Simplicity

H. Jackson Brown’s third suggestion for success is this:

Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

I’m not going to write about this specifically this post, but I realized I’d forgotten to attach it to the end of my last post. So here it is.

What I am going to write about is a prequel to that particular bit of knowledge, but, strangely enough, it’s going to approach it rather obliquely. What I want to look at is simplicity of heart.

I’m not sure where the best place to start is. Certainly, one needs to bear in mind that we are all given the ability to love. We do not all choose to use it, however. And much in the world prevents us from it. But we do have that capability in us, and it is from the heart that serving others springs. And it is in simplicity of heart, truly, that the key to the gift of service is to be found.

We add complexity to the heart by launching the meditation of reason against it. As a result, we lose the simplicity of heart that gives rise to unflinchingly loving people – living in innocence. Or we find ourselves in situations where we don’t want to love people, and forget that we’re all broken. Regardless, I’ve been thinking recently that being simple in heart, as a child is, really is as important as the Bible says it is.

To recover this is not a work that we undertake often or without trepidation. But it is sometimes necessary to return the heart to something approaching innocence in order that we might be of the greatest service to others.

Something to think on, anyway.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Exercising Faith III – Emotional Shorthand

One thing that really bugs me about this new digital culture is the way in which we limit ourselves emotionally by saturating ourselves with news…BAD news.  Countless thousands of people will get up in the morning, brew their coffee, sit down at the computer and peruse the previous day’s tragedies.  We’re hit all the time with news of death, war, famine, pestilence…yes, I’ve mentioned the four horsemen of the Apocalypse specifically (They’re Biblical, and not just icons of popular understanding).  So much, in fact, that it destroys compassion and empathy.  And this is frightening.  We are deluged with so much loss and so much senselessness, and as a result we start to shut ourselves down emotionally, like circuit breakers.  We can’t bear the things we hear on our own strength, so we don’t try.  And that narrowing of the range of feelings short-changes the heart and soul of what we’ve been designed for.  In a nutshell, what happens is that we’ve designed our lives to communicate in emoticons, which I call emotional shorthand.

There’s a lot of reference in the Bible to things like fullness of joy, and there are a lot of people who don’t experience it, because of depression (spiritual or physical), distraction, delusion and division.  I kind of like the alliteration, and I’ll probably spend a post on these things a little later on.  But now, bear one thing in mind – We’re not designed as emotionless beings.  Nor are we meant to experience things like love and sorrow as brief blips on an otherwise steady ECG monitor.  We have hearts for a reason, and it’s no accident that in places like Ezekiel 11:18-21 and Ezekiel 36:25-27 the Lord expressly declares that he will give us hearts of flesh.  They are to be used for people, and to their full range…not as foolish little yellow heads to punctuate sentences.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Keeping Company with The Dead II

For fear of making even less sense than I normally do , I stopped early last night to sleep.  There are a number of things that I’m still thinking about regarding this whole concept of living among the dead.

It’s a hard thing to accept physical death.  All of us have experienced, at one time or another, the death of a friend, a family member, or someone else.  But at least there is a clear sense that something has passed away.  What happens, though, when we find ourselves walking among the dead?  To give you some sense of what I’m saying, I’ll briefly quote Matthew 8:18-22:

“Now, when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side.  And a scribe came up and said to him, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’  And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’   Another of the disciples said to him, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’  And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.’”

Leave the dead to bury their own dead. What does this mean?  On the one hand, it doesn’t make any earthly sense.  How can the dead bury their own dead?  There’s no life to give them energy, no work that they can do if they’re physically dead.  That is, unless they’re zombies.  I could spend some time reflecting on what it means to be a zombie and how very closely related to the lives of many people the condition truly is.  But I won’t, for your sake and for mine.   On the other, we have a profound insight into the spiritual condition of the follower of Christ as opposed to the citizen of the world.  And an extemporization of the cost associated with such a radical lifestyle change.  But centrally, this passage speaks to me about one thing.  The necessity of considering eternal life in Christ as more important than anything that we or our enemy might raise up against it.

The second point of this whole idea of keeping company with the dead is the fact of the loneliness of the condition, the isolation and wretchedness of letting Satan have his way.  I’ve heard many observations about the fact that Christ crossed the sea of Galilee for one man…the demoniac who, in Mark and Luke becomes the messenger of the life-changing purpose of Christ.  But one thing I haven’t seen much on is the causality of the whole thing. Look at it with me for a time.

Christ has just come down from the Mount of Olives, having preached revolutionary ideas to a culture with hundreds of years of entrenched legalism.  He’s going to want to rest for a bit, because he’s just led a service of worship for five or six hours.  He still has time, however, to make two crucial statements to two different people regarding the essentially nomadic lifestyle that His followers must subscribe to. The first declares that He has no home, no place of permanent rest.  The rest of the follower of Christ is in Him.  The second statement declares the ultimate value of following Christ, that those who would follow him are called into life, while those whom we have lived with, been raised by and been loved by are left in death.  Jesus then asks for a boat to be made ready to cross the Galilee, is obeyed, and promptly falls asleep.  A storm blows up, during which Jesus remains asleep while his disciples, frantic, wake him up.  He rebukes them for having little faith, and calms the waters of the sea completely.  Finally, he arrives amidst the tombs of the region of the Gadarenes, meeting two men (more likely one man) and casts a legion of demons out of him.  I could spend a post on authority here, but the essential point I want to make is that, in my thinking, Christ is using this man as an example of rebirth, something that, until now, he had not demonstrated.  Furthermore, that this man is going to physically leave the houses of the dead that he has been living among and go to spread the message of rebirth to those who still live among the metaphorical dead.  Here’s the crucial part…Christ’s message hinders the men of privilege who ask Him if they may follow, but the men (or man) without even a home or a given name, who have nothing, are given health and wholeness.  The most despised and feared become the most readily transformed, and this after those who have willingly asked have found the cost too hard.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.