The worry test
Commentary
Object:
For a time, many years ago, the most popular song around the world was Bobbie McFarrin's little tune called "Don't Worry! Be Happy!" People hummed it everywhere, and radio stations of all varieties played its catchy optimistic message.
Since millions and millions of people bought recordings of that song you would think that no one would be anxious anymore! Unfortunately, even with all that airplay, Bobbie McFarrin's song failed to chase the worry warts from our souls.
One man tells of sitting next to a passenger taking his first flight. The novice was obviously ill at ease: squirming in his seat, looking out the window to see if the wings were still there, gripping the armrests in a knuckle lock. Every little bump or jolt would bring a gasp and a prayer and one hand nervously fingering a rosary bead.
The experienced traveler grinned a bit and thought he might calm his seat-mate's nerves with some religious psychology. "What are you so worried about?" he asked. "You're a religious person! Didn't Jesus say, in the Bible, 'I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth?'!"
"No!" his partner fairly shouted. "You've got it wrong! Jesus said, 'Lo, I am with you always!' I'm not sure what happens when you get way up here!"
High or low, worry is part of human life, as is evident in today's lectionary passages. God's word comes through Isaiah to strengthen the feeble hands and weak knees of the community of faith in his day. Paul needs to reassure the Corinthian congregation of hope beyond today's troubles. And Jesus faces the issue head on in his mighty teachings found in the Sermon on the Mount. Preach with confidence today, for God reigns and our times are in his hand!
Isaiah 49:8-16a
The bleakness of Isaiah's world and the need for God's revealing word of hope have an echo in Alexander Solzenitsyn's memories of the Gulag Archipelago. Sitting distraught during his days in the Siberian labor camps, he had lost his family and his days stretched out in endless backbreaking efforts. Then the doctors told him he had cancer. There was no cure. He would die soon.
The next day, he said, he barely got out of his bunk. His heart was gone. His mind was numb. He had no energy as he left to join the others in the dawn work patrol. "What's the use?!" he asked himself.
Solzenitsyn says that when he got to the rock quarries he dropped his shovel, sat down, resting his head on his tired, folded arms. He knew the guards would see him soon, but he didn't care. He hoped that they would shoot him. Then, at least, the pain would be over and the worries gone.
"Just then," he writes, "I felt someone standing near me. I looked up, and there was an old man. I'd never seen him before. I don't remember ever seeing him again. But he knelt over me, and he took a stick, and he drew a cross on the ground in front of me."
That little act of a stranger did something for Solzenitsyn. "That cross," he said, "made me see things in a new way! There's a power in this universe that is bigger than any empire or any government! There's a God who experiences our pain and who dies our death and who came back from the tombs. There's a God who gives life meaning, who is LIFE itself! That's what really matters here! That's why we exist! That's why Jesus came to earth for us!"
Solzenitsyn says that he sat there thinking about it all for a few more minutes. Then he stood up, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Things wouldn't change around him for over a year, but inside he was a new person. God lives! God cares! God is working out his purposes!
That put Solzenitsyn's worries in their place. They didn't vanish or disappear suddenly. Instead, they were caught up into a larger perspective of concern. How can I share the life of the Master? How can my days be a reflection of his kingdom, his power, and his glory?
The God of Isaiah makes it clear that we mean more to him than anything else in this widely scattering universe. With the voice of a parent he calls out to us in these "bleak midwinter" days, "Can a mother forget her child?" "I have engraved you on the palms of my hands!" We are not alone. We are not forgotten. No matter what our circumstances, we are neither beyond the searching eye of divine love, nor the stretch of omnipotent and loving hands.
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Paul's brief instruction in our epistles reading is almost a complaint. He had given his heart and his ministry to the Corinthian congregation and then moved on to establish other beachheads of Christian community like the one in Ephesus from which he was writing. Too soon the Corinthians forgot who they were and whose they were. Too quickly they devolved into splintered factions and challenged his apostolic authority. It's like the story someone told of two men on a cross-country bike trip. They were traveling together on a tandem bike. For the first short while the land is level, and they pump along with energy and style, enjoying this teamwork. Then the horizon began to rise, and they found themselves fighting a steep climb. Panting and puffing, they slowly worked their way to the top.
Finally they reached the summit and stopped to catch their breaths. "Whew!" said one, wiping the sweat off his face, "that was some hard climb!"
"Yeah!" replied the other, "and if I hadn't kept the brake on, we probably would have slid back to the bottom!"
