Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Men, do I hear an Amen!

(Ladies, maybe one day it will be high heels!)

Right now, an AMA (American Medical Association) committee is considering a resolution that supports adopting guidelines for a dress code for doctors that minimizes the spread of infections.

There’s evidence that doctors’ neckties actually can spread disease – meaning there may soon be no “ties” in the hospital or doctor’s office!

Lord, may that kind of thinking “spread” all across the country in the days to come!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Ready When the Gate Opens

A few years ago, I had the chance to go to one of the most gorgeous places on the planet; Kodiak Island, Alaska. From there we flew in a small seaplane to an island called Afognak in order to go salmon fishing on some of the most beautiful rivers in the world. But what I also remember is the “Gate Keepers” I met there.

As we were walking in the wilderness up one river, we suddenly came upon a small house. During the endless summer days and nights in Alaska, the cabin was occupied by a state game and fish employee, (and in this case, with his wife and their three young children as well). The game warden was there to operate the “Salmon Weir.” It’s basically a huge gate that swings shut, or swings open, so that the salmon coming upstream can either continue their journey, or have to stop and wait.

If you’re not familiar with the journey that these salmon take to get to this gate, it’s an amazing picture of God’s miracle of creation. The “gate keeper” told us that these very same huge salmon had once hatched in these beautiful mountain streams. They stay in the shallows until they grow big enough, and then they travel downstream to the bay and finally out into the ocean. After they grow large and fearsome in the rough, cold Arctic waters, God turns on an internal homing signal that points them back to Afognak. “Back” in some cases means beginning a journey of two thousand miles or more in order to end up in the very stream where they were born, and where they now seek to lay their eggs.

The salmon gate provides two services for the fish and the fish mangers. First, it allows the game and fish employee to count the number of salmon heading upstream (an incredible feat with the hundreds of salmon that congregate below the gate when it’s shut). That allows a forecast to be made of the amount of salmon they expect to harvest that year. But the gate also provides a place to rest, for the salmon to breathe and gather strength before continuing their arduous journey upstream.

It was astounding to stand above the gate and look at the thousands of salmon waiting for the gate to open. Milling around. Darting back and forth. Looking like carbon copies of those huge fish you see on the wall at Red Lobster. Only now a huge, living, churning, mob. And then finally, the “gate keeper” opens the gate, and they shoot through and on toward their goal!

Or at least most of them do.

For whatever reason, there are some that when that gate finally opens – simply stay put. They’ve been stopped in their journey and blocked from their goal. Now, when an unseen hand finally opens the gate, it’s like that “open gate” means something for others, but not for them.

Which (I’m sure you’re waiting for this!) is something that’s going on right now in the lives of many people we minister to and counsel with. There are thousands of us right now who are in “transition.” I’ll define a transition as a major movement in our life, often outside our control, that stops us in our tracks, and only sometime later, opens up a new season and way of life for us to go.

For so many people today, they’ve seen their goals and dreams and “pathway” blocked in these tough times. And the longer they sit in a pool through being unemployed or underused or simply forced to “wait” for something out of their control to “open up,” the more difficult it can be to believe that the goals they once had were real, or were ever really achievable. And for too many, when a gate finally does open – all after the waiting and uncertainty – they stay put instead of pressing forward toward what God has next.

My prayer for you – if you’ve had a gate close on your career or “well planned” life-story – is that you’ll stay “anxious” and expectant for the time when the Lord opens the gate for you. Being “expectant” wasn’t easy for the people of the Old Testament to keep waiting for a Messiah to come. It wasn’t easy for King David who was told by God’s Prophet that he would be “King” – and then was chased into the desert and had to flee for his life! It certainly could have seemed to David when Saul hunted him down, that that gate would never open. But that wasn’t his mindset – even in the cave where he wrote,

Psalm. 43:5

"Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why are you disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God."

That whole Psalm is the prayer of someone waiting for a gate to open – but waiting in faith and expectancy of God’s better day.

I know it’s incredibly hard (or at least it’s hard for me) to mill around and wait for the “gate” to open, even if you’re with lots of other “fish” or fishers of men. But God will open the door for the “what’s next” for us, in His time, if we’ll just keep trusting, and exercising our faith, and knowing the day of our “open gate” will come. And when it does, we’re ready to race upstream toward all He has for us.

Is your gate closed right now? Will you be ready when it opens?

Photo credits: #1 ADF & G, #2 Thomas Quinn, # 3 RangerRoy - Flickr