An old mountain man once told me a story that he thought was humorous. He told me about a young man and an ancient withered man riding in the same wagon. The young asked the old when he lost interest in women. The older responded, “You’ll have to ask someone older than me.” I chuckled appropriately as I was a young man talking to an old man who might be referring in some ways to himself. The quote, “You have to ask someone older than me,” has stuck with me.

I woke early from a series of rough dreams last night. In one of the dreams, I spent hours and hours working on a beautification project. Someone else came in at the last minute and took credit for all the work. I woke very frustrated. When do you quit fighting the challenge of personal vanity? I guess you have to ask someone older than me. I believe there are many challenges that we will face all the way to the last breath we breathe, no matter how old that might be. Personal vanity and the human tendency toward selfishness are two of them. The failures of man are many, so the list of challenges might be very long.

The availability for any failing anyone has ever committed is within me. I have experienced enough rage to cause me to wonder whether or not I would really commit a horrible act if I were to let my anger go unrestrained. The answer is yes, I could. So it is with other failings. Thank God I live in the restraints of my culture, my training, my experience, and the generosity of Jesus that many things on that long list are walled outside my experience. I have seen in the news and through history that the wall can be breached, and people you never suspect, or who had never failed before, can suddenly fall into devastating behaviors and thoughts. We are vulnerable and susceptible. There are no guarantees in life and the human experience. You never get too old to be part of the warfare that is life.

The holocaust was committed by people who left civilian life, entered the military, and became monsters they would have never been had they been living under normal circumstances at home with their families. It is horrifying to see that people who started out in need and working to help others could end up like they did, doing what they did in Jim Jones camp in Guayana. Those weren’t people we would have considered bad people until something happened. The wall was breached, and they became the worst version of themselves and a horror to the rest of us. I believe we are wrong when we think that couldn’t happen to us because we see miniaturized versions of those extremes happen every day, all around us. You never get too old for this battle.

Humans have a natural gift for belittling others and seeing others as less than themselves. I saw it in the clicks in high school. I see it in the clicks in church. I see it in the way we gravitate toward those who make us comfortable and away from those who make us uncomfortable. Within that natural, unthinking, sorting is the ability to see those different as less. There is an unspoken human trend to feel like people who are “less” can be treated as less to varying extremes of degrading thought and action. Follow the joke trends through the years. Who do we choose as targets for humor? How do we talk to or treat persons we think aren’t worthy of our respect or friendship. In extreme situations any of us might behave in extreme ways. I don’t think I’ll ever be too old to face this fight.

Is there a happy thought, as Peter Pan recommends, to help us take flight in this dire set of possibilities. Absolutely. There is a God who is far beyond the strength and temptation of man who has proven Himself victor over all the failings of man. Jesus faced everything we face and won the battle we continue to fight. The great joy is that He has not left us alone. He is with us every day, in every way to give us the resource and power to be what we would prefer to be instead of the worst we could be. You can see that in history too. There have always been the courageous who stood against the horrors of the overwhelming evils without wavering. We have tons of examples of people who loved when hating was the easier choice, who respected when degradation was the common way. Every generation has seen the face of Jesus among those who left us with the example we want through the strength He gave them. Jesus is alive, and He is here today with us. I’m not too old for that either.

Jacob Miller is a powerful example of accountability and independence. September 19, 1863, Private Jacob Miller was shot between the eyes at the battle of Chicamauga. His picture comes up as one of the most common in medical searches related to the Civil War. He tried to push his eye back in place and the bones of his head together, tying them up with a bandana. He had to hold his eye open with his finger to see where to go. He was left for dead on the battlefield, got to the aid station on his own, and was left for dead again there. He left the aid station under his own power to follow the army because he didn’t want to be a prisoner. Two ambulances passed him by and a third picked him up. The ride in the ambulance was so painful that he got out and walked. Surgeons refused to help him until he finally convinced one. Buckshot fell out of the wound 17 years later and other debri fell out 33 years later. He lived to the ripe old age of 88. 

