Ever meet a guy who works in a pizza place?  Sometines, when you congratulate this fellow on his good fortune to have access to unlimited free deep dish, he replies, “Pizza?  I can’t stand the stuff any more.”

We do this sometimes.  I still like baseball an awful lot, but about fifteen years ago I got in way over my head.  I read every box score.  Could tell you the starting rotation for every Major League team.  Kept track of the top minor league prospects.  I started collecting the cards, and managed to put together a collection that included at every player who ever put on a Brewers uniform.  Calculated all the stats; I used to make a game of calculating the change in a hitters average after every hit or out.  I posted on the message boards, talked baseball waaaaaay too much.  And little by little, as I got more baseball stuff in my house and more baseball stats in my head, something unexpected happenned.  The more baseball claptrap I clouded my life with…the less I watched the games.

Had no idea that was going to happen.  But the tertiary items of the sport, with their lure of controllable ownership, choked off my affection for the game itself.  I’d miss a game on TV to go to a baseball card show.  I’d chase autographs instead of game tickets.   It really surprised me. 

Sometimes I see us do this with Jesus.  We have so much cool Christian stuff.  Take a look at some of the myspace pages linked on this blog and you’ll find list of some of my favorite Christian music.  Flip through my bookshelf and you’ll find Christian authors from Lewis to Miller.  I even used to have this cool “Jonah’s Surf Shop” t-shirt.  There is just so much Christian stuff that can overshadow Jesus.

It goes beyond the music, movies, books & t-shirts.  It can even get to the theology itself.  Like a golfer who gets infatuated with the clubs over the game, or the handyman who enjoys buying tools more than using them.  We can get so caught up in collecting correct theological understandings that we lose focus on who the object of the theology is.  It gets to where we jump headlong into the trap; where instead of worshipping Jesus, we worship truth.  The more pride we take in how much we understand the study of God, the less we may really know him.

I ended up cancelling ESPN.  I stopped buying cards, and gave a lot of them away.  Now my radio plays the ball games,  and I enjoy the actual game rather than all the officially liscenced merchandise.  We need to do the same with Jesus.  Can we still worship him if we aren’t singing along with Casting Crowns?  Can we still listen to him speak to us if we read the verses in our Bibles, instead of the extensive study notes?   I’m still listening to Larry Norman and Derek Webb, but only in an accessory type of fashion.  When we prefer our own books and our own music to his Word and a real worship of God, we fall victim to our own shell game. 

I worry that we invent a Jesus that really is no more than an amalgum of the merchandise we’ve collected and the grade we got in Theology 101. 

 Pray that we can know God for who he is.

So I recently picked up this book, Jim & Casper go to Church; by Jim Henderson & Matt Casper.  Jim, a Christian Pastor, hires Casper, an articulate athiest, to attend the Sunday Morning service at several Christian churches and evaluate them.  A very interesesting and compelling premise.  In the book, Jim asks for Casper’s honest impressions on the churches that they visit. 

Casper makes some astute observations.  He usually is looking for  evidence of service to the community.  Not a bad thing to look for, as James told us that the real function of religion is to care for widows and orphans.  Casper is also very sensitive to authenticity, and notices several times that he is greeted at the door by someone who has volunteered to do that job, but not greeted by anyone else once he enters.  The manner in which the plate is passed is a big deal for him also, as one particular church that all but guarantees prosperity to contributors gets him pretty ticked off.  He is also turned off by the obvious use of formula.

Jim pretty much acts as Casper’s straight man, asking probing questions to elicit candid responses, but not really adding a lot to the narrative.  So we get a lot of the outsider’s perspective, and it is bristling at times.  But I would have liked to see more input from Jim.  Or, if Jim was really just to be a facillitator, I would have like to see him hire a committed, well-learned Christian to come along as well.  Because there are things that Casper just can’t tell us.  He can’t really tell us if the church that they are auditioning is really communicating the gospel.  The central truth of Christianity, that Jesus died to allow us to be saved, can only be fully understood by one who has experienced salvation.  To Casper’s credit, he doesn’t really attempt to speak to this point.  However, I would have liked to see that perspective addressed in a book like this, as the real effectiveness of a church as far as outsiders are concerned is how well they communicate the gospel.  Should an average non-Christian come into a  Christian church on a Sunday morning, we would hope that they have been given a real view of who Jesus is and how one can become a Christian.  If a church is not communicating the gospel, they might as well be a Moose Lodge.

