The Danger with Busy-ness

You blink and your little kids are not so little anymore. Isn't it crazy? We all have our reasons, but many of you can probably identify with me - the busy-ness scale is off the chart in my life. This photo is taken from an airplane about a week ago - I went up with our pipeline patrol pilot to see what my project in Colorado looked like from the air. When combined with all of life's other activities, this project has kept me hopping, and has taken priority over some things in my personal life.

What do we do to counter the craziness that we experience when life gets so busy? I don't yet have all of the answers, but I'll be blogging about it here as I figure some out...and I hope to hear from others about what they do to cope.

Outfitter Stove

This is the new outfitter stove that my brothers and I picked up for use in the mountains - it weighs around 80 pounds and everything fits inside the stove for convenience in transportation. It has a 3 gallon water tank on the side - you always have hot water available and it improves heat retention in your living space. The stovepipe nests inside itself - it grows from 5 inches at the bottom to 6 inches at the top. Very cool - we are going to enjoy using it very much. If you're looking for something similar, go to the Cylinder Stove website.

Do Whatever Brings You Back to Your Heart and the Heart of God

From Wild at Heart:

Against the flesh, the traitor within, a warrior uses discipline. We have a two-dimensional version of this now, which we call a “quiet time.” But most men have a hard time sustaining any sort of devotional life because it has no vital connection to recovering and protecting their strength; it feels about as important as flossing. But if you saw your life as a great battle and you knew you needed time with God for your very survival, you would do it. Maybe not perfectly—nobody ever does and that’s not the point anyway—but you would have a reason to seek him. We give a halfhearted attempt at the spiritual disciplines when the only reason we have is that we “ought” to. But we’ll find a way to make it work when we are convinced we’re history if we don’t.

Time with God each day is not about academic study or getting through a certain amount of Scripture or any of that. It’s about connecting with God. We’ve got to keep those lines of communication open, so use whatever helps. Sometimes I’ll listen to music; other times I’ll read Scripture or a passage from a book; often I will journal; maybe I’ll go for a run; then there are days when all I need is silence and solitude and the rising sun. The point is simply to do whatever brings me back to my heart and the heart of God.

The discipline, by the way, is never the point. The whole point of a “devotional life” is connecting with God. This is our primary antidote to the counterfeits the world holds out to us.

All Men Die; Few Men Ever Really LIVE

The most dangerous man on earth is the man who has reckoned with his own death. All men die; few men ever really live. Sure, you can create a safe life for yourself...and end your days in a rest home babbling on about some forgotten misfortune. I’d rather go down swinging. Besides, the less we are trying to "save ourselves," the more effective a warrior we will be. Listen to G. K. Chesterton on courage:

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. The paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

Eldredge, Wild at Heart , p.169

Red Tape, Regulation, Intervention...and Freedom?

Limited Government and Private Property Rights…

 

I’ve had recent experiences in both of these arenas that deserve to be discussed.

 

Private Property Rights

We bought an investment property a little more than two years ago.  It is a home that was converted many years ago to a duplex.  However, the homeowner at the time did the conversion under the radar, so the local municipality will not consider it a legal duplex.  Furthermore, they are unwilling to change the zoning from single family dwelling to multifamily dwelling, in spite of the fact that it is surrounded by multiplexes.  In our efforts to make change, we dealt with a number of very friendly people at the city that were, frankly, also very clueless.  So, we decided to sell the property.  From the time that we went under contract with a buyer, two months have elapsed.  We are in the middle of signing final closing paperwork, and it has been an absolute motley crue of regulation and intervention clear through the sale process.  The buyer is getting an FHA loan, so the federal government is involved with the FHA requirements.  The buyer is also seeking redevelopment money from the city, and so the city is using the opportunity to make the property comply with zoning rules.  The loan companies have inserted their requirements, as have the title companies.  All real estate transactions are also regulated by the state.  In the end, if I ask the question “is this really my private property?” I have to conclude that it is, in fact, not.  If I had freedom to do what I wanted on the property, so long as it did not infringe on my neighbors’ rights and well-being, and if I had freedom to buy and sell property without constant intervention and regulation at every step of the process, then it would be private property.  But I conclude that we have had our private property rights stripped from us and really are all just tenants of the state.  After all, if I own the property free and clear, I will still forfeit it to the state if I fail to pay property tax.  I’m just a renter after all.

