The Principle of Paying Attention
Stories
Contents
“The Principle of Paying Attention” by C. David McKirachan
“Here Am I” by Frank Ramirez
The Principle of Paying Attention
C. David McKirachan
John 1:29-42
John the Baptizer was nothing if he wasn’t intense. Setting up shop on the road to and from the place where everybody came to offer sacrifice, including the ones who shed the blood, admittedly the blood of animals. All of this was to receive forgiveness. People went to these sacrifice offerors because they were taught these guys knew what they were doing. These guys did everything right to allow the maker of all moral laws and judge of all sins to think well of them and the ones who came to them. Back then, if this maker and judger didn’t think well of you, bad things happened. So, you did it the way you were supposed to. These priests spent their whole lives learning exactly how to accomplish this. They learned how to raise the animals in a pure fashion, they learned how to keep the transactions that purchased the animals from being polluted by foreigners’ money. They learned how to butcher the animals, saying the right prayers while they did it. They were priests and they were keepers of the law — Pharisees.
If you had a question, you took it to these guys. They knew. They knew how to get you good with the maker and judger. All of this was accomplished at the seat of the faith. The maker and judger had chosen Jerusalem as a throne. The temple was there. It was amazing. It was a WOW!
So, everybody came to get their questions answered, buy the sacrifice, and let the priests do their job to make sure everyone went home pure, good, right with the one who could make everything really good or really bad.
And here, where everybody is crossing the Jordan to and from the holy city, is this wild man, yelling that they’re wrong. None of this was making them right with God. He was scary. But who was he? He said he wasn’t the one who would really make a difference. He said he was only there to prepare the way for the one who would really do the job.
Crazy, I tell ya.
But something in his eyes. He knew who he was. He wasn’t the answer. He pointed toward the answer. That was so different than all the power brokers, the important people. That passionate humility pounded past all the pride and arrogance that everyone else offered.
Humility seems to be in short supply these days. We teach our kids to be winners, to ‘make it,’ to get ahead. But all the testing points toward delayed gratification as the key to being able to apply their gifts appropriately, running the gauntlet of growing up and building a life of hope and joy doesn’t come from scoring or dominating, it comes from honest relationships. It comes from self-acceptance and acceptance of others. Such behavior isn’t built on getting it right, it’s about learning how to laugh at yourself and with others. It’s also about telling the truth.
I don’t know if John the Baptizer was good at relationships. Camel hair isn’t very warm or fuzzy, but he was very honest. I don’t know if he did much laughing, but he was very clear about his own place in the world. And that wasn’t at the top of any heap.
And for all his fierceness and weirdness, for all his unwillingness to go along with what people told him he was supposed to do, he knew the truth when he saw it. It may not have allowed him to have an easy life. But it defined him.
This is a time to make plans for the year. Maybe it’s time to consider our humility, our relationships, and what truth we are letting define us.
I’m not recommending a desert diet, or yelling at people, but I am recommending embracing the principle of paying attention. You never know who’s going to be comin’ down the road.
* * *
Here Am I
by Frank Ramirez
Psalm 40:1-11
Then I said, "Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me (Psalm 40:7).
In 1961, a graduate student in mathematics, Michael Minovitch, was hired for the summer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to plot orbital trajectories for spacecraft that might be sent to other planets in the solar system. He was focusing primarily on traveling to Mars and Venus. The space race was only four years old, and almost all the firsts were being racked up by the Russians. NASA was looking at planetary exploration as a way of crossing the finish line first in something.
Minovitch realized that a spacecraft acted like a mini-planet, and that if it were to swing by a larger body like another planet it might, like an asteroid, fall into the larger body’s gravity well and then be slung at a faster speed further along its path. He included this observation in his report.
That report came to the attention of Gary Flandro, also working at JPL, when in 1965 he began researching a way to get to outer planets, without great cost, or the use of brute force. Using an encounter with another world to speed along a craft could save billions of dollars. And about that time it was realized that every 176 years there is an alignment of the four outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, that would allow someone to send a spacecraft to all four of those worlds and knock decades off the time it would take to otherwise reach them. Each time the spacecraft would gain speed for free, without the use of extra fuel, allowing more weight to be taken up by scientific instruments.
