You cleared the ground and tilled the soil, and we took root and filled the land.                 Psalm 80:9

I dug up this old piece which I had written for a newspaper column titled Point of View many years ago. This is timeless, I think, in that farming and gardening are ever old and ever new. Thought I’d share it for a summer read,

Blessings!

            I have been doing my personal therapy this weekend. I have been spending time doing something that clears my head and renews my soul – I have been working in my garden.  I was digging up the vegetable garden, planting flowers, working on our new pond (another whole column I think), and spreading mulch. While my body aches, it is a good kind of pain, because you see, working in the soil is a healthy thing.

            People who plant gardens, be they flower or vegetable gardens, tend to be people who have a healthier, more realistic view of life.  Why do I say this?  Let’s look at what is involved in planting flowers.  First, there has to be an intention to do so, which involves planning and forethought.  Flower gardeners appreciate the beauty of color, and they usually have a desire to improve the looks of their home as well as their neighborhood.  That means that they care about what is going on around them and they want to be a part of making their environment just a little nicer.  Then there is the satisfaction they get by having their early Spring vision rewarded with emerging little plants.  Where there had been nothing but soil now bursts with very visible life. 

            Another noble aspect of gardeners is their desire to nurture life.  When you plant flowers or vegetables, you need to be prepared to nurture and protect the young plants from bugs and those ever-present rabbits.  This takes vigilance and care, and a real desire to see a tender and nearly helpless plant survive.  Gardeners will pay a price in both time and money to see their plants through the dangers of predators, disease and weather hazards.

            Vegetable gardeners have the added incentive and motivation of eating the fruits of their labor. Those vegetables taste better than anything in the world when they come from your own garden, partly because the gardener knows how hard he or she worked to get to that point.  Vegetable gardeners know too that they are not really saving money by growing their own vegetables, they are satisfying a rather deep-seated urge to care for themselves by growing their own food.

            Finally, all gardeners work in the soil partly because they like to work. They see physical work as healthy and good.  They don’t mind getting dirty, and in fact, probably enjoy being that close to the earth.  Stooping and sweating become acts of love which minister to their overall sense of well-being.  They are creating something, at the same time knowing that there are numerous factors, weather etc., which can wipe out their work. That, of course, is part of the challenge.  They know that they are ultimately not in control of what happens, but they willingly extend themselves in an uncertain venture for physical as well as spiritual rewards.

            This sounds a lot like life to me.  God bless the farmers and gardeners of the world.  They live in the rhythm of life.

He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted                                                    Isaiah 53:3-4

What do we do with pain? Pain is a universal experience of humankind. It comes in many flavors- physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain, even spiritual pain. We try to avoid it, naturally, and there are some things that we can do to avoid unnecessary pain. We can, for example, avoid risky behaviors that may end up in pain such as extreme sports, reckless driving, excessive alcohol use, etc. Yet, even with such precautions, we cannot totally avoid pain in life.

Getting into relationships give us great pleasure and comfort, but we also then share the emotional pain of those whom we love. The pain of loss and death, for example, is extreme, but again, it is inevitable in our human experience.  That risk though is outweighed by the wonderful benefits of connection and intimacy we have with friends and family.

We cannot completely avoid physical pain, because pain was given to us for a reason. It is an indicator that something is amiss. We need to pay attention to the pain because it is telling us something, namely- “look into the source of pain to try to remedy it”. It may be a marker of more serious problems.

Other types of pain just come with the territory. We get muscle and joint pain just from our everyday living. Sometimes, we just physically hurt, and that is unavoidable.

But what do we do with pain? Do we ignore it? No, that is a bad idea most of the time. Do we acknowledge it and accept that it is part of life? Yes, that usually is a pretty good idea. Learning to accept pain is a gift of maturity and wisdom. Cursing the fact that pain exists is an exercise in futility. Pain is part of life.

So, how do we handle pain? We all have our ways, and we learn what works. The key is that no matter what the pain, we need to take ownership of it and decide what our attitude about it will be.

 All things considered, honestly acknowledging pain, not cursing it, is a good start.

Prayer: We understand that pain is a part of life, and the life you have given us is a blessed gift, Amen

All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets stem from these two laws and are fulfilled if you obey them. Keep only these and you will find that you are obeying all the others.” Matthew 22:40

For the whole Law can be summed up in this one command: “Love others as you love yourself.” Galatians 5:14

I have always found it fascinating how Jesus taught about the Law. The Law was the guiding star of the Old Testament Hebrew nation, and the strictest observers of it in Jesus’ time were the Pharisees. They were more than meticulous in observing every possible law given by Moses. Those laws then acquired “extra baggage” over the years when scholars and priests refined those laws and went into agonizing detail about how to fulfill them. More to the point, they went to great lengths to find ways to restrict the daily lives of Jews by making sure that no law would be broken.

The irony, of course, is that such adherence was not possible. I’m sure that most of these scholars and priests, Pharisees, and teachers of the Law had good intentions. They wanted to make very certain that they were doing what God wanted, and that they were leading people to holy lives.

But they missed the boat.

