I was thinking recently about the time I spent in the university orchestra while I was a college student. I particularly remember our orchestra conductor, Anatole, who told many stories. Here's one he told during an orchestra rehearsal.

He was once part of a quartet that was working on a piece of music by a modern composer. It was a piece of music that had "more black than white on the page," which is a way of saying that there were lots and lots and lots of very fast notes! So this quartet worked and worked and worked to get every last note perfect. Then, a couple weeks before they were supposed to perform the premiere of this quartet, the composer showed up to hear them practice.

"WHAT are you doing?" he demanded as they played his composition for him.

"What do you mean?" they asked.

"Why are you playing all those notes?"

"That's what's on the page," they said.

The composer was disgusted. "I didn't put those notes down because I wanted you to play every single one of them -- they were just to give you a general idea of what to play."

Now, I don't know about you, but I would have been pretty disgusted with the composer if I'd worked for so long to play what he had written, only to find out "he didn't really mean it."

That got me thinking, I'm awfully glad God isn't like that. God doesn't play guessing games with us...he makes it very clear what He expects of us.

In the book of Micah, the Israelites are asking God, "What do you want us to do to please you?" And God essentially says, "This is no guessing game...I've already told you!"

These are the "notes" God has written on the page, and they are the notes he wants us to play. Unfortunately I think we lose sight of what is written on the page because we think God is playing guessing games with us. We spend all our time worrying about "What school am I going to go to?" or "What job will I take?" or "What color shirt does God want me to wear this morning?"

Perhaps if we spent our time worrying about the notes which are actually written down, everything else would just fall into place. But, of course, if we spend all our time worrying about those other things, we'll lose sight of the really important stuff...

...and once we've lost sight of those things, it really doesn't matter what school we go to, what job we take, or what shirt we wear, because we're not playing the music God has written for us anyway!

"Your mother's wrinkles, your daughter's pimples, and your face is right in the middle."

That was the voice-over in an Oil of Olay advertisement I saw last night. And it got me thinking...

Oil of Olay has been around (under various names like Oil of Ulan and Oil of Olaz) since 1949. I remember seeing ads for the product when I was a kid (so very many years ago ;D). What I got thinking about is this: the women who were targeted by the Oil of Olay ads when I was a kid are the mothers of the women who are now being targeted by the ads.

And apparently it's a done deal that they've got wrinkles now...they're beyond the hope and help of the rejuvenating wonder.

And...let's take this a step further...the women who will be targeted by the ads in another twenty years are the pimply-faced daughters, whose pimples will be gone, but will be in fear of those wrinkles...who will be afraid they won't stay young forever...who will be looking at their mothers and praying, "Dear Lord, let me never have that many wrinkles..."

Seems like a kind of pointless and repetitive cycle. But it made me think of two seemingly unrelated Scripture passages:

Kind of depressing, isn't it?

Here's the other one. This is from I Peter:

There's a word in those verses that I absolutely love -- one that keeps cropping up again and again in the book of 1 Peter: imperishable.

When we look at beauty in the terms that the world sees it, it is not imperishable -- it is, like any other earthly treasure, destined to fall apart over time. No moisturizing cream, no anti-wrinkle formula, no anti-aging drugs can forever prevent it.

On the other hand, the character we develop, as followers of Jesus Christ, the "hidden person of the heart" -- that lasts forever. It is, in a word, imperishable.

But which do we spend more time worrying about? Outward beauty? Or inward character?

No wonder Solomon talked about "vanity." And he didn't mean "vanity" in the way we mean it today -- he was talking about emptiness.

And there is something painfully empty about a life spent worrying more about the outward than the inward, more about the perishable than about the imperishable...

This past summer we took the teens in the youth group to Popham Beach for a day. This is one of our "yearly" outings; we've done it every summer for quite a few years now. We spend the day playing in the water and playing on the beach (ultimate frisbee, beach volleyball, etc.).

My nephew Daniel went with us this past summer, and at one point he wanted to go down near the water and build a sand castle (I guess he wasn't interested in playing volleyball). So he brought his buckets and his shovels, and I went with him down to an empty spot where we could build.

