Free Falling and The Context

There are lots of things I remember from college. 

Unfortunately, very few of them are the things my family paid a fortune for me to learn. 

I learned how to use my meal card and a salad bar to feed stir-fry to my entire apartment.

I learned that sloshing pure bleach into a shower, while being the only way to clean a bathroom shared by six guys after three months of neglect, will make my coughs taste like Clorox for a week. 

I learned that if I allowed my laundry to filter down to the bottom of the laundry pile it did, quite miraculously, come out less stinky than it went in.

There is, however, a lesson I learned in college that’s proven essential to life.

It’s been worth every penny of my tuition.

Context is king.

The key to understanding everything is to understand the context surrounding it.

Here’s an example:

If I say, “it turned blue”, that could mean all sorts of things.

I could be talking about a  frostbitten toe…

or a pregnancy test.

(for the record, I am NOT talking about a pregnancy test).

I could be talking about the notorious, PC “blue screen of death”…

or the moisture indicator on the front of our middle child’s training diaper. 

You have to know the context to know which one of those scenarios I was talking about. 

And context can drastically change how you feel about something too.

Such is the case with the phrase, “Free fall”. 

Those words have some emotional punch don’t they?

If you’re wearing a parachute and are with a bunch of college friends having a reunion weekend, those words sound exciting.

If you just tripped on an exposed root on the edge of the Grand Canyon…not so exciting. 

If you just looked at your 401K, “free fall”, while accurate, may be terrifying.

If you are using those words to describe your emotional state it may be scarier still.

The context determines if those words thrill you or kill you.

And here is why that is such a great life lesson.

As a Christian, The Gospel is always the context.

God’s unfailing, unconditional, gracious and merciful love is always the theme.

And that changes everything.

So as The Moritz family, like a lot of families right now, wrestles with issues of joblessness and financial strain, we need to live as if The Gospel really is the context.

Will we still be afraid?

Sure.

But will we be excited that we have an opportunity to see God move?  Will we be emboldened as we embark on this adventure?

Absolutely.

Now, for anyone who thinks that I write that glibly, know this:

I had a friend who used to tell me this during hard times. 

I wanted to punch him.

It sounded like overly simple mind games for truly scary and difficult times.

It’s forever been the simplicity of the Gospel that is the biggest stumbling block for the minds of men.

Ironically, it can be even more of a stumbling block for us Bible Major/Professional Ministry types.

We like our coffee strong and our theology complicated.

And so it was the very simplicity of what my friend suggested that made me bristle.

But as Laura and I walked some very hard and painful roads together, and as we truly experienced what it meant to live in the context of The Gospel, we discovered that our friend was right and we can face the free fall.

 

Zero and The Journey

Right now I’m staring at a blank screen. 

The empty, white rectangle hovering in its Microsoft Word window seems to taunt me, daring me to fill it.

You see, after writing for almost a year, I’ve finally hit a writer’s block. 

I’ve got nothing. 

Zero.

It’s not that God isn’t doing anything in my life. 

He is. 

And it isn’t that I don’t have anything to share. 

I do. 

The problem is that I feel the pressure to take what God has been teaching me and make it humorous and entertaining to read. 

So, in the spirit of honesty, and since I don’t have a funny story for this week, I’ll just share how God has been challenging me. 

It’s no secret for most of you that my season with Osterville Baptist Church is coming to an end. 

This is bitter, sweet, exciting, and scary. 

It’s sweet because the amount of time that I’ve had to spend apart from my wife and kids has been totally inconsistent with what I believe about family. 

It’s bitter because I truly do love and care about the people I’ve been serving for the last year and half. 

It’s exciting because I know that God has something in store. 

It’s scary because I haven’t the foggiest idea where I’ll serve in ministry next. 

We’ve also been wrestling with our preconceived notions of what God’s plans for us might be.

I think that we always assumed that God’s plan would involve better health, more money, a bigger house in a safer neighborhood, and nicer clothes. 

No part of that assumption is Biblical. 

If God chooses to bless us with those things, then we’ll be grateful.  The challenge to us has been to remove that presumption from our minds so we can clearly hear God as we seek him for our next step. 

