I have been reflecting on an issue that often troubles me. When a crisis occurs in the world, there is an urge to pack up and go, or to at least to write a very big check. Many share that urge. But we are constrained by time commitments, lack of preparation, and enormous personal debt.
As part of the changes in my own life, I am thinking I need to make an effort to live loose, live light, and live large.
Living loose means to take life as it comes and to be able to join Isaiah in his declaration, "Here I am; send me."
If we live loose, we plan and implement our plans, but we do not become so attached to our plans that they take precedence over our purpose for living. Strategies are vital to our goals, but they change. They must not rule us. Calendars represent commitments to be honored, but there must be some flexibility built into our rigid lives.
Living loose means living in a state of readiness to respond to God's call through the suffering of the world.
Living loose may mean having a passport ready at all times. I don't have that. It may mean having contingencies plans and back up prepared for our routine commitments.
Mostly it is an attitude.
I need to live light. Too often we are guided by our limitations. We have created many of those limitations through compulsive spending, mismanagement of credit, consumer greed, and appetites out of control. I have wasted thousands of dollars for which I have little to show.
What do we really need? What is interfering with our ability to give when a need arises?
How can we lighten our loads and live simpler, more rewarding and satisfying lives?
Not only debt, but possessions and expectations of comfort and pleasure can tie us down.
So can mismanaged health and wellness. We are often just too out of shape to be ready to respond. I, for one, have abused my body through years of eating too much of the wrong food and failure to push myself beyond my comfort level in exercise.
These are seemingly innocent sins, but they have effected my availability.
I am just being honest here - I have not lived light. Yet, in recent weeks, I have been experiencing an emptying of myself before God. It has been obvious on the physical level, but it has informed my soul and my spirit.
The sad consequence of the past, however, is that barring a miracle, I could not financially, physically, or professionally get on a plane tomorrow and fly to Haiti.
Neither do I have the money in the bank to write a big check. I will write a check, but it will not be what I could have written if I had lived more wisely and lightly.
There are skills I ought to require, but there is the ever-present excuse: When can I find the time?
Where does anyone find time? We make time.
Living large means we take the world into our hearts and let it expand us beyond ourselves. It means growing toward a God-sized concern for the pain of humanity. It means weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice. It means thinking globally and eternally.
Living large means loving our neighbors as ourselves.
We love ourselves. We pamper ourselves, indulge ourselves, and fatten ourselves. In the process, we destroy ourselves for usefulness. We need to find a new way of loving ourselves that embraces the whole world. We need to transform our love of self into something that feeds a new self, a servant self, a more fulfilled and joyful self that is available to God and others.
As we change ourselves and love ourselves that way, we can love and change the world.
Live loose; live light; live large!
Tiptoes
Standing on tiptoe in expectancy.
Living breathless in the wind.
Waiting with expectation among the voices of boredom.
Living above the storm ...
Hopeful ...
Hope.
Miep Gies and Ordinary People
I posted this some years ago when Miep Gies died at the age of 100. I have added the graphic and the video interview to remember an extraordinary woman, her legacy, and the life lesson her life communicates. - 1/19/2018
An office secretary in Amsterdam during the Nazi reign of terror, she was impressed to do her part to save the family of her boss and friend, a Jewish man named Otto.
For 25 months, she, her husband, and other employees assisted them with food and necessities. She could have been sent to a concentration camp for this effort.
Eventually, the family was discovered and arrested. Only Otto survived.
Gies went to the apartment where they had hidden to rescue the family's scattered notebooks and papers. Then she locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. Include among the papers were those of Otto's daughter.
Gies never read them. She felt that they were sacred and private. If she had, she said she would have had to destroy them because they would have implicated "helpers" whose lives would have been in danger.
After the war, Otto returned alone and stayed with the Gies family until 1952.
Her efforts later won her many accolades which she considered unfair. She felt others had done and risked far more. She said that if we believed that only extraordinary people responded courageously to their neighbor's needs in times of danger, no one would respond. To her, it was the natural thing to do.
She said that not a day went by in her life when she did not regret not being able to save Otto's family, especially their young daughter who died in the concentration camp at the age of 15.
Her name was Anne - Anne Frank.
Miep presented Otto his daughter's diary after his return.
It has been a treasure to the world of hope and goodwill. Without Miep Gies' courage and compassion, it would have been lost to the generations.
Gies was honored with the "Righteous Gentile" title by the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem.
She fell shortly before Christmas and sustained a neck injury which took her life last week.
I had never heard of Miep Gie, but without her, I would have never heard of Anne Frank or read "The Diary of Ann Frank."
God grant us more ordinary people who are willing to extend a hand to their neighbors in ways that may seem extraordinary but become so commonplace as to be considered ordinary.
