letting things go

The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief.
To increase knowledge only increases sorrow. (Ecclesiastes 1:18)

Ecclesiastes is in my daily Bible reading right now, so I am seeing several things in it that strike me. And this is one.

The more you know, the harder it is on you. I believe that to a large point, the old adage “Ignorance is bliss” is true. The less you know, the less you have to worry about. Simple people tend to be happier.

My wife and I are two examples of this. Ella is by no means unlearned, but she and I have a totally different outlook on life.

I am an accumulator of information. I find it everywhere and it sticks in my mind. What is more, for the most part, I remember a lot of it.

Ella, on the other hand, enjoys receiving new information, but will not go out of her way to get it. She enjoys it (to a point) when I bring up new things, but does not go out to seek it on her own.

It makes for a marked difference in our personalities. Quite frankly, I know too much. And the more I know, the more it weighs on me. The accumulated information does not necessarily help me. She knows what she wants to know and is happy. I have to know more and am not, as a general rule, a happy guy.

And I learn a lot of stuff I don’t need to know because that is the way I am made. Some things I learn, I do not tell her because it would make her unhappy or bothered. But it is a personality quirk of mine that I have to learn them.

Once I do, they sit in there inside the maelstrom that is many times my mind. They may come out at some odd time and people are surprised that I know whatever it is I know, but in general, most of the knowledge I accumulate is useless. It is a shame I do not go to cocktail parties, because the kind of stuff I know would be great there.

Occasionally I will ask her, maybe while we are driving around, what are you thinking about?

Her response will be something like, I was thinking about how pretty those flowers are. Or I was thinking about the song we just heard on the radio.

I am usually thinking about 17 things, all unrelated, all of them twirling around inside my brain competing for attention. And there are times when I would love just to shut them all up, to think about flowers without thinking about conversations from 30 years ago, and something I had read, and the Hebrew word for something and what might happen to the van next, and something I had read and the political situation in America right now and missing my kids and our financial situation and my knee hurting and – on.

I envy her in her ability just to let things go.

daily java

Daily Java:

Commit yourself to instruction; listen carefully to words of knowledge. (Proverbs 23:12)

I was listening to someone talk about the Bible the other day and they didn’t know what they were talking about. The worst part of it was that with a little study, they would have.

I guess that was the worst part. Maybe the worst part was that they were willing to go out in public and say things that were not true and didn’t know the difference.

A man I worked with thirty years ago had this problem. He would hear something and it sounded relatively logical to him so he would use it in his sermons. The problem was that it was blatantly wrong.

For instance, he said that the word Gentile means literally dog. It doesn’t take more than thirty seconds to read in a book that Gentile means nation and it is the word we get our word ethnic from. He was wrong and if you knew anything you knew he was. So he looked foolish.

The writer of Proverbs says to commit yourself to instruction. In other words, be a learning person. Keep on learning, keep on studying, keep on being fresh. Don’t say foolish things under the guise of scholarship. If you are going to pretend to knowledge, then be knowledgeable.

Listen to people. You can learn from anyone no matter how old you are. The real student does this. He always questions, always checks. He will ask anyone no matter who they are or their age if he doesn’t know what they are talking about. He has a thirst for knowledge.

To this kind of person, knowledge is not something they accumulated back in school and now just automatically have. It is something that is life-long, continual. And it is something that is a joy, to learn new things.

Do it. Make yourself a learning person and listen.

Seven Last Words of Christ: I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise

Seven Last Words of Christ:

I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:35-43).

As Jesus hung on the cross, bleeding his life away, many around him taunted him and laughed. He was hung between two thieves, a snarky little comment by the ones crucifying him, trying their best to minimize him and his death. After all, if he is hung between two thieves, it is guilt by association, right?

One of the thieves took advantage of  the situation and began railing against Jesus himself. The other recognized Jesus for who and what he was. He also recognized that he and the other guy deserved to be punished.

