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I have a violin which was given to me by my aunt many years ago. It is a beautiful instrument, and is capable of making very beautiful sounds. When I look at my violin, and listen to the sounds it makes, I think, "What an extraordinary piece of workmanship!"
The pieces of wood were carefully cut from the trunk of the tree in thin sheets, which were then cut into exactly the right shapes to fit together into a musical instrument. But that's not the end of the process; the ribs (the wood separating the front and back plates of the instrument) had to be planed to the right width, heated, and bent to the shape necessary.
The face plates were carved in a "bowl" shape, and hollowed out to make just the right thickness and curvature to resonate properly. Too thick, and the violin wouldn't resonate. Too thin, and the violin wouldn't hold the tension of the strings.
If only the tree trunk could speak -- what would it say? "What are you doing to me? Why are you cutting me up? Why are you putting me on the fire and heating me? Get that knife away from me!"
But each painful cut, each bending and twisting, is necessary to make something beautiful! If only the tree knew what the violin maker was doing, how it might rejoice to know that it was being transformed into something of extraordinary beauty! So it is with us; James tells us (James 1:2-4) to rejoice when we face difficult times, because difficult times mean that God is making something beautiful of our lives, just as the violin maker transforms the drab tree trunk into something amazing. We should approach our difficult circumstances with the attitude, "Hooray! God is making me complete and beautiful!"
Of course, one of the difficulties for us is that we cannot see the end of the work. Just as the tree trunk can't understand what the craftsman is doing, we can't see what it is God is making of our lives. Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that we will not "find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." Nevertheless, the same verse tells us that God "has made everything beautiful in its time."
The real tragedy would be if the tree could stop the violin maker from creating what he desired. What would be the end result? The tree would never become something beautiful and long-lasting. The violin would never be made. But the tree would still serve a purpose; it would keep someone warm in the winter time. But if I had my choice, I'd choose being a violin over being firewood!
Lately I've been discovering gray hairs here and there throughout my gotee. The teens in my youth group tell me it's a sign of how old and decrepit I'm getting. They're so kind.
In reality, having gray hairs doesn't really bother me from an aesthetic point of view; I've always thought that beards which have a mixture of gray and dark look very distinguished. I'm certainly not one who feels the need to color my hair in order to continue feeling (or looking) young.
But the thing I hate about my gray hairs is that those hairs are a different texture from the rest of my gotee. When I'm trimming, the dark hairs all get trimmed, and the gray hairs all say to the razor, "Ha ha, you can't get me!" So I end up with thousands of short black hairs and a few gray hairs that keep getting longer and longer.
And there's nothing I can do about it.
Jesus actually had something to say about the color of your hair; in the Sermon on the Mount, he told his followers:
In essence, He is saying, "Don't swear by something you have no control over; it is a completely meaningless oath to swear."
But He doesn't stop there; He tells us not to swear any oaths at all! He explains that we must be so completely honest that we develop a reputation for truth-telling, and we never have to swear any oaths at all. "Let your 'yes' be 'yes' and your 'no' be 'no,'" he says.
I may not be able to control the color of my beard, but what I do with my character, my integrity, is entirely in my court. The choice is up to me.
Of course, on a related note, it's interested to see that the three little pigs in the old fairy tale disobeyed this command of Christ when they said, "Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!" That is, after all, an oath sworn on the hair of their heads! ;D
Imagine that you are not feeling well, so you schedule a visit with your doctor. After your checkup he tells you, "You've got a heart problem. We need to perform open-heart surgery."
So there you are, on the operating table, and the doctor is pulling out his tools of the trade...including, of course, his scalpel.
"Oh, Doctor," you say, "that looks very sharp, very painful. Do you think you could use something different?"
"What did you have in mind?"
After a moment's thought, you reply, "Maybe a feather-duster? That wouldn't hurt so much."
The doctor smiles, pulls a feather-duster out of his cabinet, brushes it several times over your heart, and then says, "There you go! Good as new!"
What would you think of this doctor? Surely you would think he was a quack? Although the scalpel may hurt, it's necessary for the healing of your heart.
