YOU LEAD, I’LL FOLLOW

[My wife] and I recently decided to take dancing lessons.  I grew up Swedish and Baptist, and we were not a dancing people.  I also attended a college where it was against the law to dance.  But I have been married for twenty-five years, so I guess dancing would be legal now.

We have a terrific dance instructor who, before we began, pulled us aside.  “I have a very important question,” this instructor said.  “You are going to dance now.  Who leads?”

“And who follows?” Silence.  Then, “I follow”.

It was hard for Nancy to follow for two reasons.  One is that when you aren’t leading, you aren’t in control.  It is hard not to be in control.  The other is that when it comes to dancing, I am a thoroughly incompetent leader.

Jesus, however, is a thoroughly competent leader.  When you wake up in the morning, you can feel completely confident in saying, “Okay, Jesus, today You lead, and I will follow.  Whatever I have to do in my relationships, my body, my health, and my finances are in Your hands.  I won’t try to figure out the rest of my life.  I won’t try to solve every day.  Just today.  You lead.  I’ll follow.”

You don’t want to miss the dance.  It is why you were born.  And God leads it, not just for today, but into eternity.

-- John Ortberg in The Me I Want To Be

#3940

SECOND CENTURY CHRISTIANS

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”  (2 Corinthians 5:17 NRSV)

Christians love one another.  They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them.  If a man has something, he gives freely to the man who has nothing.  If they see a stranger, Christians take him home and are happy, as though he were a real brother.  They don't consider themselves brothers in the usual sense, but brothers instead through the Spirit, in God.  And if they hear that one of them is in jail, or persecuted for professing the name of their redeemer, they all give him what he needs -- if it is possible, they bail him out.  If one of them is poor and there isn't enough food to go around, they fast several days to give him the food he needs...  This is really a new kind of person.  There is something divine in them.

-- Aristides, a lawyer, before Hadrian, 2nd century

#3939

BITTER OR BETTER

After the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, Robert Schuller, pastor at the Crystal Cathedral in southern California, wrote a newspaper column. There, he said, "Why do bad things happen to good people? That's the wrong question. . . the right question is: What happens to good people when bad things happen to them? We know the answer to that question: They always become better people. Tragedy never leaves us where it finds us."

I agree with Schuller that, "Tragedy never leaves us where it finds us." But in my experience, as a bereaved parent who lost a son and as a minister to those who have experienced tragedies of their own, people don't "always become better people". Some people become bitter. Some marriages break up. Some lives are shattered.

What is the difference? In my estimation it is choice. Am I going to choose to come out of this better by trusting in God's sovereignty, power and love? Or am I going to come out of this bitter by blaming God, my spouse and whatever or whoever caused the tragedy?

I choose better over bitter. I choose life over death. I choose hope over despair. I choose love over hate. I choose Jesus.

-- Rev. David T. Wilkinson


#3938

GRIEF OFFERS TWO POSSIBILITIES

Does it feel at times as if grief defines your life?  You may wonder: Is this who I have become, a half person whose life has context only because of death? Perhaps your spirit seems resigned to a tentative half life where you live in your mind in a conditioned state of emotional hyper vigilance. You hold on; you let go; you grow forward. You want to live, to have love and joy again flood your life with blessing and abandon, yet the persistence of death seems to defy adjustment. Even so, you continue to try to grow forward.

In unexpected pinhole moments, joy beckons to you on the other side of grief, calling you to warm the cold of your heart and live in the moment with joy, enthusiasm, and engagement. You wonder how you will replace your former joy with your loved one gone.

Grief offers you two possibilities: You grow, or you remain rooted in a physical or emotional past that no longer exists. You choose whether to grow and adjust through grief. When you resist growth and adjustment, you succumb to the past, spending your day in frustration and self-pity.  But when you choose to grow, you claim life. Growth and adjustment move you to a new place that inspires reinvestment in the future. You grow spiritually when, in faith, you allow the forward dynamic of grief to propel you away from the past toward the light of new life.

-- Julie Yarbrough in Beyond the Broken Heart

#3937

BEARING GOD’S FRUIT

Holy God, Beloved Trinity, let me always be rooted in You so that I may live in You and You in me. Bless me so that Your grace may flow through me, allowing me to bear Your fruit to a hungry and helpless world. As I wander, prune me of all that inhibits Your growth in me. Let me do nothing apart from You so that Your joy me be complete in me. In Christ’s name I pray. Amen.

-- Vineyard Guild Prayer

#3936