I dreamed a dream of love,
and in that dream
there were long evening walks
and serenades;
we picked wild roses
while moonbeams played
through your hair,
enchantment everywhere.
In that dream we flew,
just me and you,
up to the stars,
and down below,
in soft starlight’s glow,
the world was light.
There was no fear,
unlike here.
Did you blink and miss summer? I did. Every year I promise myself I am going to recapture those magical golden days of summer when time used to slow down. Why, in a single day I used to fit in a dozen games of horseshoes, an hour or so of cloud watching, a romp in the woods with my faithful dog, a good nap after an hour reading in the hottest part of the day, a game of kick-the-can with my sisters (played at dusk to maximize stealth), a bit of tire-swinging, and, of course, plenty of watermelon eating. And somehow, I managed to fit in the chores, too!
If you’re like me, you’re wondering where the summer went. You’re already back in the swing of full-blown stress-and-panic mode. How am I going to get the kids where they need to be, do my job, cook the meals, help with homework, clean, cut, fix, mend, shop, build [insert 400 other action verbs of your choice]… do you feel your chest tighten just reading this? Do you have 911 on your speed dial because three numbers requires too much time, time you just don’t have, and when the breakdown comes you have to call the ambulance, arrange a sitter and order take-out before you hit the floor?
Imagine if there were a way to multiply time. Would you believe me if I told you it’s possible? Maybe I should put it on cable in the early morning and offer it to you in three installments of $19.95, but only if you call in the next ten minutes, because those operators standing by? They have to get home to fix breakfast, start a load of laundry, drive the kids to school…
The Bible is full of lessons on different types of sacrifices to make to God: a “broken and contrite heart” (Ps 51), “a sacrifice of thanksgiving” (Ps 116), “of praise” (Heb. 13), our “bodies as a living sacrifice” (Rom. 12), and money, among others. In speaking of the monetary sacrifices, Paul said, of the “churches of Macedonia,” that “They gave themselves first to the Lord,” and somehow, then, were able to give “beyond their means, of their own free will, begging earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints” (2 Cor. 8:3-4). Wow!
Jesus has a knack of multiplying that which we first freely give to him for His service. Take the fish and loaves, for example. When I read that story in John 6, I have to stop and think “Only a child would have given his small lunch to Jesus to feed 5000 people.” Someone, probably more like Martha than Mary, had responsibly sent her son out with a small lunch. Which of us would have given it up? I’d have thought “Why should I go hungry so that everyone else can also go hungry, because if I give up this lunch you can be sure of one thing: None of us will be satisfied.”
Not that boy. He gave “first to the Lord,” and the Lord multiplied it, not just until everyone was satisfied, but until everyone was satisfied and there were leftovers to boot! In our frantic, panicked, stressed-out, overwhelmed lives do we dare to believe He can do it with time?
I think the answer is a resounding and emphatic “yes!” I firmly believe that God gives us more than enough time to do the work He’s given us to do, including time to worship, pray, study and fellowship. Sadly, we beg for enough time when He longs to give us leftovers.
Often times in our lives, when it all gets to be too much, the first thing we neglect is our relationship with God. Our personal devotions, our church attendance, and our participation in Sunday school and Bible study (that is, our personal and corporate worship and our Christian education) suffer. Our service is often maintained, because so much of our image is dependent upon it, but it’s often done with feelings of stress and frustration rather than joy and gladness. We forget where our fuel comes from and serve on empty.
Lord knows (and I say that literally without an ounce of irreverence) we need to rest. He knew it when he designed us; He knew it when He instituted the Sabbath; He knew it when He called us and when He commissioned us. We’re the ones who don’t seem to understand.
Christian discipleship has at its heart four action verbs: “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.” (Matt. 11:29) “Abide in me.” (John 15:4) Come, friends, take, learn and abide “and you will find rest for your souls.”
