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August 11, 2004
Hello everyone,
In 1998, a young Sunday school teacher was seated comfortably in an easy chair, lecturing to a cramped room bursting with teenagers. More than the usual number of persons were present, as two classes had merged for the occasion, given the importance the church deemed the topic at hand. His lesson plan was taken from a somewhat unlikely source for such an age group, none other than What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women by Dr. James Dobson. The young Sunday school teacher was, of course, yours truly, and the topic of the day was a clarification of the often unrealistic expectations and beliefs that young people hold about love, marriage, and sex. There was one particular comment that Dr. Dobson made that I think is entirely fitting for our topic today: he purports that most failed marriages do not generally have an out and out blow-out but rather develop a slow leak. Our topic today is not about marital relationships, but I think the principle is the same in our spiritual pilgrimages as we pursue a relationship with God. We are a people who must constantly trim the thorns and the thistles of this life—the cares and concerns and the endless demands on our time. Our technology with its many amenities may have tamed nature to large degree, but it has done little in terms of enriching our lives; at least since the Industrial Revolution, efficiency and productivity have become ideals of success. We take a certain pride in telling others how overwhelmingly busy we are and it is sheer joy to recount the many travails of our day to the kindly ear. But what of our spiritual lives? Even when we work to keep them trimmed and pruned, it is so, so very easy to find ourselves feeling detached from the Vine—dry, distant, withered—and we begin to entertain thoughts that the spiritual life is next to impossible, at least for us ordinary mortals. Often when we realize that we have been cast adrift, when we look back across the course of the last few days, weeks, months, there are no obvious causes we can pinpoint and we wonder how we got here. The answer is probably as simple as a slow leak.
People often say that the little things in life don’t matter much, but that is a falsehood on many levels. The little things do matter. The little things make or break a marriage, the little things give us a reason for living another day, the little things nag and gnaw at us until our stomachs are lined with ulcers. The difference between an accomplished virtuoso and a beginning pianist, the difference between a prima ballerina and Ballet 101, the difference between the author and the amateur always amounts to the little things: the subtle nuance here, the delicate flourish there, the fine gradation of detail that separates minion from maestro. It is indeed these little things that so often drive wedges between our soul and its God: death by a thousand paper cuts. In his examination of the Lord’s Prayer, Emmet Fox writes this about the little things:
The facts are these—the more you pray, the more time you spend in meditation and spiritual treatment, the more sensitive you become. And if you spend a great deal of time working on your soul in the right way, you will become very sensitive. This is excellent, but like everything in the universe, it works both ways. The more sensitive and spiritual you become, the more powerful and effective are your prayers, you do better healing, and you advance rapidly. But, for the same reason, you also become susceptible to forms of temptation that simply do not beset those at an earlier stage. You will also find that for ordinary faults, even things that many men and women in the world would consider to be trifling, you will be sharply punished, and this is well, because it keeps you up to the mark. The seemingly minor transgressions, the “little foxes that spoil the vines,” would fritter away our spiritual power if not promptly dealt with. (The Lord’s Prayer)
And that is precisely what does happen to all of us: “The seemingly minor transgressions, the ‘little foxes that spoil the vines,’” . . . “fritter away our spiritual power” and we must deal with such things as promptly as possible if we wish to walk triumphant in Christ. Dealing with these little foxes is usually a matter of turning again to our Source and Sustenance, imploring His forgiveness, boundless grace, and mercy to help us pick ourselves up anew and continue our journey homeward. I believe these little foxes often take the form of small compromises when we ignore the little pinpricks of the Holy Spirit: small compromises easily enough rationalized away. But the problem with rationalization is that once the lid is opened a crack it becomes that much easier the next time to open it just a little wider, and a little wider, and a little wider still. Soon, before we know it, we have rationalized away many things that we would never have dreamed of letting slide just a few weeks or months ago. We do well to shut the lid and sit on it.
Or again, the spiritual life can be likened to housecleaning. How much easier it is to do the dishes immediately after using them, to hang the clothes in the closet after washing them, to put them in the laundry when we soil them, to clean up our mess soon after we make it. There may, of course, be the day that we are so exhausted after dinner that we let the dishes sit in the sink. No bother—no real harm done. As long as it is the exception and not the rule, we’ll just wash them tomorrow morning. But the problem so often develops that tomorrow morning never comes and we settle into bad habits like letting the dishes pile up, and pile up, and pile up, until we realize we’ve run out of silverware, and the handful of dishes that would take us almost no time to wash has now become a mountain of foul-smelling pots and pans and plates and bowls and spoons and knives and forks. We do the same thing in our spiritual lives. It’s probably been a few weeks since we last dusted—or maybe we never do. Perhaps the floors need mopping, the clothes need hanging in the closet. There probably isn’t a huge amount of work we need to do to put our spiritual house in order, but the task has likely piled higher than what it should if we would just make it a point to do the chores daily, setting a day a week aside (Sunday, for most of us) to go over the house thoroughly, setting into order anything we have neglected throughout the last six days. During that time, we can do such things as ask ourselves if we harbor any lingering resentments or grudges, or suffer from any unconfessed sins. We can evaluate if this week we were closer to God than the week prior, and if not, we can invite the Holy Spirit to pinpoint the source of the slow leak, helping us find and repair it before all the substance has seeped out of our spiritual lives.
