Every morning that I don’t have to go to work I go through a battle with gravity.  With no alarm and no justification for getting out of the bed, I find myself struggling to get up.  It’s always the same thing. First I wake up and notice that it’s somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30 AM.  My instincts tell me to get up and start giving.  I start thinking about blog posts I can write, videos I can create, people I can serve by just listening, or the prayers I can offer up. Every thought inside me says “get up and work for your breath”, but every cell tells me to take a break.

I reflect on Love and the Way it commands us to live our lives when we choose to surrender to it.  I think about the instructions that I will give my daughter some day and I think of how important my example will be.  Then I think about how tired I feel.  I think about the idea that I don’t even know if people even get anything out of the blog. I tell myself that thinking about writing is almost the same thing as doing it.  “At least I’m going in the right direction”, I say to myself.  And then I think about all of the people who overcame gravity for my sake.  There are too many to count.  What if they made my excuses.  Where would I be?  Where would any of us be?  I think these thoughts and I lift up and I type.

My fifty pound hands strike at every key like they’re moving targets.  I know what I want to say, but I don’t know how to say it.  My intentions are clear, my mind is not.  I pray that I can get out of my own way and just give something honest.  And through some miracle, words start to come together into something that makes sense.  Somehow all of my thoughts, experiences, dreams, and speculations form sentences and paragraphs. At the end, I feel grateful.  In some ways it doesn’t even matter if anyone reads what I write.  What’s most important is that I have been blessed to overcome gravity at least one more time.  Just in doing this I feel like I have shown some honor to everyone who gave of themselves so that I could even sit down at a computer and express my thoughts freely.  It’s a small gesture, but it’s what I have to give.

I know that in America we are often taught that if you can’t  do something big, it’s not worth doing.  “Getting big” is even how we often describe success. What ends up happening for most of us is that we end up putting ourselves into boxes.  We think that we are either someone who has something to say or we think no one’s listening so why bother.  I overcome gravity with this blog so that the people who visit here know that  someone’s always listening.  I’m sure that there’s at least one person that can relate to the struggle that I described above.  We all deal with gravity in our own way.  Maybe for you it’s cleaning the house for the 1000th time. Perhaps it’s giving the same advice to a friend over and over again.  Or maybe it’s something like getting yourself to go back to school.  I’m dealing with that one right now myself.  Whatever it is, the only way you’ll ever make moves is to overcome gravity.

I think that’s what Jesus was talking about in John 12:32 when he was quoted as saying, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”  He was big on overcoming gravity.  He knew that in every instance that we overcome the weight of the world, everyone who comes in contact with our example will benefit.  He also knew that it doesn’t always have to be “big”.  Even giving a cup of cold water has meaning when given in truth (Matthew 10:42). Everyday we’re presented with little opportunities to fly followed by hundreds of reasons not too. That’s gravity at work.  It’s something that most of us will have to be mindful of every day of our lives.  It won’t always be easy, but it will always be worth it. Even if you only get an inch off the “ground”, you’re moving. Just remember that with every instance that we take those opportunities, we take others with us.  Ultimately serving others is what makes it easier.