Caring

The prophet Isaiah tells us that Jesus ‘carried our sorrows’. (Isa 53). I know that Jesus is the unique sin bearer and I would not want in any way to equate our personal ministry as Christians with the atoning sacrifice of our Lord. But I do believe that this idea of Christ carrying our sorrows can help us in our understanding of what it means to really care about people.

I was visiting in the home of a dear Christian lady a while back who was in a great deal of pain. I tried my best to comfort her and before leaving I prayed with her and her husband and I placed my hands on her and I prayed for her that God would intervene and bring her relief and healing. But sometime afterward I found myself crying.

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of how closely related the two words ‘carry’ and ‘care’ are but I think it has got to be significant. I remember hearing one time that in at least one language (and I don’t remember which one) the word for compassion translates literally into English as ‘your pain in my heart’. When we care for people their pain and sorrow stays with us and we carry it around with us in our hearts.

One of my favorite passages is from Paul’s letter to the Romans where he tells us that we are to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.” Somehow, life just doesn’t seem real unless we are able to do both.

But that’s not the end of it, is it. If we were to take unto ourselves all of the hurts of others along with our own burdens, allowing them to simply accumulate, there is no way we would be able to bear it. We would sink before we made it through a day. We are instructed to ‘carry each others burdens’ and by so doing ‘fulfill the law of Christ’ (Gal 6:2), but there remains one more important thing to do with all of this. The apostle Peter tells us that we are to “cast all our cares upon Him because He cares for us.” (1Pet 5:7)

Together, as a community of faith, we must learn to go to God continually and give it all over to the only One who is really able to bear up under it all.

“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Heb 4:16

Restoration

I had a favorite shirt that always hung by the stove at home. It was the casual, comfortable shirt that I would slip on when I was just hanging around the house and needed to add another layer. But, as it happens, over the course of time it wore out. When I showed it to Florence she took it and headed for the rag bag saying, “If I was my mother I would take all of the buttons off of it and put them in a tin.” And I remembered my mom’s button can which was really cool when I was a kid.

Back in the day, I’m quite certain that every mom had a button tin. I don’t think it’s common anymore but back then it was a given. The reason for it I think was quite simple – how could you ever even think of throwing away a perfectly good button? You never know when you’re going to need one! ‘Waste not – want not’ was the motto of the day for sure. I’m from the generation that watched my mother save the wax paper from the shredded wheat packets so she could use them to wrap our sandwiches for school. How many of you can relate?

It’s a different day for sure. Today, we live in a much more ‘disposable’ society. I know that to some degree it is inevitable. Things change and technology moves us along. It becomes cheaper to replace something than to fix it. I understand that. And I don’t really think very many of us today are prepared to say good-bye to tissue paper and go shopping for a 'hanky' instead. But I can’t help but feel that there is just something wrong with our willingness to dispose of things so readily and to just buy new. When are we being practical and when are we only capitulating to the consumer culture of convenience?

There is something to be said for the task of restoring something that’s old. I found an old jack knife in some of my dad’s stuff a few years back. It was corroded quite badly but something compelled me to go to work and see what I could do with it. I’m sure I could have purchased a new one for far less than the ‘sweat equity' I put into restoring that old pocket knife and it still doesn’t look quite like new. But I actually like it better because somehow it just means more. Not just because it was my dad’s either though that is part of it.

One of the books that I have on my summer reading list that I’m looking forward to getting into is ‘Broken Down House’ by Paul Tripp. In the book he relates how excited his father-in-law was when he bought an old broken down house. He was having a hard time understanding the man’s enthusiasm until he came to understand that his joy was found in the prospect of all he could do to fix it up. He goes on to say how much we are like that broken down house. I’m really glad that God is into restoration.

Dad

This coming Sunday is Father’s Day. Earlier this month was the anniversary of my dad’s passing. He’s been gone twenty years now and even as I write that I find it difficult to believe that it has been that long. I miss him.

Father’s Day coincides with the garden season and it is impossible for me to garden without thinking of my father. He was an amazing gardener. He loved it and he was good at it. I learned from him how to garden.

He wasn’t an agriculturalist. He was just an old fashioned gardener. An agriculturalist might instruct you to periodically loosen up the soil around the plant to allow oxygen into the soil which is vital to the root system. My dad never said that. But he did tell me that “plants like to be worked around.” I think I like his explanation better actually. Even as a young boy it just seemed so easy for me to receive and to understand this simple instruction, what some might call ‘folk wisdom’.

To all you dads out there, please take the time. I know that it might seem really difficult at times to be there but remember that you have one of the two most important jobs in the whole world.

When it was looking like rain this week I went out and took the little hoe that my mom gave me after my dad died. He always used this little hoe especially for this purpose because it is small and light and sharp and you can really work the soil with it. I worked the soil all around our tomatoes and peppers. They liked it.

The Way Up

Everyone wants to feel good. But there is a real problem with making that our life’s goal. How we feel is not, or should not be, the bottom line. Feelings make great companions but lousy leaders. If you are led by your feelings you’ll end up somewhere you don’t want to be.

