What is the One Shift in You That Changes Everything

I have met my match.  When it comes to Seinfeld, Rob Mercurio blows me away.  Who is Rob Mercurio?   His child goes to our Learning Centers.  He sits on our oversight board there.  Well, this week that board met.  I mentioned our Souper Bowl coming up.  Rob asked.  Do you remember that Seinfeld episode with the Soup Nazi?   Sure, I replied.   In fact, I’m showing a Seinfeld clip this Sunday.  He said, which one, I’ve seen them all.  So, I tested him.  I said the Even Steven one.    He simply nodded.   Oh yeah, that one, he said. Then he quoted exactly, exactly, a scene from that very episode.   Rob Mercurio knows his Seinfeld. 

Now you may not know Seinfeld like that.  Heck, you may not even like the show or know it at all.   But this episode has a certain bizarre wisdom to it.  The only problem is it doesn’t go far enough.  Here see it for yourself.

Do you see Seinfeld’s attitude towards life?  For him, everything comes back to even.  So, he doesn’t worry.  He knows.  For him, it will all even out.   It makes for a funny show.  But is it true?  Does everything even out.  No, of course not.   In a deeper, more real way, it’s even better than that.   How can it be better than that?  In these words, God shows you the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.    

Isaiah 30:15-16

In life you can get caught up in all sorts of worries and anxieties, stresses and insecurities.  Life captures you like that.   But does it need to be that way?  Of course not.  You can become free.  In these words, God shows you the way out, a way that leads to greater abundance, to a life lived in the overflow, a life way beyond even. How does that overflow happen?  God tells you.  It happens when you stop to trust in what you already have.

As the prophet Isaiah shares these words, his people were obsessively focusing on what they didn’t have.   The superpowers of the day had put a target on Israel’s back.  Why?  Israel occupied a strategic piece of land, and they wanted it.   So, in a desperate bit to survive, Israel made an alliance with one of the superpowers, Egypt.  

But Isaiah tells the people of Israel. Stop freaking out.  Stop rushing around trying to save yourselves from invasion.   None of all that anxious action will save you.  Only in returning and rest can you be saved.  Only quiet trust will give you what you need.  But then comes the tragic twist in the lines that follow.  Israel didn’t take this advice.   Their alliance, their swift horse just got overtaken by swifter horses.  And the very destruction they feared came their way. 

And, lots of us are making the same mistake Israel did.  We don’t live caught between superpowers   But we do live caught between all sorts of things, and it is killing us.  

A few weeks ago, an article in Buzzfeed took the internet by storm.   The writer, Anne Peterson, talked how her generation of Millennials had learned to live life as if it was all about doing things faster and better.  One author she quoted put it this way.   “Efficiency is our existential purpose, and we are a generation of finely-honed tools, crafted from embryos to be lean, mean production machines.”  In other words, really swift horses.

But what has happened to them?  The writer puts it this way. “The end result isn’t just fatigue, but enveloping burnout that follows us to home and back.”  Now people prescribe self-care. Give yourself a face mask! Go to yoga! Use your meditation app! But here’s the kicker.   All this self-care, it’s not care at all.  It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry, one that wants to get you back to doing stuff so you’ll come and buy more self-care.  Self-care like that. isn’t a solution; it’s exhausting.  But still folks do it, along with everything else.

After all, they think.  Isn’t that what being an adult means.  For them, adulthood isn’t a way you are, it’s a bunch of stuff you do.  “To adult” is to complete your to-do list — but everything goes on the list, and the list never ends.  And so people keep going, getting more burned out every day.   As the writer puts it…. “the only way for us to survive, day to day, is to normalize (it all) the events, the threats, the barrage of information, the costs, the expectations of us. Burnout, it’s not a place to visit and come back from; No, it’s our permanent residence.

