passion

Things that I love to do:

• Run
• Fix broken things
• Read stories of heroism
• Preach
• Pray
• Play ultimate
  
• Talk with friends long into the night (food and beverage included)

What prevents me from doing these things:

• Laziness and injury
• No time
• Apathy
• Lack of opportunity
• Unsettled feelings about God. Fear of His presence. Lack of discipline.
• Time/Season
• Ruts and routines

It takes effort to do what I love. It takes time. Planning. Prioritization. Discipline.

I often believe that the things that I love to do are simply going to happen. That I will do what I love naturally. That frisbee, or prayer, or good stories happen as naturally as breathing. They don't. Friends have to be called. I have to choose to pray. I have to turn off the TV and open the book.

I will lament lack of passion. I will treat it like a sickness that just happened to me. But I am not sure that this is accurate or true. I think that lack of passion is something that I choose. I choose to live life less fully. I choose to be less engaged with God, my friends, my wife, my own body. I trade the things of life for things that are easy.

Passion is a gift. But I don't think it is a gift the way that a toy wagon is a gift. A toy wagon can sit in the garage for months and years at a time. But when you take that wagon out, the wagon is going to work. The wheels will turn and treasure can be stacked in the bed of the wagon. I think that passion is more like a plant. It must be watered and nurtured. It needs light to feed it. It has needs, wagon's don't have needs. Without the food it needs, passion begins to wilt. Too long without food and passion dies.

The celebration of Easter is a celebration of resurrection. Christians get to live out a crazy belief that things need to die in order to live and that nothing that finds itself dead has to stay dead. One of the things that I get to see consistently happen in the lives of students I work with is that they go away on retreats and resurrection happens in their hearts. The passion plant comes back to life and blooms again.

My prayer in this last week leading to Easter is that God would resurrect my passion plant and that I would learn that it doesn't belong in my garage, but in my window. I want that which gives me life to be exposed more fully to light and I am thankful for a God that gives me all the chances I need to learn this lesson.