Why tell this story? This man is an example of independence, fierce independence. He needed help and pursued it. He went to the aid station and to the hospital beyond. He talked a doctor into working on him when others avoided the challenge. He did not operate as a self sufficient person who needed no one. He was independent.

Nowhere in his story did it indicate that he blamed anyone or felt sorry for himself. He was in the situation he was in and had to deal with it to the best of his ability. His ability, in my opinion, far surpassed anything I think I could do. I feel like I would have stayed on the battlefield feeling terrible and sorry for myself to a point that I might well have waited beyond any help anyone could provide. 

Entitlement is a terrible word in our country today. Entitlement and privilege are connected because both are the belief that someone is deserving of some kind of right or benefit for whatever reason, legal, emotional, social, financial, or other. Entitlement tends to put the belief on others to provide or give. It has a layer of helplessness in it because many who feel entitled have done nothing to earn it or deserve it. Many say that our students are acting as though they are entitled instead of being accountable. Accountable is the opposite of entitlement because accountable takes responsibility to itself instead of putting it on others. Miller was accountable, not entitled. He was independently motivated to go forward, not dependent to wait on others. 

Miller threw no pity party at the realization of his situation. He gathered himself to do the best he could and get the help he needed. Assessing a situation and choosing to take action without waiting on others or blaming others is a true act of independence and accountability. He is a great example for me.

Jesus gave us earthly examples we could relate to when He explained heavenly values and principles. He talked about sheep to shepherds. He gave common examples of prejudice and bigotry in ways that the bigots could understand, often making the most hated the example of good. Miller is a good story which truly exemplifies accountability and independence. It also is a great story of courage.

How does this relate to me? All of us have been wounded on the battlefield of life. I was an alcoholic. Until Jesus put me in the place where I had to accept accountability for my actions, I was dependent and lived as a slave to my addiction. Accountability freed me to be independent and move in the direction of the aid station and the hospital beyond. I am grateful every day for the freedom Jesus has provided for me. I highly recommend Jesus, accountability, and independence. 

I have friends who are historical experts and read books by well studied professional researchers. I am exposed to many truly knowledgeable people as a volunteer docent at a small local museum. I am amazed at the things our predecessors have gone through. They are a well of our experience which we can dip in to at any time we want.

Some nations around the world are controlled by terrible dictators who turn their country into total servitude to their personal will. Other countries have fought against those leaders to win freedom and democracy for their people. We can see, in these large events, the true war between good and evil that are large on grand scale of nations, but work the same on the individual scale of people.

Hitler and Japan wanted to enslave the world to their will. The rest of the world fought against that evil. We could easily see the evil in those countries during that time. They were barbaric to anyone who was not like them or disagreed with them. They would abuse or kill anyone who challenged them. They intimidated others into being lackeys to their will. We can see the same traits between individuals. I’ve met people I easily thought could be a “Hitler” if they had the control of a nation instead of just being a supervisor in a local store.

Humanity has all the traits of good and evil you could ever hope to experience. The traits have been played out many times in many ways through past generations. We celebrate our heroes and hate our demons from the past. Now those traits are being portrayed by this generation. Nations are simply groups that have come into agreement to stand together. Their stance as a nation comes as a collection of all the individual choices collected together. A stance will be established when enough choices agree.

Hitler could not have done what he did if the people of Germany refused to agree with him. He lied, manipulated, intimidated, and twisted the feelings of the people, and they were in enough of a struggle that they chose to overlook the truth to accept what Hitler pitched. Everyday of our lives, we face the same war on a much smaller scale.

Human appetites can dictate behavior and take on the traits of a dictator. The appetite for sex has drawn many otherwise successful and famous people down a completely destructive road. Did they overlook the truth of the danger to accept the desire? Yes. Addicts and alcoholics all know the danger and horror, yet they persist in the folly. Once a person has committed to the dictator, politician or appetite, backing out becomes increasingly hard as the lies become steel bars on a locked cage. Where is freedom?

