Finding What You Love

Yesterday morning, I was listening to a podcast about turning one’s passion into a career and what it takes to make money off doing something you love. In the 28 minute episode, the host and guest of the show dive into why taking chances, saying yes and being optimistic help make businesses succeed, especially if you’re trying to start your own business. Makes sense.

Another reason for a successful business that the podcast dives into is being able to lose sleep over doing what you love. This was the idea that got me thinking about the things I would lose sleep over. After all, I do love sleep.

When I look at my life as it is now, I lose sleep over working out and writing, but really that’s about it. And most of that is working out. The writing has been a bit of a drag lately. And in all honesty, there aren’t a lot of things that I would work so hard at that I would sacrifice sleep for. I can’t seem to find what that ‘passion’ is. I don’t get up excited to work out or write. Currently, those are just things I feel obligated to do. I’m having trouble finding my passion. Finding what I love to do.

Is this common?
Is it seasonal?
Do you feel that way?
Could you let me know if you do, so I don’t feel so alone?

Looking at the world around me, it seems like everyone else has a passion. People love their work, love where they volunteer and love passions or hobbies that they lose sleep over. Lately, I haven’t felt that, and i’m searching for that feeling again. Hopefully it shows up soon, otherwise, there may not be many words left to write because passion often fuels the words.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Find something worth losing sleep over.

All is Vanity?

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities. All is vanity.”

The beginning of my favorite book of the Bible is depressing, to say the least.

“Everything is meaningless,” it says.

But the opening is also one of the most relatable openings in the ancient text.
How often do we feel like our life is meaningless?

I think we all have our seasons. We have our seasons of depression, our seasons of doubt and our seasons of questioning. We all want to know what our “why” is, and often times, that why changes.

We work hard, but for what? For who?
Ourselves? That seems selfish.
Our family? What if we have none.
Fame? That’s fleeting.

I’ve always wanted to memorize an entire book of the Bible, so I’m picking this one. Ecclesiastes. My favorite book, and one that i come to time and time again in my seasons of doubt and lack of purpose. The Preacher in the text asks a lot of the same questions I have myself, and rarely has answers, much like myself. It seems like a good fit.

Maybe in the meaninglessness, I will find meaning in memorizing these words and reflecting on them, in small doses at a time.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Meaning can be found, even in meaninglessness.

Nature's Colors

Have you ever noticed how each time of day has its own color scheme?

The afternoon has it blinding, bright whites and yellows. The evenings have their warm oranges, purples, laced with deep blues. And the morning has it’s shimmering, light golds, muted whites and low blues.

This morning, the sun is coming through my window. The gold light is dancing between the tree branches, reflecting the muted greens of leaves and casting light to the shadowed browns of tree bark.

The morning is probably my favorite light. It’s the light I chase the most. It seems to bring me the most peace. I don’t think i’ve ever regretted getting up for a sunrise, and if I knew I were to die tomorrow, I’d want to make sure I got to see one more before I departed earth.

It’s amazing what the colors of nature can bring. Whether you’re spiritual or not, they bring their own spiritual experience to any moment, and the world would be bleak without them. Colorless.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Don’t forget sunrise. The best entertainment. It’s new every day.

A Prayer of a Human

What is it to be human?

SOUL
Stuck in a sack of meat and bone

MIND
Out of control

BODY
Exposed and vulnerable

From infant to son to man,
growing and adapting,
learning and influenced,
so much out of our own will.

God, save me. Save us.
Be our God and Savior.
The King of our souls, minds and bodies.

- Cliff

Cliff’s Note: A prayer does not fall deaf on a living God.

Power

This life is not about power.
It is, in the sense that those in power control it, but it is not in the sense that power is fleeting.

Money is power, and money changes hands.
Strength is power, and strength grows old.
Fame is power, and fame fades.

One day, the last will be first, and the first will be last. That day may be a death bed, but it is a Truth we hold to as power corrupts and while the. mean suffer.

Yet may there be unity in our weakness, as two are stronger than one, and as there is power in being together.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Do not seek power here, but see power in the creation that is around you, and let that power leave you in awe of the Eternal.

Stuff

I have a lot of stuff.

I have stuff on shelves, stuff in cabinets and stuff tucked away in closets.

Some stuff has been used before, but won’t be used again. Some stuff is used often. Some stuff will never see the light of day, until it’s time to move it from one place to another. It’s just kept around for keeping.

My stuff isn’t to the level of some. I don’t have a storage unit full of things representing a past life, and at this point, our attic is empty. Yet, I still have so much. Some would say too much. And I know I have a lot when I have to use the word “stuff” instead of specifics.

