En-JOY Your Life – By Means, Spiritually

THE SPIRIT WORKING BEHIND THE SCENES knits thought together in seemingly harmless ways but always according to the purposes of God. Nothing in this way is ever an accident. [This thought ignited by a dear friend.]

I love playing with words like a kitten does with a ball of wool or a young leopard with a novice impala before it savours its first fresh kill.

When we “enjoy” things we’re in the process of being ‘in-joy’ for the ancient languages that feed into our English held “en” as equivalent to our “in.”

So, what is the relevance?

Life is to be en-joyed. We’re purposed for a life that is, in a sense, a total joy—a state of in-joy-ment—or a movement toward that state.

And this, at its final resting place, speaks of hope. It’s the hope of coming joy that keeps us smiling through the madness, the fury, the sadness’s, the tears. Hope remains for joy, for peace at last.

To be in-joy and to “enjoy” are one and the same thing. Whilst we enjoy something we’re in-joy and our whole life purpose is to achieve this state continually.

The only way we can do this is to become spiritually one with God. He is the only one who can give us the power of continual spiritual in-joy-ment, not that this is “happiness” as we usually associate it as. But it is an appreciation for life and all it holds for us. It’s a long-term view if you like.

It’s an “accepting” state that runs with the flow of life.

Joy is not really happiness. Joy is an inside job. To en-joy, truly “in” ourselves, is to feel within the safety of knowing God and his Presence with us. It’s a sense of peace in that.

Joy is available in pain. Joy acknowledges the pain is real, that it’s horrible just now, but it waits patiently in hope, for a better time is coming. We never enjoy pain but we can remain in-joy for a future time and a future state that is coming. We can also remain in-joy for what the pain is achieving in us, if we’ll let it—that funnel to maturity. The hope for these things is enough to keep a smiling light burning better-than-dimly within.

This is when we know we truly know God—when we can feel this kind of joy at the depths. It’s the safest place to be. It’s the place where the Holy Spirit calls us home, residing as welcomed houseguest-unto-family-member.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Do You Feel: ‘Too Much’ – ‘Not Enough’

LIFE’S OFTEN A MISHMASH OF AWKWARDLY BALANCED DAYS. We start out, our equilibrium’s awry—either we feel too much or not enough... emotions scatty and hard to check or just simply numb to it all. Well, at least this describes the Myers-Briggs “feeler” of a sense.

But it occurs to us all. Either we have too much on or too little. We are too popular or lonely. Work is horrendously busy or it dries up.

When life is like this, and though it isn’t always, we’re tempted to think we’re islands—the only souls on the planet that feel this way. And the truth, of course, is we aren’t.

Everybody hurts for lack of “this,” or an overabundance of “that.”

And the last thing we should be feeling as a result of this unbalance is defeat. Let’s have the spiritual pluck to notice the nemesis hanging around us and flick it off. Find a mirror, smile into it, knowing that balance will soon return.

It always does.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

The Will for Power

“Our future and our fate lie in our wills more than in our hands, for our hands are but the instruments of our wills.”

~B. C. Forbes.

This is not about bad power. It’s about the power of the mind to create for us the destiny of our dreams.

We see here the hard worker is not simply good with his or her hands; it’s their virtuous mind and heart—both working together in unison—that punctuates their modus operandi.

They have power because they make it happen.

What gets people up at 4.30 A.M. to train or prepare, ensuring the success of that venture of theirs? They have willed something; they decided they wanted something deeply, so they commit and forget the cold, the dark, and the sleep (and warm bed) they might miss. If they’re properly diligent they’re getting to bed early enough because they recognise the importance of sleep for the health of the mind and heart.

The power of the will of the mind is an incredibly deep reservoir—a resource we can hardly tap; but hone it we may.

The inspiration to us is always the person who went fundamentally beyond the will of the normal human being, pushing the envelope into the heights of the ‘achieving stratosphere,’ continually buffeting the coarse, grainy pessimism natural to life against the typical apathetic flow.

