Imagine you are walking down Woodward Avenue in Downtown Detroit. You are with friends and you’re making your way over to Comerica Park for the Tigers game. At the moment you are standing at a crosswalk waiting for the light to change so you can cross the street. As you wait you notice the buildings, the smell of the city, the crowds of people around you and even the weather: it’s a wonderful 76 degrees and sunny, with blue skies and a light breeze. It is the perfect day for a ball game.  

With the overpowering sights and sounds you overlook something. It is something that generally goes unnoticed but when realized is never forgotten. Can you hear it? It’s the sound of the crickets in the bush you are standing next to.

So often we notice the big things in life and are more than willing to recognize God’s presence in those things. It could be the beauty of nature, the relief of a bill being paid, a long awaited college graduation, etc. We often forget that while God is in the big things, He is most often found in the daily mundane things as well. The mere fact that we wake up in the morning is a gift from God. Just as we often forget God’s presence in the big/small things of life, we can also see in 1 Kings that God doesn’t always respond to our requests in ways that we would hope or expect.

All throughout Scripture we are reminded to “be still” “be silent”   

I don’t know about you but I struggle with this idea of silence. Perhaps it is the society that I live in, or maybe I am too consumed with my own desires that I just don’t notice, but to sit and be still-to be silent… is something that I can’t stand. I am constantly doing something, constantly with people, constantly focusing my time and energy on anything but stillness. Truthfully I think the only time I am silent or still is when I’m sleeping. 

But if we take the time to sit and listen, take the time to stop and breathe… imagine what could happen. It is possible that we’ve been missing God’s voice the entire time.  Like the crickets who are sitting in the bush it could be that God is right there… we just haven’t taken the time to notice.

And the first time
That You opened Your eyes did You realize that You would be my Savior
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever

And so this Christmas I’ll compare the things I felt in prior years
To what this midnight made so clear
That You have come to meet me here

To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me
In the hope that what You did
That you were born so I might live
To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me

And I, I celebrate the day
That You were born to die
So I could one day pray for You to save my life

 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”

I find the contrast between Naomi and Job incredible. Here we have Naomi (granted she had a pretty crappy situation) decide that she has had enough. She has had enough to the point that she changes her own name to Mara (or Bitterness).

We read later in the book of Job about a similar issue. Job has virtually everything taken from him and yet still chooses to praise God.

I love that. It reminds me of that fact that  it is not our situation, but our response to the situation that makes it what it is. Our response to situations really determines the gravity of the issue. It can be something as little as stubbing your toe to hearing the news that you have cancer. Things happen; we live in a fallen world. To expect sunshine and roses everyday is foolish. Things happen; we choose how to respond.

                                      Attitude is everything.

I heard a story the other day. I know what you’re thinking- she hears lots of stories. You’re right. I hear lots of stories and I would love to hear your story someday as well.

But this story resonated so deeply with me that I wanted to share it with you.

“Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?” Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, ‘Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.’ I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.”

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested. “Yes, it is,” Jerry said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live life.”

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my scars?” I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. “The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied. “Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.” “Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked. Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, ‘He’s a dead man.’ “I knew I needed to take action.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry.

“She asked if I was allergic to anything.’Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Bullets!’ Over their laughter, I told them. ‘I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.” Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.”

My question for all of us is this: What would it look like to respond positively to everything around you?

“And He said, ‘who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’”

I find it interesting that God asks. I find it interesting because God already knows the answer, and Adam and Eve know that He knows the answer. So the question is why does God ask?

When I was younger, I was notorious for making messes. I also had a love affair with cheetos (not the poofy kind, the crunchy ones). One day I had decided that it was necessary to build a fort, and because my fort was the barrier between the forces of good and evil – cheetos were the only appropriate food of choice. To be honest, I am quite confident that when Scripture tells us of God providing manna from heaven for the Israelites, they really meant cheetos (kidding, sort of).

Within moments of the fort being built a battle broke loose. The forces of evil (a.k.a. my big sister Jackie) decided that a fort would not stop her from entering the world of good (a.k.a. my half of the living room). Due to poor planning there were no weapons within the fort to protect against such an invasion. The only thing available was my oversized bag of cheetos.

With sadness, I opened the bag of cheetos and launched into a full attack. Moments later, we heard a door open.

                                                         Mom was home.

Oh no! what were we going to do? The living room was a mess, cheetos were everywhere. There was no time to think, no time to clean up, and certainly no time to get out of the living room (the front door my mother was entering was directly ahead).

So what did we do? We did only what any child in our situation would do: we froze. We froze and prayed to high heaven that somehow she wouldn’t notice. Unfortunately, we weren’t that lucky. Apparently this was one of those times that God doesn’t answer your prayer right away because He wants to teach you something.

Nevertheless:

Mom enters the room. At this point my older sister and I are standing so still that one could easily mistake us for statues. Our mother- clothed in the finest Levi brand mom jeans and stellar red soccer mom jacket… stands in the doorway and ever so sweetly asks:

                                                          Girls, what happened?

This was it! The moment of truth and what did we do? We lied.  “I don’t know what you mean…, nothing mom.” Clearly my mother knew we were lying. The evidence was everywhere. We left that afternoon unpunished- well, not really… our guilt got us and we confessed later, losing T.V. for the week. Anyways…

I think that God is kind of like my mom in that moment. She knew what we did, knew that we were lying, and loved us anyway. And I think that this is because regardless of what we say or do- there is nothing that can take away that love and desire for relationship that a parent has for a child. The same love that God has for us. God loves Adam and Eve enough to ask the question, even if He already knows the answer. And He loves us enough to give us the choice to be honest with Him or not… and no matter what we say or do, He will never love us any less. 

In hopes to remember things, I’ve started a blog. I hope that it will lead to better memory retention. I also love feedback from others. I hope that this can become a safe place for people to discuss serious issues and help answer the question of what it means to live out the way of Jesus in today’s world.