An App for Holiness?

 

“I’m convinced that watches that track your exercise patterns don’t really help people get fit,” I said.  “I think they just help people feel good about the level of activity they already have.”

“I don’t think so,” the man next to me said.  “I get pretty competitive with it and really get focused when I have a long exercise streak going.”

“I’m probably a little cynical because I see a lot of overweight people wearing them,” I said.  Then, I added, almost as an afterthought.  “You know, it’s too bad that there isn’t a watch that keeps track of spiritual disciplines for you.”

“That would be interesting.”

“You know, have a feature that keeps track of church attendance, Bible reading, and prayer?  It would tell you when you are on a good streak of activities that are healthy from a spiritual standpoint,” I said.

“It would probably help some people,” the other man said with a laugh.

I continued thinking about the subject.  I am sure that some people would react negatively to such a watch feature.  It would seem too much like trying to curry favor with God or earn His approval.

Maybe the exercise comparison is a good one.  We exercise in order to build muscles and in the same way, there are things that, throughout history, Christians have relied on to grow in their relationship with Jesus.

We call these things Spiritual Disciplines.

Paul told Timothy, “Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it hold promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” (I Tim. 4:7,8)  The Christian life is not something that simply happens.  There are an awful lot of flabby, out of shape Christians these days and it isn't because God is less powerful or real.

Spiritual disciplines are out of favor these days.  They seem like the sorts of things the Pharisees would do to prove the fact that they had more holiness than anyone else around.  If you are doing these things to look holy or boost your ego, then they are wasted time and effort.

I believe there is benefit to them. Strong Christians in every era have made an effort to practice them regularly – even though they never had a watch or app that encouraged them in their exercises.

Seed Potatoes

 

“It’s time!”  I announced to my children.  “I need help planting potatoes this evening.”

Anna and Victoria looked a little excited, Elliot a little less so and Vincent did not look particularly pleased.  Anna said, “I need to practice flute, so I can’t really help.”

"That’s OK,” I said, “the rest of us will take care of it.”

After supper we walked down to the garden.  It was a cool evening and I had already made rows for the seed potatoes.

“Why did you cut the potatoes in pieces?”  Elliot wondered.

“It helps us cut more potatoes from each seed potato,” I told him.  “Some of the seed potatoes are pretty big and have several eyes on them and each eye has the ability to grow into a potato plant.”

“I want one!  I want one!”  Elise was definitive that she was going to help.  Then, she proceeded to put the piece given to her right on top of another potato.

“No, Leesy,” Victoria told her.  “You need to space them out.  Like this.”

I like planting potatoes.  Smelling the fresh spring air and not battling heat make it one of the nicer things to do in the garden.  Later, when the temperatures reach the 90s, it isn’t quite as much fun to do the necessary parts of gardening.

Planting things in the soil always makes me think of what Jesus said.  “Except a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” (John 12:24)

Every gardener knows that gardening is about giving up something to gain something more.  If you plant a half pound of bean seed or 20 pounds of potatoes, you expect to get much more at the time of harvest than what was planted in the first place.       

Jesus was talking of His own sacrifice.  We are coming up on Good Friday and a time when we remember Him walking to the cross to give up His life so that we might have life. 

We were – we are -- broken people.  God in His love and wisdom looked into this world and realized that the only solution for our brokenness was for Him to come into the world and be broken for us.  Only then could we be made whole.

We too are called to follow in our Master’s footsteps.  We need to die to ourselves so that we can live for Him and bear a plentiful harvest.

Jesus became like us so that He could bring us Shalom.  We must be willing to share in His brokenness so that we too can bring healing to our little corner of the world.

             

The Biggest Blueberry!

 

I walked along the walk towards the front yard.  Behind me, I heard the sound of Aria barking, but I ignored her.  There, along the driveway I could see my blueberry bushes full to the bursting with blueberries which seemed odd, since it was a chilly February day.

I picked a handful and ate it, tasting the sweet tartness of the berries.  Then, I saw it -- a blueberry as big as an apple, shining in the morning sun.  I had never seen a blueberry that big.

I picked the blueberry and in an exact of selflessness, I ran tearing into the house.  "Elaine," I called to my wife.  "I found the biggest blueberry I have ever seen and I want you to have it!"