I do have a favorite line from this book.  It is Casper’s line, and he repeats it a few times.  It comes up when he sees things in church that he would not expect to be there.  Like fog machines.  Like tearful pleas for funds.  Like sermons that did not mention the name of Jesus.  Like churches that spend more money tring to be relevant and cool rather than helping the poor.  Like an offer of salvation that amounts to little more than a get out of Hell free card.  His question, over and over again was, “Is this what Jesus told you guys to do?”  A great question, not only for the decision makers in each local church, but for each Christian as well.

The days work is done, the kids are in bed, and Creedence Clearwater Revival is playing.  What better time could there be to go over Daniel chapter 3?

 This is the very famous account of Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego defying Nebuchadnezzar; thus being sentenced to be burned alive.  It’s written very poetically, with a limited use of pronouns and a very lyical feel.

 Seems Nebuchadnezzar was so inspired by the vision  that is detailed in chapter 2, that he decides to make a literal representation of it.  And he takes the interpretation to it’s illogical end, requiring worship by proxy.  And of course, the three Hebrew boys don’t worship, even though they are set up in high governmental positions.  So they are sentenced to die, and God miraculously saves them.

 I have glossed over the narrative quickly, but I want to go back & highlight a couple of details.  In verse 16-18, the three heroes are responding to the king.  He has just pronounced their sentence, and thrown in a dig at their God for good measure.  Let me quote their reply for you;

     O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter.  If it be so, our God, whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire: and He will deliver us from your hand, O king.  But even if he does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.

Can you imagine?  They have just been sentenced to a torturous death, and yet they remain openly defiant to the king and firmly trusting of God.  I can imagine the shouts and gasps from the courtiers.  It says in the next verse that Nebuchadnezzar’s “facial expression was altered.”  What a nice, understated way to put it.  According to verse 13, the king was already enraged, so this latest refusal must made his face even redder that the very furnace itself.

 ”Even if he does not.”  Wow.  How do you stand at the edge of certain death, and retain the composure to utter such a statement.  Reminds me of Stephen, the martyr who is described to us in Acts chapter 7.  Stephen, as he is about to be stoned, has the audacity to tell the homicidal crowd that he can actually see Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father.  This compels the Council to angrily stone him.  And Stephen faced it bravely, just like Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego.

 Makes me think of the missionaries in Ecuador, who in the 50’s went almost knowingly to their deaths in bringing the gospel to the Aucas.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Saint  How does a man, who has just lost everything, focus only on eternity and God, rather than whining through a checklist of all the things he has been forcibly divested of?

We all know the end of this story.  God saves the three men.  In a way so miraculous that the king does an about face, calling for the God of Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego to be honored.  But of course, as we’ll see in the next chapter, Nebuchadnezzar is given to the gargantuan relapse.

These men are amazing to me.  Shadrach.  Meshach.  Abednego.  Stephen.  Nate Saint.  All men, who embodied the apostle Paul’s credo that living is good so that we can embody the will of God, but dying is so much more personal gain.  I humbly submit that most of us do not believe that we could match the faith of these men.  But I would venture, that prior to the circumstance, they would also not ascibe such faith to themselves.  As God always does, he supplies the faith necessary to overcome the obstacle. 

We have to be careful not to discount the strength of our faith.  Because the faith shown by these men was the same faith that all Christians have.  It is not the faith that is strong.  The strengh is supplied by the object of the faith.  As the martyr John Rogers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rogers_%28Protestant_minister%29 said , “We are not saved by the strength of our faith; but we are saved by our Lord Jesus Christ, who is laid hold of by weak faith as well as by strong faith.”  

Taking a break from Daniel.  Just a short one.  I was reading the story of Judah, son of Jacob, and was taken by the character development he experienced in his life.

 He starts out as the fourth of twelve sons.  In Genesis 37, he is an eager conspirator against his brother Joseph.  The text implies that he was in cahoots with the 10 brothers that wanted to deep six Joseph.  Only Reuben dissented, and it turns out that was enough.  Rueben planned on letting things blow over with Joseph, and was going to rescue him after the other brothers cooled off.  But in the interim, Judah convinces his brothers to sell their kin.  So here’s Judah, the broker of his own brother.