Anyone can grow a mind that’s strong of will. Even better is to meld this with strong faith—together the will and faith combine to acquiesce to God, creating much power to the good, fighting and conquering all evil that might otherwise encroach.

Life, as they say, is no dress rehearsal. It is good to harness the incredible power and beauty of the mind, making it sing in tune with the vast opportunities life inevitably presents.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Destiny’s to the Hand of the Beholder

“Every person is their own ancestor, and every person their own heir. They devise their own future and they inherit their own pasts.”

~H. F. Hedge (adapted).

“To human beings belong the plans of the heart,

but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue.”

~Proverbs 16:1 (TNIV).

With the exception of God’s hand in things, we create our own pasts and futures. And as is all our experience I’m sure, when we’ve done it well, God saves much grace for those who’re diligent and prudent to make their own way in life. The wise, in tradition, are blessed of their way.

And yet, beyond the work of diligence and prudence there are the very facets of life that fly in the face of the most perfect of plans—just every now and then.

Still, this won’t be stopping the personification of discipline ordered to the top quote. They willingly take their place in history as it is borne, bearing as they do the weight fully, and with general aplomb.

What we carry through with in life truly does echo into the farthest reaches of our eternities. And this is the way we’d wish it, besides the common error, which is easily forgiven us.

The past is used in learning and as a catapult toward an aligned future—both are interminably connected to us through linear time though we’re so apt to forget the intrinsic nature of their connectedness.

We are the ones that hold a great portion of our own destinies in our own hands—like cupping water—notwithstanding the pummelling things that come in and knock us fairly from the courses we’d set for ourselves.

And though God—as it is acknowledged—does have the final Word, we remain able to respond to this Word and will graced over our lives as we accept most humbly; he is our master.

This occurs whether we like the fact or not.

But, still, destiny is so largely ours.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

You Are the ONE!

IN EVERY FIELD OF EXCELLENCE there have been some who’ve excelled despite overwhelming odds; the radio DJ and television journalist that ‘don’t have the voice for it,’ the ungainly athlete who wins gold, the mother who overcame disability to become a very special “Mum” to a dear one.

Life itself awaits the emergence of you; the only one who can become the “you” you were always meant to become.

Paraphrasing Rob Bell, ‘There is no good being a second-anyone-else; the world needs the first-yourself.’

Despite the odds against all who do eventually achieve personal greatness they strive forward in pure self-belief. This is the faith of the ‘called person.’ They know their destiny—it’s just the rest of the world that must catch up, that’s all. In the meantime, they just about their business, deliberately and intentionally.

And the world does eventually dip its lid to these—and you too, when you’ve obliterated within your own mind and heart the ignorant and arrogant perception of them who think that you can’t make it.

Where there is small risk there can only be small return.

Nothing ever achieved on the road to greatness was easily achieved, and provided we’re not totally deluded—and most of us aren’t—we can achieve so much on the road to our personal achievement.

One of the truly wonderful things is we have nothing to lose. If we fail, we’ve tried harder than most people thought we would, so we get plaudits from the most unexpected sources; people love a battler, no matter the eventual result. If we succeed, we become heroes and inspirations to everyone looking on.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Classically Raw, Unbridled Humility

TRY THIS FOR AN EXAMPLE AMONG MANY: a soon-to-be husband stands at the front of the church, the place is suddenly hushed and the music starts. Everyone’s eyes fleet from the groom to the entering bride’s maids. (Times like these—with so many things to see simultaneously—there are always insufficient eyes to see with.) As the young bride’s maids glide to the front, the bride and her father suddenly appear. As they saunter down the aisle, one look back confirms the very essence of humility in that young man at front.

I want to take you deeper into the vision of this young man.

He, though he is young, is held in such high regard by his peers. He’s popular, but for all the right reasons. He considers others and he gives others himself, not some inauthentic version of himself.

