Assuming My Human Form
I had a meeting at 6:30 this morning. The guy said, “You don’t look the same at 6:30 as you do at 8.”
Remember Odo, from Deep Space Nine
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I had a meeting at 6:30 this morning. The guy said, “You don’t look the same at 6:30 as you do at 8.”
Remember Odo, from Deep Space Nine
My old truck had developed belt problems. The squeaking was driving me crazy. I pushed on each of the belts to see if one was loose. Sure enough, it was the one you would expect it to be: the one in the back, behind all the others. It obviously would require removing the whole engine to change that belt, so I took the easy way out. I squirted it down good with belt dressing. At least it wouldn’t squeak. Not for a few days anyway.
I knew I was postponing the inevitable. But the inevitable needed postponing from my point of view. (I hate when people say, “You’re just postponing the inevitable.” I always want to say, “Why are you walking around breathing and eating and all that? You know you’re going to die. You’re just postponing the inevitable. Why not drop dead right now? Don’t you want to go to heaven and be with God? What are you waiting for? Quit procrastinating and get on with it.” But I don’t say that. Some people are overly sensitive and might take offense.) Inevitable or not, I wasn’t ready to take the truck apart to change that belt. I tried tightening it. I loosened the bolt on the air-conditioning compressor, lifted it with a crow bar and re-tightened the bolt. It worked. But in a few days, it was loose again.
I made several attempts at tightening it, and went through two cans of belt dressing before the belt finally broke. That belt went around the air-conditioning compressor and several other things, and the truck would not start or run at all without it. Result? Dead truck. I was at work when it happened, and hadn’t the tools, the time, or the patience to fool with it. So I had it towed to a shop down the street. Using whatever sort of cranes and arthroscopic mechanic tools it took, they managed to get it apart and put a new belt on. But they couldn’t get it tightened up either. To make a short story longer, they ultimately discovered the cause. There was another bolt, under the compressor and behind some other stuff where it could be neither seen nor reached by mortal man, that had worked itself loose and fallen out somewhere on the road. Somewhere they scrounged up a bolt that fit, sprayed it with something to keep it from working loose, and replaced it.
The labor charge was horrific, but they charged nothing for the bolt—it was just a spare one they found lying around. After all, the bolt itself was not worth anything. But without that bolt, it was impossible to tighten the belt. And without that belt the truck would not run. In other words, that bolt was the key component that made the difference between a nice, smooth-running truck, and an expensive yard ornament. That one bolt made all the difference. Sounds to me like a bolt of tremendous value.
Oddly enough, it was Psalm 139 that brought this to mind. Especially verses 13-16:
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
—Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV)
I have heard it said that God knew the end from the beginning. But I think it would be better to say that he knew the beginning from the end. Better still, he knows the end and the beginning because he is present at both. He doesn’t have to look ahead to the future to see the end, because at this moment, he is already present at the end of time. Just as he does not think back to the beginning of time because at this moment he is present at the beginning. God exists outside of time, and to him the end and the beginning are one.
Like a mother bird hovering over her nest, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, and he imagined the universe he was about to speak into being. In that moment, before time began, he imagined you. He imagined the color of your eyes. He imagined the shape of your toes, the creases on the inside of your wrist. He imagined the DNA it would take to make you who you are. He imagined the kind of parents you would need to have. He imagined the gifts and intelligences, the drives and desires it would take to make you the unique person he needed you to be. Because God has a plan for the universe, that is unfolding in time. And he has a purpose for your life. He needed someone just like you to fill a vital role in carrying out his plan to completion.
He planted desires in you that will only be fulfilled when you are carrying out his plan. He made you for that specific purpose. He is hoping you will discover your calling and use your gifts the way he intended. If you don’t, God will still get it done with the spiritual equivalent of belt dressing, crowbars, and a substitute bolt. But it will not be the perfect plan he imagined. And you will not live the life he created you for. It will not be the life of joy, meaningful work, purpose and fulfillment that he wanted you to have. It will not be the life of your dreams, the life he dreamed of for you.