It seems absurd to imagine asking a doctor to perform surgery on your heart without cutting you, and probably causing some pain. And though we would never expect this kind of painless treatment in the physical world, we often expect it in the spiritual world. We want God to perform healing on our hearts without causing us pain.
This is exactly the mentality Paul is talking about in 2 Timothy, where he writes:
The word of God is sharp and piercing, and is necessary for our spiritual well-being. Yet how often we say, "I'd rather hear something that entertains me, that tickles my ears!" But God's word is like that doctor's scalpel; its purpose is not to entertain or tickle; its purpose is to wound, and in wounding, bring healing to our wayward hearts.
Are you willing to come "under the knife" of the word of God, allowing it to injure you so that you can be healed? Or do you merely want to be entertained?
Wounding or tickling? One way is painless, but it leads to spiritual weakness and disease. The other way may be painful, but it is the only way to spiritual health and strength.
When I was a high school math teacher, I remember vividly one algebra one test I gave. As I was correcting the students' papers, I noticed that one student had put virtually no "work" on her paper; only answers. Then, as I corrected her paper, I began to realize that some of her incorrect answers looked very familiar.
Flipping back through the papers I had already corrected, I found a paper with identical answers. In some cases, the first paper had a wrong answer because the student had made a foolish addition mistake (7+8=16, for example). Yet even in these cases, the second student had an identical answer.
Accordingly, since it was exceedingly evident that one student had directly copied answers from the other, I gave that student a zero on the test. Since I had no way of knowing whether the other student was innocent of wrongdoing, I acted in accordance with my "optimism principle," which states, "When in doubt, assume the best." I gave the first student the score earned based on the answers and work given.
Interestingly, the second student's mother had her own "optimism principle" as well. Faced with the possibility that her daughter might have cheated, she chose to assume the best. Especially since she did not know me, or have any reason to believe me over her daughter.
It was not until I showed her the photocopies of the tests that she acknowledged that her daughter was in the wrong.
Why do I tell this story? Because it illustrates an aspect of love which we must emulate. According to 1 Corinthians 13:7, love believes and hopes all things. It is my "optimism principle" in action. When in doubt, assume the best.
Unfortunately, human nature is bent toward assuming the worst. For us it is safer; we are less likely to be hurt or betrayed if we assume the worst. Yet I believe it is better to assume the best and be disappointed or betrayed than to destroy our relationships from the very beginning by assuming the worst.
And if we are hurt in the process, let us remember the love of Christ, which took Him through deeper pain than we could ever dream.
A while back I was visiting my parents, and as we were sitting at their diningroom table, my father said, "Look at that bird out there by your car!"
I looked out the window, and there was a bird, perched on the windowsill of my passenger-side front door. But where he was, that wasn't half so interesting as what he was doing.
The bird was very studiously examining itself in the side-view mirror! I chuckled a bit, and then turned back to the conversation. About five minutes later, my father said, "You know, that bird is still there!"
Sure enough, the bird hadn't budged from that spot, but was still preening in front of the mirror.
I immediately thought of Philippians 2:3, which speaks about behaving based on "selfish ambition or conceit." Selfish ambition, of course, is when we are seeking personal gain. But conceit is something altogether different (although it is still based in selfishness). It is when we act based on an exalted view of ourselves and our own importance.
What does conceit cause us to do? It causes us to gaze endlessly at our own self, admiring who we are, and generally being impressed with ourselves.
But what does Paul say? Get your attention off yourself! You're not the most important being in the universe! In fact, you should consider each of the people around you as more important than yourself.
This mentality is at the root of Christian character. Paul says, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ..." and then he goes on to describe how Jesus put aside his own self, making himself "nothing" for us.
Can we, then, follow His example, and instead of gazing endlessly in our own reflection, take our eyes off our own selves, to see those around us? I don't know about you, but I don't want to go through life gazing endlessly into my own reflection, when there are so many more important things to do...
Several years ago we had a yearly tradition of taking our church youth group on a hiking trip to Mount Katahdin. If you've never been to Katahdin, it's the tallest mountain in the state of Maine, and a wonderful place to hike. The views from the top are downright amazing.