I was looking at all of this stuff this morning after I read about one of the richest men on earth coming face to face with his Creator. The wealthy man, perfect by anyone else’s optics, asked what he needed to do to inherit eternity. His Creator told him he had to give his wealth of accumulations away to the poor and to follow the Creator toward a new life of freedom from possessions and worldly stability. Upon hearing the news, the man wept and went away because he couldn’t give it up.

And I wonder if I would also be that man.

How tightly do I cling to things? My stuff.
The stuff on my shelves?
The stuff in my cabinets?
The stuff in my closet?

Could I give it away if the Creator of the world stood toe to toe with me and asked me to give it all up?
Could you?

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: ‘Hold on loosely’ to the things of earth, but how in my heart when it has no hands, but instead has soul-ties, which seem to cling ever-more tightly.

Reflections from Matthew 16

Though we are Loved,
we are not perfect.

Though we are Disciplined,
we are not hated.

In God’s eyes,
we are worth the work.

In human eyes,
we give up on each other.

We may never understand our Creator’s view.
We are limited by our human nature.
But may the Creator help us in our greatest need:
May we see one another through Creation’s eyes.

-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Perspective is almost everything.

Tired

When I am tired, what will I do? What will I say to myself? What will I say to God?

When death takes life.
When I’m sinking.
When I am out of food.

I will call on the Name of the Lord. I will tell Him my needs, and I will find peace in my time with Him. He will tell me He is enough.

He has mourned with me.
He gives me strength to stand.
He feeds me and provides for all of our needs.

Amen.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: I am tired, and so was He
Reflections on the book of Matthew from chapter 14.

Oppression Pains

My heart is heavy this morning.

I’ve been reading about how the country of Afghanistan was taken over by the Taliban, seemingly over night.

I don’t know much about the Taliban, other than it’s a Muslim group.

I also don’t know much about the situation, except that for the last 20 years, American has been in Afghanistan, ever since Sept. 11, 2001. I don’t know if we have been bringing war to that country over that score of years, or if we have been bringing peace, but America has been there, and now that American is not there, the Taliban is once in control.

Maybe that’s what the country wants. Maybe Afghanistan wants to be run and governed by people from the East, not the West. But maybe they don’t. Does the Taliban bring oppression? Or do they promote freedom? All I can read is the American-side of the story, which seems bleak.

It’s strange how something so far removed from oneself can have such an emotional impact. I remember when my country moved into Afghanistan. I was in fourth grade, and 9/11 had just happened. From my perspective, we went over to help the people after the Taliban inflicted much damage in America. But who knows if that’s how they people saw it.

All I know is, my heart hurts for oppression, and my prayer is that these people will not be oppressed under this new leadership. My hope is not in American justice, or that America always has the right answer and executes it in all the right ways. My hope is in a God of justice and that one day we will all be free from oppression, war and pain.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: We do not always know what is best or what is right, but hope in what is True and what is in Love.

Potential

I have a haircut scheduled for today at noon. I’m going to a new barber at an old shop because my old barber stopped working there.

My old barber had some personal issues come up that somewhat wrecked his life. He lost a marriage, the rights to see his kids every day and two jobs all in a matter of four weeks, and because of that, he has fallen off the grid. As anyone would be after all of that, he’s in a dark spot. He isn’t communicating with anyone, he’s making rash decisions, and he isn’t at all himself.

I made a decision to stop going my old barber because in all of that turmoil, he became unreliable, and I got frustrated.

In his pain, I was impatient. He couldn’t meet me when I wanted, time after time, so I went somewhere else, and I sit here wondering if that has been the wrong decision. Did I stop giving him a chance to redeem himself? Did I stop seeing all of the good work he had done for me for more than two years? Did I stop seeing his potential to overcome adversity?

People have potential. Even in our darkest times, we rise, work and have the opportunity to turn to light and goodness. And I hope my old barber digs deep and finds that potential, and that I have grace to see that in him and the world around me too.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: God sees more in people than people see in people - humanity’s potential.

Affirmation & Authority

“I never knew what I wanted to do when it was time for me to go to college.”

That could be the cry of the millennial generation, but it could also be true. It was for me.

Growing up, I rarely knew what I was good at. I felt affirmation through sport, but that was just about it. Rarely did I ever hear anything about excelling in a particular subject in school, and without that affirmation, i felt a lack of ability to capitalize on any certain subject or career field when it came time to move on to university.

I lacked authority, affirmation and acknowledgment.