 Once Joseph is Potiphar’s property, we see a telling vignette about the character of Judah.  Seems he has moved off the family estate, gone to a place called Adullam, and taken a pagan Cannanite wife.  Of course, he knew this was high on the list of forbidden actions.  So this wife, Shua, produces three sons for Judah; Er, Onan, and Shelah.  These people could have used a good baby name book.  Er is a bad dude, and God causes his premature death.  There must have been some interesting Cannanite customs in play, because Judah’s second son, Onan, finds himself with the responsibility of impregnating Er’s widow, Tamar.  Evidently, the proposed children of Onan and Tamar would carry the family line of Er.  This makes some sense, as a woman needed sons for security, financial stability, and for securing her place in the extended family.  Now this Onan is a real character.  He doesn’t decline the opportunity to sleep with Tamar, but takes great care to make sure that his semen doesn’t actually end up inside of Tamar.  So this four-flusher Onan is some kind of selfish opportunist, like a cad who sneaks out of a diner without paying the check.  He’s taking advantage of his sister-in-law without actually delivering on his end of the bargain.  I find it very interesting that God honors this arrangement, as he gives Onan the same punishement as his late brother Er.  So Tamar is sent to live back at her father’s house until the third son, Shelah, is of marrying age.

 Judah is getting tired of losing sons in this whole deal, very ironic in that he was ok with Jacob losing a son earlier.  I bet this gives Judah some perspective on his earlier actions.  Judah’s wife Shua has died by this time.  So Shelah grows up, but Judah doesn’t keep his promise to Tamar.  So here is Tamar, a childless widow who is hanging around like an unpaid bill.  Tamar is resourceful, though.  She learns of a journey that Judah is taking to get the sheep sheared at Timnah.  Evidently, what happens in Timnah stays in Timnah, beacuase Tamar is able to entrap Judah fairly easily by masquerading as a prostitute.  Judah doesn’t recognize her, as by now it has been a few years, and she also has veiled her face.  They don’t really haggle over price, as Judah offers a young goat and she immediately accepts.  Of course, Judah is currently herding sheep, not goats, and doesn’t have the goat with him.  So he gets his action on credit.  Imagine what Dave Ramsey would say.  Judah leaves some identifying articles as collateral, a seal, a cord, and a staff.  Evidently, he wasn’t too concerned about leaving a trail, now that the wife was out of the picture.   But he left much more significant evidence, as Tamar finally gets her payment, becoming pregnant with twins.

 Judah has his good friend Hirah take the goat to Timnah to pay off the prostitute.   But Tamar has retired from the business, and is nowhere to be found.  Judah and Hirah discuss the situation and decide that it is best to let the matter drop, as it’s got to be pretty embarrasing to just go door to door with a goat, looking for a prostitute who let you run a tab.  But three months later, Tamar is visibly pregnant, and is evidently still under Judah’s authority. He takes the opportunity to rid himself of the Tamar problem once and for all by condemning her to death for her obvious immorality.  But before sentence can even be arranged for, Tamar pulls a great sneaky Pete move.  She announces that she has the seal, cord, and staff of the man who slept with her.  And Judah is shown for what he is, as she displays the very things he was earlier trying to redeem with a goat.  So Tamar gets her children (Perez and Zerah), Shelah doesn’t have to die like his brothers, and Judah gets a nice public comeuppance exposing his lack of character.  I bet he had to smile a bit, like when a chess master falls prey to a creative checkmate at the hands of a beginner.

 We see Judah again in the 42nd chapter of Genesis.  In the interim, Joseph has gone to prison, been released, and saved Egypt from famine.  Judah is back on the family ranch.  He probably wasn’t too keen on remaining in Adullam, where he was probably regarded somewhat humorously.  Or maybe he is just moving back home because of the famine, like a college dropout just crashing at his parent’s place until he can get on his feet.  Whatever the case, he’s back with his brothers again.  And they have still kept the secret about Joseph, probably believing him to be long dead. 

 But there’s food in Egypt, so they go to Egypt to buy food.  And they go back again to get more.  The mysterious Egyptian official insists that Benjamin come as well, in order to verify the brother’s earlier story.  Of course Jacob is gun shy about letting Benjamin go, he being Joseph’s full brother and all.  So Judah starts to turn it around here.  He steps up to the plate and gives Jacob his personal guarantee that Benjamin will return.  I can’t imagine that was very comforting for Jacob, given Judah’s recent history.  But times are desperate, and a hungy Jacob allows Benjamin to travel to Egypt in the custody of his brother Judah.

