Burning Rubber

When I wrote here about our radical call to orphan care, I specifically wrote these words ...

"What if all of my writing on taking care of the fatherless is the rubber about to meet the proverbial road of reality?"

Let me just say, with you as my witness, I'm burnin' rubber! My actual tires have yet to move forward. They are stuck, rotating with rapid speed, tread being worn thin... but not progressing an inch.

Normally, for me, a new year begins with a bang! I'm off of the starting line like Lightning McQueen... ready to read through the Bible in a year, start working out, buy a bunch of veggies and start juicing, study the songs of my favorite birds so that I can go birding, and so on. This year, however, started off with a whimper... mine. No resolutions, a new read through the Bible checklist that has check boxes so small that my aging eyes can't even see them. No working out, no book list. Just some illness. (I will say that Alex has taken up juicing - yipppeee and bring on the cabbage!)

So, here I sit on the 14th, January almost half over, wondering. Just wondering. Last year, I felt like God prepared my heart for the year by showing me this verse: "And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.'" 2 Cor. 12:9 I clung to this verse and saw God's reminder of His power time and again. Would that be the case for 2010? Nope. Just some consistent words of reminder over and over ... humility, gentleness, quiet.

In the calm this morning, a series of verses from the first chapter of the book of James began to speak on so many levels. At first I thought it was just the first few verses, but as I read to the end of chapter, I realized how beautifully they fit and how applicable each and every word is to my burning rubber.

¹⁹My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, ²⁰for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. ²¹Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

²²Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. ²³Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror ²⁴and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. ²⁵But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
²⁶If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. ²⁷Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Ready to get these wheels moving on down the highway.