So where is your centre?

     Who decides where it is?

     Do you get pushed and pulled away from it?

     Moms understand this. I’ve watched the demands of motherhood on my wonderful and patient wife Erin for years. Always trying to balance fifty demands on her time at once. It’s never easy. From school to diapers to lunches to her relationship with Jesus to work in the church to her friends to community volunteering to taking care of the bigger kid (me) to homework to four daughters crying at once to…to….to….

     If a mom isn’t careful she starts to lose her way and her centre actually gets pulled in the direction of her responsibilities.

     How does it look to you? The role of mother is only one of Erin’s roles. You have many hats that you wear too. Life is busy and life is complicated… Do you have a centre that you always come back to? Are you even comfortable in your own skin? Maybe you’re trying to use your mom’s centre? Good luck with that…

     Sir Winston Churchill’s reply to a woman who accused him of having had too much to drink: “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”

     Wow. He was certainly comfortable in his own skin.

     Question: does life happen to you? Or do you happen to life?

     Mr. Churchill had every reason in life for his centre to be pulled askew. Decades in politics. War. Unbelievable pressure over such extended periods of time. How many people could live like that? He had his share of blunders. The Treasury wasn’t really the place for him and the budget he once introduced nearly sunk the economy. He bounced back in typical style and even remarked later in life “everyone said that I was the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever was. And now I’m inclined to agree with them. So now the world’s unanimous.” (John Pearson in The Private Lives of Winston Churchill).

      His centre helped him bounce back.

     King Saul in the Bible had a centre that shifted to suit the pressures he was under. Things happened to him. Goliath happened to him. The Philistines happened to him. Even David happened to him. Saul rarely happened to anything. Except the one time early in his kingship…

     Nahash the Ammonite King was putting out the right eyes of the Israelites on the east side of the Jordan River. Seven thousand men escaped to Jabesh Gilead. Nahash pursued them there and said “I’m baaaaaacccckkkkk!!!”

     King Saul flies into a rage when he hears the report. He did what leaders have to do sometimes: he lost his mind on the state of his world. He simply could not believe both the report and his people’s reaction to it. They were expending all this energy mourning and crying and carrying on, yet weren’t going to lift a finger to save their brothers. What did he do? He chopped up some oxen and sent a very scary message to the Tribes letting them know very clearly that they were going to come, one and all, to his “invitation” and fight for their brothers. He threatened to come destroy their oxen if they wouldn’t. Remember the times they lived in before you go and freak out because of cruelty to animals. He had to save his people. At any cost.

     And he did. He amassed an army of 330,000 and destroyed Nahash. Because that’s what great leaders do.

     What happened to King Saul?

     What happened to you?

     You never used to have your centre so affected by circumstance and what other people thought about you. You used to come back to the middle. But maybe that was before the pressure started to rise in your life?

     If your centre is decided by anything or anyone that can change….IT WILL!

     Your husband shouldn’t decide your centre. Neither should your kids. Neither should you. Temporal things do what they always do in a broken world, they disappoint. Your mom will disappoint you. Your kids. Your wife. Your friends. Your school. Your work. Heck, you will disappoint you. If you have never let yourself down, I want whatever you’re on! (That should get me an interesting email or two…)

     What if… there actually was a God who made you and knows you and still loves you? What if you set up shop around what He thought about you? He thinks you’re of immense value! He believes in you! He also won’t let you get away with acting like a selfish idiot!

     What if… you built your house on the Rock? Not the wrestler, but who the bible calls the Rock: Jesus. (You couldn’t actually build a house on the wrestler, and he wouldn’t want you to… probably…I’ve never met him). Not build on Jesus the human, but on what Jesus thinks and says about you?

     What if… you finally crossed the line and put Him in charge of your centre? I’ll bet He’d do a better job of it than you do, than your mom does. The storms come and the storms go, but a house built on the Rock stands.

     “Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever”. I like that much better.

     Back to Sir Winston: “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.”

Will you?