Russellings of the Spirit

I got a little bit of a scare the other day.

As I was driving back home after having spent the day in the two small communities where I serve, I noticed a bit of weariness beginning to set in. The old eyelids drooped a little and fogginess slowly began to enter my brain.

Instead of doing the smart thing and pulling off the highway for a couple of minutes to get out of the car, walk around, and revive myself a bit, I decided just to grit my teeth and push on. You know… the manly way.

Suddenly I heard a loud BRRRP, BRRRP BRRRP as the wheels of my car started rolling across the rumble strips that are cut into the shoulder of the highway. I sat up with a start, corrected my steering wheel, and got back into my lane.

WHEW! That was close, I thought to myself. And yes… I did pull off the next exit and walked around the car three times to help wake myself up.

In addition to vowing to be more cognizant about my overall state of alertness, I was also struck by how quickly and easily this whole thing had happened. One minute I was just driving along the highway, happy as a clam. The next minute I was headed for the ditch.

The change from “focused, purposeful driving” to “unconscious, aimless drifting” took less than an instant.

All of which made me cock my head a little to the right, knit my eyebrows together, and then ask myself, “Is it possible that there are other areas of my life where a degree of DRIFT has also begun to happen… except that there are no ‘rumble strips’ to warn me about it?”

Drift is a tricky thing to pick up. By definition, the act of drifting is slow and gradual. It is not at all like suddenly yanking the wheel to the left and abruptly changing direction.

It happens almost without noticing.

Drift can happen in many different areas. It can happen in our important relationships… such as when we start taking a spouse or loved one a little bit for granted… when we stop noticing or commenting on the small, yet important differences they make in our daily life… when we stop thanking them for the micro-favors they do for us, or the subtle change they made in their appearance.

Drift can happen in the way we tend to our own health. “What the heck,” we say. “A little extra helping of this is no big deal. I’ll work it off later.” Or, “Yes, I know I really should walk there, but I’m in a hurry so I’ll just hop in the car and drive.”

Or it can happen in the 1,001 little reasons we can ingeniously invent to avoid exercise yet again today.

And if you – like me – have been a practicing Christ-follower for more than a few years, you know how easily we can begin drifting in our faith.

We get comfortable. For the most part, those of us who profess Christ are not persecuted for our belief. We stand as the dominant expression of religious faith in our culture. We don’t have to arrange secret meeting places and code words in order to gather for worship.

And so… in our comfort, we drift.

We get tired. Or even bored. We celebrate the same holy days, observe the same liturgical seasons, say the same prayers, read the same scripture passages and – mostly – hang out with the same people in our places of worship.

And so… in our boredom, we drift.

We get proud. We fall in love with our place of dominance and start to feel a sense of moral superiority about being a Christian. We sing praise songs with titles like, “How Great is Our God,” and add our own little, “He’s lots better than yours,” to the end. We honestly can’t believe that people would NOT be a part of our faith, or would purposely choose to practice something else.

And so… in our pride, we drift.

Paul Simon sang about drift in his famous 1982 song, Slip Sliding Away. He said, “The nearer your destination, the more you’re slip sliding away.”

John the Revelator wrote about the phenomenon of drift in a little more direct, less lyrical way. He said, “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” (Revelation 3:15-17, NRSV).

And so, just like last year and the year before and the year before that, we again stand in the middle of the season of Lent. We’ve been told a thousand times before that Lent is the season of renewal and repentance… a time to “wake ourselves up” and shake some new life into our relationship with God.

And we generally respond to that urging by saying, “Sure. OK. Great idea.” And we then go right back to checking to see what’s for dinner tonight.

day I am praying that God might help me hear the “rumble strips” in my life and jar me into aliveness and alertness and into “focused, purposeful driving” in my discipleship.

How about you?

Abundant blessings…