That's the picture in these opening verses of 1 Corinthians 4, isn't it? The one fellow (who could be Paul) had his mind on the heights. He was going to make it to the top if it took all of his energies and strength. Meanwhile his partner (certainly an echo of the Corinthians) had his mind on the bottom. He was worried about sliding back and about being sucked down the hill. They're both doing the same thing, riding the same bike on the same road up the same hill, but their values are at different places. Their worries set them apart. Only the end times would reveal their diverse focuses. Paul pleads with his friends in Corinth and in our congregations to get our faith connected to the Creator and thus find again our truest selves.
Matthew 5:24-34
Worry is a part of human life. Do you know anyone who never worries? Not a chance! Only a machine can't worry. Only a robot never gets anxious.
Erma Bombeck once wrote about the fears of a young fellow on the way to his first day at school: "My name is Donald, and I don't know anything! I have new underwear, a new sweater, a loose tooth, and I didn't sleep well last night; I worried. What if the school bus jerks after I get on, and I lose my balance and my pants rip and everyone laughs? What if a bell rings and a man yells, 'Where do you belong?' and I don't know? What if the thermos lid on my soup is on too tight and when I try to open it, it breaks? What if I splash water on my name tag and my name disappears and no one will know who I am? What if they send us out to play and all the swings are taken?"
Though she writes about a child, Erma Bombeck takes our everyday fears and echoes them through the mind of a six-year-old. We all worry. It is part of life. G.K. Chesterton was once asked by a reporter, "If you were a preacher and you had only one sermon to give, what would it be about?"
Chesterton didn't think twice. He said, "I'd preach about worry!" He knew what it was to be human. Worry is a part of life and something that drives a lot of our actions. Jesus knows that. That's why he focused on worry for such a large portion of the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus' list of worries comes from the morning newspaper. We worry about food, he says, and about our health. We worry about the kinds of clothes we wear: Are they in fashion? Will people notice me? Will they respect me or laugh behind my back?
More than that, says Jesus, we worry about money. We worry about mortgages and interest rates. We worry about pensions and taxes.
Jesus knows us pretty well. Everything on his list of worries is important, isn't it? We should be concerned about our health! It is important to pay our bills and to have good relationships in society. In fact, we get a little upset with people who don't pay their bills. Maybe it's okay for Bobby McFarrin to tell us "Don't worry! Be happy!" but we kind of mumble through that part of his song where we sing with him: Landlord say your rent is late, he might have to litigate! We don't want to spend too much of the national debt servicing welfare! We don't want too many of Bobby McFarrin's friends living next to us, or leasing our properties, and paying no rent!
Jesus can't be telling us to be careless about ourselves and our things. After all, he also teaches us to pray, "Father, give us today our daily bread." He expects us to be concerned about all of these things that are close to us and such a common part of life.
That is what we worry about, isn't it? We worry about the things that are close to us, the things that are constantly with us, the things that we carry around with us day after day. We worry about the things that have the most immediate value to us.
Maybe that's really the point of what Jesus is trying to say. Our worries are essentially the test of our values. We worry about things that are the most important to us in life.
That is why Jesus encourages us to take the "Worry Test." What are you most anxious about? What troubles you the most? What keeps you awake at night or disturbs your thoughts most often during the day?
When we take the test we find out where our hearts are at. The worry test teaches us the schedule of values in our lives.
So it is with us. We all worry, says Jesus, but our worries surround the things that we value most in life. Take the "Worry Test," he tells us. List the concerns that bother you the most. When you read your list over, you'll find your heart! "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21).
So the challenge of Jesus is not to stop worrying altogether. To be human is to have worries, frets, and cares. We are affected by life. The issue, according to Jesus, is to change our goals, values, and treasure so that, in the end, our worries will take on a more godly character. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," says Jesus, "and all these things that you need will come to you as well."
That's where Jesus is leading us, as well. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," he says. But that is a hard lesson to learn. We are so good at taking control of our lives. We are very good at trying to play God, to the point that we don't want him to remind us of the real structures of life.
Application
Some years ago, when Dick Shepard was the vicar of an Anglican parish in London, England, he had a dream. It was very vivid and stayed with him after he woke. His life was exceptionally busy in those days, constantly trying to meet the demands of the many people under his care in ministry.
