Brow Sweat, Part 3: Worth It

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     It all made sense once the man explained it to me. Before I read Harry Caudill’s book, Night Comes to the Cumberlands, I thought work was divided into two distinct categories: “Worth It” and “Not Worth It.” And as far back as I could remember, “my people” – parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents for generations – had always worked in that second, dismal category. We traded our time for someone else’s money, but found ourselves short of both. Not worth it – ugh. But Mr. Caudill’s insights were a big help.

     In the 1700’s, there were basically two methods by which a person got from Europe to the “new world,” America. In the old countries of Europe, the first-born sons inherited the estate and typically stayed there, carrying on as the generation before them had. Younger sons would inherit wealth, and needed a place to invest it. These often came to the Colonies, and most often landed in the Northeast, or New England, as it was coming to be known.

     Meanwhile, other Europeans were coming across the pond. With no wealth to speak of, these paid for their passage by way of indentured servitude, paying back their sponsors with years of labor. Mostly, they were from families with no old money. Some were the overflow from debtors’ prison; still others from plain old prison. For all, the status quo had not worked for a very long time. All things must surely be better beyond the western horizon. Their boats usually landed in southern Virginia and the Carolinas – the Tobacco Coast – and they debarked to begin a period of prepaid labor.

     My forbears came from that second bunch. Strong backs and plenty of ambition. More adventurous, perhaps, than those who had stayed on their continent of origin. But no capital to invest, other than themselves.  

     In the Northeast, the investors were enjoying a bountiful return, and moved west across the Alleghenies to the rapidly developing frontier territory of Ohio. At the same time, those who had come ashore on the Tobacco Coast were finishing their contracts, and with essentially no chance of acquiring land where they were, moved west across the Appalachians, passing through the Cumberland Gap to homestead in Tennessee and Kentucky.

     Along the northern route, a strong connection was maintained with the East, including a commitment to establishing accessible education. On the southern route, a strong emphasis was placed on resourcefulness – making the most of what was naturally at hand. The two routes converged right here where many of us at Cobblestone live now. Industry in our area, and Miami University itself, were direct results of the convergence. (Did you know that, in the year 1900, Hamilton, Ohio was the fifth-largest industrial producer in the whole United States? It's a fact.) Both institutions needed money and labor – capital and resourcefulness – to thrive. Hello, Butler County!    

     It would have been a match made in heaven, except for one pivotal (and tragic) event. The Southerners caught on quickly to the trading-life-for-money arrangement. There was a cultural memory of indentured servitude – not a pleasant memory at all. The Northerners realized that the very people who were providing them a handsome return on investment were increasingly dissatisfied. There was – just maybe – a sweet spot in which the two groups could have come together: Labor could have taken greater responsibility for profitable outcomes; Capital could have shared further in the profits. Instead, the two groups separated. Those with capital built their New World estates apart from the smoke and noise and sweat that made the estates possible. Those with great pools of resourcefulness retreated into their enclaves of like-gifted people. Both groups blamed the other for the divide.

     If there’s any truth in the old adage “You have to spend money to make money” (and I believe there is), it’s truest for those who have a large margin between what money it takes to survive and what is left to invest. It doesn’t really work the other way around. Other than the occasional recession and one Depression, the more money an investor spent, the greater the return. Meanwhile, those who had little or no margin were left without a way to participate. For investors, the gains were often meteoric; for laborers, the gains were incremental. And on this foundation, dear Church, the Worth-It/Not-Worth-It dividing wall was built.

     Harry Caudill took a lot of criticism because of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, mostly from other Appalachians. He pulled no punches in describing how, time after time, Kentuckians of the Cumberland Plateau found themselves on the muddy end of exploitation. Being told that the people you’ve loved and admired all your life were, basically, rubes – that’s a tough one. His son, in the Foreword to one of the more recent editions, even tells of death threats his dad received. But to a very high degree, based on what I’ve seen in the sixty years since the book was originally published, I believe Cousin Harry was shooting us straight. He taught me where the division came from.