That conclusion, that’s what captured the internet.  It captured it, because millennials weren’t the only ones feeling it. Almost everyone was feeling it at some level.   After all, American adults report being 39% more anxious than just a year ago.  And let me tell you last year, American were already pretty anxious and now it’s worse.  What is this anxiety if not what it feels like to live under that sort of driven doing.   This epidemic doesn’t just affect a generation.  It is affecting almost everyone.  And if you keep it, it will devastate you, me, everyone.

That’s why Israel doesn’t just need to hear these words God gives Isaiah.  Everyone needs to hear these words.  You need to hear these words.  “In returning and rest you shall be saved: in quietness and trust shall be your strength.”

But to quote that Buzzfeed writer again, “This isn’t a task to complete or a line on a to-do list, or even a New Year’s resolution. It’s a way of thinking about your life, and what joy and meaning we can derive not just from optimizing life but living it.”

So how do you live like that? You stop and trust what you already have.   Why are so many people so frenzied, so anxious, so driven?   Sure, you can talk about financial pressures; the craziness of our economy. But it goes deeper than that.  Lots of people with lots of money can’t stop either.  In the end, fear drives it.  Fear of not measuring up.   Fear of missing out.   Fear of failure.   Your fear that if you stop, everything will collapse, that you won’t survive. 

And that fear, that is what you need to turn away from.  That is the returning that God is talking about.   God is talking about returning to what is real, to this God who you can rest in, who you can trust in. 

Imagine you’re on a plane, getting ready to take off.  And you look out the window.  And you see this guy trying to move the plane.  He’s pushing at the engine.  He’s pulling at the wheels.  That’s nuts, isn’t it? After all, it’s not your job to get the plane off the ground.  It’s the plane’s job to get you off the ground.   Do you get the point?

That’s what Israel forgot, whose job it was to get them off the ground.  But when Israel forgot, when Israel turned to the swift horses, did God turn away? 

Almost right after these words you heard from Isaiah, the prophet gives this message from God.  Isaiah says,

Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you.

For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.  He goes on.

Truly, O people in Zion, inhabitants of Jerusalem, you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when he hears it, he will answer you….the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Then you will defile your silver-covered idols and your gold-plated images. You will scatter them like filthy rags; you will say to them, “Away with you!”

And these words of comfort go on.  Don’t you see what God is saying?  God is telling them.  This is the way of trust.  This is the way that fills you up instead of running you down.    And I’m not interested in just bringing you to even.  God says.  I’m interested in giving you more, more than you could have ever dreamed. 

But to get what God yearns to give, you’ve got to stop and trust long enough to get it.  To paraphrase a wise priest.   Think of life as a big wagon wheel with many spokes.  In the middle is the hub.  And we are running around the rim trying to reach everybody.  But God says, “Start in the hub; live in the hub.  Then you will be connected with all the spokes, and you won’t have to run so fast.  “In returning and rest you shall be saved: in quietness and trust shall be your strength.”

During the Civil Rights movement, on the nights before the big marches, everyone went to a big prayer service.  They weren’t doing it to tick it off a to do list.  They were doing it because they needed a power greater than themselves.  They needed a strength greater than any of them had.   They were doing it to get filled up, to let Jesus lift them off the ground.  And the next day, as they marched, they lived in that overflow.  They flew forward under his power.   And when they did that, they got more than even.  They got justice and change. 

  

Don’t you get it?  In Jesus, God has defeated death for you.  So, do you think that you face anything in your life that Jesus can’t handle?    Do you think any problem exists that overwhelms God?    Only when you rest in that, when you trust that, will you discover the abundance that God yearns to give.   And yes, you will work, you will do things.   After all, after those Civil Rights prayer services, they did something.   But you will be living out of the overflow.   You will be working out of the hub.  

But you don’t get the overflow by some technique.  Nothing you do gets you to the hub.   It’s not your job to get the plane off the ground.  So, what do you need to do?  You need to let go and let God do what only God can do in you.  And as you do, Jesus will save you from yourself.  Jesus will fill you until you overflow.  For, “In returning and rest you shall be saved: in quietness and trust shall be your strength.”