For countries, freedom comes through the soldiers who are willing to fight and die for the right of their people to be free. An individual has to become a soldier to fight and die to the appetite or lies that hold them in bondage. We are all in a war.

The great hope is that Jesus has overcome this world and all the bondages in it. He is the personification of freedom. He was not bound by selfishness or any appetite like so easily ties humanity up in hardship. Jesus is a warrior like no other. He fought, died, resurrected, and continues to fight for each of us every day. He has set a standard that no bondage can cage. His standard is beyond what man can do or create without Him. Humanity has an image of perfection which only God can fulfill.

The great joy we have is that we are not alone. The Holy Spirit has been given to work with us as individuals, as groups, as nations according to how willing we are to accept and receive Him. He gifts us with the freedom Jesus won against all the failures of man. We only have one caveat. We must choose. We must choose Jesus and the Kingdom of God and its standards to have that freedom.

I enjoy Marvel, DC, and so many of the other amazing super story creations. I enjoy Harry Potter. There are so many stories in which power seems so easy to get and use. Let’s completely ignore science and believe that all this energy for power in the mutants and other figures comes from nowhere and isn’t depleted with extreme use. Enjoyable fantasies like Superman, unlimited power without getting tired, abound. Yet in all these stories, the power fuels the fantasy, but the story is based on what the characters go through, and how they have to fight themselves and the forces around them to do the right thing.

The most powerful thing I’ve ever seen in the “real” world is someone who did the right thing when all their feelings were lined up in the opposite direction. I know how powerful it is because I saw how much it took in me to do the right thing when only a few of my feelings were aimed in the wrong direction. I can feel really accomplished as a strong man when I go into the grocery store hungry and come out without any snack food, not that it happens much. So I see these superheros as being superheros, not because of their powers, but because they give up something they want for themselves to do what is right for others. By my standards, Jesus is the most powerful of all that might be considered powerful on any level, fantasy or real.

Recently I have had other thoughts about Jesus and power. Creation and nature were created by God with governing laws which no human can break. Gravity works the way it was created. Oak seeds only give birth to oak trees. The world and all on it works according to the laws of creation. Human beings created the atom bomb, but even it worked according to the laws of the nature of its parts. We manipulated the parts to get what we wanted from them, but we did not make them operate contrary to their nature.

So my thoughts began to circle around what power can break nature and the laws of nature or creation? I see the healings of Jesus to be great statements of power because He healed diseases for which there were, and sometimes are, no treatments or cures. He continues to do that up to and including today. Testimonies of such events have been widely proclaimed through the centuries. He fed the 5,000 which was truly contrary to the rules of nature and creation. I think that the power which amazes me the most is the one that is most personal to me, changing nature itself.

It is the nature of sin is to be blind to the light of heaven and to war against the values of heaven. So, if all are born in sin, how do people get saved? It has to be a miracle because it is a break and overcoming in the laws of the nature of sin. People who are blind see. They have a revelation and accept what they have not seen, refused to see, fought against, and hated. A miracle. We are surrounded by those miracles and yet often choose not to see that God is alive and extremely active today, right now, in our world. We live in the presence of God’s miraculous presence and power, and He gives us the power to see and participate in it. We are part of God’s great miraculous rescue of the human race. We have the power to choose, join Jesus, and participate. Our super power is choice.

Dad’s day is, for the lucky among us, a sentimental day of remembrance. It was funny that my dad wore his glasses into the shower because he forgot to take them off, until I did it – and did it often enough for it to become a joke in my family. I remember staring at his hands during those long lectures I deserved. At some point I realized that my brother’s hands look just the same as dad’s, and I was glad for the reminder. I’ve met many who did not have a good dad they want to remember. My dad had problems and issues, but I was lucky, very lucky.

