A Principle Worth Remembering

 "No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted."

                                                                Aesop

Summer...TIME!

 August.  Oh, no!  Summer is almost over….  It is a cry heard across the country as Memorial Day Weekend and July Fourth celebrations are in the rear-view mirror, and we look toward Labor Day and the beginning of a new school year.  And while not everyone loves the steamy days of summer, the evaporation of what we like to think of as a “break” in our daily schedules and the return of a “back to work” mentality has most of us feeling a bit disconcerted.  

 

Where did the summer go?  I would like to suggest that it would be more profitable for us to consider our frustrations with the passing of time within the broader context of Biblical and human history.

 

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth….”  So the beginning of Genesis goes.  And while we often jump to God’s creation of mankind, it is worth considering that God created day and night, morning and evening, the sun, moon, and stars.  When God breathes life into Adam and creates Eve from Adam’s rib, they have the rhythm of the planet and of life itself as a foundation for exercising sovereign care over creation.

 

But with the fall, time—like the entirety of God’s good creation—becomes distorted.  Thistles and thorns make finding and growing food difficult and time consuming.  The misuse of free will consumes more time in broken coordination and conflict.  Time becomes a precious resource that fallen man will abuse and waste along with the rest of the resources the LORD God has provided.  And now, millenia after the fall,  we have become adept at cutting time corners as we depend on fast food meals, online shopping, multi-tasking, and copious caffeine consumption as we get less and less sleep.  Indeed, time is such a limited resource that Benjamin Franklin’s observations that “time is money” rings very true in our culture.  

 

True confession: I am perpetually busy and time conscious.  The white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland”—Oh dear!  Oh dear!  I shall be too late!”—rings very true.  I am usually in a hurry, and I am often running late or too close to it.  I have done a good bit of pondering about my discomfort with time has a long history and runs deep.  Beside the generic issues of the fall, I see two specific consequences that illuminate and magnify my struggles with time.  The first is my brokenness and my sin-laden response to hurt and trauma in my past.  I have a history of shame: not belonging, not measuring up.  My fallen human response has been to try harder, to earn my place, prove my worth.  Those efforts are major wastes of time, almost always leaving me with too little left for everything else.  The second consequence echoes the fall itself: not only do we know both good and evil, we practice both good and evil.  And so once again, the time we use our time to pursue the desires of our flesh, to pursue evil, leaving us with less time to do good.

 

But as the LORD pronounced the consequences of Adam and Eve’s fateful choice, He also promised the Messiah.  The Apostle Paul proclaims an important truth in his epistle to the Romans: “For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.”  (Romans 5:17).  And it is in Christ that we can find our identity and value without wasting time trying to earn or prove it.  And it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can use more of our time doing good and less pursuing evil.

 

I often marvel at the Jesus that we see consistently depicted in the Gospel accounts of His time on earth.  Jesus never rushes; He is never in a hurry.  He welcomes interruptions as opportunities, and He always has time for any and all who came to Him.  It is both convicting and inspiring.  And it isn’t just that Jesus models for us the Godly use of time.  By dying on our behalf, Christ—the One—earned for us our righteousness, our rightness with God and our eternal identity as heirs of heaven.  We have no need to spin our time wheels trying to earn or prove our salvation.  And by sending the Holy Spirit, we have the power that raised Christ from the dead living within us to turn away from the desires of the flesh.

 

Again, I turn to the wisdom of the Apostle Paul: “Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.”  (Ephesians 5:15-16).  This does not mean that we rush from one ministry opportunity to another with no discernment or rest.  It is, however, an invitation to accept time as a gift from the Lord, to use for His good purposes and His glory.  If we are to take Paul’s words to heart, we must align our perspective of time with Him and see our frustration with time as a call to grow and to grow together in faith.  May we encourage one another to use our God-given gifts with wisdom and we walk toward eternity.

 

 

 

 

 

Thought For Each Today

 "Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you're already in heaven now."  

                                                                                                               Jack Kerouac

Thought For A Generation

 "Our phones have created what I like to call SADD--SOCIAL ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER."

                                                                                                                             Dan Levy

Called To Freedom

July is the time when we in the United States celebrate the freedoms associated with our democracy.  Even as the political and ideological divisions in our country have received a good bit of attention and created significant distraction in our life as a nation, we have much to be grateful for.

 

We could say the same for the church.  There are divisions over theology, faith and practice, and even politics.  But again, we still have much to be grateful for.  I hear quite often that “these days” are so much worse than those past.  In truth, though, controversy and division in the church are anything but new.  The writings of the Apostle Paul confirm the wisdom of King Solomon: There is nothing new under the sun.  Believers singly and corporately have survived and even thrived in times of challenging disagreements.  