If we plan on giving God our leftover time, we won’t have any, and we’ll be frazzled, hurried and stressed, but if we give “first to the Lord,” I bet we’ll suddenly find that we even have time leftover!
This was posted as a comment to the Internet Movie Database over a year ago, but I thought I’d put it here just to help keep what I write in one place, but also because I think Christians should observe, reflect and comment on art and culture, even pop culture.
Click on more to read the review Continue reading
On Fresh Air, Terri Gross recently interviewed Michael Farris of Patrick Henry College. PHC make each of their faculty sign a faith statement. I don’t have a lot of problem with that faith statement in general. I do wish they would add “inerrant in all its teaching.” No one does, though. I just have a problem with faith statements in general. I was unable to volunteer with Prison Fellowship in MS because I couldn’t sign one, over the inerrancy issue.
I believe the Bible is the only infallible guide to faith and life, and I believe it is inerrant in all it teaches. However, I can’t accept that the mustard seed is the smallest seed, for example, because others have been found since that are smaller. Does it change Jesus’s teaching? Not one bit. Inerrancy isn’t a very useful word. Of course God is right, but do I understand his meaning?
Likewise they focus exclusively on only one of the four established doctrines of the Atonement, substitutionary. I agree with that view, but I don’t think it’s all there is too it. It was much to wonderful to be contained by that vessel alone. I would need a faith statement that developed Atonement more fully.
In general, I think faith statements are problematic for several reasons. First, those without integrity and those who view them as just a hoop to jump through or a formality or expediency would sign one any way to get the job, regardless of whether or not they even bothered to read it. It wouldn’t even slow down someone who wanted the job to subvert the institution. The only people who might not sign one are principled people who disagree in some small way with something not essential. These might be the very people one needs to be hiring, especially at an institution of higher learning.
I do think Christian organizations, institutions and churches need to ensure that sound doctrine and Biblical principles are upheld and maintained, but creedal orthodoxy should be sufficient. Making the holes in the sieve too small is reactionary, and this is my second problem with faith statements. They are often a reaction to societies which no longer reflect their once Christian roots, and I think we can’t be reactionary.
The first century church was founded in a hostile environment, amongst people who had just had Jesus killed and who were not receptive to His teachings, teachings which both the Jewish and Roman governments feared were subversive. God never promised us a Christian government or a moral society. If we are defined in reaction to what’s not Christian we are being defined by the world and not by our mission in it. Our commission is not to create Heaven on earth.
You can’t close Pandora’s Box, and if the 21st Century church is to survive we have to learn how to live amidst radically different worldviews and with less sure foundations. I don’t mean the Church’s One Foundation, that never changes; rather, I am talking about the philosophical and historical foundations that have been used to secure Christianity’s primacy in the West.
In his essay “The Uncertainty of Science,” Feynman writes about how uncertainty and doubt are essential to science. I think it is as true for religion. One has to be willing to extrapolate into the unknown. He writes that “to solve any problem that has never been solved before, you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. You have to admit the possibility that you do not have it exactly right.” This is my point about inerrancy. God has it exactly right, but do I? John Robinson, Puritan minister and pastor to the Pilgrim Fathers, said “the Lord had more truth and light yet to breake forth out of his holy Word” and I agree.
The freedoms that Patrick Henry College want to preserve include the freedom to doubt, which is essential in the process of “faith seeking understanding,” as Anselm put it, and to education. Faith statements that are too precise and inflexible, that go way beyond the clear, agreed upon core truths essential to Christianity (triune nature of God, bodily resurrection of Christ, need for Atonement, etc), and that don’t allow for Christians of good will to disagree are not productive, in my opinion.
I can’t help but wonder which comes first at PHC, a Biblical worldview or fidelity to the American founding? What happens when they conflict? I think the college is probably an excellent one, and I admire and share many of their goals, and it’s excellent that such a first rate center of learning was created specifically for home schooled Christian children, but I doubt I could sign their faith statement.
