To whom do we cry out?

(A letter to a friend. A musician)

The single most determinative decision you, we, face in the course of our lives is this: "who is running the show?"

The simple man's hack for figuring out where we stand on that is this: "to whom do I defer?"

An example from your own experience could be a music gig. You know who's running the show (and it ain't you, usually). The person who IS running it gives you a limited role to play. You accept your role. He expects you to bring certain things to the show, and, equally important, leave other things behind. And you do. Because you have assented to the idea that you have been given a supporting role to play, under the leadership, direction and authority of someone else.

It is a model that works. Until one of a few things happens.
A. You lose confidence in the ability of the band leader.
B. You assume your own abilities to be superior, and step out of your role.
C. You bring things to the show that prevent you from playing your part.

You, of all people I know, fit into that model well when show time comes. "Why," is the question. Well, because you understand and assent to a few things. Beginning with "this show may not mean that much to ME, but it means something to somebody else, and I respect THAT at the very least." Thus you find purpose in playing a 2-bit Recliners show, regardless of the fact that it doesn't, at the time, carry much meaning for you.

But then a strange thing happens as we accept the role, let go, for a few hours, of the things in our hands so that we can play our instrument, and dig in to something because we accept that it means something to someone else: we begin, slowly, to identify some purpose, some love, some joy for ourselves along the way.

Now, with you, I have no need of performing the obligatory drawing of the connecting lines between the dots here.

As a toddler I carried my burdens to my mother (loudly) because I assented to the idea that she ran the show. As a young man I carried them to my father, for the same reason. As a young adult, I struggled as I tried to run MY show. And I got all the associated beat-downs. As an old, fat-man, I assented to the idea that I STILL don't run this show. It is not MY show. I have been granted the opportunity to play a back-line role in it. I defer to the band leader on a regular basis.

I will leave you with a couple other thoughts. Quite a few years back, King Solomon made a public prayer/dedication of the temple for Israel. In part of it he said "When there is famine in the land, pestilence or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers; when their enemies besiege them in the land of their cities; whatever plague or whatever sickness there is; whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, when each one knows his own burden and his own grief, and spreads out his hands to this temple: then hear from heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart You know (for You alone know the hearts of the sons of men), that they may fear You, to walk in Your ways as long as they live in the land which You gave to our fathers."

Note the PURPOSE of his request: "that they may fear You." The temple wasn't the band leader. It was merely a stage upon which God displayed Himself to his people. Not too many years later, a unique descendant of King Solomon said "Come to me, all you with heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." Its not MY show to run. I cannot run it, anyway. Above my pay-grade. But I can play my part, and ultimately find purpose, love and joy in it.

Just a few short years later, a Pharisee (whom Jesus had referred to as son of the devil), who was committed to the persecution of any who assented to Jesus as the one running the show, was stricken blind as he walked the road to Damascus, probably thinking to himself along the way that HE was running the show. He assented to a different idea. Toward the end of his life he wrote to Timothy that "I am being poured out."

Consider the perspective necessary for that statement. He could have looked back on all of the self-induced, as well the unjust suffering he had endured, and seen them as unwelcomed defects in what should have been HIS perfect show. But he didn't see it that way. It wasn't his show. It may not have had meaning and purpose for him at first. But He set aside the burdens of his own show, and played his part. And he eventually found the joy in having been poured out on stage under someone else's direction.