We would hike up Pamola Peak (the second-tallest peak on Katahdin) and then cross Knife Edge to get to Baxter Peak (which is the tallest peak). Knife Edge is a trail, approximately a mile long, which runs along a ridge between Pamola and Baxter. You can probably guess what the trail looks like, just from the name of it: Knife Edge. At times you really do feel like you're walking along the edge of a knife; you stand on the ridge and you can look down to your left and see the bottom of the mountain -- then you turn and look down to your right and you also see the bottom of the mountain! It can be a bit intimidating for people who are afraid of heights.
One time when we took this hike, we had a teenager with us who was a seventh grader, and this was her first "serious" hiking experience. When we got to Pamola Peak we gave the teens the option of pressing forward, or turning back the way we came. This girl was determined to go forward.
But once she got out on the ridge, she discovered that, with the wind blowing, and her being tired as she was, she felt like she was going to get blown right off the mountain. So she hiked the entire Knife Edge on her hands and knees.
It was a long hike that day, stopping every couple minutes for her to rest, and get up her courage to press on. The rest of the group pushed on ahead while a couple of the leaders stayed with her. We would stop, sit down on the rocks to look at the views around us (which were, by the way, absolutely stunning and amazing!), and then we would point at a turn in the trail, or an outcropping of rock, and say, "Do you think you can get that far?" And the girl would get a look of grim determination, nod her head, and off we would go again.
As we hiked, I thought to myself, This is what life is like. The trail is rough, narrow, tiresome, and occasionally nerve-wracking. But we don't have to travel the entire trail all at once. Crawling along the trails of life on our hands and knees, we only need worry about what lies directly ahead of us. When the trail gets hard, we only need the grim determination to make it through one day at a time, and when the day is done, God says to us: "Take a rest, and tomorrow we'll tackle the next part of the trail!"
For those who think they have to face the entire trail all at once, take the time to read from Jesus's Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 6:25-34. And especially verse 34:
Have the faith to travel as far as God gives you to travel in a single day, and let tomorrow -- and God -- worry about tomorrow!
Ever stop to think about gifts you've been given, and why they are important to you? There are many reasons why a gift might be important to you...let's look at a few.
#1: A gift might be from someone who is very special to you. With Valentine's Day right around the corner, this is a reason lots of people are thinking about. When you think about the gifts people receive for Valentines Day...roses, chocolates, jewelry, etc., they are rarely practical, and often not even all that expensive. And yet, when a girl gets her very first rose from a guy, she's likely to keep it on display until it's mostly wilted...then she'll press it and keep it forever (or at least until she breaks up with the guy!). It's not because the rose itself is so valuable...it's because it comes from someone who is very valuable to her.
#2: A gift might be life-changing. This was the case with the very first ventriloquist puppet I ever received. It was a Christmas gift from my parents when I was in sixth grade. None of us guessed at the time that this gift would result in me traveling not just around the state, but throughout New England and across the world. That gift really did change my life.
#3: A gift might be expensive. Obviously, if we receive a gift which costs a lot of money, we treat it very carefully, because we know that it is irreplaceable. I recently received a large gift which allowed me to refit my recording studio. I purchased a somewhat expensive studio microphone. Then last week I needed a sound system to take to our youth group's winter retreat. Do you think I took my new microphone? Oh, no! That one stayed safely at home. Why? Because it was costly, I was protecting it.
I think it's interesting that our salvation fits all three of these categories. It is a gift from someone who should be very precious to us: our Lord Jesus Christ. Why is he precious to us? Because of His great love for us. 1 John 4:19 gives us the reason for our love: because He loved us first.
Our salvation is also precious to us because it is life-changing. This is certainly true, although we don't always see the changes immediately. Jesus Christ promised us in John 10:10 that He had come not just to give us life (and that's pretty signifinant in itself!) but also to give us an abundant life. How precious should that gift be to us?
And, of course, the gift is a costly one. In 1 Peter 1:18 we are told that our salvation (redemption) was not purchased with something perishable (silver or gold) but with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. What a costly gift our salvation was! Jesus didn't reach into His pocket and pull out thirty pieces of silver to purchase my salvation...it was far more costly than that! He gave up everything to give me the most precious gift I will ever receive.
