Turning the Page

I have grandchildren.  They are brilliant, beautiful, high achieving, eloquent for their ages and miles ahead of the competition (other grandchildren) in virtually every category.  This is not opinion.  It is objective reality.  Now that we’ve settled that, I would like to press on to loftier matters about children.  Children have little trouble turning the page, literally and figuratively.  Their fingers are nimble.  Arthritis has not settled in their constantly touching fingers.  Their hands are not war torn and brittle due to overwork or serious injury.  Small children generally turn the page well.  In fact, if you are reading a story to them you should not be a slow reader.  A slow reader will likely find a child turning the page before you are finished out of protest over your laziness.  Their eyes have already soaked in the page.  They want the next.  Figuratively, the same is true.  They set their minds on the matter at hand until a more attractive matter catches their attention.  Then they are committed to turning the page with all that is in them.  Their ability to absorb and engage and move on is enviable to most who are older.    

The reason I mention this, is because something happens to our hands with age.  They become stiff and slow.  They struggle with turning the page.  Something also happens to our wanderlust and to our openness to good distraction, new challenge and thrill at change.  Turning the page in life becomes a conversation point rather than a description of what is truly happening. 

As I walk through the New Testament, I see a Savior and His disciples who were turning more corners than they were carving a straight line. Their movement was lithe, often and agile.  Similarly, the first and second wave of successors (Paul, Barnabas, Timothy, Philip and James) also seemed to be those who slept with their shoes on or at least with their belongings in a very portable arrangement.  The only way to track Paul is with a good map.  [How many times did he visit Corinth, Jerusalemand Lystra?] 

Buildings did not mark the church until the fourth or fifth century.  They were not defining at all until the eleventh century.  Training institutions (universities if you will) were mobile and singularly dependent upon the location of the teacher- not the other way around.  It would seem strange to Origen, Irenaeus, Clement and Tertullian to be simply fixed by geography and known by those tied to the same turf.  Though there was no phone, fax, internet or pager everyone in the Christian world knew about these folks.  And, up to very recent times, Free Methodist pastors followed in the tradition of people who could not be nailed down to location.  [There are good and bad parts to that.] 

But, today the only ones who seem to be able to turn a page in life pretty easily fit in only a handful of categories:  the homeless, unsettled, criminal and born again.  In the first case, there is no fixed place to call home.  Life is about turning pages.  The second group is filled with those who cannot be satisfied with their life.  So, they try a new one every now and then.  The third group had better learn to turn the page or they will be sent somewhere where pages are not turned very frequently and if they are, someone else is turning them.  The last group is the people who serve at the whim, will, desire and conviction of the Lord.  They are stewards, not owners.  They had better be willing to go wherever they are called or sent.  They are out to transform and one cannot do that standing still.  They are people on a mission.  And, mission keeps moving them.  Sin is something that is not supposed to stick.  So, the born again are constantly turning pages away from that which drags down to that which lifts up. 

My prayer is that we get better and better at turning pages.  My fear is that our hands and hearts become too calloused.  I like to ask myself and other folks, “What’s fresh in your life?”  “What new fruit is being produced?”  “What new challenge is on the horizon for you?”  “What new thing is God doing in you?”  These are all page turners.  I still thrill to see people ready to move when the Lord calls and looking carefully for the Lord’s call.  

 

Comments

[Dennis Jeffery]

Matt, well said and timely. As one far to young to have Grandchildren I'll concede the point that yours are the best.
May the Lord give us flexibility to turn the page according to His will. Thanks for being a model of embracing needed change even when it takes faith and guts to do so.

[JJ]

True. As a previously pro-page turner, I am surprised at how easily I allow distraction to absorb my life and make the turning of a page seem more like a chore than an opportunity.