Elaine took the blueberry, looked at it for a second then bit into it.

My moment of glory was immediately swallowed up by the sound of her choking and spitting out the berry into the trash.  "That is awful!"  She said.

And that, dear readers, is when I woke up.  It was all a dream and not even a very good dream at that.

I am not certain how to interpret it.  Certainly, it doesn't seem to speak of years of famine and plenty, nor of future empires.  If it speaks of anything, it is probably my forlorn desire to have a few blueberries from our bushes in a year when spring came to early and all of the blooming things are bound to get frozen.

Maybe it also says something about things that are not what they seem.  There are plenty of people who look good on the outside, but aren't so good on the inside.

Jesus told the Pharisees of His day that they were like white washed graves -- freshly painted on the outside but inside, they were full of dead men's bones.  Not surprisingly, they didn't take this very well.  No one really wants to be compared to a sepulcher -- however nice looking that sepulcher might be.

Our goal must never be to only clean up the outside.  Cleaning up the outside is helpful before going on a date, but for life, it is far more important is to let Jesus purify our hearts.

This is the only way to escape the trap of hypocrisy, of trying to seem like something that we aren't really -- a little like an apple-sized, dream lemon masquerading as a beautiful blueberry.

Playing with Thomas

 

 “Dad,” Elise said.  “I want you to play Thomases with me!”

 For the uninformed, Thomas is a sentient tank engine that runs on the tracks on the island of Sodor.  While the real Thomas lives far away (I guess in the United Kingdom), we have plastic railroad tracks and AA battery operated engines that run on them. 

 Elaine was out running errands and Elise and I were manning the fort together.  “Let me finish washing these dishes,” I told her.  “Then, we can play with trains.”

 “OK, Dad,” Elise said.  “My dollies really want to play with Thomas.  Hamber [her doll Amber] says that Thomas is her favorite engine!”

 I finished washing the dishes and we went upstairs to play with trains.  This mostly consisted of me putting tracks together and Elise watching me do so.  Then, we ran various trains around the tracks.

 It didn’t exactly thrill me to watch the trains meander around the tracks.

 I was getting tired of this.  “Shall we stop playing with trains?”  I asked in a hopeful voice.

 “No!” Elise said, quite firmly.  “Hamber wants to keep playing with trains.”

 “How about if we read a book together?”

 Elise thought for a moment.  “Yes,” she said, at last.  “We can read a book together.”

 So, we went downstairs, and I began to read a variety of books.  We read “Popcorn” by Frank Asch.  We read “Jonah’s Trash… God’s Treasure” by Joel Anderson.  We read several Richard Scarry books.

 At the end of each one, I gently suggested that Elise could do some playing on her own.  Each time, she demanded that I read more and so on and on we went until finally, as my voice gave out, Elaine arrived back at home.

 The morning had passed, and the clock showed that it was time to eat lunch.  As we sat down to eat, I felt a little frustrated.  I hadn’t accomplished anything that morning.  I had just put together train tracks that would be taken apart in a few days and read books that my daughter has heard twenty times before.

 I’m sure plenty of parents feel this way.  They clean and wash clothes and do endless tasks that only need to be repeated – sometimes hours after they are completed.  Their children want to play the same thing over and over or read the same books until they have them memorized.  

 I am afraid that the biggest issue for me is simply that I am not good at discerning what is valuable.  Jesus told a story in Matthew 13 about a man who finds a pearl that he recognizes as immensely valuable and then goes out and sells everything he has to purchase that gem.

 This story was talking about the importance of giving up all to follow after Jesus.  At the same time, the important thing in the parable is that the man recognized the value of the gem.

 In much the same way, I need to recognize what is valuable in my life.  Of course, at the top of the list is my relationship with Jesus, but other things are important too.  Nurturing relationships and getting to know my children are extremely high on the list of things that are worthwhile for me to do, even if they won’t ever get me into a “Who’s who” list of important people.

 If we were a little better at recognizing what is really valuable in life, our priorities would probably shift quite a bit.  Maybe we would even come to the place of understanding that the benefit of playing with our children isn’t playing with trains or reading books.  The benefit is spending time with some of the most important people in our lives and building relationships that will last, even when their childhood is gone.