It seemed a strange yet appropriate endeavor to launch my first blog with such bittersweet sentiment. It’s a new year. It’s a new day. And this is a new journey. Old things passed away, new things have come. Wouldn’t these be the words of my friend and brother Pete? It is never easy to say goodbye to a friend. Yet to wish one back from the ultimate life would be folly.
“Here are the two best prayers I know,” wrote Anne Lamott: “Help me, help me, help me,” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” They are the two best prayers I know as well, for they place us in the posture of humble dependence upon and eternal indebtedness unto the Lord.
When all was taken from him, when all was lost to him, the scripture says that Job “…arose and tore his robe and shaved his head.” In other words, he mourned – he grieved. But then Job did something else. Something unimaginable. Something that only a God-focused, Lord-centered, Spirit-empowered soul can do. “He fell to the ground and worshiped.” The first two responses to the most painful experience of his life were grief and worship. We all share in both of those things.
We who knew Peter grieve the loss of his life with us here on earth and we cry “Help me, help me, help me.” At the same time we worship the Lord in a spirit of gratefulness for the joy of Peter’s life and the way he touched so many of us and we sing, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
When I think of Peter’s impact upon my own life I can’t help but think of the words inscribed in the author’s note of one of my favorite books, Blue Like Jazz. Don Miller writes, “I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Baghdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.”
That, to me, was Peter, my friend and brother in Christ. Whether it was playing just about every stringed instrument under the sun or discussing personal insights from the scriptures, and especially when he was leading worship in our services, I enjoyed watching him, because whenever he was engaged in something he loved he made me want to love it too. And because he loved Jesus the way he did, I want to love Him more as well.
Someone once alluded to the fact that life comes in the guise of a game board shaped like a calendar. It is filled with squares and each square is another day. We live one square at a time. You and I are square fillers. And how we fill those squares speaks volumes about what we think is important to us – at least at the time. But is what we fill our squares with as important as we think it is? I wonder.
You and I have just one life! One and only one. What we do with it is our choice, but know this – it counts. God never created a useless life. God has given each of us a calendar called life – a limited amount of squares – you can fill them any way you want to, but you can only fill them once. What will you do with yours from this day forward?
I have filled mine with a lot of things up to this point and you have too. Pete filled his as well. But I saw one thing for sure, he filled many of them living for Christ.
A few days ago I visited the Billy Graham Library. I was astounded at the way one man could fill so many days with a passion for Christ. It’s what I want to do too. And so, my best prayers these days are simple and to the point: “Help me, help me, help me to fill my squares wisely and with You,” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you for the gift of every square you’ve ordained.”
“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his Son into the world that we might live through him.” – 1 John 4:9 (NIV)
