Why your work will not be in vain

Between us and the Kingdom of God as a fully realised fact lies death. It cannot but be so. We saw before that the idea of a perfect society under conditions of mortality is impossible. The perfect society cannot lie this side of death. And moreover it cannot be the direct result of our efforts. We all rightly shrink from the phrase "building the Kingdom of God" not because the Kingdom does not call for labour, but because we know that the best work of our hands and brains is too much marred by egotism and pride and impure ambition to be itself fit for the Kingdom. All our social institutions, even the very best that have been produced under Christian influence, have still the taint of sin about them. By their own horizontal development they cannot, as it were, become the Kingdom of God. There is no straight line of development from here to the Kingdom. The outward attestation of that spiritual conviction is the fact of death. Across our path this obliterating shadow lies: not only must we, body, mind and spirit, personality as a whole, go out into the dark unknown, but also all our labours, our achievements in science, in art, in social and political progress - all is destined sometime to be swept away and forgotten. Everything in the end, even if that end be the promised death of the solar system, is destined to be buried in the dust of failure and death. Our faith as Christians is that just as God raised up Jesus from the dead, so will He raise up us from the dead. And that just as all that Jesus had done in the days of His flesh seemed on Easter Saturday to be buried in final failure and oblivion, yet was by God's power raised to new life and power again, so all the faithful labour of God's servants which time seems to bury in the dust of failure, will be raised up, will be found to be there, transfigured, in the new Kingdom. Every faithful act of service, every honest labour to make the world a better place, which seemed to have been forever lost and forgotten in the rubble of history, will be seen on that day to have contributed to the perfect fellowship of God's Kingdom. As Christ, who committed Himself to God and was faithful even when all ended in utter failure and rejection, was by God raised up so that all He had done was found not to be lost, but alive and powerful, so all who have committed their work in faithfulness to God will be by Him raised up to share in the new age, and will find that their labour was not lost, but that it has found its place in the completed Kingdom.

Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid The Rubble, p.46f

Joy can get no grip on him

(These comments by Matt Crawford in The World Beyond Your Head on the absence of silence and the gutting of attention have serious pastoral implications and are worth pondering) Our mental fragmentation can't simply be attributed to advertising, the Internet, or any other identifiable villain, for it has become something more comprehensive than that, something like a style of existence. It is captured pretty well in the following satirical news item from The Onion:

Gaithersburg, MD - While cracking open his second beer as he chatted with friends over a relaxed outdoor meal, local man Marshall Platt, 34, was reportedly seconds away from letting go and enjoying himself when he was suddenly crushed by the full weight of work emails that still needed to be dealt with...an upcoming wedding he had yet to buy airfare for because of an unresolved issue with his Southwest Rapid Rewards account, and phone calls that needed to be returned. "It's great to see you guys," said the man who had been teetering on the brink of actually having fun and was now mentally preparing for a presentation that he had to give on Friday and compiling a list of bills that needed to be paid before the 7th. "This is awesome." "Anyone want another beer?" continued Platt as he reminded himself to pick up his Zetonna prescription. "Think I'm gonna grab one." Platt, who reportedly sunk into a distracted haze after coming to the razor's edge of experiencing genuine joy, fully intended to go through the motions of talking with friends and appearing to have a good time, all while he mentally shopped for a birthday present for his mother, wracked his brain to remember if he had turned in the itemized remibursement form from his New York trip to HR on time, and made a silent note to call his bank about a mysterious recurring $19 monthly fee that he had recently discovered on his credit card statement.

I think most of us can recognise ourselves in Mr Platt. Is "modern life" really so burdensome? Yes it is. But Mr Platt seems to have a deeper difficulty as well: joy can get no grip on him. The sketch seems to be about the little tasks that claim his attention, but at the center of it is an ethical void. He is unable to actively affirm as important the pleasure of being with friends. He therefore has no basis on which to resist the colonisation of life by hassle. (p.6f)

"You cannot destroy God's good purposes for us."

Commenting on Joseph's & his brothers' experiences, Tim Keller writes:

We must never assume that we know enough to mistrust God's ways or be bitter against what he has allowed. We must never think we have really ruined our lives, or have ruined God's good purposes for us. The brothers must surely have felt, at one point, that they had permanently ruined their standing with God and their father's life and their family. But God worked through it. This is no inducement to sin. The pain and misery that resulted in their lives from this action were very great. Yet God used it redemptively. You cannot destroy his good purpose for us. He is too great, and will weave even great sins into a fabric that makes us into something useful and valuable.

(Walking with God through pain and suffering, p.264)

Not even an angel: on guarding the gospel

It's a striking warning: "if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse" (Galatians 1:8). Paul doesn't mince his words and we can be glad he didn't - the gospel is far too important to mess with. But why extend the warning to include 'an angel from heaven'? Is this just stylistic hyperbole?

Maybe Paul has in the back of his mind the unusual episode in 1 Kings 13 where a man of God from Judah is sent by the Lord to speak God's judgement on Jeroboam and was then to return home pronto, no staying to feast with the king. The message was to be spoken to the altar Jeroboam had fashioned, thus corrupting Israel's worship; it heralded the reign of a Davidic ruler who would be raised up by the Lord (Josiah) and would restore true worship and judge the corrupt.

The man of God played his part well and set off for home, just as he had been told to do. But a certain old prophet ran after him and urged him to return for the sake of hospitality - and he swayed the man of God with these words: "An angel said to me...bring him back". The man of God allowed himself to be persuaded and fell into judgement.

A message about a Davidic king who restores true worship and judges its corruption? The need to hold steadfastly to what God has spoken, even at the cost of the approval of other people? Maybe Paul wasn't being so random after all.