Everybody, Always

thought I would. What I’ve been doing with my faith is this: instead of
saying I’m going to believe in Jesus for my whole life, I’ve been trying to
actually obey Jesus for thirty seconds at a time.
Here’s how it works: When I meet someone who is hard to get along
with, I think, Can I love that person for the next thirty seconds? While
they continue to irritate me, I find myself counting silently,... twenty-
seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine... and before I get to thirty, I say to
myself, Okay, I’m going to love that person for thirty more seconds. This
is what I’ve been doing with the difficult commands of Jesus too. Instead
of agreeing with all of them, I’m trying to obey God for thirty seconds at
a time and live into them. I try to love the person in front of me the way
Jesus did for the next thirty seconds rather than merely agree with Jesus
and avoid them entirely, which I’m sad to say comes easier to me. I try to
see difficult people in front of me for who they could become someday,
and I keep reminding myself about this possibility for thirty seconds at a
time.
It’s easy to agree with what Jesus said. What’s hard is actually doing
what Jesus did. For me, agreeing is cheap and obeying is costly. Obeying
is costly because it’s uncomfortable. It makes me grow one decision and
one discussion at a time. It makes me put away my pride. These are the
kinds of decisions that aren’t made once for a lifetime; they’re made
thirty seconds at a time.
When you’re getting your skydiving license, most of the class isn’t
spent talking about what happens when things go right and the parachute
opens correctly. Instead, they prepare you for what to do when it doesn’t.
That seemed like a good idea to me. One of the things they teach you
feels counterintuitive. The parachute is connected to your harness by
hundreds of small strings. When it opens, you’re supposed to look up and
see if all the strings are where they’re supposed to be. If there is just one
string caught over the top of the parachute, they tell you to cut away the
entire parachute, start free-falling again, then pull the emergency chute. I
remember thinking, Are you kidding me? There’s no way I’m cutting