[tem-puh-rer-ee]
adjective, noun, plural -rar·ies. adjective
Over the months of selling a home, saying goodbye, and stumbling over this new life, I've met world changers who serve missionaries in the field (go-ers) with compassion and cheeky love.
They make sure that the go-ers have what they need and are prayed up. These stay-ers stand firm at home – for now – while others get their passports stamped. Living among these Love-ers has me thinking.
I've also encountered a tribe of people who have flung themselves to the far corners of the world, into their schools or jobs, and under bridges and through the lushest of wastelands all for love and a little adventure. These go-ers have seen and done more than even the Army does before 5 am. They are a merry rowdy bunch of world-changers who are delightfully both confident and genuinely humble. A little cheeky, relaxed and yet seeking; they are rebels with a cause. Meeting them has me thinking.
Last week, I hugged my kids & Kansas-born world-changers, logged several hundred miles in a rental car, made homemade sushi at the ranch and enjoyed time with a few friends in WildCat land. I broke bread with pals, walked the Konza, made a cake, and giggled over rum punch at the Little Grill. This latest round of meetings and partings has me thinking.
It is all so temporary.
The things that cause us to sob on the floor are so often marked by a short season. We get excited about something coming and lose sleep with the thrill of it. Then the day comes, the cookies by the chimney are eaten, the wrapping paper is recycled and tomorrow is just another day.
Fleeting.
I spent nearly $20 on the Harvard Business Review because I am a geek and like to read it. It is already crumpled and coffee stained and the cat has commandeered it as a cool place to sleep. All the work and sweat and effort and equity that those brilliant people put into learning and testing and knowing has become an ad hoc coaster and catnap station (and mosquito swatter).
We are chasing after the wind. That fancy trip we've wished for or stud
ly fella that has all the Thriller moves or carpe diem brilliance eventually succumbs to gravity, decay, the critics, or fickle memory.Except there's hope. Hope that was born in a stable that looks so temporary and flimsy and meaningless on the outside that we easily pass it by. I have peeked inside that stable. But, like the crumudgeony dwarves in the Narnian Chronicles, I have gone 'round it looking for a harder way in and missed the whole point & pleasure of it. I've pursued, tried to fix, hammered out, "got things done", and generally resisted the reality of what
waits in that stable in favor of my best efforts. (see +++ below)
Now, I am staggering in like an exhausted toddler; dragging up to my "daddy" and flopping my weary self into his lap. "I got nothing" but a need to press in and let him be dad & do his dad stuff.
All I have or know is that in pressing in to a God I cannot see, and giving up on all of my efforts to please, stir, and entice him to act, peace has come. "That's the whole story. Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God (stand in awe of him) and obey his commands, for this is everyone's duty." Ecclesiastes 12:13
+++Isaiah 30:15 & 18
(NLT)
15 This is what the Sovereign Lord,
the Holy One of Israel, says:
“Only in returning to me
and resting in me will you be saved.
In quietness and confidence is your strength.
But you would have none of it.
18 So the Lord must wait for you to come to him
so he can show you his love and compassion.
For the Lord is a faithful God.
Blessed are those who wait for his help.