     What he didn’t teach me was what to do about it. True, his book carried a resounding “Don’t let this happen again” message, and I’m all for that. My family is from Kentucky too, and I groan when I see the exploitation still going on. (My nephew in Jackson County, upon graduating welding school, was offered $9.50 an hour to start – about a third of what he could make north of the Mason-Dixon line.) But there’s a uniquely Christian understanding – what should Christians do about the Woth-It/Not-Worth-It wall – that was left out of publication.

     Enough history – let’s get to the crucial point: “Hey, Christian, you don’t work for The Man, you work for The King.”

     Regardless of socioeconomic status or nature of employment, all who have the mind of Christ (see 1Corinthians 2:16) and the indwelling Holy Spirit (see 1Corinthians 12:13) are engaged in work that is Worth It. Do all of us know that? Not even close. Let’s go to Scripture, and begin to be convinced:

    Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ (Colossians 3:23-24). 

     See? What I told you is Bible-true: you work for The King. The work you do, done in service to the King, brings his kingdom.

     In the two letters I’ve written to you so far on the nature of work, we’ve seen that 1) work is meant to be satisfying; Adam had a job before he sinned, and the Garden of Eden flourished under his care, and 2) work is not a curse; indeed, there was no curse pronounced, only the natural consequences of being separated from God by sin. In this letter, the idea is to understand where our work is headed.

     Jesus knows exactly what he wants his kingdom to look like when he completes it here on earth. In his first appearing, he dropped some large clues, and intends that we would pick them up and implement them to the best of our Holy Spirit-empowered ability. But life happens, right, and it looks for all the world that the un-Jesus side has all the worldly advantages.

     Close your eyes. Go ahead, close ‘em. Now say, “On earth as it is in heaven…” Say it again. I don’t ask you to do stuff like this very often, Church, but I’m asking now. Say it a third time: “On earth as it is in heaven…”

     This planet of ours constitutes a very precise volume. Mankind has estimated, but only God knows how many cc’s that is. Earth weighs a certain amount, and though man has made his best guess, God knows it down to the fraction of a gram. But mankind can know – oops, to be more specific, Christians can know – this unassailable fact: Every particle of Jesus’ kingdom we call onto earth, displaces the same amount of un-Jesus kingdom. It’s a gon-er. Outta here. We will have to wait for the Rightful King to tip the scales undeniably and eternally, but the work we do right here and right now loads them in his direction. Please take that idea into your next shift.

     And just for kicks, when you lay your head on your pillow after long hours of work, receive this truth from the Bible book of Zephaniah:

The Lord your God is in your midst,
    a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
    he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing (3:17).

     I can make the offer only on his promise.

 

 Grace and Peace (even “on the clock”!),

 

John

Brow Sweat, Part 2: Frustration

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     In our last letter, we started looking into the nature of work. Work: you know, the thing we thought was a punishment for sin, but learned otherwise a couple of weeks ago. The very first human had good and gainful employment before he sinned; and presumably, the second human (his wife) joined in the work – a family operation. Sin happened and changed the appearance of work, but not its origin or its reason for being. With our tuned-up understanding, we’re ready now to see why we misunderstood in the first place.

     Back in Genesis 3, there’s an important detail hiding in plain sight:

And to Adam he said,

…cursed is the ground because of you;

in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
    and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread…” (Genesis 3:17-19).

     True or False: this was part of God’s curse on Adam.

     False. There was no curse pronounced on Adam. Of the four beings in the garden at that moment – the LORD God, Adam, Eve, and the serpent – only one was cursed. The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you…” (verse 14). When the LORD God says, “cursed are you,” it’s a done deal, and the end of the serpent’s story is already written in the twentieth chapter of the Revelation.

     But look again at what the LORD God said to Adam: “…cursed is the ground because of you…” The ground was cursed, not the humans. It’s right there. All manner of ugliness would sprout from the ground because it was cursed. And it was cursed because of human sin. The unhappy couple were expelled from the Garden of Eden, and for the first time ever (and henceforth), frustration and work became inseparable.

