choices

So last night I found myself lying awake staring at the ceiling and for whatever reason I kept thinking about choices. Earlier Sara and I had watched the Grey's Anatomy premier and the characters kept having flashbacks to these key moments in their lives when they made a choice that changed everything. As I was thinking about this I was really overwhelmed by just how many choices we make each and everyday; from whether or not to hit the snooze one more time to when will I climb into bed. Our days are simply jam packed with choices. And the truth is most of them are mundane and don't really have any impact on our lives. But there do come moments when we make choices that years later we look back upon as having changed how we've lived out life. For some it may only be one or two critical choices, for others the twists and turns may have come more frequently, perhaps even more frequently than they would ever have wanted. Yet through it all we keep moving forward. Sure there are choices that I've made that when I look back I wonder what would have happened if I had chosen differently. I think that you can trap yourself by dwelling too deeply on those moments. The choice was made, life moved on and if we spend too much time looking back we'll only hamper our ability to make the choices before us today.

Well, there you have it. Some of my late night ponderings. Enjoy.

tradition and the status quo

I've been thinking a lot lately about traditions... why we have them, what purpose they serve, what role they have where we're headed. Mind you I'm not totally anti-tradition though that may surprise a few. Traditions have their place in our life and in our faith. The real thing I struggle with is when traditions are simply used to maintain or appear to maintain the status quo. We hold tight to so many traditions that even when they've lost their purpose and meaning we let them define who we are and what we're about.

Granted this is the type of stuff I think about a lot when I think about my faith and my role in the church both bigC and little c. Its also why I like the movie Dogma so much. So the other day I'm reading through the gospel of Matthew which I have read countless times and this one passage really stood out to me:

In Matthew chapter 15 the religious leaders are having their usual cow regarding the actions of Jesus and his followers. So they ask "why do your disciples break the traditions of the elders?"

Jesus comes back pretty harsh "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?" He goes on to hammer his point and says that they have nullified the commands of God with their traditions. He never says that all traditions are bad. All he does is point out that all traditions in the realm of faith need to be looked at regularly with a critical eye. Does that mean we toss them out? Not necessarily. Some may be great traditions that we have simply distorted or lost the meaning of. When we take a close look and rediscover the original meaning and intent we may find that we have a real treasure. Others we may find to have run their course and are no longer, or possibly even never have been, useful or good.

I think really its not that we should be jaded toward tradition(though I often am) but that we need to not be afraid to really dig in and take an honest look at whether they are something that needs to continue and be passed on.