Psalm 19, Philippians 3:12-15, John 17:18
When I was back in the US last month, I went on a two day prayer retreat at a camp in the northern woods of New Jersey. This camp had four hundred acres of land (177 hectors) with a lodge built on the edge of a small lake. The leaves were changing colors so the woods were a beautiful mixture of greens, browns, reds and yellows. There were several times when we could go out and sit somewhere to meditate on the content of the teaching we had received.
I went to this retreat because of my experience this summer of having burned out spiritually and emotionally. I wanted to learn what I could do to prevent such an experience in the future.
I was sitting by the lake, leaning back on a rock with the sun warm on my face and body. I listened to the wind in the trees, the birds chirping and moving through the leaves, the frogs croaking in the shallows of the lake, a symphony of sound. The sun shimmered on the lake and the clouds drifted by a beautiful blue sky. I followed the chirping of the birds with my eyes until I could see them and identify certain ones I knew. I looked carefully at the plants around me. I paid attention to the colors, the small flowers, the veins in the leaves, the spacing of leaves on branches.
I concentrated fully on the created world around me and the worries and concerns that weighed on me seemed so distant.
Canada geese honked in the distance. The sound of the wind above my head built up and then receded into silence and then back again. I listened to the world and as I did, I arrived at an insight that has helped me since.
It came to me that I need to keep in balance three aspects of my Christian life. I need to keep eternity on my mind. At the same time I need to walk in reverence through the created world that will one day cease to be. And then I need to walk with Jesus in partnership doing the work he is doing.
When my life gets out of whack, it is because I am neglecting one of these three aspects of my faith and I am like a chair with only one or two legs. Let me walk you through those three aspects.
The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote that God:
set eternity in the hearts of men.
In the Puritan prayers I have been reading, there is a wonderful phrase in the Fourth Day Morning prayer.
Grant us to know that to walk with Jesus makes other interests a shadow and a dream. Keep us from intermittent attention to eternal things.
What is the real world? Is what we touch, taste, smell, see and hear the real world? Are the tajines we eat the real world? Is the mattress on which we sleep and the blanket that keeps up warm the real world?
“Of course,” you might say, “of course that’s the real world. What a stupid question!” But what is more real, a picture of a steak in a magazine or a steak on the plate in front of you? Both exist but one is more real than the other.
What is more real, a girlfriend who holds your hand for two days and then disappears or a girlfriend who sticks by you and then says yes when you ask her to marry you?
The more substantial something is, the more real it is. Something that endures has more reality associated with it than something that exists for just a moment.
When we become Christians, we become aware of the existence of a supernatural world. Some of us may have been aware of this supernatural world before we became Christians, but this is certainly part of a Christian awareness. We put our faith in a God we cannot see, cannot touch, and cannot hear. We believe by faith that there is a supernatural world but we do not know this by our senses.
What is more real, this material world or the supernatural world? Which is more substantial? Which is more enduring?
CS Lewis wrote a book titled, Lightbearer in the Shadowlands. As his title indicates, he viewed this material world as the shadow of the real thing, the supernatural world. This material world is the picture of the steak, the supernatural world is the real steak. This material world is our temporary boyfriend or girlfriend, the supernatural world is our marriage partner. As Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians:
I Corinthians 13:9-12
For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
Part of growth in our relationship with Christ is that the supernatural world, the eternal world, becomes more real to us and we begin ever so slowly to relinquish our hold on this present material world. We begin with this world being all we know and then gradually we become aware that the world we see is a shadow world, imperfectly mimicking the real world that is promised us by Jesus. We grasp and possess what we can in this world but then slowly loosen our grip and release the things that this world has to offer. We gradually release what we will certainly leave behind in exchange for the things that we believe by faith we will share for eternity.
We are born grasping and holding on to the world around us and unfortunately, many people never get past that. Annie and I watched an interesting film titled, Other People’s Money, in which Danny deVito opens the movie with this quote:
I love money. I love money more than the things it can buy. Does that surprise you? It don’t care whether I’m good or not. It don’t care whether I snore or not. It don’t care which god I pray to. There are only three things in this world with that kind of unconditional acceptance: dogs, doughnuts and money. Only money is better, know why? Because it don’t make you fat and it don’t poop all over the living room floor. There’s only one thing I like better . . . other people’s money.
