A wake up call from a Bird

Lisa and I had the privilege of spending the week between Christmas and New Year house-sitting for a friend in Gillitts just north of Kloof.  The home was palatial (by our standards) with a magnificently verdant garden and private leisure area.  It was a great place to unwind from the pressures of 2011 because, though I'd had a very successful year financially, my vertical relationship with Christ had suffered a bit.

On our first morning, we were awakened by a persistent tapping on a downstairs window which, it turned out, was an Olive Thrush hammering with his beak on the glass just above the breakfast table.  Though he came and went throughout the day, he spent most of his daylight hours engaged in this transient activity.  And though I know he was probably just attracted to his own reflection, I imagined his deeper motivation was to try and break in and explore the mysterious universe which lay behind this frustratingly reflective surface.  It turns out, by the way, that this bird is a daily feature of life at this lovely home and that the people who live there have grown quite fond of his eccentricity.

How often, I wondered, am I like that bird?   Tapping with obsessive yet fruitless curiosity upon windows and doors which, quite simply, were never meant to yield in the first place?  And what could it teach me of my working year?  Like that bird,  had I spent most of 2011 trading the world of generious possibilities that I DID have access to for one which is perhaps not meant for me?  How much did the ambitions which fuelled me in the short term actually wear me out in the long? Why, for example do I long to be seen as an authority in my profession - to be renowned and honoured for my expertise?  Yet how big a toll will this (oftentimes subconscious) yearning - actually ask of me?

I am thankful for that simple little illustration because it taught me the importance of perspective in seeing all which God has placed in front of me.  As David says in his song of praise in 2 Samuel 22, even though I have entered the Kingdom through a narrow door of salvation, my entrance has brought me into a spacious place, one which God has given me because he delights in me.

It reminds me of the one of the closing chapters of C.S. Lewis' "The Last Battle" when Tirian and Digory encounter a stable door in the the middle of a Narnian forest.

"It seems, then," said Tirian, "that the Stable seen from within and the Stable seen from without are two different places."  

"Yes, said the Lord Digory.  "Its inside is bigger than its outside"

Bill Johnson, in his book "Secrets to imitating God" re-echoes this truth:

"Life in the Kingdom, which is past the narrow entrance of salvation, is completely different.  It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.  It is here we find the Lord saying to us that we're no longer servants but friends"

Because so many of my mis-spent ambitions and worries have to do with work - the quantity, quality and even the occasional lack of it - I have drafted a few imperatives to remind me of God's goodness in the spacious place he has placed me:

• Work is only one of the ways in which God provides for my needs and that God's provision can take many forms - often beyond the financial
• I understand that it is not the LEVEL of provision that matters because in God I can never have too much or too little - the Israelites found this out when Manna fell from heaven (Exodus 16 vs 17)
• I understand that all work - even menial, seemingly unfulfilling and unpaying work - is a means to glorify God.  I will give thanks for it all, acknowledging Him as the source
• My work is firstly the place of mission and influence - income is a distant third place spin-off
• My work is a unique instrument with which to worship God - I am willing and able to work and thus refuse to adopt a doctrine which says that I am perfected in the hardship of unemployment
• I will not second guess my allocation of "talent" as a way of judging how much or how little of it I am to invest.  I will invest it ALL wholeheartedly and in faith to leave a legacy.
• My work is not about being the "best IN the world" but about being the "best FOR  the world"
• When it comes to my dreams for my business, I will seek the Lord for patience - because I believe that it is a lack of patience (and not failure) that sinks dreams

 "Small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life"