Fitting into God's Creation

St. Paul’s life was certainly not free of pain and suffering for the Lord. His optimism in the Lord is an example for us as we live out our lives in faith.  Paul was not always connected to our Lord Jesus.  Many of us have struggled with worldly distractions before turning our lives over to God through Jesus and trusting in Him and His Son.  St. Paul says in Romans 8:26-34: "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose."

It takes a strong faith to forge ahead for God when we are encountered at every turn by forces that would see us fail. God promises that no matter what or who our foe, the happenings in our lives will be positioned together to work for good. How do we receive ownership in this? We must love God, listen for His call and take action on it no matter what is in our way.

Diogenes Laertius, the ancient Greek philosopher, wrote this dynamic description of  Earth and Man in his “Time is the Image of Eternity”: "Eons before man, the perpetual ebb and flow of the ocean's tides carved an ever-changing face on the spinning globe. From the ocean's depth came man and inhabited the Earth. Like the tides in which he was born he brought changes...As the seas raged against the Earth, ocean and land now fused now torn, so man met conflict. Struggle and peace became the alternating tides of history. We cannot mourn the ebbing tide, as soon the flow will rush to land.

So man has learned, eternal conflict is perpetual growth. Today's struggle is tomorrow's strength. We are part of man's perpetual renewal of strength. This strength is knowledge, accumulated for us in the course of time. So we become in our time an image of eternity mirroring all mankind. But unlike the tides controlled by the stars, we are not bound to fixed limitations. The future, a constant tide, ebbing and flowing, is ours to determine."

While this is a beautiful piece, I always take the liberty to mentally add some things that would have made it complete for me. First of all, what Diogenes is describing here is God's created Earth. The future is ours to determine good in this world.  If we love God and accept His calling according to His purposes, as St. Paul said, we will please Him and good will flow. We will, however, always have difficult challenges. At the end of our very short stay on Earth, we will lose the gift of 'free will' and God will take us to His chest. We should try to seek God every day in anticipation of that day.

It is only through great discipline that we can fend off the evil that engulfs the world and tempts us. The pressures are great for the strongest. In our faltering we give in to the secular culture. We set the bar low. As long as we don't get caught or called into judgment by the secular world, we're safe. We fool ourselves, but not God.

History is full of witnesses to the power of God over darkness, over evil. Many have testified to close encounters with God, which have moved them away from evil and changed their lives. The unbelievers put more stock in the last lottery ticket they bought than in the way of the cross.

God is at work in those who believe in Him; those who accept His grace and pray to Him. When we doubt the power of God it is usually because we cannot believe that He can work miracles through us. Our spiritual self-esteem is bankrupt. We are like the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Lion. We fail to realize that we possess the very qualities that we seek. We fail to understand that the only true and gentle power is the power of God. That power dwells within us. Our challenge is to recognize it and use it.

Will they know we are Christians?

I recently met with a couple of Christian friends for lunch. We asked the Lord to bless our food and we talked for about an hour about things going on in our lives and where our personal ministries for the Lord were taking us. Our waitress was very nice and took an interest in the spiritual things she heard us sharing.

As she was waiting on us, checking our need for refills and the like, we included her in our conversation. She shared about things going on in her life and her trouble in surviving on a very low hourly wage plus tips. We asked her how many hours she worked a week and what was her busiest day. She said that Sunday was her busiest day, but she disliked it the most of all her work days.

We were shocked by her answer as to why she disliked Sunday work. She said, “Lots of church people come to lunch here after their Sunday church services. They are the most rude and demanding customers I have all week. I am exhausted by the end of my Sunday shift.” In her case, a strange meaning is communicated in the words of the tune, “They will know we are Christians.”    

Going to church on Sunday does not always make us behave like good Christians when we go through the doors of the church and into the world. No matter what we might think we are doing in our activities at church, we can only be a Christian if we allow Christ to dwell in and among us.

In 2^nd Corinthians 13:5-8, St. Paul gives us a litmus test to check our action acidity in saying: ^“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?  And I trust that you will discover that we have not failed the test.  Now we pray to God that you will not do anything wrong—not so that people will see that we have stood the test but so that you will do what is right even though we may seem to have failed.  For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.”

We find guidance in scripture to help us prepare ourselves for daily living and interaction with others. The Holy Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is certainly a blessing to us in seeking God’s Will in our lives. As we have God’s forgiveness and deliverance from our sin, we don’t have to look back, but forward in our interaction with our fellow man. Seeking God’s Will in all that we do makes us ready to take Christian action in all of our environments with the Grace of God and His Spirit flowing into and through us.

We can make our own litmus test to see if we are preparing for and fulfilling that which we are called by God to do in this world. While we may fool ourselves, our Father recognizes immediately if the Spirit of Christ is in us. As for ourselves, we must examine our thoughts and actions regularly to be sure that they conform to God’s Will. In 2nd Peter Chapter 1, we are reminded of our gifts from God and our Savior Jesus Christ and that they are great and many.

And thus in 2^nd Peter 1:5-9, we hear: “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.  For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.”

So as the song tells us that we should be one in the Spirit and one in the Lord, then “they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” This works in restaurants and at all times and places in our lives.