     If we mistakenly see God pronouncing a curse on mankind, here’s what happens: we set ourselves up in an adversarial relationship with the creator of all things. And if we could just wiggle out from under the curse (the one that doesn’t exist, actually) we’d be much better off. Adam tried that. It didn’t go well.

     Instead of inventing a curse God didn’t pronounce, let’s look instead at a blessing he did:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

     The question at hand is this: Did God, in pronouncing the consequences of sin, retract the blessing he pronounced earlier?

     To arrive at a sensible answer, let’s break out the blessing, item by item. The benefits of the blessing would be: 1) be fruitful, 2) multiply and fill the earth, 3) subdue the earth, and 4) have dominion over the non-human living things. Now let me ask one question pertinent to each item:

1)    Q: Are humans fruitful, ever? A: Yes.

2)    Q: Have humans multiplied? A: Oh my gosh, absolutely!

3)    Q: Have humans subdued the earth? A: To some extent, sure.

4)    Q: Do humans have dominion over non-human living things? A: We live where we want, for the most part – so, yeah.

    All the essential elements of the blessing are intact. God grants success in every one of them – in measure. Before sin, success was absolute; ever since sin, success has been expressed in a ratio with frustration, and can’t be absolute – yet. (More on the “yet” in a future letter.) Back to the original question: Did God, in pronouncing the consequences of sin, retract the blessing he pronounced earlier?

     Answer: Some of it… for a while.

     In our previous letter, dear Church, I planted a seed: Live as much Genesis 2 (satisfaction) as you can, even though Genesis 3 (sin) happened. Work is not a consequence of sin, because work predates sin. The takeaway from this edition is this: Sin did not cause God to pronounce a curse on mankind; neither did sin cause him to retract the full measure of blessing. Let’s please stay out of the adversarial relationship with our creator; there’s no basis for it.

     Sometimes, Bible teachers will use the term “co-regent” in reference to Adam and Eve: they co-reigned with God in the Garden of Eden. Contrary to the serpent’s lies, the same term applies to Christians now, outside the garden – except, creation is in a flawed, cursed condition.

     But creation won’t stay that way.

 

 Grace and Peace (beyond the frustration),

 

John

Sweat of Your Brow, Part 1: I Can't Get No...

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     A strange thing happens to a man when he takes hold of a pressure washer gun. The machine’s engine is roaring, and the work is right in front of him: a dirty house, a moldy slab of concrete, maybe a deck that really needs to be shown who’s boss. With the opening shot, ugliness is blasted away, and the man gets to thinking, “Wow, I could clean the WHOLE WORLD with this thing! If I just had a long enough hose and a steady supply of gas… Maybe I should get a sponsor. Honey, I’ll be back home in a few weeks, and you’ll be tickled pink with what I got done!”

     And then reality sets in: the sun begins to set; his trigger hand cramps up; the extra can of gas he was counting on actually went into the lawnmower last week, and he forgot to refill it. Such is life. And work.

     The expectation that a person can clean the whole world with a pressure washer is, to say the least, unrealistic. And yet, there’s satisfaction in the work. Dirty stuff gets clean almost instantly. If only that kind of satisfaction could carry over into every other form of work.

     For decades I operated under the assumption that work, in and of itself, is a consequence of the Fall. By “the Fall,” I mean The Big One, the Genesis 3 Fall, where sin entered the human experience, causing separation from God – and, of course, death. I thought, because of Adam’s screwup, I should expect work to be difficult and unsatisfying. Many’s the paycheck I drew with resentment, realizing I had given time out of my life in exchange for the boss’ money – and while the boss’ money was replenishable, my time was not. I couldn’t wait to get my hands around Adam’s throat.

     Though I can’t say for certain when my understanding of the nature of work was flipped on its head, I can certainly say that it has. And over the course of our next few letters, dear Church, if your understanding of the nature of work needs to be flipped – and I reckon it does – I hope to be the flipper. Are ya ready?

