Brow Sweat, Part 5: Cooperation

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     With apologies up front to football fans, an NFL game is the silliest thing on earth. Twenty-two men line up, eleven facing eleven, with an odd-shaped ball between them. Play starts with the ball moving away from the goal line. In the next few seconds, eleven players do their best to keep the ball moving backward, while the other eleven do their best to reverse the direction in which the ball started. Success is measured in three-foot increments. Hundreds of millions of dollars are expended. Meanwhile, here’s an unassailable fact: my three-year-old granddaughter could move the ball farther and faster if the twenty-two big boys would simply get out of the way, all for a handful of M&M’s.

     Here's my fantasy football scenario. Picture a residential street, new, with no homes along it yet. Make it a cul-de-sac, just for the sake of maximizing the cozy. On each side of the street are five foundations, ready to have houses built on them. The buses roll in and the players pile out. Tools and equipment are issued to each. Object of the game: to see which team can build the best five houses soonest.

     Offensive linemen become hod-carriers, mixing the mortar and hauling the brick. The secondary gets started on framing. Special teams become electricians and plumbers and HVAC. Defensive linemen get to hoist twelve-foot sheets of five-eighths drywall straight onto the ceiling joists, while the kickers shoot the screws. Wide receivers become roofers. Quarterbacks… hmm, well, I guess every jobsite needs a foreman. Everybody gets to do something worthwhile.

     In this scenario, ten houses go together, to be occupied by ten households who turn the structures into homes. Everybody wins; nobody loses. In a word, it’s cooperation instead of competition.

     Economists tell us that competition drives innovation forward and keeps prices down. Within a certain context, I can’t disagree with them. But the certain context assumes, up front, that cooperation isn’t possible. Looks like we need a broader context.

     Have you read the end of the story? Whatever your end-times beliefs are, one feature of eternity is unmistakable: there will be one King, unopposed and unquestioned. From the Prophets through the Epistles and into the Revelation, Scripture points to a time when time is obsolete and the plan that was from the beginning comes to total fruition. Permits have already been issued; ground has been broken.

     What kind of work do you do? How does it fit with the end of the story? If you can identify many aspects of your work that seem to correlate with God’s finished plan, my pastorly advice would be: Rejoice! If not, please don’t despair. Instead, ask the Holy Spirit to show you how your work fits into the plan. There will be more ways than you could think of on your own. And that’s not just a dime-store promise from me, but rather a solid scriptural principle based on the following verse…

    Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain (1Corinthians 15:58).      

     Hey, Church, in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Hear it again: in the Lord your labor is not in vain! Believe it. Own it. Let it permeate whatever work you do. Your labor is not in vain. Maybe the understanding of this promise is still in the future, but that doesn’t make the promise any less solid.

     All of us have had nights when, laying head to pillow, we wondered whether anything we did during the just-gone day was worth anything at all. Did a needle move in a good direction, anywhere, even in the tiniest degree? It’s a condition that’s plagued me all of my working life. Viewed through a microscope, very few days will appear fruitful.

     Our Father, our King, gives us a better lens, a telescope and portal into that broader context. Even now, we work for one King, as I pointed out in a previous letter. Competition is so pre-Christian. Jesus initiated the kingdom and the kingdom to come. It’s all headed that way. Read the end of the story again, and ask the Lord to help you focus your work to resemble, more and more, what is certainly and astoundingly on its way already.

     At this advanced age, I’ve come to groan over competition, especially when cooperation would move us ahead so much quicker and better. Companies – churches, too, for that matter – stepping on one another’s heads, grinding competitors into the turf to gain a few yards here and there. And if it’s not according to the finished plan, then it’s not just for nothing, it’s all for loss.

     This will be the last letter in the “Brow Sweat” series, my humble attempt at explaining why-the-heck we humans get up off our tushes to work, anyway – to describe the nature of work in the Creator’s creation. If there’s any encouragement to be had from these letters, perhaps I could sum it up as so:

·         Christians are headed toward a better Garden than Adam and Eve ever had

·         Sin has separated us from God, but not negated all of original blessing

·         Jesus has given us a preview of all the best parts of what’s to come

·         We get to be sanctified – made more like Jesus – as we travel on the way.

    With these encouragements, I hope you are strengthened. I hope you build resolve, not by gritting teeth, but by rejoicing in work. I hope you see more of the kingdom coming every day.

     If I get the boldness, I’m going to call up the commissioner of the NFL and pitch my fantasy scenario. I’ll bet Habitat for Humanity would approve. (Maybe Habitat has made the call already?) I’d love to see what twenty-two very large, very strong men could do on a building site when, instead of banging their heads together, they’re putting their heads together. 

  

Grace and Peace (and boldness to cooperate),

 

John