A Potential Blog Post

I love potential. It's everywhere around us, all the things and situations that could be more than what they are at the moment. The apostle Paul says that “these three remain – faith, hope, and love” and while the greatest of these may be love, the most abundant of them is certainly hope. Hope not only springs eternal, it springs eternal everywhere!

I particularly love the potential for restoration. Paul speaks about the way that all of creation groans to be restored and scripture in both Old and New Testaments is bursting with God's efforts to take rag-tag shabby used up derelict people, places, and situations and restore them to life, vigour and abundance. The people of Israel were not pulled from the richest most powerful most affluent but God formed them in amazing ways from wandering enslaved aliens and strangers into a people of promise – God's chosen ones.

When my wife and I were dating we used to walk around in the places we were living and look at old houses. The most exciting thing about looking at old houses is thinking and talking about what they could become with some tender loving care. Sometimes there would be a house on an old street or a gentrified neighbourhood in a city where we could gawk at how people had realized the potential of an old house, either restoring it to its former glory or taking it in some new unexpected direction. Sometimes we critiqued the ways other people had tried to realize the potential of a house but (in our humble opinion) had made a monstrosity of it instead by adding an out of proportion dormer or odd sized windows or a really ugly garage. Sometimes potential is squandered but it's never in short supply.

I like the potential for other kinds of restoration too. Recently the local thrift store had a guitar and a violin donated. The violin is quite old and has had a long full life. It's been carefully but amateurishly fixed several times. It has quite a few dings and scratches. Parts have been replaced with newer ones that don't match. The sound post isn't in it. The case is beat to pieces. The thing is a wreck but it sounds great and what a wonderful wreck with so much potential for making more music with just a bit of fixing and setting up! The guitar is handmade. I would guess from a kit although I don't know for sure. It sounds beautiful – loud, clear, and bright. The thing rings like a bell. The neck is straight, the frets are good, it's not hard to play. It needs some work but with some careful attention, it could become a real winner. It has amazing potential and that's very exciting to see. Maybe you are interested in owning one of these instruments or you're the person who donated one of them. You can leave a message for me at the church office if you like and we can talk more.

Other wonderful things have potential coming out all over the place too. A grassy field with wet spots just needs a few dry days and maybe a bit of spray and some cultivating and it could be seeded and produce a bumper crop! A church that's gotten small and maybe a bit weary could thrive again with a few tweaks and the grace of God and maybe one or two new people to add a different point of view that would get us going again! A small community that tends to fracture along church and family allegiances is just a few steps away from coming together in great ways and realizing how much common ground we all have together! There is potential everywhere just waiting to be realized!

Part of my work involves speaking with builders and homeowners – usually couples – about their hopes and dreams for renovating their existing home or building a new one. It's often surprising to me to hear people say they're not sure how to get started or what direction to turn. They sometimes say they have no good ideas. That's amazing to me because there are so many good ideas. They could add on to this side or that side or build a separate structure. Maybe a garage with a room above or maybe the garage on one end and the room separately on the other end. Trim could be heavy timber and match a new porch or wide and traditional for elegance or narrow and brown for that '70s look. There is so much potential and there are so many wonderful possibilities everywhere we turn. In the words of Jesus, it's “a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.”

Are you sensing there may be a BUT coming? It's true, there is.

