A few days ago I loaded Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston on my iPod. I’ve been listening to it on and off while mowing or working out. If you aren’t familiar with the story, Ralston was hiking in Utah, got his right hand trapped under an 800 lb. boulder, was stuck for five days and had to resort to drinking his own pee, and then finally amputated his own hand with a dull pocket multi-tool.
I’d appreciate prayers tomorrow morning. All morning. My somewhat stunted leadership ability is likely to be stretched. In fact, I am operating in an area that is a definite weakness for me, something I’m sure would cause great distress to my brother Sam.
In my weakness, may the fullness of Christ’s strength be made manifest.
A friend sent this to me last week after reading my post about my Lenten failures. Please pay particular attention to the bolded portion:
Hey, Matthew
Thanks for posting about not meeting your goals for Lent. It was encouraging to me because I, too, failed in meeting my goals. They were:
* No Internet
* No snacks in between meals
* No Coke
* Not missing my Bible readings
* Read through The Apostolic FathersI did well with the Coke and with the Fathers. I did well with the snacks until the last week. I lost it with the Internet around week 2. There were gaps in my Bible reading.
Yet, Lent was good for me. It was “successful” even if I was not. It caused me to ask some questions about myself: Why did I start snacking when I was so close to the goal? Why do I make it so easy to miss my regular Bible times? Why am I so addicted to Google? The answers reveal sordid things about myself, of course. I started snacking because I don’t finish well. I miss days with the Bible because I don’t value it as highly as I should. I’m browser dependent because I avoid silence and quiet time by myself (a bunch of issues there!). I’m a failure for sure - and that’s what Lent taught me this year. It prepared me for Holy Week and Easter. Come Good Friday I was eager to hear again that the Father had sent a Saviour for failures such as myself.
I’ll do it again next year [DV] and hope to do better. But if I don’t that’s OK. Jesus came for failures!
Blessings,
Puddleglum
What is the gospel if it isn’t that Christ came for failures? This brings a whole new dimension to my struggle with “permission to fail”. Even if I fail, Christ is there to pick up the pieces. What comfort!
Now, I’m not a Crackberry user, but, I get really edgy if I can’t check my E-mail for more than a day at a time.
I know it’s a week after Lent officially ended, but Easter Sunday was a 14 hour day for me and we left for a much needed vacation early the next day. That’s why I haven’t blogged since Lent ended. Well, that’s part of the reason. The other is sheer embarrassment.
I didn’t meet my goal for Lent. Not even close. I had the plan scientifically plotted out at 60 pages a day out of the Bible I was using for this. The first week went incredibly well. Then my grandmother died and I spent five days at home with my family as I prepared for the funeral (I officiated). A better man would have looked at that 300 page deficit and laughed. I crumbled.
I’m still going to try and finish up as quickly as I can but I figured I owed everyone who was interested an admission of failure.
I’m back and looking forward to blogging much more soon.
My grandmother died this morning in her home. I’d appreciate your prayers. We were very close and I’ll be officiating her funeral on Saturday.
Withdrawals have been pretty bad. I was trying to open a program that I needed today which has a green icon. Without even thinking I double clicked a green icon. It wasn’t the one I needed but my instant messaging program. It was so automatic. I had to take Firefox and Safari out of my dock so I wouldn’t be tempted to click on them. Lord, help me, a sinner!
Well, at least there is iTunes! My sister gave me a $15 iTunes card and I’ve struggled to come up with that many songs that I want. I looked at a collection for “cardio” and since I need to flavor my running mix with some new tunes I took their advice and purchased a song with this line in it:
Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted-One moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?
That’s been eating at me all evening. It says a lot about my hesitancy to do what I need to do in this life for the kingdom. And they were rapped by none other than Eminem. Interesting 
I’ve read a couple of chapters today with more hopefully tomorrow. Today was terribly long. Fortunately I have a retreat this weekend with about a four hour break in the middle of Saturday so I figure I can get a lot of Bible reading in.
So far today I’ve noticed a couple of things: God is orderly. Far more orderly than I am. Makes me wonder if I got left out in the whole “image of God”. I also reconnected with the idea that God’s image is expressed in male and female. Distinct and different but complementary and awesomely divine. Lastly, I’m not sure if I ever noticed this before, but God warned Adam of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil before the woman came along. Adam was more aware of what not to eat than the woman. And he blames her. Century after century, generation after generation.
More soon.
During Lent 2006 I gave up TV and the internet (except for E-mail and the rare occasion I needed to get on-line for work) and did nothing but read. The four books I read are #6 and #1 on this list. That was a lot of reading if you’re keeping count. My wife was pretty happy even though I only distracted my attention from digital entertainment to paper entertainment. (I might be revealing too much of myself by counting N.T. Wright as ‘entertainment’.)
This year, I’m going to do the same thing except that instead of reading a set list of books I’m going to read the Bible from beginning to end.
I will be giving up TV and internet again but I will be posting on my progress since I use a blog client called ecto. I don’t have to use an internet browser to do my blogging so I’ll consider this a journal of my journey through the Bible.
Anyone want to join me? Respond by Tuesday at midnight
(I’m cross posting here and at my other blog)
As the IMN Cohort went through the character matrix last week, one of the things that stuck with me was a short saying about wisdom. Wisdom is doing the right thing at the right time in the right way with the right spirit.
All my life I’ve done what I want, when I want, the way I want, if I felt like it.
Wow. I feel sick.
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