Death Watch

"In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, “Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die” (Isaiah 38:1).

I read this morning about a new gadget, the Tikker Death Watch, a wristwatch that ticks off the seconds until you die. The watch wearer fills out a questionnaire, inputs age and the countdown begins. (The watch employs a logarithm used by the federal government to estimate life expectancy.)

Swiss inventor, Fredrick Colting (interestingly, a former grave digger!) thought the device would encourage wearers to number their remaining days and live them fully. One potential customer quipped that he would "put out the trash, change into clean underwear, blast some Ethel Merman one last time while sipping latte."   

King Hezekiah of Judah had a "Death Watch" of sorts: he became dangerously ill and the prophet Isaiah revealed that the countdown had begun. The king, who was the only 38 years old at the time begged for additional days. God in his mercy gave him fifteen years.

Sad to say, Hezekiah squandered those years, exposing Judah's treasure to the Babylonians, a foolish decision that led to the Babylonian conquest some years later. He also fathered Manasseh, the most despicable king in Judah's history.

What would I do if I knew the hour of my death? Would I number my days and live them in wisdom or would I fritter them away in self-serving efforts to fill our a mythic bucket list?

Peter had his own countdown: "The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self- controlled and sober- minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace..." (1 Peter 4:7-10).

What should characterize our remaining years, however many God shall give us? Prayer, love, hospitality and the use of our spiritual gifts; or put another way, patiently and quietly doing those things that have eternal significance. In the words of a plaque that hung on the wall of my boyhood home:

Only one life will soon be past;

only what's done for Christ will last.

And when I am dying how glad I shall be,

that the lamp of my life has blazed out for Thee.

—C.T. Studd

David Roper

The Love That Surrounds Us

“Love surrounds us, looking for the smallest crack by which it may enter in.” —George MacDonald

Our neighbors' sidewalk boasts a peculiar sight: an ice plant growing out of a slab of concrete. Seeds from a plant next door have washed down the sidewalk and taken root in a tiny crack in an otherwise solid slab.

When I pass that way I think of the story Jesus told about the farmer that went out to sow seed in his field. Some fell on a hard, impenetrable pathway and could find no place to grow. 

Some folks’ hearts get to be that way: Trampled and hardened by wrongdoing—others’ or their own—there’s no place for God’s love to take root and grow.

But the hardest heart will be broken—“the rains fall, the floods come, the winds blow.” A child dies, a relationship unravels, a career founders, an incurable illness is uncovered, old age descends and the last illusions of life are torn away. Then tiny fissures begin to appear and the Love that has surrounded us all through our lives may find a place to enter in. That’s when we may be closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than ever before.

David Roper

Glass Beach

“On the day that I make them My jewels.” —Malachi 3:17

Early twentieth century residents of Fort Bragg, California disposed of their trash by throwing it onto a nearby beach. Cans, bottles, tableware and household garbage accumulated in piles over thirty feet high. Even when residents stopped depositing trash on the beach, it remained an embarrassment—a disgusting, malodorous dump beyond human reclamation.

Over the years, however, wave action broke up the glass and pottery, and washed the rubbish out to sea. The pounding surf rolled and tumbled the glass particles in the sand, frosting and smoothing the surface and creating gem-like “sea glass,” which it then deposited on the beach, creating a kaleidoscopic beauty at which visitors now stare in amazement.

Perhaps your life has become a dump, a foul, disgusting mess beyond human reclamation. There is one who loves you; who waits to redeem your ruined and ruinous life. Just give Jesus your heart’s affection and ask him to make you pure and clean. “Believe in the slow work of God” (Teilhard Chardin). He may tumble you a bit; it takes time to smooth away the rough edges. But He will never give up until he makes you one of His jewels.

DHR

When He cometh, when He cometh

To make up His jewels,

All His jewels, precious jewels,

His loved and His own.

Like the stars of the morning,

His brightness adorning,

They shall shine in their beauty,

Bright gems for His crown.

—William Cushing

Reaching Out in the Darkness

How hard to think, through cold and dark and dearth,
That thou art nearer now than when eye-seen on earth.

—George MacDonald. “A Diary of an Old Soul.”

Our old Westie sleeps curled up at the foot of our bed. That’s been her place for 13 years or so.

Normally she doesn’t move or make a sound, but lately she’s been pawing us gently in the middle of the night. At first we thought she wanted to go outside, and tried to accommodate her, but that’s not what she wants. She just wants to know that we’re there.

She’s in her nineties now (in dog years), nearly deaf and partially blind. She can’t see well in the darkness and can’t hear us move or breath and feels insecure. So when she touches me now I just reach down and pat her on the head and assure her that I’m there. That’s all she wants to know. She takes a turn or two, settles down and goes back to sleep.

Confused in the darkness? Grieving, fearful, guilty, doubting, discouraged? Not sure of God? Reach out for him. Though you may be in darkness the darkness is not dark to him.[1] He could make the darkness light if he chose to and step out of it into plain sight. That would be no trouble to him because, though unseen, he is nigh. He has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”[2] It must be true. Put your hand into his outstretched hand. He is there.