 

Limited Government

I build large pipelines for a living.  In a nutshell – LOTS of permits.  I work for a regulated company – we are regulated by FERC and DOT.  The federal regulators force other stakeholders (BLM, USFS, FWS, states, counties, property owners, etc) to work through a process known as NEPA to “streamline” the building of a new pipeline or related facility.  We (the pipeline company) also have the right of federal pre-emption if a stakeholder is not participating appropriately in the NEPA process or otherwise puts roadblocks in our way.  Now, I’m a champion of private property rights (in spite of my cynicism in the previous paragraph) and do not like to be involved in using eminent domain on projects; in fact, we do not exercise that authority very often.  However, if a government agency, state, county, or municipality fails to meet their obligation to the process, I feel no sympathy toward their cause.  I recently experienced a county throwing their weight around and doing whatever they could to get additional money from my company and bolster their budgets.  We chose not to federally pre-empt simply due to a tight timeframe, and the county knew this would be the case.  So, when a small county in the mountain states behaves in this fashion, I tend to feel pretty cynical.  I had held out hope that things were different in the small towns, cities, counties.  But the truth is, the small governments generally behave just like the big ones, and sometimes they seem even more corrupt.

 

So, when will the pendulum of freedom start to swing in the other direction?

What IS Discipleship?

Another great daily email from Ransomed Heart:

What have we come to accept as “discipleship”? A friend of mine recently handed me a program from a large and successful church somewhere in the Midwest. It’s a rather exemplary model of what the idea has fallen to. Their plan for discipleship involves, first, becoming a member of this particular church. Then they encourage you to take a course on doctrine. Be “faithful” in attending the Sunday morning service and a small group fellowship. Complete a special course on Christian growth. Live a life that demonstrates clear evidence of spiritual growth. Complete a class on evangelism. Consistently look for opportunities to evangelize. Complete a course on finances, one on marriage, and another on parenting (provided that you are married or a parent). Complete a leadership training course, a hermeneutics course, a course on spiritual gifts, and another on biblical counseling. Participate in missions. Carry a significant local church ministry “load.”

You’re probably surprised that I would question this sort of program; most churches are trying to get their folks to complete something like this, one way or another. No doubt a great deal of helpful information is passed on. My goodness, you could earn an MBA with less effort. But let me ask you: A program like this— does it teach a person how to apply principles, or how to walk with God? They are not the same thing.

(Waking the Dead , 95–96)

I couldn't help myself - I had to re-post the "daily reading" that I received over the weekend from Ransomed Heart Ministries (from John Eldredge.) You know, this stuff calls to my deepest sense of self. I'm a Mormon - and here is a born-again Christian author to whom I owe a deep debt of gratitude.

Then from on high—somewhere in the distance there’s a voice that calls—remember who you are. If you lose yourself—your courage soon will follow.
(Gavin Greenaway and Trevor Horn, Sound the Bugle)

You are going to need your whole heart in all its glory for this Story you’ve fallen into. So, who did God mean when he meant you? We at least know this: we know that we are not what we were meant to be. Most of us spend our energy trying to hide that fact, through all the veils we put on and the false selves we create. Far better to spend our energy trying to recover the image of God and unveil it for his glory. One means that will help us is any story that helps us see with the eyes of the heart.

To live with an unmasked, unveiled glory that reflects the glory of the Lord? That’s worth fighting for.

The disciples of Jesus were all characters. Take James and John, for instance, “the sons of Zebedee.” You might remember them as the ones who cornered Jesus to angle for the choice seats at his right and left hands in the kingdom. Or the time they wanted to call down fire from heaven to destroy a village that wouldn’t offer Jesus a place for the night. Their buddies called them idiots; Jesus called them the Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17). He saw who they really were. It’s their mythic name, their true identity. They looked like fishermen out of work; they were actually the Sons of Thunder.

(Waking the Dead, 82–83)