A Toast To My Mother Now In Heaven

“What do workers gain from their toil?

Ecclesiastes 3:9

At my mother’s grave on Friday, I prayed from the Book of Common Prayer:  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” And as I prayed, I pondered the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes:  “What do workers gain from their toil?” Yes, my mother toiled, she sacrificed, she gave, and she saved.  And at my mother’s grave, I wondered — what does it all mean?  What is there left to show for her effort?

This is the hard question Solomon asks at the end of his immortal poem in Ecclesiastes.  It is the poem that was read at my mother’s memorial service.  The poem that begins:  “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”

Then after these opening words, Solomon’s poem follows with 14 pairs of opposites, 14 pairs of human activities that seem to cancel out one another:

a time to be born, and a time to die,

a time to plant, and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal……”

And Solomon wonders — if one human activity only cancels out the other — if we are born only to die, and we plant only to uproot, then what is the gain from it all?   What use is all our effort?  In asking this question, Solomon actually uses a word from the business and accounting world of his day —  “What is the net profit? he asks.  What is the bottom line?  Does income exceed outgo?

That’s the question I wrestled with at my mother’s open grave — is there anything that remains from all her toil?

Solomon answers that question for me in a way that only Solomon could.  With characteristic beauty and insight Solomon affirms the bottom line of existence for the believer:

God has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from the beginning to end.  I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.  That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil – this is the gift of God.  I know that everything God does will endure forever. (Ecclesiastes 3:11-14)

Ponder again God’s incredible truth!  With eternity in our hearts we cannot yet know life’s eternal dividend.  We cannot yet grasp the beauty of life’s completed tapestry.  Yet one day we will look back and see that indeed God “has made everything beautiful in its time.” Every piece will fit!

In the meantime, Solomon advises:  “Be happy…do good…eat and drink….find satisfaction in all your toil.” So tonight I toast Berniece Smith!  I savor the beauty of her life now complete, and I enjoy.  And I will enjoy all the days to come.  “This is the gift of God,” that I will not squander!

Enjoy!

Tim Smith

Tell Us A Story!

¹Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
²I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
³things that we have heard and known,
that our ancestors have told us.
⁴We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.

Psalm 78:1-4

It seems only yesterday that our two sons were pleading at bedtime, “Tell us a story daddy!”  And then the insistent cry for an encore: “Tell us another story, daddy!”  We all love a story and the wonderment that begins with the enchanting words, “Once upon a time…”

When my mother died last month, I was having a hard time sorting through some of my feelings.  I couldn’t quite put a finger on some emotions.  Then my wife, Rita, helped me as she observed, “Youe mother’s death means that you are now the keeper of the stories.”

The keeper of the stories, yes, that’s it.  Part of the gravity of what I was feeling was the awareness that generations of stories were now in my keeping.  It was now up to me to preserve and pass on the stories to children and grandchildren.

Today’s scripture text speaks to all who are keepers of the stories.  The psalmist is commanding us to pass on the stories “our ancestors have told us…to the coming generation” We are to faithfully recite the “glorious deeds” of the Lord.

The Bible comes down to us not as a textbook of systematic theology, or a treatise on metaphysics, but a book of stories.   The Bible is a book about real flesh and blood people whose stories are interwoven into God’s one great Story of Redemption.

In recent years I have decided to stop playing it safe.  I have decided to stop living with the breaks on.  I have decided to so live the years allotted to me that I will have stories to tell my grandchildren.

But as an English teacher once told me, conflict and struggle are essential to any story.  There is no story without a character who is struggling, struggling against forces outside or forces within.  These struggles may be against forces of nature, against society, or against other persons.  Or they may be struggles within, struggles against one’s weakness, against fear, against doubt, or temptation.  But without struggle, there will be no story to tell.

Having just returned from the historic sites of Yorktown, Jamestown, Mount Vernon, Arlington Cemetery, and others, I am reminded that the stories we cherish are stories of great struggle.  They are stories where something was at stake, where something was laid on the line.

I know that the stories I will be telling my children and grandchildren will be stories of redemption, of grace, of failures, of forgiveness, and new starts.  But I pray that my stories will also be stories of faithfulness, of trust, daring, and steadfastness, like those in The One Great Story.

Reflect for a few moments on what stories you want to tell….

To new adventures!

Tim Smith

Guided Through The Wilderness

¹⁴ When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us”…¹⁸ When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. ¹⁹ It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees ²⁰ and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel. Deuteronomy 17:14, 18-20

On the fourth of July, 1776, after conducting some other rather important business, the Second Continental Congress appointed John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson to “bring back a device for a seal of the United States of America.”