Our castle was a very nice one. It had four towers, and a wall connecting all the towers. There was a moat all the way around the castle...and it was a very big, very deep moat. No one was going to breach the walls of our castle!

But, by the end of the day, when we went down to the water for one last dip before heading home, our castle was already starting to deteriorate...I think someone had stepped on our wall in one spot, and the moat (which we had built to protect the castle) was eating away at the foundation of our walls...

When we go back next summer, I have no expectation that our sand castle will still be there. In fact, I will be downright shocked if we get there and discover that the castle still stands strong and defiant against all destructive forces.

There's an interesting verse in the book of Psalms, which has long been one of my favorites, and it makes me think of our sand castle...

God has compassion on us, because He is the one who formed us, and he knows exactly how we were made (he knows our frame -- or, as the NIV says, "He knows how we are formed"). The book of Genesis reports the rather unusual manner in which God created man:

So there you have it...we're just castles in the sand. That's all we are. Extraordinary, when you think about it, that God should love us. I have to confess, I didn't have a huge amount of love for the sand castle I built. I'm not shedding any tears over the realization that the castle is probably long gone. Yet God loves us.

Far too often we have this picture in our minds of God sitting up there in heaven scowling down at us, eager to zap us with His righteous indignation every time we drop the ball, every time we fall flat on our faces. God is laughing to Himself, saying "Ha! I've got you now, you miserable piece of trash!"

But God is not like that. When we drop the ball, when we fall flat on our faces, God says, "Well, I did make him out of sand, after all."

The really extraordinary thing (in my mind, anyway) is that God intends to take these castles of living sand and make something that will last forever out of them.

That is truly amazing.

When I was a kid, our house had a kitchen and a dining room, and there was a wall, with a doorway, between the two.

That wall is no longer there. At some point while I was growing up, my parents decided they'd had enough of that wall. They wanted to have one large, wide open room, instead of two smaller rooms.

So dad took a sledgehammer to the wall and knocked it out. Of course, when they built the house in the first place, they knew that someday they might want to get rid of that wall, so they were careful to build the house in such a way that this wall was not a load-bearing wall. It was supporting nothing. Nothing else anywhere in the house depended on it. It was, in a nutshell, useless.

The book of Ephesians tells us this:

2:4As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious,1 Peter 2:4 adds to this image by telling us that we are not just stones in a building, but we are living stones, growing together as God has fitted us together.

But as God is building His house, He is not putting in any useless stones. There is no part of His church that He could point at and say, "That living stone there doesn't support anything. Nothing else in My house depends on that living stone. That living stone is, in a nutshell, useless. I could take a sledgehammer to that living stone and it wouldn't affect anything else in the building."

We are all "load bearing" in the church. God has fit us together perfectly, designing each of us to bear and carry a load which was specifically designed for us. Galatians tells us this:

The good news is that the load is not an unbearable load; Jesus said in Matthew:

In 1 John, John reiterates these words by assuring his readers that:

The loads we are each given are not unbearable, or unreasonable. But they are our burdens to carry. And in carrying our own load, we support and strengthen all the other living stones in the building with us, strengthening the entire structure. It is an exciting realization to understand that we are fitted so perfectly together by God, but with that realization comes an exciting responsibility as well -- to build up, strengthen, and support the living stones all around us, who shoulder their loads side by side with us.

Monday night I was babysitting Daniel. We had a good time; we played together, and watched part of Revenge of the Sith. Daniel showed off his lightsaber moves (I think the force is with him!).

I brought my laptop and puttered on some work stuff while the movie was on. But while I was trying to work, the cat just wouldn't leave me alone. That foolish thing was climbing all over me. On my shoulders, in my lap, rubbing up against my arm, practically sitting on my laptop...

A very affectionate cat. If you pet this cat, you'll have a friend for life, and you'll probably live long enough to regret it.

When my brother got home I made a comment about how friendly the cat was. He said, "Yeah, he's been like that ever since we got rid of the other cat. I think it's because he doesn't have anyone to play with any more."

I thought this was interesting, because I've been noticing, for the last couple months, exactly the same thing about Daniel. Daniel has always been a very affectionate boy, but now that his brother has gone off to college, Daniel is ten times as affectionate...always wanting a hug, or just to cuddle up close to someone.