He called out to the other thief, let him alone. We deserve this. He doesn’t.

Then he looked at Jesus and asked would you please remember me when you come in your kingdom. I recognize you. You are the Messiah. Can you overlook my sinful life and just, if nothing else, claim to know me in that great day?

Jesus, through his haze of pain, looked at his fellow dying man and said, I promise you. Today  you will be with me in paradise. It is not long until we both die and I will not forget you.

We are dying, all of us. We begin the minute we are born. And Jesus promises life. As we die, we have to recognize that need for life. When we do, we call out to God, through Jesus, remember me. Claim me. Know me. Love me. See me.

And when we do, Jesus says to us, through his haze of love, today you will be with me in paradise.

daily java

Daily Java:

The wise are glad to be instructed,
      but babbling fools fall flat on their faces. (Proverbs 10:9)

I was a boy with my parents going through something, I don’t remember what. It was a museum or exhibit of some kind. A man who was friends with my father asked the guide what seemed to me to be an elementary question. I don’t know if I already knew the answer or if I just wanted to feel superior, but I asked my father why he asked such a (to me) silly question

My father replied something to the order of “There is no such thing as a silly question.” I have found that over the years that is not always true, but it is true 98% of the time. He also told me that the man I had mentioned was one of the smartest men he knew with several degrees from college. He knew a lot already and now that he had asked his question, knew some more.

I have found that if I do not know the answer to something, chances are high that a lot of others don’t know it either. And the odds say that the vast majority of people are afraid of asking for fear of engendering just such a response as the one I gave my father. They do not want to look stupid by asking a “silly question” but don’t know what else to do.

So because they don’t know something but also don’t have courage enough to ask, they don’t know the answer.

So I started to ask questions. Sometimes the questions are welcomed. Most people enjoy explaining things to others. It makes the feel smart to know what you do not know and to tell you their information.

Of course, there is the person who feels superior to you because they know and try to ride that feeling of superiority by making you look small. They are knowledgeable fools.

But you can still learn from them.

I have also noticed that when I ask a question, most of the group I am with will look at the person guiding us with an expectant look on their faces. What teacher doesn’t enjoy seeing that on their listeners’ faces?

Many times, if not most of the time, if I had not asked the question, they would not have known.

Sure I look a little foolish for not knowing a simple thing like that. Maybe everybody else in the room knows it except me. But I have a thirst for knowledge and want to know too. My ignorance may surprise that group, but at least in the next group that is talking about whatever I didn’t know, I will know what I am talking about.

I asked a friend the other day a simple question like that. Everybody knew what they were talking about except me. I had never participated in that particular activity but it interested me. I asked, it surprised a couple, but my friend just told me the answer. Now I knew too.

I could have looked knowledgeable and cool and been ignorant. Or I could have asked the question and known.

I ask people about themselves and where they are from, what they do for an occupation, all the things that interest me. And I have found that people love to talk about themselves. It is each person’s favorite subject. They talk for a long time. My son says I ask too many questions. But he also admits that when we leave he knows a lot about somebody he would not have known otherwise.

Another preacher friend says he doesn’t like to do so, so it always surprises him when I tell him something new about his members that I have asked that person.

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. I like to know and don’t mind looking ignorant to find out. And I find that I know far more things than the average person. Most of them are somewhat worthless, but still, I know them.

Am I better off? Maybe. Maybe not. But I will continue to ask questions, and be instructed.

daily java

Daily Java:   

Getting wisdom is the wisest thing you can do! And whatever else you do, develop good judgment.  (Proverbs 4:7)

Wikipedia blacked out the other day in protest of proposed internet legislation. The blackout was only for a day, but it is amazing how we have come to depend on it and the internet in general for knowledge.

With the internet and the availability of knowledge at our fingertips, we know a lot. We can find out almost anything from the internet. The chords to a favorite song, the population of Madagascar in 1897, the different breeds of horses, how to put a pulley belt on a GE dryer, just about everything.

