Legacy

“Cornelia kept her in talk till her children came from school, ‘and these,’ said she, ‘are my jewels.’”

—Robert Burton (1577–1640)

The Talmud, an ancient collection of rabbinic writings, says there are three things a man ought to do before he dies: plant a tree, write a book and have a son. In other words, we ought to leave something behind that prolongs our usefulness.

I’ve done all three with varying degrees of success. I’ve planted a number of trees, some of which have flourished while others have perished of pestilence, or neglect. Despite the lofty Latin names we give them—semper vivere, for example—no tree lives forever.

I’ve written a few books and some of them remain, though it’s not likely that any of them will long endure. Like Carl Barth, I imagine myself entering heaven with a pushcart full of my stuff and hearing the angels laugh at me. “I shall be dump them,” as he suggests, “on some heavenly floor as a pile of waste paper.”

But, if you’ll allow me one conceit, I’m inordinately proud of our three sons, who have grown into sturdy young men. They are my most significant legacy.

There is a universal preoccupation among us to build something enduring. No one wants to drift through life and leave nothing noteworthy behind. That’s why we work so hard at our work and spend so much time and energy on our widgets. We spend ourselves building a house or a city, rising up early and going late to rest, “eating the bread of anxious toil,” (Ps. 127:1,2), busying ourselves beyond all common sense and human endurance to make our mark on this world, all the while overlooking the one investment that matters beyond imagination—our children.

A friend of mine, Bill Younger, wrote recently with this thought: “If we died tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of days. But the family we left behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives. Why then do we invest so much in our work and so little in our children’s lives?” Good question, I say.

“Behold!” Solomon declares, as though stabbed awake by the insight, “Children are a heritage from the Lord”—an invaluable legacy he has bequeathed us. They are “wages from the womb”—a priceless pay–off. Nothing is more worthy of our energy and time. “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth,” is Solomon’s striking simile. Our children are our most powerful and far–ranging asset. “Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.” (Psalm 127:3-5).

Yet, for so many young men and women there is “not enough father,” as Robert Blye used to say. Young people have fathers, to be sure, but they’re mostly absent or distant for they’re much too busy making a living.
Nobody understands this better than Fredrick Buechner who weaves the tale of Godric, a Twelfth Century holy man, around this theme. Old Godric looks back to his childhood and struggles to recall the face of his father, Aedlward:

Aedlward’s face I’ve long since lost, but his back I can still behold. He held his head cocked sideways, and his ears stood out like handles on a pot as he strode forth from the smoke of our hut to work our own scant croft of leeks, parsley, shallots, and the like, or else my lord’s wide acres. Endless was the work there was, the seeding, the spreading of dung, reaping and threshing, cutting and storing. In winter there were scythes and plows to mend, the beasts to keep, roofs to patch until your fingers froze. It seems that he was ever striding off in every way but ours so I scarcely had the time to mark the smile or scowl of him. Even the look of his eyes is gone. They were grey as the sea like mine, it’s said, only full of kindness, but what matter how kind a man’s eye be if he never fixes you with it long enough to learn? He had a way of whistling through his teeth like wind through wattle, and it’s like wind that I remember him. His was a power to thump doon, open and shut like wind, a grey gust of a man to make flames fly and scatter chaff. But wind has no power to comfort a child or lend a strong arm to a lad whose bones are weak with growing. If Aedlward and Godric meet in Paradise, they’ll meet as strangers do and never know. It was fear kept Aedlward from us, and next to God what he feared of all things most was an empty belly…. It was his fear we’d starve that made him starve us for that one of all things that we hungered for the most, which was the man himself (Godric. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980, pg. 9,10)

But, you ask, “How can I give my children what they hunger for when I must keep the wolf from my door?” Israel’s poet answers: there is no need for “anxious toil, for (God) gives to his loved ones while they sleep” (Ps. 127:2).

There’s something very significant about this psalm, something easily missed unless we understand that the Sabbath for Israel began not on Saturday morning but on Friday evening at bedtime. The Hebrew evening and morning sequence says something very important: God puts his children to sleep so he can get their work done. “Sleep is God's contrivance for giving us the help he cannot get into us when we are awake,” said George MacDonald.