You may be reading these words and thinking how monumental of a task this all seems, remembering how clean your house once was but how many things have since kept piling up, and piling up, and piling up, until on the brink of despair, you feel like throwing your hands up and quitting for keeps. You wonder where to start; you wonder where you will find the time. Your house can be cleaned in the same way that it became a mess: one item at a time, the Holy Spirit guiding you, moving the furniture around Himself if you will but let Him help. The only way to cure the restlessness of life and to truly unwind is to set aside a certain amount of the free time that mysteriously manifests itself when no one else is looking and spend that time meditating on the truths of God in prayer. I am reminded of the old hymn “Take Time to be Holy,” which I will quote here in full:
Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord;Abide in Him always, and feed on His Word.Make friends of God’s children, help those who are weak,Forgetting in nothing His blessing to seek.Take time to be holy, the world rushes on;Spend much time in secret, with Jesus alone.By looking to Jesus, like Him thou shalt be;Thy friends in thy conduct His likeness shall see.Take time to be holy, let Him be thy Guide;And run not before Him, whatever betide.In joy or in sorrow, still follow the Lord,And, looking to Jesus, still trust in His Word.Take time to be holy, be calm in thy soul,Each thought and each motive beneath His control.Thus led by His Spirit to fountains of love,Thou soon shalt be fitted for service above.
There is, I believe, a certain wisdom that many of the old hymns embody that threatens to be lost in our current emphasis on contemporary praise and worship. Many of these classic treasures are didactic in the most positive sense of the word, imparting truth threaded on strands of melody. If these old hymns don’t evoke familiar memories, you might find the frequent iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets a bit quaint, yet as you read these words, can you see the difference in approach this hymn takes to that of most of our praise and worship choruses? There is nothing superior about either and both have their place; the choruses are designed to “take time to be holy,” so to speak: they are designed more for corporate participation than private instruction. But perhaps you can also see how having the hymns rattling around in your mind can be helpful outside of corporate worship in the other elements of the Christian life? (Then too, hymns such as “How Great Thou Art” are very much in the spirit of our contemporary praise and worship choruses.) I cannot begin to count the number of times the old hymns of my youth have not only helped me in terms of giving guidance and direction, but have also formed the basis of some of the very sound theology with which I have been able to help friends and even write newsletters. (See, for example, Trust, Obedience, Forgiveness, These Three.)
Our goal today, however, is not to harp on hymns; we will trust God’s hands are not tied by what is or is not in vogue at any given moment. Let us again revisit this idea of taking time to be holy. Let us say that you are a parent and you really don’t have any real free time to speak of; let us say that you really don’t have any free time to speak of at all in which you can get alone with God or spend time with the family He has given you. May I submit to you as gently as I can, a stranger who does not know you or your circumstances, that you may be entirely too busy? May I submit to you it might be because you want to be too busy, in hopes of running from something you’d rather not face or because busyness is for you equated with success? May I submit to you that all good things come from the Father and that it doesn’t have to be this way? that it doesn’t have to be this way even though it seems for now there is no way out? Would you tell me that I simply don’t understand or would you consider and see if there might be real wisdom in what I say, a stranger who does not know your situation? Is it possible you could live with a little less to gain a little more? Do you have to do all the things you do, or could your busy life stand some pruning of its own? In his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, Emmet Fox has something interesting to say regarding the subject of God’s provision that I find very compelling:
People think of their supply as coming from certain investments, or from a business, or from an employer, perhaps; whereas these are merely the channels through which it comes, God being the Source. The number of possible channels is infinite, the Source is One. The particular channel through which you are getting your supply is quite likely to change, because change is the Cosmic Law for manifestation. Stagnation is really death; but as long as you realize that the Source of your supply is the one unchangeable Spirit, all is well. The fading out of one channel will be but the signal for the opening of another. If, on the other hand, like most people, you regard the particular channel as being the source, then when that channel fails, as it is very likely to do, you are left stranded, because you believe that the source has dried up—and for practical purposes, on the physical plane, things are as we believe them to be.
A man, for instance, thinks of his employment as the source of his income, and for some reason he loses it. His employer goes out of business, or cuts down the staff, or they have a falling out. Now, because he believes that his position is the source of his income, the loss of the position naturally means the loss of the income, and so he has to start looking about for another job, and perhaps has to look a long time, meanwhile finding himself without apparent supply. If such a man had realized, through regular daily Treatment, that God was his supply, and his job only the particular channel through which it came, then upon the closing of that channel, he would have found another, and probably a better one, opening immediately. If his belief had been in God as his supply, then since God cannot change or fail, or fade out, his supply would have come from somewhere, and would have formed its own channel in whatever was the easiest way.
