"Coming to Jesus with our small potatoes."
In a wonderful book on spiritual and emotional growth called The Road Less Travelled, Scott Peck, a Christian psychiatrist, writes this about life:
"Our view of reality is like a map with which we negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate we generally know where we are, where we are going, and how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, then we are generally lost (and don't know where to go next)."
Growth in life, whether spiritual or emotional, is generally about the process of making revisions to our current world views, or as Peck calls them, our life maps. The basic point of Peck's thesis is that it takes a lot of courage and it is risky to make changes in our way of life; and as a result, to grow spiritually and emotionally is the road less travelled.
Making changes to our world view is hard and painful, so most of the time we try to defend our outmoded life maps, rather than entering onto the road of growth. Our resident attitudes have a lot of inertia and to change our ways or revise our maps requires work and suffering and truthful acknowledgement of who we are and what we are, or are not, doing.
I believe that Jairus, the man in our Gospel lesson today, is a prime example of a person who has travelled this road of spiritual growth. As a ruler of the synagogue, a leader amongst the Jews, I think it took a lot of courage for Jairus to change his old ways and come to this Jesus who was considered a renegade rabbi, to fall at His feet right there in the middle of the street and pray for healing for his twelve-year-old daughter.
As I thought about what Jairus had to do, and indeed about my own life changes, I began to wonder about what holds us back. Why is it so hard to change our spiritual life maps, let go of our set ways and come to this waiting Jesus with our problems and pains, our hopes and joys?
So out of all this thinking about Jairus and myself, I came up with four roadblocks which I believe delay us, or divert us, from the road less travelled, or to put it in Gospel language--which hold us back from coming to God.
1) We wait too long before coming to God in the first place because we don't feel sufficiently prepared. As a longtime engineer and mathematician, I am aware of how much preparation I like to have before I feel ready to commit or change or make a decision or anything, including coming to God. And I think many of us are like that.
Paul Tournier, a Swiss psychiatrist and writer, says:
There are people who go on indefinitely preparing for life instead of living it. They never feel they are sufficiently well prepared, or strong enough. They go on studying for one thing after another, adding diploma to diploma, taking endless precautions. They fondly imagine that in this way they are improving their chances of success, but in reality all their effort is merely a compensation for the lack of self-confidence and confidence in God. The only result of so much preparation is that self-doubt increases and your chance of success is less than ever. We often see this in patients' dreams: It is time to leave on a journey, and the dreamer wastes precious time looking for some superfluous item; he packs so much into his suitcases that they will not close; he runs all the way to the station, but his luggage is so heavy and cumbersome that he is late; there he gets stuck with his luggage as he tries to pass through the turnstile, and the train moves out before his eyes.
We worry, we procrastinate, we prepare, but we don't act.
2) Along with not feeling prepared, we often feel that we are not yet good enough. In reflecting on her own life, Helen Wodehouse, a twentieth-century English educator, says:
"We think we must climb to a certain height of goodness before we can come before God. But He does not say, at the end of the way you may find Me. He says, I am the way, I am the road under your feet, just as low down as you happen to be. If you are in a hole, the way begins in that hole."
Jesus came to save sinners--not the well. The moment we come out of the shelters where we wait and set our face to God as Jairus did, we are with God and will experience His healing.
3) The obstacle on the road less travelled is that we don't come to Jesus often enough. Spiritual growth is a lifetime and indeed an ongoing process and coming to Jesus is like coming to a deep well of water for refreshment.
Jack Sanford tells the story of an old well his family used during their summer vacations in rural New Hampshire. The water was cold and pure and refreshing, and it never dried up, even in the worst summer droughts. After a few years passed, the family decided to modernize their vacation house. Kerosene lamps were replaced with electricity and the old well replaced with indoor plumbing and running water. The well was covered in order to have a reserve should the occasion ever arise.
More years passed by, and one day Sanford became nostalgic for the old well and its water. He uncovered it to look inside and taste again. He was shocked to find the well bone-dry.
He made inquiries to discover what had happened. He learned that kind of well was fed by hundreds of tiny underground rivulets. When water is drawn from such a well, more water flows into it through the rivulets, keeping them open and clean. Otherwise, they clog up and close.
The soul is much like that well. It dries up inside if the living water of God does not flow in. What makes it dry up is not the absence of God's Spirit, but disuse of the well.
We cannot cover our wells and wait until we really need a drink. We must go often and regularly to the well for nourishment as we travel the road of spiritual development.
4) The fourth and final roadblock is that we too often come to Jesus with just our small potatoes.
Many years ago, some farmers theorized that they could eat their big potatoes and keep the small potatoes for seed. Consequently, they ate the big potatoes and planted the small potatoes. As a result of this practice for many years, these farmers made this startling discovery: nature had reduced all their potatoes to the size of marbles.
A new understanding of the law of life came to them. They learned through bitter experience that they could not keep the best of life for themselves and use the leftovers for seed. The law of life decreed that the harvest would reflect the planting.
Planting small potatoes is a common practice that holds us back from spiritual development. We tend to bring only small bits and pieces of ourselves to God. But unless we learn to take the whole of our lives to Him--big and small issues, pains and joys, fears and dreams--it will be very hard for us to communicate with God when our need is great. Like the farmers, we cannot hold back the best and deepest parts of our lives and later expect to reap a bountiful harvest. God wants all of you when you come to Him, not just the bits and pieces of your lives.
So if you, like Jairus, would like to revise your spiritual life map and come to Jesus, fall at His feet and ask for God's healing and hope, for yourself or a loved one, consider what roadblocks are in your way.
If you are still waiting, getting better prepared, or trying to be good enough, let go and come to Him now. God calls us in our inadequacies--so you are sufficiently prepared and good enough now.
If your well is dry or you are not coming to the well regularly for the living water of spiritual nourishment--uncover it, prime it, and develop a regular and disciplined spiritual life today. The more you drink the more will flow. If you are holding back any part of yourself, some crucial decision or your deepest heartfelt need, bring it all to God now. What you sow you reap!
Take the opportunity today to look at your life maps and join Jairus on The Road Less Travelled.
Amen.
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[The drug-addicted young man named Charlie, whom Brad met at a Credo Workshop in 1971, found what it means to "let go and come to Him now." In Charlie's words: "It was a hard struggle to break free from drugs. Only someone who has been addicted to something as powerful as drugs can really understand the struggles I went through. But no matter how many times I messed up, how many times I disappointed myself and those who cared for me, the love was always there. In retrospect, I guess many of the times that I went back to using drugs was so that I could prove to others that I was a hopeless case. I wanted them to abandon me, to give me up because I had given up on myself. But they just would not leave me alone. They would not allow me to feel sorry for myself, nor would they let me push them away from me. In April of 1973, on a beach in Southern California, surrounded by the people of Credo, I was baptized in the Pacific Ocean. I became an active Christian."]
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