Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's psalm of praise

How easy for me to live with you, Lord!
How easy to believe in you!
When my mind casts about
or flags in bewilderment,
when the cleverest among us
cannot see past the present evening,
not knowing what to do tomorrow --
you send me the clarity to know
that you exist and will take care
that not all paths of goodness should be barred.
At the crest of earthly fame
I look back in wonderment
at the journey beyond hope--to this place,
from which I was able to send mankind
a reflection of your rays.
And however long the time
that I must yet reflect them
you will give it to me.
And whatever I fail to accomplish
you surely have allotted unto others.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

What I admire in this poem is first of all the faith. "How easy to believe" he says, which sounds like some hymns I dislike for being too simplistic, singing that all our problems are over when we come to God. But that is certainly not Solzhenitsyn's story. He wrote this after going off to war as a young man, then going to the Gulag for eight years, then nearly dying of cancer, then suddenly finding success as a writer (for once a good surprise). So he certainly knew the bewilderment of not knowing what to do.

I also admire the humility. The fame he enjoys when he wrote this he sees as him reflecting God's glory. And he knows he's not the only one reflecting God's glory, whatever he does not succeed in is the tasks God has given to others.

Can you believe this?

A book I was reading quoted Psalm 46. Very familiar words, but I'm tempted to wonder how one can believe them.

1 God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.

Are you kidding us? You actually expect us to believe you are so serene in God that a cataclysmic earthquake could throw a mountain into the sea, and it wouldn't disturb you? "Oh, that's interesting. How different the mountain looks hurtling through the air. Wow, that splash looks cool. I wonder how big the tsunami is going to be. I'm glad I know God though, otherwise I'd worry."

I don't know about you, but I don't think I could pull that off. If I were at all calm as I watched a mountain flying overhead and splashing into the sea, it would be because I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. Could God keep me calm? I suppose possibly, if Jesus appeared to me, said "Steve, take my hand and close your eyes, you won't want to watch this next part".

But yet the statement isn't false. If I really understood who God is, and that he has promised to always be with me, and to work out every circumstance for good, I wouldn't panic at a huge earthquake altering the landscape or an asteroid the size of Russia heading right for me. I certainly wouldn't panic at some comparatively minor thing like a hurricane that merely flattened my house and cut off power and water to the neighborhood for a couple of weeks. And really minor things like a car wreck or losing my job or discovering I had cancer I'd barely notice.

I can expound how Scripture should give me that kind of confidence in God. But I don't have it. Maybe the Psalmist who wrote these words didn't have it yet either, maybe he wrote this to say "If I really believed what I know I should, I'd be calm." Maybe like me he wrote that down, looked at his words and prayed, "Lord I believe, yet help my unbelief. Help me really get this deep down."

The astounding story in Acts 6

I think the Holy Spirit did something truly astounding in the beginning of Acts 6. Not an astounding miracle like the tongues of fire and the speaking in unknown languages that happened at Pentecost, nor an astounding healing like the crippled beggar.

The chapter begins with tension. The Greek speaking believers complain that their widows aren't getting as much food aid as the Aramaic speaking widows. Typical humanity, one group complains that another group is getting favorable treatment. What would normally happen? Some Greek speakers might start their own church. The Aramaic believers would criticize those radicals that split the church, who accused the apostles of favoritism. The apostles might call a press conference to say they weren't unfair in distributing food, and accuse their critics of disloyalty to the church God has established. The Aramaic believers might wonder why there weren't many Greek speakers in the church, but conclude that the Greek speakers have hard hearts, are just a bunch of barely converted (if that) pagans.

But instead, the apostles call a meeting and say that something needs to change. How rare is it when a majority group running an organization decides to make a change because a minority within the group is feeling disgruntled? Even more astonishing, the seven people picked by the group to take charge of distributing the food are all (judging by the names) Greek speaking believers. This is what astounds me. The Greek speaking Jews perceive unfairness, so the whole church decides they'll fix the problem by having Greeks do the distributing. Truly the Spirit was working in the hearts of the church members.

Is there always an easy way to do something?

Now and then I think about my American world view. One thing I think we Americans are always ready to assume is that there should be a fast, convenient way to do anything. We should be able to quickly get any food we want at any hour of the day or night, and the information we need or the music or video we want should be accessible from anywhere on our cell phone or whatever we have with us.