David Roper

11/12/2014

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[1] Psalm 139:12

[2] Hebrews 13:5

The Daily Grind

“And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men” —Colossians 3:22

The high school I attended required four years of Latin instruction. I appreciate the value of that discipline now, but back then it was a grind.

Our teacher was old school: She believed in drill and repetition. Repetition, repetition, repetition! “Repetitio est mater studiorum,” she intoned over us several times a day. “Repetitio ad absurdum,” we muttered under our breath.[1]

I realize now that that most of life is simply that: repetition—a round of ordinary, dull, uninspiring, lackluster things that must be done again and again every day. “Repetition is reality...our daily bread,” Kierkegaard said. But, as he went on to say, “It is the bread that satisfies with benediction.”

It’s a matter of taking up each duty, no matter how mundane, humble, trivial, or onerous and asking God to bless it and put it to his intended purposes. In that way we take the drudgeries of life and turn them into holy work, freighted with unseen, eternal consequence.

Gerard Manley Hopkins said that, “a man with a dung–fork in his hand and a woman with a slop–pail” are doing the work of God if they “mean it that way."

Knowing my heart, I’ll have to “mean it” several times a day.  

Teach me, my God and King, 
In all things Thee to see;
And what I do in anything
To do it as for Thee!
—George Herbert    

DHR

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[1] She did, however, enliven some days by leaping up on to her desk and reciting passages from Caesar’s Gallic Wars!

The Sounds of Silence

“Now what ought we to learn before everything else, but to be silent, that we may be able to speak.” —Ambrose

I often think of some lines from an old Simon and Garfunkel ballad: “In the naked light I saw ten thousand people, maybe more. People talking without speaking; people hearing without listening...”

Some folks do talk without speaking, having little or nothing to say and taking forever to say it. As a fishing buddy of mine once observed, “Shallow streams make the most noise,” a delightful turn on the old adage, “Still water runs deep.”

But it seems to me that even more folks hear without listening. Oh, they hear the words, but they fail to silence their own thoughts and really listen.

I think it would be good if we all learned to be silent and still.

Not all silence is good silence, however: There is a smug, self-satisfied silence, the silence of detachment; and there is the silence of timidity and self-consciousness.

Good silence on the other hand is a listening silence, a humble silence. It leads to right hearing, right understanding, right speaking. “A man’s soul is like a deep well,” the proverb says (Proverbs 20:5). It takes a lot of hard listening to get all the way to the bottom.

And while we listen to others, we should also be listening to God and hearing what He wants us to say.

I think of Jesus, scribbling with his finger in the dust while the Pharisees railed on the woman caught in adultery. Was he writing the Ten Commandments as some have suggested? No, I think he was just doodling in the dirt, biding his time, listening for his Father’s voice and asking, “What shall I say to this crowd and this dear woman?” 

His response is still being heard around the world.

David Roper 

Icarus Revised

In Breughel's Icarus...how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

—W.H. Auden

Auden is referring to a painting by Dutch painter, Pieter Brueghel, based on Ovid’s Myth of Icarus, the story of a boy who flew too close to the sun. It hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels.

If you look closely, in the lower right hand corner of the painting you can see Icarus with melted wings falling into the sea. Ovid's point was the danger of hubris; Brueghel had another idea.

In Brueghal’s version of the myth, Icarus falls and no one cares. Sailors on their ships, farmers and others are unconcerned, going about their own business, unaware of the calamity unfolding in front of their eyes. All are apathetic in the face of appalling tragedy and heartbreak.

Few of us are aware of the sadness all around us; we go our way inattentive and unmoved, too busy with our own business to respond to human need. Something amazing has happened: "a boy falling out of the sky"—right in front of our eyes—but we have "somewhere to get to and sail calmly by."

You don’t have to go far to uncover tragedy and heartache: a young widow, stricken with loneliness; an anxious parent concerned for a critically ill child; a frightened man awaiting heart surgery; a care-worn checker in a grocery store working at a second or third job to make ends meet; a young boy who's never had enough father; a single mother whose worries have washed her hope away; an old man who inhabits his bleak world alone; a needy soul behind our own front door—all right in front of us. Perhaps we don't have much to give, but we can see beyond what others see to the possibility of mercy, compassion and understanding.

I wonder how many times I've glanced at a grocery clerk, a bank teller, a waitress and failed to see the marks of woe, the drab, cheerless affect, the weary face, the downcast eyes, the mumbled response to my frivolous query, "How are you?" I hear the splash but miss the forsaken sigh, the deep sorrow in their response.  I turn away from the disaster. I feel no tug on my heart; I have somewhere to get to and sail calmly by.

John Newton said on one occasion, "If, as I go home, a child has dropped a halfpenny, and if, by giving another, I can wipe away its tears, I feel I have done something. I should be glad to do greater things, but I will not neglect this." Nor should I.

"Oh, how blessed are those who care," Israel's poet mused (Psalm 41:1). How rare and how happy they are.

David Roper