We Must Never Listen to Our Critics

With reckless abandon, Noah built the ark.  With wild faith he followed the path he was led to.  He had children and a whole family.  They all looked to him as the leader of the clan and he told them that they were all going to help him build this boat because something that was never going to happen before was going to cause there to be so much water that it would flood.  A new meteorogical event that had never happened was the cause behind the need to build, rain.  And build they did.  It took them over 300 years to get it together and all that time Noah had his neighbors as constant companions.  They were not there to cheer him on or help him plane beams.  they were there to mock him.  The whole time they did, Noah pleaded with them to get their acts together. 

How could he put up with that kind of abuse?  How could he go on doing the work when day in and day out, week in and week out, year in and year our, decade in and decade out, even to point of century in and century out he was plagued by criticism?  I mean Noah had an incredible faith, or he would not have started.  There is another part of the story told elsewhere that explains things. 

Let’s do a little geneology.  We need only go back four generations from Noah.  His father was Lamech.  Lamech’s father was Methusaleh.  Methusaleh’s father was Enoch.  That is as many “begats” as I am going to use.  These two men, Enoch and Methusaleh, have very cool stories.  Enoch was a normal man living as all of those before and around him lived, but something changed when he had his son Methusaleh.  God told Lamech that as long as his son lived, He would not destroy the earth.  Enoch may have been close to God before, or maybe this was what drew him closer to the Father, but one thing we know is that Enoch grew so close to God that God did not even let him die, but just took him.  Enoch was there one moment and then, “…(he) walked with God and then was not more for God took him.”  The son of the man at the middle of this extraordinary story star studded the pages of the Bible too, for Methusaleh lived the longest of anyone else every recorded.  969 years is a long time for anyone.  Methusaleh lasted on this planet just 31 years short of a milenium!  This was Noah’s grandfather.  I am sure that Lamech had passed the story down to his son about God’s promise to protect the earth as long as he lived.  There is no way that it did not become a family story.  There are not that many people who can say that they are the sole person keeping God from destroying the earth!  Noah grew up around this man.  He heard the stories about his great grand father walking with God and then being taken.  He knew the nature of God and therefore, when God said He would destroy the world and his grandfather the oldest man on earth dies around this time, it was a no brainer.  Noah sets off into the unknown.  Surely it was still difficult, challenging, and faith testing, butthe faith of Noah had been built up his whole life. 

Following Christ is the same today.  We take the steps that God asks for us to take for two reasons.  The first is most important, God asked us, so that means He would not ask unless He knew we could.  So success is through being obedient to His Will.  The second, the next step is usually the next step.  It is not a jump 5, 10, or even 25 steps ahead of things.  God is a God of process.  Therefore He prepares us for the steps that He asks us to take before He asks us to take them.

So, like Noah, we do not need to listen to our critics.  We do not need to bow down under that weight of their criticism.  If God has called us to do it, He will provide the way, and the means, and the strength.

What Came First the Chicken or the Egg? Part 1

          I am a 7th grade reading teacher.  One of the concepts that I teach my students is cause and effect.  This is the axiom that in literature when looking at events and trying to understand the “Why?” one must understand the relationship between cause and effect.  That is that there is always the agent or an act beginning an event which results in a change in someone or something.  If you understand the cause, then you will understand the “Why?”.  This concept is true in real life as well.  Consider these ponderings: 1)Why does Al Gore propport that global warming is the cause of man?  2)Why does my car use so much gasoline?  3)Why am I so much like my dad?  These are all effects.  They are not the “why”, but the reason we ask.  They are the things that went “BUMP!” at night that make us ask, “Why did that happen?”  They bring notice to the dynamics at work.  We must look at what led to these to get to the cause or the answer to that which piqued our interests.  The following are my conjecture to the answers:  1)Al Gore makes loads of cash and receives the much craved recognition he has missed since his long gone political career.  2)My car needs an oil change, or another more fuel efficient car to drive it, or it needs a driver whose foot is a little more of a welter weight than a lead weight.  And I am a lot like my father because… because, well I have not figured that one out yet. 

         

 Now I will apply the concept of cause and effect, to spiritual matters.  God wanted a created being in His own image who would choose to worship Him.  Why did God create man if He knew he would sin, that is to choose to walk away from Him?  And when man fell, why did God bother with him?  Why didn’t He just wipe the slate clean and start over again?  We assume that there is a cause and effect relationship here.  God created man and man sinned.  This must mean that God created sin, or the worst case scenario man sinned without God knowing it would happen.  This would mean that God’s plan was flawed.  When man sinned it put a kink in His perfect creation.  Everything was working well the balance of nature and the circle of life and now man had to choose to walk out on God.  Well isn’t that just brilliant.  The Macau was not made in His image.  The Ferret was not shaped in His likeness.  The only one of God’s creation who God did not speak into existence was man.  He took us from the dust of the ground and molded us with His own hands.  What better way to make man than for the one whose image he would inherit to shape him?  After all of this the Creator God looked upon it and said that it was “very good”.  That is an adverb more than the rest of the creation got.  They were only deemed “good”.  Notice what word was missing, “perfect”.  Man was not perfect when God created him.  If he was then anything that he did would also have to be perfect like choosing to disobey God.  No God knew from the beginning what was going to go down.  He did not create sin.  Apart from man, creation, I would argue, is perfect.  The difference that man brought to the scene was choice.  Perfection is to function according to design.  We can choose to sabotage ourselves all day long and many times do.  God does have a perfect design for us and we can choose to follow it.  And when we do, our lives will be functioning in the perfection they were intended.  The problem is that we live in a fallen world where men’s choices have splattered all over God’s perfection.  That does not mean that the snow flake has mutated to now have eight points or that the sun rises somewhere else than where is always does.  It means that like an oily viscous film, the choices of man, have scattered pell-mell over God’s perfection.  And all of God’s creation cannot wait for the redemption of man.  That is a time when nature can take a bath knowing that the nature of man will have also been scrubbed too.  God knew all of this was going to happen from the beginning.  It does not change His plans, it is part of the Plan.  And that is why we can trust in the Plan and in this the only true God, who knew what would happen from the beginning.