I gave him a plaque with a Mark Twain quote, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” It was a joking apology for the abuse my father suffered as a result of my immaturity. He expected it, and I provided with enthusiasm. I wore my immaturity like a badge of honor and would sacrifice anything to gain more of it. It was long after I was twenty-one when I realized that immaturity and stupid were close friends, if not twins.

We all have stereotypes of “Dad” that our fathers lived up to or avoided.

• He is always there, thick or thin.
• Completely trust worthy.
• Always looking for your best benefit.
• Will tell you everything that you don’t want to know but have to hear.
• Will enforce his will if it means protecting you from worse harm.
• Will allow you to suffer some of the harm you cause yourself if it is survivable and will teach you wisdom for the future.
• Will laugh or cry with you depending on which is necessary at the time.
• Provides for the necessities until you learn to provide for yourself.
• Trains you in a frame of reference which will guide you into having and maintaining a healthy life of success.
• Still provides for you as an adult because no one survives completely on their own best efforts.
• Examples that true love is sacrificial, understanding, and forgiving
• Has wisdom and stories that teach and inform.
• Provides a strength of character that continually lifts you up and pushes you forward, even when you are on your own, even after he is gone from the picture.
• The list can go on and on.

The more I work on this list the more familiar it becomes. I’m finding that a true dad, the purest form of the best stereotype, is a description of God. No human can live up to or completely fulfill the stereotype, but God can and does. We always have earthly examples for Kingdom of God things we need to understand. Jesus said, “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” John 3:12 ESV We can understand God because He uses examples that we can understand. We can understand “Dad.” That means that we can get what He means when He offers to be, and acts like, a Heavenly Father.

Yesterday was a great Father’s Day. The best part of it was that all of us had a Heavenly Father working to bring us closer to home and Himself. Dad really does love us in all the comfortable and uncomfortable ways that a true and perfect Dad does.

A line in the sand was a true challenge when I was growing up. Typically, you didn’t want what was on the other side of the line if you dared to cross it. It was a dare with dire consequences. Usually, the consequence was a person ready to fight. “Will you come meet me in battle,” was the challenge for young knights to see if their armor would hold by the strength of their nerve and determiniation. It was your hero self against the villain who came against you.

My daughter was a toddler some years ago. The line in the sand was the stove. It was the challenge because mom worked at the stove. Mom kept saying “No!” She spelled the word “H O T hot. Don’t touch because it will hurt you.” My daughter jumped the line in a moment that mom turned to get something from another counter. We all heard our beautiful child yelling “H O T  hot” as she ran around the room holding burned fingers in the air. Mom immediately came to the rescue with hugs, a bowl of ice water, and training efforts to assure that the little one would not do that again. The consequence of crossing the line was too severe. 

We are loved by God greater than we are loved by our mothers and fathers. We understand His love because we experienced the love of people who cared and sacrificed for us. We know we want this kind of sacrificial love because we have all experienced times when we didn’t have it. One example of love is from some battlefield warriors who experience such a strong sense of all-sacrificing care from their fellow warriors that they prefer the danger of the battlefield over the safety of home to have it. God is greater than all the levels of love we might ever experience from the deepest and most satisfying of any relationship we have ever held up as a standard of love and care.

God has drawn a line in the sand. He gave us ten commandments. He points to them and tells us that crossing that line is “H O T hot!” Failure to stay on the right side of the line will be painful to us. The line isn’t to punish, but to protect. It is mom or dad saying, “I don’t want you to be hurt. Crossing this line hurts. It will create sorrow and hardship in your life. It will damage you, your life, your relationships, all the good things I want for you!” 

Inevitably and predictably we jump the line in a moment we think He has turned His back. Inevitably and predictably we run screaming from our injury. Wisdom takes us screaming right to the one who warned us. He with the bowl of ice water, hugs and teaching, uses the moment to love on us and assure that we will apply this lesson to other warnings. He doesn’t want us hurt. He is there to repair the damage and care for us when we do hurt. 

