It's not easy being you

Kermit the Frog sang about it. Rodney Dangerfield made a comedy career out of it…. “It’s not easy…Being green. It’s not easy when you get “no respect!” You probably know how it feels, too. Like it or not, sometimes it’s hard being you.

Any of us could understand why Kermit could relate, right? Being a frog in a man’s world has got to be hard. We all understand where Rodney was coming from when he complained about getting no respect. You’re well-acquainted with the feeling, especially when life starts to get the best of you. It’s not easy being you and no one knows that better than you do.
But, the next time you fall into a Kermit the Frog mode or you start to feel a little Dangerfield-esque, remind yourself that everyone has to deal with this. There are no exceptions. Everyone, at one time or another faces the unavoidable reality that sometimes it is just plain hard to be you.

If you don’t believe me, you can ask King Solomon. Sitting on the throne that his father made famous, he feels it. Ruling over an empire doesn’t make it go away. Power, riches, fame, none of these things can overpower the feeling that being King is hard. Solomon may not know what it feels like to be green, he may not be able to complain about getting no respect, but he does know that life isn’t always easy, even for a king! Solomon knows this as well as any of us, but you won’t hear him complain about it. Not even for a second.

Lord knows, he had the chance to complain, too. Literally. God knows. One night, God visited Solomon in a dream. He stood right in front of David’s Son, and said “Ask what I should give you.” (1 Kings 3:5 NRSV) I’ve had dreams where I’m flying. I’ve had dreams where I’ve somehow left the house and forgotten to get dressed. I’ve had other dreams that I couldn’t explain at all. I’ve never had a dream where God showed up and invited me to ask him for anything in the world. Solomon had one. Because it was dream, he could have said anything at all. He could have asked for everything his heart had ever desired. He could have told God anything at all. He could have even said:

“Being king is too much pressure. I’m not sure I can fill my father, David’s, shoes. The people in my kingdom expect so much from me. I live in constant fear of my enemies coming to defeat me. Make me something other than a king. What can you do for me, God? How about getting me out of this!”

He could have said all of that, but he didn’t. Instead, he thanked God for making him king, and then he asked God to help him be the best king he could possibly be. When God showed up in a dream and said: “What can I give you? Ask.” Solomon looked back at God and said:

“Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil” (1 Kings 3:9).

Solomon knows that it was God who put him on the throne, and he also knows that without God there’s no way he can continue to sit there, so he asks God for the ability to be the person God created him to be. Even though it’s difficult, Solomon asks God for help to be himself. He’s willing to lead God’s kingdom if God will help him to do it well.

Jesus loves to tell people about God’s kingdom. The good news is, we’re all a part of it, every single person on earth! The bad news (maybe) is that it is unlike any kingdom you’ve ever imagined. It is built from tiny seeds that grow into low-lying shrubs instead of tall trees and heavy timbers. It is like a hidden treasure that no one but God knows about. It is like a single pearl that God searches passionately for. It is like a net full of fish…and you are in the net! Are you ready for life in this kind of kingdom? Because this is what Jesus tells his disciples that life in God’s kingdom is like.

I don’t know about you, but there are several places I can think of where I would rather live than in the branch of a shrub. And while I may not mind being called “treasure”, I’m not sure I’m willing to be buried in the dirt in middle of the field in order to do it. Pearls are great, but you and I know where they get their start…in oysters. And finally, while I wouldn’t mind being the person pulling in the net full of fish, I’m not sure I want to be the fish sitting in that net.
This, I think, is what makes Solomon’s request to God so remarkable. He doesn’t ask to be something other than what he is. He doesn’t ask for something that he doesn’t aready have. He doesn’t ask for an easier life. He doesn’t say: “Get me out of the shrub and plant me in a tall, strong tree where I’ll be safe from the rest of the world.” He doesn’t ask God to give him more treasure than he’s already got. He’s not interested in getting out of the oyster shell. He’s content to stay right in the net that God cast for him. He doesn’t ask for any of these things, or anything else that would change him from what he is, remove him from where he’s at, or free him from his responsibilities.

