Will I ever learn to shut up and obey God?

This week, as I've continued work on the book I'm writing about trees in the Bible, I've turned to the book of Exodus to look at Moses. When you think of him, what pops in your mind first? The ten commandments? Moses proclaiming to Pharaoh, "Let my people go"? Or maybe it's a Moses that looks remarkably like Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea? Those are all images of a strong, confident Moses, but he wasn't always that way.

One day, he was leading his flocks near Mount Horeb (known as the Mountain of God), when he saw something peculiar:

     The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush;
     and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not
     consumed. So Moses said, "I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight,
     why the bush is not burned up." When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look,
     God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he
     said, "Here I am." Then He said, "Do not come near here; remove your sandals
     from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." He said
     also, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the
     God of Jacob." Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
     -- Exodus 3:2-6 (NASB)

Moses' curiosity stopped him in his tracks, and his encounter with God that day would change him forever. Notice that God didn't call out to him until Moses had turned aside from his flock. God was waiting until Moses was quiet and fully paying attention.

You see, God had a plan for Moses that He knew would be difficult for him. He wanted Moses to leave his life of hiding and return to Egypt to speak for the Israelites and lead them out of Egypt. But Moses had a lot of reservations.

During their conversation, Moses whined and asked God to choose another messenger to free the Israelites. Take a look at Exodus 3 and 4 to read about this encounter, and you'll see Moses offer excuse after excuse about not being able to fulfill God's call. Here's my take on Moses' side of their conversation:

• I'm nobody. Shouldn't You send someone more capable and important? (Exodus 3:11)
• Who are You? Are You really *that* God? (3:13)
• Um, I don't really think the Israelites are going to believe me. (4:1)
• Besides, You know I'm terrible at public speaking. (4:10)
• Okay, God, it's a good message to send to Egypt, and so I ask You to send it (just maybe could You pretty please pick someone other than me?). (4:13)

Up until that last comment from Moses, God had been patient, but the last comment finally pushed God over the edge: "Then the anger of the Lord burned against Moses" (4:14).

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't want to face an angry God. And yet, I can definitely relate to Moses' reluctance to obey God. Did any of his comments sound familiar to you because you've said them yourself?

I've been putting off writing this book, starting and stopping and getting sidetracked with life and other writing projects for the last seven years. I'm ashamed and embarrassed that it has taken me so long to be obedient to God's call for me to write a book. Even now, I struggle to keep the book on the front burner as other project ideas inspire me. But this is the season for me to write this book, and so I keep putting other projects out of my mind to stay focused on accomplishing this one task.

Moses' encounter at the burning bush provides us with two key lessons about our relationship with God, two disciplines we must learn: being quiet and still before God, and obeying His call.

My problem is that I'm crummy at both of those disciplines. I mean really, really crummy. However, because I don't ever want to read, "Then the anger of the Lord burned against Hope," I'm working on developing both. Each morning, I take time to be quiet and still before God. Not easy, but I'm trying. I'm also refusing to take on other projects while I finish writing the book.

It's a daily struggle, though. So -- my friends and readers -- do you have insights or successes or stories of your own struggles in these two areas that could help all of us learn these disciplines? If so, please share them by writing a comment below. 

You don't even have to sign in or include your name -- simply choose to share your story as "anonymous," if that's more comfortable for you. (After you click on the word "Comments" below this post, you'll find a screen with a box where you can type your comment and then a drop-down menu to choose "Comment as." Anonymous is the last choice in the drop-down menu). I'd love to hear how you're meeting the challenges of quiet and obedience.

A Valentine's ode to trees

Valentine's day is just around the corner, and I've been reminded in the last few days of a few of the reasons why I love trees.

One reminder came yesterday in The Diane Rehm Show. Rehm invited a panel of experts to discuss the state of the cacao tree -- which provides us those lovely pods filled with beans that, when fermented and roasted, are transformed into a favorite Valentine's gift: chocolate.

Save the chocolate trees
Scientists are hard at work trying to learn more about cacao trees so they can help farmers around the world produce stronger, healthier cacao trees -- ones more resistant to climate change, drought, pests and disease. They're doing this in part by mapping the genome of known varieties of cacao trees, and by exploring the Amazon to find wild, uncultivated strands that may be able to infuse greater genetic diversity to the current pool of cultivated chocolate trees.