De Vito’s character continues,
Make as much as you can for as long as you can. Whoever has the most when he dies is the winner.
Whether or not people articulate it this way, that is the inevitable goal when you make this material world the real world. If this world is all there is, then we work to accumulate as much of what the world values as we can and taking the money of others to accumulate more than others only makes good sense – if this world is all there is.
This stands in contrast to what Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians.
Philippians 3
I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
15 All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.
DeVito’s character grabbed for as much money as he could, Paul forgot what was behind and strained for what was ahead.
Christians who grow in their faith increasingly view this world as the shadowlands and long for the reality of the world that is to come. They hold on to the truth of what John wrote in his letter
I John 2:17
The world and its desires pass away, but the one who does the will of God lives forever.
For a growing Christian, the material world become less substantial, more temporary, and the longing for the real world grows.
Because of this, when we make decisions, we need to make decisions in light of the fact that we will one day stand in the presence of God. We need to live in light of eternity. We need to live realizing that we will one day be held accountable for our decisions and actions. We need to live realizing that one day we will stand in front of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who suffered for us and we will see the wounds in his hands and side and feet. When we stand there with the evidence of his love for us confronting us, will we be pleased by the way we lived our lives on earth? Our words, thoughts and deeds will be judged by the evidence of his love for us.
We may be sexually tempted but what is more real, the person tempting us or standing in God’s presence and being held accountable for how we responded to that temptation?
When you are tempted to take advantage of someone to get what you want, what is more real, getting what you want or having to give an account to God for misusing and abusing one of his creation for your own selfish interests?
When you are tempted to break the law to get to Spain, what is more real, the prospect of making money? or living with Jesus in eternity where the currency is not money but faith?
Do you want to know what is real? Let me read you from Philippians 2 about what is real:
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Since the eternal world is what is real and the world we see around us will one day cease to exist we would do well to follow the advice of Paul to the Colossians:
Colossians 3
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
The eternal world is what is truly real and we need to live and act in view of that reality, but that does not dismiss the material world in which we live. In one of the many paradoxes of Christianity, we are to live for eternity while we enjoy the fact that our feet are planted firmly in the mud of earth.
In theology we talk of general revelation and specific revelation. Specific revelation is revelation we would not understand or comprehend apart from the specific revelation of God. So when God spoke to Moses or the prophets or when God gave us the New Testament or especially when God gave us Jesus, we learn about God in a specific way. God reveals himself to us in a specific way.
But we also learn about God from general revelation. This is what we learn about God from his creative activities. The text that came to my mind when I thought of this was Psalm 19
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
4 Their voice
goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
Because we learn from God through his creation, it becomes a spiritual exercise to take a walk in the woods or a walk in the park or a garden and observe. Sitting down and watching an ant on the sidewalk is an opportunity to learn about God. Watching clouds or the stars or the birds in the sky is an opportunity to learn about God.
Solomon was praised as a wise man, in part because he studied nature and learned about the world God created. Many of the great saints in church history spent a lot of time walking in nature, observing, learning. Read through Proverbs sometime and notice how many of the proverbs were derived from observing nature.
Proverbs 30
25 Ants are creatures of little strength,
yet they store up their food in the summer;
29 “There are three things that are stately in their stride,
four that move with stately bearing:
30 a lion, mighty among beasts,
who retreats before nothing;
31 a strutting rooster, a he-goat,
and a king with his army around him.
When I sat by the side of the lake, observing and listening to the created world around me, God was able to speak to me in a way that I very much needed. I was able to allow the concerns that made me anxious and worried slip away and I was able to pay attention to God’s intervention in my life. I was able to relax and listen to God.
The fourth commandment tells us to
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, … 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
We observe the Sabbath by going to church, reading our Bibles and praying. But we also observe the Sabbath by taking time to walk along the ocean or in a park. We observe the Sabbath by lying outside and looking up at the sky. We observe the Sabbath by paying attention to the world God created for us to enjoy.
