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Monday’s Question: Why Are You Working so Hard?
Devotional Thought of the Day:
2 Smoke, nothing but smoke. [That’s what the Quester says.] There’s nothing to anything—it’s all smoke. 3 What’s there to show for a lifetime of work, a lifetime of working your fingers to the bone? 4 One generation goes its way, the next one arrives, but nothing changes—it’s business as usual for old planet earth. Ecclesiastes 1:2-4 (MSG)
Then suddenly, filled with a holy love, and a sober shame, in anger with himself cast his eyes upon his friend, saying, “Tell me, I pray thee, what would we attain by all these labours of ours? what aim we at? what serve we for? Can our hopes in court rise higher than to be the Emperor’s favourites? and in this, what is there not brittle, and full of perils? and by how many perils arrive we at a greater peril? and when arrive we thither? But a friend of God, if I wish it, I become now at once.” (1)
As I sit in my office this morning, looking at perhaps a busier week than last, I am overwhelmed with thought’s like Solomon’s this morning.
Older translations use the word vanity; all is vain. Others use futile, or emptiness.Most of us on Monday can easily sympathize, why are we here? Is it just to earn a small paycheck, to buy food, pay for a roof over our heads, and find our “escape” whether it be television, or a vacation, or something less positive, like drugs, alcohol, gambling or other addictions.
On Mondays, we tend to be more aware of this futility. Even those of us who work in “noble” jobs, which strive to help. The work is unending, the pain we observe just seems to move from one family to another.
Augustine’s recounting of a friend shows a similar revelation, as they realize their futility. Even if they rise to the highest of heights, there they find the probability that such a place is fleeting. That the favor of those they would count on could shift like the wind, and they could be on the way out, terminated by the boss. In their day, termination was more than going on the unemployment line. It was an actual termination, with prejudice.
So why do we do what we do? What is the end reward, besides simple survival? Occasional moments of pleasure which cost us more in the end?
Augustine’s friend found an answer, simpler than he ever expected, and something I need to remember as I struggle on Mondays.
Being a friend of God.
TO know that we are loved, that we are the children of a promise.
15 I do not call you servants any longer, because servants do not know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, because I have told you everything I heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me; I chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures. And so the Father will give you whatever you ask of him in my name. 17 This, then, is what I command you: love one another. John 15:15-17 (TEV)
To walk with God, to talk with Jesus, not as some great Lord, but as with a friend. To hear His encouraging voice, to know that He walks with us, His people. That He draws us together to be His family. What a blessing to be reminded by a hundred voices yesterday that God is with me, to hear them bless me, reminding me of the peace that is mine. To see God’s love revealed, through those who know the love of God!
I am, today, looking at a hard week, as I will deal with family after family struggling with death. It would seem vain, meaningless, even painful, where I not living in the shadow of Easter, the place where God proves His love for me, and for all those He yearns to call his friends. Because of that, I know why I work so hard, why I endure.
It is to give others the hope that all is not futile, that all is not vain, that it all will not just go up in smoke. It isn’t just a pastor’s job to do this, but the life of those who Jesus called friends, who someday He will welcome home.
As St. Peter said,
“simply concentrate on being completely devoted to Christ in your hearts. Be ready at any time to give a quiet and reverent answer to any man who wants a reason for the hope that you have within you. 1 Peter 3 (Phillips NT)
And may you realize you dwell in God’s peace – a peace that goes beyond all logic, yet a peace where your hearts and minds are kept safe, guarded by Christ. AMEN
(1) Augustine, S., Bishop of Hippo. (1996). The Confessions of St. Augustine
. (E. B. Pusey, Trans.). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
We Find Our Rest.. In His Cross
We Find our Rest in His Cross
Matt 11:25-30
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† IHS †
As we learn the depth of the grace of God, how it floods our lives, may we learn to trust as children, leaving our burdens behind, and learning to rest in His presence!
A Parker Parable….
Being a Christian is like Playing Golf…..
It leaves me a little in awe how often my life includes lessons that coincide with the message of the sermon for the week. It happens most weeks, sometimes multiple the same lesson learned through the experience of several lessons, and sometimes one of them is perfect to use in the sermon. When those happen, I call them “Pastor Parker’s Parables” even though they are the lessons I learn…the one’s I’ve been taught.
So get ready, this week, the parable is that, “Living the Christian Life is like playing golf!”
No, I don’t mean the part about the frustration, the anger, losing things left and right, from golf balls going in the water to one’s temper, to all desire to keep going.
Well, those things are included, it’s what called the law….
But there is another aspect to golf, that is not about suffering, but actually develops character, and joy….
A Little Success is a dangerous thing!!!!