We are awash in knowledge. We know more raw knowledge than at any other time in human history.

But as a culture, we are dumb as a rock. There is no discernment, no common sense, no wisdom.

The writer of Proverbs said that wisdom was the best thing you should get, so get wisdom. It sounds so simple.

But how do you get wisdom? How do you plug into the circuit that somehow transmits wisdom to your life.

Someone once said that if you teach children knowledge without teaching them about God, you are making time bombs. Without the knowledge of God to balance out the knowledge of everything else, there is no perspective. Everything becomes equal.

That is the thing that is bad about the internet: everything is equal. Trivia is as important to a computer as deep wisdom is. And when we do not have access to wisdom, we lose perspective. We lost he ability to tell what is important and what isn’t. our heads become full of knowledge, all of which competes for our attention.

Some of what age brings should be that perspective, the knowledge of how things fit in to life. That knowledge of perspective is wisdom. It is the realization that some things are more important than others, and that some things are to be avoided at all costs.

We lost that in an information age. We become so swamped with information that we lost the perspective. And when we do, we lose wisdom.

In Louis L’Amour books, it always portrays cowboys and men who roamed as deep thinkers. They didn’t know a lot, but hours spent on the back of a horse made them think a lot about what little they knew. So if the read a book, they thought a lot about that book. They didn’t have access to many, so the few they had access to became important to them.

We have access to so much that books become commonplace. And with the advent of Kindle and electronic books, we have access to even more. One person can carry around in his pocket more books that whole states had in their possession one hundred years ago.

And most of them are drivel. Wisdom tells us what is drivel and what isn’t. but that knowledge can only come when we have the perspective of the One who is eternal.

He is all that is truly important.

daily java

Daily Java:

“The time is surely coming,” says the Sovereign Lord,
      “when I will send a famine on the land—
   not a famine of bread or water
      but of hearing the words of the Lord.
 People will stagger from sea to sea
      and wander from border to border[g]
   searching for the word of the Lord,
      but they will not find it.
 Beautiful girls and strong young men
      will grow faint in that day,
      thirsting for the Lord’s word. (Amos 8:11-13)

The Lord said there would come a time when there was not a famine of food, but of knowledge. There would come a time when people would be dying from knowledge malnutrition more than anything else.

And it seems to be now. But in such an odd way.

We have an overflow of knowledge today. With the advent of Google, we can find out just about anything with one click on our computers. In the past few days, according to my Google link, I have found out a number of things. Definitions of words, biographies of people and of rock bands, cake recipes, Christmas jazz stations, what kind of dog a corgi is, an English to Klingon dictionary, a Greek interlinear Bible, the words and chords to “Me and Bobby McGee,”

I have always had a fascination with knowledge and the computer is a way to almost glut that desire to know more.

But yet, with all the knowing more, we really know less. Things are so easily attainable that we lose the perspective that comes from study. Reading a book and thinking about it brings wisdom. Finding a quote brings just knowledge. Disciplined study brings wisdom, scattergun Googling brings knowledge. That kind of knowledge is great for parties where you are looking for something to talk about, but in general, it is worthless.

We are in an age of wisdom famine. People seem to have no perspective on things, no ability to think things through. We are an impulse society, and impulsive people are never happy nor are they well balanced.

And the knowledge we have is mostly trivial. Looking at the Google bar and what I have looked for on the computer, I see that it is mostly nothing, just trivial things. The idea of sitting with a good book and just reading is almost alien. And it affects me. I want to know something and I want to know it now. I finally have something that can give me instant information. In fact, I get irritated at having to read all the posts on the first page of the Google search just to find my scrap of information.

It breeds impatience, and wisdom can only come through patience.

And we can only come to God through patience and learning to listen to him and know him. He is not Googleable. You cannot know him quickly, nor can you know him thoroughly without a lot of time spent in looking for him and listening to him.