I have been reflecting on an issue that often troubles me. When a crisis occurs in the world, there is an urge to pack up and go, or to at least to write a very big check. Many share that urge. But we are constrained by time commitments, lack of preparation, and enormous personal debt.
As part of the changes in my own life, I am thinking I need to make an effort to live loose, live light, and live large.
Living loose means to take life as it comes and to be able to join Isaiah in his declaration, "Here I am; send me."
If we live loose, we plan and implement our plans, but we do not become so attached to our plans that they take precedence over our purpose for living. Strategies are vital to our goals, but they change. They must not rule us. Calendars represent commitments to be honored, but there must be some flexibility built into our rigid lives.
Living loose means living in a state of readiness to respond to God's call through the suffering of the world.
Living loose may mean having a passport ready at all times. I don't have that. It may mean having contingencies plans and back up prepared for our routine commitments.
Mostly it is an attitude.
I need to live light. Too often we are guided by our limitations. We have created many of those limitations through compulsive spending, mismanagement of credit, consumer greed, and appetites out of control. I have wasted thousands of dollars for which I have little to show.
What do we really need? What is interfering with our ability to give when a need arises?
How can we lighten our loads and live simpler, more rewarding and satisfying lives?
Not only debt, but possessions and expectations of comfort and pleasure can tie us down.
So can mismanaged health and wellness. We are often just too out of shape to be ready to respond. I, for one, have abused my body through years of eating too much of the wrong food and failure to push myself beyond my comfort level in exercise.
These are seemingly innocent sins, but they have effected my availability.
I am just being honest here - I have not lived light. Yet, in recent weeks, I have been experiencing an emptying of myself before God. It has been obvious on the physical level, but it has informed my soul and my spirit.
The sad consequence of the past, however, is that barring a miracle, I could not financially, physically, or professionally get on a plane tomorrow and fly to Haiti.
Neither do I have the money in the bank to write a big check. I will write a check, but it will not be what I could have written if I had lived more wisely and lightly.
There are skills I ought to require, but there is the ever-present excuse: When can I find the time?
Where does anyone find time? We make time.
Living large means we take the world into our hearts and let it expand us beyond ourselves. It means growing toward a God-sized concern for the pain of humanity. It means weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice. It means thinking globally and eternally.
Living large means loving our neighbors as ourselves.
We love ourselves. We pamper ourselves, indulge ourselves, and fatten ourselves. In the process, we destroy ourselves for usefulness. We need to find a new way of loving ourselves that embraces the whole world. We need to transform our love of self into something that feeds a new self, a servant self, a more fulfilled and joyful self that is available to God and others.
As we change ourselves and love ourselves that way, we can love and change the world.
Live loose; live light; live large!
Tiptoes
Standing on tiptoe in expectancy.
Living breathless in the wind.
Waiting with expectation among the voices of boredom.
Living above the storm ...
Hopeful ...
Hope.
Miep Gies and Ordinary People
I posted this some years ago when Miep Gies died at the age of 100. I have added the graphic and the video interview to remember an extraordinary woman, her legacy, and the life lesson her life communicates. - 1/19/2018
An office secretary in Amsterdam during the Nazi reign of terror, she was impressed to do her part to save the family of her boss and friend, a Jewish man named Otto.
For 25 months, she, her husband, and other employees assisted them with food and necessities. She could have been sent to a concentration camp for this effort.
Eventually, the family was discovered and arrested. Only Otto survived.
Gies went to the apartment where they had hidden to rescue the family's scattered notebooks and papers. Then she locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. Include among the papers were those of Otto's daughter.
Gies never read them. She felt that they were sacred and private. If she had, she said she would have had to destroy them because they would have implicated "helpers" whose lives would have been in danger.
After the war, Otto returned alone and stayed with the Gies family until 1952.
Her efforts later won her many accolades which she considered unfair. She felt others had done and risked far more. She said that if we believed that only extraordinary people responded courageously to their neighbor's needs in times of danger, no one would respond. To her, it was the natural thing to do.
She said that not a day went by in her life when she did not regret not being able to save Otto's family, especially their young daughter who died in the concentration camp at the age of 15.
Her name was Anne - Anne Frank.
Miep presented Otto his daughter's diary after his return.
It has been a treasure to the world of hope and goodwill. Without Miep Gies' courage and compassion, it would have been lost to the generations.
Gies was honored with the "Righteous Gentile" title by the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem.
She fell shortly before Christmas and sustained a neck injury which took her life last week.
I had never heard of Miep Gie, but without her, I would have never heard of Anne Frank or read "The Diary of Ann Frank."
God grant us more ordinary people who are willing to extend a hand to their neighbors in ways that may seem extraordinary but become so commonplace as to be considered ordinary.