My favorite form of exercise is probably walking. I love to do it alone many times so I can take in all of God’s creation around me without distraction. I notice so many things I miss when my ears, eyes, and thoughts are wrapped up in my day-to-day living activities and concerns. I often go without music plugged into my ears so I don’t miss the sounds of the birds, the breeze, or the Lord’s whispers. Sometimes He wants to point out something to me and I would never want to miss it!

Other times I love walking with a family member or friend. It’s an opportunity to talk without interruptions from electronic devices and assorted other things.

Walks with several of my grandchildren would top the list of some of my favorite memories. It’s given each of us time to get to know one another in unique ways as we have shared. One of those times was a photo walk where our youngest granddaughter and I were looking for special evidences of creation to catch a glimpse of through our camera lenses.

My husband has also been a great walking partner often in our years together. I have especially loved times when he has told me the story of the latest book he has been reading. Because he is one who notices details, it has given me the sense of being in the midst of the book with him. One of his best stories was telling me about Undaunted Courage that chronicles the Lewis and Clark expeditions.

Sometimes the walk is solely for the purpose of exercise, but I love the walks that do not have that purposeful stride I am looking to have as I wend my way along a path or neighborhood sidewalk.

But there is another issue of walking I must not neglect and it can be one that I must be purposeful about. It relates to Paul’s words in Ephesians:

“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Ephesians 4:1-3 (ESV)

Paul is stating an imperative in these verses. That puts it in the category of being an essential thing, crucial, vitally important, and a command, but what we fail to sometimes consider is what it means to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling.” That requires more intentionality.

Walking in such a manner means that I am looking like Him (or seeking to do so) not only in my words, but also in my actions, attitudes, tone, and posture in all things. After all, Jesus makes clear He represented the Father in his time on earth and was actually showing us the Father.

Am I (are you) showing others Jesus and the Father?

In this tension filled polarized world, how will that look for each of us?

The other words in the passage outline that, don’t they? If I am walking in humility, I am neither boasting nor trying to convey that I am right, my position is the one that clearly is most Christian, or trying to convince you that you are wrong. My social media is filled with postings from brothers and sisters that do not reflect that and I am pulled back to seek the Lord about what I post myself. Does it edify, build up, show love, promote our oneness in Him or does it focus on a position that can be debated and comes from my opinion, preferences, and experiences? We all have those (Me too!), but far too often they separate us; and, the body of Christ grows weaker when we promote them.

Each of us is called to be patient and “bear one another in love” and it is good to have those with whom we share those unfiltered ideas and opinions, but when they do not lead to peace and unity between us, do they result in a walk that is worthy of His calling?

In Paul’s first book to the Thessalonians, in 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NIV) he exhorts the reader again about what walking in a worthy manner would look like:

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.”

1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NIV)

In this case, Paul offers commendation for those who are doing it.

Am I?

Are you?

“Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”  

Hebrews 3:13 (NIV)

The admonition, “Don’t Wait Till The Last Minute”, is one we all hear and have heard many times. Those words have come from teachers, parents, friends, spouses, ministry leaders, and so many others along the way including us. It is always sound advice and certainly intended to encourage us to accomplish a task, do well on an assignment, meet a project deadline, think through what we need to pack, and if we heed it, to avoid stress and disappointment in our performance.

Somehow those words often can result in feelings of frustration as well. We may not admit that, but it shows up in the tone of our voice when we respond to it. We do not like to be reminded of things we need to do much of the time. Perhaps it is our pride that anyone would suggest we didn’t have an awareness of the deadline we are facing. Perhaps it is our reluctance to dig into it and set aside the excuses and procrastination that triggers the feelings. Perhaps it is our regret at our commitment to complete it from the beginning. It is a reminder that our time is not our own.

Nevertheless, duties, assignments, projects, and the like are a part of our daily lives and something we cannot avoid. Time. We complain when we are older that we do not have enough of it. We grumble when we are younger that we have too much time on our hands and are bored.

Time is a gift. We spend some of it every day while never knowing what our allotment of time is.

We can feel we have no choice in how we spend it, but that is an illusion. There are duties for each of us, but the things we have committed to whether it is a job, a class, our family, a ministry, or anything else are choices we have made.