Without him? We grow faint, no matter  how well off we may be otherwise.

there are those who learn all their lives

Commit yourself to instruction; listen carefully to words of knowledge.

(Proverbs 23:12)There are those who learn all their lives. They never stop. I guess that I am probably one. I love the accumulation of new knowledge.

What do I do with it? Many times, nothing. I just gain it. My wife is amused at it sometimes. I just seem to have a never ending thirst to know new things. Even though it may be of absolutely no use to me, I still will go out of my way to learn it.

And I always picked up stuff fast, too. Languages, ideas, music, philosophies – they just came naturally to me.

I suppose they do because I search them out. I don’t know of anyone who accidentally learns stuff as a matter of course, that is smart by accident. I know you get a lot of your life knowledge accidentally (don’t touch the heater, don’t hold a knife by the blade, etc) but in general, people who are learned set out to be so.

It wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision to learn stuff. Most of the time it is just the way a person is wired.

For instance, I will go out of my way to learn new things. My wife, on the other hand, enjoys hearing about the new things I have discovered but will not pursue them herself. She likes to know the new things, but puts little effort into the learning.

Most people are like that, I think. The odd bit of weird knowledge is interesting but the life-long pursuit isn’t.

There is a book I have that is called “The Bathroom Reader.” It is designed to go in the bathroom to read at the odd times you are trapped in there. It is trivia, completely and utterly useless trivial information. It is fun to read, but useless to life.

I pore through it and others like it. It is almost a disease with me. And for the most part, I do well in Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit and things like that because of that tendency.

Most of the things I learn quite frankly do not stick. But it doesn’t matter. It is the learning.

The same with the child of God. To be pleasing, the child of God has to have a thirst for the knowledge of God. That is not to say that you are just memorizing scripture. Memorizing scripture does not necessarily mean you know God. It just means you know a lot of scripture by heart.

Unless you use that scripture in your service to God, all it becomes is trivia. It has to be used.

Commit. Listen carefully. Know what God wants and do it.

the more you know, the harder it is on you

The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief.
To increase knowledge only increases sorrow. (Ecclesiastes 1:18)

Ecclesiastes is in my daily Bible reading right now, so I am seeing several things in it that strike me. And this is one.

The more you know, the harder it is on you. I believe that to a large point, the old adage “Ignorance is bliss” is true. The less you know, the less you have to worry about. Simple people tend to be happier.

My wife and I are two examples of this. Ella is by no means unlearned, but she and I have a totally different outlook on life.

I am an accumulator of information. I find it everywhere and it sticks in my mind. What is more, for the most part, I remember a lot of it.

Ella, on the other hand, enjoys receiving new information, but will not go out of her way to get it. She enjoys it (to a point) when I bring up new things, but does not go out to seek it on her own.

It makes for a marked difference in our personalities. Quite frankly, I know too much. And the more I know, the more it weighs on me. The accumulated information does not necessarily help me. She knows what she wants to know and is happy. I have to know more and am not, as a general rule, a happy guy.

And I learn a lot of stuff I don’t need to know because that is the way I am made. Some things I learn, I do not tell her because it would make her unhappy or bothered. But it is a personality quirk of mine that I have to learn them.

Once I do, they sit in there inside the maelstrom that is many times my mind. They may come out at some odd time and people are surprised that I know whatever it is I know, but in general, most of the knowledge I accumulate is useless. It is a shame I do not go to cocktail parties, because the kind of stuff I know would be great there.

Occasionally I will ask her, maybe while we are driving around, what are you thinking about?

Her response will be something like, I was thinking about how pretty those flowers are. Or I was thinking about the song we just heard on the radio.

I am usually thinking about 17 things, all unrelated, all of them twirling around inside my brain competing for attention. And there are times when I would love just to shut them all up, to think about flowers without thinking about conversations from 30 years ago, and something I had read, and the Hebrew word for something and what might happen to the van next, and something I had read and the political situation in America right now and missing my kids and our financial situation and my knee hurting and – on.

