Like the Shadows of Great Men - The Jesus Year

When I turned 27, I began to compare myself to famous men who have died during their year that I was currently living.  It started at the age of 27.  For some reason, many young stars burned out and exploded before they could reach 28. 

I would walk in the forest of shadows of lives past and find one to inspire me to live a rich, fulfilling, challenging life.  Each year, I compared, took measure, held up my life in comparison to theirs.  Last year, it began to become more serious.  Thirty-two is the year of the Dragon.  The year of Bruce Lee.  Stated as one of the most "Badass of the 20th Century," (Badass, Ben Thompson) the bar was set high and I could see how far I was below the bar.  I could see the shadow of his life envelop both my body and my shadow.  I shivered to think that we had nearly spent the same amount of time in the world and he accomplished so much. 

I watched Spike's special on Bruce Lee, "I am Bruce Lee" and was inspired, or rather disgusted, by my lack of enthusiasm for life.  My life was nice, quiet, peaceful, relatively stress free, but it missed that sense of adventure, manliness, epic-ness that Bruce Lee seemed to live on a daily basis as an undercurrent to his entire being.  For crying out loud, he had muscled wings under his arms pits.  All I have is hair and soft skin.  I don't even think I have those muscles.

To remedy the situation and to try to gain some ground on the Dragon, I started to take practical steps towards regaining some of what I had never had, but Bruce had left for me.  I signed up for the Colorado Tough Mudder, I began crossfit and watched, listened, learned everything I could about Bruce Lee.

The Tough Mudder came, I conquered it (but nearly did not).  The training did not prepare me for the metal aspect of what the obstacle course is.  The hills (read: mountain, because it was in Colorado at a ski resort), the elevation, electrocution, snow, water, mud and walls taught me that I am tougher, stronger, deeper, grittier than I could have imagined.  It gave me a sense of just what I could do, what I could accomplish, what I could affect.  I was actually like water.

My Bruce Lee Year ended.  I had learned a lot.  I had tested myself physically more than almost every other year of my life.  Now I was looking forward to the next year, the next challenge, the next person that I would judge myself against in order to challenge myself by their standard, by their legacy. 

Thirty-three is an interesting year as far as the smattering of people whom passed during their third year after the big "three oh."  There are a couple of choices to choose from, but I picked a person that would set the bar as high as I could: Jesus of Nazareth.

How can I compare myself to Jesus?  Physically what could I do?  What about spiritually?  What about relationally?  These questions have been in my head and in my heart since February.  What I want to find out was: who was Jesus.  Who was he to himself, to his family, to his friends, to his government, to his boss, to his homeless guy on the street near his house?  And then how can I gain inspiration from that to change my life.

Easy?  No.  Good?  Yes!  I think this year will be a fantastic adventure.  A challenge to not only find out who Jesus was, but how would he act in the overall situations of my life.  Would he walk out on his job to find a group of men to invest in and then go out and change to world by introducing the darkness to the light and watch as God invades peoples' circumstances?  That is what he did, but how do I compare my life, my circumstances, my journey to his?

This will be fun.

This will be hard.

This will be good because he is worthy.  Worthy of emulation and so much more.

Like a New Book

Sitting down.  Getting comfortable.  Settling in.  Picking up a new book is an interesting and unique feeling.  If you are reading it for the first time, you have no idea what kind of journey you are about to embark on.  Yet, you know enough about the book to be pick it up and snuggle into your favorite chair or coffee shop to invest your life into it.  You have weighed your life without this tale and with it and have decided that the time lost consuming the pages is nothing compared to your life with these stories, characters, victories and loses.

For me the hardest part of the book is the last ten pages.  In movie terms, this is the last scene just before the credits start to roll.  It is after the climax, where the plot is resolved.  The losers have lost and the winners have won.  The only thing left is the final resolution.  All the strings are tied neatly into one cord.  Sometimes there is a one string left unresolved or cut loose from the rest at the last moment to get you hooked for the next movie, but I think this is greedy.  Just finish the book already.

I feel like getting to know God is like reading a new book.  We hear about Him from others in our lives, from ladies with big hair on TV, in music and from the echoing well deep within us.  One day we sit down, focus and open the relationship with Him to see where it will lead us.

The beginning are the character introductions.  This is God.  God.  This is me.  Then the setting starts to get laid out.  Where are you in life, who else is around you, what are the circumstances of your existence, what are your struggles, your faults, your failures.  I don't think God is interested in nature anymore.  He created the mountains, seas and animals, enjoyed them, saw a million sunsets and then decided to create man.  He wanted someone else to enjoy them.  He wanted to enjoy someone else enjoying them, like a chef watches the critic scoop up the first soup full of soup or a mustached custom bike builder has a big reveal of his new creation and revs the engine so that everyone can feel the power.  I think He sees the settings of our lives not in location, but in station.  Who are we surrounded by, who do we influence, who influences us.

The conflict is already in the setting of people, but God starts to work.  The conflicts are resolved.  Small ones, big ones, ones we didn't even know existed.  The conflict resolution stage of my life lasted a long time.  My conflicts are never done, but after the beginning stages, I feel like the conflicts are less of the story and the relationship that has begun becomes the spot light. 

No longer does my life revolve around conviction, confession and accountability, but it becomes about living in the victory that has been gained.  The adventures are not longer internal, but they become external.

I think that this is where a lot of people stop growing because the story stops becoming about me and God and starts becoming about God and you.  The main character in my story, me, becomes the vehicle of introducing people to God and getting them find a fire place, a comfy chair, a coffee shop with a corner window and to open their books.

Our lives after that moment are never the same.  They may not be the adventures of David, Samson, Rambo or the 300, but we are never the same.

Your story with God is always evolving and always changing.  I missed this for the first part of my life.  I thought the book of my relationship with God was a short story.  I read it.  I knew it.  I recounted it every time that I recited my testimony in front of others.  I thought it was published, bound and sealed for His glory.  Little did I know that my story with God was like the unresolved stories that frustrate me unceasingly.  The story evolves, grows, dies, changes venues, characters, scenes and plots.  It flows like a storm cloud across the blue sky of Montana.  The wind pushes, pulls, up-heaves and saturates me with no end. 

I think the thing that I crave the most is the adventure.  Sure, there was a stage of my life where I only wanted the pain to stop and never thought it would.  But then it did.  Then I was bored.  Then I was challenged, and challenged and then challenged some more by God and the people around me.  Hell can be other people, but so can God.

My story is never over until it is over.  He will never say I am done, until I am done.  To get to hear those words is my goal, my dream, my desire.