The day on the course starts our great… well, great for me. Nice strong drives… decent bogies, nothing too pathetic. Then, on the par 5…. confident in my drive, the ball dribbles off the tee, it wouldn’t even make it to the parking lot! The next 6 hits went about as far, one even bouncing off of three trees to land at the base of the first one! The next hole – a par three (that mean you meet the standard by getting the ball in the hole on the third “hit”) the penalty strokes for getting the ball in the water exceed par on their own! Frustration is set in, every possible change to my swing is being analyzed…… I am relying on every bit of wisdom.. and failing.
We are like that in life, things can be going well, we can be doing good, and then confident, we try to do everything on our own, We want to decide not only what is good and right, but we become wise in our own eyes, trying to solve the messes we get into, because we think it is all about us.
Most of us, at one time or another, fall into the trap that Jesus so clearly describes, when He describes those “who think themselves wise and clever.”
Not that we would use those words, but how often do we try to run our lives? How often do we set aside God’s word and do things that we think will be beneficial to us, without considering its effect on others, or on us. The more our playing God fails, the digger the hole we dig ourselves in, Or instead of trying to run our own lives, it is telling others how they should live, or helping them justify their playing god, in the way they deal with others.
Ultimately, all sin, any time we break any of the commandments boil down to our thinking we know what’s best. Somehow we think we are wiser, or more clever than God. That we can handle it all on our own, without any help from Him, or those He sends.
Not only do owe not measure up, but we get more and more frustrated, until we want to give in, or give up…..or just hurl a golf club farther than the ball we hit with it went.
Playing God doesn’t lead to peace, but just frustration and anger and anxiety and….. we don’t ever find ourselves measuring up. We find ourselves so far from par, from being righteous, from being the people God came to share life with, eternal life, that is.
Even long after we’ve left the course, we are going to feel the frustration, the tension, the disappointment in ourselves. We will go from thinking we are perfect, to condemning ourselves, putting ourselves down, and giving up what we love, and are meant to do.
No, I am not talking about golf, but the lesson can be seen there as well.
Finding the Ability to Cease, to Give Up Control…
If those who find themselves wise and understanding struggle, it is amazing to see that the simple, that the naïve, that the very childlike do not.
It is because of the ease, the natural way they come to trust in God, to know Him, to walk with Him. How they accept what is revealed to them by God.
It’s not that they don’t sin, but they learn to seek forgiveness, to count on mercy, quickly. They get to know the Son of God and therefore the Father.
And when Jesus says come, knowing His love, knowing the joy of walking with Him, they come.
And find rest, they find the ability to relax and cease their struggles in life. They learn to stop trying to force life to go the way they think is best, and just revel in His presence.
That is the key to live, it is what those who think they are wise cannot figure out. It is because it is something beyond figuring out, beyond our capacity to comprehend.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t experience it….
The Rest….
It has been said that it is not the power of the swing that causes a golf ball to sail far, but the smoothness of that swing. That a relaxed smooth that might appear to be effortless will cause it to go farther than one is far more powerful but is forced.
The same is true for a believer in Christ.
There is Jesus, saying come to me, and I will give you rest…
I love how the paraphrased translation the Message says this….
29 Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. 30 Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew 11:29-30 (MSG)
That’s what the yokes are for, as we see in Hosea,
“4 I led Israel along with my ropes of kindness and love. I lifted the yoke from his neck, and I myself stooped to feed him.”
The blessing of being yoked to Christ is learning to live in His grace, His love, His peace. It isn’t about God controlling us, or turning us into robots, it’s about teaching us to live.
When you go through physical therapy after surgery, as many of us have done around here, as some are doing right now, the therapists aren’t just trying to cause us pain, but teach us how to move again, so that other places don’t give out. What seems like a curse, or may cause a curse or two, is there to help us live as free as possible.
When a golf instructor has you swing the club over and over, without hitting anything, he’s conditioning you body to do what is right. Same for the martial arts instructor who makes you punch the same spot in front of you 10,000 times.
Hear the Message again,
29 Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. 30 Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew 11:29-30 (MSG)
Where do we walk, bound to jesus? Learning His grace?
To the cross, and then to the resurrection.
To see God’s handiwork through all of life – even suffering, even death…for even there, in the shadows of death…. we find His life…eternal, everlasting, immortal.
We can stop guessing, we can stop trying to play God, or pretending we are wise and clever.
We can move with Him, through our baptism, to the altar. To look upon His sacrifice, His body given for us, His blood shed to seal His contract with us, to seal us to Him. We can move with Him, as He takes our burdens, as He takes our cares, and anxieties, and binds Himself to us, that we may know how to live.
To live, now as well as then, in a peace that passes all understanding, a peace in which we are kept, heart and soul… guarded by Jesus Himself.
AMEN?