I envy her in her ability just to let things go.

daily java

Daily Java:

But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. (Matthew 24:36)

I read again of a guy who has a book out (at least it is free) that says that 2011 will be the last year for the human race as it is now, that God will come again either in late 2011 or 2012, I was not sure. Either way, he is full of beans.

Jesus made it clear here and in a couple of other passages that nobody knows when he was going to come back, not even himself. When he comes back, it will be like a thief in the night. In other words, it will be suddenly. We will be standing around doing stuff like normal and then – bang! – he will be here.

And one thing is for sure – I have said this before and will say it again – if God the Father did not tell Jesus when he was coming back, he sure isn’t going to tell some preacher so he can have a book, website and followers. That is for certain.

If he did, he would be placing that man or woman above Jesus. And you remember that Jesus is King. Nobody is above him. It is arrogant to presume such.

I suppose that it is fear of the unknown. We feel we have to unlock all the mysteries of space and time. We cannot stand it that God has a secret and we are dying to know it. That is part of the human psyche, I guess. We want to know the unknowable.

Deuteronomy 29:29 says The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. In other words, we have our stuff and God has his stuff.

He has revealed to us the “mystery” that the Old Testament people were looking for so hard in order to show us Jesus. That mystery, of course, was Jesus and his redemptive power. It was grace triumphing over law. It was manifest love.

Just being able to look into a Bible makes us more aware of the will of God than people living even 300 years ago. We have greater access to the written word than the vast majority of humanity through history. But yet we want more.

And wanting more is not necessarily bad. But when you start making up stuff for those who are desperate for more, you sin the sin of both arrogance (the presumption that you know something even Jesus didn’t know) and either you commit the sin of lying or it is just that you are crazy.

In the movie Braveheart, there was a man who claimed to talk to God as we talk to each other. It was obvious that he was mentally unsound and everyone around, including himself, knew it.

Those who claim to speak for God on hidden things are either liars with an agenda of self-aggrandizement or crazy. They are not prophets.

Just ignore them.

daily java

Daily Java: John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' " 16 From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known. (John 1:15-18)

It is hard to remember what things were like before you had your life-time watershed moment, before you had your life set on its course.

It is hard to remember what it was like not to be married to my wife. We have been together for more than twice the time we were apart.

It is hard to remember what it was like before I went into the ministry. Having been a pastor for 36 years, I have trouble remembering the time before I became a pastor.

Life has been set for so long, it sometimes seems as if it has always been this way.

John the apostle felt the same way when he wrote this. Since he was writing it some 70 years after the fact, it was hard for him to remember what it was like before. His comment about John: He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. In his mind, Jesus had always been and it was probably hard for the old John to remember when he was new. I would even imagine that the old John had difficulties remembering all of what happened that long ago. After all, it was only 3 years out of his long life. And he was probably pretty young then.

Seminary was a two year period 35 years ago, and the memories, while sometimes quite vivid, are fading as I get older. The same with the memories of our wedding and honeymoon, high school years and childhood in general. That is a normal thing. They are all part of the fabric of my existence, to use a neat phrase. None of them are particularly gone, but they are all kind of melded together in my memory. It is hard to remember a life without them.

Jesus brought grace and truth. And John can see the blessings that he has gotten from them – one blessing after another. He can see all of the great things that have happened. Sure, some bad things happened also, but the grace of God had overwhelmed everything else. The thing is, he had the grace of God and the Lord’s blessings in his life for so long that he could not remember not having them.

He knows he has not seen God, but for sure he has seen his results in everything he is, has done and ever will do in the little time he had left.

That is what I strive for. The total knowledge of God in such a way that it becomes part of my very existence.

I want to know him like Paul knew him. As he said, I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day (2 Timothy 1:12).