Our Regatta Regalia

When I was frequenting a bakery cafe on Ohio State’s campus, there would often sit just a few feet from me the university’s women’s crew coaching staff and key leaders from the school’s national powerhouse rowing team. They met there regularly, seemingly to keep communications wide open in both directions and to minimize potential disruptions to team unity, focus and success. It was good leadership.

One morning, my attention tacked to “headwinds” at the table on my left. A younger member of this select group was wearing a t-shirt of another university, and seeing this, the coach kindly, but firmly took issue with the matter, emphasizing the student’s identity as a team member and educating her on the impact of the individual on the solidarity of the whole. I can’t say whether the rower learned anything that day, but I came away with a deeper appreciation of responsibility and resolve.

To be fair, it is easy to lose perspective in life, and course-corrections are often necessary. For instance, though the believers in Ephesus now belonged to the ultimate championship crew, the body of Christ, some still sported their old t-shirts of darkness—greed, impurity, and obscenity, in their case—inconsistent for the individual and confusing to the team. So, Paul reminded them of their new identity in Him whose jersey they now wore: “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light ...”¹

What do we wear in their place when we remove the uniforms of our past? Again, we look to Paul. Steering the Thessalonians also from the depths of darkness into the lanes of light, he emphasized self-control, embracing who they were in Christ and aligning their actions with their identity in Him. How? By “putting on faith and love ... and the hope of salvation.”² For when we really grasp what Jesus has done for us, when we openly accept for ourselves the deep love He has for us, we are overwhelmed to the point we eagerly discard the old and put on the new. Faith, hope and love—these are the team regalia that bind us together as we represent Christ in a watching world.

Father, thank you for saving me and giving me new and eternal life in Christ. Grace me to truly understand who He’s made me to be, and inspire me to live and to give in faith, hope and love. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Christ in me is freedom.

¹ Ephesians 5:8
² 1 Thessalonians 5:8

See today's Scripture in 1 Thessalonians 5:4-11. 

More thanks and fewer knots

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.  1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

When my sister turned 50, I wished her a happy birthday and added, “Welcome to the decade of ‘I wish I’d learned this 30 years ago!’” 

How awesome, yet humbling, the perspectives we gain and the understandings that congeal as the miles of our journey accumulate behind us.  We muse now and then about “what might have been” had we been a little wiser along the way, but we’ve learned by now not to wallow in regret – it does no good, a distraction at best.  Reflecting instead on God's faithfulness in our past, we more readily jettison our ways for his ways and relinquish our will to his will. 

Among the biggest lessons I’ve learned more recently is not to pray anxiously.  (It would have been so helpful to have “gotten this” years ago!)  For what does it say about trust when our tongue is faithful in petition but our stomach is knotted in doubt? 

We need to step back and ask, who is more faithful – us in our prayer, or God in his care?  Who is more caring – us in offering up the burdens of our hearts, or God who placed them there in the first place?  And which is more powerful – our anxiety, or God's authority? 

There is nothing new about praying anxiously; the temptation to fear and to doubt is a continual reminder of an ancient strain between a loving God and a rebellious people.  Surely, Paul’s exhortation two millennia ago still resounds today: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6).  He posits it not as a magic formula or an upward manipulation, but as an act of belief, relinquishment and celebration of our promise-keeping God.

So I’ve been trying it – praying and thanking God for hearing me and answering in a wisdom far greater than my own.  I must say it’s been exciting to trust God and to leave my burdens in his hands.  And thanking him for his unchanging faithfulness has brought me only peace. 

More thanks and fewer knots.  Why didn’t I learn this 30 years ago? 

Oh well, better late than never, right?