 The brothers buy the food, but Joseph had Benjamin framed for theft.  On the way out of town, Jacob’s sons are overtaken and brought back to Joseph where the false evidence is proof enough for Benjamin to be declared guilty.  Joseph declares that Benjamin will remain in Egypt, to be put into slavery for the offense.  But Judah steps forward again, insisting that he himself take the punishment.  Here Judah completes his journey from being a rule bending, selfish man to becoming a man who really does take responsibility for others.

 Of course, Judah and the brothers learn of Joseph’s true identity, and after some tenuous moments, everything ends well.  But in all this, Jacob’s fourth son rises to preeminence among his brothers.  And the son’s of Jacob, who were dead set against serving their younger brother Joseph, and up all falling in line behind son number four.  At the end of Jacob’s life, as he lay dying in Goshen, he delivers a commencement to his sons.  This is recorded in Genesis 49.  He starts with his oldest, Reuben.  The one who would have been the head of the clan but for an earlier dallience with one of Jacob’s concubines.  He then moves on to his next two sons, Simeon and Levi.  Addressing them as a pair, he explains that they also will not become the leaders of the family, due to their over-the-top retribution for the defilement of their sister Dinah.  So next up is Judah.  And Jacob declares that the scepter will not leave his hand.  This is like a wild card team winning the World Series.  As my sophomore theology professor liked to say, this is why they are called Jews instead of Roos.  Funny, but true.

 And Jacob is proved to be right.  The first chapter of Matthew records the lineage of Jesus.  This is the boring part, with all the begats, that we all zip over quickly as we read.  But right there we see that the line of the saviour goes back to Judah, right through Perez.  That’s right, the product of Judah’s tryst with his disguised daughter -in-law becomes an ancestor to the Messiah himself.  And God does with Judah what he does with all of us; he gives us on ocean of grace to overcome our trash barrel of sinfulness.   God ties all loose ends, not only making Judah grow up, but also uses that as part of how he gives us Jesus.

It’s a nice quiet evening.  The monthly budget is finished, the kids are independently amused, and the itunes is playing several Derek Webb selections.  Seems like a great time to go over Daniel Chapter Two.

Here we lead off with the sleepy & confused King Nebuchadnezzar being pestered by a recurring dream.  It’s enough to keep him up.  So he gets all the king’s horses & all the king’s men brought in for a consultation.  But the kicker is that he won’t tell him the contents of the dream.  These guys must have felt like those poor phone psychics, when people mess with them by saying things like, “What do you mean, ‘Why did I call?’  You should know, you’re the flippin’ psychic!”

Needless to say, these charlatans can’t do the job.  But they are wise men, and they do the wisest thing they possibly can–they stall, by attemting to negotiate with the king for some details of the dream.   Not a bad idea, especially when they are presented with a request that is for them impossible.  But Nebuchadnezzar isn’t fooled.  And the king shows his ability to make a snap decision, deciding that since these sages are not worth keeping on the payroll, he might as well be rid of the lot of them.  Nebuchadnezzar orders the execution of not only the ones that he is angry at at the moment, but of every last government-issue truth guru in the kingdom.  Thus, this becomes a problem for Daniel.

 I’ve had some unwelcome people show up at the door.  Cable salesmen, kids raising money for band trips, missionaries for various fringe religious factions; you get the idea.  But imagine Daniel having the king’s guard, Arioch, stop by to carry out the execution order.  Y’know, I’d rather talk to the salesman, myself.  But Daniel is successful where the other guys weren’t.  He goes to the king, and is granted time.  Perhaps Daniel has already gained a great deal of respect, or maybe the king has cooled off a bit now that he’s had time to rethink his rash order. 

 Daniel then employs his afformentioned friends, Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego to pray.  And God comes through.  God gives Daniel the details of the king’s vision, and supplies the interpretaion as well.  Verses 20 to 23 of this chapter comprise a poetic thankful psalm, where Daniel thanks God for the information.  In verse 21, Daniel points out how it is God who sets up rulers, and God who takes them down.  We’ll see some examples of that later in this book.