When Jesus came teaching, he assured people that he did not come to abolish the Law.  He said,
“Don’t misunderstand why I have come—it isn’t to cancel the laws of Moses and the warnings of the prophets. No, I came to fulfill them and to make them all come true.”

What did he mean by that? He meant that the whole law, the intent of the law, was to bring people into peace with God and their fellow human beings. If one truly loves God, as well as him/herself, you do not need a law that says “Don’t rob, cheat, steal, harm, demean, defraud, covet, or do any other hostile actions toward others. If one truly loves God and neighbor, those laws are already fulfilled.

I am not casting blame on the Jewish scholars who went overboard in their zeal to try to please God. They just missed the point of the Law. Actually, we do the same things too often times, don’t we?

Prayer: Forgive us for our short-sighted views, and help us to see the real point of your laws for us, Amen

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.                                                           Philippians 4:8-9 (The Message)

One of the concepts that I frequently discuss with my clients is that of motivation. Motivation can be positive or negative. In aspiring to a goal or a “desired place”, we may have several motivators in place. We are complex beings, so simple answers are often insufficient to explain all the factors that move us. Yet it is good to try to determine, “what is my true motivator?”

I tend to think that positive motivators, that is, going toward a goal is a better and more satisfying motivator than a negative one. A negative motivator looks like, escaping from a painful or disagreeable situation.

Take a job change, for example. If we are in a bad job, one that drains us or causes undue anxiety, we probably want to get away from it. The motivation is escape. While in the short run  another job may look like the answer, it may not solve the real problem. We may take the first job opening that comes up as an answer for the bad job. If that new job is not satisfying either, we have just traded problems, with no solution.

If, on the other hand, we are drawn to another job that is really part of our skills, experience and calling, that is a much better motivator. There is a much better likelihood of success and fulfillment.

This concept is true for many decisions that we make. Moving toward a high value is more energizing that trying to escape a bad situation. Running away is tiring. Moving toward a vision is energizing.

Prayer: Lord, help us to discern the things to move toward, and what we may be running from, Amen.

He has given you Paul and Apollos and Peter as your helpers. He has given you the whole world to use, and life and even death are your servants. He has given you all of the present and all of the future. All are yours                                                                                                                                                            I Corinthians 3:22

I was speaking with a client the other day about some of her future fears, specifically a fear of chronic pain like her father endures. She too has some chronic pain, related to joint conditions which are possibly hereditary. She worries about this because she has chronic anxiety. This, of course, is not uncommon, but it should also not be discounted. People with chronic anxiety suffer. If they could simply stop worrying, they would!

 We discussed her fears, and I suggested that she work on behaving her way out of the anxiety, not trying to think her way out. What did I mean by that? I meant that there are certain actions she could take that might help to head off her dread of the possible future she faced.

Rather than simply filling her mind with fears of the future, she could take some present actions that could head off that fear. Note that I was suggesting that she act in the present time, the time she has currently available, rather than the future which she cannot control.

We talked about the exercise of swimming, which is gentle on the joints, but is vigorous in aerobic conditioning. The vigorous exercise she gets, which is also gentle on her joints, will be beneficial to her both physically and emotionally. She can take present action to control a dreaded future.

Living in the present is the key to anxiety control. As they say in recovery work, that concept is simple, but enacting it is not always easy.

Prayer: Lord, you control our future. Help us to take actions in the present that can help that future, Amen

“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”                                                                                                                                                                I Samuel 16:7

I was talking recently with a client who had concerns about her body image. Many young women (and men) suffer from the sometimes crippling societal expectation that one’s worth is tied to body image. This client is coming to see that she cannot meet the expectations of everyone else, and that she does not need to, in order to be the best “her”.

We discussed the value of working out, not for the sake of her body image, but for the sake of her health, both physically and emotionally. Her value is not in how she looks, but in her intrinsic worth. She is a woman of high character and values, but she has been rejected in relationships, and she is hurting from that.

We discussed the value of accepting first her own sense of worth before basing her worth on the acceptance by others. I reminded her that self-esteem is based upon keeping promises to ourselves first. When we can learn to trust ourselves, our self esteem rises. Then others can see a confident person whose worth is not dependent on the judgment of other people.

God’s view of us is not based upon our appearance, or even our performance. God loves us right where we are, even if we are not yet where we want to be.

So, remember the formula for self-esteem- keep those little promises to yourself. As we keep those little promises, good disciplines grow, and we gain confidence.

That is an attractive quality.     

Prayer: Lord, thank you for accepting us right where we are, Amen

That depends on who you ask!

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day                                                                                                       II Peter 3 :8

When we think about God’s “timing” as we sometimes call it, we are in way over our heads. Why is that you ask? Because our idea of time, and God’s idea of time are in completely different time zones (pardon the pun).

We humans operate in a finite, linear time zone. There is a past, a present, and a future. We have relative scales to understand time like clocks, watches, calendars, etc. If you are like me, you live by those calendars, and we do that so that we can feel a sense of control and order. Indeed, society needs to have such structures in order to prevent chaos and to have some level of predictability.

But God is timeless. He sees and lives in the past, the present, and the future all at the same time. He sees eternity past and eternity future, all in what we call the present.  We often talk about God’s timing in our life, and that we must have patience. But what we really need is trust.

