fields, and the state is relatively flat, and there are vast stretches to real estate where you won't see too many people. But I don't think that this means Kansas lacks beauty.

I've been living in Cincinnati, Ohio for about six months, and last month I was able to go back to Kansas for a few days. As I was crossing the Missouri-Kansas border on Interstate 70, the sun was beginning to set. And it was the best sunset I have seen in a long time. The sky was on fire. The entire thing glowed in a brilliant orange. I could see the horizon miles in the distance, and I could see the opposite horizon in my rear view mirror, and the entire space in between signaled that the sun was calling it a night.

In Kansas, the sky is big. When I walk out my parents' front door, I can see for a ways in almost any direction, and the expanse of the sky stretches from one horizon to the other. During the day, I might be able to go outside and see huge white clouds hanging in the sky. At dusk, I can see orange and red streaks in the clouds as the sun descends. And at night, I can see the stars arranged in their constellations.

In Cincinnati, the sky isn't that big. When I walk outside, I can't see more than about a hundred yards in any direction. There are too many hills and trees and buildings. So the sunsets aren't as majestic, and the stars aren't as bright. This isn't to say that Cincinnati doesn't have its own beauty. It's just different. In the fall, all of those trees shift colors and drop their leaves. I can also go to my school's library and look out the window at a view that overlooks downtown.

Different places possess their own beauty, and it's unique to that location. I've been able to see Pacific sunsets and Arizonian deserts, Kansas constellations and snow-capped Rockies, Appalachian foliage and Manhattan skyscrapers. None of these things looks like the other, but they're still beautiful. Even when you might think a place is devoid of beauty, it can be found.

I've been thinking about how this truth my be valid in other spheres of existence. In people, for instance. Every day, you probably encounter people who don't seem very beautiful. I work at a large retail store, and I have to deal with people who are rude and inconsiderate and loud on an hourly basis. Not everyone walks into the store with graceful radiance. So it can be easy for me to dismiss people--to let my interaction with them be brisk and hurried. To just sleep in the car during a drive through Kansas. But I think that in each person, there is some beauty to be found. It just might not be accessible on the surface. So whether it's your neighbor, roommate, coworker, in-law, or whoever, it might be good to try to find the beauty in people.

It may be that this also applies to how we think of seasons of our lives. I think that for each of us, there are times in life that we love and we wish we could stay in forever, but then there are others that we wish we could just skip over, just like we fast-forward through the commercials when we record a TV show. It's because we think that some times lack beauty. I've hinted at it in previous posts, and maybe I've stated it explicitly, but the season of life I'm currently in isn't the most enjoyable. It often feels like my life has stalled out. I've got friends that are starting their real lives, beginning new ministries, forming new relationships, getting married, and starting to look more and more like grown-ups. I, on the other hand, am still in school, do the same job my sister did when she was 17, and eat frozen pizzas on a too-regular basis.

But there has to be beauty here. It's just hard to find, sometimes. This chapter of my story doesn't look as exciting as my years in college or preschool (I love Play-Doh), and it might not be as exciting as the years ahead of me. But it's where I am, and certainly it's not void of value. There is beauty here. Maybe you too are at a place in your life where you feel stuck in some ways. The temptation is to just zone out until a time with more obvious beauty begins, but I would encourage you to find the beauty where and when you are. I think it's there. Sometimes we just have to dig a little.

This morning I watched the series finale of Extreme Makover Home Edition, in which they built seven homes for seven families in Joplin. If you have some time, check it out at ABC. Continue thinking of and praying for Joplin. Every time I hear about it, I'm reminded just how much I love and miss that city.

Also, yesterday I started a Twitter account, so if you're interested, you can follow me @DavidHeffren.

I'm sure you were all cheering for the Steelers in the playoffs, and they're now eliminated. I share your grief. Who are you going for now?

Real Food

Are there many feelings better than a full belly?

I don't mean when your stomach is so full that it makes you feel sick. We've all been there before. Actually, we've all been there pretty often. You eat until you feel like you're going to explode, leaving a big mess that you're going to have to order some OxiClean to take care of. That's not a good feeling. But there are times when your stomach is full, and it's just right. You've eaten Sunday lunch with your family, and now you can lay on the couch and watch football until your eyelids droop and you slip into a nice long nap. It's the American dream. To be satisfied after a good meal.

I read a passage from the New Testament yesterday that I think deals with the topic of satisfaction, and it uses the image of food and water. But food and water are only metaphors here. The satisfaction that is addressed goes beyond how you feel after Thanksgiving. It talks about spiritual satisfaction--of being completely content and fulfilled in Christ and in living the life God desires for you to live.

The passage is a popular one. In John 4, Jesus is traveling through Samaria when he stops to take a break near a well. Before long a Samaritan woman comes to the well to draw water, and Jesus engages her in a conversation that reveals this woman's longing for satisfaction and her inability to attain it. The whole thing centers on the metaphor of water. Jesus points out that the water in this well is unable to truly satisfy, because she keep having to come back to draw more. But he promises her living water that satisfied completely. And what is this living water. It's Jesus himself, and the pouring out of his Spirit into a person.

Up to this point, this woman hasn't found that sort of satisfaction, because she's been looking in the wrong places. She's been married five times, and at the time of her encounter with Jesus, she's living with a guy she's not married to. It seems like she keeps trying to find fulfillment in men, but all she really does is leave behind a string of broken relationships. What she really needs is Jesus himself, and the same is true for each of us. We have a habit for trying to find satisfaction in all the wrong places (relationships, jobs, money, status, etc), but all that ends up happening is that we find ourselves saying "I can't get no satisfaction" (sorry...I had to throw that in).

A little later in the chapter, we see a glimpse of what brings Jesus a level of satisfaction. After the Samaritan woman leaves to go tell the rest of the town about Jesus, Jesus' disciples show up and say, "Hey, you'd better eat something." Jesus replies, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." He goes on to say, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me to finish his work."

Jesus sees his ministry as his food. It's what nourishes and sustains him. It satisfies him.

I think that's a really interesting way to look at ministry. It's more common to think of ministry as something that depletes you. It empties your tank, and you have to find another way to fill yourself up in order to go out there and minister again. And in some ways, that might be true. We see Jesus going off in solitude and praying and resting, and I think these practices were necessary to his ministry. But at the same time, his work is still his food. He was satisfied when he was in the middle of God's will.

You need food to survive. And so too, we need to be engaged God's work for us to be spiritually healthy. Our lives are incomplete when we wast them pursuing all sorts of things that have nothing to do with God's will for us and through us. We need to follow the Spirit's leading just as much as we need to put food in our bodies. The prophet Jeremiah communicates this need when he says, "But if I say, 'I will not mention him or speak any more of his name,' his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot" (Jer. 20:9). Jeremiah had a compulsory need to proclaim God's word, and I think Jesus understood that need.

For us, I think it's important to ask ourselves from time to time about where we are seeking satisfaction. I have to ask, "Am I look for fulfillment in something outside of Christ and his will for me? Do I for some reason think that God is insufficient for me?" Chasing satisfaction in other things never gives us what we need. It's like eating nothing but gummy bears and expecting to be well-nourished. Jesus gives living water. God's work is our food. And the rest is imitation.