The Value of the Opposing View

“Iron sharpens iron,

and one person sharpens the wits of another.”

~Proverbs 27:17 (NRSV).

Whenever we take an opposing view in life one of two things generally happens—one good, the other not as good.

We’ll either reflect over our responding view—and hence the source viewpoint—and meditate on their comparative veracity, sometimes for hours or even days afterward, or we’ll think more and more how ‘right’ our view is compared to how ‘wrong’ the source view is. Sometimes this latter view might actually be right but it doesn’t do us any good to pump up our own tyres.

The Frustrating Beauty of Communication

The beauty—and at the same time, the travesty—of communication, and particularly that of the written word, is so much of the semantics can be lost in transmission, translation, transliteration and receipt. The beauty is mystery.

Also, the premise, context, focus, meaning and conclusion of the matters at hand simply add their own awkward dimensions to the complicated network of thinking (and feeling) variables that we do battle with—and with words!

If the law is an ass, so then is the issue of language and communication at times; God, in this, reveals our necessary folly post haste, though we will often want to chastise the other person in our frustration.

The message is somehow changed as the words are let fly or typed on a page.

I often find this with my own writing. People naturally read it with their own frame of thinking and feeling at mind and heart. Sometimes they hit on ‘what’ I was saying—remembering context, which is always incredibly important—and sometimes they don’t.

And still there is benefit. This is another mystery.

Pastors preach sermons and wonder why there were various different conclusions reached by their parishioners. Sure, part of this is the work of the Holy Spirit, but just as pertinently, we all have our own filters, our own needs and also our own fears—which we seek to placate. Again, in that, the ministry of the Holy Spirit at times.

The Benefit of Debate

Personally I’m not a big subscriber to debate—and not because I don’t believe in it, because I do. I just don’t have either the knack or the passion for protracted ‘tennis game’ debates which often go nowhere functional.

Debates reveal me as impatient; my focus tending forward.

And having said this, I am a subscriber of personal debate—of mulling the issues over in my own mind and heart.

If we don’t attempt to conform our thinking to what else is out there we quickly become islands of solitude that can’t be reached.

Our God has given us the ability and the propensity to ruminate over things that are important to us. To have the debate, and to do so respectfully and for edification, whether personally or interpersonally, is a great thing.

It is also a great thing to always bear in mind the multiplicity of communication—what we understand personally is not the whole box and dice.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Austere Perseverance - Jewel of the Character

“Austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.”

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

As you sow, shall you also reap. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:6 and also in Galatians 6:7-8 that we invariably get back what we put in. It’s a principle enshrined in life; alternatively it is God’s wisdom as woven into the laws of relational cause and effect... generally so.

Just what is ‘Austere Perseverance?’

This is a compound word phrase underscoring the meaning—a character trait—of the truly ‘applied’ life bound for true, unfazed resilience.

People who apply themselves to the living of their lives—tapping this silent power—according to such a creed as quoted above—will know success, eventually.

Being austere in our perseverance, by my simple understanding, is a situational thing; always kept in store for when it’s most required. It’s when our biggest fears, tests and doubts hit that we need to draw on our most rigorous sense of bearing, guiding us through the trepidation.

Taken further into the inner sanctum, then, of this jewel-like quality, we find it’s serenely poised and forthright in its approach to life. It doesn’t hold onto everything it owns with all abandon, yet it won’t let go of the important things; it stands firm for these.

It goes beyond common perseverance, which flails by the way, often in the direst tumult. Austere perseverance never gives up, and cheerfully and simply goes on to the next revelation—whatever that might be. It is hence full of a good, useable faith—with hope and patience in reserve.

Developing this Character Trait

What we focus upon we inevitably—finally—get.

God is good to us in that he gives us many opportunities to practice our perseverance. This is why James said, “Consider it pure joy... when you face trials of many different kinds” (James 1:2-4).

The reason we have our trials—if not by virtue of our ‘equal’ role, our part, in creation—is to conform our responses to the austere perseverance that God knows we’re capable of.

And we are... all capable. We can develop the cognitive, emotional, spiritual and moral strength to persevere well beyond where we often think our limits are.

Whenever we consider momentum and success in one sentence, perseverance is the glue that sticks the two together; it practically creates both. The former is the short term outcome of perseverance. The latter is the long term outcome of perseverance.

The simple thing is anyone can persevere. We just don’t give up.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Visions of Importance – Part 3

A vision: I lie there in a bed. I’m in a hospital. I can tell by the cadent mood set on the faces of my family and close friends around me that the news for me isn’t good. I have cancer. It looks terminal. I feel the pain, and not simply the physical pain of my ailing body, but the altogether hideous and vagrant pain highlighted by the rancid spectrum of poignantly sorrowful emotion. This is real.

