Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible For Helping

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos. Great Britain: Penguin Random House, 2018. Rule 2: Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible For Helping – part 2 pp. 31-44

Opening Thought: Well, we are on to rule two. I was eager to dive into this rule, and then I read the first few paragraphs. My eagerness was traded for a minor pessimism which occurred when Peterson laid out a sad truth about humanity: if 100 people were given a prescription by their doctor, on average 1/3 of them would not fill the prescription at all. Out of the remaining two-thirds who did fill the prescription, half of those people would not take the prescription as prescribed. Peterson makes that stark point that people will often not care for themselves as they would others, citing later that people often take care of pets better than themselves. My optimistic drive thought well maybe it is because people are more selfless than we give them credit for, sacrificing the energy and time to care for themselves, to care for others. But this is a big leap on my part, sure it could be said this was the odd case, but like the oxygen mask on an airplane when an emergency occurs, it is better to make sure your health is being cared for first, so you can better care for others in the long run. If people did have the ambition to care for others, they would logically care for themselves so they could be their best selves for others. At least you would think. Rather than the selfless argument to try to understand why so many people don’t take care of themselves, I think there are likely a variety of reasons: depression, anxiety, fear, laziness, forgetfulness, and chaos.

Opening Prayer: Lord of all goodness, heal us from our lack of care. We can withhold care from others and ourselves. Help us to see that if we wish to walk the path of Jesus, we need to do our best to be sound in body, mind, and spirit, always trying to do our best to give our entire being to your mission. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Reflection: Having looked at the first half of the description of rule two, I see Peterson echoing the first rule, stand up straight with your shoulders back, but narrowing the scope enough to say, “there is a particular way to do this.” The clear and obvious first step is to make sure that you are healthy enough to effectively walk into a world of chaos. Peterson does begin to outline, in both material and spiritual sense, the truth of the world, that the world is made up of a juxtaposition of “order” and “chaos”. And as a result, we must navigate the thin pathway between these two element realities of life. If we move too far to order, life becomes stagnate and we can become the victims of tyranny, if we move too far into chaos, the world will make no sense, and we will be at the whim of monsters. Balance is key, and as a result, we must use whatever tools we have to keep a balance. If you were walking on a tightrope, you would take a pole out with you to aid you in your balance. And if you were ill, you would take your medicine.

What it comes down to, is that if you want to have the fortitude that goes along with walking straight with your shoulders back, you must be willing to put in the work which supports that posture. You must be willing to do whatever care you need to ensure that you are your best self, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Otherwise, the chaos of the world will challenge your uprightness, and what will you have to help you hold your ground?    

Scripture Brought to Mind: Matthew 7:14 & John 14:6

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. & I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

When it comes to the Biblical connection to this idea of a narrow pathway, we must always assume that it reflects upon two things: what God calls us to do, hold to the moral law, and how we are saved from our shortcomings, which is to repent and trust in Jesus.

So, we are navigating the narrow path of salvation, we are called to a moral law, justice (order) and because we are subject to chaos, we need to find the salvation from that, God’s mercy (chaos). The interesting thing here is we see that the juxtaposition of order and chaos within God’s will is healthy, it becomes justice and mercy, tenants to God’s over compassing reality of love. Justice calls us to live rightly by one true ultimate standard, and mercy allows for variance, as the individual with free will seeks to choose that standard for themselves.

The boundaries beyond this narrow pathway do not work. For if the order of justice was forced into humanity and negated free will, we would be robots. Love could not exist because we could not choose it, and love must be freely chosen, or it is not love. We could also not completely move to mercy, for if we did not repent and trust in Jesus to unite us with God’s will, and we just kept living in sin, we would become so distant from God, and so eternally looking inward, we could not live in communion with the Source of All.

The narrow road must be narrow because it is the only thing that produces authentic love for God, neighbor, and self.

Continual Work: Reflect on "the road" or "path" which Jesus calls us to follow him on. It is a road on which we must seek justice, follow the moral law, resist evil and repent upon our mistakes. It is not a journey with many paths, rather one road. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: There is a term used in ministry life, “self-care”. It is a struggle for many people in ministry to remember that we too are people who need time to heal and rest, we too are people who need to take our medicine, we too are people who need to care for ourselves as we would care for others.  

Prayer for your week: God, help us this week to walk the road less traveled, the road which spells out your love for us. Remind us that you gave us a law upon our heart, and a savior to hold our hand. We have all we need to do the good work you call us to do, in the great faith shared in the gospel. Amen.

Artistic Close: Sometimes the narrow roads, are the most beautiful