Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.
For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words.
– Ecclesiastes 5:1-3
Below is the chorus of a song we sing in church sometimes.
I would run for a thousand years
If I knew every step would be getting me closer
I’d swim to the ocean floor
For my Lord is the Treasure
My Lord is the Treasure– Treasure by the Desperation Band
Sometimes I wonder if I’m overthinking things, or if there’s something wrong with me. But I have a confession:
I can’t sing that.
Now, this isn’t self-deprecation or sham-humility. I honestly wonder how anyone can sing that. I wonder if St. Paul could sing that. This side of heaven, that is.
I believe that the person who wrote that song meant the words he/she was writing, on an emotional level, or at least desired to mean them. But we humans are fallible. In my more cynical moments I label songs such as these “brag worship”. I feel it’s a boast that few, if any, can keep.
Many of us have a hard time following the commands of Jesus in the mundane things of life, though there are many saints out there giving their all for the Lord.
But none of us can run for a thousand years, or swim to the ocean floor. And to sing this in a corporate worship setting troubles my spirit.
I realize, of course, that these lyrics are poetry. I am being too literal, most likely.
But I just know I can’t sing them yet, this side of Heaven. One day, though, I will be like Him, for I will see Him as He is. Then I’ll be able to sing this and other songs that we cannot even fathom or imagine yet.
Bob brings it.
Yesterday I went to hear a talk about sharing your faith in the workplace. Two speakers. Each of them emphasized that the workplace was a mission field (good). And they both also emphasized that you don’t have to beat people over the head with a Bible (that of course is a warn out straw-man, but let it pass). They both said we should let our lives and our demeanor be our message. And one of them repeated the alleged St. Francis quote, “Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary use words.”
About that quote . . .
I’ll admit that the first time I heard it I was beguiled. “Hey, yeah [that’s what I say when I’m beguiled], it’s really that easy!”
Now I think someone ought to take that quote out behind the barn and shoot it. Would somebody do that please?
Here’s the thing. “Preach the gospel” really does mean “use words.” When Acts 8:40 says, “But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea,” do you think Philip was just loving people and sharing his life, etc. Or was he SAYING SOMETHING? [Sorry about the caps; I get excited sometimes, and exclamation points just aren’t enough.]
When Paul advises Timothy, “preach the word,” well that little word “word” is a dead give away.
Read the whole thing. Convicting.
Due to the rain (resulting in cancelled soccer and a cancelled camping trip), this is one of the first days in memory where I have had absolutely nothing to do. I’ve literally been in my pajamas all day long. Even when I took Bethany to CVS to get a gift card and then to a birthday party, I stayed in the pajamas (no need to mess with that aspect of my day).
We’ve watched movies, hung out, walked Cooper, played some hoops, and I spent some time working on Bloo.
Good day.
Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.Seven Stanzas for Easter – John Updike
[Hat tip: Andrew]
Jesus, thank You.