     An upside-down understanding is easy to come by. Scripture itself requires a clear-eyed look at what led up to the Fall. Absent that clear-eyed look, the Fall and the Curse become synonyms referring to the same event. They are not. Below is a key piece of Bible, familiar to most of us, I’m sure, that needs to be understood better. Here it comes, in the King James Version, for maximum theatrical effect:

…cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return (Genesis 3:17-19).

     Totally looks like a curse – I get it. Why it’s not a curse on mankind is a topic we’ll get to in a future letter. This time around, what I want to highlight is the order in which events took place.

     Work predates the Fall. Genesis 2:15 says The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Did you catch the chapter number? Early in Chapter 2 of Genesis, Adam was the happiest (and only) human on earth. He also had a job. And with his work and stewardship, the Garden flourished. Late in Chapter 2 of Genesis, the second human came along, and Adam was happier still. In verse 23 we find the first recorded words of a human being, Adam’s joy over finally having another imago Dei around the place. And we would do no harm to Scripture if we assume Eve began to “work” and “keep” the Garden along with her husband. Clear eyes will see that work was well underway before the serpent did his dirty work, before the deception of Eve, before Adam’s sin.

     What does that mean for us now? Well, I could go into several trains of thought on how God set, in the beginning of human history, a laser line that has established the standard for marriage and family and all other human relations. But since the topic at hand is work, I’ll stick to it.

     In 1965, the Rolling Stones blew the rock charts to smithereens with their hit song “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Yeah, I was around for that. I remember gathering around a record player in an upstairs bedroom of my grandma’s house with my aunt and two uncles – all of whom were not much older than me, one of whom had bought the 45 single – and marveling at Keith Richards hitting those now-famous riffs on his newfound fuzz guitar. Maybe the riffs are so famous that the underlying message snuck in unnoticed.

     Here's what I recommend to all humans, married/unmarried, employed/unemployed, young/old: Live as much Genesis 2 as you possibly can, even though Genesis 3 happened. As it pertains to work, the satisfaction we gain won’t be like the satisfaction Adam and Eve had before the Fall, but satisfaction can still be had.

     That kernel of thought is what I want to plant at the moment. And now I’ll shut up for a while.

  

Grace and Peace (and satisfaction beyond the pressure washer),

 

John  

 

 

 

   

Surprise

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, God comes up with something unexpected… simply because he wants to.

     My bride and I thought the cherry tree was done for. We didn’t get a crop this year; most of the fruit fell to the ground while it was still green. And despite the “scare tape,” the birds managed to pick off most of what did ripen. And then the leaves fell off – about two months ago. We plan to give the tree a righteous pruning come winter, and hope for better results in ’25.

     We don’t need the cherry crop: it is neither crucial income nor sustenance. When Kay loads those tart cherries into a pie crust, the outcome is wonderful, for sure – put on an extra pot of coffee, we’re going to be here a while – but still, a luxury, not a necessity. I stopped grieving over the cherries and moved on to other issues a while back. Leave weeping to the willows.  

     One thing that has stuck with me, though, is the drought we’ve been in. Money crops are suffering; farmers and their families will suffer too. I was on the back porch early Wednesday morning, asking Jesus why we’re having this exceptionally dry weather. He upholds the universe by the word of his power (see Hebrews 1:3); a couple inches of rain wouldn’t be too much to ask.

     While I was praying, movement caught my eye toward the north end of the yard: a hummingbird was flitting around the cherry tree. Stupid bird, you’re supposed to be headed south soon, and here you are trying to draw nectar from a tree that has none. In a moment, another hummingbird came along. They must really be desperate. I went on praying, and gave the birds up to failed instincts.

     But the birds kept at it. The movement, now somewhat of a nuisance, kept drawing my attention. On one glance I finally spotted a few patches of green where green hadn’t been, and a few flecks of white that were out of place. The cherry tree was blooming. As Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight” (Genesis 3:3), and I went for a closer look. The tree had a few dozen waxy, June-fresh leaves and maybe fifteen to twenty blossoms, all in one patch. Not enough for a cherry crop, but enough to get a couple hummingbirds started on a long migration.

     Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,

    your faithfulness to the clouds.
    Your righteousness is like the mountains of God;
    your judgments are like the great deep;
    man and beast you save, O Lord.