 So Daniel goes to Arioch, who in turn gets him in to see the king right away.  I have to think that Arioch is eager to have this order removed.  After all, the Arioch must have some interaction with these magi that he has been charged with killing, and he probably finds the task distasteful.  So the king poses the challenge again to Daniel, and Daniel gives an answer similar to what Joseph said when he was called to interpret a dream.  That no wise man can do what the king demands, but that there is a God who reveals mysteries.  And then he lays out the dream for the king.  Gets the whole thing right.  Then he gives the interpretation.

 It works out well for both Nebuchadnezar and Daniel.  The king comes out looking good, being intrepeted as one of the greatest kings ever.  The king worships God, although later he’ll be shown to be a little fickle in this regard.  Daniel gets promoted to be chief of the wise men that he just saves from a quick end.  You’d think they’s be grateful.  In chapter six, we’ll find that for being so wise, these magi have short memories.

This account is a striking example of the providence and benevolence of God.  God delivers a clear preview of history, to both Nebuchadnezzar and us.  Using the vision to show that he is sovereign over all of histoy, and using the circumstances of it’s delivery to show that he covers the details of our daily lives.  Even going so far as to show mercy in saving the lives of four Israeli aliens.  And he does this in such a way as to show the king who’s boss, show the rank & file wise men that they really aren’t as smart as they think they are, and to show Daniel, Rack, Shack & Benny that he is protecting and promoting them.  This event sets up Daniel in a political position that will give him good view and a strong influence over the current and next two kings.  It’s a Jed Clampett-esque ride for Daniel, from death row to Beverly Hills.

I haven’t faced the doe or die type situations that Daniel did here.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of wondering if my friends will still like me if I talk about Jesus too much.  This is a good example for me; to have faith during a present crisis, pray, work hard, and let God do the rest.

You don’t own me
Don’t try to change me in anyway
You don’t own me
Don’t tie me down ’cause I’ll never stay

I don’t tell you what to say
I don’t tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That’s all I ask of you

I’m young and I love to be young
I’m free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please

But even so, as he is in a small but significant way sticking it to the man, he does so within the rules.  These Babylonians are a curious bunch.  They keep on getting these capricious kings, yet they are all over following rules.  (Kind of like when we get a Republican president and a Democratic Congress.)  Give these guys a rule, and the will literally die to follow it.  Which is strange, as we see these kings turn on a dime in changing their mind at times.  But Daniel is smart in the way he presents this.  He’s going to refuse the food, but he still requests permission from his immediate supervisor.  This poor guy, looks like he is stuck in middle management.  He’s got to perform alchemy, taking these bitter, angry refugees, and turn them into capable, enthusiastic government employees, all while following rules handed down to him by a king who never even stops by to really understand the nuts & bolts of doing this.  Even in his response to Daniel, he’s basically saying, “Look, why are you tring to get me in trouble with my boss?”  I’ts an effective management strategy, to make the subject familiar with the immediate boss so  that a respect and possibly even friendship germinates, and then extract obedience in order to avoid that immediate supervisor getting disciplined by the faceless king.  So the Commander of the Officials has to figure out how to accomplish his end goal, while not violating the rules so much as to get noticed. 

A deal is struck.  Daniel, and his three friends (I wonder if they knew what Daniel was getting them into) will be vegetarians for ten days.  At the end of the ten days, they must look better than the other Jewish boys who don’t seem to have as stong of convictions, or the salad bar is closed.  And God brings it about.  Daniel, Shadrach, Meshack & Abednego are noticably healtheir than the others, so the arrangement is extended for the rest of their three year training.  And at the end of the training, the king finds them to be acceptable, so they enter the service of the king, where they distinguish themselves.

God affects two people here.  The first is Daniel (along with the three others).  He sees that God will have his back.  Daniel must have had a great temptation to doubt God’s providence, what with the besieging of Jerusalem and being heisted back to Babylon as a high profile prisoner of war.  It says a lot about Daniel’s faith that he was willing to go out on a limb, to cast his lot that God will keep him healthy on nothing but vegetables.  At that point in his life, he could have very well rationalized the whole thing away, reasoning that if God wanted him to stay kosher he should have kept the Babylonians from conquering Jerusalem and forcibly deporting him.  But he doesn’t.  He keeps his faith.  He doesn’t become bitter.

