Equal to the task

2 Peter 1:12-15
"Because the stakes are so high, even though you're up-to-date on all this truth and practice it inside and out, I'm not going to let up for a minute in calling you attention before it. This is the post to which I've been assigned--keeping you alert with frequent reminders--and I'm sticking to it as long as I live. I know that I'm to die soon; the Master has made that quite clear to me. And so I am especially eager that you have all this down in blackand whiteso that after I die, you'll have it for ready reference."

It happened when I learned my first crochet stitch. We were at the beach, I begged my mother to teach me, got terribly annoyed, was persistent in my practice and then came that moment that I got it, it was natural to me. It happened when I learned to knit. My friend, Lia, taught a class. Everyone in the class marveled at how bad I was. Outside of class I practiced over and over until suddenly there was that breakthrough moment and I came to learn the meditative pace of knitting. It started happening with motorcycling. I took a class. I dropped the motorcycle about three times, my hands were cramped, my blood sugar dropping when I decided that my learning curve simply creates danger in this particular situation. I would work on letting that one go!

Do you see the pattern? My learning goes something like this: Someone is kind enough to show me the basics, I do it horribly, I get frustrated and annoyed with myself and others, I keep pushing myself because I'm bent on getting it and then AHA! breakthrough happens and I have learned. This method feels more to me like being self-taught because it takes so much effort on my part to learn.

Peter considered himself a self-taught Christian. Christ gave him the basics but it was only through his errant ways and through trial and error that he came to the place where he got it. And he got it as a personal experience. It was not handed to him by someone outside of himself. He did not seek guidance from an external force. He learned from Christ to seek guidance from God directly.

As he writes, he now is old in age and cognizant of impending death. Maybe like many of our elders who find themselves in the same situation Peter is determined to pass on what he's learned so as to save other generations from at least a bit of the angst he's known in his growing. He makes clear that he has every confidence in these people whom he will soon leave behind. But even as he writes such words he has to know that each one will have to learn his same lessons on their own terms. Each one will have to depend on their own relationships with Christ to guide them. Each one will have to commit to trust God, to listening to his direction in their own unique ways and to learning obedience in all things. What Peter knows in his gut is that they are equal to the task.

Are we? Are we equal to the task? Recently, I have witnessed the crazy learning curve in my spiritual life. God has made promises to me. Instead of believing I wind up being like Gideon (see the book of Judges) who will not allow himself to believe the promises that God gives him and wants a sign and then just one more sign and on and on! I am left again and again with the question from God, "When will you trust me? God knows that I am equal to the task of having faith enough to claim his promises. But I spend so much time worried about what others will think that it paralyzes me from really acting and prevents me from claiming joy that comes from total trust.

I don't know to what God may be calling you, but I do know that like me, when God looks at you he sees someone who is equal to the task of the calling set before you. I pray that you will not be like the Gideonesque me, but that you will step forward in confidence as Peter admonishes. In so doing, may you find the freedom that comes in such confident faith. Amen.