Instead, when God invites him to ask for anything in the world, all he asks is for God to make him good at what God made him in the first place. “You made me king, help me to be the best one I can be.” I don’t know if I could do the same thing. Could you? If God showed up in a dream and invited you to ask him for anything at all, could you ask the way Solomon does? Asking, not for more riches, more success, or for more power, but instead asking God simply to help you be a better you. IT IS TOUGH!

If you don’t believe me that it is challenging to ask God to help you be what you are, just ask Jesus. He speaks to God in the middle of the night after he has shared the Last Supper with his disciples. Unlike the conversation Solomon had with God, this is no dream. In fact, it’s a nightmare, and Jesus knows it. That night, kneeling in the garden, he prays to God, and this is what he says: “My Father, if there is any way, get me out of this.” That’s an honest prayer. That’s a prayer I can relate to. That’s a prayer that screams to God that it’s not always easy being us. But Jesus’ prayer doesn’t stop there. His conversation with God in the garden continues with the words: “But please, not what I want. You, what do you want?”. (Matthew 13: The Message) To even give voice to these words is so difficult, so challenging, that it causes him to sweat. Luke’s gospel tells us that as he prayed, his sweat fell “like great drops of blood.”
In the garden, where olives are grown to be pressed into oil, Jesus is pressed into saving our world. When every human muscle in his body screams “Get me out of this!”, every divine cell within him quietly asks God to help him to continue to be who God wants him to be. What Jesus does in the garden that night is exactly what Solomon does in his dream: he asks God to help him be who God made him to be. “You sent me to save the world, help me to do it…even if it means my life.”

“Not what I want, but what you want” is possibly the hardest prayer ever prayed. But Jesus does it. The reason is simple. Jesus does it all, prays for strength to face the cross, prays for God’s will to be done instead of his own, carries through on the life God gave him to live-even when that life is on a nonstop collision course with death. Jesus does it all so that you will have the chance to live the life God made just for you.

Jesus knows that it is God who put us all on earth, and without God none of us can live here. Jesus gives his life for yours. He gives his life so that nothing can harm you, nothing can defeat you, nothing can prevent you from living the kind of life God knows you can. Jesus gives up his life so that you never have give up yours.

God made you. Who you are is no accident. God made you to do things that only you can do. What are they? God made you to be someone that only you can be. Who is that person? Do you know what God put you on earth for? Are you doing something about it everyday? If not, how can you pray to God, asking for help to find out what you’re here for?

If you do know what it is, how can you be the best at it? Do you have the strength to do what Solomon and Jesus did? To speak to God and ask, not for wealth, or fame, victory over your enemies, or even in Jesus’ honest words for God to get you out of whatever you find yourself in…but instead for the strength, the power, and the tools to become who God created you to be?

Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” Quarterback Johnny Unitas heard a similar mantra from his mother, who taught him that "If your job is to scrub toilets, then make them shine!"

The streetsweeper and the King , if they are living the life God gave them, know that they can’t do any of it without God. They also know that they are doing all of it, in the end, for God. Solomon’s prayer is a tough one: “Help me be who I am.” Jesus’ is even tougher “Not what I want, but what you want”. If you and I are going to live in God’s Kingdom, we will need these prayers-to avoid the temptation to try be mighty redwoods when we’re called to be mustard shrubs. We’ll need to be well-versed in these words if we are going to be able to sit in the field and wait for God to uncover us as the treasure we really are. We will need to pray these words regularly, as we sit clamped tight in that oyster shell as we slowly and steadily become the pearl God made us to be. We will be glad when we can say these words, when we sit lumped together with all the other fish in the net, waiting for God to pluck us out and keep us forever.

Being what God made you to be is never easy, but with God’s help, it is worth it. Along the way, we’ll find that out: as we grow, as we are discovered, as we become that precious gem, and as we are caught up in God’s net just because we are who he made us to be.

Weeds and Wheat

God loves things that grow. In fact, God started all of this, everything we see around us, in a garden. Genesis chapter two tells the story of that garden and the first people, whom God put there to “till it and keep it.” (Genesis 2:15) From the beginning, God is sharing His love for growing things with us.

