All I Learned About Life I Learned from Green Eggs & Ham

The older I get, the more I’m convinced everything you ever need to know about life they teach you in first grade. Things like, your day will be a whole lot better if you take a twenty minute nap, you should probably eat animal crackers and Oreos at least twice a day, and one of the best investments you’ll ever make in life is a 64 pack of Crayola crayons. My favorite things though, as a child, were stories. I was a voracious reader growing up, and one night, out of melancholic nostalgia for those days, I began to re-read some of my most beloved childhood tales. As I went along, I was struck by a profundity from the one-and-only Dr. Seuss:

“All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you’ll be quite a lot. And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants. There are some, down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.”

Whoa. I think I was too focused on protecting my share of the goldfish from my classmates than actually listening to Mrs. Jones during story time to grasp the sagacity of that statement.

I believe Dr. Seuss was onto something in Oh, the Places You’ll Go. I’ve never enjoyed being alone very much, or sitting still in one place very long for that matter. I would spend my holiday’s deep-sea fishing in Alaska, hunting big game in South Africa or hiking the Great Wall to avoid spending several months in suburbia. Yet, God, in His infinite wisdom (or divine sense-of-humor), called me to spend the summer months in sleepy southern Virginia. I don’t know if you have ever been to southern Virginia, but there’s not a lot here, unless you’re a coal-mining aficionado or like watching trains go by. Far from the city lights of Atlanta, away from the stimulation found in exotic places, removed from most of my collegiate community, I’ve been terribly lonely.

Nobody likes to be alone. Even introverts have their limits. Why is it, of all the verses in the Bible, one of the hardest for me to live out is Psalm 46:10, “be still and know that I am God?” I’ve concluded it’s because in solitude and silence we’re forced to face who we really are, it’s in those moments of stillness where we begin to realize the depth of our own depravity. I think the author of How The Grinch Stole Christmas would agree one’s own degeneracy falls into the category of something that “scares you right out of your pants.”

Yet, one of the things I love most about God is his uncanny ability to make order out of chaos; to transform ugliness into beauty. He demonstrated this ability most vividly on the cross where He took something that killed and transposed it into something that saved! In the same way, loneliness doesn’t have to stop at the realization of my own inequity, but can become an opportunity to enter into the throne room of the Almighty. Loneliness is, in a way, a call from God to draw close to Him. It’s a chance to remind us what happened with a handful of nails and two wooden beams over two thousand years ago on a hill called Calvary. Loneliness is an invitation to look into the eyes of Jesus, the “luminous Nazarene”; to proclaim the truth of who He is, who you are and Whose you are, and declare those things until they ring true in the deepest parts of your soul.

The great irony is we can’t do it alone, on our own we will never push through loneliness; to quote The Cat in the Hat, “this mess is so big and so deep and so tall, we cannot pick it up. There is no way at all!” Yet Christ, defying all human logic, comes in and plucks us from the muck and the mire and walks beside us into the radiant gates of eternity. Meeting us in the mess, He takes the abhorrent cacophony of our human existence and replaces it with a majestic symphony of unconditional love and grace. He is more than capable of transforming our depression-filled loneliness into an intimate companionship. So, embrace the gift of isolation! Remind yourself of truth. Realize that feelings don’t dictate fact. Finally, never, ever, get to old to “be still” and sit like a child at the feet of the Jesus, rapt and enamored with the lavish story of redemption He’s written.

Lessons from Rhonda

I remember being five years old, living in sunny Phoenix, Arizona sitting in Ms. Piano’s kindergarten class when I first heard one of life’s quintessential questions, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Fast forward nearly two decades and the question I faced, as a little boy, is the same one that echoes in my mind today, this time as a bearded man.

