Poor Service

There is an old saying that "the greatest enemy of the best is the good enough." Just so, the greatest enemy of serving God out of gratitude is serving Him out of a mere sense of duty.

"Though I give my body to be burned and have not live, it profits me nothing," said the passionate apostle. God forbid that I should fail to love God because I am, Martha-like, serving Him so well.

His Troubling Question

It is the question which haunts every believer. The Master asks not, "Do you honor me?" or "Will you obey me?" But stripping away all pretense, He asks simply, "Do you love me?"

It hurts that the question even need be asked, though we know why it must: "Then act as if you love me. Care for the weak. Love your wife sacrificially. Befriend your neighbors. Feed my sheep."

Cemetery at Gatlinburg

It's odd, sometimes, where a new thought can strike you. Gatlinburg, Tennessee, is not the place where you would expect to have an epiphany, but I noticed something there once while I was eating lunch at a Chinese restaurant on a balcony overlooking the street.

The city of Gatlinburg is a thriving combination of free enterprise and hillbilly chic - a city built on the notion that people will drive for hours to spend lots of money for Elvis memorabilia, a glimpse at the famous Batmobile of the 1960s TV series, a dazzling collection of holographs, Ripley’s Believe-it-or-not displays, a miniature golf-course with “fifty live bunnies running loose on the course,” video arcades, air-brush T-shirts, and Smokie Mountain bric-a-brac shops by the dozen. The atmosphere of the city’s main drag is so carnival-like that an ordinary drug-store in the middle of town seems like a relic from another time and place.

I was eating lunch on an balcony overlooking the busy main street of the little city. From my perch above the sidewalk, the thronging avenue seemed even more bizarre, like Vanity Fair in Pilgrim’s Progress, with pedestrians streaming down both sides of the street.

As my gaze wandered over the sight, I was startled to notice a cemetery on a grassy hill behind the row of shops across the street. Invisible to everyone below me, the sunny little graveyard stood silent vigil over the shoppers, waiting patiently for each in his turn to leave the busy avenue and return to the dust.

The two images were a study in jarring contrast: the quiet, grassy hillside with its little headstones serving as an understated reminder of our common, inevitable Destiny . . . the street below thronging with life, enthusiasm, and imagination. Somehow, the sight of the graveyard gave a sense of ludicrous irrelevance to all of the frantic activity below.

I did not come away from that experience with the sense that the Gatlinburgs of our lives are somehow immoral or even that they are wasteful and frivolous. But I did decide that whatever I do in Gatlinburg ought to make sense not just from where I stand now, here on the street, but also from the long view on the hill as well. The Gatlinburg cemetery was a warning against short-sightedness.

In Jesus’ parable, the rich farmer is condemned not because he had a bumper crop and built new barns, but because he was so very short-sighted. “Thou fool, this day shall thy soul be required of thee.” In all his calculations, the wealthy landowner failed to take into account his own mortality. His viewpoint was limited to his immediate prospects, and he did not notice the yawning mouth of the grave beneath his next step.

It is, of course, equally short-sighted to live in the graveyard. We have all contemplated how we might spend this day if it were our last on earth, but we know we cannot really spend each day in such a mindset (perpetually saying farewell to loved ones, never going to school or to work). Our awkward dilemma is that we must invest our mound of minutes simultaneously as if each were the final moment (because it well could be) but also as if we had thousands left to spend (because we might).

Our Assignment is to occupy each moment so that if our Summons should come, we might lay down our work or our play and turn to meet our Maker without regret. God give us wisdom to remember the view from the hill even while we walk the streets.

Five Words from God: A Parable

One night a man had a dream in which God told him five things.

First, God said, "You have no idea how much I love you. You are my beloved. If you understood for just one moment how much I love you, it would change your life forever. I love you far more than you could understand."

The man thought this was good.

Then God told the man, "You have no idea how much I want to bless you, how I long to pour blessing into your life and through your life bless many other people. If you understood for just one moment what blessings I would give to you, the way I want to use your life to bless others, it would change your life forever."

The man thought this also was good.

Then God said, "Tomorrow something will happen to you that will devastate your life. The trauma will be so horrific that you will doubt my wisdom, my goodness, even my existence."

The man thought this was not good at all.

Then God began to tell the man how that horrific, traumatic event would ultimately be a source of blessing in his life, how He would use that man's suffering to bless many people, not just in his lifetime but for many years to come. By the time God had finished telling the man all the good things that would come about because of his suffering, the man was ready, almost eager for his ordeal to begin.

Finally, God told the man one more thing: "Tomorrow, when all this trouble falls on you, you will remember none of this dream."