Obedience, Veggie Tales, and the Progression of “The Dream”

        When it comes right down to it dreaming while obeying the direction of God is not an easy task.  Even when you let God in on the dream it is still in some way and some part, the ideas of man, otherwise how could we say that it was our dream?  Sure we can say that God gave us the dream.  Peter had his sheet going up and down from the sky with the unclean menu in it.  Jacob had the angels ascending and descending on a ladder, I guess they left their wings upstairs.  John had the whole appocalypse now thing.  But didn’t they all also have their own thoughts about the future?  Didn’t they all want or at least expect something else?  Sure God changed their direction somewhere along the way, but weren’t some of them going in the general direction and only had to fine tune their heading?  There are always those Jonahs, sail in the exact opposite direction of where they know they should go.  But don’t most people’s dreams lead them if not true north at least magnetic north, not quite right, but almost?  How do you dream and follow God at the same time? 

        Being a father, I have the opportunity, or maybe really the excuse, to watch children’s shows like Veggie Tales.  We watched “It’s a Meaningful Life”, and ” Josh and the Wall”.  The first one, a take on “It’s a Wonderful Life”, shows Larry the Cucumber as the character “Stuart” who was the star football player who almost caught the winning catch, but another did instead.  Now years later he wonders what his life would have been like if he had.  SPOILER ALERT: He finds out that things would have been much worse and that life is actually better for him and those around him because of the way things have turned out.  Moral of the story: God orchestrates our way.  Just because in the middle of it things don’t seem to be going according to ” The Plan” doesn’t mean that we are in the wrong place.  “Josh and Big Wall” goes kind of with this same idea.  They are told to do things in a way that does not seem normal strategy, but in the end things work out and listening to God and doing it His way ends up being the right way to go.  If through both of these stories we learn that God has a plan and that His way works out in the end, how are we then supposed to dream?  How are we supposed to fix our eyes on Christ and at the same time look ahead in our own hearts and plan on our own?  Should our dream always be written in pencil?  Should we dream with our whole mind and throw ourselves at the dream with our whold heart at the same time holding a big Pink Pearl eraser?  How can you keep one ear to the sky while keeping your eyes to the task?

        I am reminded of Hebrews 13, one of my favorite chapters.  It speaks of living the life of a Christ follower as running a race.  When we run a race our focus in only on one goal.  Our energy on one end, the finish line.  All that we exert, everthing that we are about is for that end.  Nothing that we have on is for any purpose other than to cross the line, and not just to crossit, but to be the first.  Anything we do not need on comes off.  Any runner going into a race has an expectation of what is to come.  They have a plan of attack for the hills and the flats.  This plan does not always and probably most of the time ever survive to the end of the race.  This is because the plan is meant to serve the runner to help him or her cross the finish line as well as possible.  The plan is subserviant to the race.  The race dictates the validity of it.  If there is rain or other obstacles along the way the plan is immediately altered.  All good plans take time emotional buy-in to work, so when the plan does not work it can be jarring for a second, but it is in that second that the runner must make the all too imp0rtant decision.  Will I stick to the plan because it is what I know, or will allow wisdom to guide me the better way?

         Running is all and good, but it is not the point only the metaphor for the point.  Dreams take time and emotional investment otherwise they would be worthless to us and just as easily forgotten.  We must look at them as what they are, plans without substance, expectation (hopefully grounded in truth) looking for present validity.  We can let the dream be the  direction when we have no immediate information yet keeping them written in pencil eraser at the ready, or we can write them in stone and when circumstance dicatates a change from the current course of action stick with the plan and be crushed by that stone.  Dreams are only at best man’s inspiration of God’s thoughts.  The farther down the road we get in the Plan that God actually has for us the more clear our inspiration becomes and the more it becomes necessary to change our dreams to accommodate them.  Otherwise we will spend the next undeterminded number of years crying over engraved fancies and allow them to become our epitaph and a warning to others who pass our way not to fall to the same foolishness.  “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not upon your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight.”  “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.”  These are the light for our feet and a lamp on the path of the pregression of “The Dream”.  We must always dream in pencil knowing that this plan, this inspiration of God’s thoughts will only improve as our life and understanding of Him matures.  Our purpose is to do.  We dream about what we will later do, but we must always make sure that we do.