Ad Aspera Astrada
By Striving We Can Reach the Stars
Cyberspace is filled with teenage angst. Searching for InDivIdual-ity and connection simultaneously isn’t like searching for a needle in a haystack; it’s like searching for a particular needle in a stack of needles.
Of course I had my complexes and neuroses, but it turns out that those had nothing to do with being a teenager; they were just me. The things that threatened to undermine my self-esteem (“What if other people don’t like picking their noses as much as I do?”) were actually things I should have been worried about. People got quite annoyed, let me tell you, when I picked their noses.
Recently I saw the following question: “Who was your biggest source of help?” I can’t answer that question because my biggest help was the constant, consistent, day-to-day help of parents, teachers and neighbors who took it for granted that children need quantity time and role models. The fact that no one stands out like a lighthouse in a hurricane only proves that my life was filled with those who understood a simple truth: when you can’t calm the storms of life, calm the child
It takes more than a village to raise a teen; it takes an act of God. Sure, I had my moments of feeling misunderstood and depressed. There were times when the village just didn’t have the resources, and I had to find my own help. It was during those times that I found friends in strange places: in books, in nature, even in the stars.
From Dickens, I learned that I didn’t appreciate how good I really had things. From Donne I learned that “No man is an island.” Teens sometimes feel so alone that they try to go it alone, but in looking back we see that we were always “a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” From Dumas I learned that revenge does not heal and from science fiction in general I learned how to dream.
Seemingly so alone on this world, I dreamed of other worlds. I learned the stars and knew the night sky as well as I knew the backyard from which I gazed at them. Of course, like we so often do, when I no longer needed those friends I forsook them. It wasn’t until years later, out at night with my new son, that I remembered them. It was then I wrote the following poem.
A long time ago the stars were my friends.
I’d often lie in fields and look up at them.
It gave me a sense of wonder and awe
to see the same stars that the ancients saw.
Dreaming of the worlds that might circle those stars,
mentally exploring those planets afar,
I’d sail their seas and cross their sands,
climb their mountains, explore their lands.
Their rivers and forest were no strangers to me;
two suns would light up their skies,sometimes three.
Their moons were so bright that it seemed like day,
but then I’d wake up in fields where I lay
and realize it had all been just a dream,
and go back to my world of everyday schemes,
ambitions and strivings for fortune and fame;
I forgot my friends, even their names.
But now once again I see Vega’s bright light,
Arcturus’ splendor and Antares’ might.
I feel a peace as calm as can be
as once again I set sail over alien sea.
A long time ago the stars were my friends;
it’s good to have them back again.
I wish that each troubled teen will find at least one friend, no matter how strange, who will let her be herself, who will let him shout the things he feels he can only whisper, who will be as constant as the stars.
[Written 10 years and 2 less kids ago]
God is the bond of love that binds my wife and I together after ten years of marriage and brings us closer every day and still leaves the best for tomorrow.
God is the purest intentions and the fulfilled potentiality of my mother and father.
God is the absolute trust my seven year old has that I will take care of him when he is afraid, the spontaneous joy of my three year old when she awakens in the morning, and the uncorrupted laughter of my thirteen month old when she finds her foot.
God is the growth that comes through pain and the key that unlocks my chains.
God is the wisdom to know what is right and the freedom and courage to do it.
God is the Sisyphian rock that none can get ride of because God is the paradox which bends all belief systems back in upon themselves.
God is the kindness of strangers and the honesty of friends.
God is the truth that hurts and the truth that heals.
God is the strength to endure persecution and the virtue not to exact revenge.
God is the Wholly Other who fulfills our Ultimate Concern.
God is the eternity that stepped into time.
God is the patience of a Redwood tree as it gazes across the centuries of man’s folly and yet still grows straight and true.
God is the Carpenter who can build straight with the crooked timber of humanity.
God is the faith that there is hope and the hope that there is love.