Yes, but...

In Luke 9, walking down the road with Jesus, one man said to Jesus, "I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."


Jesus said to another man, "Follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."... Still another man said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family."

Jesus calls out to all of us: follow me. And the response of most? Yes, Lord, but...

The first man says, "Yes, Jesus, that sounds nice. I want to do that. But I'm going to just go home, spend a few nice years with my aging father until he passes and then after that I'll come find you."

The second man responds, "Yes, ok, I will follow you, but let me go home and say some goodbyes first."

Are these requests outrageous? I don't think so. They are the pleas of people who love their family and want to get some things straightened out before they radically change their life, following a man who claims to be the Son of Man.

But Jesus calls us to follow him. And to follow him not carefully, not after meticulous planning, not when the time seems right, not when it is easy, not when we have dotted our "i's" and crossed our "t's".

In fact he warns us, "the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." He says that a life lead by him will not be comfortable or easy or cushy.

But he calls, nonetheless, to follow. To surrender. To yield. To be lead. NOW.

There are so many "yes, but..."s I have about following with the entirety of my life. Do you have "yes, but..."s? What would it look like for us to just simply say, "Yes, Lord, I will go."

Nouwen: In the Name of Jesus

It is entirely possible that I've spent more time in my bed in the last two days than I have in the last two weeks combined. I hate being sick. Hate, hate, hate it. But, on the bright side, the last 48 hours of feeling under the weather has allowed for time to read some good things and catch up on episodes of New Girl. Which, by the way, is hilarious.

Sometimes this blog expresses my own thoughts and sometimes not. One super short but quality read I just devoured is a compilation of reflections on Christian leadership and is called, "In the Name of Jesus" by one of my all-time favorites, Henri Nouwen. I will spare you of any of my Nicole-ish commentary and just provide some Nouwen nuggets that gave me cause for reflection. Enjoy!

If there is any focus that the Christian leader of the future will need, it is the discipline of dwelling in the presence of the One who keeps asking us, "Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?"... 

Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate Word, and to taste fully God's infinite goodness?... 

Their leadership must be rooted in permanent, intimate relationship with the incarnate Word, Jesus, and they need to find there the source for their words, advice and guidance... 

Without this, future leaders will be little more than pseudo-sociologists, pseudo-psychologists, pseudo-sociologists, pseudo-social workers...

Who am I?

As I prepare to wrap up a chapter of life- life in college, in a house of amazing friends, in Wisconsin- I have been challenged a lot to really ponder who I am. Gosh, that sounds dramatic and midlife-crisis-ish. And not unlike the scene in Zoolander when Derek Zoolander asks, "God, who am I?"

But, with this next season of life, a lot of my current roles and identities will change or disappear. And truthfully, in major ways I let what I do- how I spend my time and with whom I spend my time- dictate to myself who I am.

I've let the fact that I'm a student, a friend, a roommate, a daughter, a sister, a teammate, a Young Life leader, an AmeriCorps volunteer, a child advocate, a nanny, blah, blah, blah define who I am. I sometimes cannot see myself apart from these identities, these roles I've held for the past few years.

I just finished a book. But that isn't news to a lot of my roommates and friends. I've been talking non-stop for the past few days about "Love Does" by Bob Goff.

In part of one chapter, Goff writes about when the apostles go through the process of selecting a twelfth to be a part of their posse after Jesus dies and is resurrected to replace Judas.

After Jesus left, the ones who were following Him decided they needed to add another apostle to replace the bad Judas. The requirements were pretty straightforward: the replacement needed to have been with Jesus the whole time He was here, and he had to be a stand-up guy, too. There were two guys the apostles camp up with.

One was a guy named Matthias, and the other was a guy nicknamed Justus. I'm not sure how they cast lots back they. Honestly, it sounds a lot like rock, paper, scissors to me. Somehow, however, they picked Matthias. He got the nod and has been in every stained-glass window from then on. But I've always wondered, what happened to Justus? We never hear about him again, yet he did all the right things, saw all the right stuff, knew who Jesus was, and was a faithful guy.

The thing is, "Justus" sounds a lot to me like "just us". God's plans are full of just-us kind of people. I would say probably the majority of us are just-us people, folks who don't get capes or stained-glass windows. We just get the opportunity to do what God wants us to do without a lot of fanfare.

Even though he lost rock, paper, scissors, I bet Justus was one of those secretly incredible guys who kept on being incredible. We get the same shot....

Although not Goff's point at all with this passage, this little snippet stuck out to me as a reminder that we are called to be like Justus- simply to be obedient and full of love. No matter what. No matter what titles we may or may not hold, no matter what roles we've been asked to take on. No matter if we have "capes" or "stained-glass windows" to tell us or others who we are.

So regardless of what roles and identities I'll soon be leaving behind and what new ones I'll soon step into, I really just want to be like Justus. I want to be someone who spends time with Jesus. I want to be a "stand-up guy". I want to be a "just us" kind of person. I want to be perhaps a secret, unidentified doer and lover.