Blights have taken out swaths of cacao trees, and changes in climate are currently threatening to shift some of the prime growing regions in Africa. Why is this a big deal? Because 60-70% of the world's chocolate comes from a relatively small region in the African countries of Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Liberia and Cameroon. The cacao trees there are not all that genetically diverse and are therefore more vulnerable to the same diseases and pests.

According to the show's panel, 95 percent of the world's cacao farms are small operations, and many of those are family-based. Because cacao trees love shade and thrive well mixed in with other crops, these small farms often grow and sell a variety of fruit, not just cocoa. Their livelihood depends on healthy cacao trees, as well as educational systems in place to help them sustain and improve their trees. If these trees get wiped out, it's not just major farming operations and corporations that will be in trouble.

I don't usually give much thought to where my chocolate comes from, but this show made me stop and think more about trees that I take for granted to give me the chocolate I so adore.

I'm admittedly picky about the kinds of chocolate I'll buy: the darker the better if it's in a bar, and if it's chocolate milk, it has to be Silk brand regular chocolate soy milk. No other brand (I've tried several and been disappointed), no light chocolate Silk (ugh, not worth it) and no dark chocolate almond milk (too sweet and thick). How about you? Do you love chocolate? Do you have a favorite? Or does it simply need to have the word chocolate in it for you to be happy?

Saving lives
Besides being a fan of chocolate, I'm also a fan of World Vision, a relief organization that focuses its efforts on child sponsorship in the most impoverished areas of the world. Its latest magazine arrived this past weekend, with a story that held the other reminder of why I love trees so much. (I had hoped to point you to the issue online, but the latest one doesn't appear to be on the site yet.)

World Vision's president, Rich Stearns, kicked off the magazine with an article called "The Famine That Never Happened," about the ongoing famine in the Horn of Africa. What amazed me was his statement that not one of World Vision's sponsored children in that region has died because of the drought and famine ravaging other parts of that region.

Stearns credits that to lessons learned in the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s, when World Vision came in to help local families recover then from the devastation caused by deforestation and drought. His description of the Antsokia Valley in Ethiopia really caught my attention:

     Orange groves, maize, sorghum, and grazing farm animals blanket the valley today.
     In the shadow of the surrounding hills, 20 million trees nourish the soil and bring
     income as farmers sell their fruit. More than 90 percent of the valley's children are in
     school. God has turned the parched ground into flowing springs.

     During a more recent drought in 2000, farmers in Antsokia provided food for other
     regions in Ethiopia. The formerly dry valley became an oasis amid drought. This
     year World vision will phase out its work in the valley. We're no longer needed, as
     the farmers there are reaping "a fruitful harvest." ...

     In World Vision communities, farmers are learning how to conserve water and
     promote rain by planting trees. ... This work is changing the future. Years from
     now, we'll be talking again about the famine that never happened.
     (World Vision Spring 2012: 4.)

I'm heartened by his mention of trees, and the crucial role they play in keeping an environment safe (or at least safer) from drought that leads to famine. His organization is encouraging a life-giving cycle: plant trees to strengthen the environment and use the fruit of those trees for a better livelihood and for protection from drought and famine.

So maybe this Valentine's Day, you'll consider sponsoring a child through World Vision. It costs $35 a month to give a child the gift of hope, a gift lasts a whole lot longer than flowers, or dinner out, or even your favorite chocolates.

I'd love to hear from you if you decide to sponsor a child. But I'd also love to hear about your favorite chocolate treat, too. Happy Valentine's Day a little early!

Running roots

I've mentioned my love of running before, but these days, it takes up a lot of my thoughts. Just a few short weeks ago, I registered to run my first marathon and sat down with my husband (who also happens to make a great unofficial running coach) and mapped out my long runs from now until mid-June, when I'll run the marathon.

I wish I could say I feel completely confident about reaching this new goal, but overly tight muscles and memories of old injuries keep threatening to drag me down. Anyone who has run a marathon will tell you that overcoming the mental hurdles is half (or more) of the battle. And so I know I need to win the mental race before I'll be able to endure the physical one.

That's where patience and discipline come in. Let me be the first to admit that neither of these two virtues is a strength of mine, but I know I'll need to cultivate both to toe the line at that June marathon with a firm hope of finishing.

Running the marathon is a bit like enjoying a fully grown and thriving tree planted in your yard. Trees don't just spring up fully grown overnight, just as humans don't typically wake up one morning and find themselves magically able to run 26.2 miles.

