It's been a while---my friend Josh Patrick has encouraged me
to write a blog post for the first time in something like 7 years! This will be
posted soon in his blog "Knowing Jesus Today".
The following is written by my dear friend, Jason Henderson.
We share two common passions -- knowing Jesus and food. He is a professional
chef who has developed restaurants and menus in more than 25 countries. He
graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and cooks the best burgers
I've ever had in my life. What he shares in this post resonated with me. I bet
it'll encourage you, too.
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We're only a dozen weeks into 2016, and many of us are
already worn out. The stillness of the holidays and the excitement of a New
Year have wilted and given way to an endless to-do list, constant kids'
activities, the frenetic dinner-time/bath-time/bed-time routine, nagging home
projects, work stress, money stress, family stress, and on and on it goes.
Is anybody else tired?
I have one friend who is asking for prayers because he is
drowning in the hours he is putting in at work, another is moving and is
struggling to balance life and the stress of his home’s upheaval. Another
friend, while trying to add new self-improvement routines to his life,
discovered a health issue that he now must manage (insurance, doctor visits,
medication) ugh! The momentum of life’s stresses builds so easily, so quickly
and I find myself already looking toward the next break, the next vacation. Didn’t
we just have a major year-end holiday season?
When I was growing up it was the beginning of the computer
age as we know it. I could write simple little DOS programs on my family’s VIC
20 and Commodore 64. These were computers in the form of a keyboard that you
plugged into a TV. The VIC-20 held less memory than it takes to even display
the icon for an app on today’s mobile devices (about 21 kb). It was enough to
spend hours plugging away at some simple programming to create an animated
image of a skiing man, drawn with alpha-numeric characters, who would ski down
my TV screen – a modern marvel!
The one thing I remember about all of these new computers
was that they inevitably would become bogged down due to the lack of memory.
There would be two commands that couldn’t execute together or a spinning black
and white wheel instead of a mouse pointer that meant “this computer will never
stop thinking." Frustrating! These error indications meant the executing
of commands, of keeping up with the demands put upon the machine was too much.
The poor small-minded computer was overwhelmed and frozen. Fortunately, there
was one trick that always got you out of these
infinite error cycles -- Ctrl+Alt+Del! Clack, click, clack, beep!
Today those three keys do not have quite the same effect as
they once did. Today it will bring up a list of choices or programs and you can
choose what you want to do from another menu. In the world of early computing
it was a triumphant method of escape. When the machine was overwhelmed,
Ctrl+Alt+Del was there.
I somehow still have a Pavlovian feeling of relief just
remembering the sound; Clack, click, clack, beep and then a beautiful fresh
start. No more error sounds, no more hot headed frustrations of not being in
control of the dumb computer. Just a pause, a breath, and then the computer
would slowly start back up as if it were working fine all along. You may have
lost some work but that was part of computer-life back then. You were just
happy to be back in control.
We just finished a teaching series at our church called
Reset. The logo for the series at church had a sideways power button in place
of one of the “e”s. In our busy world we find that kind of control appealing.
Just power down and stop the madness. I think it is something similar that is
so appealing about Jesus’ response to the Pharisees in Matthew 22. The
Pharisees were experts in the law and the prophets. These are guys that in
addition to the stresses of their day-jobs and family life would memorize and
become experts on the Torah and its 613 commandments. Amazingly, they would
commit all of them to memory and be able to answer life’s questions in light of
them and pass them along to their families. They wore them (literally) on their
bodies and hung them in front of their eyes where they could continue to study
them.
I don’t know about you but if anyone came to me, today, with
all that I have going on and said “by the way, we’re going to need you to
memorize and and obey this list of 613 things” my head might just explode. I
don’t believe it was any easier back then which is probably why a young
“know-it-all” like Jesus would be the target of many “okay then, tell me this
if you’re so smart” type moments.
Imagine yourself overwhelmed with life’s worries and
balancing family life and being a provider and imagine you are an expert on the
law. You know exactly what to do and not to do and why. Now imagine this young
revolutionary Jesus starts taking control of the spotlight. All the stress and
time and work you put in and this guy is getting the credit as an expert?!? And
then he says it. The crowd has gathered and your best friends have confronted
him. They have him right where they want him, this is the moment you have
waited for, you and your hard working, learned comrades will take back the
expert role you have worked so hard for. “Teacher” they ask him “which is the
greatest commandment in the Law?” Yes! Now you have him. Out of 613 commands
who would ever be able to answer this?
“’You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all
your soul and all your mind… and equally important: Love your neighbor as
yourself.’ Clack, click, clack, beep!
That sound would not actually be heard for another 1900+
years but I think the impact was just as good. All the stress and memorization,
all the rushing around and performing and image-managing, all the works and all
the strife, faded behind this single statement. When you love God with all you
have the rest will take care of itself. I think for at least some of those
Pharisees there was calm that day. I bet at least a few found themselves, eyes
locked with Jesus, in the calm eye of the storm.
Does your life need a reset?
Do you long for this? Does the thought of a Ctrl+Alt+Del to
life appeal to you? If it does, you are in luck. If you are already desperate
for the next vacation... if you are looking for the eye in your storm... take
in these words and believe them: Jesus said “Come to me, all of you who are
weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
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