Fatigue overtakes us in the evening and we have to stop working. We lay ourselves down to sleep and drift off into blessed oblivion for the next 6-8 hours, a state in which we are totally non–productive. But nothing essential stops. Though we may leave many things undone and most projects unfinished God is still on the job. “He gives to those he loves while they sleep.”

The next morning his eyes sweep over us and he awakens us to enjoy the benefits of all that he has done and to join in a work in progress.

In other words God is at work when we are not. (Truth be known, he is at work when we are!) We can make time for our children and leave our work to him. They are our legacy, an investment we will never regret.

David Roper

Sour Grapes

Your vanity and greed and lust

Are each your portion from the dust

Of those who died, and from the tomb

Made you what you must become.

—William Dean Howells

Advances in the behavioral sciences suggest that there may be negative psychological traits that are genetically influenced. Individuals appear to be born with dispositions toward alcoholism, sexual aggression, erratic work habits and other personality disorders.[1]

It would appear, in fact, that everything wrong with us is “our portion from the dust of those that died” and make us “what (we) must needs become.” Whether we go back to our first parents or some other relative, whether we talk about major perversions or minor peccadilloes, it’s all the same: every one of us has been cursed to some extent by some ancestor, handicapped by his or her perversions, saddled with insecurities, insanities and sinful predilections. Wrong-doing resides in our DNA, without our creation or consent, demanding compliance.

It’s common these days to assume that wrong–doing includes only those behaviors that are voluntary and unforced. If it can be shown that some orientation is caused rather than chosen we render human choice irrelevant and remove that behavior from the realm of moral argument. “Our fathers have eaten sour grapes and our teeth have been set on edge.”[2]

“No,” Jeremiah would say, “Whoever eats sour grapes, his own teeth will be set on edge.” Regardless of the roots of our behavior we are morally responsible for the wrong that we do.

But here’s the good news: We are not stuck. The laws of heredity are not the highest laws. There is one higher. George MacDonald wrote, “Everyone is born nearer to God than to any ancestor and it rests with everyone to choose whether he will be of God, or of those who have gone before him....”

It does no good to excuse our bad behavior. The only way to rid our selves of an evil trait is to call it evil and bring it to God for his healing. He can then begin to bring about a cure.

The decision to bring our flawed temperaments to him may be nothing more than the end–product of a lifetime of failure. We may have struggled so long with our compulsions that we’ve given up in despair. But God does not despair of us even when we have despaired of ourselves. He assures us: “I will forgive your iniquity, and your sin I will remember no more.”

Some of us are difficult cases. Flawed by environment and indulgence as well as heredity, our personalities resist change. We have “a hard machine to drive,” as C. S. Lewis would say. Yet God can take the most difficult and damaged life and gradually turn it into good. He does not leave us in ruins. He is “watching over us to build and to plant.”[3]

The process is neither swift nor painless, but chaotic and often subject to agonizing delay. Progress is seldom made by quantum leaps, but by tentative steps and a number of hard falls. It is a gradual thing, better seen in retrospect than in prospect. Yet, every day God is at work “putting his law in our minds and writing it on our hearts.”[4]

For reasons God only knows, some of us may glorify him for a time through our compulsions. We’re so damaged that total healing awaits heaven. If you’re one of his children so afflicted you can be assured of his promise: there will be progress and someday, if only in heaven, there will be perfection. The God who started his great work in you “will keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.”[5]

DHR

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[1] I have omitted homosexuality from this list because no certain biological basis for sexual orientation has been established. The most cited study is one published in Science by gay activist, and neurobiologist Simon LeVay. LeVay noted a small difference between homosexual and heterosexual males in a tiny area of the hypothalamus (INAH-3), but not all scientists accept his conclusions. Drs. William Byne and Bruce Parsons of Columbia University examined the evidence and concluded: “There is no evidence at present to substantiate a biologic theory of homosexuality,” though their study was never been reported by the press. (William Byne and Bruce Parsons, “Human Sexual Orientation: The Biologic Theories Reappraised,” Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 50, March 1993: 228-239.)

[2] Jeremiah 31:29

[3] Jeremiah 31:28

[4] Jeremiah 31:33

[5] Philippians 1:6, The Message

Cosmos

“The cosmos continuously declares the glory of God…” (Psalm 19:1)

I came across a single flower growing in a meadow today—a tiny purple blossom that was “wasting its sweetness in the desert air.” I’m sure no one had ever seen it before, and perhaps no one will ever see it again. “Why this waste?” I thought.