God asks us to trust him, because he can see what we cannot see or comprehend. We cannot really conceptualize eternity because we are finite creatures who can only live in specific time dimensions as I described above.

So, when we are thinking of God’s timing, I think it is better to view that in terms of trust, rather than “waiting” for his timing in our life. We don’t know the time, but he does because he holds the future as well as the present and the past.

Prayer: You are Lord of the universe and of time itself. We are awed by your presence! Amen

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.  Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you                                                         Philippians 4:8-9

Hans Selye was an endocrinologist in the 1940’s who pioneered the work on the effects of stress on the body. He was among the first scientists to recognize the role of what we now call “stress” by naming it the general adaptation syndrome. He called it this because the body responds to stress by producing certain hormones, and eventually inflammation, that causes the body to react in very negative ways. In others words, stress can make us sick, and it can make sickness even worse.

Stress has always been a part of human life, but it plays out differently in our modern culture. We are surrounded by access to news of local and world problems to a degree never imagined in prior centuries. I have had many clients talk with me about personal problems such as marriage, job, financial problems, etc., but there is an added burden many say. They may not be able to put their finger on it exactly, but when asked about specific stressors, they may add something like, …”and you know, all the stuff going on in the world today…”

Yes, I know what they are saying – all the stuff going on in the world today. It is easy to get caught up in the bad news all around us. That can give us a negative attitude, whereby we start to expect that all the news is bad.

Some “vacations” from news might be helpful. Cut back on social media; just don’t turn on or surf for the national newscasts for a while; find an uplifting book and remind yourself of the positive things in your life.

We all know that the bad news will be there waiting when we return to viewing it, but maybe we should consume a little less of the stuff that, “you know, is going on in the world today.”  

Prayer: Lord, help us to remember all the good news that is around, and find comfort in your words, Amen

Dear friend, if you’ve gone into hock with your neighbor
    or locked yourself into a deal with a stranger,
If you’ve impulsively promised the shirt off your back
    and now find yourself shivering out in the cold,
Friend, don’t waste a minute, get yourself out of that mess.
    You’re in that man’s clutches!
    Go, put on a long face; act desperate.
Don’t procrastinate—
    there’s no time to lose.
Run like a deer from the hunter,
    fly like a bird from the trapper!

Proverbs 6:1-5 (The Message)

Do you ever procrastinate? Yeah, I do too. Some of us are better than others on this, and for most of us, it depends on what the activity is. Typically, the things we put off are the unpleasant tasks. Maybe they are the ones which we feel less confident about. Typically, also, the things that we put off or try to avoid, are the ones that will cost us something extra by putting them off. They get harder to do for several reasons.

One of those reasons is that the task gets bigger in our mind the more we delay it. We build it up beyond the actual difficulty of the task. Possibly, the longer we put it off, the more awkward the task becomes. A time delay may really work against us, especially, of course, if the task is time sensitive. Calling at the last minute, for example, to cancel a meeting, can cause more problems than that same phone call would have caused two days earlier.  

Whenever we put something off, we usually have to pay with interest. It seems it is like a universal rule of some kind. With bills, that may be literally true. With social capital, it works much the same way. We usually have to pay extra mentally, socially, or emotionally for that delay that we made. Those hard conversations that are put off can cause more pain by their delay. We would save ourselves some pain by what we could have done much earlier.

So, while the tendency may be to procrastinate, remember, it almost always has to be paid with interest.

Prayer: Lord, we avoid the hard things. Give us the courage and the nudge to act in a timely manner for our own good, Amen.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us                                                                                                                                                                                            Hebrews 12:1

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.                                             II Timothy 4:7

Since I am a baseball guy, I have this image of a baseball player, maybe an aging outfielder playing what may be his last game. He knows it, maybe others do too, maybe they don’t. But he is on the field on October 1, the last day of the long season. His team is hopelessly out of the playoffs, and have been for weeks. The game he is playing has no value for either team, both just playing out the string. It is late in the game, his team down by four runs in the eighth inning, and fans, the few that showed up, have mostly long abandoned this contest.

The pitcher winds up and delivers a ball that the batter sends screaming on an arcing line toward the outfield. Runners on first and second move with the hit as it appears to be well out of fielding reach. Our aging outfielder responds immediately, tracking the ball as it soars into the outfield gap, headed for extra bases. He does not give up on it. He tracks it toward the wall, leaps at the ball and makes contact with the ball and the wall at the same time. He crashes down, the ball in his glove. He manages to right himself, and throw the ball into the cut-off man who completes the double play on the stunned runner who had occupied first base.   

The game, that season, are essentially meaningless, and those around him have essentially given up on it. The fans had mostly left, and the game meant nothing in the standings, yet he poured himself out on the last play of his last game ever.

This is the scenario I think about when I think about effort- effort to the end. The aging fielder is doing his very best to the very end, no matter what others thought about the meaning of it. It meant everything to him.

That dear readers, is how I want to go out. How about you?

Prayer: Lord, help us to finish strong, doing the right thing for the right reasons, Amen.