One day he felt himself coming down with the flu. But he couldn't afford to get sick! He didn't have the time! There were too many things to do! There were sermons to write, classes to prepare, meetings to chair, and people to visit! His congregation needed him! His family needed him! Even God needed him! He just couldn't afford to get sick right now!
That night he had his terrible nightmare. He dreamed that he was standing in heaven near to God's throne. An angelic telegram arrived, and the messenger handed the envelope to God. God tore it open and read these horrifying words: "Dick Shepard is about to be ill."
Then, said Reverend Shepard, God began to wring his hands. A worried look clouded God's face, and he began to mumble to himself: "Oh, no! Dick Shepard is about to be ill! Whatever shall I do? Whatever shall I do?"
When Pastor Shepard woke up in the morning he had a good laugh. He decided that God could probably manage somehow without him, and he stopped living as if the entire world depended on him.
That's the lesson that Jesus wants to teach us. Only that lesson will change our values, redefine our goals, and point us toward new treasures. "Your heavenly father knows!" says Jesus. And that's enough.
Alternative Application
Isaiah 49:8-16a. There is something exceptionally endearing about the word of the Lord to us through Isaiah. The pictures of deprivation, captivity, and forsakenness are gripping. Even though they picture a world not yet explicit in the prophet's day, the threats of the Assyrians and Babylonians in the political potboiler of the ancient near east made the scenes as clear as color photos in a glossy news magazine. But even more poignant are the anthropologized images of God that capture our imagination as the Great Parent/Creator comes looking for children that can never be forgotten. Fred Craddock reminds us of that in a story he passes along about a sermon of his that took on a life of its own. It was called "Doxology," and he had preached it a number of times -- enough so that it gained quite a reputation among his family and friends. The message of "Doxology" was all about the meaning of life and the reason why we exist. It said that the ultimate goal of our time on earth is to bring glory to God, no matter what the circumstances. Fred said that that sermon led to one of the most beautiful experiences of his life.
"I was on the phone," he writes. "My oldest brother had just died of a heart attack. When stunned and hurt, get real busy to avoid thought.
"Call the wife. Get the kids out of school. Arrange for a colleague to take my classes. Cancel a speaking engagement.
"And, oh yes, stop the paper, the mail; have someone feed the dog...
"All night we drove, across two states, eyes pasted against the windshield. Conversation was spasmodic, consisting of taking turns asking the same question over and over.
"When we drew near the town and the house, I searched my mind for a word to speak to the widow. He was my brother, but he was her husband. I was still searching when we pulled into the driveway. She came out to meet us and as I opened the care door, still without that word, she broke the silence: 'I hope you brought Doxology!'
"Doxology?" writes Fred. "No, I hadn't even thought of [that sermon] since the phone call. But the truth is now clear: If we ever lose our Doxology, we might as well be dead."
Isn't that true? We will never stop worrying. We will never still our anxious hearts. But when we take the "Worry Test," and when we find out where our treasures really lie, and when we learn to sing the Doxology in all circumstances of life, then the divine promises filtered through Isaiah's tender expressions will have come home in us!
Preaching the Psalms
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 131
This short psalm is amazing. It is zen-like in its call to let go. Rather than the tone of so many psalms that shout praise and ask to be lifted up to glory, this psalm simply states the writer's sense of release. In almost contradictory language, the psalmist begins, saying "My heart is NOT lifted up." How unexpected! It continues with a humble cant. "My eyes are not lifted up too high." In other words, ambition and over extension do not cripple me.
How much of our lives are spent occupying ourselves with things too great? In the American Dream scene of "I can do anything," or as one car company intones, "You have no boundaries," how are we to give ourselves to God? What if there are limits to what we can and should do? What if there are holy, spiritual boundaries that we are called to observe? What if our hearts were calmed and quieted because we did not reach too far; because we were able to keep our eyes, not on the heights, but on the prize?
The thought of such calm is stunning. Imagine whole peoples rooted in the peace of a life found in the maintenance of good boundaries and the surrender to God's will rather than to our ambition? Imagine faith communities liberated of the drive to be bigger and rooted instead in the commitment to be faithful. Picture your own life freed of ambition and given instead to God's way, God's glory, and God's love.
It seems almost contrary to human nature to suggest that we refrain from "occupying ourselves with things too great…." Yet here we have a calm heart and a quieted soul. Here we have someone whose striving is done and whose living in the Lord has begun.
What would this feel like? What would it look like? How could begin to occupy ourselves differently? How would we change the landscape of our lives to look more like the terrain that God would have us travel?