Trading the hot and arid southwest for the just as hot but significantly more humid southeast, I moved to an affluent suburb of Atlanta for the remainder of my years at home. The majority of my peers aspired to attend the ivory towers of academia, striving to become lawyers, doctors and executives. And I was one of them, in fact, I came to believe everyone’s list of life goals involved becoming a partner at a law firm, operating a medical practice or having a corner office somewhere above Wall Street. People took blue-collar jobs out of necessity- not inclination.

This summer has radically changed that perspective. I have an internship with one of the most recognizable beverage brands on the planet; it’s my first “real look” at the inner workings of a colossal corporation. Specializing in supply chain management and operations, this seasonal position exposes me to the many logistical facets of a multi-billion dollar organization. One of my first days on the job, I walked out on the factory floor and met an older woman named Rhonda*. Rhonda has been working the same machine in manufacturing for twenty-eight years. An expert operator, she had been around long enough to know every aspect of the beverage business. Yet, Rhonda didn’t match my idea of what a protalitarian worker would be- college-educated, smart and articulate, it didn’t add up that a woman like that would still clock-in and-out after nearly thirty years on the job. More fit for management than manual labor in my mind, I inquired if she had ever looked into “climbing the ladder.” To my surprise, she had in fact been asked several times to move up- to trade in her smock and leather shoes for a blouse and heels- to give up labeling bottles to start signing paychecks, but she turned it down… every time. In beautiful simplicity she stated, “This is what I’m called to, I love the job I have, why would I want to change?”

I haven’t been able to shake Rhonda from my mind. In my arrogance I had, in a way, “felt bad” for the working class. I couldn’t imagine someone could actually be “called” to hourly labor. I think we as millennials and Christian millennials in particular- have lost sight of what it truly means to be successful, the true definition of what ‘work’ is. We’ve begun to believe if we’re not working at a trendy non-profit by the time we’re twenty-five we’ve somehow failed; if we’re not involved in changing the landscape of leadership, culture and the arts, we’re somehow “less than” everyone else. We so easily place things in the the boxes of “sacred” or “secular”, giving more value to one or the other based upon the environment in which we were raised.

Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, challenges these ideas by defining work as anything that “brings order out of chaos […] and rearranges the raw material of God’s creation for the purpose of human flourishing.” Work isn’t about whether you write legal briefs in an office or preach sermons in a pulpit beneath a steeple, it has nothing to do with being a blue-collar foreman or a white collar executive- all honest work has inherent dignity and worth because, “it’s something that God does and because we do it in God’s place, as his representatives.”

So, as I continue on my quest to answer one of humanity’s fundamental questions- it’s beginning to sink in, as an agent of the Almighty, I have direct access to the unwarranted gift of value and honor in my work. So does Rhonda. And so do you. Culture will tell you to trade in your smock and your shoes, but if you’re where you’re supposed to be, there is so much more joy in being marked by God than being marketed by man.

*name has been changed

The Irrevocable Condition

I go to college exactly 479 miles from home. That may seem like nothing to some, but for me the 479 mile, eight-hour drive might as well be 4790 miles. I don’t get to come back very often and when I do make the trip, I usually drive through Atlanta- my beloved hometown- sometime in early evening. When I come around the bend on Interstate 85 and see the towering luminescent skyline, my eyes almost always brim with tears. Why? Because it’s home. The city lights represent to me all that is safe, what it means to belong; an extrinsic representation of the intimacy associated with the place I spent so much of my life.

However, after a couple days back in the Peach state a unique phenomenon set in. The same place that brought water to my eyes a mere forty-eight hours before is the same city I’m rearing to leave. Describing this phenomenon, twentieth century African-American essayist James Baldwin wrote in his acclaimed work Giovanni’s Room, “perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

What is it I’m longing for? Of course I miss family, I miss country music, I miss Braves games with friends and I miss fried chicken, grits and biscuits (probably more than I should), and yet, those are all just things.