For anyone who has wrestled with these things, you know how hard that is to do.

And so, in the midst of this season of transition, Laura and I have been praying for peace.

A lot.

Not “peace”, as in, “everything is smooth sailing”, but true, Biblical peace…even in the middle of hard times. 

Even this morning, as Laura called to tell me that our youngest was throwing up, we found ourselves asking God for peace.  And as much as I’d like to tell you that this story has a nice happy ending, as you can tell by the tone of this post, I still feel unsettled and afraid. 

And I think that that’s an OK place to leave it for now. 

I don’t think it’s OK to stay here but I don’t think we should be afraid to visit.

Especially during Advent.

Because the whole idea behind this season is anticipation, longing, and tension. 

The fearful, difficult, but expectant journey to Bethlehem.

 

 

Deliverance Hamsters and The Geckos

Back when I was twelve years old, my middle school class had hamsters.

We began the year with two, but by June, we had a small tribe.

It was a good lesson for health class. 

It was also a good lesson for genetics, since the two original hamsters were closely related and thus produced mutant spawn.

Please know that when I use the term “mutant” I’m not talking about the cool “Spiderman” or “Fantastic Four” kind of mutants. 

I’m talking about the kind showcased in the movie “Deliverance”. 

These were backwoods, rural Appalachian, scary hamsters. 

It wasn’t pretty. 

Some of them were blind, some had stumps instead of legs, and all of them would pee on you when you tried to pick them up. 

So…come the end of school, the teacher asked who would like to take them home for the summer. 

No one wanted them. 

I, having not yet seen “Deliverance”, thought they were mildly cute and enjoyed the sound of their dueling banjos. 

I took them home. 

They lived about a month. 

I wish I could say that they died of complications due to their “inbredness”.

Unfortunately, they died from my neglect. 

One morning, I cleaned their cage out (it was one of those cool ones with two levels and a tube connecting them) and thought it would be nice for them to have some fresh air.  So I placed their nice clean cage in the shade on the deck, so that my little, incontinent friends could enjoy the morning breeze. 

But then things went South. 

My mom and I got in a fight over something (I can’t remember what) and then discovered that we were late for an appointment.  We ran out the door and rushed off. 

Now, here’s the funny thing about planetary movement. 

The spot where the shade is in the morning is not where the shade is in the afternoon…..what with the rotation of the Earth and all. 

And so, we returned to find our furry wards baked inside their cedar chipped habitat by the noonday sun. 

It was truly as terrible as it sounds. 

We gave them a proper burial by the shed in the backyard. 

Fast forward to this weekend. 

Laura works in a middle school where the science teacher has several animals for the students to enjoy.  This includes two gecko lizards named Izzy and Lizzy. 

Since our kids love animals but don’t have any pets of their own, we volunteered to keep them for the weekend. 

They came with instructions. 

1) Pick them up from behind their front legs. 

2) Don’t grab them from behind their front legs.  You’ll crush their lungs.

3) If they get scared, their tails will fall off. 

4) Handling them, looking at them, or taunting them, will scare them.

5) If they get too cold, their tails will fall off. 

6) Reading this list will make their tails fall off. 

With my history of killing class pets, I was a nervous wreck. 

Brehm, however, LOVED them.  His favorite thing to do was to hold them firmly, but gently, in his hand and pet their backs.  Apparently the geckos liked this because their tales never fell off. 

They would just rest in his hand while Brehm watched TV. 

Eventually I relaxed enough to let them climb up my shoulder and onto my head. 

They looked just like the Geico gecko but they never offered us insurance. 

I guess they considered us a risk. 

Lately I’ve been fearful that God is more like me than like Brehm. 

That He will start to do something to bless me but then get distracted and leave me to bake.

I’m not sure why this is. 

Everything in the Bible and everything I’ve experienced these past few years indicates that I can trust God.  That he will not neglect me the way I neglected those inbred hamsters. 

And so this weekend I’ve been praying that I would be more “geckoish”.

A fragile creature resting in strong but gentle hands. 

I’ve also been thankful. 

Mainly I’ve been thankful that, no matter how scared I get, I don’t have a tail that can fall off.