This, of course, is not true. Not yet, anyway.

A Simple Vision

This vision came to me whilst I just sat with my wife in church waiting for the band to play one recent Sunday. It was over in the flash of a blinking eye. Then simply my imagination went to work.

I don’t think I’m particularly gifted by these visions as I think God puts these before all of us, and for a reason—if we want them.

My attribution for the above vision was that it was a preparatory vision—simply building in me, at least, the strength to deal with such a harrowing concept should it happen. In reality it could happen anytime. It is, after all, the reality for a million-and-more people right now, and that doesn’t even factor in those sweetly in their remission to this disease; just one form of a myriad of despicable slurs on creation.

Visions of Life Importance – the Series

I wrote Part 1 and Part 2 to describe what I feel are the sorts of visions that Christians should most definitely sow into and pray for. Both proclaim the keys as to the warnings of life and how they might be appropriately heeded, and the opportunities that are there for any of us to grab.

This is what life is about.

It’s about being prepared in the appropriate measures of godly wisdom—these to receive. It’s also about being aware, awake and alive so as to peel away those things that God has for all of us—these to take.

Going Further ‘Into’ the Vision Above

Why would I be afraid of such a horrible vision? It was actually quite beautiful, simply because God cared enough to make me aware of the possibility of my imminent potential decline and death.

It is impetus also to love my family even more, having only recently lost someone close enough to family to know afresh the chilling and lasting sting of death upon those left behind.

Living on the other side of this sort of vision ensures that I’ll not live flippantly.

Seeing ourselves in our deaths is not a bad or morbid thing at all—it is simply our inevitable destiny. Visions of death, in this way, can give our lives just so much more meaning.

Besides all this, visions as portrayed here, are life-giving gifts beckoning each of us to God and to his ways.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Celebrating Every Little and Last Step

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

~T. S. Eliot.

Life is short. We know it in theory but we rarely take the time to rediscover this fact. Every second that ticks by writes something indelible about us in the realm of the eternal—our true destiny. Soon, very soon, we’ll find out. But not just now!

There is nothing we can do about time but travel wilfully upon its buffeting journey.

What we can do, however, is not be held back in our going on in—toward the higher goal; that one that remains just ahead; the one for which we’re called.

The Message paraphrase tells of Paul’s inspiration in this very same way, but with a rider—Jesus:

“I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.”

~Philippians 3:14.

If we’re to combine the sentiments proposed by both Paul and T.S. Eliot we can easily perceive a challenge of monumental proportions—depending on ‘where’ we’re at right now.

Yet, we can control only what we can control. But this is enough, for we act in this life.

This is to be our attitude over the things we’ve just accomplished and those directly ahead:

We celebrate, truly, every little and last step on the way to our goals, never taking for granted the faith-held journey and our part in it.

Never.

We take the time—in the moment—to cherish within us every little piece of encouraging feedback, every achievement, and especially—with a magnificent irony—every harrowing discouragement as a badge of honour worn, pressing us on, like a springboard, beyond it!

Looking just seconds back on our response-of-resilience, then, we indeed celebrate—for nothing can hold us against achieving the goal we’re called higher for.

Nothing.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

The ‘Game’ of Life – Honouring Humour and Patience

I’m a serious enough sort of guy. It’s happened to me frequently in life that my peers have seen this and surely thought, “Lighten up a little, Steve,” and then custom-designed a little prank—all for my ‘benefit’ I might add—which I’ve not always enjoyed.

I frequently have times where I have to remind myself, “Get over yourself!”

I accept that a certain seriousness—especially if I’m under task pressure—is part of my make-up. You might in some ways relate. But we’re best never to leave it there.

The Abject Importance of Humour

Situationally-appropriate humour, at any number of levels, is the key to breaking the silly grades of tension whereby we’re stuck in the rut of a seriously tunnel-visioned world without a clue of, or a care for, externalities.

Humour shatters this false world immediately and allows the release of malignant desire—which will prove the ending of us if we take it much further.

Humour Promotes and Introduces Patience

Once we’ve had our chuckle—and most humbly with, and over, ourselves—we then have the opportunity for reason. The mood of reason breaks through our psyches and we can immediately be counselled by the Spirit of God to invest wisely in patience.

Of course, this happens often times at many levels below our conscious thought mostly; it only seems the humour alone has done it.

Patience is a very practical quality. We can almost observe patience; it becomes not so much a behaviour, but we look patient and at ease when we’re ‘adjusted’ to our life situations.

Resisting Pride

The frustration highlighted by blocked goals reveals at a deeper heart level the sins of pride and anger, although it’s pride we’ll focus on here.

Pride says, “I want things my way, on and in my time, on my terms, and heaven help anyone or anything that gets in my way.” Pride has ‘me’ pinned all over it. Do we see here the link between our overt and extraneous seriousness and this?

