Knowing

Metamucil.

This is fiber supplement older people often take to help with their…um…bowel movements. Since I’m not much of a trendsetter, I have decided to start a new trend. I’m going to start taking Metamucil. I’m not doing this out of necessity or because I want to be more regular. Just want to start a trend…please believe me. The last time I tried to start a trend it didn’t work out so well. I tried to bring back “courting.” But every time I asked a girl if I could court them, they walked away. Another time I tried to make skip racing popular again. Back in the day, people would skip all the time. Then I thought to myself, “I’m competitive. Maybe I should race someone in skipping.” So I did, and I won. But it didn’t catch on. Maybe Metamucil will be more successful.

Now there really is no way of knowing whether or not I’m going to be successful in my attempt at making Metamucil a daily habit for 20-something year-olds, but there is one thing I do know. Humans have this longing sense to know. We want to be in the “know,” or we butt in conversations because we want to know what people are talking about. If you are every around little kids, they are always asking, “why?” They are so curious as to how the world around them works. Or they want to know the reason for why people do what they do. I remembering growing up I would always ask my parents “why” after they told me to do something. They would always quickly reply, “Because I said so!” After living in almost 23 years, I still want to know! I went to college and paid tons of money (well, my parents paid….thanks mom and dad!) just because I wanted to KNOW! I honesty think that we just never quit wanting to know.

In his book, Knowing God, J.I. Packer gives a great metaphor about how you can know something. He says that inanimate things are very easy to know. You can study it, and you can tell people what it looks like. You know the object. But it gets a little trickier when you try to get to know a living object. For instance, it will take you a little longer for you to know a horse. You would have to study its behaviors until you could finally tell someone that you know the horse. It gets even more complicated when it comes to knowing a human. Unlike a horse, humans can keep secrets and things hidden. You can know someone for 10 years, and they could do something totally out of the ordinary that you wouldn’t expect. So you really don’t know that person. In this instance, the ability to know a person falls on to the person who is getting known. It is up to them if they want to divulge knowledge about themselves. Are you following me? I hope so because this is very similar to our relationship and our pursuit of knowing God. The first thing we must understand that is that God has allowed us to get to know him. Jeremiah 24:7 says, “I will give them a heart to know me…”

I am humbled and very thankful that the God of the universe has allowed me to get to know Him! I hope I never miss the opportunity to get to know Him more and more each day.

Not so Noisy in Boise.

Yesterday I was privileged to be in my good friend's wedding. Ryan and Tasha got married on January 1st at 1 o'clock in Boise, Idaho. So their anniversary will be 1/1/11...smart move on Ryan's part. He should never forget that date, right? I think I'll probably get married on 4/4/44, so I'll never forget my anniversary. I don't want my wife beating me with her walking stick.

When we first landed in Boise for the wedding a couple days ago, I started making this joke about how we are going to get crazy while we were in Idaho. At the airport I said, "Let's get noisy in Boise!" Then this older man over heard me and said, "Boise isn't noisy. New Orleans is." Then he walked away. What a kill joy. Despite the Old man's warnings, I still tried to make it noisy in Boise...

On the flight from Denver to Boise, I was reading a chapter out of Pete Wilson's Book Plan B. The whole chapter dealt with something that I am horrible at dealing with. WORRY. If you are close to me at all, you know that I don't handle stress very well, and all the stress is directly connected with worry. I don't know about you guys, but I always tend to worry about really dumb stuff...stuff I can't control. Motivational speaker Earl Nightiingale said that 40% of the things we worry about never happen. He adds that an additional 30% are things that happened in the past and can't be changed anyway. Needless concern about our personal health occupies 12% of our worries, and 10% of our worries are petty, miscelaaneious items. In other words, according to Nightingale, 92% of our worries have no substance at all. Only about 8% of our worries are legitimate matters worhty of our conern! I know this is very true in my own life. I always worry and stress out about stuff that I have no control of. I met a guy named Seth at the wedding I was in yesterday, and he is one of the most laidback guys I have ever met. Besides being sick the past couple days, he had to travel about ten hours back to Oregon rigth after the reception because he had to teach on Sunday morning. When I asked if he was freaking out about it, he shrugged his shoulders and said, "There is really nothing I can do about it...so no worries." Man I wish I could respond to worries like that.

Even though Seth did admit that he might be a little to lax when it comes to worry, I still wish I could be more Seth-like instead of totally freaking out and getting worked up. Can I ask you a question? Well, since I just did, let me ask you another. Do you like watching birds? My friends sometimes make fun of me because I love just sitting out on the back porch and watch birds with my parents. I just love watching them interact with each other and eating from bird feeders. They live a pretty simple life. Besides living a simple life, did you know that most of the birds' brain space is taken up by their eyes? So they are not the brightest animal in the animal kingdom. Matthew 5:26 is Jesus talking in the Sermon on the Mount and he says, "Look at the birds in the air. They don't plant or harvest or store food in barns, but your heavenly Father feeds them. And you know that you are worth much more than the birds." So despite their seeming lack of purpose and intellect, Jesus says God takes care of them.

In the previous verse Jesus plainly states, "do not worry." So is Jesus saying not to worry at all? Does he not want you to be concerned about your parent's pending divorce, the tanking economy or a dying love one? Absolutely not! I think Jesus just wants to give us a different perspective. This new perspective gives us a better understanding of what is truly important: Life! The fact that God has blessed with the ability to live for Him is truly the best gift we could ever ask for.

So the next time I start worrying, I need to take a breath and think to myself, "Is this just something that fits into the 92% of worries that is meaningless or do I really need to be concerned at that moment? Right now, I'm sitting on chair in a living room in Boise, Idaho. After the wedding yesterday, it really hasn't been so noisy in Boise. Just a lot of sitting around doing nothing. At first, I was really stressing out about this because I knew I could be at home with my family instead of sitting here doing nothing. But I really can't change that because my flight doesn't leave until tomorrow, so it does me no good to stress out about it. I don't know if you struggle with this stuff like I do, but if you do, let's focus on that 8% instead of the 92.