The Command to Care

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 

Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so.
Genesis 1:28-30 NASB

I remember when my parents gave me my first guitar.  I had wanted one for some time, I had invested time learning to play on my dad’s guitar.  When my parents gave me my own guitar it came with a solemn charge.  This was a gift, but it was expected that this gift would be taken care of.  It was a way to show appreciation.  I was not just being given a gift, but I was being given a gift that needed to be maintained and was meant to be used for a specific purpose.  God created mankind to fill, care for, and enjoy His amazing creation of planet earth.  This charge was repeated to Noah and his descendants after the great flood (Genesis 9:1-4).  This planet is a special charge for humanity.  To discover what God has made and how to best support it as it supports us by God’s provision.  Just as my parents’ charge to me to care for my first guitar was really for my greatest good, so caring for this amazing planet is an important part of the charge of every believer.  We were never meant to abdicate our management of this domain either in the sense of abusing it, or in the sense of worshipping it and thinking that the earth would be better off without us.  We are meant to interact responsibly with our physical environment, appreciating and enjoying the great gift that it is to us from our loving Heavenly Father.  And yes, I still have my first guitar, and it still gets played, enjoyed and maintained.  

Swimming Wonders

Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens." God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. Genesis 1:20-23 NASB

My son, Finnegan, started it all.  He decided that he was interested in sea creatures.  Whale sharks were the most interesting and everything else in the ocean was interesting by proximity.  I think the first mystery was the massive size of many of the greater sea creatures, but the adventure was only beginning.  First evening story time became dedicated exclusively to reading about sea creatures, and then even our entertainment hours began to be consumed by deep sea documentaries.  What is most lovely and remarkable about each of these amazing creatures is how beautiful and complex they are.  They fill the depths of the ocean with amazing bio-luminescence and interconnected systems of living and functioning together that until very recently went totally unnoticed by humanity.  To see these creatures that were created with such beauty and magnificence and such purposeful planning even though many would never be seen by human eyes is remarkable.  It is another demonstration of the greatness of God to have created a world that will intrigue and impress us with its wonder and magnificence until we are face to face with Him...and even still all of the beauty of the created earth is only a reflection of the wonder of His infinite and matchless character expressed most fully in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Worship Book

I bought this book a number of years ago when I was looking for a hymnal to have around the house. It looked nice and simple and I hardly looked through it at all before buying it because it was cheap and it was the only hymnal at the so called "Christian Book Store." Like any hymnal it has some of the ones you hoped to find and is missing some that you really would ordinarily expect. But I found a new aspect of it tonight, which disappointed me when I first got it, but now I find invaluable. The following prayers come out of this book:

For Janitors, Maintenance Men, and Refuse Collectors

Great God: you have made the world a home for us, and surrounded us with beauty. Thank you for those who take pride in keeping the air fresh and streets clean; who make corridors ad working spaces clear and safe for us. May they labor faithfully to maintain your world; for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For Play

God our Father: you made the world for sane and cheerful pleasures. Show us how to live free from false restraint or the terror of aimless craving, so that we may enjoy good times together, like guiltless children who play within the safety of your love, known in Jesus Christ, who set us free for joy. Amen.

For Little Children

Great God our Father, Father of families: guard the laughter of children. Bring them safely through injury and illness, so they may live the promises you give. Do not let us be so preoccupied with our purposes that we fail to hear their voices, or pay attention to their special vision of the truth; but keep us with them, ready to listen and to love, even as in Jesus Christ you have loved us, your grown-up, wayward children. Amen.

For Those Who Work in Education

Holy Father: you have led us in each new generation to discoveries of the truth. Thank you for men and women who teach, administer, and work in schools and colleges. Make them eager to explore your world, searching mysteries. Never let them neglect students who are slow to learn. Keep teachers young in mind, resilient, exciting, and devoted to human welfare; through the love of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

When a Family is Separated

Lord God: watch over us while we are apart. Keep us in your love, and bring us together again to praise you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I love prayers. There was a time when I would have criticized such prayers as being stiff and too formal (though these aren't nearly as formal as many others). But what strikes me about it is how much I miss in my prayer life. I love to read a short elegant paragraph that reminds me to be thankful for my children, to be thankful for people who clean and build and work. It reminds me to be praying for the lives around me. Prayer is such a rich and glorious gift of God. That we can enjoy fellowship with the Creator of the Universe, it's more than a bit unbelievable. But no less true for our inability to understand it.

