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Get your own, Free HomepageThis morning, on the way in, everyone should have received a little "kaleidoscope" keychain. Did everyone get one?
Everybody...take just a moment and look through the little small hole and turn the kaleidoscope. Obviously, these are not the best ones around, but you get the idea. You can make out a design that keeps changing as you keep moving.
The word "kaleidoscope" comes from two Greek words: "kalos" which means "beautiful," and "eidos," form. The definition of kaleidoscope is "anything that constantly changes as in color and pattern."
That's not a bad metaphor for understanding life. A design that keeps changing as you keep moving. Something "that constantly changes...pattern."
On this, the day of our annual Congregational Meeting, we can't help but be reminded that life for our church is constantly changing. Even as we try to create designs that we can look to for meaning and guidance in our operation, we are aware that, with every move we make, the patterns shift and we're forced to see things in a new way.
Likewise, I have sensed recently that in many of our personal lives, there is a lot of shifting going on. Patterns are changing; designs that we thought we had glued down have shifted as the world keeps moving, seemingly beyond our control or even, sometimes, desire.
Whether in our church as a whole or in our lives, we must face the question: how will we respond to the constantly changing patterns and designs...around us and within us? We all have a tendency, as human beings, to desire continuity. But the world just doesn't seem to be made that way...at least, if it ever was, not any more. Are we just caught in a spinning mass of randomly falling pieces from which we're supposed to create a life for ourselves? Or is there something more going on in the midst of our "kaleidoscopic living?"
Inside of a kaleidoscope, there is something else present besides a bunch of randomly falling pieces of colored glass or plastic. There are also three small mirrors placed in a constant position so that they reflect on themselves and off of each other as the small pieces of color roll and dance. The seemingly random and changing designs of the moving pieces are actually formed and shown to us by these three stable mirrors. In our constantly changing kaleidoscopic lives, there are also three stable mirrors that can make the seemingly random pieces turn into beautiful designs.
MIRROR #1: INTERIOR EVALUATION
Our Fellowship of churches publishes an on-line newsletter called "Strategic Growth." Not long ago, they put out a call for responses to the question, "What recent book, publication or conference has most influenced your leadership?" I was one of many who submitted a response; I shared that, if I had to pin down one particular one, it would be a little book by a woman named Laurie Beth Jones. Our Board of Directors is familiar with this book because the devotionals we share before our monthly meetings often come from it. It's called Jesus: CEO - Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership.
The book uses illustrations from the life and teachings of Jesus to teach modern leadership principles. One of the main sections of the book focuses on Jesus' "Strength of Self-Mastery." Listen to some of the chapter titles: "His 'I Am' Statements Are What He Became." "He Kept in Constant Contact with His Boss." "He Believed in Himself." "He Had Internal Anchors." "He Guarded His Energy." "He Did the Difficult Things." "He Said Thank You." "He Was Constantly in a State of Celebration." "He Did Not Waste His Time Judging Others." "He Was Willing to Look Foolish." "He Saw Love in Control of the Plan." "He Worked Through His Fears." "He Prized the Seed Rather than the Bouquet."
For all the many books and resources on living that are out there, I like this book, Jesus:CEO, because - call me whatever you want to call me - I still think Jesus is our best example of supremely successful living. If we really read the Gospels with an intent to understand how Jesus lived and treated himself and other people, we can find, if we choose to see it this way, an impossible standard by which to measure ourselves. Or we can find an impeccable standard toward which to strive, even in our weakness and failures.
Please understand: I don't think that Jesus was selfish or self-absorbed by any means. But I do think He was keenly self-aware. Laurie Beth Jones says He had "self-mastery." I think He looked, often, into the mirror of "interior evaluation," constantly correcting his own course, choosing his responses, seeking God's guidance within about decisions, consciously rejecting the temptation to re-act to people and circumstances and opting instead to act, always, from a deep place of awareness and choice. Jesus had "mirror #1" well in place. And so can we. Doing so takes work and a willingness to face our fears and our faults, but "interior evaluation" is a mirror we need and can have in the ever-changing kaleidoscope of our lives.
MIRROR #2: EXTERIOR EXAMINATION
Too often, both churches and individuals can get to a point where we are just sort of mindlessly "cruising" through life, not really paying much attention to what's going on around us. We cease to have any wonder about anything, not exploring new possibilities. We start to believe, mid-journey, that we've somehow arrived and suddenly, like the crew of that "unsinkable" ship Titanic, the ice-berg catches us totally off guard.
Sometimes, though, it may not be something "sudden" that rips open our lives. It may be the slow, insidious growth of an everyday failure to pay attention, to dream, to seek, to desire, to work for what we really want...to give in to monotony and give up on any sense of possibilities.
