Prone to Wander

“All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.” (Isaiah 53:6 NAS95)

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; 

Take my heart, O take and seal it; Seal it for Thy courts above.

from the hymn “Come Thou Fount” by 22 yr old pastor Robert Robinson, 1757

Wandering is a problem for all of us. We know that it was for Moses’ followers - those poor souls of the wilderness wanderings. At first, having just exited slavery in Egypt, they made a beeline from Mt. Sinai’s covenant to the Land of Promise. But no, at the Jordan River’s edge, they would not believe the Lord’s promise and take possession of the land. And so God punished them by forcing them back, to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, until all that adult generation died.

And our author of Psalm 119 - that longest chapter in the Bible, and most amazing piece of poetry -  in which most every verse in the psalm, nearly all of the 176 verses, hold a reference to the beauty and cruciality of God’s Word - that psalmist saw fit, in the last verse of this psalm, after all of his diligence and devotion, to confess: “I have gone astray like a lost sheep;” and then to beg of the Lord: “seek Your servant.” Even this disciple/follower had a problem with wandering.

So do you. It can happen in the busyness of life. You flit here and you flutter there. Before long, life has gobbled you up, and you can’t tell whether you own your life, or if your life owns you. One way to describe this behavior is “aimlessness.” The old proverb says, “Aim at nothing, and you will most surely hit it.” Sounds like wandering to me. This does not mean that you have done or will do nothing significant. You just will never know the ‘why’ or ‘what for.’

We often wander due to bad directions. In a world where ‘true truth’ is drowned out by the roar of ‘good lies,’ we pursue our paths with hopes of a happy ending at the end of the rainbow, missing the clues that indicate that we have been fooled by the advice of fools. Sophistry never demands that its professors show their work or reveal their sources.

Have you ever been lost in the woods? I have, up at the Dennis’ cottage when I was a boy. I did what many of us do when we wander and are lost. I started to run - to wander harder and get lost even deeper. Yes, I made it out of the woods. But have you? The verse at the top implies how. Turn to the good shepherd, Jesus, who gave His live for the sheep.

Let’s Go Kill Somethin’

It’s the time of year when the hunters head to the woods, intent on killing somethin’. They wear bright orange, just so they don’t go killin’ each other. Seems like a good idea. And just so you know, this isn’t a diatribe against hunting, or, as some wrongly call it, harvesting. It would only be harvesting if they were hunting squash. But killing deer, that’s called hunting. And for a variety of good reasons, go for it.

Not everyone gets into the whole hunting thing. But there’s other killing that should be done. Now don’t mistake, I’m not at all talking about killing people. But we ought to be killers of ideas - bad ideas, that is. We talk and discuss and think, and then we conclude that there are just some ideas out there that should be put to rest. Yes, it might hurt someone’s feelings if we disagree with them. But they need to get over it. You’re not killing them. You’re killing their idea.

We need to teach ourselves, and we need to teach our children, to say ‘no’ to ourselves at the appropriate times. Every urge we feel is not to be obeyed. Some of those passions and desires need to have a stake put through them. Why? Because it has been proven over and over by one sad case after another that the indulgence in certain desires and passions is not freedom of expression, but rather submission to slavery. ‘Sins of the flesh’ (so-called in Bible) don’t prove that you are the master of your life. Rather, they will be the killer of your soul, and do damage to those around you as well. What is needed is a sharp spear in the hand of a zealous Phinehas to nail the sin to the ground and stop the plague in its tracks.

John Owen said, “Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.” It’s a daily battle, always in season, so that we might be free to live according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. This Spirit is available through faith in Christ, and nowhere else, and provides the only alternative to dying in our sins. This alternative to dying in our sins - Jesus thought it was worth dying for; and we should think it worth killing for.

Arrogance

A wave of populism swept across the United States with surprising results. A similar wave recently shocked Great Britain, and there are populist rumblings in such places as France and Spain. Populism wells up when the experts forget whom they serve. Experts often operate from their bubbles, assuming they know best for people they do not know; for people they do not understand. In short, it is easy for experts to become arrogant.

In a way, the formula is not that hard to understand. Experts make things work. They pull the levers of culture and technology and finance in such a way that there is progress, and people enjoy the fruits of the their genius. But when there is no progress, it then becomes apparent that the experts are not so expert. After all, an expert who cannot figure out the puzzle can hardly be called an expert, can he (she)? And when the so-called experts do not perform, well, it’s time to throw the bums out.

It seems that had those experts adopted the mindset of humble servants from the beginning and throughout the process, they would have been better listeners, learners and guides. They would have taken leave for a time from the university campus in order to mix with those on the shop floor; or left the financial district to walk through the slum. Perhaps they would have even wept when faced with the unintended consequences of their latest, great idea and policy. But as we know, these are rare occurrences. More often than humility, we find arrogance.

There is no such thing as an arrogant servant. If he is a servant, then he cannot be arrogant; and she is arrogant, she cannot be a servant. The two words are antithetical to each other.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to humble service. This applies to our lives at home, with spouse and children and parents; it applies to school, and our treatment of schoolmates and teachers; it applies to work, and our interactions with fellow workers, and those above us, and below us. We are to love others, which requires us to consider what is good, not just for ourselves, but for others, and to go out of our way to make your wife’s life richer; your teammate’s role more fulfilling; the custodian’s job more satisfying.

We need to remember that it takes but 2 minutes for the populist to secure a supposed victory, and to go from being forgotten or ignored, to being arrogant and insufferable. Let’s, instead, be like Jesus, and live lives of humble service.

For No Good Reason

Our Scripture passage for this Sunday begins, “Princes persecute me without cause.” That is, they are giving me a hard time “for no good reason.” This complaint is repeated over and over in Scripture, and the the same thing happens repeatedly in our world. Perhaps you have felt it yourself. Someone has done something to you “for no good reason.” 

One verse in the Old Testament Scriptures uses the word twice: “For without cause they hid their net for me; Without cause they dug a pit for my soul.” The phrase “without cause” can hold a variety of implications - legal, financial, personal, etc. My rendering, “for no good reason,” says, “Hey, I don’t deserve this treatment.”

The truth is, there may be no good reason from your point of view, but there may be a very good reason from the other person’s point of view (not “good” as in “moral goodness,” but “good” as in “it suits my purposes, whether noble or ignoble”). Why does someone do something to you “for no good reason?” Well, maybe you have something they want. Or maybe they are paying you back for some real or imagined offense. Or maybe they are just feeling mean, and you are an easy mark. Those may not be good reasons for you, but they seem to work for the perpetrator/persecutor.

But maybe their reasons are not all nefarious. Maybe they know what is good for you, when you don’t yourself. A kid may say that his parents took his phone away “for no good reason,” while, in fact, there may be a very good reason. Maybe there are factors at work that you don’t understand, and it falls to you to suffer something relatively minor for the the sake of some greater good. Maybe when you complain that you have been mistreated “for no good reason,” there actually is a good reason, and that reason is actually good. 

So let’s all slow down the martyr talk about how we are constantly mistreated “for no good reason.” Yes, it happens, and all too often. But here is something else that has most assuredly happened: God has reached out to you in Christ “for no good reason.” He is extending mercy to you that you did not deserve. Jesus died for your sins “without cause.” You, by faith in Jesus, have the privilege of being called a child of God through no fault of your own. In fact, the verse at the top of the page implies that God had every good reason to execute the judgment that rebels against the King deserve, and yet He withheld His hand, and gave His Son - for no good reason, except that He loved you.