Dear One,
I feel like someone hit the pause button on my life. Like I’m playing a childhood game of freeze tag and am waiting, still as stone, for one to run and rescue me with the slightest touch.
But since human contact is pretty much outlawed these days, I’m suspended here. Frozen in place.
Do you feel it, too?
The waiting?
Waiting for our lives to resume?
Upended and Suspended is how I name it.
Life was moving along nicely, and now it’s not. Standstill. Can’t go back. Can’t go forward. ‘Stuck in the middle with you.’ What’s a person to do?!
My thoughts turn to the Scripture story of Joseph. Here’s a man who’s lived the upended and suspended numerous times (I’d seriously be crying ‘uncle’). So you know what Joseph does?
He does what he can.
He does what he can, where he can, however he can. With all his heart.
In one of the stories (Genesis 39-40) Joseph’s job was to attend to a high-ranking official in Egypt until one day, wham-bam-thank-you-mam, he was falsely accused and thrown into prison. Life upended and suspended, right?
Kind of right.
Upended, absolutely. But suspended? Seems that was up to Joseph himself. Instead of throwing a pity party or even just waiting it out with a bowl of popcorn and a Netflix-binge, Joseph kept right on doing what he did before – just in a vastly different setting.
He could no longer attend Potipher, so Joseph attended the prisoners.
As if he didn’t miss a beat.
The reach of Joseph’s influence and scope of his world rapidly shrank, but his faithfulness to tasks and call did not. He didn’t wait for the get of jail free card. He served whoever was within his reach.
Me? I keep waiting to get out of jail.
Friend, how we live out these days of waiting matters. How we live in a diminished place and shrunken space matters. Possibly more than we can imagine.
This is a time to be faithful to whoever and whatever is in front of us.
There’s so much we can’t do right now. I know. Believe you, me. So how about we focus on what can we do?
After all, maybe what matters most is not what we do, nor to whom, but how.
As another prisoner once said,
“Put your heart and soul into every activity you do …” Colossians 3:23
Every. Single. One.
Heart and Soul: Our Little Life Words of the Week.
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DEEPER DIVE
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Ponder:
- What can’t you do?
- What can you do?
- What are you waiting for?
Practice:
- If you are quarantined with others, play a game of freeze tag.
- Play heart & soul on the piano. Trust me, it will keep these words before you for a long time to come ;).
- Read about the impact of Brother Lawrence who spent his life doing menial tasks with great love.
Play:
- Our song of the week is: Together by For King & Country
Pray:
- Ask God to help you be present to your life as it is.
Friend, a wise man once said, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” Ecclesiastes 9:10
I believe this wholehearted – living in the now – is what will move us from frozen to faithful.
Tag, you’re it.