Sometimes as Christians we get wanting to feel spiritual and we pursue that. We make it our aim. And we judge how well we think we’re doing by it. But here is a big problem - the more spiritual you get the less spiritual you’ll feel. The more humble you get, the less humble you’ll feel. The closer you get to God, the larger your own inadequacies appear. The more mature you get as a believer, the more you realize how incredibly far away from God’s holy and perfect will you really are.

Of course, there is a great paradox in all of this. Jesus said that the way up is the way down. He who humbles himself will be exalted. If you want to be great, become a servant of all.

So, if you really, really want to feel spiritual, become a total hypocrite. I think that hypocrites are the only ones who really feel spiritual. Or here is a better idea - forget about trying to feel spiritual and choose faith. Put your focus where it needs to be, on Christ, and rest in the assurance that His grace is sufficient regardless of how you might feel at any particular time.

Taking Credit

Some time ago I had someone express to me their disdain for how contemporary Christian artists take the secular sound and write Christian lyrics to it and call it Christian music. This person, not a Christian, suggested to me that this is what Christians do; we don’t have anything really of our own, we just keep stealing ideas and concepts from the secular world and calling it ours.

I can see how someone could think that way. However, one of the problems with this view is that it fails to recognize that the ‘secular sound’ was influenced in a big way by earlier gospel traditions. So who is imitating who one might be caused to wonder really. And what about other areas?

It is not unusual for people to take credit for things without really giving credit where credit is due. I’m sure we are all guilty of this type of behaviour as it is simply part of fallen human nature. We are quite eager to take credit and quite reluctant to give it. However, it seems to me that a lot of contemporary academic movements seem to excel in the practice.

Back in 1970, leadership guru Robert Greenleaf came up with an amazing breakthrough in Leadership Philosophy. He called it ‘servant leadership’. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it all:

“Servant leadership is a philosophy and practice of leadership, coined and defined by Robert Greenleaf and supported by many leadership and management writers such as James Autry, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Peter Block, Peter Senge, Max DePree, Larry Spears, Margaret Wheatley, Jim Hunter, Kent Keith, Ken Jennings, Don Frick and others. Servant-leaders achieve results for their organizations by giving priority attention to the needs of their colleagues and those they serve. Servant-leaders are often seen as humble stewards of their organization's resources (human, financial and physical)… The modern servant leadership movement was launched by Robert K. Greenleaf in his 1970 essay, ‘The Servant as Leader’, in which he coined the terms ‘servant-leader’ and ‘servant leadership.’ Greenleaf subsequently published a number of additional essays on various aspects of servant leadership. Since his death in 1990, the concept has been developed by other writers such as William W. George, James Autry, Ken Blanchard, Jim Hunter, Ken Jennings, Kent Keith, George SanFacon, and Larry Spears.”

The thing that most of these writers have in common is that none of them, to my knowledge, are writing from a biblical context. And yet, who really ‘coined and defined’ servant leadership? I would humbly suggest to you that it was Jesus.

“Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave - just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Matt 20:25-28

After Jesus washed the disciples feet (Jn 13) He said, “I have done this to you as an example that you should do as I have done.”

Recently I was reading an article by Linda Hill in the prestigious Harvard Business Review. The online article was entitled ‘Leading From Behind’ (May 5/2010). There she wrote as follows:

“This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the topic in June 2010… For now and into the coming decade or so, the most effective leaders will lead from behind, not from the front — a phrase I've borrowed from none other than Nelson Mandela. In his autobiography, Mandela equated a great leader with a shepherd: "He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind."

Then she adds these profound words, “It's a concept whose time has come.”

Shepherding? Leading from behind? An idea whose time has come? Really? Or is it a concept whose time has been for a long, long time? Here once again are those on the ‘cutting edge’ of the highest levels of secular academia putting forth what they consider to be the latest and greatest and I’m sure people flock (pardon the pun)to their lectures and book sales.

The simple truth is that the model of the leader as shepherd is owned by the Bible in a really big way. I hardly need to explain that for anyone who actually reads the Bible. Whether it is David’s Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…”. Or whether it is Jesus’ wonderful words, “I am the Good Shepherd who gives his life for the sheep…”. Or, whether it is a myriad of other references from the prophets and apostles that use the same model for leadership, the concept is clearly biblical in its orientation.

Furthermore, I read this passage a few days ago:

“Now then, tell my servant David, 'This is what the LORD Almighty says: I took you from the pasture and from following the flock to be ruler over my people Israel.” 2Sam 7:8

When God talks about David ‘following the flock’ that sure sounds like the concept of ‘leading from behind’ to me.

So, what does this all mean? Well, the whole thing about ‘servant leadership’ and ‘leading from behind’ means a whole lot if you are striving to be a good leader. That’s for sure. But beyond that, the whole thing means we all really should be more careful to give credit where credit is due.

“Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.” Rom 13:7