Commitment

Today could have been the best day of my life, but it wasn’t. It was one of those times when commitment was needed, and it just wasn’t there. Today was the Seahawks’ parade.

I was ambivalent about going from the start. I had two motivations. The first was simply that I “should go.” It is a big deal community event, and it may never happen again, so I “should just go.” The second was that I should take my daughter. I think she was motivated to go by the fact that she is 14 and she had been given the day off from school. Imagine going back to school and not having gone! So I announced I would accompany her and her friend to the parade. This did not go over well at all. Bad start. I tried to explain myself… “It has to do with crowds,” I said. “They make me nervous”. Twice in my life I have been in crowds that have turned into mobs. They become scary, uncontrollable beasts. Sure this is Seattle, but remember the WTO talks in 1999?

The above decisions weren’t even considered until Wednesday morning. Already the radio was full of announcements about packed buses, blocked streets, and people lining the parade route. I spurred my daughter on. If we were going to make the 11AM start (ha ha ha), we needed to get out the door.

It just got worse from there. Here is the point: There was no up-front commitment, and so there was no decent preparation and no adequate build-up of excitement. This must be what it feels like to go to church on Easter, having decided Easter morning to do so. Commitment counts, whether to be part of a great day in Seahawk history or to lose weight or to grow on one’s spiritual journey. When we commit to something, we prepare and plan and anticipate, and then more thoroughly enjoy the experience and get more out of it. Imagine how much fun it could have been standing on 4th Avenue with a thermos of hot chocolate, six layers of clothes and warm boots, covered in Seahawks’ paraphernalia, and then knowing the names of the players I actually waved to!!! Super cool, it would have been, if I had been committed.

Jesus understands commitment. He says it this way… “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matt 13:45). Talk about commitment. Here is another Jesus saying… “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys the field” (Matt 13:44). Talk about commitment.

Are we living a committed life or are we showing up to the Seahawks’ parade in flip-flops drinking a slushy?

Usually what keeps us from commitment is a long series of decisions made that have nothing to do with who we are or what we are made to do. We are set on the treadmill, pointed toward goals made by someone else, for some other reason.

Here is the fear… if we get off the treadmill we’ll die or go broke or let our kids down or -- fill in the blank ___________.

Love is bigger than that. God is too committed to us to let that happen. After all, as Paul writes in Romans, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom 14:8). Church is the place that reminds us of this love. It is the place that reinforces the reality of God’s commitment. Grab it and go for it. Throw yourself at that pearl of great price! Buy the field! For when you do, you will find yourself smack-dab in the middle of the kingdom of heaven, maybe in the middle of a parade.


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