Perhaps the greater challenges, however, are the truly important things for which we never receive such an admonition and yet we should remember daily.

What kinds of things should we not wait to do lest we miss an opportunity? Here might be a short list that you can add to:

• Tell those we love that we love them and why (Don’t wait until they are dying.)

• Kiss our children and tell them something positive we noticed about them (Don’t wait! They are growing up so fast and they will hear so many negative things from others in their lives.)

• Notice the world around you and become a good observer so you experience the wonder of creation and places where you may be needed. (Don’t wait to look up at the star-studded sky, smell the flowers you planted weeks ago, notice the neighbor whose steps are slowing.)

• Take time to read and reflect on God’s Word (Don’t wait to discover the words the Lord wants you to hear from Him for that very day.)

Don’t simply add these to your “to do” list, but ask the Lord to help you keep the important ahead of the urgent in each day. It is usually the small things that are remembered by those around us long after we have been with them.

In God’s Word there are many reminders about time and our responsibility to be good stewards of that time. I was reminded of that again as I was reading in Mt. 25:1-13 about the wise and foolish virgins and the return of the Bridegroom. When we see the reminders we can be tempted to chafe again and add to our “to do” list, but I don’t think the Lord is as interested in our “doing” as in our relating to Him, loving Him, and loving one another.

Perhaps the truly important admonition is this: “Don’t wait till the last minute to receive Him, love Him, to love those He has brought into your life.”

If being grafted into Jesus reduces my stress, helps to release me from the entanglement of pride, and brings me rest, what gets in the way of my arriving there tucked in with all the other branches to the vine? I know my identity is first and foremost to come from Him, but there’s the rub. Even though I know that somewhere in that theological construct in my head, do I live as though that is the case?

A long time back in Sunday School I learned the chorus about the wise man building his house upon the rock and the foolish man building his house upon the sand. It provided the foundational principle that all that I am is to be built on Jesus, the rock of my salvation. If that has shaped my identity then rest should not elude me and yet it often did.

Any of us can show ourselves to be sand builders when we compare ourselves to one another or when we try to prove ourselves as somehow more valuable or important as someone else.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote:

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man…It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.”

C.S. Lewis

We betray what is happening within us when we care so deeply about what others think of us, how they measure us. I am not sure how any if us develops the habit of comparing ourselves, but I am persuaded that it begins very early before we even have words.

As infants we are compared to a chart of height, weight, and other characteristics that suggests whether we are developing in a healthy fashion or are somehow “less than.”  In childhood play it is not uncommon to hear one child say to another, “I’m stronger than you” or “my bike is faster than yours.” The competition and comparison sounds innocent enough, but reveals we even come into the world stained with such traits in our genetic heritage born in the Garden of Eden when we unwittingly sought to raise ourselves up to be equal with God. The wily serpent struck us where he knew we could not resist.

Putting that character flaw on the cross for good is not easy even when we try. Another place comparison shows up in our adult conversation is when someone says, “I can’t identify with her (or him, or that).” In that moment we demonstrate something about empathy, but we have also made a comparison putting ourselves above or beneath what we have used as the standard of comparison. We have made an arbitrary judgment ranking ourselves somewhere on some obscure set of guidelines.

G. K. Chesterton brings us all up short with these words:

“How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure.”

G.K. Chesteron

We can be so susceptible to focusing on ourselves. Some of us have missed it because we thought so little of our physical well being that we run ourselves ragged trying to be what we believe we need to be to gain acceptance, love, or appreciation. It might “look” like we aren’t thinking of ourselves at all, but a closer look underneath often reveals the source of our busy activity. We have defined our identity in something other than Jesus. We are building our resumes and want to be sure ours looks as if we are worth consideration.

But you see, He, Son of God, Jesus, soon coming King of Kings, loved us so much that He pursued us when we were far from Him. He knew we were dust. He knew what He was getting and that even after we turned and accepted His unspeakable gift of grace that we would fall again. Even so, we were worth His consideration because of who He is. And if we are grafted into Him, that settles it, but can we keep our focus on Him?