Jesus seems to share God’s passion for growing things. He tells all kinds of stories about things that grow. He tells stories about seeds, a fig tree, vineyards, vines, and branches. In Matthew chapter 13, he tells a story about “weeds and wheat” (13:24-30, 36-43)

What makes this story so interesting to me is the weed that this person sows into the wheat field in the middle of the night. The Bible names it: zizanium (in Greek). It’s scientific name is Lolium Temulentum. It is commonly known as darnel or cockle. In some places, this weed is called “false wheat” and here’s why: it grows right alongside wheat and looks nearly identical to it. But, when the seed in the zizanium, which is heavier than the seed in wheat, appears it makes the plant bow over. Worse yet, the seed of the zizanium is inedible, and can even be poisonous.

The farmer sows seeds that will grow into wheat that can be harvested to feed his family. He sows the seeds with the hope that they will grow and produce ripe grain. He sows only the best seed he has. Then, when he goes to sleep someone sneaks in and sows zizanium. This intruder is as passionate about ruining the harvest as the farmer is about growing good, healthy crops.
Think about it for just a moment. Do you garden? What do you love to grow? It would be like someone coming into your garden at night and planting something that looked just like it, but when it grew and blossomed, destroying everything around it!

If you’re not a gardener, then what are you passionate about? I have a friend who is passionate about his car. He works on it every chance he gets, he keeps it clean, waxed and polished. Sowing weeds among he wheat would be like someone coming in the middle of the night and putting sugar in his gas tank.

Are you passionate about the appearance of your home? The story that Jesus tells could be about you, too. Picture this, you’ve just repainted your house, then someone comes in the middle of the night and eggs it!

The simplest explanation is that what this night-time planter does is mean, malicious, and intent on stopping the growth from happening.

What if it happened to you? You wake up in the morning to find zizanium growing in your wheat field. You leave the house, start the car and it’s dead because of the sugar in your gas tank. You’re coming in after picking up the morning paper and your house is covered in whites, yolks, and shells! How would you feel? What thoughts might coarse through your mind? What would you do about it? What if you knew who had done it? What would you like to say to that person? What might you like to do to him?

Jesus’ story is a story about God, his Father, who began creation in a garden and makes it his passion to help it to grow. How does God feel when someone comes into His garden and sows things that will ruin it? What does God do when this happens?

Amazingly, in the story that Jesus tells his followers, God does nothing! There’s no retribution. God doesn’t go storming over the malicious weed-planter’s house to confront him. God doesn’t begin dreaming up ways to repay the favor. Instead, God does nothing. After these poisonously destructive weeds begin to come up, growing right alongside the farmer’s precious grain, what does he say: “Let both of them grow together until the harvest…”

This doesn’t make sense to me. This is the same all-powerful God, who, the moment He said “Let there be light,” the sun burst into the brightest ball of flame the world will ever know. This is the same creator who watched his people flee slavery and reached down to part the sea in front of them so that they could escape. This is the God, by the way, who sent ten nasty plagues: frogs, locusts, darkness, a river of blood, to free those people. And now, Jesus tells a story where the character who is supposed to represent this same all-powerful God does nothing when someone sows nasty weeds into his garden? It doesn’t make sense. Not to me, and not, apparently to Jesus’ disciples. “Explain the parable of the weeds to us…” they ask. “Make this clear to us, because we’re just not getting it.”

Maybe the disciples are having a hard time, because up to this point they had thought that as followers of God’s Son, that it was their job to pull up all the nasty weeds in the world. Now they’re confused because Jesus seems to be saying: “leave them alone”. Maybe they’re wondering why God doesn’t do a better job of guarding the garden. Maybe they’re starting to wonder which kind of plant they are “Are we the weeds or the wheat? Please explain it to us!” Jesus’ story, rather than make something about God clear to them, seems to leave them more confused. Sometimes, we have these same kinds of confusions.