Both humour—our initiating it and responding to it—and patience help us resist or fall for pride.

Constantly Re-Setting our Expectations

This is one of the most important considerations of life—to conform our expectations (that which we have of ourselves and others) to the perceivable reality.

Humour and patience facilitate this. They create space for us to review the expectations we have. They also give us the space for courage to enter so we can morph our expectations so our goals are more pliable, and hence they’re made more achievable.

The true ‘game’ of life is hitting the mark. This is one for which we cannot achieve without the foregoing. Life with appropriately-girding humour and patience is darting for the bullseye!

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Impending Disaster, Burgeoning Triumph!

So many times God has brought me around to this chilling truth:

If I leap over the impending disaster, the burgeoning triumph is right there in the making.

At our lowest situational or relational ebb—chided we are in our disappointment with it all—we stand merely minutes away from the brimming inspiration of recovery, if we’ll only continue going on stridently and cheerfully in our spirits.

‘Going On’

It appears, for me at least, this is a current refrain—that of ‘going on’—and it’s one I don’t apologise for; this powerfully-soaked truth stands on its own brave and capable legs.

The heavenly position for us all is the resilience, where our capacity for compromise—related specifically to our hope—is rendered null.

More positively put, we go on and on and on, as we restore this truth to our souls—having surely known it once, if only as an echo reverberating through our eternal psyche—the ‘God factor’ of reminiscence; one we’ve perhaps never quite known or perhaps forgotten.

Even More Basically Put...

This is such an important message for every human being to take hold of we’re loath to understate it in our own minds as we consider it.

As we’re trilling in our anxious moments—never knowing where ‘this terrible thing’ is taking us—we remind ourselves that we are safe.

Forcing, as a nature—but never in terms of our relationships with others—is the way through all our tumults. Forcing the will to surrender—an incredibly paradoxical suggestion—is central. We take hold of two dichotomous truths simultaneously, holding a beautiful tension:

1) That we can go on over this; and,

2) That we can accept anything, come what may.

Both require strength for the moment: the first pure pluck; the second a swarming faith.

Fear enrols us in self-deceit—we doubt our positive beliefs and we’re confounded and stunned.

Two Eternally Grand Activities

Two great activities of the heart and mind are needed:

1) Awareness that fear is sweeping over us—that it’s a scam; and,

2) Action upon receipt of the awareness—one of deliberate and intentional courage—to change the internal ‘circumstances’ hemming us in. This has nothing whatsoever to do with what is actually happening external to us—that which we have little or no control over.

Never Forget

We’re bought by God. We have strength in reserve shaped to our taste if we’ll only collect it from store.

What we will do if we’re so inclined is take now (and whenever we need) that which is always ours—and always has been.

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

~John 16:33b (NIV).

This is a remarkable ‘overcoming’ truth to the saving of our momentary souls.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Shattering the Fallacy of Overload

This is an amazingly powerful truth that the procrastinator in each of us can learn and derive much confidence from. The many ‘cares’ of overload present us almost always with unfounded fear as we dig deeper.

So, if you’re currently in a chaotic flurry, stop!

If you can conceive of it, stop what you’re doing and take a few courageous deep breaths. The problems won’t get any larger while you do this.

Consider this...

Two dichotomous but nonetheless equally salient truths: 1) stopping—as used as a platform for a better approach—can be powerful; and, 2) starting is just as powerful and it can be done any time we please.

A Fact to be Cognisant of

Despite the fact that there are times when we do become overly burdened with many cares, it is not often that average individuals are continually pressured. So, the key issue is in getting over these extraneous ‘humps’ in the flow of work/home life.

Just being mindful of this reality can help us challenge our schedules if life is passing us by in its fury.

A most powerful principle follows...

Just Start and Move Quickly

Breaking past procrastination or a huge workload is about as simple as just starting.

Just starting something, wilfully and positively, is truly a wonderful theme shattering the myths inherent in many attitudinal barriers of fear.

Moving quickly does not mean moving in a hurry; it’s simply moving as diligently across the ground of our tasks as sensibly possible. This is a game of efficiency, not panic.

It’s easy to renew our approach to life’s work right now by just beginning from wherever we are.

Take Micro-Pauses to Derive Confidence

Micro-pauses in this context happen in the flow of the moment.

We don’t even need to stop; we just choose a routine moment to place the mind on auto-pilot, so we can enjoy the reflection—the work just done—as impetus and motivation onto the next plane of the tasks at hand.

This is intelligent use of time in the context of the resources of energy available to us. This truly is rooted in multitasking—yes, a skill even men can acquire and practice!

‘Burst’ Tactics

The sporting term ‘burst player’ is not used that much these days, but we can sustain an enormous amount of momentum for an hour or two—or even one full day, if necessary.