    How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
    The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
    They feast on the abundance of your house,
    and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
    For with you is the fountain of life;
    in your light do we see light (Psalm 36:5-9)

     I don’t generally think of hummingbirds as “beasts,” but they and “the children of mankind” share a common reality: God saves; the Lord pours out his steadfast love; he gives them, all of them, drink from the river of his delights.

     Meteorologically, we are in a dry season. But the river of delights flows always. The fountain of life springs fresh. The steadfast love of our Father encompasses the heavens and the deeps and the mountains and the hummingbirds.

 Surprise!

 

 Grace and Peace (and water for your souls),

 

John  

O My Soul

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     What do people usually do or say when they catch you talking to yourself? Do they chuckle, or make circular motions with a finger near the head? (“Watch out: somebody’s done gone looney-tunes!”) Do they show some measure of pity, as for a puppy with a thorn in its paw? The reactions vary, but invariably, we don’t like to be caught talking to ourselves.

     Which is why I’m going to encourage us to talk to ourselves, sort of, on purpose:

 Bless the Lord, O my soul,

    and all that is within me,
    bless his holy name!
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
    who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
    who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's…

Bless the Lord, O my soul! (Psalm 103:1-5, 22)

     Who wrote this Psalm? That’s easy: it’s attributed to David, the shepherd king. About 49 others have his name in the superscription as well. Here’s the question that’s not so easy: Who’s he talking to?

     David, like all of us, had relationships with a wide variety of people. Some were counting on his continued success; others wanted nothing more than to see him impaled on a long pole and eaten by crows. Navigating those relationships, we know, can be tricky – don’t want to mix those up. Is there a faithful, steady source of good counsel?

     David was one of the few Old Testament people who understood anything about the companionship of the Holy Spirit. And among those to whom the Spirit had been granted for a certain task, David was perhaps the only one with a clue that the Spirit’s companionship was meant to be a lifelong, even eternal, blessing. He was, in this respect, the prototype of the present-age Christian. He, like Christians now, had a perspective that is unavailable to anyone who does not yet have the Holy Spirit dwelling within. So yeah, he was talking to himself, but it’s okay: he was acting on the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

     Now that we know who did the prompting, it’s oh-so-important to see what the Spirit prompted our ancestor-in-the-faith to speak to his soul. Give a big ol’ WooHoo, precisely because the Spirit did NOT prompt David to say to his soul, “Soul, you’re so clever, and good-looking too. We killed the lion and the bear. And don’t forget the smelly old giant – off with his head! You’re rocking it, soul. Ain’t nobody can stand in our way.”

     Give the biggest WooHoo ever, precisely because the Spirit prompted David to shout out the praises of the only awesome God: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” Bless – from the Hebrew word barak (baw-rak’), the primitive root of which means “to kneel,” as in adoration. Bless the Lord; speak favorably of him; adore him. I’m so glad barak is a verb, an action word – something happens, something tangible and measurable, because of barak.

     Best of all, the prompting of the Spirit to bless the Lord is founded on at least a bajillion reasons to adore him. Here are a few:

The Lord works righteousness
    and justice for all who are oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses,
    his acts to the people of Israel.
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
    nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
    nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
    so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
    so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame;
    he remembers that we are dust (verses 6-14).

     The soul – even the regenerated soul of the believer – gets bogged down. The poet William Wordsworh wrote, “The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers…” (Maybe he was having one of those bogged-down days way back in 1807.) Each day has the potential to be a bogged-down day. Just too much. No discernable way out. Thankfully, each day also presents the option to adore the lover of our souls. The soul was never designed to be self-sustaining. The soul was designed to be blessed and refreshed by blessing the Lord.

     Go ahead, sister; go ahead, brother – talk to yourself, at the Holy Spirit’s prompting. He is already “interced(ing) for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). And he “intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (verse 27). If some of those groanings were to turn into words, I wouldn’t be surprised if they sounded much like what David said in Psalm 103: “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Through the Spirit, the believer has the ability to stand apart from the overwhelm-ed-ness, to get out of the torrent, and gain solid footing.