The idea was dismissed out of hand as impractical. The deadline was only a little longer than a decade away, and nobody thought spacecraft could last so long for the distance involved.
Yet the idea would not go away. Even so, when some began to figure out ways to make it practical, political budget cuts made it less and less likely that it would happen.
Nevertheless, miraculously it happened anyway. In 1977, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 set out on their epic journeys. They were originally approved for five-year voyages to first Jupiter, then Saturn, but Voyager 1 performed so unexpectedly well in visiting Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980 that its partner, Voyager 2, was approved for maneuvers that sent beyond Saturn to Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.
The instruments, designed during the same era when the VCR was the height of technology and home computers had to husband every kilobyte or thousand bytes of information, continued to function against all expectations, and now both spacecraft have passed out of the solar system and the sun’s influence, and are currently in interstellar space. They may well operate for a total of forty-five or perhaps even fifty years or longer.
Even after they can no longer function, they will continue to travel towards the stars, and this is where things get interesting. Those interstellar travelers each carry a gold-plated record. Its cover depicts basic scientific information about where we are, and how to play the record. The record features photographs of life on earth, humans, animals, plants, insects, music recordings, sound recordings, and recordings of one person’s brain waves. The music recordings include classical music, ethnic music from around the world, and even “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry. There are also greetings from then President Jimmy Carter and Kurt Waldheim, who was Secretary-General of the United Nations at the time when the spacecrafts were launched. There are also greetings from children.
The individuals recorded or photographed on this record may well be memorialized for millions, or perhaps even billions of years. Whether or not they are ever discovered by some extraterrestrial race, or the spacecraft are destroyed by an unlikely encounter with another star, or planet, or chunk of space rock, one can be satisfied that they will outlast almost everything written, sung, or spoken by a member of humanity.
Although when you think about it, the psalmist, celebrating inclusion in the scroll of life, might well have a claim to being recorded a good deal longer.
Like for eternity.
*****************************************
StoryShare, January 19, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“The Principle of Paying Attention” by C. David McKirachan
“Here Am I” by Frank Ramirez
The Principle of Paying Attention
C. David McKirachan
John 1:29-42
John the Baptizer was nothing if he wasn’t intense. Setting up shop on the road to and from the place where everybody came to offer sacrifice, including the ones who shed the blood, admittedly the blood of animals. All of this was to receive forgiveness. People went to these sacrifice offerors because they were taught these guys knew what they were doing. These guys did everything right to allow the maker of all moral laws and judge of all sins to think well of them and the ones who came to them. Back then, if this maker and judger didn’t think well of you, bad things happened. So, you did it the way you were supposed to. These priests spent their whole lives learning exactly how to accomplish this. They learned how to raise the animals in a pure fashion, they learned how to keep the transactions that purchased the animals from being polluted by foreigners’ money. They learned how to butcher the animals, saying the right prayers while they did it. They were priests and they were keepers of the law — Pharisees.
If you had a question, you took it to these guys. They knew. They knew how to get you good with the maker and judger. All of this was accomplished at the seat of the faith. The maker and judger had chosen Jerusalem as a throne. The temple was there. It was amazing. It was a WOW!
So, everybody came to get their questions answered, buy the sacrifice, and let the priests do their job to make sure everyone went home pure, good, right with the one who could make everything really good or really bad.
And here, where everybody is crossing the Jordan to and from the holy city, is this wild man, yelling that they’re wrong. None of this was making them right with God. He was scary. But who was he? He said he wasn’t the one who would really make a difference. He said he was only there to prepare the way for the one who would really do the job.
Crazy, I tell ya.
But something in his eyes. He knew who he was. He wasn’t the answer. He pointed toward the answer. That was so different than all the power brokers, the important people. That passionate humility pounded past all the pride and arrogance that everyone else offered.