It’s actually quite easy to manage a full-day’s work in two or three hours if we’ve harnessed the tenacity of focus required.

When we routinely apply this method, we can gain for ourselves much valuable downtime, or use the extra time we get to give us options and possibilities i.e. freedom. This creates empowerment and contentment.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

The Abundant Life - a Matter of Purpose

The mystery that is life often has us wondering personally—when we achieve happiness—and happiness is important to us all (Christian or not)—“Why am I here?” and “How did I arrive here?” and “What can I possibly do to become and stay content?”

I have come to find through experience that contentment in life is so effuse with our purpose, i.e. our found purpose—what we do and how we do it—for we all have one.

Indeed, it is even possible (or better put, probable) that our purpose could be multi-faceted (compartmentalised) to several and even many purposes. But, there will always be a centralising theme resonant, underpinning it all—how we operate and what defines ‘us.’

We venture through life aimlessly when we’re without purpose; as if we’re stuck inside someone else’s home and not our own. This is not a nice feeling. We want to escape and this is no good at all if it’s our own lives we’re talking about.

This contributes to the lack of peace, and hence discontentment—and felt unhappiness, from tangible boredom to anxious fear, which we’ll experience. We’ve all been there and, in fact, we’re there in an instant at times—even on a purpose-driven path (to remind us of less palatable options awaiting us should we lose purpose).

Personal Identity

People will say about Christianity, “(Without qualification) my identity’s in Christ.” I’m not sure I entirely buy that. I think Jesus always purposed for us to contextualise our felt identity, in him, via the way we interact with ourselves, other people and the world in general.

Of course, we know and should accept the theory that our identities are solidly based in God—without cause for what we do, per se.

But, we miss the point if we leave it there.

Our identity must be formed through self reflective effort on our own parts. Only through conducting such a practice—and ever so continually—can we attain a model of identity, and a faith, that stands up to the storms of life (and all else) as we’re personally concerned.

We’re forever held back and are somewhat disengaged to the true Spirit of God—the fuller experience—until we find that/those specific purpose(s) of our lives.

What If I’ve Searched and Searched and Still Have Not Found?

We mustn’t fret. God honours our efforts toward the acquisition of our purpose—for the most basic of intent is simply to serve and anyone can do that.

Our purpose is finding a personally-meaningful way of serving.

There is possibly an issue here, also, in terms of indecision—holding out for something ‘better.’ We all do it to some extent. And we’re not going to be ‘guns’ at everything.

There are many things we enjoy doing. Our purpose is simply about sowing more fully into these things to see where they take us; to see, for instance, if our enjoyment of a certain thing will morph into a talent and therefore something of value for use in God’s kingdom.

If we’ve searched and searched and searched and we still haven’t found what we’re looking for, we’re even more loath to give up searching, for real spiritual success—as far as purpose is concerned—is still on the horizon.

This is a very good thing. The best is, indeed, yet to come. Always is.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Remembering Back, Forgetting the Future

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”

~Winston Churchill.

Well, we know the theory. Of course, it’s said, don’t worry about tomorrow, each day’s its own worries (Matthew 6:34)—but I often wonder how practically we ‘install’ such truth into our daily lives.

This is where the worn cliché either transforms us or ever eludes us—just why do some get it right, not worrying for their futures any more than living for the moment?

This is as compelling as it can be tormenting.

There is no delicate way of saying it and, of course, there’s no way of over-complicating such noble-an-art as this.

We can only ever practice life, with power armed at the ready, one gentle but sure step at a time.

The future will always be there—in our peripheral vision; it need not become, ever, the prime focus.

Remembering Back as We Forget the Future

John Wesley said famously,

“Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry, because I never undertake more work than I can go through with calmness of spirit.”

There is a tangible closeness of concepts here.

Railway wagons being shunted along a long rake are notoriously quiet. Unless we have our ear to the tracks we’ll often not know. Many people have been unsuspectingly killed as a result.

Yet, we can imagine here an approach to life that is productively calm and quiet—serenely quiet. It harries not, simply because the fuss is not worth it.

This approach is about cramming more into the present second by relinquishing any encroaching notion of the near past or soon-to-be-coming future.

Wesley is telling us that he attained and maintained “calmness of spirit,” even though he managed to achieve much more than we can do justice to by presenting it here.

We redouble our living moments when we get past our futures, only seeing them in the fleetingly reflective hindsight, which all of us should engage in. This way we’re actively forgetting the future and only see it from the aspect of the meaningful past.

Getting back to our railway example, shunted trains are difficult to stop—once we have the rolling stock moving, the momentum carries it slowly forward. We’re to be the same. Our fervency of focus is presently on the acute hour—and incrementally each ten-minute slot, and then each minute, to the second.

It’s the only rational way to treat time and life.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.