It's worth a thought. It's worth some prayer. It's worth even trying.
Since millions and millions of people bought recordings of that song you would think that no one would be anxious anymore! Unfortunately, even with all that airplay, Bobbie McFarrin's song failed to chase the worry warts from our souls.
One man tells of sitting next to a passenger taking his first flight. The novice was obviously ill at ease: squirming in his seat, looking out the window to see if the wings were still there, gripping the armrests in a knuckle lock. Every little bump or jolt would bring a gasp and a prayer and one hand nervously fingering a rosary bead.
The experienced traveler grinned a bit and thought he might calm his seat-mate's nerves with some religious psychology. "What are you so worried about?" he asked. "You're a religious person! Didn't Jesus say, in the Bible, 'I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth?'!"
"No!" his partner fairly shouted. "You've got it wrong! Jesus said, 'Lo, I am with you always!' I'm not sure what happens when you get way up here!"
High or low, worry is part of human life, as is evident in today's lectionary passages. God's word comes through Isaiah to strengthen the feeble hands and weak knees of the community of faith in his day. Paul needs to reassure the Corinthian congregation of hope beyond today's troubles. And Jesus faces the issue head on in his mighty teachings found in the Sermon on the Mount. Preach with confidence today, for God reigns and our times are in his hand!
Isaiah 49:8-16a
The bleakness of Isaiah's world and the need for God's revealing word of hope have an echo in Alexander Solzenitsyn's memories of the Gulag Archipelago. Sitting distraught during his days in the Siberian labor camps, he had lost his family and his days stretched out in endless backbreaking efforts. Then the doctors told him he had cancer. There was no cure. He would die soon.
The next day, he said, he barely got out of his bunk. His heart was gone. His mind was numb. He had no energy as he left to join the others in the dawn work patrol. "What's the use?!" he asked himself.
Solzenitsyn says that when he got to the rock quarries he dropped his shovel, sat down, resting his head on his tired, folded arms. He knew the guards would see him soon, but he didn't care. He hoped that they would shoot him. Then, at least, the pain would be over and the worries gone.
"Just then," he writes, "I felt someone standing near me. I looked up, and there was an old man. I'd never seen him before. I don't remember ever seeing him again. But he knelt over me, and he took a stick, and he drew a cross on the ground in front of me."
That little act of a stranger did something for Solzenitsyn. "That cross," he said, "made me see things in a new way! There's a power in this universe that is bigger than any empire or any government! There's a God who experiences our pain and who dies our death and who came back from the tombs. There's a God who gives life meaning, who is LIFE itself! That's what really matters here! That's why we exist! That's why Jesus came to earth for us!"
Solzenitsyn says that he sat there thinking about it all for a few more minutes. Then he stood up, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Things wouldn't change around him for over a year, but inside he was a new person. God lives! God cares! God is working out his purposes!
That put Solzenitsyn's worries in their place. They didn't vanish or disappear suddenly. Instead, they were caught up into a larger perspective of concern. How can I share the life of the Master? How can my days be a reflection of his kingdom, his power, and his glory?
The God of Isaiah makes it clear that we mean more to him than anything else in this widely scattering universe. With the voice of a parent he calls out to us in these "bleak midwinter" days, "Can a mother forget her child?" "I have engraved you on the palms of my hands!" We are not alone. We are not forgotten. No matter what our circumstances, we are neither beyond the searching eye of divine love, nor the stretch of omnipotent and loving hands.
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Paul's brief instruction in our epistles reading is almost a complaint. He had given his heart and his ministry to the Corinthian congregation and then moved on to establish other beachheads of Christian community like the one in Ephesus from which he was writing. Too soon the Corinthians forgot who they were and whose they were. Too quickly they devolved into splintered factions and challenged his apostolic authority. It's like the story someone told of two men on a cross-country bike trip. They were traveling together on a tandem bike. For the first short while the land is level, and they pump along with energy and style, enjoying this teamwork. Then the horizon began to rise, and they found themselves fighting a steep climb. Panting and puffing, they slowly worked their way to the top.
Finally they reached the summit and stopped to catch their breaths. "Whew!" said one, wiping the sweat off his face, "that was some hard climb!"
"Yeah!" replied the other, "and if I hadn't kept the brake on, we probably would have slid back to the bottom!"