Franklin proposed for the seal that they adapt the biblical story of God parting the Red Sea for the Israelites.  Jefferson suggested that the seal be “the Children of Israel in the Wilderness, led by Cloud by Day, and a Pillar of fire by night.”

Jefferson eventually embraced Franklin’s proposal and rewrote it for presentation to the Congress, that the seal for the United States of America be the Lord God leading the Children of Israel through the Red Sea.  While another theme was  eventually chosen for the seal, the story of the Lord leading His people played a formative role in our founders’ thinking.   They believed that the Lord had led and blessed them and that the Hand of Providence was at work in the nation’s founding.

Today’s text from Deuteronomy was an critical for the founders as they considered the role of a chief executed and other elected officials.  God’s command that each new king should “write for himself a copy” of God’s law meant for the founders that leaders and citizens should be fluent in the Scriptures.   Thus they promoted public education so that children could be taught to read the Bible.  Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth were established to train ministers of the Gospel.

Our founders were convinced that through the knowledge of the Bible that an elected leader or citizen would “not consider himself better than his brothers….and then he and his descendants will reign a long time” (Deuteronomy 17:20).   They were convinced that this was the way to true brotherhood, community, and lasting prosperity.

Let us fervently pray that our nation and leaders will return to this faith in the Providence that governs nations, and let us exalt the Scriptures to their rightful place in our land!

Grace and Peace,

Tim Smith

Andy He Walks With Me

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Matthew 28:20

Often when my wife, Rita, returns from a walk in the early morning, I will ask her if she saw “Andy.”  With a twinkle in her eye she will often reply, “Yes, I saw Andy this morning, Andy talked with me.”

The little joke we share is something we have taken from the chorus of the old hymn, “In the Garden.”    The hymn is about Mary Magdalene coming to the garden on the first Easter morning and finding the tomb empty.  Then she is greeted by the living Lord.  The chorus of the hymn goes like this:

And He walks with me,  and he talks with me,

and he tells me I am His own;

and the joy we share as we tarry there,

none other has ever known.

Yes, Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me, Andy tells me I am His own! Jesus promised He’d always be with us, to the end time.

With this in mind I want to share with you a spiritual practice that has been very meaningful to Rita and me.  The practice is the “Daily God Hunt.”  The Daily God Hunt is something I learned from David and Karen Mains in their book, Daring to Dream Again.  We cannot begin to dream God’s dreams for us until we really know that God is with us.

The Daily God Hunt begins each morning with a simple prayer telling God that we will be watching for Him throughout the day.  And then we look for God’s presence with us in:

1.     Any obvious answer to prayer

2.     Unexpected evidence of God’s care

3.     Help to do God’s work in the world

4.     Unusual linkage or timing (synchronicity)

At day’s end we reflect back on the day and note any God sightings.  We then give thanks for those times that he made His presence known to us.  We find that in looking for God each day He seldom disappoints.  The more we watch for Him, the more He seems to show up!

He promised He’d always be with us.  Watch for Him!

Grace and Peace,

Tim Smith

Know Thy Enemy

¹²For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness,  against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. ¹³Therefore take up the whole armor of God…Ephesians 6:12-13

“Know thy enemy,” the sixth century B. C., Chinese general, Sun Tzu, stressed to his troops.   He taught that only by knowing the enemy could victory be secured.  In his definitive treatise on military strategy, “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu emphasized the necessity of not just knowing the enemy, but also knowing what weapons and strategies would be effective against that enemy.

In today’s text, the Apostle Paul is also emphasizing the necessity of knowing our enemy and the means to defeat him.  And again and again I find myself needing to come back to these few verses to be reminded who our enemy really is, and what is needed to defeat him.

In the midst of what many are calling a “culture war,” and even a “clash of civilizations,” I can find myself getting pretty worked up and heated.  Hardly a day goes by but we see people in the news, who like in Isaiah’s day, “call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20).   And often it seems like they are winning!  And I want to do something!

But Paul reminds, “Know thy enemy.”  Be sure you know who the enemy really is.  And the enemy is not people, however mixed up they might seem in their worldviews and tactics.  No, Paul says, we face an enemy far greater than “blood and flesh”.  The real enemy is “the cosmic powers of this present darkness,” and the “spiritual forces” behind them.   We’re ultimately caught in a spiritual battle.   And this spiritual battle calls for spiritual weaponry.

No wonder then that Paul urges believers:   “Therefore take up the whole armor of God….truth…righteousness…the gospel…faith…salvation…the word of God” (6:14-17).  And Paul concludes the call to committed Christian living with his ever insistent call to prayer:  “Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.  To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all believers (6:18).   Yes, that’s what we need, isn’t it.   That’s what our world needs too.

This is where we begin to “fight the good fight,”

Grace and Peace,

Tim Smith