This morning, I was reading about the time Jesus first called his 12 disciples together to send them out. It caught my attention that before giving them instructions on what to do, He gave them authority to do it. He instilled them with authority and power in who they were and who they were created to be. That felt important, and it felt like something I have lacked in my own life from teachers in the past.

Maybe you feel the same way, maybe you don’t, but whatever side of authority you sit in, use it to encourage, affirm and equip someone today. It could change a life and a future.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Share authority. Give Purpose.

Creator

This morning, I was reading about how the Creator desires mercy and desires for Creation to know the Creator more than anything - more than judgement, more than sacrifice, and more than rules or laws. As I sit here reflecting on that, I can’t help but notice how beautiful and peaceful that truth is.

I often get caught up in following the rules, myself. As a perfectionist, I find myself always wanting to color inside the lines. I find myself longing to be right, to be perfect.

But that is not our greatest calling.

Our greatest calling is to know our Creator, and that calling changes us all, all in different ways, just as we all get to know our Creator in different ways. And in our differences, we are somehow all drawn to the same Creator.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: It is strange how the Creator’s creation cannot know much at al about the Creator, but the more we learn, the more we grow.

Beauty in Difference

Humanity can be ugly, but isn’t it also beautiful?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how wonderful it is that no one looks the same. Not only are our races different, but also our faces, shapes and attributes. And that’s just on the physical side. We are possibly even more different on the inside, in soul and mind, than we are on the outside in flesh and bone.

When we were formed by our Creator, we were not formed lazily. We were not made as products are made on an assembly line, but instead, we were each made complexly. Our cells and our souls are unlike anyone else’s in time, past, present or future.

Humanity can often see these differences as dangerous and threatening, rather than unique and uniting. Don’t miss out on the beauty we were created to be as One Creation.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Red, yellow, black, white, tall, short, skinny, big, smart, funny, active, studious, bold or bashful - we are different, and that is incredible.

Agreeing to Disagree

I often find myself looking at the world around me saying, “I wish we could all work together. No one seems to agree on anything anymore.”

You probably have the same thoughts when you look at the world around you. Everyone is “doing it wrong,” and fighting about the right way to do it, whatever “it” is. And at this point in human history, this is to be expected. There are so many of us, each with our own ideas, beliefs and frameworks, but there are few ideas, beliefs and frameworks that are cohesive across the board.

I specifically struggle with this when I think about how many churches there, each with its own set of doctrine, belief and denominational affiliation. But the other day, I heard a quote that made me feel better.

“Disagreement and arguing are bound to happen when something is open to all, truly, all people. The rich and the poor. The black and the white. The left and the right. The American and the European. People who are hesitant and skeptical and people who are bold and confident. Those hungry to learn and those learned and knowledgable.”

Christianity, and all religion, are big. They are movements dealing with individual souls and beliefs, and we are but humans, while God sits on His thrown, in control and above all. Amen.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Unity is hard when movements are large.

Green

I am green. My youth haunts me and leaves me with a lack of life experience.
But I want to be evergreen. My desire for wisdom drives me and raises questions.

I want to stand out, as we all do. I want to make a difference, to help others, to be a bright spot in a cloudy world. I want to be the change that I desire for the world, and I want to leave people with a good taste in their mouth after they spend time with me. I want them to fill recharged, rested and known.

These wants are good; they are true. But still, I am green. My lack of wisdom keeps me from being who I want to be, not all the time, but some times.

And one day, we’ll all be evergreen, all the time.

-Cliff

Cliff’s note: Be light, be salt, be evergreen.

Peaches

When I was growing up, my grandma’s house had an orchard out in front of it. The orchard was full of apple trees, pear trees, peach trees and cherry trees. It was a always a sweet, green spot in the heat of the golden wheat fields of southwestern Oklahoma.

The trees in the orchard were hard to predict. Some years were better than others, and some fruits always produced better than others. There were always copious amounts of apples, and there were hardly ever more than a hand-full of peaches. But the peaches were my favorite. It was probably because they were the rarest and the juiciest. There are few things better than biting into a cool, juicy, fresh peach after mowing the yard on a 100 degree day.

I started thinking about my grandma’s orchard this morning because I was reading about spiritual fruit in the book of Galatians. There’s a passage of text that lists all of the good fruit and a passage of text that lists all the bad fruit. For some reason, the bad fruit always feels like the apples in my life - like there’s a lot of it. While the good fruit feels more like the peaches - rarer to see, but much sweeter.