So the final question is...how do we treat this gift? 1 Peter 1:17 tells us that, because our redemption was such a costly gift, we are to conduct ourselves "with fear." Just as I would never risk damaging my expensive studio microphone by treating it carelessly, I should never treat my relationship with Jesus Christ in a careless manner!
It is the most precious thing I have in this life.
I have three brothers. No sisters. Occasionally people would say to my mother, "Four boys? Wow! I bet you wish you had a daughter!"
And my mother would say, "No, not really."
"Really? Why not?"
"Because I teach sixth grade." Now, that would seem like a bit of a non-sequiter, but then my mom would explain, "When boys get mad at each other, they have a big explosion, maybe they throw a punch or two, and then ten minutes later it's all over and they're friends again. With the girls it's not like that. With the girls, when they get mad, it festers and simmers underneath, and it sometimes goes on for months before they get over it. And those months are downright miserable for everyone around them."
It's the difference between a quick explosion and a slow burn. And although that may be the general rule for sixth graders, it doesn't always break down into gender lines; sometimes it's the guys who have the slow burn, sometimes it's the girls who have the sudden and violent explosion.
And I suspect everyone leans toward one or the other of these personality types. Are you a violent exploder? Or a slow burner? It's important to understand which type you are, because your personality type affects how you handle stress and conflict. And there is a Bible verse for each of the personality types.
For the violent exploders we have this passage:
If you are violent exploder, you must learn that anger is never your first response. In fact, it's never even your second response. Listen first, speak second, and anger comes last of all. Violent exploders occasionally put anger before speech, and often even before listening. But this kind of response achieves nothing...except injury and destruction.
For the slow burners, we have:
The root of bitterness -- the deep-seated grudges and hatreds that fester in your soul -- these are just as destructive, perhaps even more destructive than the violent explosions. Because once bitterness grabs hold of you it never lets go. It burrows deeper and deeper and, as Hebrews says, defiles many. Not just you, but all the people around you.
Slow burner? Or violent exploder? Neither is good; both must be tamed for the sake of all.
Two times in the last month, under completely different circumstances, I've had people say to me, "I don't want to be a burden." In both cases the statement was made by another Christian. Both times my reply was: "How could you be a burden? You're part of my family. This is just what we do for each other."
We always talk about "brothers" and "sisters" in Christ, but I don't think we often stop to really think about what it means that we are family.
I remember hearing a story about two brothers who were walking one day, and the younger one became tired, so he asked his older brother to carry him. The older boy scooped his brother up in his arms and began to carry him. As he walked, a neighbor chuckled and said, "Wow. He must be heavy."
And the older boy replied: "He's not heavy, he's my brother!"
It's a cute story, but let's be realistic -- the younger boy would have weighed exactly the same if he hadn't been brother to the other boy. And yet, because he is family, the load seems much lighter.
You can see the same truth in your own life. Think about everything your parents gave up for you. The freedom of activity they gave up the moment you were born. The sleepless nights (my parents tell me I used to wake them up with my giggling in the middle of the night ::)) All the money spent on your food, clothing, medical bills... the time spent driving you from place to place, going to your sporting events, concerts and school plays. And then when you were a teenager, the sleepless nights started all over again...
Okay? You've got all that in your mind, right? Now go to your parents and say to them, "I'm sorry I was such a burden to you..."
And if they're anything like my parents, they'll look at you like you've got a third ear sprouting out of the middle of your forehead, and they'll say, "Burden? You weren't a burden!"
Well, yes, you were. But because of their great love for you, they don't see you that way. Because you are family.
Now think about your spiritual family. The people you call your brothers and sisters in Christ. Do you really treat them as brothers and sisters? Or are they simply your burden you have to bear? If a physical family (born of corruptible seed, as 1 Peter 1:23 says) bears one another's burdens, how much more should we, who share an imperishable, incorruptible family tree, bear one another's burdens?
No wonder Galatians 6:2 tells us to "bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ"! It is one of the most simple and obvious responsibilities -- and joys -- of family life!