Hearty- (as in "That was a hearty meal.")
Again, I really don't know what I have against this word...I just can't stand to hear it spoken, and, in fact, to even think about it is, to me, the equivalent of fingernails on a chalk board.
Now to the new post...sorry about the elapsed time in between!
Have you ever been in a situation where in an instant you just begin to sweat...where one second the temperature in the room goes from fine to seemingly sweat-inducing hot? The other night I had such a moment. Let me say before I go any further, I enjoy good hygiene (my own and especially that of others that I come in sniffing distance of!), but I am not "metro"...if you don't know what "metro" is then that's okay, you won't accuse me of being what you don't know...if you do know what "metro" is and you know me, you know that you probably have not used that adjective or tag to describe me. With that out of the way, I've been getting tired of having to deal with my hair lately. I have more cowlicks than a salt-block in a pasture in south Georgia, without gel I fro, and when grown longer I resemble a hybrid between my dad and Elvis. So, the other night, I decided to go short...clipper short. The next night, I came home and as I was looking in the mirror, I saw that there was a small area on the side of my head that was a little bit longer, so I decided to take care of it. Simple, good idea. Bad idea to "take care of it" forgetting that the guard was not on the clippers! This is the point that my sweat glands went to DEFCON 1 alert status! Once you "take care of" a patch of hair without the guard on, there's no turning back. As I write this, my scalp is exposed to nature's elements! I must say, that I have never really seen my scalp in full like this before. I have discovered that I do have a nicely shaped head, though! My dilemma now, every morning, is the question of do I use more face wash to scrub my entire cranium, or do I use the same amount and couple that with shampoo just for the sake of principle...I have chosen the extra-face-wash-route. To the surprise of all, I kind of like it...one less thing to worry about! At the very worst, I have a funny story!
My greatest long term fear is to look back on life and have no interesting, significant, world-changing story to tell. Looking back through Hebrews 11, which is tagged as "The Hall of Faith" chapter (which if really understood, should be tagged as "The Chapter About People Who Should Not Even Be in Scripture Had It Not Been Because of Their Faith in God") is all about people that had no earthly qualifications to change their world in their day...Abel (second born and therefore would not receive the family inheritance and blessing), Enoch (not much known about this man), Noah (old and hardly a boat-maker in the desert), Abraham (do you really think that God called him to move because of his extraordinary ability to walk long distances to unknown places on the senior circuit?)...and on and on. Hebrews 11 is filled, not necessarily with people, but the faith/risk lives of these people in their God. In other words, we know these people by their faith (the way they lived), and by their faith (the way they lived), we know their God. Their faith was not a "sit in a chair or a pew and raise your hand and affirm a religious belief" type of faith, but rather their faith was life on the move...uncaged, unsafe, non-prudent, not boring.
Isn't is strange that we trust God to take care of us when we die, but fail to trust God to take care of us as we live...and I do not say "take care of us as we live" in meaning "devoid of pain and suffering, skipping down the yellow-brick road." We must understand that there is a stark difference between existence and significance...without living faith/risk in God day-by-day, moment-by-moment we are confined to our own natural limitations and will inevitably find ourselves existing...because, let's face it: we really have nothing to bring to the table that changes history in and of ourselves! But through faith/risk in God, we are set free to unlimited possibilities because we are empowered by all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere-present God.
In the years to come, when someone asks me about my story, I pray that it will be a little bit more than school, marriage, home, work, a the best chili dog I ever ate...I pray that it will be a story about exchanging the limited for the limitless, a story that is not caged, not safe, not prudent, not boring...shaved head and all!
