Daffodils & Deferment

We had a remarkably beautiful day yesterday.  A rare sunny, 80 degree gem  for so early in April.  My wife & I spent the day working in the yard, reclaiming it from the general mayhem that Winter had left.  We cleaned up all the sticks, raked up all the leaves that had been hidden under three months of snow, and bagged up all the yard garbage.

There are a few bulbs hidden in the earth of our garden.  Most of the year they sit dark, dormant, and forgotten.  Bur early every Spring, they are the stars of the show, as the flowers break through the thawing ground, the first of the plants to come back every year.  We’ve got several yellow daffodils that have returned just in the last week.  They are a vivid down payment from the garden that is regenerating.

So  I’m raking through the garden, scraping up the decomposed & moldy leaves that are plastered to the ground like paper-mache.  It’s not real exact work.  Flattened leaves, dead plants, and dry woody stalks all come out as the teeth of the rake chew through the remains of last years garden. The rake doesn’t discriminate; everything in it’s path is purged.  I try to be somewhat careful, but there’s a lot of garden and only so much time, so sacrifices have to be made.

The first time I raked up one of the new daffodils, I felt kind of bad about it.  I pushed it under the pile of leaves, so my wife wouldn’t see.  The second daffodil to go down was given to my daughter, who was not all that excited to get a broken, disjointed flower, but put it behind her ear anyway.  The third casualty was unceremoniously swept into the pile with the rest; by this time I had resigned to the knowledge that a few daffodils was just the cost of doing business.

Made me think of Jesus’ words in Matthew 13:24-30.  Here Jesus tells the parable of the weeds.  In Jesus’ story, a man plants a field of wheat, but an enemy secretly scatters weed seeds in the field as well.  As the wheat & the weeds grow together, the farmhands suggest that they pull up the weeds.  But the farmer declines, telling them that the wheat & the weeds are so intertwined, that to pull the bad plants out would destroy the good ones as well.  He decides to let them all grow together and sort them out after the crop is harvested.

So here is where the farmer & I acted differently.  Where I was willing to mangle a few daffodils for the sake of expediency, God isn’t willing to sacrifice even one of his, even if it means that evil & it’s effects aren’t annihilated right away.  So evil men continue on, and the effects of sin march forward in the midst of what God is accomplishing;  not realizing that their judgment is deferred.  All will receive justice or grace, but it doesn’t have to be right away.

While this parable wasn’t meant to be the complete answer to the aged question of why evil is allowed to continue, it does get us a good way down that road.  God is always looking at both the good of the individual and the good of the whole.  Most of the time those both conflict with what we want right now.  It’s up to us to trust him, even when it seems like bad things are allowed to go on unchecked, or that selfish people are getting away with whatever they want.  God is not willing that any one of his should perish, even if it means that evil has to wait a little longer to be extinguished.

“Even if He does not”

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.”  

Mundane Miracles

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.