I think of the song from the 70s by, now long dead singer, Harry Chapin. In "Taxi," Chapin told the story of a guy who drives a cab, mostly to make enough money to keep getting high, and how one night he picks up a woman he recognizes as an old girlfriend. The cab driver reminisces about how he had wanted to be a pilot and the girl he knew had wanted to be an actress but had instead married for money and security. They had both "settled" and let "real life" creep in and choke out their dreams.
In one poignant part of the song, Chapin sang, "Oh, I've got something inside me to drive a princess blind. There's a wild man wizard, he's hiding in me, illuminating my mind. Oh, I've got something inside me but it's not what my life's about; 'cos I've been lettin' my outside turn me over 'til my time runs out."
"My outside..." - the exterior of our lives - needs to be constantly examined. Are we still striving? Or have we "settled?" Are we trying to believe we've "arrived?" Or are we still engaged in the journey? Are we dying to live? Or are we just living until we die?
Proverbs 13:12 says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." Jesus Himself said, in the Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 10, "I have come so that people might have life and have it in abundance." I don't think He was talking particularly about material abundance but about spiritual and emotional abundance. And we don't find those things by "settling" or by giving up. I read a quote on a greeting card this week: "We don't stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing."
As a church and as individuals, the "exterior" of our lives needs to be examined. What are we doing? What and whom are we living for? At our last Board meeting, the devotional that was shared from Jesus: CEO spoke about how Jesus gave His disciples a vision of something larger than themselves. Part of it said, "History is full of stories of people who gave their lives for a cause that was noble and holy in their eyes. Perhaps it is because, deep down, we know that we are made of stardust, not just dust, and are willing to give up what we have on earth in order to approach the heavens from whence we came."
Looking into the mirror of "Exterior Examination" will lead us very naturally to...
MIRROR #3: ULTERIOR EXPECTATION
Now we have, in our culture, a bad concept of the word, "ulterior." We most often hear this word used in saying that someone has "an ulterior motive" for doing something, and we think of that as a bad thing. But I looked up the dictionary definition of "ulterior" and it is this: "lying beyond or on the farther side; beyond what is expressed or implied; undisclosed." To me, that sounds like a reference to heaven or, for our "kaleidoscopic purposes," God.
A few weeks ago, I told you that, more than anything else, the Bible teaches us that God is "holy," which means, "different...separate...other." We are to be always aware of the powerful, awesome "other-ness" of God.
Jesus the Christ...God Incarnate on earth...did little in Scripture that was pedestrian or mundane. That isn't to say that what he did was always sensational. But Jesus was full of the unexpected, the arresting, the unanticipated. This is the 3rd mirror we need in our "kaleidoscopic" lives: ulterior expectation. Do we really have great expectations of a God who is described in Ephesians 3:20 as One "...who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine"? As a culture, we're more than willing to pay 39 cents more at McDonald's or Burger King to "super size" it. Yet, how rarely we will really put our lives and earnest expectations into the hands of a "God-sized" God!
We heard, this morning, a portion of a long section of Scripture from 2nd Corinthians in which the apostle Paul writes about the incredible power and glory that comes to us, from God, through Christ. He writes, in chapter 4 of that book, "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness, made God's own light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ."
Then he goes on to address what we can expect from this God of ours: "But we have this treasure [God's glory within us] in [bodies and lives that are like] jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." We can expect a lot - EVERYTHING - from God, who is wholly "other" - "ulterior," beyond what we can know and understand.
Look into those kaleidoscopes one more time. See the rolling colors, falling into seemingly random patterns - a design that keeps changing as you keep moving? Our lives may feel like that. Broken pieces, shaken and rolling into endlessly changing patterns that we can't control.
But I don't believe that's how God intends it to be for us. Paul wrote, in our Scripture reading this morning, that we "...are being transformed into Christ's likeness with ever increasing glory...." Church, as a group and as individuals, it seems that this constant, random change may be God's process of transforming us more and more into a likeness of Christ in the world.
I believe that God is inviting us this morning to embrace the concept of "kaleidoscopic living." Just as we stand, in our faith, on the certainty of three aspects of God - Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit - so we can find the balance and continuity we crave by having three constant "mirrors" in our lives. "Interior Evaluation" to keep us centered. "Exterior Examination" to keep us dreaming and growing. And "Ulterior Expectation" to keep us focused in faith on a God who is bigger than any challenge we might face and stronger than any set-back we might encounter. Three constant mirrors in the middle of an every changing kaleidoscope of colors and patterns. That's the life of abundance we're intended to enjoy! Amen.
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