The other person affected here is the Commander of the officails; Daniel’s keeper.  I liken him to the jailer who was present when Paul stayed even though God smashed the jail doors open.  This guy really had a lot to lose here, and God goes out of his way to not get this guy in trouble.  But more importanly, this Babylonian gets to see the power of God.  There are going to be more events in the coming years centering around these Jewish refugees, and this Commander is one of the first to get a taste.  I bet during the events of the dream, the statue and the lions, he would think back to the time this foreign God saved his job and possibly his life.  I like how God cares about individuals like that, even guys who are on the other team.

This past year, I’ve been drawn to consider what it is to live a significant life.  Adventure, sacrifice, meaningfulness…they all seem to be reserved for folks who are jumping out of airplanes or pouring out their days in service to the poor.  Today I worked a ten hour day at the office, then came home, had dinner, reloaded the ipod, and now I’m writing to what may be an audience of myself.   Not exactly what I pictured when I was a college kid with large but poorly-defined dreams of a lifetime of significance..

 I saw Donald Miller speak a bit ago.  He told a story about a man who had a teenage daughter.  The daughter was getting into the whole goth scene, complete with a goth boyfriend that the father didn’t like (as if daughters have any boyfriends that fathers like).  The man went to Miller for advice on how to un-goth his daughter and exorcise the boyfriend.  Miller said he listened to the man’s story, and then told him that he could see the daughter’s reasons for what she was doing.  In the daughter’s new adventure, she got to be the rebellious, misunderstood, gothic temptress.  The only role the father offerred her was the kid who got in the way and got yelled at a lot.  So in a couple of weeks, the man called a family meeting, and without even warning his wife, announced that he had committed the family to donate $25K to an African orphanage.  This was about 24 1/2 grand more than the family actually had.  They laughed him off, but he stuck to it, and in a few weeks the whole family was on board, daughter included.  They sold some things, gave up usual expenses, and thought of creative ways to raise cash, and they actually came up with the entire sum.  In the process, even though the father never directly addressed the issue, the daughter divested herself of both the goth look & the goth boyfriend.  Because he offerred her a life of significance.  Sure, she could go on being the rebellious, misunderstood gothic temptress, which isn’t all that bad of a personna; but instead, her father gave her the role of the selfless, heroic saver of children.  A much better part to play.

 There is a friend of mine who has taken in his niece’s two year old.  Giving the neice a chance to get her life together.  He drags himself into work after spending evenings in giving himself to this child.  Not only has he & his wife taken on a child, they have jumped right into the deep end of the pool, getting the child right at age two, without the usual warm up that most parents get.  This kid desperately needs the care, and will never be able to repay him.  He is selfless, heroic.  Significant.

 I console myself, considering that the impact that I have on my wife & children, while not immediately dramatic, is one of great significance.  And it is.  However, few blokes set out to be a bad husband and father, and sometimes it seems not enough to hang one’s hat on.  There are daily, mundane miracles, that God grants me the chance to be a part of.  Opening the door for a person with arms full of groceries.  Giving my wife the time she needs to perform her own mundane miracles.  Clearing the snow from the neighbor’s sidewalk.  Late night discussions of real importance with my son.  Dropping change in the red Salvation Army bucket.  Things I am fortunate that God gives me to do. 

But I think of what Paul wrote in the second chapter of Ephesians.  Right after the famous verses in which he tells us that we are saved by grace, through faith, with no help from us.  Good verses that stand on their own.  But he follows those up in Ephesians 2:10, telling us that we are the workmanship of God himself, created with purpose in mind, created for good works, that God planned in advance for us to do.  I like these verses so much that I wrote them on my garage workbench that I wrote of earlier.

 So I wonder;  am I doing what God has planned for my life?  I don’t fear judgement for not getting all the work done, as Paul just told me that I am saved by grace.  Good thing.  But since I have gotten an ocean of grace, I would really like to show my gratitude.  God’s got things planned for my life–maybe I’m just meant to raise my kids well & be a good husband to my wife.  Maybe he’s going to tell me to sell my house and preach to the folks in Central America or Asia.  Is it my role to continue with these garden variety good works?  If so, that’s ok, there are plenty of elderly ladies that need the driveways shoveled.  Or is it my role to do something bigger, like to adopt a child with AIDS or run a homeless shelter?