     I saw a TV commercial lately for a medication that helps people who’ve had a heart attack not have another one. The scene has a woman doing an interview with a production crew, along with an animated heart – her own – on the couch beside her. It’s a two-party conversation, the woman and her heart. Thankfully, the heart’s voice is also the woman’s. Freaky if it wasn’t, huh? I figure, if a TV production crew can give it a serious effort, why not us? And if somebody catches you encouraging your soul, maybe that’d be a great time to explain how you were doing it just like God’s people have been doing it for thousands of years.

  Grace and Peace (through blessing God),

 

John

Jesus in the Starting Blocks

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     I can’t see heaven from here.

     Try as I might, strain as I will, the glory escapes me. I squint to see what the other John saw in the Revelation, but as soon as I look down onto the pages of my Bible, I lose sight of what is above. I’ve stood on mountaintops many thousands of feet above sea level, but thought mostly of the toil it took to get there. I’ve traveled in aircraft six miles up with clouds far below, but thought mostly about how presumptuous it is to move so high and so fast.

     By day the sun is too intense to look upon. By night the moon is a mocking reflection. Faraway stars twinkle and tease – though others find lions and hunters and bears by connecting the shimmering dots, I take one Big Dip and I’m done. And the heavens return to returning a blank stare.

     At some point in my childhood I heard a preacher describe Jesus’ present posture in heaven. Jesus, presumably, is coiled up like a sprinter in the starting blocks, waiting for the Father, at a moment known only to him, to fire the pistol. For, like, two thousand years so far. Sounds exhausting to me. I’ll bet Jesus has better things to do. The image of Jesus in the blocks returns (unbidden) to my recall at times, but I put no stock in it. And heaven gets farther away.

     Help a brother out, here?

     I’ve been reading some old, old writing lately. Early Seventeenth Century – how’s that for retro? The author, one Jeremiah Burroughs – a Puritan preacher who gained and lost various degrees of distinction over his 46 years on this earth – proposes that there is greater satisfaction to be had in this walk-around world, and in this mortal life, than in the world and life to come.

     Oh, perish the thought!

     To be fair, his theory is that obedience to God in a disobedient generation (meaning, any generation) sets up a better-than-heaven-on-earth scenario; an isle of contentment can be had in a raging sea of sin and debauchery. He posits that seeking God’s purposes in the midst of temptation is better than being plugged into God’s purposes when there is no choice. But the question I’m itching to ask Brother Burroughs is, “How the heck could you have known?” He knows now, gone to heaven these 378 years. Maybe he knows, now, he was wrong then.

     “On earth as it is in heaven…” (Matthew 6:10). Of all the things Jesus could have taught us to pray, this is one of the very few he chose. Leads me to believe that earth contains precisely as much heaven as we pray into it. That – ahead of the rightful King’s return – his little brothers and sisters will see only as much heaven as they drag down to examine at arm’s length. Mountains are worth climbing, and flying through thin air is great fun, but if Jesus is to be believed, climbing and flying and gazing into the heavens aren’t the best ways to catch a glimpse. Maybe heaven is closer than I thought, and easier to see.

     “…having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you…” (Ephesians 1:18). Of all the things Paul the apostle prayed for us, this – breathing in the words God breathed out – is one of the many he prayed. As it turns out, I’ve been using the wrong organs for looking into heaven. My natural eyes are subject to the grit and smoke and fog of the atmosphere – the very heavens conspire against my seeing them. Praise God: there’s a better way of seeing.

     Disagree if you wish, but I’m convinced that the grit and smoke and fog here below are all part of the divine plan, meant to make us concentrate. I’m convinced that if we had all of heaven right now, it would be a terrific letdown. Though I found this quote in a novel, by a fictional character, it bears considering: “We’ve all got to go through just enough to kill us.” Why should it be otherwise? And, thank God, since we who are saved won’t be touched by the second death, we don’t have to go through twice as much as it takes.

     If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory (Colossians 3:1-4).