As he stands there, you detect the slightest quiver of the chin, a slight shifting of the face; he is awed by the occasion of the sight of this, his gorgeous bride—the vision of her and the momentousness of this time’s instant sweep reality away. For this few seconds he’s reached heaven, but not some numbly dreamy and blissful place of the mind, but the very state of awe one must feel in the mighty Presence of God.

This is the very spirit of humility because the young man sees all of the truth of significance and significance of truth in this one moment. He stands before God and humanity on this historic occasion and he sees it truly for what it is—an occasion where the only just response is awe. Nothing else would cut it.

And we don’t just need to be standing at our wedding day altar’s to experience the humility this young man experienced.

All our moments are awe-some. All of them are filled with God’s Presence.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

The Force to Subdue

A POLICE CAR SCREAMS PAST, LIGHTS AND SIRENS BLARRING IN ALL THEIR STUNNING GLORY and it apprehends a car further ahead with an impressive use of momentary force, skilled to preserve and protect.

When we’re on the receiving end of this force we cannot do anything but capitulate—yet, it’s only afterwards, when the officers have created a “rapport” with us, that we can see ‘this force’ was necessary for our safety and the safety of others.

The process of salvation is not dissimilar from this.

I know many who’ve been “apprehended” by God in their personal circumstances—coming to him at their depths. I know I did. He had to scoop me up from the floor.

He subdued me. Later I was to see that those personal circumstances were his wake-up call for me.

And yet, it was the sweetest mercy ever done for me. My life has only improved. I’ve become a freer, happier, more assured person. I’ve become myself, truly. His power is mine to use. And he uses me for good.

Short message – simple message. God is good every day. God is great eternally.

Be apprehended by God in your day today.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

VISION + DILIGENCE = SUCCESS

“A determined purpose of life, and steady adhesion to it through all disadvantages, are indispensable conditions of success.”

~William M. Punshon.

Almost nothing needs adding to this punchy phrase and formula.

When we set our mind and heart on things—good things; blessed things—and we stick to our guns, patiently, no matter the breaching waves over our bow, we can eventually succeed. Indeed, we almost certainly will.

The manifestation of our success is not always what we initially hope for and we, in fact, often surprise ourselves with how things turn out.

Still, it’s success—however we come to define it.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Life – Miraculous or Not?

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

~Albert Schweitzer.

This quote might just seem a little extremist but it isn’t really. It simply pays homage to two vastly different ways of sight—both of which are certainly real. But, only one way is the blessed way.

Many people with contend with the quote saying, ‘Surely there’s a continuum connecting both extremes.’

And I guess there is. Most people will see miracles some of the time or most of the time, yet Schweitzer is beckoning us to a better reality—the reality of choice—to be “saved” by the miracles or not. Is there an acceptable middle-ground? Can we sit on the fence?

Lukewarmness is not something any of us should really subscribe to.

Being lukewarm is a sure-fire way to being expelled from the best life has to offer. It is ambivalent to the mood required to go on in life—that to see all of life unfolding as a complete miracle of this reality that none of us can understand, proven by death. The fact that things die, and even we will, turns our no-big-deal perceptions upside down. God gets our attention somehow. Is it perhaps a gripping miracle—that of death—forcing the extraction of life before it all ends?

From the rising to the setting of the sun, a thunderstorm and its lightning and rain, to the birthing of a newborn baby, or even the turnaround in an attitude of a child to his or her own volition, we can see miracles everywhere.

Being alive and blessed with air inspired in our lungs... hearing and speaking... moving and travelling... long vision... music and art... light relief and the escape to fantasy... light from the sun to see and grow things... love...

All these things are miracles. Life is miraculous if we’ll only see.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Courage and (Don’t Forget) Wisdom

IT STRUCK ME AS IT OFTEN DOES—WELL AFTER THE FACT that whilst courage toward decisiveness is an indelible success factor, the wisdom to re-consider and balance such decisions is as vast a triumph as anyone could manage; the blend of both, salubrious and salient.

