Rules for Living Life, Part 7

Growing up, my compulsively sarcastic and morbidly ironic friends and I created a number of off-center mental games.  One of them was called the “Wish Game.” This game was loosely based on genie folklore and it worked by having someone supply a wish and then the rest of us would suggest how a genie could grant the wish in a way that was actually bad.

As an example, the game may start with: “I wish I was the most beautiful person in the world!” and then the peanut gallery would chime in with:

“To yourself.”

“In your own opinion.”

“To dogs.”

Then the group would vote on which was the best (read: worst) way the genie could grant your wish. In this case, my peer group would have definitely selected, “to yourself” as the winner since it conjures up a mythical connection to Narcissus staring lovingly at his own reflection for years at a time.

But I digress…

Today’s rule is a little like a round of the Wish Game. On the surface, it seems like a universally good and natural thing but the second half of the rule throws down the challenge. This is my hardest rule to practice in daily life. Rule #7: Ask for what you want, accept what you get. Asking keeps you focused but God’s plan is better.

In case this is the first blog of this series you are reading, this is a series of posts based on a set of rules I put together for living my life.  These rules were created by merging a set of secular rules with my understanding of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.  If you missed the previous seven blogs in the series, you can start at the beginning of this series here.

This rule is challenging for me because I have a predilection towards asking for what I want. As a society, we Americans DEMAND what we want, and we expect to get it. We live in a culture driven by immediate gratification, instant access, unlimited potential, and unrealistic expectations. On one hand it seems almost sacrilegious to associate the concept of asking for what you want with the teachings of Jesus. And it certainly seems unnecessary to remind the average American that they should be asking for their own, personalized life experience.  So why this rule?

Because of the rule’s second half: accept what you get.

But what if I what I get does not match with what I asked for?

Accept it.

But what if what I get is less than what someone else gets?

Accept it.

But what if what I am getting is not enough?

Accept it, because it is.

This rule also has one of my favorite explanatory statements: Asking keeps you focused, but God’s plan is better.  This explanatory statement highlights the reasons why you ask (to keep you focused on what you want) while at the same time reminding you why you are not guaranteed your every whim and why maybe what you DO get actually works out better in the end.

Although this rule sits nestled next to Rule #6: Take time to pray, I want to be clear that this rule is not exclusively tied to prayer. This rule pertains to every aspect of life, just like the rules before.

So why did I feel the need for this rule?

Looking at the set of rules as a holistic way to live life, this becomes very important. As you act from a place of agape love, live humbly, and look for ways to lead from your knees, there is an inherent bias that builds up and you start to lose track of yourself. You pray, you teach, and you learn from those around you, but if you lose focus on the ultimate goal of your life, your purpose, then you will lose the motivation to continue.

When you feel lost or depressed, you need to ask yourself what you are working towards. You need to ask yourself what you want. You need to ask what your heart desires. And then you need to accept what you receive.

There is also danger that when you expect an outcome that fails to materialize, you miss the beauty of what you did receive. So you missed a flight, but did you talk to the really amazing person next to you on the next one? So you failed to land your dream job, what can you do with the job you did get? So you had to move away from your family, how many new friends can you make? Focusing on bad outcomes causes you to miss the opportunities in front of you and potentially even critical pieces of your life-puzzle. Staying focused on acceptance keeps you looking for those silver linings.

Each of these rules requires faith – none more so than this one. This rule requires faith that what you receive is exactly what you need when you need it.  Faith that you are not being short-changed. And faith that you are working towards your ultimate purpose even when you seem to be heading in the wrong direction.

And this faith, this asking, and the acceptance of and gratitude for what you have received stems directly from one of Jesus’ most popular sermons: the Sermon on the Mount. We are compelled to seek and told we will find. We are told we will be cared for and promised our needs will be met.  We are not promised that we will find exactly what we seek or that our needs will be met to the level we wish they were.

We are just reminded that asking keeps you focused, but God’s plan is better.

And remember: we’re all walking through a darkened city at night with a penlight. None of us are seeing more than a small piece of the landscape…