     Kay and I recently re-watched “Hidden Figures,” a movie about the lesser known yet indispensable contributors to early space travel at NASA. The crescendo comes when the team of mathematicians correctly calculates the re-entry path and returns Astronaut John Glenn safely home – a task that had been described as being like “shooting a sawed-off shotgun and putting one pellet through a pinhole at a thousand yards – on purpose.” One of the mathematicians, Katherine Johnson, was then asked by her boss, “So, do you think we can get to the moon?” To which Katherine replied, “We’re already there.”

     Well, whaddya know? I done died and gone to heaven! Like it already happened. According to Colossians 3:3, and in a sense that I only grasp occasionally, it already has. With the eyes of my heart enlightened, the glimpses will come more often – right here, at arm’s length.

 

Thanks for the help, Church.

 

 Grace and Peace (on earth as it is in heaven),

 

John

 

Glory and Honor

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     Do you trust God?

     Let the question bubble up for a bit. There’s an easy answer – a Christian reflex, we might say – but I think we’ll be more satisfied if we hold it off for a while. I asked a very broad question, on purpose, but the best responses will be more specific.

     I trust God with whatever I can’t possibly change: the orbits of heavenly bodies, the rotation of Earth and such. I trust God, sometimes, with whatever I can’t change but think I can: the effects of gravity, international affairs and all that jazz. Trusting God in the details, in the everyday, in all the matters in which he calls for my cooperation – yeah, that’s the hard part.

     In our last letter, I wrote to you on Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” I hadn’t planned for the verse to become a series, but there’s a certain phrase that won’t leave me alone, so I’ll pester you with it as well: “…as you trust in him.”

     From the prayer Jesus taught us, we have some familiar phrases: “on earth as it is in heaven,” and “forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The small-but-mighty word – “as” – sets up a firm correlation. In the same manner and to the same measure that the kingdom of God has come to heaven, we pray for the kingdom to come here on earth. In the same manner and to the same measure that we forgive those who trespass against us, our trespasses are forgiven. Romans 15:13 has the same correlation loaded into it – “…as you trust in him.” Joy and peace ride in through the gate opened by trusting God.

     Trust, we know, is built over time. In human relationships, we take that as a given. Why? Because we’ve had relationships with some untrustworthy people – keep your distance, let trust be proven. Ironically, Christians tend toward the weird idea that trusting God is a one-and-done, now-and-forever proposition. This notion sets up a difficult scenario: I trusted God once – say, for salvation – but if I fail to trust him in some detail, all of my trust in him is shaken… or broken. That won’t do.

     From what I can tell in Scripture, God is OK with us learning to trust him over time. Jesus didn’t come on the scene saying, “Hey, everybody, I’m the Son of the Almighty – time to bow down and worship!” Rather, he came healing and ministering and admonishing. He made an offer, that even if the people couldn’t yet trust his claim of deity, they could begin to trust through what he was doing among them. All of us who are saved trusted God for salvation – but at that point, did any of us understand everything salvation involved?

     I’ve never been a fan of the “Jesus Take the Wheel” brand of faith. Jesus made the wheel, and whatever road I’m traveling, he, ultimately, paved it. But when he plunks me down in the left-front seat, I get the idea he wants me to drive – according to his purpose, of course. Job One for me is to give up the notion that I made the wheel, I paved the road, or my purposes are better than his. As God called the first human to be co-regent with him in the Garden of Eden, so he calls all saved humans to participate in the reconciliation of all things on earth and in heaven.

     “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). Nothing can be added to salvation – we walk into Jesus’ finished work on the cross. But look at the arrangement of trust and strength, so close together. Strength, like trust, is built over time. The Father’s trustworthiness will always outpace our level of trust in him, and we are made stronger – quietly, faithfully – each time his grace is found to be sufficient for the day.

     As you trust in him… joy and peace begin to fill. It’s a one-for-one proposition, best I can tell. My prayer for us is that we lean into the trust, and are willing to be surprised by the joy and peace.

 Do you trust God? Get as specific as you like; God can handle it.

 

 Grace and Peace (with a side of joy),

 

John

John