I sometimes wonder whether Jesus laughed while distributing his bits of wisdom to the people around him. Sometimes I think he laughed a big full hearty laugh as when the children were coming to be blessed. Other times, though, I wonder whether Jesus laughed ironically as when someone says something tongue-in-cheek with a bit of sharpness below the surface. Some of the things that Jesus says mean one thing at first glance and something else on further reflection. One of those cases where I think Jesus might be laughing behind his eyes is in Luke 6:38, which I quoted before. “Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Have you ever gone to a gravel yard with a little pickup truck to get some gravel to fill in a pot hole in your driveway? You tell them what you want and the worker gets in an impossibly huge front-end-loader and scoops up some gravel and then everybody holds their breath while they try to dump it into the back of your teeny tiny little truck. What seems like the smallest possible bit of gravel in the huge bucket of that heavy equipment threatens to overwhelm the much smaller vehicle you brought to haul it with. Maybe, if you're lucky and the operator is very skilled you get the pile about in the middle of the truck bed with not too much spilled out over the tailgate and not so much that it collapses your poor little suspension which was not made for such things. Maybe the operator knows you can't haul as much gravel as you thought you could. Maybe, in a worst case, you do get them to put on as much as you think it can hold and it's too much. Half way home you blow a tire or break the axle or crack the suspension mount or maybe there are dents in the truck afterward where they spilled rocks over the side.

I often feel overwhelmed by the potential bursting out all around me. There are so many good things to do and so many wonderful things to restore and so many amazing things to be part of that I get overwhelmed. I feel like I've asked God for some gravel and God gives me some gravel and then says, “here's some more gravel for you! ... oh and here's a bit more gravel! ... just a bit more gravel coming right up!” And pretty soon I've got a full measure of gravel, pressed down, shaken together, and running over and the stuff is all over my lap and running on the ground and it's squishing me and my suspension is broken and I can't stand up or even shout for Him to quit with the gravel already. Jesus, I've got enough gravel, just stop it. Please quit! I can't handle a full measure pressed down, shaken together, and running over. Maybe Jesus shrugs then and says, “Well, with the measure you use ...” and laughs a little laugh behind his eyes.

I talked to the people at the thrift store the other day when we were looking at that violin and the guitar. It's amazing to me that people donate stuff like that with so much potential. But those thrift store people, they've seen a thing or two. One of the reasons for the anonymous drop-off trailer for donations is so you can put stuff in there without talking to anybody about it and without anybody knowing it was you who left it there. You can take stuff that you've had around the house for years and years, stuff with wonderful possibilities and loads of potential that you've intended to take advantage of and make into something wonderful. But if all that potential and all your hope for what it could become starts to hang heavy around your neck and you start to resent the thing that once brought you joy and wish you could just get rid of it and never think about it again, you can leave it in the trailer and not look back. Maybe if you really want to leave something behind you can drop it off at a thrift store in another community where nobody knows you or your stuff. Maybe you're reading this blog post and you left your guitar in the donation trailer knowing that the nut and the bridge didn't turn out quite right and the binding didn't adhere properly and you never did get around to dressing the fingerboard edges, and in the end you spray bombed a can of varnish on it and said, “Enough of this thing I want to be rid of it and think about something else now.” Good for you.

Things that have a lot of potential don't just pop up into their amazingly restored new form all by themselves. It takes a lot of time, skill, and patience to build a guitar. It takes many decades of use and careful repair for a violin to last as long as that one has. An old house takes a pile of money and a lot of skilled time to bring to its best form – often more than a new house would. The same is true of fields and gardens, cars and boats. It's also true of relationships with friends and family and people from the community and around the world and in our church. Each one has the potential to be the most amazing Christlike wonderful thing but there's no way any one of us can realize all the potential bursting forth around us. Christians sometimes look forward to God's dramatic final intervention in the world to make all things new but our experience over two thousand years now is that the work of restored relationships with God, with one another, and with God's created order happens gradually in fits and starts. We are restored and called to restoration but we are not yet fully restored and neither are the people or situations around us. We commit ourselves to some situations with potential and others pass us by.

I still love potential and I still see it all over the place. I can hardly turn around without feeling dizzy with the potential for everything in sight. I want to realize all of it. I want to be capable of both holding and realizing a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. But I'm not capable. In fact, I'm in danger of being broken by hope, possibility, and potential. I need to shift the emphasis in that verse from the gospel of Luke from “pressed down, shaken together, and running over” to the first part where Jesus recommends that we, “give and it will be given to you. A good measure ...” and not more.