Humility seems to be in short supply these days. We teach our kids to be winners, to ‘make it,’ to get ahead. But all the testing points toward delayed gratification as the key to being able to apply their gifts appropriately, running the gauntlet of growing up and building a life of hope and joy doesn’t come from scoring or dominating, it comes from honest relationships. It comes from self-acceptance and acceptance of others. Such behavior isn’t built on getting it right, it’s about learning how to laugh at yourself and with others. It’s also about telling the truth.
I don’t know if John the Baptizer was good at relationships. Camel hair isn’t very warm or fuzzy, but he was very honest. I don’t know if he did much laughing, but he was very clear about his own place in the world. And that wasn’t at the top of any heap.
And for all his fierceness and weirdness, for all his unwillingness to go along with what people told him he was supposed to do, he knew the truth when he saw it. It may not have allowed him to have an easy life. But it defined him.
This is a time to make plans for the year. Maybe it’s time to consider our humility, our relationships, and what truth we are letting define us.
I’m not recommending a desert diet, or yelling at people, but I am recommending embracing the principle of paying attention. You never know who’s going to be comin’ down the road.
* * *
Here Am I
by Frank Ramirez
Psalm 40:1-11
Then I said, "Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me (Psalm 40:7).
In 1961, a graduate student in mathematics, Michael Minovitch, was hired for the summer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to plot orbital trajectories for spacecraft that might be sent to other planets in the solar system. He was focusing primarily on traveling to Mars and Venus. The space race was only four years old, and almost all the firsts were being racked up by the Russians. NASA was looking at planetary exploration as a way of crossing the finish line first in something.
Minovitch realized that a spacecraft acted like a mini-planet, and that if it were to swing by a larger body like another planet it might, like an asteroid, fall into the larger body’s gravity well and then be slung at a faster speed further along its path. He included this observation in his report.
That report came to the attention of Gary Flandro, also working at JPL, when in 1965 he began researching a way to get to outer planets, without great cost, or the use of brute force. Using an encounter with another world to speed along a craft could save billions of dollars. And about that time it was realized that every 176 years there is an alignment of the four outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, that would allow someone to send a spacecraft to all four of those worlds and knock decades off the time it would take to otherwise reach them. Each time the spacecraft would gain speed for free, without the use of extra fuel, allowing more weight to be taken up by scientific instruments.
The idea was dismissed out of hand as impractical. The deadline was only a little longer than a decade away, and nobody thought spacecraft could last so long for the distance involved.
Yet the idea would not go away. Even so, when some began to figure out ways to make it practical, political budget cuts made it less and less likely that it would happen.
Nevertheless, miraculously it happened anyway. In 1977, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 set out on their epic journeys. They were originally approved for five-year voyages to first Jupiter, then Saturn, but Voyager 1 performed so unexpectedly well in visiting Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980 that its partner, Voyager 2, was approved for maneuvers that sent beyond Saturn to Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.
The instruments, designed during the same era when the VCR was the height of technology and home computers had to husband every kilobyte or thousand bytes of information, continued to function against all expectations, and now both spacecraft have passed out of the solar system and the sun’s influence, and are currently in interstellar space. They may well operate for a total of forty-five or perhaps even fifty years or longer.
Even after they can no longer function, they will continue to travel towards the stars, and this is where things get interesting. Those interstellar travelers each carry a gold-plated record. Its cover depicts basic scientific information about where we are, and how to play the record. The record features photographs of life on earth, humans, animals, plants, insects, music recordings, sound recordings, and recordings of one person’s brain waves. The music recordings include classical music, ethnic music from around the world, and even “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry. There are also greetings from then President Jimmy Carter and Kurt Waldheim, who was Secretary-General of the United Nations at the time when the spacecrafts were launched. There are also greetings from children.
The individuals recorded or photographed on this record may well be memorialized for millions, or perhaps even billions of years. Whether or not they are ever discovered by some extraterrestrial race, or the spacecraft are destroyed by an unlikely encounter with another star, or planet, or chunk of space rock, one can be satisfied that they will outlast almost everything written, sung, or spoken by a member of humanity.
Although when you think about it, the psalmist, celebrating inclusion in the scroll of life, might well have a claim to being recorded a good deal longer.
Like for eternity.
*****************************************
StoryShare, January 19, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
