grilling and chillin' and spiritual growth

In the photo below, you can see me doing one of my all-time favorite activities. There are so many fine nuances of this exquisite task that each time becomes an attempt to best the previous one. There are three main elements to consider as one tries to produce ever-tastier delicacies for family consumption.



The three elements are 1. the quality of the meat, 2. the marinade, 3. and temperature control. Mess up any one of these three and you will be disappointed in the results. Depending on how badly you fluff one of these three you might be very disappointed with the results.

It seems to me that the spiritual life I am trying to live has multiple elements to it as well. Yesterday afternoon in the middle of syllabus writing, I get a phone call from the pastor in Kochani. He along with three other people are stranded at a gas station near Skopje as their automobile has suddenly stopped working. The pastor has an urgent meeting to attend in Kochani; he wants to know if I will come pick him up and take the four of them to Kochani.

Now I already had been having a rather unproductive day as far as the syllabus writing was going and I was experiencing more than a bit of frustration with the process. Moreover being a typical man, I am generally unfavorably predisposed toward interruptions of any variety, but especially four hour interruptions such as a "quick" trip to Kochani poses. So the first element of spiritual life has to be framing, attitude, or perspective . . . whatever you want to call it. You gotta frame what happens as positive and make the best of it. This is the choosing of the meat if we want to stay with a grilling motif. In other words, I need to see what happens as a steak, rather than roadkill. (Hopefully today's readers will all be grill aficionados, otherwise someone will think that the person writing this is more than slightly twisted.)

The second element of spiritual life is relationship. Vertical, horizontal, repetitive and consistent. Spiritual growth is not something that happens in a vacuum, it's in the day to day working of relationships. Why would the national pastor call me you ask? It's because we are friends. Not co-workers, not acquaintances - friends. As Venso got into the Peugeot he rubbed his hands together and said, "This is great, we can argue all the way to Kochani!" The three ladies in the backseat promptly went to sleep while Venso and I indeed argued about all kinds of fun stuff for the two hour ride to Kochani. I felt like a polished stone on the quiet ride home alone. This is the marinade of grilling. It is what you soak life or the spiritual life . . . it is what gives life flavor.

The third element is pace. Sustainable pace. Or if we fall back on grilling for the last time, this is how hot the fire has become. Too hot - the meat is burnt on the outside and raw on the inside, plus the fire goes out quickly. (BTW, this is GRILLLING, which means using REAL wood charcoal, not gas, and not those factory chemical cubes you get in America that they call charcoal). Not hot enough the meat never cooks and frankly the meat is not safe to eat if the heat is not hot enough. Unfortunately, this one is the most difficult for me. The hotter the better is generally my motto. I grew up in the era that proclaimed, "I want to burn-out for God!" Reality is that no one benefits from such a mentality. Now if only someone would help me get the heat - the pace - just right.