I think we’re always hyper-critical of ourselves, and we typically see the worst in us, verse the best parts. That’s good at times, but this morning while I was reading and thinking about fruit, I felt like i should look for more good fruit in my life. It’s harder to see, but there’s bound to be plenty of it because God is good, and He gives us peaches, even when it seems like we’re standing in a forest of apples.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Pursue the good fruits.

Self-Reliance

The term “self-reliance” has been on my mind lately.

It seems like there is so much to do the older we get. We go from simple chore lists that include taking out the trash, mowing the lawn and getting our homework done on time to working 40+ hours/week, taking care of apartments or homes, providing for pets, kids or both and cultivating relationships through planning and events. Plus, you still have to find time to go to the grocery store, eat, budget and put out the other life fires that pop-up along the way.

And in all of that, self-reliance rears its head, telling us, “Get this done yourself.”

But then I catch myself reading in the book of Galatians, and the author talks about relying on Spirit, rather than ourselves alone, and that confuses me.

How does one does one do that, and what does it mean?
Does it mean only in a spiritual context of our souls, or does it mean more, even pertaining to life’s daily tasks?
How does one shift from feeling like all of life is dependent on oneself, into a feeling that life is actually more dependent on God’s provision?

I feel like shifting to that alternate mindset would make things easier and less stressful. Now, we just have to figure out how.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Maybe prayer & petition can position us in enough humility to not rely totally on ourselves.

Dying Earth

I grew up around a farm in Southwest Oklahoma. As a kid, I was surrounded by livestock, pasture and ponds teaming with fish, frogs, snacks and turtles. Nature was all around me.

I always loved the smell of the fresh hay stacks after a summer rain and feeling the warm, cool air rush past my skin with the gentle breezes that would blow across the fields.

But now, I’m told that all of these things are in danger, and until this morning, I’ve never taken those messages seriously or given them much thought.

I stumbled upon a podcast today from a theologian in the northern United States. He talks a lot about caring for our earth and how its changing, getting warmer and warmer each year due to what humanity has done to it. Apparently our fracking, drilling, burning and usage is doing harm, and one day, all of those things I grew up loving, have a chance to be gone for good or changed forever. And I don’t want that to happen.

I’m not sure what I can do to help, but I’m happy to at least be more aware. To have listened, heard and begin to understand what’s unfolding. That’s step one. We’ll see what step two is.

-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: God created the heavens and the earth, and they were good.

Broken Fascination

I’m surrounded by people consumed by devices, including myself. Some of the devices are tablets or computers, and others are cell phones. There are even a few books spread among the crowd.

People are listening to music, movies or audiobooks, and rarely does anyone speak.

All the windows are closed, keeping most of the light out, so it’s dark, as well as quiet, except for a low hum in the background.

This sounds normal in 2021, like any standard waiting room. Except it’s not normal because I’m 30,000 feet in the air in an airplane.

It’s strange how far humanity has come in the last 100 years. Our minds are no longer interested in the sites that a bird’s-eye-view can give us. Instead, we are transfixed by screens, pages and our eyelids. Flight no longer fascinates us. We close our windows and get mad at the person next to us who doesn’t. And reflecting on that saddens me.

It saddens me that being thousands of feet in the air in a multi-ton, metal vehicle no longer holds my interest, that watching the sunset over the mountains behind the Great Salt Lake is not as interesting to me as looking at a screen that I can look at any time.

What is life now that I am here? When will I stop to enjoy what is around me? When will Creation be enough, just as God spoke it to be?

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Sunsets > Screen time

Praying for Enemies

I spend the majority of my early morning drives in quiet. I use that time to think, pray and listen to the rest of the world be quiet around me. It’s one of the few times it feels like there is stillness in the air.

This morning while I was thinking and praying, I had a thought to pray for an enemy in my life, and immediately following that, an audible ‘nope’ came out of my mouth. I had a physical, negative reaction to the idea of praying for an enemy. After a few moments, it hit me - how sad is it that I have that sort of reaction to doing something that Jesus asks us to do?

To be honest, I’d never had the idea to pray for this enemy before, so I certainly felt caught off guard. But I also don’t know that I’ve spent much time praying for any of my enemies at all. I was convicted.

This morning’s prayer was possibly one of the hardest prayers I’ve ever had to pray. It felt uncomfortable in the moment, and for most of it, I was at a loss of even what to pray. But at the end, I felt relief, some healing and some peace with overcoming my ‘nope’ moment. It wasn’t a shining example of who we are called to be as followers of Christ, but it was pointing to a question: How often do I pray for my enemies, rather than just against them?

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: My enemies need prayer, and so do I.