There are a few "lessons" I remember from childhood that seem, whether faithfully followed or not, to make consistent sense. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," for instance. Whether learned in Sunday School or on the playground (whether as a strategy for life or a realization that "what goes around" really does "come around"), that one never gave much cause for doubt or concern. "Children obey your parents" made sense too - didn't often follow it, but not because I had any doubt in the practice, fundamentally I mean. Right?
There are also some ideas that somehow stick in my mind, but always seemed pretty tough. Tough from the outset...from a "how does that really work?" perspective, and then even tougher the more exposed I became to the world. The deeper I searched, the less sense they made. The more I interacted with and became challenged by and grew to be frustrated or angry or disappointed with others. Even the more I came to realize the truth of real evil: Hitler or Sudan or the evening news or insert-your-unbelievably-horrible-story here. Some ideas just didn't fit.
"Love your enemies." Jesus said.
What?
The turn the other cheek thing? That at least has some resonance in a Ghandi-like, civil disobedience, "you may win but I will still win through my meekness," kind of way. But "love" my enemies? As a strategy for life? I haven't, to my knowledge, built a long list of enemies for myself in this world. I think there are far more times in my life that "feel" as though I'm battling an enemy...when I'm really not. But lets assume, at times, that I've felt like my boss is my enemy...or a competitor...or a neighbor...or a pastor...or a friend.
Love my enemies? Really?
Is that really a serviceable technique for impacting the world? And if it impacts the world...it surely doesn't carry the likely "impact" of helping me "win," does it? Not even on the holier-than-thou, I win in the end front. And, with love being a pretty powerful word...and the phrasing of this command being a pretty specific assignment...I mean, am I just supposed to "try" to love them? To "look like" I love them? To "act" as if I love them? Because, lets face it, I don't...love...them. Right?
Or is it just "in general?" Is it simply the fact that I can't sit back and "hate" a "people group" because of Pearl Harbor or 9/11 or because hacking off someone's arms with a machete or raping women is detestable and clearly worthy of "hatred?" That instead I "should" be willing to "go" and "love" them...in hopes of seeing them change...in hopes that my love affects that change? So that my love of them is really, I don't know, a love "for" or even "toward" them that is contingent on the possibility that it will influence and impact and change them? Is that it?
But that seems odd because the command is really pretty simple: Love them, he says. My enemies. Not "show them love" or "go do love to them" but...love them. The actions -- the hope for impact, the desire for change -- are all good and even perhaps a necessary outflow or result of love. But it all starts just with, well, love. How can that be?
Over the course of the past few years I have had the chance to hear the life stories of several men. I don't mean to say I've "spent time" with some guys and "picked up" on the story of their lives. No. I mean I've heard men begin their story with the date and place they were born...and tell it up until today. Well, yesterday maybe. Sometimes these stories stretch across weeks. Sometimes hours. The story of a man's life; how he came to be who he is today - both broken and whole.
I have heard stories that I did not want to hear. I have heard of terrible things done to the storyteller...and terrible things done by him. And some have heard the same from me. Across all of these stories I have learned one thing that is inevitably true of every man's story. One commonality that happens again and again and again.
I love each of them.
I cannot, it seems, hear your life story without loving you. Even against my own expectations...even against my own "better" judgement.
I know you may not believe this...you might have things in your story that you have promised never to tell another human being. Terrible things that make you unlovable. Or surely would if they were known.
But that's not true.
What I've found is that "knowing someone" and "loving someone" are ultimately synonymous. It is unavoidable. And through knowing them I discover that I am rooting for them. I can see the path that they are on today as it grows out of the path of yesterday...and I am rooting for their tomorrow. To see them win... To see them overcome... To see them fulfilled...
To see them rescued. Or to see them live into the rescue that is already taking place.
So, this odd perspective on Loving Enemies has dawned on me. It isn't that I should act in love or try to love or work toward loving...it isn't that I should do anything. I can simply trust that, if I knew the real story, I would love them. I would love them in the midst of their circumstance, perhaps hating some things that they've done or are doing or might do, but loving them all the same. Rooting for them all the same.
And trusting that I "would" love isn't all that far from simply "loving" after all.
What I do next, then, about my love? That is the only question.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
About Time
Coffee filters. Hate ‘em. Well, not the filters themselves, of course – very useful things… necessary, even. No, it’s the running out that I hate. And not, perhaps, the running out so much as the sneaking up of the running out…of the coffee filters.
I don’t know (without going to look) how many coffee filters come in a pack. I am going to guess that we buy these things in lots of a hundred or so.
And I use one per day.
Easy math, right? The “last” filter means three months gone since the last, “last” filter. More than three months. What is that, 15 weeks? Give or take?
And what have I done with 100 days? Hmm?
I heard a sermon a year or so ago that must have caught me at or near coffee filter day. Our pastor was talking about time. He told a story about a man he knew who got so concerned about the manner with which he wasted time that he projected out how many years he likely had left, multiplied that number (40, let’s say) by 52, then filled a jar with a marble for every Saturday from today until, well, his… end.
That’s 2,080 marbles.
Each Saturday morning would start once the man removed a marble from the jar – his chance to measure the time he had left and ensure it was put to good use.
