Peace on Earth? Where?

More than 2000 years ago a “multitude of the heavenly host” strongly implied to a group of common shepherds that there would be “on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:13-14) Ever wonder when, exactly, “peace” and “good will” are going to show up? I’m personally not seeing too much of it these days, and a cursory review of the last couple of millennia pretty well affirms that there’s been a whole lot more war and ill will than peace and good will, the 20^th Century perhaps being the worst of all . . . and we haven’t gotten off to a very good start here in the 21^st Century, either.

The broader implication of the “multitude of the heavenly host’s” announcement was that the birth of the “Savior, which is the Christ the Lord” (Luke 22:11) was going to be the catalyst for that peace. This raised all kinds of new found hope among the plebes. People (particularly the Jews) were so weary of the oppressive governance of the ruling class and their conquering ways, that their yearning for freedom made them wonder that maybe, just maybe this was the Great Shepherd promised by their prophet Isaiah. (Isaiah 40:9-11)

Alas and alack, they misunderstood Isaiah’s message (Prophesy is only clear in hindsight, and even then not perfectly clear) so when Jesus didn’t deliver them from their Roman oppressors they turned from shouting “hosanna” one weekend to “crucify him” the next. The handful that followed and trusted him to the very end were even confused; confused, that is, until after the resurrection. Then, and only then did they truly believe, and in less than 100 years that same confused handful of followers had multiplied themselves and spread the story of the “Savior, which is Christ the Lord” all across the known world.

Oddly, though, none of this led to peace. Peter, one of Jesus’ more challenging protégés, was crucified . . . upside down, no less . . . and his friend and disciple James was executed with a sword. With the lone exception of John, every last one of Jesus’ disciples died a brutal, martyr’s death. Is this the picture of peace you imagined? Me either! So what are we missing? Either the Bible is a lie, Jesus is a fraud, or we’re missing something really, really important.

Guess what? We’ve missed something really, really important.

The Jews believed their Messiah was going to overthrow the Roman government.

The Disciples thought Jesus was that Messiah and was going to overthrow the Roman government.

First Century Christians thought the resurrected Jesus was going to return during their lifetime and overthrow the Roman government.

Christians to this day are still waiting for Jesus to return and . . . you guessed it . . . overthrow the government.

We seem to think, whether consciously or subconsciously, that overthrowing the government is the pathway to peace, regardless of who the rulers of the moment are. After all, every election year we try to do just that, only to be disappointed that the person or persons for whom we voted didn’t bring the promised peace.

The truth is, Christians are supposed to be salt and light in the government, and everywhere else in this world (Matthew 5:13-14), reflecting the Jesus that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John describes in their biographies of him. Peace will never be found in governmental change. Peace will be found in personal change, the change that comes when you’ve had a genuine encounter with Jesus.

So, “on earth peace, good will toward men” it is.

I think I finally get it.

Do you?

Downsizing

My wife and I were downsizing the other day. Actually, we’ve been downsizing for the past 10 years, but that’s an entirely different story for another time. 

Anyway, during this phase of our Decade of Downsizing we were going through some old books and ran across “volume 10 of The Famous Burgess Bedtime Story Books”. Well, needless to say, I was intrigued. I was even more intrigued when I read the captivating title of volume 10, “The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver”. 

Now I love children’s story books, and wondered how in the world I missed this one. The picture on the dust jacket alone was enough to grab the heart of the little boy that still lives in this old man’s body.

Paddy is sitting there on his house of mud and sticks, in the middle of the pond that was created by his having dammed up Laughing Brook, talking and gesturing to Peter Rabbit. (Apparently Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit of 1902 wasn’t copyrighted, because Thornton Burgess’s Peter Rabbit looks just like him . . . cute little jacket and all.)

So for the next hour or so I read aloud to my wife (and me) all 180, very large print, 5 inch by 7 inch pages of this charming little tome. I learned more about beaver behavior and habitat during this hour than I’d learned in my entire life from my Dad and Mom’s encyclopedias, and I’d referred to those encyclopedias a lot as a kid. But what captured my attention the most were the values and morals that this book taught, things such as;

Chapter 1 - “Paddy the Beaver Begins Work” - The work ethic alone taught in this book makes it worth reading to your kids and, in my case, grandkid. To Paddy, work is a pleasurable and rewarding endeavor, and before one can truly relax, one must work!

“Work, work all the night

While the stars are shining bright;

Work, work all the day,

I have got no time to play.”

Chapter 2 - “Paddy Plans a Pond” - But Paddy’s work wasn’t simply work in order to keep busy. Paddy was a planner, and planned his work well, scouting around Green Forest for the perfect building site for his house, determining where to dam up Laughing Brook in order to create his pond, and even making sure that the backed up waters of Laughing Brook that created his pond would eventually overflow his dam and restore Smiling Pool. Not only was Paddy an engineer, he was a conservationist! 