The ten commandments are a pretty big line in the sand. It becomes easily evident that it takes someone far more than mortal to be able to keep the commandments. No one, born of this earth, has ever kept all ten faithfully. This line proves that we can’t stay on the right side of the line without help. The line pushes us into relationship with God. We are damaged every time we cross it, just like He says. We can’t do it without Him. We can’t heal from crossing the line without Him. The line proves that man with man’s greatest strengths and abilities aren’t enough. 

We aren’t alone. Jesus crossed all barriers, all lines in the sand, from heaven to earth, to provide us with the help we need, the healing we need, the comfort we need, and the teaching we need. Jesus is alive. The promised Holy Spirit lives in each believer working the redemption and restoration Jesus won on the cross and through His resurrection. We are truly loved by the line in the sand that warns us of death and danger and the living Jesus who walks with us through every adventure and misadventure, drawing us ever deeper into a healing, redemptive relationship with Himself. We are loved at every level. 

It is easy to joke that most of my traveling comes through guilt trips. Maybe it just comes easy because I’m a mistake maker. I certainly make enough mistakes to keep an apology ready for every occasion. I must say that the tour guide for the guilt trip and the sights seen on the guilt trip aren’t worth having. It is easy to feel guilty over every missed possibility. 

This weekend my wife and I took a more preferred type of trip, one to the beach. I saw a man leaning against a rail on the walk to the beach and greeted him. The same man was at the same place the next day, and a conversation started. Apparently the tour guide on this trip was the Holy Spirit. 

Somehow the conversation came around to a deep and profound pain in the man’s life. I listened. I accepted his view of the experience. I shared my understanding of pain and my respect for what he had and was currently experiencing. He had lost a child. I was able, as an outsider, to see the tremendous love he had given the child. I’ve had many students who did not know their parents loved them. This child knew and trusted. The beauty of his love and sacrifice were obvious to me. He had a hard time seeing the beauty for the pain he felt.

How can love be so necessary for life, health, and well-being when it is never completely pain free on planet Earth. You suffer when those you love suffer. All will die and leave loved ones behind to suffer. The daily sacrifices of selfishness required to love others is a constant type of pain and suffering, worthwhile, but painful. Learning to be self-less is never easy and never without some level of discomfort.

Now it is time for the conflict resolution. Should I feel guilty about leaving my wife on the beach while I talked to this man, or should I ignore this man’s needs to sit with my wife and feel guilty about that? There are so many ways I can turn this into a neurotic, anxiety attack. I can feel the guilt tour guide planning my itinerary. That is not what the Lord wants.

Guilt or no guilt is based on my understanding of any given situation. I am not God and do not clearly see all possibilitiies and implications of any decision, great or small. Feeling guilty means that I have decided to be in the position of God and have determined my mistake. Many times that means a no win situation because, like above, all possibilities and every choice is filled with the opportunity to be a mistake or be perceived as a mistake from my earth bound perspective. 

Jesus had to deal with the limitations of being in one place at one time with more opportunities than one person can accomplish. He dealt with it, and I have Him to lean on and be with. Jesus had purpose, vision, and an unrestricted relationship with God the Father. God the Father could and would cover all the additional distance Jesus in one place and one time couldn’t. I have a relationship with Jesus. I have to trust Him instead of buying tickets on the guilt train. That doesn’t mean that I will be right all the time, or even half the time, or even less. It means that I can trust God to do, correct, fix all that is beyond me because nothing is beyond Him. I can walk in the awareness of trust instead of the missing opportunity that breeds a guilt reflex.

I believe Jesus used that conversation at the sidewalk rail to teach two people to trust. He was teaching two people to be aware of Him and what He can do for limited people in hurtful life experiences. I shared the experience with my wife who was touched by it too. That is three for three that Jesus worked on. My wife saw me talking to the man and trusted the Lord was up to something. He doesn’t miss an opportunity. 

