One week. One day.

8 days.
7 states.
4 different planes.
25 hours in the car.
8 major United States cities.
4,382 miles.
Seeing two of my best friends and their families.
Worth it?
A hearty “yes.”

Cities at night are...magical.

I already told you that the desert is...bewitching.

Bests.

My thoughts exactly, Chik-fil-a.

Call us Mrs. Davey Crocketts. We don't mind.

They be pretty patriotic.

It is so hot in Texas.

Pretty sure when I saw this I said, "Come to mama."

 

I know, I know. Maybe I am excessive.  But I promise this is the last of my travels for at least 2 weeks.
And maybe a lot of you think THAT is excessive, too. For surely I could be doing a lot of better things with my time; more productive things. You’re right. I look excessive.

Am I, though?

Do you ever, like me, wonder what really is too much? How much travelling to be with people I love is too much? How much money spent helping others is too much? How much sacrificing of my time for ministry and adventures and God-revealing-experiences is too much?

I don’t know. Maybe it is excessive. Maybe I will regret the list that opened this post someday. And maybe I won’t.
Which is probably more likely.
The truth is, I probably won’t.
Will you be shocked if I tell you that I want people to think of me, when it comes to generosity and joy and sacrifice and love and acts of service, as excessive? I want to be more excessive in those things than even I sometimes know what to do with.

On this trip I kept thinking about Psalm 84. It says in verse 5, 10-12, “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion…For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the LORD God is a sun and a shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you.”

This passage caught me off guard for a long time. Being one who has dreams and goals for achieving a lot with my life, I never really understood how being a doorman somewhere could be a really great thing. I mean, isn’t that one of those people in fancy New York City apartment buildings who opens doors and say, “Good morning, Mr. Banks. How are you and Mrs. Banks doing? Have a wonderful day, sir. See you this evening”?

That’s not what I feel called to do with my life.
And yet, this verse calls me to that.
I never got it.
And what is all of this about ONE DAY being better in the yard of God than THOUSANDS of days elsewhere?
Surely I could accomplish a lot more for the Kingdom of God in THOUSANDS of days elsewhere.
Trading in thousands of productive days for ONE DAY in God’s house seems a little…well…excessive.

I used to play down this verse. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jesus more than I love any of you. Hands down. He is more real to me than any of you are. But ONE DAY?  I question myself about whether he is more real to me than thousands if days…

Have any of you seen the Pirates of the Caribbean movies?

I have wanted to be a pirate for….ever….so naturally I love them. There is this one scene in, I think, the third one where a pirate named Will is trying to make a deal with his pirate father, Bootstrap Bill. The deal is that Will can either choose to die, or be bound to his ship forever, except for one day off the ship every ten years.
Now mind you, there is a catch. Will has a smokin’ hot wife named Elizabeth.

Ah, women, the proverbial fly-in-the-ointment!

WHAT IS A MAN TO DO?!??!?
Ten years on the miserable ship, in trade for ONE DAY!??!?

Bootstrap Bill echoes just my thoughts in discussing this with Will: “That’s a mighty high price to pay for one day, Will.” Will, however, is not to be put off. He is in love, remember. And what he responds back with sticks right in my gut.
He looks his father in the eye, smiles as he is clearly thinking about his wife, and says, “Well that depends on the one day.”

Suddenly, I get it.
I understand that passage in Psalms:

Love is excessive.

A relationship with Jesus, who is Love, is excessive. It makes people look down their nose at you and think you are wasting your time. Think you could be doing something more productive.
Their disdain really is them saying, “Giving up thousands of days for just one day of being HIS doorman is a mighty high price to pay, don’t you think?”
And Christians, the ones captured and all caught up in love, shouldn’t we be like Will, remembering the One we love, and look at them with a smile in our eyes and reply, “Well that depends on the one day…”?

I think so.

See love, of God and people, and generosity and joy and sacrifice and acts of service, etc etc whatever, is excessive.

And it should be.

If we aren’t having people of the world call us out and say, “Don’t you think you are paying a little too high of price for Him? How lowly to be his doorman!” then I wonder if we are in love enough. I wonder if we excessive about him ENOUGH.

So maybe you have been reading about my life on this little blog here for a while. And maybe you all think I am crazy.

I hope so.
I hope you think I am excessive.
I hope I spend way too much of my life and time and money on things that reflect HIM and his excessive nature. I hope to spend too much of me on the people I love. I hope I look to the world like one of those people who has their priorities screwed up, because, let’s be honest, I want them to know that my priorities are not theirs.

This passage says “Blessed are those… whose heart are the highways to Zion.”
I know about highways, trust me, and I want the world to know that my heart isn’t travelling after the same things theirs is. My heart is on its way home, excessively.

Call me names, I don’t care. Call me a silly doorman, good. Call me excessive, please.

For those who have been captured by Christ’s excessive love, let us say to the world’s claims that how we spend our lives for him is foolish and really TOO excessive a price to pay, “Well that depends on the one day.”