As I look out at three young trees in my own yard and wish for them to grow healthy and tall and strong, I can see parallel lessons for completing the marathon. You may not run, but I share these lessons with you because achieving your own dream may also feel like running a marathon, and some of the insights here may help you achieve that dream.

1. Strong roots = healthy tree.
The three young trees in my yard have been growing underground in ways that I can't see, but their roots are what will sustain them in wind and drought and storms. Similarly, you haven't seen my running log probably haven't seen me out on a training run, but my running roots are getting established. Over the last seven years, I've logged miles and miles that are all part of the preparation to get me to the point where I am now -- optimistic about possibly completing a marathon, despite the rocks and storms that may lie ahead.

You know what else gives my running stronger roots? Lots and lots of prayer. I don't listen to music when I'm out running, and that gives me a lot of time alone to think and pray -- lifting up pleas and praise to God, depending on what's happening in my life on any given day I head out for a run. I like to think of these prayers as an emotional taproot that I've been establishing, one that will sustain me on race day.

What roots are you establishing to achieve your dream? And do you see prayer as an integral part of a healthy root system?

2. Don't underestimate the power of water.
Quite simply, just as trees need water to thrive, so do humans. Runners, especially. I temporarily forgot that essential lesson this past weekend. I was running a half marathon in considerably warmer, more humid conditions than my winter training has provided. Though I carried a bottle of gatorade with me, it was too sugary sweet for me during the race, but because I had it in hand, I skipped past a few too many water stops along the course.

That's when I got cold. No -- it wasn't because a lovely breeze had picked up across the water as I ran over a bridge. No -- it wasn't because of the cloud cover (a blessing from God that kept me from getting into serious trouble and needing an ambulance). I got cold because I wasn't drinking enough water, an early warning sign of heat exhaustion. And because of it, I had to slow down and walk more and drink a lot of water simply to cross the finish line.

For you, actual thirst quenching may not be an integral part of achieving your dream, but I've written before of waterers who can help you quench an emotional or mental thirst through their encouragement of your dream. My husband and other running friends are waterers whose counsel will sustain and encourage me when marathon training gets really tough (which I expect will happen in approximately 10 days when I run farther than I ever have before).

3. Grow a little at a time.
This is where those pesky areas of patience and discipline come in. Those three trees in the yard aren't bogged down by fear. They're doing exactly what they're supposed to -- growing a little bit at a time, not trying to over-reach but simply taking in water and sunlight and good soil nutrients to reach up a little taller each passing season.

I'd love to be able to go run a marathon next weekend and cross it off my bucket list, but I know that's not practical, and I'm pretty sure that would skip past the lessons of patience and discipline that God wants to teach me over the next few months as I build up my mileage each week. Every long run will be just a little longer than the previous one, training my body in a gentler way that will strengthen me and keep me less likely to get injured by expecting too much from my body.

Are you writing a book? You simply cannot write it all in one go. Are you trying to raise great children? That'll take 18+ years to see to fruition. Are you moving into a scary but exciting new role at work? You will not be perfect at it from the moment you begin (you may never be perfect at it). All dreams come with challenges, and they're going to require daily growth -- sometimes frustratingly slow -- before you can look back and see what you have accomplished.

4. Take rest days.
This is also where those pesky areas of patience and discipline come in. Trees have seasons of rest, seasons when they do not bear fruit or flower or hold green leaves, but even during those seasons of rest, they are still living and strengthening.

When you have set goals, expect some setbacks. Maybe your whole family came down with the flu during a week you had planned to finish a special project. Or maybe you ran a half marathon without drinking enough water and now your quads hurt so much you can barely walk without pain, much less go for a short run (ahem).

Rest days are important, even though you may chafe at them. God rested. And He insisted that His people rest, too. Don't try to outdo God by ignoring the essential need for rest. Rest, renew and recharge -- ready for the next effort.

I'd love to know what dreams you have and whether you see them as the growing tree or the marathon training. What roots have you established? What or who will water your dream and wait with you while it grows? Do you have tips for learning patience and discipline? I'd love to hear from you and run alongside of you as your dream grows toward harvest.

When the devil hijacks your hashtag

Show of hands: How many of you know what a hashtag is? Need a hint? A little bird told me it looks like this: #

For those of you who don't use Twitter (I don't either), a message sent through Twitter is called a tweet.

