live better

It seems like every time I am away somewhere, I find myself thinking about what it would be like to live there.

So, here I am on Oahu thinking about buying a little restaurant, living in a shack, marrying a hula-girl (you should have seen them dancing at the luau!!!), laying about in the sun, and soaking up the islands for the next 40 years. This fantasy typically starts with me growing a church, but quickly changes to a non-ministry vocation. After all, it is my fantasy and dreaming about doing more of the same isn’t much of an escape. In my imagination, I am able to be perfectly content sitting on a porch all day whiling away the hours. And I have no doubt that I would be content – for about 3 months, maybe less.

The attractive part of all this certainly has something to do with the location. Oahu is gorgeous, Rwanda is breathtaking, Salida is a gas, but even these places where I have dreamed of living would lose their allure if I lived there the way I live at home. In the end, it isn’t the location or the vocation – it is the approach to life that makes the grass appear greener.

If I am honest, the very happiest I have been in my entire life was a summer spent preaching camp after camp. I got up every morning to share devotional thoughts with the campers. I worked out, ran until I dropped, laid in the sun, swam for an hour, took a nap, and finally worked on my sermon a little before dinner. Each night I would preach for an hour or so. By the end of summer, I was fit, tan, in the Word, and had played a part in making an eternal difference in the lives of the young people who journeyed with us.

I also know that the last four years have brought me more satisfaction and joy than any other period in my life. God made me to preach and lead a church – this much I have discovered and that discovery has brought me a kind of contentment that trumps happiness.

In the end, I don’t want to live somewhere else – even if it is paradise. But I do want to live better at home. I want to live better. I want to slow myself down, to find contentment in conversation, to find the time to just lie in the sun for an hour. I’m really not sure if even these simple goals are actually achievable. It seems that there is always so much to do and so many people expecting so much. Ultimately though, I know I am responsible for living on the ragged edge of brownout and I am equally responsible for finding a way to live better.

I will tell you one thing, I am supremely grateful for my friends Sam and Shan who gave me a gift of this time away with them and to take a deep breath and inhale some much needed rest and the perspective that comes with it.