This reflection came on the back of some healthy interchanges around co-dependency and boundaries. When we interact with loved ones, especially when keeping them to account, we can’t afford to be precociously erring.

It appeared to me that the “rules” around relationships are rarely scripted quite that cutely that we can give “pat” advice; that we might—this way—be making something quite deleterious out of something requiring the utmost discretion.

I’ve often prayed for these both—courage and wisdom—in challenging seasons, and for two virtues alone, what could possibly run after them? They seem the perfect blend of a frontal assault and a rearguard, determined to be fit-for-purpose in any situation. Don’t all other virtues fall in behind these?

When it comes to decision-making we’re surely never always correct first time; part of us is necessarily staid and nonetheless certain our first decision was correct. But, it really is wisdom that carries the finality of success’s chances at those times when we’ve ignorantly or arrogantly chucked good sense long to the dogs, as occasionally happens.

Courage is a most necessary trait to have in life. But without wisdom chiming in from time to time to amend courage’s boldness, courage seems destined to fall flat on its face on occasion—and us with it!

Courage can’t, of itself, contend with the longer term goals of life success and achievement without wisdom.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

The Joy-Back Guarantee

FOR A PERSON IN A HELL-OF-A-PICKLE there surely is little to lose in giving faith a red hot go, especially if it’s never been tried before. This message mightn’t even be for you, today. Maybe tomorrow.

People at their rock bottoms invariably have the choice to continue to fight their way out of the most recent set of struggles or finally surrender, allowing a ‘Higher Power’ to take control; and it’s basically going to be a guaranteed better result. Most people at this point are just sick ‘n’ tired of fighting their battles, going against the flow. Resolve to fight, when ironically a fight beckons, is understandably at an all-time low.

Giving faith a try is something that can easily be done for, say, a three-month period—a joy-back guarantee, no questions asked—after which you’d be free to return to your old life.

But people generally find that the newfound way to joy is actually the right way and never go back to the way it was—that is, if they find truth there. And this is where truth and love are linked...

But faith (a form of “trusting”) is never really facilitated alone; we just don’t get there without support. Faith can never be acquired by ourselves, separate from others to guide us. I know programs like AA and NA are set up like this for this very reason; as is the Christian church. We need to see how fellow human beings genuinely care for one another. In this is modelled a better way of life. In these places, not only is support for faith found, but so to, love—perhaps the love you may never have experienced before. Love like this transforms people’s personal worlds.

The joy-back guarantee means you’re in ‘no-lose-situation,’ and you either keep the newfound source and sense of joy, ever growing in it, or you return to the “joy” of past, which oftentimes is seen for what is really is: literally, a hell-of-a-lifestyle, devoid of a Higher Power to trust in.

When we’re sick ‘n’ tired of being sick ‘n’ tired it won’t take that much to impress us and gently begin to lift us out of the mire. The love of concerned new fellows—those who have faith—will often be the catalyst of this newfound joy.

If you’re in a bad place currently, give this joy-back guarantee toward a journey to faith a genuine try. You’ve really got nothing to lose!

It might turn out to be the best decision you ever made.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Without Love, Nothing – With Love, a Start (and Everything Else)

WE STRUGGLE WITH THE SIMPLICITY OF LOVE ALL OUR LIVES. For love is surrender and love is a beginning, and none of us truly wants to give everything away continually. And yet, life—as a verb and not a noun—is abjectly missing without love.

Without love, no matter what we bring to the table, we’re nothing. We miss the point. We come prepared with our bargaining chips but clearly without the Powerball. Love is that powerball.

Being without love is like the Prosecution attending court with all the various witness statements, affidavits, items of evidence and statutory declarations—all neatly filed and in order, but without their primary identification to prove their role in bringing the case against the accused. The case falls flat before it even enters the courtroom. It’s a laughingstock.