I believe the word ‘home’ has a two-fold definition. Naturally, there’s the physical, geographical denotation of the word. Home is where you physically associate yourself (i.e. ‘Home’ for me is Atlanta, Georgia). The secondary aspect though is an internal, emotional, psychological state. It’s a condition- as opposed to the external, physical reality described earlier. Home is more than just a place- it’s an inner identity.

This duality of definitions explains why we’re never fully satisfied. Why ‘home’ never feels quite right. Why- if you’re me- you’ve spent thousands of dollars a “hopeless wanderer” circling the globe, hoping one of the runways you touch down on will clarify your calling. My search for new experiences, my excitement for exploring new places, effectively, my search for a new geographical “home” is actually not an external quest at all. Rather, it’s an outward manifestation of my internal state of homelessness.

I’m finally starting to realize my intrinsic sense of “homelessness” as a Christian arises from the fact I wasn’t made for this world. The tears that fill my eyes when I drive through Atlanta. The rush of dopamine I get when I fly into a new city for the very first time. The nostalgia in the pit of my stomach for people and places that have long since past. They’re fleeting. They don’t satiate the thirst that lies deep within my vagrant heart. We weren’t made for this world. In fact, we weren’t even made for the next. What we were made for is unhindered intimacy with an Almighty God.

The old cliché “home is where the heart is” can now be seen in a new light. Every man was made in the image of God. Every man’s heart- whether he knows it or not, cries out for Him. It’s only when our hearts are made one with Christ in salvation, and continually tied to the Spirit that we find the peace, intimacy and inner identity we seek. It’s solely when we fervently live in the grace of the Almighty we experience home. Ultimately however, we won’t experience our true “home” in both definitions until we join our Father in Heaven, and I imagine the effulgent spires towering over the city of Atlanta will be nothing compared to the blazing eyes of the angels in Glory. The end of this life begins with the marriage of the Lamb and the Church, when we, the bride of Christ are taken into the family of God. I know, on that day, far more than a few tears will fill my eyes as I enter my true home for an infinite eternity.

Inconsolable Longing

Everyone’s hungry for something. We all ache for more from our relationships. Crave to be a part of something greater in our careers. Desire to be a better family.  Yet, what is inconsolable longing? C.S. Lewis describes it as the “scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.” Ultimately, it’s the longing to be a part of something sacred, yearning for something more in our experience with God.

I’m beginning to realize how thirsty I’ve been for that experience. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, it hasn’t mattered how many times I’ve attempted to rearrange my relationships, shift my career path or reorder my life, I still return empty handed. I’ve distracted myself by traveling to exotic locales, as if foreign culture could satiate my thirst. I’ve attempted to transfer colleges, changing circles of friends, as if these new relationships would bring me peace. I’ve chased the dream of a corner office as if my name emblazoned on an ivory business card would produce joy and happiness. I’m only just now coming to terms with the fact that my thirst won’t ever be quenched by people, nor gratified by new experiences or achievements.

And I’m not the only one. Going to a Christian school, we all clean up pretty nice. With a head full of mandatory theology classes, required convocations and obligatory bible studies, you could say we’re pretty respectable Christians. But underneath dapper designer button downs and flowery sundresses our souls don’t look so nice. We’re all thirsty and 100% of us long for more of God than currently have.

In the words of Craig Barnes, from his book Sacred Thirst,

 “Until we find relief for the soul, everything else will be nothing more than a distraction- a very temporary one at that- from our fundamental craving for living water. […] We will never find what we are looking for in the things we pick up along the way. Not even the religious things. Not even important things like our relationships. All of these things will leave our souls empty if we try to force them to satisfy our thirst. The true object of our search is nothing less than an encounter with the Holy One.”

I’m beginning to discover the secret of living a fulfilled life, is to not try and find fulfillment at all. But rather to befriend my yearning instead of perpetually avoiding it. To live in my longing rather than trying to incessantly resolve it. To enter the spaciousness of my own emptiness instead of constantly trying to fill it up.*

* A portion of this is paraphrased from The Awakened Heart by Gerald May.