Chapter 5 - “Paddy Keeps His Promise” – Paddy was an animal of his word. He assured the rest of the forest animals that his dam and new pond wouldn’t keep Laughing Brook quiet very long, but that Laughing Brook would in fact laugh once again. As the animals watched Laughing Brook dry up downstream of his dam, they were skeptical and ridiculed his work as destructive to their heretofore happy neighborhood.

“So day by day the dam grew, and the pond grew, and one morning Grandfather Frog, down in what once had been Smiling Pool, heard a sound that made his heart jump for joy. It was a murmur that kept growing and growing, until at last it was the merry laugh of the Laughing Brook. Then he knew that Paddy had kept his word, and water would once more fill the Smiling Pool.”

Chapter 19 - “Paddy and Sammy Jay Become Friends” – Sammy Jay the Blue Jay, like most animals and humans, created his own problems. He was judgmental, argumentative, and nosey, and wondered why no one liked him very much. He scolded animals with his querulous squawk for whatever he deemed the righteous cause of the moment, and Paddy was no exception. But Paddy was an exception to the other animals of Green Forest and Green Meadow in his response to the annoyances of the irascible Sammy Jay. For instance, Paddy addressed Sammy as Mr. Jay, “knowing how it pleased Sammy to be called mister.” 

“Now this made Sammy feel very proud and very happy. You know it is very seldom that he hears anything nice said of him. He flew down on the stump of one of the trees Paddy had cut. ‘Let’s be friends,’ said he. ‘With all my heart!’ replied Paddy.”

And there is more, oh so much more, but suffice it to say that maybe it’s time you did some downsizing yourself. It’s hard to tell what you might find in that basement, garage, or closet that might remind you of those tried and tested values for living that so many have forgotten. 

By the way, if you don’t find them in your basement like we did, “The Famous Burgess Bedtime Story Books” have been reprinted time and time again and can be found on Amazon.

Common Sense

My Dad is a simple man. He didn’t make it past the eighth grade. He worked in the factory doing piece work for his entire working life. He hired himself out to a local farmer as a “hand”, not because he needed the money, but because he enjoyed the simple life of a small farm. He is not a good debater. He is not well educated. He does not subscribe to the Harvard Business Review. His favorite author is probably a tossup between Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour; however, what my Dad does have, is a healthy dose of common sense.

            I remember watching him thoroughly clean, oil, and sharpen a borrowed chainsaw before returning it; wash, wax, change the oil and fill with gasoline his brother-in-law’s pickup truck before returning it; thoroughly clean the deck, then remove and sharpen the blade of a neighbor’s borrowed lawn mower before returning it. “Robert”, he’d say, “Always return anything you borrow, better than when you got it!” 

            I came home from sixth grade one time and told Dad about someone picking on me, threatening to beat me up. “Robert”, he said, “Don’t ever start a fight, but never run from one, either. And if the [bleep] (Dad had quite a vocabulary of colorful metaphors) is bigger than you, get something to even the odds, but never run. You’ll run for the rest of your life.” 

            One time my brother and I were “helping” him work on the old pickup truck. Well, at least our intentions were to work on it, but the hood latch was difficult to pop at best, and impossible at worst. He kept a small pry bar in the cab to help the latch along, and was working both that latch and his temper into quite a frenzy. 

“Pry, twist, pry, pry, twist . . . swear . . .  pry, twist.“ 

Even as a kid, I could see where this was going.

“Pry, twist” . . . increasing frenzy and muttering of a string of colorful metaphors . . . “twist, WHAM!”

He took that pry bar a slammed it across the hood of that truck, putting a nice, obvious crease across it. (The old truck really wasn’t much account anyway.)

He dropped his shoulders and looked over at us and said, “Well THAT was stupid!” 

No excuses, no blaming latch or the old, practically worn out truck, just accepting responsibility for his own actions . . . common sense.

I’ve learned so much from that dear, uneducated, hot tempered Dad of mine, because he was a man of common sense, common sense that I’m afraid is rather uncommon these days. It wasn’t all that long ago that knowing what was right, and knowing what was wrong was pretty obvious. People . . . most people, anyway, and if you weren’t most people, you were the odd ball . . . understood what was right and just did it, and they understood what was wrong and didn’t do that: and if they did something wrong or stupid, accepted responsibility and paid the consequences for it. 

The old prophet Isaiah in chapter 5, verse 20 of his prophesy saw the disappearance of common sense coming, and had this to say about it: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

The definitions of right and wrong, good and evil, have been turned on their heads, but let’s be honest with ourselves. Way down deep in our souls, we know the difference. We just need to be bold, like my Dad, and make uncommon sense common again.