And, still, this is the way we’ll often “arrive” in many situations in our lives; prepared logistically, but not emotionally or spiritually—the truth is not in tow and love is several towns away, thumbing a lift and striving to catch up.

This is not a hard luck story and it’s certainly not a criticism; it’s a challenge—we all need it because love doesn’t very often come naturally to us.

Love is a start—it’s the foundation and critical building block of all success. It has no pre-proposed desires and specific ideas, but it does want the very best for all. Love is intrinsically pure and entirely trustworthy; it is certainly full of peace and just about free of tension—besides the desire to integrate.

How many pious people activate their faith without love, and God’s discredited as a result? Faith without love is really not faith at all, but an impostor. Where there is love there is glory straight to God—the correct order of things as far as love and life is concerned. Love is the lynchpin of spiritual progress, for without it, only an awkward, confused and chaotic antipathy is possible.

And still, so many people get things right simply because they loved. Love is hence a miracle. It’s miraculous because people hardly expect to see it. When someone does something heroic it’s full of love because they’re seen to simply want the best, no matter the personal cost at the time.

Love is the beginning and the be-all-and-end-all of life—it is everything, for without it, there’s no purpose to anything. Love encapsulates people, problems, processes and precedence. Allowed to reign, it moulds things to their own creative and situational perfection. It is both the means to and the end of all things. Perfection that could not be known beforehand is attributed silently to love.

Love starts out faithfully and ends that way; it can afford to because it knows no fear. Why on earth would it fear? Love’s power exists on a totally other realm, heavens above the fear that constrains much of the world and reigns classically—albeit needlessly—over many of our hours.

Love hopes, for it sees nothing but perfection—but this perfection is totally open, optimistic and creative. It’s nothing like the closed “perfection” of legalism, which again, starts out without love and never returns for it—it foolishly ‘knows better.’

If we start today without love we start without the vital ingredient for life.

If we start today with love we have the means for everything else.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

BALANCE – PASSION and REASON

“Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.”

~Kahlil Gibran.

The critical and necessary balance of life can be summed up in the above quote; a blend of both reason and passion achieves for us the dynamic, pliable life—a narrow way not so personally confining or destructive. It’s an expansive yet safe life.

And it’s here that we find the introverted thinker and the extroverted feeler within each of us pitted against the self—for each of us has qualities and personality traits of both the introverted thinker and extroverted feeler. The reasonable person within us is situationally introverted and thinking; the passionate person within us is situationally extroverted and feeling. Both moods are required, at their time. The key to life is picking the right blend of reason and passion for the right time.

As we negotiate life between the poles of reason and passion we note our results and mature accordingly—this is the hope. Neither one can hold sway for too long. We’d be dogmatic, either way, if we did.

It has been long held in my own train of thought: what if we could achieve the perfect blend of introversion and thinking, and extroversion and feeling—perfectly attuned at holding reason and passion at arms length for selective use—and never abuse them? Using either or both according to the given situation must be about self-mastery.

For the person advancing on the frontier of maturity and a continuing place regarding God’s best for them, this is not an unworthy goal.

The balance of wisdom dictates a gentle blend of both reason and passion in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

RE-VISITING HELL

It occurs to the most and the least of us in the flash of light; back we are in that presence of sheer madness, a frenetic embodiment of pain and torment; evil apparent, and that, like deer in headlights, to no quick escape.

We re-visit the hells of our pasts—and even those unknown to us in our futures—and we know a life that just plain isn’t. It’s an anti-life. The living death has a way of making us appreciate life; that sense of existence without the merest worry.

Whether we re-visit our hells for a moment, a season, or a lifetime is little matter for us—it’s basically no place for any decent-minded human being to venture.

What is this place?

