The Top of the Mountain

Once upon a time a young man was told by the wise man of his village that he was to receive a great gift.  Just outside his village was a beautiful, very tall mountain.  Every young man in the village climbed this mountain as a rite of passage into manhood.

The young man strained his eyes to see the mountain peak.  Some days it was covered with cloud, and other days the peak was very clear.  The day after he was told about the gift he would receive, he saw a glint upon the mountain top.  He got a pair of binoculars and looked.  There was a beautiful package on top of the mountain, wrapped in gold and silver and tied with gold and silver twine.  There was no gift tag he could see, but he was sure it was the gift that had been foretold for him.  As he started out to climb the mountain, he saw beside the road, a very large brown sack with his name on it.  He was sure someone was joking about his wonderful gift by leaving such a plain old bag, and he passed it by.

He climbed all day, and in the night he was hungry and thirsty and cold.  He wished he had thought to bring a blanket, water and food, but he remembered that the next day he would receive the great gift on top of the mountain and his discomfort wouldn’t matter then.

He didn’t sleep well for he was very cold.  In the morning he was very hungry and not a little thirsty, but he shrugged it off and began to climb again.  By noon he was very, very weak from hunger and thirst, but he anticipated reaching the package by late afternoon, and by then every need would be satisfied by his present.  By late afternoon, as he approached the gift,  he could see writing on the silver and gold wrapping paper.  The writing said: “wealth, fame, success, admiration”.  His heart beat a little faster as he was sure this package would contain everything his heart desired.  He became weaker and weaker, but at last he reached the package–a box bigger than he was.  He was nearly blinded by the glitter of it all.  He saw the written words, “wealth, fame, success and admiration”, were repeated many times all over the box.  With his last bit of strength, he opened the box, and to his great dismay, it was empty.  He nearly fainted from weariness, weakness, thirst and disappointment.  As he lay near the open box and all the glittering paper, a little creature came by.  Whether the creature was a fairy, an angel or a  human, he couldn’t tell.  The little creature said, “what good are wealth, fame, success and admiration now when you are now dying for what you really need? Nevertheless, I will give you food, water, and the warmth you will need to get back home.  You have climbed the mountain after all, and you are now a man in the eyes of your village”.  “But where is the present I was promised”, demanded the young man.  The creature struggled as it pulled out a large brown bag with the young man’s name on it.  It had a cask of water, food and a big, very warm blanket.  Without this present, he knew, he would never get back home.

The Letdown after Christmas

I imagine that this week many people are suffering a post Christmas letdown.  We let ourselves build up a sort of excitement, an anticipation that somehow this Christmas will be satisfying, and at the end of the day, something is still missing.  Not even Christmas satisfied us fully.

We humans are curious beings.  At some level, we know what we need, but we persist in chasing after something else for all the wrong reasons.  We are like desert dwellers who know we need water, yet persist in trying to get the biggest patch of sand.  The one with the most sand wins, and we are all still thirsty.

The only people who are truly satisfied at the end of Christmas are the ones who spent Christmas looking for the One whose birthday it is.  If we can celebrate His coming, thank Him for coming, and ask the one thing He delights in giving us, we will always be satisfied.  The one thing He delights in giving us is more of Himself.  If we go to bed on Christmas Eve asking Him to invade our minds and hearts as we sleep and truly change us to love Him more, we will be surprised at how different our Christmas will be.  Jesus himself is the water we need.  He said so.

Our Lavish God

Lord, being in the mountains yesterday was a time of worship.  It was so incredibly beautiful.  Yet these mountains were not always as they are now.  Volcanoes, earthquakes and glaciers shaped what we see.  Nor will they always be as they are now.  Boulders fall,  dam up rivers and create lakes.  Earth moves and rivers are re-routed.  Climate changes.  Wildlife migrates.  Then there are seasons.  The rushing streams of spring make way for the green of summer, the vibrant tones of autumn and finally life slumbers under a blanket of snow.  You didn’t just create a masterpiece and walk away.  You are directing a neverending epic of beauty.  You didn’t have to be so extravagant Lord.  But you are.

Reconciliation

Perhaps you’ve had a huge disagreement with someone over a particular issue, the conversation became emotionally charged, and now you are avoiding each other.  You each have deeply held beliefs from which you can’t back down without sacrificing your integrity.  Yet, you value your relationship.  Perhaps you are family or you have a long history together.  There seems to be no way you can both win.  Or is there?  Perhaps you can seek reconciliation.  Reconciliation means a restoration of peace and a restoration of relationship.  Reconciliation says “I value you and I respect you.  I acknowledge your right to your beliefs though they differ from mine”.  This frees you to be honest.  You are not being passive and seeming to agree to something when you don’t.  You are not playing games in order to restore peace.  You are not trying to manipulate the other person into agreeing with you.  You are not in denial about the other person’s position.

