On God, Death, Time, and Canada Geese
I originally wrote this on December 10th, 2011 while I was contemplating running for the Georgia House of Representatives for the first time. I am posting it here now and hope it helps you seize the opportunity (whatever that may be) in front of you and make the most of the time you have. For those who have been curious about the lapel pin I wore while in office, I wore it to remind myself of this time in my life.
As I come up against my 36th birthday, which seems to be barreling its way down a path faster than any of its predecessors, I am coming to the realization that in life it is a good thing to stop and reevaluate one’s position and assess potential future opportunities from time to time. How did I get here? Where am I going? This is where I am at right now.
The passing of Steve Jobs, though he was an imperfect human being by all accounts, has had a profound effect on me. Though much about Jobs can be debated, there are two things that cannot be in my mind; one, he changed the world, and two, he understood that his time on this earth was limited and he didn’t waste it. He only had 56 years. He was only 21 years or so older than me. This has kindled in me a sense of urgency that has always been there, but had become somehow dormant. And it is this sense of urgency that is growing daily in my life and is causing me to take account of where this life is heading.
I don’t know about you, but this is not the first time I’ve taken a moment to pause and reflect on my life. But I will tell you, when I do it, I pray. I pray a lot. And I ask God to show me what he has in store for my life. Specifically, I ask him to allow my work and life to Glorify Him, and for Him to make clear the path He wants me to follow and to give me the wisdom, discernment, and courage to follow it. I have not always been a success when I do this and in fact from time to time I have failed. When failure greets me with a mocking grin, I take refuge in my sense of faithfulness and knowing that even in failure, God is glorified.
And so I have been praying these types of prayers lately. And things that can easily be dismissed as coincidence are happening right in front of me that I choose to pay attention to instead.
First, I have to tell you that I love my family. Everything I do, I do with them in mind before any thought of myself. I work long hours because of them. I go to school and better myself because of them. I engage in political activities because I want to protect their future prospects. When I worry, it is always in relation to providing for them in some way. This has been my purpose in life, and I am proud of that.
However, I cannot escape the fact that time is ticking. And it is this realization of how limited my amount of time is that has put me on this journey of examination. And while there are a whole bunch of reasons to think to myself, “I’m not ready,” time’s passage is making a powerful argument to start moving right now.
To get into the details of my current journey, I have to take a step back to a business trip I took last year to my Philadelphia office. I had meetings scattered throughout that greater area, and ended up at a Marriott Courtyard in Delaware for the night. Just prior to my stay in that hotel, I had read an article about how Gideons’ Bibles were becoming more and more rare. So I checked the drawer, and low and behold there was a nice blue one. So I picked it up and noticed a piece of paper tucked into Ezra 5 and 6. It was a beautifully written letter from a Sister in Christ urging the reader (me) to open their heart to God’s plan, to ask Him what that plan is, and to be reminded of it.
It crushed me. At the time I didn’t know if it was for me specifically. I did not feel particularly lost or in need of this type of guidance, I debated what to do with it. Should I leave it behind to inspire another and keep only my memory of it? Or was it written to me specifically, meant for me to read and be inspired by. In the end, and after spending the night praying about it, I felt it was written for me, I do not mean that to sound arrogant, it was just my gut feel after prayerful consideration, so I kept it. And I was powerfully reminded of it this week after spending more time in prayer about the very same concepts contained in the letter.
Being reminded of the letter is not the only event that has happened recently. As many of you know, I am part of a wonderful small group at church. We meet each Sunday evening to basically “do life together.” We talk about different aspects of our Walk and generally sharpen each other in our faith. We sometimes engage in a topic related bible study, and we recently decided to study Andy Stanley’s series called, Why Worry? I bring this up because in the past whenever I have prayed the types of prayers I have mentioned in this note I have been powerfully reminded of Mathew 6:26. And what should be the topic of this past Sunday evening’s study, but that very same verse.
“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
I once accepted a job offer after being reassured by this verse, but that is a story for another time. This story is about what I saw when I decided to take my trusty canine, Jack, for a walk two days ago. As I came around the back corner of my house, I could hear them first. They sounded close, but I didn’t know where they were. I knew the sound the moment I heard them honking and calling to each other; Canada Geese. And a lot of them. They were a couple of hundred feet above my neighbor’s house, and there were probably about 100 of them.
When one sees Canada Geese in Georgia these days, it usually is no big deal. After all they have become ubiquitous in this area and I think many of them have decided to ditch migrating altogether and stick around here all year long. But it was their flight pattern, with Matthew 6:26 in my head that caught my attention. They were flying in circles. I had never seen that before. In fact, every time I have seen them in flight, they have been in their famous V-formation. But no, this time they were circling, and circling, and circling in a clockwise pattern and in a huge clump.
I watched them for about 10 minutes struggle to get it together before I finally reached into my pocket and retrieved my phone to take some video. I was struck at how no one among them wanted to be the leader. You see, within flocks of Canada Geese, there is no one leader. Instead, members of the flock take turns leading the V-formation because the leader faces the most resistance and therefore exerts the most energy. It isn’t the most desirable position to be in, but if no one among them steps up, they get nowhere and just exert all of their energy flying in circles. It was only after one of them had had enough of getting nowhere and decided to branch out and head south did the rest of the flock benefit by following them.
I know that I have been all over the map just now, connecting dots between the untimely death of a man who changed the world with a random letter in a random hotel room, to a seemingly random bible verse that mentions birds, to actually taking note of the behavior of actual birds of the air. I know that’s a strange path to follow.
But that’s where I am at right now. I’m flying in circles. It may not be the most desirable position, and I would be sure to face stiff resistance, but it may be time to step up and lead. It may be the only way we all stop flying in circles. I may not succeed, and in fact I may fail in some spectacular fashion. I am not afraid of failure because I know from experience, if I do, God will still have the Glory. And what is my life for if it is not for that?
I’m ready.
