Fragments

It goes without saying that life is full of surprises, I guess the reality is that life itself is one gigantic surprise. No man has any idea what a day may bring, we of course have our expectations, but nothing is for certain. Even if we were to confine ourselves in a room to try to seek shelter from the unexpectedness that lurks about in the real world, even still we cannot hide from the reality of illness and our nature. By making certain choices we may limit the magnitude and frequency of life’s little surprises, but the reality is that we are in control of a very small fragment of our own lives.

A coach of mine once told me you can only worry about the things you can control, this is a piece of wisdom I tap into and remind myself of on a regular basis. So many elements in life hinge on infinite variables that are beyond our influence and it is no doubt that this can be frustrating. Like running a race chained to 100 blindfolded strangers, you can try as hard as you want, but your progress will have much more to do with your ability to make something happen with the elements that you’ve been attached to than it will with your ability simply to do things.

Over the years I’ve found that my deepest moments of personal frustration, de-motivation, and futility have mostly come about when I’m trying to control the fragments of my life that really fall outside the scope of my influence. A tremendous amount of unproductive energy can be applied towards trying to change or control things that we have no ability or business changing and controlling.

The business world uses engagement letters to define the scope, or areas of responsibility, in agreements between a person providing a service and a person receiving a service. Each “engagement” sets boundaries to define where the sphere of influence, responsibility, and control stops; additionally there is often an objective, or purpose that is typically defined. One thing however is missing, that is the way in which the objective will be met while all the while staying within the scope of the agreement…purpose and power are defined, process is not.

It doesn’t really surprise me that Christ commissioned his followers in the same way. We were provided a boundary for what we control and influence and an objective to pursue…the way we operate within the constructs of those things is entirely up to us. Of course there are lots of guidelines to help optimize our pursuits and there is grace for when we wander beyond those guidelines.

The scope of our serviceh agreement to God is simple, direct, and unmistakable.

• Our purpose: Love God with all your heart, mind, and strength; love people like you love yourself
• Our Scope (what we control): the way we love and live to convey the purpose above.

Each day I’m reminded of how little I truly influence and control. I can’t control someone being rude, I can’t control my flight being delayed, despite my best efforts I can’t control really much of anything in my life. All I can control is the way I love people, the way I show people I love Christ, and the way people I love them…that’s it. When we simplify our scope in life we are empowered to do more, and to do it more effectively. Our approach to the uncontrollable wild world around us is changed not because we believe we can change it and make it something it is not, but because we accept it as it is and we don’t try to make it something that it will never be. In turn we are able to do great things because we learn to operate in the throes of reality as real people, making real change.

Often times in life we’re left with a lot of brokenness and a lot of fragments purely due to the fact that we live in a broken world, the brokenness and troubles of life are again outside of our contol. Our objective is neither to put the pieces back together, nor is it to try to change the pieces of our fragmented lives, but rather it is to take the pieces of our fragmented lives and do our best with what we have to convey LOVE. The objective is defined, the scope of control is narrow, the process of how we pursue those things is up to us.

A few weeks back I ended up watching part of the Para-Olympic games and was reminded that we are afforded a lot of choices as people when it comes to how we deal with this fragmented, broken world. A lot of the athletes I saw had pretty tragic stories, car accidents, birth defects, war related injuries, yet instead of dwelling on the brokenness of their lives and focusing on tragedy these people were focused on the fact that they have a life left to live.

It is the same in our lives, while we cannot control much of what happens to us, we can control the way we chose to deal with that which we cannot control.

Personally, I acknowledge that the more narrow my scope, the more effective I am. I am in the process of making sure I’m worried only about the simple things in my life that I control, and in doing that I’m learning to shift focus away from the infinite number of things that are outside of my realm of influence and towards the few that I do control.