That's the picture in these opening verses of 1 Corinthians 4, isn't it? The one fellow (who could be Paul) had his mind on the heights. He was going to make it to the top if it took all of his energies and strength. Meanwhile his partner (certainly an echo of the Corinthians) had his mind on the bottom. He was worried about sliding back and about being sucked down the hill. They're both doing the same thing, riding the same bike on the same road up the same hill, but their values are at different places. Their worries set them apart. Only the end times would reveal their diverse focuses. Paul pleads with his friends in Corinth and in our congregations to get our faith connected to the Creator and thus find again our truest selves.
Matthew 5:24-34
Worry is a part of human life. Do you know anyone who never worries? Not a chance! Only a machine can't worry. Only a robot never gets anxious.
Erma Bombeck once wrote about the fears of a young fellow on the way to his first day at school: "My name is Donald, and I don't know anything! I have new underwear, a new sweater, a loose tooth, and I didn't sleep well last night; I worried. What if the school bus jerks after I get on, and I lose my balance and my pants rip and everyone laughs? What if a bell rings and a man yells, 'Where do you belong?' and I don't know? What if the thermos lid on my soup is on too tight and when I try to open it, it breaks? What if I splash water on my name tag and my name disappears and no one will know who I am? What if they send us out to play and all the swings are taken?"
Though she writes about a child, Erma Bombeck takes our everyday fears and echoes them through the mind of a six-year-old. We all worry. It is part of life. G.K. Chesterton was once asked by a reporter, "If you were a preacher and you had only one sermon to give, what would it be about?"
Chesterton didn't think twice. He said, "I'd preach about worry!" He knew what it was to be human. Worry is a part of life and something that drives a lot of our actions. Jesus knows that. That's why he focused on worry for such a large portion of the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus' list of worries comes from the morning newspaper. We worry about food, he says, and about our health. We worry about the kinds of clothes we wear: Are they in fashion? Will people notice me? Will they respect me or laugh behind my back?
More than that, says Jesus, we worry about money. We worry about mortgages and interest rates. We worry about pensions and taxes.
Jesus knows us pretty well. Everything on his list of worries is important, isn't it? We should be concerned about our health! It is important to pay our bills and to have good relationships in society. In fact, we get a little upset with people who don't pay their bills. Maybe it's okay for Bobby McFarrin to tell us "Don't worry! Be happy!" but we kind of mumble through that part of his song where we sing with him: Landlord say your rent is late, he might have to litigate! We don't want to spend too much of the national debt servicing welfare! We don't want too many of Bobby McFarrin's friends living next to us, or leasing our properties, and paying no rent!
Jesus can't be telling us to be careless about ourselves and our things. After all, he also teaches us to pray, "Father, give us today our daily bread." He expects us to be concerned about all of these things that are close to us and such a common part of life.
That is what we worry about, isn't it? We worry about the things that are close to us, the things that are constantly with us, the things that we carry around with us day after day. We worry about the things that have the most immediate value to us.
Maybe that's really the point of what Jesus is trying to say. Our worries are essentially the test of our values. We worry about things that are the most important to us in life.
That is why Jesus encourages us to take the "Worry Test." What are you most anxious about? What troubles you the most? What keeps you awake at night or disturbs your thoughts most often during the day?
When we take the test we find out where our hearts are at. The worry test teaches us the schedule of values in our lives.
So it is with us. We all worry, says Jesus, but our worries surround the things that we value most in life. Take the "Worry Test," he tells us. List the concerns that bother you the most. When you read your list over, you'll find your heart! "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:21).
So the challenge of Jesus is not to stop worrying altogether. To be human is to have worries, frets, and cares. We are affected by life. The issue, according to Jesus, is to change our goals, values, and treasure so that, in the end, our worries will take on a more godly character. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," says Jesus, "and all these things that you need will come to you as well."
That's where Jesus is leading us, as well. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," he says. But that is a hard lesson to learn. We are so good at taking control of our lives. We are very good at trying to play God, to the point that we don't want him to remind us of the real structures of life.
Application
Some years ago, when Dick Shepard was the vicar of an Anglican parish in London, England, he had a dream. It was very vivid and stayed with him after he woke. His life was exceptionally busy in those days, constantly trying to meet the demands of the many people under his care in ministry.
One day he felt himself coming down with the flu. But he couldn't afford to get sick! He didn't have the time! There were too many things to do! There were sermons to write, classes to prepare, meetings to chair, and people to visit! His congregation needed him! His family needed him! Even God needed him! He just couldn't afford to get sick right now!
