Nothing but the dead and dying

Posted on December 13, 2011 by me

I spent a few hours today in my yard with a leaf-blower, a rake, and a great many large green plastic bags. I appreciate my trees very much. In fact, I planted two of the trees—an ornamental cherry and a bloodgood Japanese maple— in our yard myself, not to mention a dozen or so evergreens.

I even like autumn leaves. I love to watch the chlorophyll-green give way to their default colors, and freshly-fallen leaves have been one of my favorite things to photograph. However, at some point they begin to decay. In Oregon, as it rains often this time of year, the fallen leaves mash together and start to rot, killing the grass underneath. Then, it means several weeks of raking, blowing, mowing and bagging.

Today as I was leaf-blowing and raking, I began to think about the leaf-cycle, and how autumn really is a season of death. The chorus of Paul Simon’s “My Little Town” started running through my brain, “Nothing but the dead and dying…” I’m not being morbid, I’m just acknowledging reality. Autumn shows us in very clear ways that the circle of life is not all about life. And in Oregon, while there’s still a lot of green going on, we don’t have the advantage of snow to cover up the signs of death that autumn brings. While we love the colors of autumn, we can’t escape the fact that in the end, death stinks, and it’s ugly. And, we have to deal with it.

Christmastime is here

As I blew and raked and bagged the thousands of dead, rotting leaves, I was also aware of how Christmas—regardless of what time of year Jesus was actually born—breaks into the “dead zone” of the circle of life. For us upper Northern hemisphere folks, Christmas is perfectly timed to demonstrate the power of the incarnation in a very tangible way. To borrow from Paul (Rom. 5:6), at just the right time, while we were dead in our sins, Christ came.  The incarnation—what we celebrate as Christmas—breaks into the downswing of the circle of life bringing super-life into the “bleak midwinter.”  Christmas tells us, among other things, that after winter there is a spring, and that there will be an Easter.

While we were “nothing but the dead and dying,” God sent Jesus. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (Jn 1:4). Christmas… lights… gifts… it all fits. We sometimes miss it, in spite of everything. But that doesn’t stop God from breaking through; nothing can stop Christmas from coming.

Today, it’s nothing but the dead and dying. However, we deal with it knowing that in a few days, it will be Joy to the World.

 

 

 

Posted in Random Thoughts | 1 Comment

Thanks, part 2: Keeping on the Sunny Side

Posted on November 24, 2011 by me

We all know the analogy about the half-full glass—or is it half-empty?

It is a fact that two people can look at the same set of facts and come away with much different ideas. The facts didn’t change; the difference is how the people interpret the facts. One of my favorite songs has become the old Carter Family classic, Keep on the Sunny Side:

Well there’s a dark and a troubled side of life.
There’s a bright and a sunny side too.
But if you meet with the darkness and strife,
The sunny side we also may view.

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side,
Keep on the sunny side of life.
It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way,
If we keep on the sunny side of life.

However, I think the difference between half-empty and half-full is more than simply keeping a positive attitude, or looking at the sunny side. I think it has to do with being thankful—or not.

We live in a culture which is increasingly focused on what we don’t have, and on the importance of equality as being defined as having what everyone else has.  The goal of advertising, politics, and even entertainment is to tell what what we don’t have, and to make us believe that we need something that only someone else can give us.

As the Colonel on MASH used to say, it’s horse-hockey.

The Bible tells us we have been given all things pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). We have enough, and that’s a lot to be thankful for. Of course, if you want something other than that, you’re on your own. Being thankful for what is in your glass—or even that you have a glass in the first place—is a choice. It requires adjusting your focus.

There is “a dark and troubled side to life,” and we shouldn’t pretend it doesn’t exist. However, there is also a sunny side. When you keep on the sunny side by focusing and being thankful for what you’ve been given, you can still see the dark side, but it never looks quite as bad.

Posted in Random Thoughts, This I know | 1 Comment

Thanks

Posted on November 22, 2011 by me

I haven’t posted anything here for a long time, which they say is the worst blogging sin you can commit.  Firmly committed to the principle of grace, I can only respond, “Oh, well.”  But, I’ve been thinking, which probably means eventually I’ll be writing again.  I do plan to continue my “This I Know” series, which focuses on the simple things of Christianity that I knew as a child, and which I still believe are true.

This post will probably be rewritten at some point as part of that series.

This weeks’ revelation

I occasionally have revelations, typically when I least expect them. That’s probably why they fall under the category of revelations. I had one yesterday. Contrary to the popular concept of revelations, the heavens didn’t open, I didn’t receive stone or golden tablets (or tablets of any kind), and I still don’t understand Lady Gaga. My revelation was more along the lines of a head-slapping, “I could have had a V8!” moment. It happened as I was not having a good day and there was very little chance of interpreting the glass as being half-full. My revelation was this:

Cast your cares upon him, as he cares for you. ~1 Peter 5:7

“Him,” by the way, refers to Jesus (I just had to clarify that in case someone took this to mean I had suddenly come to embrace Obamacare.  And no, having a revelation of this sort does nothing to inhibit my tendency towards sarcasm.).

I have to say, I felt a bit foolish, as I have known this verse since I was a child. It’s so incredibly obvious that for this to be considered a revelation, I must be particularly dull. And, perhaps experiencing some adult-onset ADS, I began to appreciate the play on words in this particular translation. “Anxiety” just doesn’t have the same impact as the double use of “cares.”