Jesus’ story, and his explanation to his followers, is a reminder to us all that God is always only concerned with growing. God loves the garden he has created, and wants nothing more than for everything in it to grow and grow. God lets the weeds grow, for now, because He’s never willing to do anything that might harm the things that He’s passionate about growing. If pulling up these nasty weeds, as offensive and poisonous as they may be, could in any way hurt the grain, then God is content to leave them until the wheat is safely harvested and stored in His barn.
The message for us seems to be: Grow! Let God worry about everything else, you just grow where you’re planted. Because, the reality is, God knows exactly what to do with the weeds and God will do whatever it takes to make sure that they never, ever harm the grain.

God is serious about the business of growing. There’s another story that takes place in a garden, and like the story that Jesus tells, it happens at night. After he and his disciples have eaten at the table, after he told them about the bread and the wine and how from now on they would be his body and blood, and how they needed to remember everything they had done at that table…After all of that, Jesus and his followers went to a garden called Gethsemane, and there, in the middle of the night people came for him. They came with charges of everything from blasphemy to treason, they came, ultimately to take him to the cross. His disciples offered to intervene, they tried to stop it, they jumped at the chance to keep Jesus right there in the garden. But, do you know what Jesus did? When people came to take him, and his life, in the end, that night in the garden, he did NOTHING. He didn’t protest. He didn’t fight. He didn’t run. He went with them. To the courts, and then to the cross.

Jesus is just like his father. Rather than lose a single follower. Rather than lose a single grain of wheat, He goes instead. Jesus won’t let anything uproot a single person from being rooted firmly in God’s loving garden…even if it means his own life, he’ll give it.

The story that Jesus tells ends in the fall. It ends when the whole field is harvested. Only then, does God worry about the weeds, and even then, his top priority is getting the wheat into the barn.

How much of your time in life is spent worrying about the weeds? Weeds that pop up out of nowhere. Weeds that ruin your garden. Weeds that poison your life? God’s strategy, when it comes to weeds, is don’t worry about them at all. Just keep growing. If you're having trouble with weeds, and they're getting in the way of your growth, then go back and re-read the story about the weeds and the wheat. In it, God promises that if we focus on growing, in faith, in grace, in our awareness of the people God has planted in this world with us…then He’ll worry about the weeds, and we won't have to!

When was the last time you visited a major city? While you were there, did you ever take public transportation? The T in Boston? The Subway in New York? The Metro in Washington D.C? If not, did you walk along the city streets? Think back to those times. Was there ever music playing as you waited for your train? As you walked down the street, was there music on one of the corners? Where did it come from? Who was playing it? What did you do when you heard it? Can you remember what instrument that person was playing? What piece of music did they perform? How long did you stay and listen? How much money did you throw into their instrument case?

The Washington Post recently explored all these questions with a little experiment. This past January 12, they invited a man to stand in L’Enfant Plaza in Washington D.C. and play his violin. Dressed in a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans, he stood and played for 43 minutes, while the folks from the Washington Post surreptitiously videotaped the whole scene. (Read the entire article and watch a video at: “Pearls before Breakfast” http://www.washingtonpost.com/)

During that time 1,097 people passed by him. How many people do you think stopped to listen? A total of seven people stopped, each one listening to his music an average of only one minute. How many do you think threw money into the open violin case at his feet? That number was higher. Twenty-seven people dropped something into the case, most of them not even breaking stride as they did it. At the end of the performance, the violinist had a little more than $32 to take home with him. As he played his violin, a crowd never formed, there wasn’t any applause, and more than 1,000 people passed by, seemingly oblivious that there was anything happening at all.

You’re probably thinking: “Isn’t this what happens when most street performers set up shop in train stations, street corners, and public squares?” You would be right, except the difference this time was that the man playing the violin wasn’t an average street performer. The man that the Washington Post invited to stand in the plaza and play was a man named Joshua Bell, considered by many to be one of the best classical performers in the entire world. The violin that he played wasn’t just any violin, either. It was a Stradivarius that was made in 1713 that still had its original coat of varnish. Its estimated value is around $3.5 million. Three days before he played his 43 minute concert in D.C. he had filled Boston’s own Symphony hall to capacity. If you wanted to hear him play there, you would have had to pay $100 for an average seat.

