Gil George has posted a blog that discusses dealing with Quaker testimonies and our attitudes towards them.  One friend in replying to the post points out the all or nothing attitude that can be found about testimonies.  I prefer the term Holiness as I have spent some time in Pentacostal churches that are related to the Holiness movement.

From the time I had my first encounter with Jesus in 1978 I have wanted to be holy.  I still do.  My first encounter resulted in an immediate victory over my worse failing.  I'm still working on my second worse.  Inbetween I have had a lot of victories over other failings but I still have a lot to go.    One of the reasons I am comfortable being a Quaker is that it recognizes that everyone is different and each of us have our own unique path to holiness or ownership of the Quaker testimonies.

Which brings me to Pick up Sticks.  Believe it or not there was a time people played games without benefit of a crt screen.  No video games, just objects.  One of these objects was a cylindrical container containing many, many long thin sticks of different colors.  My brother and I would open the container on the kitchen table, turn it upsside down and let the sticks fall where they may, most of them on top of each other with some outliers.  One by one we would alternate picking off the easy ones until we came to a cluster where removing one stick could easily disturb the remaining sticks and whoever did that lost the game.  Being competitive - who wants to lose to their younger brother or if the shoe is on the other foot who doesn't want to beat his older brother? - we focused on finding the easiest stick to remove.

Our spiritual life is just like Pick up Sticks, except with grace we get to keep the sticks we pick up successfully.  Unfortunately the remaining sticks get put back exactly where they were when we lost the game.  The spiritual life seems to get harder as we play.  Picking up a win over this weakness here and this one there only to find the weakness we really want to pick up is buried under a pile of others.  The secret is to find a way to remove the ones on top first.  What does James say about letting patience have it's way so that we may become perfect?  We also have to stay focused on our goal.  Again we hear that without a vision or goal God's people perish.  We have a lifetime to play this game.  Time is on our side.  When we reach a point where there seems to be no way we can pray for divine help and God will sometimes make a way where there seems to be no way.  He doesn't do it all the time but he did it for Moses and Joshua and He doesn't really play favorites.  There just really has to be no other way.  He does like to take a day off once a week to rest and with God's grace on our side there's nothing wrong with losing a game of Pick up Sticks so long as we don't stop playing.