How can you broker a reconciliation?  You can begin by making the first  move.  You can listen to the other person’s position.  You can be gracious by sharing with the other person how much you value them and how much you respect them even though you hold a different point of view.  You can suggest reconciliation with out resolution.  Resolution would require the end of the disagreement and that isn’t likely.  Reconciliation means to give up winning, for the sake of the relationship, which has higher value than proving yourself to be right.  Of course, the other person may not accept reconciliation without resolution.  At that point all you can do is leave the door open.  Its possible they no longer value the relationshjip as much as you do.  You’ve done your best to be generous while maintaining your integrity.  You simply have to move on, and never stop praying.

Best Selling Self-Help Books

For the past 30 or 40 years there has nearly always been a self-help book on the bestseller list.  Some of the personal stories are quite astounding and very inspirational.  I’m very happy for the people who beat addiction or crime and now have a nice life.  I saw a television interview with such a man.  He beat crime and drugs by changing his thinking and his self talk.  Now he is a best-selling author with a family and a nice life.  Very inspirational, but I caught myself thinking “now what?”  So many addicts were very successful people with a family and a nice life.  They all said their life felt empty, meaningless and without purpose.  A meaningless life is painful and drugs numb the pain.  And I asked myself “Where is God in this success story?”  It is from God we achieve our sense of meaning and purpose.  He made us all for a purpose and He tells us what the purpose is.  Without that taproot of purpose I’m like a rose I planted that blooms great for awhile and then dies for lack of a root system.  Getting off drugs is wonderful.  Getting off drugs without God has its limits.  If my car has an empty tank and I need to make a 10 mile trip, I can push the car 10 miles and write an inspirational book about it.  I may receive loads of admiration for my feat in achieving the 10 mile push through sheer will power.  I can also fill my tank with what the car was made for and drive 400 miles in that time.

Loving to be Happy

If you want to be happy, indeed if you really want to live life to the fullest, you have to love, love, love.  Dr. Smiley Blanton once said “Love or perish”.  We have to love God, love our neighbors, and love ourselves.  Everyone is familiar with the saying of Jesus that the greatest commandment is to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.  What people aren’t familiar with are the last words of this quote.  The last words are “do this and you will live.”   If we love God, we will grow closer to Him.  As we do that, we begin to realize how much He loves us.  That gives us the confidence and esteem to be able to love ourselves.  As we provide for our legitimate needs, we fill our internal well to be able to give love to others.  All this love coming around through God, us and others and around again is the source of life.  This love is like water to a thirsty plant, like rain to the desert, like sunshine in a dark and dreary place.  Just as we would say our well watered plants are “growing happily”, our well watered souls are growing happily too.  And we are living, really living.

Is Happiness a Choice?

I will admit I haven’t read the book titled Happiness is a Choice.  If I read it, I might find I agree with everything in it.  However, generally speaking, I don’t believe we can just choose to be happy and have it happen.  I don’t even think we can succeed in our constitutionally protected “Pursuit of happiness”.  I think directly pursuing happiness has an illusory quality like trying to find the end of the rainbow.  I think happiness is, instead, a byproduct of some other choices we make in life.  And what are they?

First, I think we have to settle an issue with our creator.  We are at odds with Him.  We may be in a struggle as to whether we even believe in our creator.  Secondly, we may be in that struggle because we don’t want to believe in our creator.  It may force us to give up the illusion that we are our own god in charge of our own affairs.  Think of the poem “I am the captain of my ship” and the song “I did it my way”.  Those thoughts are illusions.  We have no more control over tomorrow than we have over the wind, but our illusion of control is cherished like nicotine to a smoker.  If we wrestle the creator issue to the ground and have to admit He wins, then we have yet another struggle.  We owe our creator big time.  We wouldn’t be here enjoying this gift of life without the goodness of the giver.  We owe Him a big apology for the arrogant way we have treated Him.  Once we get that over with, we need to get to know Him.  What we invariably find in our growing relationship with Him is a sense of His love for us.  That will grow, and out of that sense of being loved will come a first taste of the byproduct of our choice: happiness.  The happiness will grow further as a result of a second choice.  The more we get to know this love and this Lover, the more the love builds up in us.  Love must be answered.  The only gift we can give God is worship, but we humans like something more physical and earthly in our gift giving.  Since there is no way we can touch God, and nothing He needs or wants, how can we show that tangible love?  He told us.  He said “Whatever you do for one of these children of mine, I consider it as done to me.”  So our second choice is to love those around us.  As Jesus friend John said in his epistle:  “If you can’t love your neighbor whom you can see, how can you love God whom you can’t see?”  Pretty down to earth man, that John.   I would challenge anyone to spend just a week trying to give love to those around you and see if happiness doesn’t just overtake you without your having to pursue it at all.   Have fun thanking God and loving others.  You are going to have a wonderful life.