 

It seems to me that the concept of freedom can help us to walk faithfully before the Lord even in these uneasy times.  Please consider with me how Paul viewed Christian freedom in a time when slavery was widely if not universally accepted and oppression and a lack of freedom was the rule rather than the exception.  

 

For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.  But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.  ¹⁷For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.  ¹⁸But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.  ¹⁹Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, ²⁰idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, ²¹envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  ²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  Galatians 5:16-23.

 

We are unequivocally called to put aside the desires of the flesh and seek the work of the Holy Spirit as we work out our faith in this hurting and unbelieving world.  For most of us, the more obvious desires of the flesh are reasonably easy to avoid.  We do not commit adultery, cheat on our taxes, become addicted to illegal substances, throw parties characterized by ungodly behavior.  But the pleasures of the flesh share a common denominator: they please our flesh because they enable us to feel good about ourselves as quickly and easily as possible, with little or no sacrifice and usually at the expense of others.  The pleasures of the flesh can represent temptation that is both subtle and counterintuitive.  If we want to use our freedom in ways that reflect and glorify Christ, I am convinced that how and why we do something is at least as important as what we do.

 

Please consider Jesus’s repeated warnings to and about the Pharisees whose status in the community became their idol and whose self-righteousness was about pleasing the flesh.  They were so focused on following the Law—for their own advantage—that they were unable to love and serve the weak; worse still, they were unable to see God Incarnate when He was standing in front of them.  

 

Paul deals with this side of serving the flesh in many of his epistles.  His first letter to the Corinthian church gives us two excellent examples.  The Corinthians were embroiled in tensions that arose as each sought personal status in which Christian leader he was following.  The leaders in question—including Paul himself—were delivering the same message and were not in competition with one another.  But the Corinthians were creating competition rather than following Christ in order to feel good about themselves.  The Corinthians also created competition in regard to spiritual gifts, seeking status in manifesting the flashier gifts.  So even though they were seeking the work of the Holy Spirit, they were doing so for their own fleshly purposes rather than actually walking by the Spirit.  The result was controversy and division rather than the love and unity that the fruits of the Spirit would produce.

 

There is no way around it.  If we genuinely desire to proclaim Christ in what we say and do, we must humbly seek the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts as we give up seeking to make our life of faith about us, to truly walk in the Spirit.  Our sin nature objects!  But please consider with me the overwhelming freedom that comes with a Spirit-filled and a Spirit-led life!  We do not need to fix the world, or save it.  Only Christ can do that.  Instead, we can enjoy the freedom that comes with being redeemed by the blood of Christ.  We have nothing to earn and nothing to prove.  We have no need to settle for the counterfeit pleasures of our flesh.  As we walk by the Spirit, He will bear His fruit in us: we will be able to walk before the Lord in faithfulness and manifest His goodness; we will know peace and joy; we will enjoy the benefits of self-control; we will be able to love others well and serve them with patience, gentleness and kindness.  May we indeed use our freedom to participate in His redeeming work in us and through us. 

  

The Days of Summer

 June…. Summer!  

 

The concept of summer evokes a wide range of thoughts and emotions.  For most children and older students, summer means a break from school and homework and more time for fun.  But for adults in general and parents in particular, summer often means more challenges: shifts in the workforce, travel plans that go awry, and the need to keep children safe and constructively occupied if/as work schedules make that difficult.  And almost everyone of all ages and lifestyles needs to deal with the expectations that summer brings.

 

To be sure, summer brings wonderful opportunities and great plans.  But if we become too attached to those opportunities and plans, it becomes very easy to evaluate the days, weeks, and the season according to how they rate on our scale of expectations.  And then if our expectations are not met, it is easy to become disappointed and frustrated.  We can miss the joy of unanticipated opportunities to bless and be blessed.

 

There is no doubt that planning is essential in order to fulfill our responsibilities and use our time well—even for fun! Planning is, however, most fruitful and rewarding if we view our plans not so much as a rubric for success but rather as an outline to be adjusted and filled in as the days, weeks, and months unfold.  In the end, it becomes an attitude choice on our part: We can cling to our expectation-driven plans, or we can cultivate an eye of faith that allows us to find deep satisfaction in the Lord’s sovereignty that is more sure than our expectations and plans.

 

 

Do not boast about tomorrow, 

For you do not know what a day may bring forth.  Proverbs 27:1

 

 

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.”  Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.  James 4:13-14a

 

Thought For The Day

 "Who you are inside is what helps you make and do everything in life."

                                                                             Fred Rogers