Today’s groovy topic might cause you to flip your wig if you can’t dig it. It will play with your head. I’m hoping this blog will make you mellow and not be a bummer, but who knows. It might just send you trippin’. Slang. We all use it. Check Google, and you can find popular slang by the decade to refresh your memory. That doesn’t even include jargon, which is work slang developed around any job or work type or situation.

Each generation creates its own way of saying things, short cuts, slapped-together metaphors, references, allusions, images, or, now, techno types of things like emojis. I’m sure the parents of Egyptian teens were wondering what the teens were saying during the time the pyramids were being built. It seems to be human nature.

Slang is a way of inclusion and exclusion. It separates those in the know from those who aren’t. Civil war youth had an entire language with fans, flowers, and gloves to give dating cues to the opposite sex in ways that the parental chaperones could not get. Slang can be subversive. It is weaponized communications used in many ways to include, exclude, separate, isolate, intimidate, love on, and meet many other needs of the communicator, sometimes just self affirmation.

I think about this when I overhear Christian speak. Christians have their own language, slang, short cuts, logic, and Bible based understanding. It is beautiful when they are together and have the same Christian speak. However, it is painful when Christian speak is used with non believers.

I’ve heard witnessing persons ask a person if they were “saved.” That is a question that a Christian would understand because it carries a lot of logic and theology with the term. A non-Christian won’t understand that. They will probably understand a potential threat and that they have been made a target, but not understand the term.

Christians use scriptures to verify their thoughts which is great, except when they are doing so with a non believer who does not recognize or understand the Bible. Jesus told parables. He explained heavenly principles in the terms the common man could understand. He only used the Bible terminology with the Pharisees and Sadducees who were trained in their common faith. Jesus communicates with us in ways that we can understand. That is loving.

I am challenged to consider how I am communicating. Am I forcing others to understand me and my thinking processes, or am I trying to understand them so I can communicate clearly and thoughtfully? Am I stretching to understand and love them, or forcing them to stretch and understand me? The truth of Jesus and heaven can be told in any language, circumstance, culture, and career. Jesus proved that in the way He taught and shared.

Seeing the beauty of God everywhere and in everything is encouraging. That encouragement can and should be shared. We are called to witness, but not to alienate through thoughtless language and slang.

I once was invited to a ministry at a retirement home for military personnel. I was extremely concerned because I had never been in the military and didn’t know how to talk to them. I realized that all I had to do was listen. Jesus had been every place they had gone and with them through all they had experienced. All I had to do was listen, and I would be able to point the Lord out to them in their own life experience. It was not about me, my understanding, or my slang. It was about the creator of the universe who truly and deeply loves everyone.

I have grown addicted to the GPS apps. Someone sends me an address, and the app will tell me where to go, how to get there, and which is the best route to take. Some GPS apps even include all the details like slow traffic, interruptions, road hazards, police, and all the places you might want to stop along the way. Convenient right? So – do you know where you are? Ask Siri or Alexa. They know.

I’ve often thought about the Tardis in Dr. Who and Hermione’s carry-all bag in Harry Potter. They are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. Humans are that way. We are much bigger on the inside than our outsides show. We have years of history, places, things, emotions, memories all jogging along with our feet during our daily movements. The demoniac in Luke 8 had enough room to house a legion of demons who took out a herd of pigs when he was delivered. Our souls are greater than houses holding on to all kinds of treasures and junk. We carry all that while we are growing and gathering more.

Periodically, people, like me, take on a project to dejunk. It is shocking how much I have in closets and storage. My heart, soul, and mind are bigger than that, filled with all kinds of stuff. You might even think of the inner you as being as big as a city, a country, or a world when you consider all it contains. The GPS maps can’t map that. Ask Siri or Alexa where you are in the inner dimension and you won’t find any coordinates or directions. I think that many times you can’t know where you are except by looking back at where you were after the fact because our hindsight is better, or seemingly more clear, than present sight.