In precisely the same way the proprietor of a business may find himself obliged to close down for some cause outside of his control; or one whose income is dependent upon stocks or bonds may suddenly find that source dried up, owing to unexpected happenings on the stock market, or to some catastrophe to a factory or mine. If he regards the business or the investment as his source of supply, he will believe his source to have collapsed, and will in consequence be left stranded; whereas, if his reliance is upon God, he will be comparatively indifferent to the channel and so that channel will be easily supplanted by a new one. In short, we have to train ourselves to look to God, Cause for all that we need, and then the channel, which is entirely a secondary matter, will take care of itself. (The Lord’s Prayer)
How often we confuse our channels! This thought reminds me of the often quoted expression attributed to Alexander Graham Bell: “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” If, however, our will is to do the Father’s will, we have this clear promise from the lips of Jesus Himself:
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matthew 6:30–33)
As many of you know, I was going to school and working full time for the better part of four years. After writing Genji Tales: Lo! the Handmaiden of the Lord, a subscriber nailed me to the wall in a discussion forum post and I will frankly admit that it stung just a little: I felt as though he were sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. But you know, he knew what he was talking about. And while I am on this subject, I’ll tell you a little secret: a true friend will tell you the truth, even when it hurts; if you are to be a true friend to someone, you too will tell him the truth. Though he snap and snarl, in the end, he will always appreciate you more for it. But have the Proverbs not expressed as much? “Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful” (Proverbs 27:5–6).
Interestingly, what stuck with me from the discussion forum post was not the aspect of blaming which Mark mentioned, for that did not apply to my situation; rather what lodged in my memory banks were these two sentences in particular: “If we are doing what we feel we are told to do, we will be empowered to accomplish it. If we are doing more than we are empowered to do, then I think it is time to reexamine all of our commitments and see which are His and which are ours.” I recognized the truth of his words. I knew I was on the path to burnout, but I had no idea what to do about it. I felt landlocked. I did not see how it would be possible to give up my job, for that is what paid my bills; I did not see how it would be possible to give up a full credit load, because that was a prerequisite for my scholarships. I continued to seek God’s face in the matter, but no end was in sight. My employer made it clear that I could not work part time, or else I would lose my job—I knew that dropping back to part time in college would cut me out of my scholarships. I was often cross and short-tempered with my friends and colleagues and coveted time, a rare and precious commodity. I was seriously considering sacrificing the newsletter, but that was my one lifeline to sanity, for it kept me accountable to God in a world filled with secular study and long, laborious hours. But you see, I had my head in a box; I was looking to the job and the college as the sources rather than the channels. But then came the capsizal of my world documented in Patient Endurance in Seasons of Change, the April 21, 2004, issue of Le Penseur Réfléchit:
It has been some time since I have written a truly personal account of the way in which God is working in my life. Admittedly, there are elements of me in everything I write, but today I feel compelled to share with you the events of my life as of late and my observations concerning them. What I write today may not be earth shattering, but I tend to think that its very ordinariness will be its strength and charm. As many of you have learned, I was terminated from my job at the end of March. However, rather than seeing this as being a curse, I have seen it as a great blessing. I have oft said that in order for God to get my attention, He not only has to rock the boat, but quite literally dump me out of it. This is precisely what has happened and these last few weeks have been a period of much needed rest and I intuitively sense change wafting on the breeze. I don’t know what lurks around the corner, but I get the feeling that there is a definite change of direction and a whole new level to be realized.
Almost always, when change is foisted upon me, I realize that I’ve had options all along and just never realized it. For now, I am drawing enough unemployment to cover all my bills with a bit left to spare, am able to devote my full time and attention to my studies, and the extra time has been incredible. Shortly after I was terminated, I was eating dinner with the pastor of the church I attend. He inquired into my well being and I commented how different it looks from this view, with time enough to spare. I told him I wondered how I ever did it before and expressed marvel at how some of my classmates could keep up with working full time, going to school full time, and keeping a family held together on top of it all. “I don’t see how they do it,” I said. His simple answer was succinct and insightful. Looking me in the eye, he said, “They don’t.” And of course he is right. Sooner or later something has got to give. But this is not God’s way. As Mark writes: “If we are doing what we feel we are told to do, we will be empowered to accomplish it. If we are doing more than we are empowered to do, then I think it is time to reexamine all of our commitments and see which are His and which are ours.”
For most of us, budgeting our time should not consist of doing more in the same amount of time, but rather in doing less. Capitalism and consumerism fuel much of the Western world; the Industrial Revolution ushered in an age of mechanization, factories, and billowing smokestacks. People were forced to keep pace with tireless machines and the same has been happening ever since, albeit its many and variant manifestations. But the so-called Protestant work ethic has its limits; we are human beings, not automatons. There are many channels; there is but one Source. And if we do not take time to be holy, we will soon find ourselves a burned out shell, hollow eyes peering out from sunken sockets. Rarely does it happen all at once; almost always it is the result of a slow leak. Perhaps we should write a new book entitled Christianity and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Nah. We’ll just purchase an old hymnbook.
God bless,
Eric
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