Decision Time: Choosing What to Hold

So... if you know me, you might know that I despise making two trips for what I might be able to make in one trip. One day, I found myself in front of the refrigerator section at Food Lion, staring at the myriad array of 6 oz. yogurt containers. So many flavors, so much deliciousness. I glanced at my watch. So little time. 

I'd run in for a second to grab some yogurt and I'd ignored the cart, because I just wanted a "few yogurts." Mental calculations ran through my head. If I got twelve, that would be two a day for the next week until I could come back for a "real" shopping trip. Breakfast, lunch. Six days. That would hold me (I was an off-campus college student on a work-study budget; eating was a struggle in those days. And I refused to do the ramen noodles thing).

So I started grabbing yogurts, piling them carefully along my left arm, balancing them beneath my chin, reaching with my right arm. Somehow, gingerly, I managed to gather twelve yogurts and also turn to inch my long, looooong way back to the front of the store.

Of course, you know what happened. My chin pressed just an ounce too hard, one yogurt popped out and fell... and then all of them fell. Clean-up on Aisle 1. I was so embarrassed.

And as I stared at the slick, globby, yogurty mess on the tile floor, I realized that the thing I should have been gripping the whole time was the handle of the shopping cart, which would have taken perfect care of all twelve of my messy mistakes.

A friend of mine spoke yesterday about some significant battles she was fighting in her personal life, and she said this phrase twice as she cupped her fingertips, almost like she was gently cupping a butterfly: "You find that you need to hold your life lightly."  

That spoke to me. We spend so much of our time and efforts and resources and energy holding on to this life rather than preparing our hearts for the next one. 

Not that we are to waste this life, or treat it trivially, or disrespect the one physical life we've been given to live. But when we grip so hard what is not ours to control... we fight a losing battle.

Today I returned to Joshua 23, which is labeled as: "Joshua's Farewell to the Leaders." It's Joshua's final word, his last testimony to the people he's served with, and it's significant that he's talking to the leaders of the people -- the ones he's leaving with instructions for how to serve. His instructions for the people themselves will be similar, but the leaders -- they've got a bigger responsibility. They have people watching them, emulating them, following them, and they've got an example to set and a way to walk.

What way is that? Joshua says: "Be very strong; be careful to obey all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, without turning aside to the right or to the left. Do not associate with these nations that remain among you; do not invoke the names of their gods or swear by them. You must not serve them or bow down to them. But you are to hold fast to the Lord your God, as you have until now" (Joshua 23:6-8).

Walk a straight path, y'all. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight" (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Going back to my friend's phrase: "You find that you must hold your life lightly," I kept turning that over in my mind. By nature, I am stubborn and clingy. I cling to the things that matter the most to me, hold them closest to my heart. I want to control those things, keep them within my wingspan in order to protect them.

Joshua says: "Hold fast to the Lord your God." 

I suppose I've realized as I've walked along this path the Lord has set for me that when I fill up my hands with the Lord, when I hold fast to Him, I have no room in my hands to hold fast to all the accoutrements and excesses I want to bring along with me. 

Hold fast to Whom? Hold fast to the Lord your God. 

Joshua says this, then: "The Lord has driven out before you great and powerful nations; to this day no one has been able to withstand you. One of you routs a thousand, because the Lord your God fights for you, just as He promised. So be very careful to love the Lord your God" (Joshua 23:9-11).

Look at the last line: "Be very careful..." Love is a choice, y'all. You know that popular phrase: "Falling in love"? That feeling is mostly based on sentiment, how many pheromones are floating around inside you at a particular moment, and maybe whether or not there's a full moon. On the other hand, the love, for example, that my parents choose to show each other, the love that has pulled them through 57 years of marriage in August, is the kind of love that has survived diaper rash and midnight feedings and kids tussling and work pressures and financial collapses and heart attacks and cancer. 

Be very careful to love the Lord your God. Choose to love Him. That means, when you don't feel like loving Him, DO. IT. ANYWAY. 

Have I ever been mad at God? Yep. Have I ever stormed my way to heaven's gates and demanded answers? In my arrogance and human frailty, yes, I have. Always, the Lord has led me back to see where I failed and where He was faithful even when I couldn't see it. And every time, even in the blackest storms, I choose Him. I choose to love Him.

On the other end of the Bible, Paul writes a letter not long before his own death, and I was impressed this morning with how similar his message to Timothy is to Joshua's message to the leaders of Israel. Paul charges Timothy: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of Truth" (2 Timothy 2:15). 

"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you have learned it, and how you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:14-15). 

"For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the Truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations (walk a straight path, Timothy!), endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry" (2 Timothy 4:3-5).

Timothy is a young leader, growing up in the church, blooming in ministry under Paul's encouragement and under the instruction of the Scripture. Paul tells him to "do his best to present himself to God..." 

Do your best. Be very careful. Strive for the goal, strain toward it. Don't turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk the straight path. 

None of this happens accidentally. Hold the life around you... lightly. Hold onto your God with a granite resolve, with a grip like iron. Paul tells the Corinthians earlier: "I have resolved to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." Resolve: That 57 year marriage of my parents. Resolve: My own 17 year marriage with my husband. Resolve: A lifetime of "holding fast" to the Lord.

At the end of Joshua's speech to the leaders of Israel, he says: "Now I am about to go the way of all the earth." He's getting ready to die, but he needs them to understand something -- because he won't be there to remind them, and they need to know this for themselves: "You know with all your heart and soul (you know this) that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed" (Joshua 23:14).

Not one has failed. Why? Because Israel held fast to the Lord. "One of you routs a thousand, because the Lord your God fights for you, just as He promised" (Joshua 23:10).

Joshua finishes with a warning not to forsake the Lord that Israel has chosen to love.

Back in 2 Timothy, Paul ends his letter with this: "The time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day -- and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing" (2 Timothy 4:7-8). 

Paul's getting ready to die, and he needs Timothy to understand something, just like Joshua wanted the Israelite leaders to understand something. This life is not a sedate walk, it's not a rooting into the ground, it's not a running backward, it's not even a sideline sweep, gathering things along the way. There is one direction, and it is toward the finish line. How we run the race is entirely up to us, but at the end -- and an end there will be -- will we receive the crown of righteousness? If we long for His appearing, if we choose to hold onto Him, if we are very careful to love the Lord our God, then yes.

So all those things I try to crowd around myself to hold inside my own wingspan, to keep within the center of my control... I'm letting those thing go. I'm "holding them lightly." My job, my way of life, my deep friendships... my children... I'm holding lightly. My husband, even... I'm holding him lightly. 

The only thing I'm gripping with every last reserve of strength in me, with a grip like iron... is Christ, my Rock.

"Because the Lord your God fights for you." So all those things I've just released... will fall into His hands, the only hands capable (including my own) of well-keeping.