Temporary

“Life; at its best, you are doing fine
But you're blind, it's china you hold
As it breaks, suddenly it's clear; beautiful but transitory

But we won't break easy, we won't give in to all unbearable pain
We'll pull through, we won't crack, we'll endure and survive...

Life; all you've got, all was swept away
Now you see what there is to miss
Suddenly you're stronger than you thought
As you know it's transitory

Cause we won't break
Survival is all we've got and our unbearable grief
We'll hold on and won't crack
And we'll value all life

Oh, transitory
Pain is as life itself
Evanescent as it fades”

After Forever, “Transitory”

In my heart, I become more and more convinced that Flatirons is the church I'm supposed to be at right now. It's kind of uncanny - this week was the fifth week in a row that the sermon has seemed to be for me. It's the second week out of five where I go to church, hear a sermon, and go “gee, this is good. I wonder if it's for me”, then I go home and the rest of the day brings the sermon home to me.

Pastors Jim and Scott have been going through the book of Jonah. The first three weeks were on storms in life, God rescuing us, and second chances. This week, Jim spoke, starting with “And I wish the book ended here. God had compassion on the Ninevites and they all lived happily ever after.” I thought that was a strange start to a sermon, but Flatirons can be the church of the strange sometimes.

To summarize the passage, Jonah 4 seems to be the chapter where Jonah pouts a lot. After God forgives Nineveh, Jonah gets ticked. He tells God, “See! This is why I ran from you. I knew this would happen, that you would give them another chance. Now take away my life because I'd rather be dead than live to see this.” God criticizes him and asks whether he has a right to be angry. I mean, after all, Jonah got his second chance too, even though he smelt of fish.

Thereafter, Jonah hikes to a place with the good view of the city and waits for God to go all Exterminatus on the city. (Yay obscure nerd reference, but it's so much better than “nuke” in this context) I can see him getting his popcorn and soda and just waiting. When's it going to start, God? When are you going to go all smitey on them and give them what they have coming? God sends a nice shade vine (which makes Jonah's life good), then a worm to kill the vine, then a hot wind seemingly just to drive Jonah nuts. Jonah gets mad at God (again) and goes all emo (again), wishing to die rather than live.

Again, God calls him out, saying “You didn't do anything for this vine. I gave it to you. I took it away and you worried more about this stupid plant than about the thousands of people in that city over there. That's right, that city that you want wiped off the face of the planet.” God doesn't even call the people of Nineveh hopeless or bad, but implies that they're just very confused (“...cannot tell their right from their left...”) Interestingly, nobody gets to hear what Jonah's answer was. Did he get his stuff figured out again? Did he just give God a rude gesture and walk off? Who knows?

The first application was that, as Christians, we often have lists. God, you should treat me like this (which is to be treated well). You should treat those people OK because they're not too bad, but boy howdy, pour out the rear-kicking on those people because that's what they deserve. In fact, I'm going to sit here and watch until they get theirs. I have a friend who only has three questions he wants to ask God. One is where he can get popcorn and a good seat to watch Armageddon. I kid you not. While sometimes I'm also in an “angry mood”, I'm not sure I've ever thought one of my requests of God would be to watch someone else get judgment poured over their heads.

The second application was about the brevity of things in this life. If you watch the text, the vine that Jonah enjoyed greatly and “knew God loves me because He gave me this plant” was given and taken away in a matter of a few days. We all know that life is temporary and only God is forever. How often do we think of things like jobs or friends or even significant others in the same light – that they will only be in our lives for weeks, months, maybe years?

Many years ago, it seemed that my entire social circle was a fan of the Michael W. Smith song “Friends”. I know, it's kind of an oldie now. Whenever someone moved away from our small, closely-knit church, someone would drag that song back out and we'd all be sad because our friends were leaving. Back then, life was a world of brightness with some dark spots. Now as I'm older, my life looks different. The bright parts are brighter, but there seems to be so many more dark spots and they seem darker. Instead of a field of light with dark spots, it seems that “real life” is dark grey with the occasional bright spot. Instead of sadness being a perturbation, an oddity, it seems that the world is a cold dark place. God promises the abundant full life and occasionally there's a bright flash such as that from a meteor, but then it burns out and the world is dark again.

It's not just my life. The more I do life with others, the more brokenness and darkness I see. Maybe it's just my choice of friends, right?. Let's look at the world as a whole. How many people's lives were irrevocably changed in the last few weeks? Across the world, around the Pacific, how many people are living in chaos and disorder? I know, it's the age-old question “if God is good, why do bad things happen?” I'm saying if God is good, why does life have to be a scavenger hunt to find the good parts? At small group, we were talking about how straying from God's right path into error “eats the sweet parts” out of your life. But why does so much of life have to bitter and hard to swallow if God is good?

That didn't quite end where it started. In my head, this wasn't meant to be quite such a depressing blog. I'll try to pull it back onto a happy track. HAPPY TRACK!

I guess the takeaway I took from Pastor Jim's sermon was that things are wont to leave and that I should value them while they are in my life. That seems like an interesting life lesson – OK, whatever. Later that day, I found out that one of my good friends is leaving the area because her life isn't working out here. Although part of me expected it, it was still sad news – we've hung out for the last three years or so, and now my life will be significantly less interesting.

Over the last few months, I've watched my life slow to a relatively uninteresting standstill, then the last few weeks, it seems to have fallen off a cliff. At some level, I wonder where the bottom is – what else is God going to take away from me? What else do I not value enough? Do I live like everything can or will be ripped out of my life at a moment's notice? Should I live like that? It's hard to think about making long-term investments in ministries or people if they're just to be “taken away” whenever.