Seamless Life in Christ

I have a good friend and church-mate that has worked to collect and save all sorts of things about our local church’s history. He has a great interest in the details of our past history, which goes back to 1888. He recently treated our members to some excerpts from an old church newsletter that presented information about activities of church members some eighteen years ago.

Among the excerpts was a quote from an Anglican priest named George Carey, who eventually became the Archbishop of Canterbury. As such, he was the leader of the Church of England and a provider of unity for the worldwide Anglican Communion, although he had no direct authority over it.

The quotation mentioned above, is from Carey’s 1984 book title, The Church in the Market Place. In reading the quotation, I was led to ponder on the disposition of Christ’s church in this world today. He begins, “How it must break Christ's heart that his people are so scattered and divided! Oh, for men and women of love and faith to thread together the 'seamless' robe of Christ that rigidity, arrogance and intolerance tear apart. 'The nearer we come to Christ, the nearer we come together,' once said the Theologian Moltmann. It is about time we discovered that unity in him."

In thinking about now retired Archbishop Carey’s comments back in 1984, it has led me to ponder on the many ways we Christians can let the busy work of our churches get in the way of where God is leading us to fulfill His Will in us and through us in this world. In managing our churches, we sometimes lose touch with God’s mission. While prayer, study and Christian action should be driving us, many times we let disagreements and bossiness get in the way of our outreach and internal ministries.

As practicing Christians we should always trust in God. He will always surprise us when we have doubts about our ability to do something in His name. He is always there beside us and we should look for Him to do our work together with Him.

As we all know, prayer is very important and is very powerful. Whether it is prayer for the sick and needy, prayer for a church project, prayer for church outreach ministry or our own personal prayers for self, family and friends, prayer drives all things. My personal experience in prison ministry has accented my awareness of prayer. In forming a forty person team to spend three days in a State Prison with a group of 42 inmates, prayer is the fuel. Having spiritual talks, discussions, artwork and other sharing with inmates requires prayer.

We have some fifteen talks and meditations during the three days and there is always a small group of us praying in a remote room for the speaker during his talk. The prayer team prays with each speaker before his talk and after his talk. Lunch and supper are prepared off site and brought into the prison to share together each day. Team formation and preparation for such an event takes many weeks prior to the prison retreat. An effective ministry such as this runs on continuous prayer. Local and connected people all over the world participate in prayer for and during this ministry.

All of a churches inward and outward ministry must be Spirit led. Reliance on the gifts of God’s Spirit is necessary in all things. Even with today’s sophisticated ways of communicating around the world on the internet, we must rely on the Holy Spirit as our way of discerning what God expects of us and where He is leading us. We must be so much in tune with the Spirit, that we will intuitively think and do what is right in the different aspects of our lives.

Choosing Our Paths

We are fortunate to live in America, where we have some choice as to how our lives will develop. God gave us free will and free countries like America allow us lots of room to exercise our free will. While we have no specific guarantees from God or our country, we can make many choices about paths we will follow and how we will relate to the rest of humanity. One size doesn’t fit all and there are many takes on life among us.

My Brother Chuck’s life experience is one of those lives a bit different than most. He is seven years younger than me, so I had a front row seat as to how he developed from childhood. From the time he started walking, my brother was interested in nature. Back in those days, we had a milk man that delivered our milk to an insulated box on our front porch. To the milk man’s surprise, he would sometimes find frogs and lizards in the milk box when he opened it to place our milk bottles. These creatures were gifts from my brother Chuck. He put them there for safe keeping.

As Chuck continued to grow, he selected other ways to connect with nature. He had a wonderful butterfly collection as well as a leaf collection. He had an interest in sports and hiking and after high school he went to our local junior college. He happened to have a professor that had a retreat cabin in Wisconsin, some 900 miles north of the college. He gave Chuck the keys to the place and told him to go visit and check out the condition of the cabin for him.

Chuck asked a neighbor friend and classmate to go on the excursion with him. After a cold and snowy winter, the guys decided to check out other parts of the U.S. That led them to Colorado and what would be home for both of them the rest of their lives. They each married and raised families there. Brother Chuck ended up in the Log Home construction business to support him and his family, but had lots of time for recreation. His list of activities included: kayaking, mountain climbing, vertical rock and ice climbing, bicycling, and fishing to name a few. He continues all of these today at age 63 and has expanded his explorations to many parts of America, Canada, Costa Rica & Mexico.

While being a good citizen during his life, Chuck has lived a bit differently than most of us. Other than his many recreational likes, he has approached life in a way apart from the worldly interferences that distract many of us. He has avoided the pressures of society and work as much as possible. He rarely listens to or watches the news. He refers to them as the talking heads and sees the media and politics as a distraction to his life enjoying nature.  

I stumbled upon an excerpt from Henry David Thoreau’s book, Walden -or- Life in the Woods, the other day and it made me think of my brother Chuck. This book was required reading for many of us in our schooling years. Thoreau lived for two years in a self-built cabin in the forest near Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts. His reason for doing this is well explained by him in the quote below. While most of us have not been led to choose the lifestyle of Chuck or the direction suggested by Thoreau, they both reflect our need for more balance and enjoyment of life.

Thoreau writes in his Walden book: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Let’s enjoy God’s created gift of the Earth more and more. After all, He put us in charge! Genesis 1:28.