Every Trial, Every Trial, Every Trial

"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." James 1:2-3 (NASB)

The Passage

A couple of interesting little insights about this passage:

1) Consider - This word has two primary meanings. One is to lead, rule or dominate. The second is to consider, reckon, account or credit. Obviously the second is the meaning that is meant here. But the two are not totally unrelated are they? Both suggest a level of authority. This is one of those "impossible verses." We must be resting in Christ, but the fact that this is given to us as a command in scripture tells us that it is within the power of the believer who is resting in Christ to view his or her trials, difficulties, failures, annoyances and problems as joy.

2)All joy - Other teachers have brought this "all joy" as "perfect joy" or even "ultimate joy." Ultimate joys in our lives may be a wedding, the birth of a child, a graduation, the day we got a job we wanted, or got a raise because of how our performance was noticed. But none of these things are being discussed - trials are.

3)Trials of Many Kinds - Many here is the Greek word that we get the word polka dots from. Polka dots are a bunch of dots of various sizes. Big dots, little dots, medium dots and everything in between. Great stuff. These are the trials that James is talking about about here. The little trial when you stub your toe or your car doesn't start the first time, and the big trial when you lose a job, have a major health problem, or lose a loved one. All of those trials (shockingly) are reasons for pure joy.

Application

It would be a misapplication of this verse to say that you cannot be joyful and morn. You cannot be joyful and weep. That is confusing "joy" with happiness. True joy, God's joy, goes far deeper than circumstance and far deeper than emotion. It is rooted in neither of those things. So you are not violating the spirit of this verse when you mourn your loss at a funeral, when you are sad to lose a job you love, or when things don't go your way. What this is talking about is that we are never left to the complete darkness of it. When we step back from those emotions and the pain we are able to rejoice on the deeper level of knowing that we are being moved closer to our Lord, being cradled and held by our Savior, being watched over and conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

Appropriation

Believe it or not I got a chance to see this one very much not in action tonight...by me! Our two kids are in the same room now. Cadence is on about a two week cycle of "I stay in bed and go to sleep when I'm put to bed" and then two weeks of "I get out of bed like my electric blanket is plugged into the toaster!" You can imagine this is frustrating. But Finn is also having trouble accepting the loving hand of Sleep when she comes to caress him with the sweet oblivion of careless infant rest. Thus, once he's down we get agitated by anything that may wake him...like a klutzy two year old plowing jumping off her bed and plowing across the room to swing the door open and run down the stairs for no reason whatsoever.

This all came to something of a head this evening when Cadence had been up 3 times and woke Finn on the 4th. Tempers were lost, punishments were given. I rocked Finn; April rocked Finn. Cadence got up again. Nobody slept. Tempers were lost. It is hard in retrospect not to see the humor in the situation. Two children, one of whom feels it is her personal mission to do ninja flips out of her bed each night and see if she can set a personal record for how many times she can be out of bed before absolute exhaustion takes her and causes her to drink her portion of calm and surrender to the demands of sleep. And another child of less than a year whom the God who created the universe also happened to install a secret button on the back of his head that causes his eyes to fly open whenever he is placed on his back to sleep. It is clear that the Lord and I will have a good laugh about this when I get to see Him face to face (sooner than later if the kids keep this up), yet my lack of perspective will not be the good part of the joke.

My prayer is to be able to hold the children, discipline as is necessary and glorifies the Lord, and dance through these trials that will only be remembered with fondness. I'm sure there will be a time when rocking my troubled children to sleep is far more complicated than simply holding them, swaying, and humming softly. I know I will wish for the time when hurts could be kissed away and hurt feelings can be mended by a nickel bag of gummy treats. But how can I hope to rest in Christ and consider those upcoming trials pure joy, if I can't consider these trials pure joy?