It's a good reminder that none of us was ever intended to be alone. We were created with the desire and the need for others. No man is an island, as John Donne wrote:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. ~John Donne

The book of Ecclesiastes reiterates the importance of togetherness with others:

Our world is on a fast track toward disconnected living; a whole lot of things (many of which are not necessarily bad in themselves) are conspiring to separate us from one another. It's all the self-help gurus who tell us we can make it on our own. It's our completely mobile society which causes families to stay in touch less and less. It's the Internet, which encourages one form of socialization, while breaking down other forms. It's the television and movies and computer games which are so colorful and exciting that they seem more real, more interesting to us than real people.

The result is, we start to believe that we can live a life as an island entirely disconnected from one another. But we were not built this way, and if we try to live this way, we do so to our own harm.

No one is an island. Two are better than one. A cord of three strands is not easily torn apart.

A couple years ago I had my cholesterol level checked, and my doctor told me "Your cholesterol level is way too high." We talked about what I was going to do about it, and I told him I wasn't interested in taking any medications to lower my cholesterol. I wanted to do the "all natural" approach, even though I knew it would be much harder.

So I changed my habits. I changed the amount of exercise I do, and made significant changes in my diet. Now I eat far less fast food, far less fatty foods than I used to. And the good news is that, in the last two years, my cholesterol has dropped 27 points. I still have a little way to go, but that's definite progress.

Changing my diet has really changed the way that I "taste" food. I used to love really greasy foods. Now, however, after being careful to avoid greasy foods, my appetite has changed. If I have a pepperoni pizza, I find myself thinking "Wow! This tastes really greasy!" It's not that pizzas are any more greasy now than they were two years ago; it's just that my appetites have changed because of the kinds of foods I put into my system.

This change of appetite can happen spiritually as well:

Just as my physical appetites have changed from fatty foods to more healthy foods, our spiritual appetites can change as well. We are supposedto have an appetite for the Word of God, just like a little baby has an appetite for their mother's milk.

Unfortunately, our appetite changeswhen we start tasting of other things which aren't as healthy. What are some of the spiritual "fatty foods" that are unhealthy, and change our appetite away from God's healthy food?

Malice. Deceit. Hypocrisy. Envy. Slander. When we indulge these unhealthy spiritual appetites, it destroys our appetite for God's word, and ultimately means that we will never grow up spiritually.

So Peter says: "Put these things aside!" As long as you let any of these things into your spiritual diet, you will never be healthy, and you will never grow to maturity.

My freshman year in college, I took Physics 121, which was the introductory-level physics course, required for all engineering majors. It was a "weed out" class, which meant it was intended to be difficult enough to "weed out" the people who either weren't serious about study, or weren't able to keep pace.

Tests were graded out of 120 points, and anything above 55 points was considered passing. Another way of saying that: if you got 46%, you were passing! Still, half the class was always in danger of failing.

Because I had an incredibly strong background in physics from high school, my college-level class didn't teach me anything new until about halfway through the second semester. While my classmates were struggling, I was coasting along, getting 110, 115 points per test.

It wasn't long before I had classmates hanging out in my room on nights before physics tests, asking for my help. I was always glad to give them help, and they knew that I wouldn't steer them wrong.

Imagine, though, if every time I explained a problem to someone, they had said to me, "Well, that's a nice idea, but I think this way will work just as well..." And then they proceeded to use a different method, arriving at a different answer.

Don't you imagine that after a while, I would say, "Excuse me, but if you're not ever going to listen to what I tell you, why are you even bothering to ask?"

This is the attitude James warns about:

James tells us: don't come to God asking for wisdom, and then just ignore the wisdom which he gives. The problem is, we often don't like the advice we get, so we try to set it aside. But James says, if you ask God for wisdom, and then ignore what He shows you, you're unstable, and will make no progress in life!

The good news is that, as happy as I always was to give advice and help to my classmates, God is even more eager to give to us; James says that He "gives generously." How great to know that God is not only all-knowing, but generous to boot!