That night he had his terrible nightmare. He dreamed that he was standing in heaven near to God's throne. An angelic telegram arrived, and the messenger handed the envelope to God. God tore it open and read these horrifying words: "Dick Shepard is about to be ill."
Then, said Reverend Shepard, God began to wring his hands. A worried look clouded God's face, and he began to mumble to himself: "Oh, no! Dick Shepard is about to be ill! Whatever shall I do? Whatever shall I do?"
When Pastor Shepard woke up in the morning he had a good laugh. He decided that God could probably manage somehow without him, and he stopped living as if the entire world depended on him.
That's the lesson that Jesus wants to teach us. Only that lesson will change our values, redefine our goals, and point us toward new treasures. "Your heavenly father knows!" says Jesus. And that's enough.
Alternative Application
Isaiah 49:8-16a. There is something exceptionally endearing about the word of the Lord to us through Isaiah. The pictures of deprivation, captivity, and forsakenness are gripping. Even though they picture a world not yet explicit in the prophet's day, the threats of the Assyrians and Babylonians in the political potboiler of the ancient near east made the scenes as clear as color photos in a glossy news magazine. But even more poignant are the anthropologized images of God that capture our imagination as the Great Parent/Creator comes looking for children that can never be forgotten. Fred Craddock reminds us of that in a story he passes along about a sermon of his that took on a life of its own. It was called "Doxology," and he had preached it a number of times -- enough so that it gained quite a reputation among his family and friends. The message of "Doxology" was all about the meaning of life and the reason why we exist. It said that the ultimate goal of our time on earth is to bring glory to God, no matter what the circumstances. Fred said that that sermon led to one of the most beautiful experiences of his life.
"I was on the phone," he writes. "My oldest brother had just died of a heart attack. When stunned and hurt, get real busy to avoid thought.
"Call the wife. Get the kids out of school. Arrange for a colleague to take my classes. Cancel a speaking engagement.
"And, oh yes, stop the paper, the mail; have someone feed the dog...
"All night we drove, across two states, eyes pasted against the windshield. Conversation was spasmodic, consisting of taking turns asking the same question over and over.
"When we drew near the town and the house, I searched my mind for a word to speak to the widow. He was my brother, but he was her husband. I was still searching when we pulled into the driveway. She came out to meet us and as I opened the care door, still without that word, she broke the silence: 'I hope you brought Doxology!'
"Doxology?" writes Fred. "No, I hadn't even thought of [that sermon] since the phone call. But the truth is now clear: If we ever lose our Doxology, we might as well be dead."
Isn't that true? We will never stop worrying. We will never still our anxious hearts. But when we take the "Worry Test," and when we find out where our treasures really lie, and when we learn to sing the Doxology in all circumstances of life, then the divine promises filtered through Isaiah's tender expressions will have come home in us!
Preaching the Psalms
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 131
This short psalm is amazing. It is zen-like in its call to let go. Rather than the tone of so many psalms that shout praise and ask to be lifted up to glory, this psalm simply states the writer's sense of release. In almost contradictory language, the psalmist begins, saying "My heart is NOT lifted up." How unexpected! It continues with a humble cant. "My eyes are not lifted up too high." In other words, ambition and over extension do not cripple me.
How much of our lives are spent occupying ourselves with things too great? In the American Dream scene of "I can do anything," or as one car company intones, "You have no boundaries," how are we to give ourselves to God? What if there are limits to what we can and should do? What if there are holy, spiritual boundaries that we are called to observe? What if our hearts were calmed and quieted because we did not reach too far; because we were able to keep our eyes, not on the heights, but on the prize?
The thought of such calm is stunning. Imagine whole peoples rooted in the peace of a life found in the maintenance of good boundaries and the surrender to God's will rather than to our ambition? Imagine faith communities liberated of the drive to be bigger and rooted instead in the commitment to be faithful. Picture your own life freed of ambition and given instead to God's way, God's glory, and God's love.
It seems almost contrary to human nature to suggest that we refrain from "occupying ourselves with things too great…." Yet here we have a calm heart and a quieted soul. Here we have someone whose striving is done and whose living in the Lord has begun.
What would this feel like? What would it look like? How could begin to occupy ourselves differently? How would we change the landscape of our lives to look more like the terrain that God would have us travel?
It's worth a thought. It's worth some prayer. It's worth even trying.