Has anyone else noticed that in our time "doing something by hand" now means typing something out character by character in a different computer program, rather than just selecting the relevant data and clicking on one button that pops it all exactly where it has to be? I'm old enough to remember typewriters. Have I forgotten what a wonder it was to work in a word processor the first time? I could go to any typo I'd made, just delete and retype it, I could insert words I'd forgotten in the middle of the text and the following words just moved over? Now it feels so arduous when I have to select, copy and paste five or ten different numbers from one page one by one into another form or a different page.

Scripture often talks about patience, endurance and long suffering. Paul prays for the Colossians that they would be "strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience." (Col 1:11). When I pray, I usually think of God's power as able to instantly solve this problem and make me happy again. "Lord, I know you can do it. Just divide the sea, throw the mountain in, raise the dead, confound your enemies and let me see what I want descending from heaven right in front of me." The temptation in my prayers is to imagine God's power making patience and longsuffering unnecessary. But that isn't how God works often. Could it be that His ways are higher than our American ways?

Dangerous Daydreams

Doris at Courage to Grow has an interesting post about Steven Slater, the flight attendant who made the news going down the escape slide after a quarrel with a passenger.

What challenged me was her point that Slater had cherished this fantasy for years, and when the situation presented itself, he acted it out. In my own heart, I can see some dangerous daydreams that keep coming back. How do I not cherish them like Slater did? A simple resolution that I won't think about X only goes so far. It feels paradoxical, like the witticism that says "Whatever you do, don't think about a blue elephant." We hear that and we start thinking about a blue elephant in the act of trying not to think about one.

I have found a real benefit in laying my dangerous daydreams before God in prayer. The temptation is not to admit my weakness, to think it is all a matter of my will power to resist the daydream. But when life is to be lived in relationship to God, I should have the honesty to admit to Him I am the weak person that I am, tempted by the things I am tempted by. My wierd daydreams are no surprise to him, I might as well admit what tempts me. I have felt peace when I have done that.

Another thing I have thought about is to think more broadly than just "not thinking about X". I try to think about the positive things that indulging my daydream of X would destroy or diminish.

The unnamed heroes of Hebrews 11

Hebrews 11 is described as the Hall of Fame of faith. The writer lists all the great heroes of the Old Testament who did great things because of their faith. There is a recurring refrain "By faith, X did Y": "By faith, Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain", "By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice," "By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned," etc.

At the end of the chapter, the writer says he doesn't have time to tell about all the heroes. He lists a few more names, and then describes the life of people he doesn't name. "Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground." (verses 35-38).

This seems like a different kind of faith than what Abraham and Moses had. We don't see great miracles here. Was something wrong with their faith? The writer starts to leave us wondering when he says "These all were commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised."

So you can have faith, not receive what was promised, and that's good? That's what the writer is saying. He ends with this: "God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect." Their faith was good and commendable because it was looking forward to the really great thing that still hasn't come yet, which I think is the Kingdom of God in all its fullness.

God and our organizations

What is the characteristic of God’s work in human history? God has intervened to come alongside us, sinners who do not deserve His companionship, and works in us to make more of ourselves in His service than we could attain on our own. How should our organizations work in light of God’s work? Here are some principles I’ve thought of:

1) Organizations are only temporary, only God and people are eternal.
The besetting sin of organizations is to think that they are more important than the people in them, to think people only have value when they advance the organization’s goals.
But to say the organization only exists to benefit its members is also not good. Individuals need to give themselves to something larger than themselves, God is pleased when this happens.

2) Organizations please God when they call, encourage and facilitate people to invest their individual effort, time and identity in a larger purpose of God’s, outside their own individual lives. This echoes in a small way Jesus laying down His life and giving His life to live in us. We glorify God when we voluntarily lay down what is merely ours as individuals for a larger purpose.

3) When organizations force people to do certain things, that diminishes the glory of them voluntarily giving of themselves to the task. In the real world, force or compulsion must sometimes be used, it is not an unforgivable sin. But it should be used sparingly. To compel people to do a good thing may have a short term benefit, but to persuade them to voluntarily do the good thing is a greater benefit.

4) People who voluntarily take on a larger purpose will usually perform better than people who follow orders to take on a larger purpose. They will spontaneously and creatively adapt ways to fulfill that purpose in their circumstances.

5) When an individual expresses his fallibility and weakness before God, he is likely telling the truth, and this is a sign of strength. The same is true of an organization. An organization can admit weakness in itself, and the leaders can admit weakness in themselves, while still being faithful to the vision. To gloss over failures and difficulties in the name of upholding the vision is actually to subtly betray the vision.