We actually do have an internal GPS called the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to live in us upon the day of salvation when we join Jesus’s family. The Holy Spirit knows where He is in each of us. The Holy Spirit is constantly at work, walking the streets and hallways of the interior world of a child of God, mapping territories, cleaning closets, repairing destroyed areas, and proclaiming the Kingdom of God to all the areas inside that secretly don’t want to come under the authority of God.

The New Testament tells us how Jesus walked through Israel doing the wonderful things He did to free people and bring them in to the joy of the life He offered them. He is doing that in each of us, walking through all the inner areas of our souls bringing His life, love, hope, and healing, piece by piece, event by event, area by area throughout the entirety of our being. The Holy Spirit is our GPS.

We can see His footprints and know where He is and where we are with Him. How? Consider — How many times a day are you reminded to do the right thing? Be loving? Forgive someone? Pray? Be honest or thoughtful? Get a sudden insight that teaches you how to be a better you? Get a revelation or any kind of experience that draws/points you in the direction of Jesus? Get an understanding of Bible verses that you’ve read dozens of times and experience it like you are truly seeing it for the first time? Finding the Holy Spirit isn’t playing “Where’s Waldo” because He is busy talking to us all day, every day, in ways that make our lives, and we as people, better and closer to our Lord Jesus.

I can’t watch “I Love Lucy” because it embarasses me. How can a TV show do that? Easy. I think I got a silly gene from somewhere, and funny things happen to me. I’m the guy who could stand up in a restaurant, knocking over the waiter with a tray of hot soup, which lands on the next table, creating total chaos, that escalates through the restaurant. 

I didn’t want to pass the silly gene on, but my youngest son got a dose of it. He really makes it work. His children adore him, as he adores them. I see in him, and his version of the silly gene, a complete lack of pretence or self presumption. In him, the silly gene is the ability to lovingly and innocuously move to any level with any person, even a small child, and communicate. I’ve seen people without the silly gene be able to do the same thing. Maybe I’m the only one who gets the embarrassing side of the silly gene, but I don’t think so.

Embarrassment comes when irony happens in real life, the opposite to what you should reasonably expect. (The teacher in me had to add that definition.)  It is that moment you get in your car to head to get some new tires and find that all four tires are flat. I have learned to fight the rigid fight response to those moments, because anger is a native best friend to embarrassment. Learning to accept and go with the humor of the moment is the opposite of my natural response, but the one that works the best. So why bring this up?

God very often works in complete opposition to human normal. His kingdom is upside down to our way of thinking. Leaders are to be servants, the first shall be last, in giving you will receive. His ways aren’t our ways unless we are learning to be more like Him, which has to be an intentional choice. It is learned behavior to let our guard down, give up our pretense and our self presumption. 

Time has taught me that those embarrassing moments become bonding moments between myself and those who love me. They see me as I am and accept me when I’m silly and when I’m not. We gain intimacy, depth, and joy through all the good and bad moments because love accepts and encourages. It builds up without tearing down. It allows you to be completely yourself without the defenses that always lead to conflict and division. 

Destructive defenses destroy relationships and potential relationships. The “I must look good according to how I think others see me” creates walls and warfare which not only hurt others, but keeps a person from receiving the love and healing so desperately needed by everyone. God’s way is upside down, but it works. Love has no need for walls, defenses, or perfection from anyone. Love does not fight to maintain an image of self, but it relies on the truth.

I guess that it should be no shock that the death on the cross is necessary for the life of relationships because no relationship can exist without forgiveness. Forgiveness destroys walls, defenses, and an individual’s unreasonable belief in his/her own perfection or ability to be right no matter the cost to others. God’s way works. Death gives life, another upside truth, because it takes the death of selfishness to love others. Loving others is more fulfilling in every way than loving self.

With all that said, I still can’t watch “I Love Lucy.” I may be learning, but, apparently, I’m not there yet.