Lowly things

A week or so ago, I was reading the Naaman story in 2nd Kings. Naaman is this "very important person", but he gets the very common and fatal disease leprosy. A Jewish servant girl of his suggests that a prophet in her country can heal him. So he and his entourage travel a long way and when they finally get to this prophet, the prophet a) won't come out to see him and b) through a messenger tells him to take a bath in the local river (vs. 10).

Naaman was really mad having had his expectations of lofty magic dashed to pieces (vs. 11). He kind of has a petulant metropolitan fit exclaiming

Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage (vs. 12).

So that's the back story to this line that caught my attention for a week

Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’! (vs. 13)”

 As I look over what I thought about my life from ages 10-20, I was oriented toward "great things". I pursued excellence and recognition. When I thought about what I wanted to do in life, I wanted to do things with awesome humanitarian merit. So being a missionary in a far off country was good. But solving for world peace was also ok.

But as any of the dozen people who read this blog know, that's not what I'm doing now at all. I'm a suburban mom who drives a minivan on nicely paved streets, in a friendly neighborhood, with good schools and convenient shopping. Like Naaman, this has felt like a downshift, a turn in the wrong direction. But instead I have been learning to live in a completely different dimension than I thought possible.

It used to be a black and white distinction between awesome or awful, advancing or retreating. We live in a culture of "dream big". I'm learning to dream deeper. When a girl has a baby and can't buy diapers, the need is obvious. But on my street, the needs are rarely that obvious but just as compelling.

We're into our third year at this address, and the sidewalk interactions are building a foundation of friendship that's allowing us unusual access into our neighbors lives. Our dreams are not about our neighborhood but our neighbors, the ones on our street. And I'm not thinking about how to solve world peace or start a movement, but how to bring living water to the dry places in the lives of my "common, suburban" friends.

I would be willing to move my family to the ends of the earth or some other "great thing" if God had asked that of us. But our ordinary, not glamorous, street is turning to be ok too, more than ok.

The good news of faithfulness

We spent the weekend with our local church family hashing out God's call to magnify his glory by introducing people to life in his kingdom. We are 100% on board with the church vision that people in our city have repeated opportunities to experience the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ. We really struggle with understanding how our family is to participate in this.

In our year of "do less", we're hearing from the pulpit "do more". As we grow older and are more comfortable with how God made us, the "success" stories presented to us don't look like our lives. Whether it's true or not, what we seem to be hearing is that who we are isn't valuable. We need to be X. X meaning more extroverted, more exhausted, more what we weren't made to be.

As I step back and look at who N and I are, we're the un-glamour family. Professionally, we're actually reasonably accomplished; N has worked on some high profile video game titles, I've published a couple books. But when I think about our lives in among our neighbors and friends, there's not a lot of flash and bang. We're not going to win community service awards for hours at the soup kitchen. But our neighbors will drop by to borrow an egg or ask for computer advice. People from 5, 10, 15 years ago will call when they need a friend. In a dozen months, we've had about that many out of town visitors.

Doing less goes hand in hand with marginal living and allows us to steward what we have. Because we're not out running around every weekend, N has time to learn how to keep up our yard. This is important first, because it is simply part of being a good neighbor and second, because it helps us connect with our neighbors who happen to care about their yards and are way more knowledgeable than we are. Because there are "margins" in my life, white spaces, when crises arise as they seem to with some regularity, instead of being bowled over I can pray and contribute.

Our pastor reminded us this weekend that becoming a child of God cost us nothing (because Jesus paid it all), but that becoming a disciple costs us everything. I don't disagree. Following Jesus is about recognizing that we are dead, dying to ourselves, so that Christ lives in us. But these words coming from a go-go-go church planter easily sound like we have to burn ourselves out to become disciples. I know the Apostle Paul uses a lot of race and training imagery, but he also exhorts the believers in Thessolonica to make it their ambition to lead a quiet life...so that their daily lives would win the respect of outsiders.

Maybe if I could summarize our struggle it's that we are Appalachian trail through hikers who feel exhorted to sprint marathons. What we have to offer is the faithfulness of putting one foot ahead of the other, mile after mile. No flash, no oos and ahhs. I think this is a deep grace in our lives, and I think there is an element of gospel-living in this that I'm unwilling to give up in order to squeeze ourselves into a check box that makes sense to who knows who? I live with the deep trust that as we are drawn deeper into God's grace, our lives will be more and more aligned with God's view of and work in this world. How could it not be?