Traveling Musings and other Spiritual Themes

Being away from your normal surroundings is a good thing.  It gives you space to think.  As we are working and living and doing life in our beloved Vienna for the next month, already there is new space to think new thoughts and hear from God in a fresh way.  For this, in spite of 97 degrees with no AC, I am grateful

Traveling always expands your mind.  You see new things and people that you hold up next to your old things and people.  Comparison and evaluation occur.  And in the space where differences divide you from the others, there's room to expand your thinking.

When we first moved overseas in 2009, we adopted a phrase as a family.  To girls who were 5, 9 and 13 years old, we repeated a mantra:  "This is not weird.  This is different."  Truth is, often things were weird!  They were so outside our experience it made us uncomfortable.  However, it didn't make our things right and other things wrong.  It just made things different.

There are lots of people on this planet.  If I just focus on one segment of society, the Christian community, there are lots of differences.  Some raise hands.  Some wear hair in buns.  Some sport tattoos.  Some drink.  Some dance.  Some observe different days as a Sabbath.  Differences are up and down the spectrum.  However, when we spotlight what is "right" and "wrong" from a place of human logic and stand on soap boxes made from personal opinions we divide and drive wedges that I'm pretty sure God never intended on being there.

In Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron start bashing their brother, Moses, for having a bride from a different culture.  This brother has ushered 10 plages upon the mighty Pharoh, opened up a sea, made water gush from a rock and asked God to bring meat to a grumbling audience of 2 million of his kinsman.  And yet, Miriam and Aaron got stuck on this one difference.  They got stuck on Moses performance and not his position.

Performance issues (what we see on the outside) highlight something in us that needs to be resolved spiritually.  God is always interested in our position (our heart in relationship with Jesus).  Moses, despite marrying a woman from a different culture, was humble and obedient and as a result, had a direct line of communication with a Holy God that Miriam and Aaron did not have.

Moses' humility and apparently his obedience put him in a position to hear from God directly.  God honored the position of Moses' heart.  Because Miriam and Aaron were critical of his performance, Gods anger burned against them.  He was defending His kid, Moses.  He was letting Miriam and Aaron know there was something more He wanted for them to see.  He wanted them to look beyond finding their worth and value in laws and rules and finding their worth and value in a relationship.  He knew that their future depended on not seeing with 20/20 vision but rather seeing from His perspective.

That's a tough one, isn't it!  I'm not advocating we accept wrong and sinful thinking and/or behavior in the Christian community.  Turth is truth.  But, because just like every culture in the world looks different, so can Christianity.  The way I am "Christian" in Norman, Oklahoma will look vastly different from Peruvian tribesmen.  However, the position of my heart in relationship to Jesus Christ and the position of the Peruvian tribesmen's heart in relationship to Jesus Christ makes us equal.  I may raise my hands in an air-conditioned auditorium and he may dance around in a loin cloth in a mud hut but in Christ, we are the same.

In Western culture, we say position matters but we get caught up in performance.  Performance is what people see, right.  I can be super active in my faith community and do all the right Christian things like sweet Miriam and Aaron.  However, my heart can stink.  I can still be in Christ but out of alignment in my heart and head thinking because so much of my attention is focused on my performance.

Case in point, me.  Normally, I've got a plan for my study times with God.  I love my routine:  coffee, Bible, TJ Max journal, favorite pen, reading plan, prayer, hear from God.  It works.  My discipline of devotion to this life-giving book called the Bible has matured and shaped me into the person I am.  But since I am out of my normal routine, I know God has asked me to go out on a limb and shake up my time and experience with Him.  I'm throwing out some routine and spending a whole lot of time letting Him guide the morning.  In Norman and now here in Vienna, my study times are valuable.  However, I'm creating some space to allow God to speak in a different way.  There may be some "Miriam and Aaron" kinds of things lurking in those places of my soul that a little shake-up of my routine will flesh out.

Stay tuned.  You just never know what will happen when we let our performance slip and our position take center stage!