Any time we exist without hope and we live a deplorable personal or relational reality we extend ourselves into the hellish unknown—the dystopia of rampant doubt or anti-faith. Belief such as this turns in on itself; the life ensnared, gasping for air, a moment before spiritual death threatens to take place.

And for journeying far and wide past the limitless widths, heights, depths and breadths of grace known in Jesus of Nazareth (Ephesians 3:18) there is scant reward but a lifeless, shrill and numb subsistence aside the knowledge of the presence of God.

HELL = WITHOUT GOD.

Heaven knows only too well the suffuse power of the devil; his adeptness and ability to trap the wanton opponent who is for the most part completely unaware of his forebodingly nasty spiritual presence. The evil one hates us but he loves us having a taste of his abysmal, de-spiritualised hell.

For us, it is fitting that we see this reality and that we train ourselves in how we’re trapped; and this, so we’re trapped less and less until no more.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Don’t Throw Your Hand

EVERYBODY HURTS SOMETIMES. The R.E.M. song re-recorded by Helping Haiti rekindles the fabulous truth that every human being feels every now and then; a sense of loneliness, vulnerability and desperation, perhaps as a response to grief in life.

There are three life-periods we can ‘throw our hands,’ but the song, I believe, was only targeting one of these:

Momentary

We’re tempted to give up in our moments really quite frequently. Things overwhelm us relatively easily. Much of the time we don’t even know what has taken the wind from our sails. These times it’s probably due a combination of little annoying and frustrating factors.

Developing momentary resilience is about identifying all the annoying or challenging factors of our torpor and one by one, exercise reason over them. Chances are if we’re reasonable we’ll see each of these things individually for what they are; that is minor in the scheme of things.

If things really get too much, sure, it maybe time to just escape for the rest of that day, to recover.

Seasonal

The intenseness of this sort of period is over a month or two, or perhaps six or twelve at most—though the pain of such a period is generally life-transforming. We’re tempted to give up “seasonally” because something major breaks in. We lose a loved one or a familial relationship ends in some way. Something significant has ended and there’s naturally a period of adjustment to make. This is grief at its most poignant.

Yet the temptation to give up should eventually be overcome, though we will have days when we will simply give up. This is okay. In fact, it’s necessary occasionally.

Developing seasonal resilience is about hope. Where there’s life there’s hope, right? It might seem that things are never going to get better, but in reality they will. We may not know this but real spiritual hope is about holding out for things we simply cannot see, but we still hope for. So long as our hopes are realistic they’re achievable. In this way it is entirely right for us to hold out, hoping in life returning emotionally “normal” eventually, whatever that is.

Life-lasting

This is tragic, yet we see different forms of it around us all the time. At the worst extreme is suicide. This leaves those remaining with, many times, irreconcilable feelings as to what went wrong. Our hearts truly go out to them. Everybody Hurts actually targeted, originally, teen suicide.

But people just as easily give up in a life-lasting way because they can’t or don’t deal well with the seasonal grief that comes. They enter a lifelong season of denial.

People in this area have literally entered hell on earth, for their grasp on and their desire for truth has left them.

And yet, anyone at any time can literally convert this issue back into a seasonal grief i.e. see it that way, and venture into hope. They’ve got nothing to lose by doing this, and almost everything to gain.

In Sum

Understanding that everybody hurts in life sometimes is good. It helps us understand that it’s normal, and that grieving appropriately needs to be a very common experience and response in life. In reality we should learn how to grieve well as kids, then life would not be so hard.

In this way it’s actually ‘cruel to be kind’ when we allow the “fullness” of life hurts to hit us and our kids so we and they can learn to grapple with feelings and give them the hearing they deserve. In a supportive environment, nothing beats this. This is how resilience is developed and grown to maturity.

In life, we all give up from time to time. The better and more resilient we can teach ourselves to be—and a reliance on God is often central—the less frequent these times will be and their magnitude won’t be as great.

And a joyousness regarding life naturally fills any of the remaining void!

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.