Basically, tweets are short messages about what's on your mind. They're limited to 140 characters, and so you can't ramble on about a topic. (The last two sentences were exactly 140 characters, to give you an idea of how short that is.)

A hashtag helps you identify keywords in tweets, and hashtags can help you find communities discussing the same topic. For instance, you'll often see Webcast producers provide a hashtag so viewers can tweet live with each other and submit questions to the speaker during the event. If I were to present a webcast based on my blog, I might create this hashtag for my blog readers to use: #flourishingtree.

There -- now you know what I know about Twitter.

A hijacked hashtag
The whole topic of hashtags came up Monday night at the first meeting of a small study group I'm a part of. One of my friends in the group is involved with Elevation Church and was telling us about Elevation's recent 12-day Code Orange Revival. The revival was webcast live each night, and participants were encouraged to tweet their thoughts in real time.

What concerned my friend -- and lots of others -- was the explosion of criticism and negative comments that showed up using the hashtag during the revival. And that led to our conversation about the devil hijacking hashtags.

You see, my friends, spiritual warfare is real. And you'll encounter it most clearly at a time of intense spiritual transformation, such as Elevation's revival. The devil never wants to lose any souls to the other side and will therefore battle with whatever tools are available, even the twitter feed on a church's revival webcast screen. Perhaps especially there, because that's where lives were being transformed. That's where new Christians were giving their lives to Christ -- the devil's worst-case scenario as he lost the souls gained for God's kingdom.

Protecting the hashtags in your head
Whether or not you tweet, I bet your mind is a lot like a twitter feed. Short thoughts one right after another, sometimes transitioning from one to the next but often jumping around among lots of different, unrelated topics. Mine is. I joke with my husband that it's like a pinball game in my brain, with thoughts bouncing around everywhere, rarely stopping in any one spot for very long.

And sometimes, whether I like it or not, the devil tries to hijack the hashtags in my head. These can be tiny little moments I might miss: a whisper of doubt, a choice to be lazy for a couple of hours when I should be working, a friend's behavior that makes room for distance to creep in between us. Other times, the attempts can be louder.

Take Elijah, who went from the confidence of triumphing over the false prophets of Baal in a fiery demonstration of God's existence and power to immediately running in fear from a queen -- a human -- because she had threatened to kill him. It took more than 40 days in the desert and another encounter with God before Elijah would clear his mind and return to work (1 Kings 18, 19).

Remember Judas. He was a disciple of Christ, witnessing the miracles and lives transformed in Christ's presence. At the last supper -- a most holy moment -- the devil enters Judas and convinces him to betray Jesus (John 13:2, 27). Judas went mad after the betrayal.

Let's not forget about Peter, either. The rock of the early Christian church, Peter had sworn unbreakable loyalty to Jesus, but then some men recognized him and questioned him. Fear gripped him. He lied. The rooster crowed three times. And Peter wept (Matthew 26, Mark 14, John 18). He had to wait until after Jesus' resurrection to be reinstated to his earlier call.

Perhaps that is why Peter is so quick to remind us of the danger we all face:

     Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a
     roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing
     that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren
     who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace,
     who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen
     and establish you.

     -- 1 Peter 5:8-10 (NASB)

It's understandable that we don't want to think about the devil. Some of you may have even been reluctant to read this post because of its title. But we do better to be on guard, as Peter admonishes us, than to ignore the threat lurking. As Peter promises, God rewards our resistance and struggle.

C.S. Lewis' novel The Screwtape Letters is an enduring account of how the devil weaves his way into our thoughts (thanks to Enuma Okoro for reminding me of this wonderful book just this past weekend). Told in letters from a senior demon instructing a junior one just learning the ropes of winning souls, the book will make you laugh, but in the laughter, may also indict your heart in places where you need to be especially vigilant.

If you have read The Screwtape Letters, I'd love to hear your reactions and your favorite lines from the book and hear how they may have helped you in navigating your own path in life.

Two lives imitating trees

In last week's post Two trees imitating life?, I wrote about two tree sculptures imitating life, or death, or maybe even tennis balls, depending on how you view the art. I promised to follow up this week with more about the blessed life being like a tree planted by water, and here's a picture of some pretty cool tree roots to get you thinking of what the tree planted by water may look like:

Trees and their roots growing by a creek

The passage I shared with you last week actually describes two lives that are like trees, just very different kinds. One life is blessed, but the other is cursed.