 This is where i should write out a nice tidy conclusion, one that challenges the reader just a little bit, while making us (myself included) all still feel good about ourselves.  Especially after dredging up all those questions in the previous paragraph.  Alas, I do not have such a conclusion.  I have determined, for the time being, to go on as I am, yet keeping my life open to whatever else God has planned.  So tomorrow, I’ll still go to work like usual.  But if I end up in Uganda, or even in Detroit by this time next year, I pray that I would be ok with that too.

    THE TYGER

By William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

 I love this poem.  The words that Blake chooses, along with the rhythm in which he arranges them, cause me to sense that the poet somehow sees the world from the outside; that is, that he can view creation as an observer rather than a participant.

 Admittedly, this poem may have never crosses my consciousness were it not for a song named after this author by the obscure band Daniel Amos.  (Note–see the link to the band’s web site here on this blog.)  The band then named their very next album Fearful Symmetry, and since I was a fan of DA, I became a fan of Blake.

 That phrase right there, fearful symmetry, is the best description I have found so far of the beautiful design evident in all the biological creatures that we discover along with the habitats in which we find them.  But that phrase, fearful symmetry, is about the only praise Blake has for the tyger.  We find out also that the beast has fiery eyes, a heart and a brain.  Roughly the same checklist of things that are important to Wizard of Oz characters.

Blake reserves his wonder for the maker of the tyger.  Although the fireiness of the tyger’s eyes is impressive to Blake, he’s much more impressed with the unknown location and the dexterity of the one who inserteed the fire into said eyes.  He seems to mention the tyger’s sinewy heart in passing, being much more enamored with the strength and artistic ability of the sinew twister.  And to be sure, our tyger has a brain, but Blake finds it more profitable to muse as to the tools that the creator of that brain has the audacity to use.  Like when we consider the guts it has to take to willingly operate a complex and dangerous machine like a space shuttle or an ice auger.

 Blake gives us a designer that is pleased with his work.  Not like one of us, who might spend 40 hours every week whiling away our work in order to get to the two sevenths of our lives that are our own; but a builder that creates for his own pleasure.  One who would build the tyger even if nobody else ever saw it.

 Blake repeats the first stanza at the end, changing only one word.  Now that Blake has thought through the steps it would take to build a tyger, he is floored that anyone would dare to do it at all.

This poem could have been written about any created being, although a poem titled The Ostrych might not come off quite as lyrical.  Because the tyger is not the subject of the work at all, rather it is the designer and builder.  And when you examine our own existence and the planet we live it on, that’s not really about us either.  We look like we’re starring in this show, but really it’s our designer that gets top billing.

My garage is a mess.  A summer of outdoor projects has taken it’s toll, and I am left with a mountain of items deemed too dirty or large to be allowed access to the house.  Winter is rolling towards me, so I am racing to clean the garage before I am caught in the snow.

 It’s getting cleaned up correctly this time.  Adding storage to the rafters, building shelves for all our gardening and automotive supplies, and most imprortantly, finally covering that last unfinished wall with some inexpensive sheets of plywood.  The studs have been exposed for 48 years, and I, along with the previous owners of this home, have not thought twice about pounding in a nail any old place that we felt like hanging a shovel or a bike tire pump.  So as I prepare to cover this wall, I must pull every protruding nail. 

A couple I recognize as my own.  Many more are certainly not mine, their  design or maroonish coloring betraying their age.  I claw the hammer in, ripping them out one by one, tossing them in the general direction of the trash can.  As they arc towards their final resting place, I think of the men before me.  These previous homeowners  who installed these nails without much thought, seeing them as a quick solution to the problem of where to put the rake.  And now, I erase their work, pulling out a piece of the history that they have left for me. 

 Makes me think of the temporariness of life, of how someday someone, maybe someone not even yet born, will come along and dispose of the plywood that I am currently affixing to the studs.  How God gives me time, a great amount of time, but still a very limited amount of time.

 This evening I read Psalm 90, where God seemed to speak to me about those nails.  This Psalm of Moses painfully points out the obvious, that we are limited to seventy years, eighty if we’re lucky.  Asking God to shorten the afflictions that we operate under, asking that we can spend these short days singing for joy because he loves us.  And Moses ends up talking about the very thing God had me thinking about as I pulled out other men’s nails;  that in this short life we can know that God is on our side as he establishes the work of our hands.

 It’s not just the nails, it’s everything we do.  The plywood that I put up today hopefully will last a long time, but it’s got a relatively short life span in the grand scheme of things.   It’s what God establishes that will last.