The man’s wife thought the whole thing was pretty morbid.
I’ve thought about that man quite a bit since then, on and off. The pastor was illustrating an idea from the Psalms where the speaker is asking that God “teach us to measure our days.” Why? So that “we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90)
Gain a heart. A heart of wisdom. A wise, experienced, knowledgeable, deep, full heart. A heart.
I actually think this man was gaining. I can envision that he was a person who had spent his days too freely -- or not at all. A man who might go to buy coffee filters and suddenly realize he couldn’t really remember anything important about any of the Saturdays from the past three months. A man who determined to be more determined about what each Saturday could be…and who maybe still chose to sit in a recliner now and again, but not for lack of consideration, first.
But I also thought of a different story about a man who stored up everything he owned and piled it in a secure place so that he could keep it safe and live off it forever. And to that man God said, “Fool…today your life will be taken from you. What good is all your stuff now?” (Luke 12) I wonder: how far apart is a jar of marbles from that big pile of stuff? A good ways, I guess. So long as the jar really is full of Saturdays.
I have an inkling that sometimes the jar is full of morbid fascination. And sometimes it is full of self-congratulation over, well, the very idea of the jar. Pride, we might call it. Sometimes it might be full of a few extra marbles that carried over from the last few marbles inadvertently missed and forgotten.
But…
If the jar really is what I hope it is -- what the man must hope it is -- I think it must be brimming with desire. Not desire to see days spent well or poorly. Not desire to “do Saturday’s right.” Not desire that gets caught up in the should-have’s of missed marbles or lost days.
No. Not that. Not the heavy, heavy burden of expectation (none so heavy as that placed on ourselves) that gets twisted and squeezed into a poorly defined term we falsely name “desire.”
Wise desire.
Desire that knows time is precious. Desire that has things to do because doing them is fearfully hard and wondrously rewarding. Desire that loves and helps and sacrifices. Desire that isn’t contained by the jar or the marbles, that isn’t so simple as a bucket list or a honey–do list or any, any, any list.
Wise desire. That wakens and does. That hungers when it is quiet. That must. Must! Even forgetting the marble. Even spending the last coffee filter. Even forgetting the heart...
…for a year.
(Thanks B.G.)
I don’t know (without going to look) how many coffee filters come in a pack. I am going to guess that we buy these things in lots of a hundred or so.
And I use one per day.
Easy math, right? The “last” filter means three months gone since the last, “last” filter. More than three months. What is that, 15 weeks? Give or take?
And what have I done with 100 days? Hmm?
I heard a sermon a year or so ago that must have caught me at or near coffee filter day. Our pastor was talking about time. He told a story about a man he knew who got so concerned about the manner with which he wasted time that he projected out how many years he likely had left, multiplied that number (40, let’s say) by 52, then filled a jar with a marble for every Saturday from today until, well, his… end.
That’s 2,080 marbles.
Each Saturday morning would start once the man removed a marble from the jar – his chance to measure the time he had left and ensure it was put to good use.
The man’s wife thought the whole thing was pretty morbid.
I’ve thought about that man quite a bit since then, on and off. The pastor was illustrating an idea from the Psalms where the speaker is asking that God “teach us to measure our days.” Why? So that “we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90)
Gain a heart. A heart of wisdom. A wise, experienced, knowledgeable, deep, full heart. A heart.
I actually think this man was gaining. I can envision that he was a person who had spent his days too freely -- or not at all. A man who might go to buy coffee filters and suddenly realize he couldn’t really remember anything important about any of the Saturdays from the past three months. A man who determined to be more determined about what each Saturday could be…and who maybe still chose to sit in a recliner now and again, but not for lack of consideration, first.
But I also thought of a different story about a man who stored up everything he owned and piled it in a secure place so that he could keep it safe and live off it forever. And to that man God said, “Fool…today your life will be taken from you. What good is all your stuff now?” (Luke 12) I wonder: how far apart is a jar of marbles from that big pile of stuff? A good ways, I guess. So long as the jar really is full of Saturdays.
I have an inkling that sometimes the jar is full of morbid fascination. And sometimes it is full of self-congratulation over, well, the very idea of the jar. Pride, we might call it. Sometimes it might be full of a few extra marbles that carried over from the last few marbles inadvertently missed and forgotten.
But…
If the jar really is what I hope it is -- what the man must hope it is -- I think it must be brimming with desire. Not desire to see days spent well or poorly. Not desire to “do Saturday’s right.” Not desire that gets caught up in the should-have’s of missed marbles or lost days.
No. Not that. Not the heavy, heavy burden of expectation (none so heavy as that placed on ourselves) that gets twisted and squeezed into a poorly defined term we falsely name “desire.”
Wise desire.
Desire that knows time is precious. Desire that has things to do because doing them is fearfully hard and wondrously rewarding. Desire that loves and helps and sacrifices. Desire that isn’t contained by the jar or the marbles, that isn’t so simple as a bucket list or a honey–do list or any, any, any list.
Wise desire. That wakens and does. That hungers when it is quiet. That must. Must! Even forgetting the marble. Even spending the last coffee filter. Even forgetting the heart...
…for a year.
(Thanks B.G.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)