Hannah Anderson’s words in Humble Roots confirm that:

“When we are consumed with God’s glory, we forget to worry about our own. When our eyes are fixed on Him as the source of all goodness and truth and beauty, we accept that we are not. When we are enamored by His worth and majesty, we can stop being so enamored with ourselves. And fascinatingly, when we seek God’s glory, we’ll be able to appreciate it in people around us. Instead of seeing them as threats to our glory, we will see them as beautiful reflections of His.”

Hannah Anderson

That brings us rest.

According to the dictionary choice means “an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities.”  The challenge for us is how often we have a love-hate relationship with making a choice. We want the freedom of choice, but that requires us to think and consider what we really want or need. That is not always easy to decide.

When I use the word “choice” or “choices,” most of us will automatically have some of the major choices of life come to mind: where we will live, whom we will date or marry, what school we will attend, and what work we will pursue.  You’re right! Those are BIG ones for sure.

Have you considered how early in life we are asked or told we need to make such choices?  It happens so early that we may not possess enough information or experience to be sure of what choice to make.

I watched my grandchildren as they were in the midst of so many choices about what college or major he or she would select, what medical school was the best option, or where to pursue an internship. Think about how old a person is when those decisions come along. Then consider how much more you know about yourself and the world around you when you are 30, 40, 50, or older.

But those are the headline types of choices. What we fail to recognize at times is that each day, each hour, we are making dozens of choices. Some of them may not affect the course of our life ahead, but all of them will have consequences. And what helps us most in making choices is when we have opportunities to make them when we are really very young. If we do, it gives us a chance to learn in hopefully a safe environment with our parents and to experience the consequences of our choices when their love, experience and grace can help train us to be better at decision-making.

Every time I say, “yes” to something, I am automatically saying “no” to everything else.  Every time I say “no” to something, I am saying, “yes” to something else. And we do it so often in those small choices that we rarely take time to think a lot about the results.

Every day we make a choice about when and if we will get out of bed, what clothes we will put on, whether we will eat breakfast or not and if so, what we will eat. We will make a choice about what route to take to work and what time we leave to get there and how we feel about what is required of us that day. We will make choices about how we respond – to those with whom we live, work, play, and minister.

As these choices start adding up month-by-month, year-by-year, we inevitably are choosing the course of every area of our lives until we arrive at mid-life and sometimes wonder how we arrived where we are. In those cases, I am talking less about those major decisions I mentioned earlier and more about those little choices that become habits and a lifestyle without a lot of consideration on our part.

Those little choices lead us to how healthy we are in every area of our lives: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and financially. Those with whom we live and interact, what we read or watch, what we tune out or what we tune in, heavily influence those little choices. There is a continual selection process going on. Yes, our DNA and our personality influence us a great deal, but these other things are key.

How did we get here?

No matter where we live, how old we are, what our education, what our culture, what our financial condition, etc., God gave His most significant creation – mankind – the freedom of choice. He even gave us a choice about whether or not we would recognize Him, call Him God, choose to believe in His Son, Jesus, and whether or not we would follow Him and in what way we would do that.

What a risk He took!

Most of us have failed miserably along the way…more than once, but He has never ceased to pursue us. He has permitted many things in our life that we question or wonder how a loving God could permit, but He has not sought to ever harm us.

He longs for us to know Him, even though He is beyond our understanding. He longs for us to discover how fierce His love is, even though we cannot grasp the full height and depth of it.  He longs for us to enjoy His presence, even though we often don’t make a lot of time to simply be with Him. He longs for us to stand in the midst of trial, even though we wobble and weaken to the point of sometimes sitting down. He longs for us to reflect Him, even when we often look more like the world than Him.

Many of us know the Old Testament Bible stories about heroes of the faith like Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, Esther, and more. One passage in Joshua still applies to us each day as we make choices:

“Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. ¹⁵ And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”   

Joshua 24:14-15 (ESV)

It isn’t the gods beyond the river, in Egypt, or those of the Amorites that may tempt us, but many other things do tempt us. Each day we must choose whom we will serve. That choice will affect every other choice we make and influence every consequence.

He chose us first:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”

Ephesians 1:3-4 (ESV)

To be chosen and hear the “Yes” of God means that He said “No” to Satan’s realm, to the second death, to utter darkness and pain. It means He has fashioned and purposed me for His Kingdom.

My choice of Him is a freedom He gave me.

My answer was “Yes.”

What will your choice be?