So, when one of the world’s greatest musicians stands in a public place and plays some of the greatest music ever composed for free on a 3 million dollar violin, what happens? The answer is, apparently, nothing. He didn’t draw a crowd, not even for a second. He didn’t receive an ovation of any kind. At the end of the day, his work had earned him the price of dinner for two at an average restaurant.

What did Josh Bell have to say about it?
"At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change."

This little experiment happened this past January. Jesus described the very same thing 2,000 years ago.

He compares the people of his time to children, sitting in the marketplace, calling out: “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance.” (Matthew 11:17) I think what he’s pointing out is our capacity to miss some of the greatest things that life has to offer because we’re focused on other things.

Has it ever happened to you? When was the last time you felt rushed, like you didn’t have enough time to get everything on your “to-do” list done? When was the last time you missed something that someone was telling you because while they were speaking your thoughts were on other things? When was the last time you walked right past something beautiful and breath-taking and didn’t even know that it was there?

Jesus understands. He knows that our lives are often overloaded. He knows that our shoulders are often weighed down with heavy things: responsibilities, schedules, deadlines, worries. He doesn’t need to videotape our lives to notice any of it. He watches us as we hurry here and there, as we pile more and more into our life, and as we exhaust ourselves. If you’ve ever felt this way, you don’t even have to tell him, he already knows.

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest…Keep company with me an you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28 The Message)

Jesus invites us to stop hurrying, stop carrying so much extra baggage on our shoulders, and stop exhausting ourselves so that we might notice and enjoy this beautiful life that God has given us to live.

With Jesus, though, this is more than an invitation. It’s a way of life. In fact, it is his only way of life. In John 10:10, he tells us “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” The “they” he’s referring to are people like you and I. This is why he came, so that people like you and I wouldn’t have to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. So that we wouldn’t be depleted of all our life and energy by working ourselves to exhaustion. He came so that we might begin to live the kind of life that God intended for us. A life that is awake and alert to the world around us, and ready to take it all in

Jesus made this possible by taking the weight of the world off of your shoulders and putting it on his own. He made an abundant life a reality for you by exhausting and depleting every bit of life that he had in him. By giving up the life God intended for him on the cross, he made it possible for you to live a real life of your own.

When you let go of the heavy burdens, the hurried pace, and the drive to work yourself to exhaustion, God does what he did for Jesus, he gives you a real life. After the cross, God opened up a new life for Jesus to live, and it was a life that was stronger than death. God does the same for us. God gives us the opportunity to live a life that is stronger than all those heavy burdens and exhausting things that have made you miss the real life that is all around you for so long.

There were two moments during Josh Bell’s performance when people did notice. The first was a man who worked for the Department of Energy who stopped to listen for a full three minutes. Afterwards, when asked to describe why he stopped, here’s what he said about what he heard: "Whatever it was, it made me feel at peace." He felt something, so he stopped to listen.

The other moment came when a mother hurriedly led her three year-old son through the plaza. She was too hurried to stop and notice or savor the music, but her son was intrigued. He twisted and turned while his mother grasped his hand, trying to see Bell as he played. Even when his mother stepped between he and the musician, he craned his neck and strained to stay and listen. When she was asked to describe what had happened, she said: "There was a musician,and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time." When she was told who had been playing, and what she had missed out on, all she could say was her son must be “very smart!”

Jesus thanks God that when it comes to his plan for the world that it has been “hidden” from the “wise and intelligent” and “revealed to infants.” (Matthew 11:25)

What would happen if we recovered some of the child-like faith that Jesus speaks about? What might happen if we made it a priority to stop and listen to the music of life and dance to it when it is played? What might change in our life if we stopped rushing, carrying, and doing so much and instead let God handle it while we savored some of the abundance he’s given us? What might happen if you and I trusted Jesus with our burdens and noticed the people around us a little more? Maybe people like Josh Bell would get an ovation in the plaza, and the little boy who was mesmerized by the music might not have to strain so hard to hear. Maybe, just maybe, we might even feel at peace more often.