Sources of Misery Part 1: The Greener Grass in the Rear-View Mirror

It seems to me that one of the chief causes of misery for many people is the condemning of the present by comparing it to an overly-romanticized remembrance of the past.

For some people, the grass is always greener in the rear-view mirror. They complain mightily about how things were at their old job, church, neighborhood, or simply at an earlier season in life.

But in Christ, the past is not ours. Not ours to overly-glorify. Not ours to regret. Not ours to cling to. In Christ, the past is His. His to redeem and make to serve our good.

The present is the only place where we can fully experience and know God's work. Being awake to the wide-awake real, the real presence of Christ in real-time, exactly where we are--that is the invitation of God to his children.

This is true even and especially when the present takes us away from a place or a time that we have loved. To hold a glorious season of the past loosely unto releasing is almost as hard for some of us as letting go of past mistakes. But both are ours only for the giving over to God, not ours for the hoarding.

In the end all of our story must be handed over Jesus. And in the end, this present moment is the sphere and realm of the work of the Holy Spirit. We can either receive that gift or reject it because it does not live up to the measure of what we had experienced in the past.

But to reject this day and all that it has to offer us is finally to reject the work of God in real-time. To reject this day's work, people, challenges, chores, and recreation is to miss the myriad opportunities to explore the un-discovered continents of God's grace and love that are available to us each day.

Time to stop looking in the rear view mirror. The grass probably wasn't as green as you remember it anyway.

Quantity Time meets Quality Time, Family Life meets the Spiritual Life

One night over dinner last night, our family had one of those magical meals together. Kelly had taken the kids to the farm that day and they were bubbling over with excitement to tell me all about it.

We weren't rushed or harried. It was just us. Together. Enjoying a leisurely meal together and enjoying one another. We laughed a lot. The best parts of each of us was on display for all of us to enjoy. I was reminded not just that I love these little people and my wife, but that I genuinely like them.

It was one of those nights that you wish you could bottle up, take with you, for the stretches when it seems like all you do is correct and discipline and manage and rush around.

Early in our marriage while we lived in Richmond, Kelly and I were fortunate to have some tremendous friends, John and Sara. They were a couple years ahead of us in the marriage department and when they had their son, Mac, we got to learn a good many pre-lessons about parenting.

One night I was commenting about how involved John was in Mac's life. He was telling me about a guy from his office who was talking about how he didn't get much time with his kid, but what he did get was quality time.

"My response to that," John said, " was how do you know?"

It seems that the only way to get quality time is to get quantity time. Last week's magical dinner wasn't planned. It wasn't guaranteed. It just happened. And apart from many, many other nights around the dinner table, some terrible and most just average, we don't have that night.

What is true at home is also true for the spiritual life.

To judge prayer, time in Scripture, time in worship, or church on one experience or to try to pick or create only the "quality" experiences is bound to end up in consumerist failure. The only way we get quality time is by investing quantity time.

And since you can only do this in so many areas of life, the question sits: what, if anything, will you give your quantity time to?