Simplifying Daily,

CP

http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com

People Shaped Spaces

I am a huge fan of Birthdays, not necessarily my own, but I love the idea of celebrating the uniqueness of an individual, the fact that though they personally had little to do directly with their birth, that the fact that they were born, is actually a truly remarkable thing. Of all the spiritual/theological concepts that are hard to swallow, I think many would claim that creation or the age old question of “How did we get here?” is a big one, if not one of the biggest. While I am fully aware the wide disparity of opinions on the origins of life, I would ask that for a moment, regardless of where you stand on the topic that you could briefly consider the implications of being created. I am not asking for anyone to abandon a scientific viewpoint on the topic, for I feel that there are many scholars who have breached the topic at length and far greater depth than I would ever, however, if we could for only a moment consider the deeper implications of life, and life created with purpose, or life as a part of a design and our part in it, we might take a new and refreshed viewpoint on what it is that we’re all really doing here on earth.

Back to birthdays…one of the things that I’ve become increasingly aware of over the years is how amazing the mosaic of situations, locations, relationships, and circumstances of our lives truly are. If we were even remotely able to understand even a portion of the expanses of creation I think we’d all be utterly dumbfounded, and I do not mean creation in a natural or elemental standpoint, I mean creation personally and relationally.

To think that prior to the creation of time and place, there was a purpose, a plan. In the plan, everything was crafted out, every detail, every moment. Like a puzzle, it was all placed together perfectly, each little piece contributing to the larger whole. In that puzzle, in the plan, was us, people…individuals who from the beginning, and even before the beginning, were a part of the bigger story.

When the foundations of time were laid, regardless of what you believe about yourself and your circumstances, the Lord above thought it best that YOU, and only YOU, an individual, be placed into the puzzle, exactly as you are, exactly where you are. There was a YOU shaped vacancy that needed to be filled, distinctly and uniquely by YOU.

There were relationships that from the beginning needed a YOU. There were people who distinctly needed a smile that would only work if it came from YOU. There were jokes that needed YOUR laugh. There were tough moments that needed YOUR tears. There were friends that would need YOUR shoulder to cry on, and only YOUR shoulder that would do. There were children that needed YOU as parents; there were parents that needed YOU as children. There were bosses and jobs, which needed YOU as an employee. There were songs that needed YOU to sing them. There were sunrises, and sunsets, that needed to be savored by YOU, and YOU alone. There were congregations and communities that had YOU shaped spaces that needed to be filled by YOU.

Friends, the uniqueness and purposefulness of US as people is something that we must not overlook. While the world would have us believe that we as individuals are nothing special, God above couldn’t feel more differently, and to think that we’re not special, and that the people around us are not of equal and dire importance is an insult and a tragedy. Both the trivial and extraordinary moments of our lives, were distinctly made for us, and us for them. To ignore the gravity of US, is to disregard the gravity of our creator, our design, our purpose…

Now there is one other important thing to remember, and that is that our uniqueness, our individuality is a part of that great mosaic. When the pieces come together they create a picture of God’s great love, his sovereign divinity, is perfect plan…his grace, his creation, his redemption, and his invitation to be a part of it all. It is us in the context of him, and not the other way around. If we take the fundamental concept of self, and strip it of the context of the greater significance of the plan to which we were placed in, we become hedonists, egotists, self-worshiping, self-indulging hopeless swine. When we extract ourselves from the greater picture, we cheapen life…though some would have us believe the opposite.

From the beginning, there was a YOU shaped space that needed filling…and it needed to be filled as a part of a plan for the ultimate glory of God. After all, happiness and enjoyment are not real until they are shared. The creator has carefully kept this in mind, as he wanted to share his mosaic, his purpose with YOU. The spaces we fill are an invitation to get in on the action, to enjoy God, his purpose, his plan, his beautiful creation work. Of course many of our daily spaces are far from sexy, but they are our spaces none the less, and they need filling, so whether we’re gas station attendants in Sandusky, OH, or Presidents in Washington, DC…there is work to be done filling the spaces of our lives.

Filling my Space,
CP
http://Chrispanoff.blogspot.com