Nature, however, is never wasted. It daily reveals the truth and goodness and beauty that brought it into being. Every morning it offers a new and fresh declaration of God’s presence. Do I see Him through that beauty, or do I merely glance at beauty and shrug it off in shoddy indifference?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 18th century English poet and philosopher, observed two tourists looking at a magnificent waterfall. One said it was “pretty” the other said it was “sublime.” Coleridge thought the first response was silly, the second was exactly right, for sublime means “awe-inspiring,” and “worthy of worship.”

Worship is the only adequate response to beauty when we behold it, for creation’s glory is a reflection of the glory of God. “Glory” suggests an epiphany (a shining out or a manifestation) of God and is, or so I believe, the biblical word, for “beauty.” Theologian Herman Bavinek said as much: “For the beauty of the Lord, scripture has a special word: glory.” God’s beauty is the penetrating light that shines out through all creation.

The word, “translucence” comes to mind. It suggests the capacity of all creation to take on something of God’s beauty and allow that beauty to “pass through” to our eyes. Our task, in turn is to grow eyes that look not merely at, but through the object to the beauty that lies beyond it and to think, “How beautiful must be He who made this beautiful thing?”

Thus, our response to beauty, when we behold it, should be worship, adoration, and thanksgiving—for the radiance of a corn flower, the splendor of a morning sunrise, the symmetry of one particular tree—for all nature declares the ineffable beauty of the One who made it.

C. S. Lewis was walking with a friend as they talked about worship and gratitude. Lewis wanted to know how to generate a thankful heart toward God, and asked, “Should we summon up all we know about God and his greatness?” His friend turned to a brook nearby (it was a very hot day) and splashed his face and hands in a little waterfall and said, “Why not begin with this?”


A little waterfall, a wind in the willows, a baby robin, the rose moles on a brook trout, a tiny flower. Why not begin with this?

DHR

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

"Ultimate peace is silent through the density of life,"

-C. S. Lewis

 Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand clapping? The “sound of silence” comes to mind—one answer to this ancient koan.

Silence, I've come to believe, is the answer to many of life's contradictions. I'm learning to say less these days. It was Jesus' way. In the face of severe provocation he was "silent (peacefully calm) and did not reply" (Mark 14:61). Jesus could have answered his critics, but, "like a sheep before its shearers is silent, He did not open his mouth.”

There is awesome power in silence, especially in those overwhelmingly bad situations in which we are subject to harsh words from those we greatly love. There, silence is most difficult for loved ones have the greatest power to wound us. But, there it is most essential, for we owe our own homes the greatest measure of gentleness and forbearance.

Silence forestalls angry reactions and bitter words that we may later regret and others may not forget. Silence gives us time to slow our thoughts and reorder them, perhaps to remind ourselves that the one who wounded us is weary, or worried and otherwise out of sorts. Or, we may quickly forgive for they may not know what they're doing. We should always forgive anything the moment there is anything to forgive for there is no better time.

Silence is a means by which we may help others see themselves, for their voices reverberate in the quietness we offer, and in it they may hear their unkind words and regret them. When we step aside and wait in stillness, we give God an opportunity to work through us. When we take up our own cause we may frustrate his ultimate intention to use us to bring spiritual healing and health to others.

Silence can be the gentle answer that turns away anger. Defensive reactions make things worse: they "stir up wrath"(Proverbs 15:1). Restraint and silence relieve tension and restore peace. When we thus "make peace," we "sow a seed whose fruit is righteousness"(James 3:18). Others begin to grow toward goodness through our example.

Finally, calm, unruffled silence is an eloquent and gracious reflection of God's unconditional love. Clement, a first century Christian, wrote, "Let (those who belong to Christ) demonstrate by silence the gentleness of their tongue; (thus) let them show His love" (1 Clement 21:7).

And so we pray for a silence that, "swallows up the waves of wrong and never throws them back to swell the commotion of the angry sea from whence they came" (George MacDonald).

Ah, for the grace to annihilate wrong in this way.