It is impossible for us to say that we have no one to turn to, as Jesus is always standing there with an implied “What am I, chopped liver?” response.  There are those who will point out that talking to Jesus is not the same as talking to someone you can touch; however, I’ve never been inclined to touch most of my friends anyway. Atheists can refuse to believe he exists, but their failure to believe doesn’t change the truth of the verse. Likewise, our forgetfulness doesn’t change the fact that Jesus is there, ready to take our yoke, carry our burdens, and so on.

For this, I am thankful.

Count your blessings

As a kid, my dad would always frustrate me with that “count your blessings” thing. Often, I didn’t want to count my blessings, as I knew that I would have to let go of my grumbling and complaining to do so. It’s impossible to do both at the same time. Even if we try, acknowledging that something is a blessing—something that we have received through grace, for which we have to be thankful—causes us to have to let go of our negativity.

This doesn’t mean that we will automatically be free from our anxieties, but being thankful does point us in the right direction.

Thanks

This Thursday is Thanksgiving, probably the only holiday that is permanently fixed on a Thursday rather than on a numerical day of the month. This is not really pertinent to my topic, but I do find it interesting. Why Thursday, except to kick off a 4-day weekend? Thanksgiving is not strictly a religious holiday, although it does presume that there is Someone to thank.  You could, I guess thank yourself for everything you’ve accomplished, or sit around and thank each other. You could thank your employer for the paychecks,  and you could thank the government for the roads and so on, and I suppose you could thank universe for kicking things off with a Big Bang. But, it’s not the same.

Thanksgiving traditionally commemorates the mythological First Thanksgiving (not that it can’t be true, but mythological in the sense that it has come to represent something larger than itself), where the Pilgrims threw a feast to celebrate being alive after a difficult 1st year in the new world, and gave thanks to God the provider for what they had been given.

Being thankful—whether we like it or not, or whether we acknowledge it or not—points us toward our creator and provider. And, for those of us who can acknowledge Jesus the source of all good things, it puts us in the perfect position to cast our cares on him.

I have a lot to be thankful for. Without getting too personal, I’ll just say that I’m happy to be here. Today is my son’s birthday, and I’m thankful for him. I’m thankful for my non-birthday kids, too. I’m thankful for my wife, and for the family members that are still with us (I’ve lost a few over the years). I’m thankful for God’s provision, and a lot of other things I won’t mention, specifically the banjo.

Now that I’m older, and hopefully a bit wiser, I have learned that I don’t like to grumble and complain. No one will listen to me anyway. I’d actually much rather be thankful. I like counting my blessings, one by one. It makes me feel better, and keeps me from getting wacked out over things that won’t matter 10 years from now.

The real meaning of Thanksgiving

People always talk about “the real meaning of Christmas,” but no one ever talks about the real meaning of Thanksgiving. It’s not football, or turkey, or shopping. It’s also not about family, as good as family is. The real importance of Thanksgiving is having a day set aside to reorient ourselves toward the only one who will actually catch our cares should we decide to cast them in his direction.

And that, Charlie Brown, is what Thanksgiving is all about.

 

Posted in This I know | 3 Comments

Why worship?

Posted on September 26, 2011 by me


I read a very interesting post this weekend at Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength that challenges the very core of contemporary church life: worship. If you attend a contemporary-style church, chances are you know that it’s all about the worship.  Walk into any of these evangelical churches—many with cool, new-age-sounding names like Daybreak or Morningspring, as well those with more traditional-sounding names, including one or 2 Lutheran churches—and you can expect to spend the first 20-40 minutes singing worship choruses.  This will be followed by announcements, the offering, a coffee break, and then a sermon, usually capped with another worship song or two. The more traditional evangelical focus has always been on the sermon. But, from listening to a number of these sermons in person or on the radio, it’s pretty clear that the focus is not there; it’s on the worship.

So, what if this contemporary understanding of worship is wrong?  I don’t mean off just a little bit, I mean completely and totally wrong. What if worship has nothing to do with creating a mood-altering state through hypnotic rhythms, major 7 chords, and repetitive chanting (hey, I’ve been on a few worship teams and even been a worship leader). The blogger at HMS&S even dares to suggest that God is not even interested in our worship songs:

If you were to search the commands in the books of Moses, you would not find a command where God asks for flattery. In the commands of the books of Moses, God shows remarkably little interest in receiving praise. In the Ten Commandments, the well-known command forbidding idol-worship is not, after all, followed by a command insisting on praising God. The Sabbath command does not contain a command to conduct worship services; it contains a command to rest from work. The kind of “worship” which God asks of his people as they live their daily lives is to be ethical: to be morally good. He requires of his people that they live good lives: not lying, not stealing, not murdering, not taking each others’ wives and husbands. He asks his people to be holy as God himself is holy. He asks us to follow him in his ways.

This is certainly in line with Romans 12:1. The Psalms, however, clearly call for us to praise God with music, and Paul tells us we should sing to each other. I’ve paid very close attention to the lyrics of the “worship” songs being sung in the churches I visit, and as odd as it may seem, there’s actually very little of either going on. Most songs celebrate human emotion, rather than actually talking about God. And most are neither encouraging nor educational (some are downright heretical).

But, this is not to say that singing worship songs—that is, true worship songs, focusing on God’s attributes and what He has done for us—isn’t a good thing.  I loved the songs we sang yesterday in the church I attend, All Hail The Power Of Jesus Name and At The Name Of Jesus (from an old Irish tune I decided to learn on the banjo). And I enjoy more modern songs, too, even outside of church.

So, I’m not sure if the blogger is 100% correct in her viewpoint, but I think it’s worth discussing. What do you think?

 

 

Posted in My Own Personal Religion | 5 Comments