A quote found in my notebooks: “I wonder if the strong sense of frustration which comes over me so frequently on Sunday evening and to which many other parsons have confessed is merely due to physical lassitude or whether it arises from the fact that every preacher is trying to do a bigger thing than he is equal to—and fails. I have an uneasy feeling that it may be native honesty of the soul asserting itself.”
—Reinhold Niebuhr
Niebuhr’s “Sunday evening” was often my “Monday morning.” In other words, I’ve been there. What pastor hasn’t awakened on Monday morning filled with self-doubt and second-guessing about the day before? “Did I really say that?” he/she asks. “Why were they not there yesterday? How could I have forgotten … ?”
Perhaps someone will do a study and discover that Monday is the day most pastors come closest to the temptation to resign. On such Mondays in the past, I did a lot of re-reading of Elijah’s “morning after” in the wilderness in I Kings 19. How kind of God to realize that Elijah’s first need was food, drink, and a good sleep. Then, a fresh view of God in his splendor. That’s a pretty practical God.
From my journal: This morning I meditated on 1 Corinthians 9: 24ff—the powerful paragraph on Paul’s sense of discipline. I’d never thought of the phrase “I beat my body … ” as an allusion to the cruel action of a slave-owner who beats a rebellious slave into submission so that the slave is finally willing to take orders. But Paul is suggesting in his metaphor that the body (or the natural side of us) cannot be fully trusted and must be “enslaved” to the higher call or virtue that comes from the heart.
Richard Foster notes Frank Laubach’s words in the opening page of his 1937 journal: “God, I want to give you every minute of this year. I shall try to keep You in mind every moment of my waking hours. I shall try to let You be the speaker and direct every word. I shall try to let You direct my acts. I shall try to learn your language.”
Later Foster quotes the famous lines of Brother Lawrence: “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”
How many times have I read that last paragraph but never quite appreciated the context of Lawrence’s thought. “Several persons … calling.” Last night when I went to bed I was complaining about all the people who want a piece of my time, and I remembered Lawrence’s comment, “Several persons … calling.” Nothing’s changed over the centuries. We have all been in the same battle.
A friend gave me a wonderful CD: a Te Deum mass, “Arvo Part.” It comes from Estonia, and it has haunting choral sounds. Very restful to the spirit.
Revisiting the SUV issue: Leadership got more than a few responses on this one. Some thought the matter trivial; others seemed disproportionately irritated that anyone would dare to question the propriety of owning one; and still others declared that the matter was outside Biblical reflection. A few said it was a legitimate environmental issue while one or two called my comments a sellout of sorts to the Democrats or the liberals. OK. …
Me? I was tickled that folks reacted. The more vigorous the debate, the better. Ultimately it begins to make us think about a lot more than just SUV’s. Does biblical faith speak into the every-day issues of life or does it not? Is there a moral/spiritual dimension to my purchasing decisions? Like I say, let’s debate it among ourselves. It makes us think. But— by the way—let’s do the debating in a spirit of Christian discourse—respectfully, thoughtfully, open to the possibility that someone else might have a better idea.
I have these follow-up observations: In about 30-40 years a few hundred million Chinese will have reached middle class life-style (India also), and they’ll want SUV’s, I suspect, and all the other energy-gobbling things that westerners take for granted. What do you think will happen to the price of energy in the world at that moment? I’m going to bet Christians in America will have developed some vigorous opinions on the morality of gas-guzzlers, huge homes, and a host of other things that presently make us disproportionate users of the world’s fuel resources.
Oh, and this: every time I guzzle an extra drop of fuel, every time I leave a light on when I leave a room, and every time I heat more water than is necessary, I squander one more unit of energy that my grandchildren will struggle to find long after I’m gone. That personalizes the matter for me. The SUV issue is not a not about rights or legalism; it’s about stewardship.
I hear John Wesley say: “Do nothing on which you cannot pray for a blessing. Every action of a Christian that is good is sanctified by the Word and prayer. It becomes not a Christian to do anything so trivial that he cannot pray over it.” It makes me wonder how he would weigh in on stuff like the SUV question.
A book worth reading: George Hunter’s “The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christians Can Reach the West Again.” Hunter reviews the remarkable missionary work of Patrick: “(Patrick) came to understand the Irish Celtic people, and their language and culture, with the kind of intuitive profundity that is usually possible only, as in Patrick’s case, from the ‘underside.'”
The “underside” refers to Patrick’s life as a shepherd in total simplicity and poverty. The bothersome implication: you can’t persuade people if you can’t totally identify with where they live and work—and suffer.
Pastor and best-selling author, Gordon MacDonald is now chair of World Relief.
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