Greetings, everyone…
Provided below is an exercise I suggested to the 2011 Haiti Travel Team last Wednesday night to help with responding to the week we spent together in Haiti. Today, I am going to begin going through this exercise myself! And I can hardly wait!
Bling
Part A: Scriptures
1 Chronicles 16:23-36
Nehemiah 6:1-14
Part B: Questions/Things to Do
1. In response to this week, I recommend that you list out at least 10 recalibrations to your life that you would like to begin to implement within the next month or so. I recommend doing this as a kind of “stream of consciousness” exercise. Pray, and ask the Father to guide you in this. After doing so, put the list away for a day or so, and then bring it back out, read through it a couple of times, and then add to it in a manner similar to the way you first created it. Then…spend some time thinking and feeling and praying through it, and ask God which two or three recalibrations He would like the two of you to partner together in implementing in the near term. Narrowing things down like this could take a few days or more, so make sure you take your time and give yourself permission to take your time.
2. What were your dreams as a child?
3. Who were your childhood heroes, and why?
4. What do you dream about now?
5. If one week from today (Thursday, 13 Apr 2011), you found out that you have only 24-hours left to live, how differently would you live out that last day then, say, the previous 365 days?
Provided below is something I wrote, primarily for me, right before the trip. I alluded to this during the debrief last Wednesday night.
Part C: A Few Things I'd Like to Learn from the Samurai
For most of my life, I’ve been fascinated by the warrior classes—especially, the ancient Samurai of feudal Japan. To say they were a paradoxical people is an understatement.
The Samurai trained in the arts of life and death: they studied and practiced haiku and swordsmanship…the tea ceremony and field applications of archery...gardening and submission grappling. They prepared for the future, but didn't wait for it to happen; they lived in and for the moment as though tomorrow didn't exist—because, to them, it didn't. They had children, and yet raised them to live as though Mom and Dad might not be around an hour hence.
Theirs was a way of life so utterly simple, and yet incomprehensibly complex. They cultivated an unnatural naturalness and a natural unnaturalness in nearly every aspect of life, and they lived by an ancient, internal code that simply reminded them to be present and devoted completely to their current experience...for there really is nothing else.
I recall a story I heard once about a martial arts instructor, who posed the following question to his adult students: “If you discovered that you had only twenty-four hours left to live, what would you do with the time you had left?” The answers he received were varied, as one might expect. Some spoke of how they would spend their time with their families; others of how they would visit places they’d always wanted to see but never did; and still others of how they would devote themselves to some form of service to humanity.
After listening intently for a few minutes, the teacher beckoned his students to stillness and then spoke of his disappointment with the answers they’d all given. “No one answered with what I would consider the best answer possible," he began. "And that's this: I wouldn't live any differently than the way I'm living right now, right here.”
Profound, and, most definitely, something to consider, would you not agree?
In the United States alone, more than two million people died last year—many from things unexpected. Just like some of us will, too, someday. Perhaps, even, today.
I’d like to ask you the very same question the instructor I mentioned above asked his students so very long ago...
If you had only twenty-four hours left to live, and knew it, how differently would you live that last day than the way you'd lived, say, the previous 365 days?
Take a few minutes, and really give it some thought. Perhaps, even, write your answers down or, even better, go and live them out—and do it today...right now. And then do it tomorrow...and the day after that...and the day after that, should you, Lord-willing, be blessed with such a precious gift.
Part D: Some Final Thoughts
The purpose of the above exercise conglomerate is to provide you with a framework in which you can respond to the Haiti trip in a way that is generative, life-affirming, and life-giving. I believe with all my heart that if you really do work at it…prayerfully…you and the kingdom of God will benefit greatly. I speak of this from my own personal experience. I did such an exercise about two years ago and, out of that time, created 63 3X5 prayer cards that have been a road map of visioning prayer for me over the last couple of years. It changed my life. But…it’s time for me to do it again. So…I’m going to be doing all of this right along with you, and I am so excited about it. I will use my blog as the canvas, so please feel free to follow along with my own process.
Part E: One Last Thing
Aside from making a decision to pursue Jesus with all your heart, don’t make any significant life-changes for at least 30 days (specifically, before 7 May 2011). But…if there are significant life-changes that you think you’d like to make, add them to your list of recalibrations, and let them marinate with all the others. :o)
Peace out, y’all, and have fun with all of this (for having fun is, I believe, half the point!).
CU,
Daver
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