     Thus says the Lord,
     "Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind
     And makes flesh his strength,
     And whose heart turns away from the Lord.
     For he will be like a bush in the desert
     And will not see when prosperity comes,
     But will live in stony wastes in the wilderness,
     A land of salt without inhabitant.
     Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord
     And whose trust is the Lord.
     For he will be like a tree planted by the water,
     That extends its roots by a stream
     And will not fear when the heat comes;
     But its leaves will be green,
     And it will not be anxious in a year of drought
     Nor cease to yield fruit."

     -- Jeremiah 17:5-8 (NASB)

The cursed life imitates a bush in the desert -- relying on entirely wrong things to keep it alive. While the desert bush may fight and scrap and somehow stay alive, it's unlikely to ever thrive. Likewise, when we trust only in our own strength, or the strength of our family, friends, posse or gang, we're going to struggle instead of thriving. And our lives will ultimately become desolate.

The second life Jeremiah mentions is the blessed life, the one compared to a tree living by the water. In the photo, you can see how large the roots have grown as they reach out over and down into the creek. It may be hard in this winter season to imagine drought and heat, but these trees have sent down their roots so that even in the heat of summer, they can continue getting the water they need to thrive.

When the heat comes
Just as roots save a tree and keep it alive, we can cultivate faithful, obedient practices in our walk with God that will prepare us for times of distress and keep us from setting up camp in the desert places we sometimes find ourselves.

Notice that Jeremiah doesn't say the tree planted by the stream will not fear if the heat comes. He says the tree "will not fear when the heat comes" (v. 8, emphasis mine). When.

No one wants that word, "when." When a man comes home and tells his family he has lost his job. When the doctor speaks the word "cancer." When a car accident changes lives. When a spouse of several decades walks out. When a young son dies. When, when, when.

Droughts come into our lives in varied ways -- even to those of us who are Christians. Our faith does not provide a genie in a bottle, ready to grant our every wish and give us perfect lives.

No, instead of waiting for a genie to show up, we Christians have a greater gift, a greater promise to cling to: God is with us and sustains us when the heat comes, and our faith means that we will continue to grow and bear fruit, even after the droughts have done their worst. He has planted us where we will grow best and will always provide for our needs.

Let that truth of God's protection seep into your heart and mind: You have been planted by the water. Be confident that your roots are strong and that He will sustain you and help you bear fruit.

What are some of the ways you feel sustained? For me, it's writing and sharing a weekly message with you, but it's also spending time with family and friends, going for a challenging run, listening to music, or going to a museum.

I'd love to hear your stories of how your life is imitating the green tree and what God has put into your life to sustain you. Or maybe you'd like to share about a time that your life was more like that desert bush and God rescued from that desolate, desperate place. Either way, I'd love to hear your stories. So please share them in the comments below.

A small soap-box moment
Now, I hope you'll forgive me a sudden topic shift and a brief moment on the soap box. But I'd like to tell you about an issue that's important to me as a writer of a blog and as someone who relies on the internet for research, social networking and so much more.

You may have noticed that Google has a black swath across its logo today on its home page. If you click on the black swath, you'll go to this story about proposed legislation that would limit freedom of expression on the Internet.

We hear all the time about oppressive regimes that shut down Google and other sites, but I've always thought I lived in a country that was not one of those regimes. However, there's a vote next Tuesday -- January 24 -- that could considerably weaken our country's ability to get information from sites many of us frequent (Wikipedia, Google, Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, ...). Who's behind this bill? Big media and the entertainment industry. Here's a video that gives a better summary than I've given.

I was really frustrated this weekend that NBC was able to have a stranglehold on Olympic trials marathon coverage -- reducing those of us who didn't travel to Houston for the event to getting text updates from sites other than NBC. NBC didn't broadcast the event live (I guess Babar cartoons are sacrosanct for them). And they refused to allow video coverage on other sites. It wasn't the most fun way to follow an exceptionally exciting set of races, but for most of us who cared, it was the only way.

This small example points to a greater problem with the monopoly big media would like to have on content. And it simply doesn't sit well with me. If it doesn't sit well with you either, please consider signing the petition against SOPA/PIPA legislation.

Thanks. I'll just go put my box away now.