Your role may not seem important or visible. But that bolt in my truck was not visible, and didn’t seem important. Yet, without it, the truck was nothing but scrap metal. Just so, the universe would not be the same without you.
I don’t know how better to say this:
Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
—Psalm 37:4 (NIV)
He gave you those desires to guide you. Follow them.
In the Bible it was a miracle when God spoke through an ass. Now it happens every day.
—Dave Johnson
This article at Leadership Journal talks about the tendency nowadays for pastors to focus on developing their ministries and growing their churches rather than building character. The thinking is that “success covers a multitude of sins.” Samson disproved that theory long ago. His many victories over his enemies could not outweigh his own failure to become victorious over the flaws in his own character. His addictive womanizing was his ruin. He was defeated by his unwillingness to build his own character.
When a pastor has the ability to draw large crowds, he is often protected and supported by his followers, despite unaddressed problems with his character. Even when he does not bring the house down with some egregious sin, his lack of character results in a superficial church experience. You cannot lead people where you haven’t gone yourself. The Christian life is, or should be, all about character transformation. So at best, this practice does a great disservice to the congregation, and to the community as a whole.
At worst it results in a meltdown. The growing junior-mega-church I where I served last winter collapsed overnight. It went from celebrating the groundbreaking on a 2800 seat sanctuary, to total collapse in about a week’s time. There were people who left town for spring break only to come back and find that their church had vanished. All of it because the pastor could not overcome his character flaws. His exposure also exposed the flaws in his ministry. The church was a mile wide and an inch deep.
The end result has not been all bad. Two new and thriving churches have started as a result of that. And you can be sure that both of these are focusing strongly on building character through discipleship. We will not be making that particular mistake. We will have to come up with some new mistakes of our own to make.
Anyway, this falls in place with my ongoing study of why the church is not working for so many earnest people—what I call the Prodigal Church. And I love the statement by Dave Johnson: “In the Bible it was a miracle when God spoke through an ass. Now it happens every day.” I wish I’d said that. And I probably will.
I have not been able to sleep for the past two nights because of this toothache. The whole roof of my mouth hurts, and now it has spread to my throat. Here it is just a few days before the Chrysalis weekend, and I already have more to do than I can manage. This is so typical of Satan’s tricks. Sometimes I just have to laugh at his attacks. It’s as if he doesn’t even bother to try coming up with something new. It’s always the same old stuff over and over again. There’s no subtlety to it at all.
I keep thinking about C. S. Lewis’s depiction of Satan in Perelandra
Deep within, Lewis said, there is “nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness.”
So a part of me looks with scorn on the childishness and monotony of his attacks. And a part of me is thankful that I am not dealing with some grand and subtle design. But another part of me is disgusted and somewhat chilled at the thought that something so petty and childish as giving me a toothache before and important event could be so damned effective.
I’m glad that God knows what I need. He knows my thoughts even as I am thinking them. He knows my feelings better than I know them myself. Anytime I turn my thoughts toward God, no matter what time, night or day, God is already thinking about me. And long ago, he prepared for this day. Satan was defeated once and for all when those nails pierced my Savior’s flesh. Is that awesome or what?
I hate to admit it, but it reminds me of an old Willie Nelson song. Remember “Always on My Mind
What happens to the candleglow when it reaches the edge of darkness? How is it that an orb of ruddy candlelight gathers into itself, huddling to ward away the shadows? And those shadows and things whose rich saturnine colors dim like cooling lava, thicker than mud, red brown, murky, do not demur to undulate slowly in the gloom. Menacing. Not with carnivorous rage, the healthy blood lust of the living predator for the living prey. But with brooding. Dark resentment. A glowering envy of geological patience. The slow creeping eternal envy of the dark and lifeless, the immutable and derelict, the lost and unsearched for, the missing but unmissed. That kind of envy! The unquenchable loathing of the dark and torpid for the light and agile simply because it is light and agile.
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