Dear Fellow Trekker,
Life has its pauses! Friend wife, Barbara, likes to quote, “Our stops as well as our starts are ordained of the Lord.” Notice… our stops and starts are something we do!
Recently I had one of those pauses, those stops, on the campus of Kansas State University, in Manhattan, Kansas sitting in the bleachers surrounding a magnificent olympic-sized swimming pool, watching my young grandson, Tyler, slither through the water with his friends and teammates methodically doing lap after lap. There must have been 20 or 30 youth across the three swim lanes being used, gliding back and forth, flip turning at each end, repeatedly, lap upon lap. They were warming up, and each was accomplished so quietly and effortlessly. I thought to myself, “Tyler must really like to swim, in order to DO that.” In fact, he does. Probably it’s in his genes, since his Daddy captained the West Point water polo team. My grandson has come a long way since his first swim lesson. I was afraid then the swim genes had swum by him. I was wrong indeed!
As I sat there, I had a number of flashbacks where I had said in public forums “we are not human doings but human beings” and that is why we are called “human beings”. Life is not defined by what we do, but by who we are. I have said this often, Perhaps you have, too. Why just a few days before I had heard that a televangelist was publishing a book, “We Are Human Beings, Not Human Doings.”
Well… in short, I think I have been off-base over the years. We all have a tremendous need to think not only alternatively, i.e. either this or that, either right or wrong, but also conjunctively, i.e. both this and that, both a bit right and maybe a bit wrong. As I sat there in the bleachers, admiring my grandson and his teammates, some words of Scripture knocked on the door of my mind: “So whether you eat or drink, or WHATEVER you DO, DO it all for the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:31) Human beings are doers inevitably. We only exist as human beings by living life as doers OF life. What a horribly false dichotomy we have erected just to make the point that our worth should not be measured primarily by what we do! And what a lesson my grandson was teaching me. The mundane, the methodical, the routine are all done to God’s glory. It’s the quiet things, the little things, those DOINGS that only our Maker and Sustainer sees. I guess it was finally coming together why I so hated cross country so much as a youth when our basketball coach insisted all basketball players run cross country. If you want to BE a basketball player, you’d better Do cross country! He was right, I was wrong.
Then to seal the lesson, the Lord brought to my attention a few days later in the dining room of Christian Senior Ministries in Seattle, these words inscribed on the wall, the ONLY words to be found there, “I’m sending you off to open the eyes of the outsiders so they can see the difference between dark and light, and choose light, see the difference between Satan and God, and choose God. I’m sending you off to present my offer of sins forgiven, and a place in the family, inviting them into the company of those who begin real living by believing in me.” Acts 26:18. I gasped and said, Why, Lord, that is all about what we DO because of who we ARE in Christ! I thought of Eph 2:10 which I had memorized 50 years before: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to DO good works, which God prepared in advance for us to DO.” The lesson was learned!… at last!
Little did we know when we arrived in Seattle for our annual Mother’s Day trip to be with Barbara’s 97-year-old Mother, that the day before Mother’s Day, May 7 we would fold her into the arms of Jesus to be forever with Him. She was “finally home.” On Thursday before she passed on I was able to sing to her at her bedside, a little thing that only seemed right to do. Perhaps she heard, perhaps not. What a precious woman! Never thought she was “the Christian her daughters were”, she remarked to her pastor. But oh so faithful in the little things she did. She never, ever, forgot a birthday or anniversary, a wedding, a graduation, etc. She was aptly named Grace Welcome. She personified grace in all she said and didn’t say. A word of criticism never left her lips. She was a remarkable human being who DID some remarkable things in her 97 very kind and productive years. There would be no mother-in-law jokes if all had mothers-in-law like mine.
Human beings or human doers? Well, clearly both! Sort of like faith and works! Law and Grace! Rightly understood, one does not negate the other. I’ve been thinking a lot about obedience recently. It came from meditating on a C.S. Lewis quote, “Obedience is the key to all doors” As I reflected, obedience is an operative word, only in the realm of action, of doing. Obedience surely is the essence of fellowship! We become like Jesus as we follow him… as we pattern our lives after Him… as we obey His teachings and preserve the new relationships He provides. Obedience clearly can only be understood in the act of DOING!
Trust and obey! Be and do! Let’s think clearly, inclusively, conjunctively and reverentially along the trail. Isaiah 55 is an awesome chapter of Scripture upon which to meditate. We’ll never get it totally until we step on the shore of Heaven, and even then we may not get it all quite yet, but… the Word of God, both Jesus and His spoken word, are inviolate, irrevocable and absolutely fruit bearing. Stay on the journey, my friends, and “whatever you Do, Do it all for the glory of God.” There is no other glory!
Your fellow trekker,
Jim Meredith