DHR

Peacocks and Their Kin

“…God plays a game with the soul called ”the loser wins“; a game in which the one who holds the poorest cards does best.” —Evelyn Underhill

Male peacocks are resplendent creatures with iridescent blue-green plumage and elongated trains tipped with "eyes" colored in hues of gold, red, and blue. They are strikingly beautiful birds…

But they have the ugliest feet in the world!

To be honest, most of us have “ugly feet,” don’t we—some blemish, some disfigurement, some physical limitation or handicap, something that makes us feel “less than”? It may be a deformity we’ve borne all our lives, or it may be the disfigurements of old age—wrinkles, blotches, sun–spots, shriveled limbs—unsightliness that makes us self-conscious and reticent.

Paul described his deficiency (whatever it was) as a “thorn in the flesh” a defect that shamed and humiliated him (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). Three times he asked the Lord to remove it, thinking that he could then serve God better. But the Lord assured him: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Paul replied with great humility, “So then, most gladly I will boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

We may be too lovely for God to use, but we can never be too ugly. One of the ironies of faith is that he often chooses those who are less endowed with natural grace and beauty to accomplish his most important tasks. They are used in ways they could never imagine. Here is mystery: We are chosen because of our limitations, not in spite of them. How encouraging is that! “God was looking for someone weak enough to use and he found (you)” (Hudson Taylor).

So…whatever measure of “ugliness” we enjoy, it is ours lest we get carried away with ourselves, and fail to make the most of our lives. It is a blessing to make us better, stronger, wiser for it is “out of weakness” that we are “made strong” (Hebrews 11:34).

DHR

Better Things Ahead

“There are better things ahead than any we leave behind”  -

—C.S. Lewis

John was my best friend, an enthusiastic dispenser of goodness and kindness, a fountain of perpetual joy. I called him Jolly John.

I thought that John and I would be friends forever…  But he died.

Augustine wrote in his Confessions of a friend much like John who was “half of his soul.” When his friend unexpectedly died, Augustine was inconsolable, for he too thought his friendship would last forever. He had loved “one that must die, as if he would never die,” he wrote. This Augustine called, “loving a man as a (mere) man.”

Augustine’s friend became a follower of Jesus on his deathbed and Augustine followed him into faith soon after. Then he wrote in his Confessions, “He was not yet my friend (before our conversion) as afterwards…for true (friendship) it cannot be, unless You join us together…by that love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us… Blessed is he who loves You and his friend in You… For he alone loses none who are dear to (You), for those who are dear (to You) cannot be lost.”

John is not lost to me, for I will see him again quite soon—younger, better, stronger, wiser and more joyous than ever before. And we will be friends forever.

How do I know? In the risen Christ I see the end for which I was made and the confidence to believe it. These “few atoms, blown to dust,” will form again in a better life, in which there is no parting. Dividing death will have been defeated. I will be joined forever and ever with John and all my other loved ones who are waiting for me there.

George MacDonald wrote, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, but the Lord will give back again better than ever before.” We’re all getting closer to that great day!

DHR

Fathers and Sons

 “I just wish I could have told him in the living years.”

—Mike and the Mechanics

My father was a good father, and, in most respects, I was a dutiful son. But I allowed my father to starve for the one thing I could have given him: myself. He was a quiet man; I was equally silent. We often worked for hours side by side and scarcely a word passed between us. He never asked; I never told him my deepest desires and dreams, my hopes and fears.

In time I woke up to my reticence. Perhaps the perception came when my first-born came into the world, or when, one by one, my sons went out into the world. Now I wish I had been more of a son to my father while I was under his roof. I think of all the things I could have told him. And all the things he could have told me. At his funeral I stood beside his casket for the last time, struggling to understand my emotions. “It’s too late, isn’t it?” Carolyn said quietly. Exactly.

My comfort lies in the fact that I’ll be able to make things up in heaven, for is that not where every relationship will be set right? George MacDonald thought so: “What a disintegrated mass were the world, what a lump of half-baked brick, if death were indeed the end of affection! if there were no chance more of setting right what was so wrong in the loveliest relations! How gladly would many a son who once thought it a weariness to serve his parents, minister now to their lightest need! and in the boundless eternity is there no help?” (Home Again: A Tale).

Death is not the end of affection, but the beginning of timeless existence in which there will be no more secrets and love will grow forever. Then, the hearts of sons will be turned to their fathers and the hearts of fathers to their sons. Then, we’ll pay attention to the things that matter most.

DHR