Every morning when I get up I go through all my morning rituals: a cup of coffee, a shower and (occasionally) shave, and maybe a bowl of cereal or a couple slices of toast. And before I set foot out of my house, I've looked at my mirror once or twice to make sure everything looks okay (or, at least, as well as can be expected!).

I suspect we all have similar rituals. I wonder, though, how often we think about the fact that we have a spiritual mirror as well! James tells us: 

So how much time do you spend in front of the spiritual mirror, the word of God? After all, if we wouldn't leave the house without checking our physical appearance, should we leave without checking out how we're doing spiritually?

Understanding God's word as a mirror changes how we view it in several ways.

First, we cease to read God's word thinking, "Oh, so-and-so needs to hear that." Because what we are really doing is looking in a mirror expecting to see someone else's reflection there. No, when we look into God's word we see our own reflection; that is how God designed His word.

Second, we stop reading God's word with the thought "yawn...I've read this before." Just as a mirror is unchanging, but gives us a different reflection every time we look in it, so God's word is utterly unchanging, yet still reflects back to us something different depending on our spiritual need. It is no wonder Hebrews calls the word "living and active"!

Finally, when we read something in God's word, we do something about what we see there. We would not look into the mirror, find a hair out of place, and do nothing about it. So we shouldn't ignore what we see in God's word. James says if we ignore what the mirror tells us, and do nothing about it, we are simply fooling ourselves.

In the corner of the mirror in my bathroom there is a little slip of paper, which reminds me every morning: "This mirror only shows my physical appearance!" To deal with my spiritual appearance, I need a different mirror altogether.

When I was little, growing up on our farm, I remember one of my least favorite days was the day we slaughtered chickens. Not a fun time.

Of course, I can't complain too much...the chickens had a much harder time of it than I did.

Imagine for a moment that you could talk to the chickens, and they could understand you. So the week before it's time to do the slaughtering, you go into the chicken coop and say to the chickens, "Next week I'm going to start slaughtering some of you guys so we can have tasty fried chicken!"

Now, with this piece of information, what would a smart chicken do? A smart chicken would say to itself, "I'm going to starve myself for the next seven days, so when he comes back, I'll be the most sickly, unappetizing-looking bird he's ever seen!"

But a stupid chicken would look at his neighbor and say, "Hey! No fair! That bird is fatter than me...he's gonna get picked for sure! I better stuff myself silly for the next seven days, so the axe-man will be sure to pick me!"

It seems silly, but that's just what James is talking about in chapter five. He says: 

Essentially, he says that people who spend their lives hoarding wealth are as foolish as a chicken who deliberately fattens himself up for the slaughter.

Remember what Jesus says: life is more than the pursuit of material posessions. The person who spends his life chasing after the material posessions of this world will never be satisfied.

This afternoon I was waiting at the crosswalk to cross the street by my house. A car coming from the left saw me, and pulled to an abrupt stop to let me cross.

There was no traffic coming from the opposite direction, so I should have been able to cross. But I noticed that another car, also coming from the left, was traveling rather quickly in a 25 mph zone, and didn't seem to have noticed that the first car had stopped.

Did I cross? No. I waited for the second car to come to a screeching halt, because I knew that if he hit the first car, the first car might jolt forward...and that would have been rather inconvenient for the person walking across the crosswalk...namely, me!

That was only sensible. I looked at the circumstances around me, considered the effects that others would have on me, and the potential consequences of my own actions, and then based on these considerations, chose a course of action. It was only sensible.

I find it interesting that in such a short book as Titus (only three chapters) Paul gives the instruction to be sensible five times! Depending on your translation, the word may appear as either "self-controlled" or "soberly" - the idea is to live your life with serious consideration, weighing consequences before acting. In other words...be sensible!

Here's what Paul says in some of those verses:

It seems like such a simple thing, but how important it is for the believer. We carefully consider the circumstances around us. We consider the ways that others will impact us, and the ways that we may impact them. And then, using good sense and restraint, we choose a course of action which will have the best possible outcome not just for us but for others as well.

Unfortunately, we often we dive headfirst into a course of action without stopping to think whether the thing we are planning to do or say is reasonable, productive, and sensible.

Other translations use words like self-controlled, discreet, and sober-minded, but the idea is the same: live in a way that is carefully considered and reasonable.