Friday, September 14, 2007

Life with a pickaxe


No I am not talking about my wife. She is a sweetie. But my other girl these days is a pickaxe. She and I have been spending lots of time together. There is nothing like swinging a pickaxe all day, to put most other things in perspective. Pickaxe perspective is a reduction of life to the basics, the simpliest point of view.

When you never have the chance of working extra hard physically, you never get a chance to get to this point, when pain and hurt and sore muscles reduce everything to several key points in life.

Sometimes in life, I simply spend too much time thinking. You can't think much while swinging a pickaxe into semi-concrete earth. The soil is so hard here, that honestly, it seems that the cement slab is softer. It rattles your bones and vibrates your insides in a very painful way. But nothing compares to the next morning. You need a crane to help you get out of bed. Every breath hurts. Who would have thought that each joint in your hand could possible cause so much pain so constantly? And then the blisters! And then an actual blister where you had yesterday's blister! A blister on the blister!

Now wearing two gloves, you return to the work site, hoping that your body does not shatter into a 1000 pieces the first time that you swing the axe again. But you don't break, and then 10 hours later, you have finished another day of swinging a pickaxe. Now you can return home to email, church meetings, music practice, and normal church work. But you fall asleep soon, and the computer runs all night. And you dream of more pickaxes chasing you all night long. This is my life with a pickaxe right now.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Temporary Staying


That is what the sign in the police station read, where I was waiting in line for hours. OF course my business there would take all of 3 minutes, if I could ever get into the office. Temporary staying, is what they call it, even though I have been here for eight years!

That phrase got me to thinking . . . that temporary staying is how I should view life in this world, but in fact, just the opposite usually happens. I live each day as if I will be here forever and always. In fact if I look deep enough, I am pretty sure that I would like to stay here forever on planet earth. Let's face it, it is the only life I have ever known.

But if I am to be or becoming or stay a Kingdom person, then I need a new perspective. I need a temporary staying perspective. True life . . . my eternal life . . . is somewhere other. This stop on earth is just a temporary staying.