These two must be kept in balance. The super-spiritual person who thinks of nothing but God and eternity is as much out of balance as the person who says they don’t need to go to church because they find God in nature.
Christians who focus only on the spiritual and ignore the material world around them are modern day Gnostics which means they focus on the spirit of man but believe the material world is bad. Gnostics lived in the early centuries of the church and as a consequence of their philosophy, they celebrated the divinity of Jesus but ignored his humanity.
How could God be both God and man? That is one of the many mysteries of Christian faith and it is in that understanding of Jesus as both God and man that we see the balance we need to strive for. We strain forward toward the prize held for us in heaven, we live with eternity in mind and as we do, we enjoy the beauty and sensuality of the world God created for us.
For most of the history of the world, observing God through his creation was a more natural aspect of life. But in the last couple centuries, we have developed our technology to the point that we easily shut out God’s created world. God’s created world has been largely replaced by man’s manufactured world. For most of the history of the world, people stared up into the sky observing the stars of the universe and wondering what it all meant. Now we stare into a computer screen, playing video games for hours on end. 26% of children in the US watch four hours of television every day – this does not include time spent playing the video games.
Because of this, we need to work much harder at paying attention to God’s created world. We have to make decisions to turn off the electronic devices, including the MP3 players, and go to where we can hear the sounds of God’s creation.
We hold onto eternity while enjoying this created, temporary world, but there is a third aspect of Christianity that must be held in balance.
When Jesus was in the world, he healed the sick, fed the hungry, comforted those who suffered, brought people into the light from the darkness of their sins. When Jesus ascended, he expected that his followers would carry on for him, doing his work.
Our work is part of our service to God. Paul urged the Thessalonians to
4:11
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
When he wrote his second letter he responded to reports that some were not working but sitting around, waiting for Jesus to return. Paul reminded them
3:10
when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”
11 We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12 Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.
If all we do is sit in the world admiring God’s creation and straining for eternity, we fail to live as God wants us to live. God is at work and we are meant to work with God, to participate with God in the work he is actively doing in our world. We are meant to be involved in the lives of people around us. We are meant to care for those who are needy. As CS Lewis talked about it, we are meant to bring light into the shadowlands.
Whether we work or not, God is at work in the lives of people. It is up to us to accept the privilege he offers us, to work alongside him in opening up in the hearts and minds of people an awareness of his love for them.
So these are the three aspects of Christianity that need to be kept in balance. Of the three, this last is the most likely to dominate. We get caught up in our work and one day realize it has been months since we took time to relax in nature. Our work can consume us so that we fail to take time to sit with God and be open to his work in our lives. A week or two goes by and we realize we did not take time to sit down to read Scripture and reflect on what it means to us.
Straining toward eternity while enjoying this created but temporary world and having the privilege of sharing with Jesus his work in this world, this is the balance, and I would ask you in which direction you are tilting this morning. Analyze how you spent your time this past week. How much did the reality that this world will pass away affect you in what you decided, how you acted or how you spent your time? How successful were you in avoiding temptation that came to you? This world is a relatively insubstantial, short-term girlfriend or boyfriend. Set your heart on what will never spoil, perish or fade.
When is the last time you took a Sabbath day and put aside work? It does not have to be Sunday, it could be any day of the week. But you need to take a day when you rest and one of the great ways to rest and relax is to sit in the midst of this created world and observe the wonder and beauty of creation. Walk in the park, not so you can exercise but so you can observe and reflect. Stop to look and observe. Find a comfortable place and sit and listen.
This third leg does not usually need to be emphasized but I have met people who knew how to relax but did not know how to work. They spent wonderful time with God and observed the Sabbath but their day of rest included three or four days of the week. If you are in that boat, then pick up your feet and get to work, that too is part of your life with God.
As for myself, to bring my life into balance, work does not need to be emphasized. I think about eternity a lot and am always thinking about how what I am doing and thinking will be viewed from eternity. I have been doing much better at spending time with God, reading and reflecting on Scripture. What I need is to take time each week to rest from work, to relax, to soak up enjoyment from God’s created world. I need that balance.
What do you need to do to find balance in your Christian life? Determine this week to seek that balance.
