Little Bitty

Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. -- Proverbs 13:11

Lottery winners and the third generations of the wealthy are notorious for squandering what might have come to them too easily.  People who win lotteries are quite frequently people who never had much money to manage so they are not very good at it.  This is not an economics lesson, but Bastiat said he had observed the working class, especially in difficult times, still spending money on small luxuries.  I’ve noticed the same kind of phenomenon with members of my own family who are struggling financially.  If something is cheap, they are apt to buy it even though it is completely unnecessary.  I know someone who didn’t make a car payment for four months until the car was hauled off.  In that time, they continued to smoke their cigarettes and buy plants and borders for their flowerbed.  At one point, the man had experienced a good week in his business so he “rewarded” himself with a polo shirt and shorts from Bass Pro.  His closets are stuffed with clothes just like that – much of it branded and overpriced.  I don’t think he even owns a suit.   He has – and I am being somewhat conservative – probably forty pair of cheap shoes – sandals, slides, flip-flops, Vans, and athletic shoes.  He could afford to buy a quality pair of dress shoes, some good work boots, and some nice casual shoes if he would stop wasting his money impulsively buying cheap junk.    (I could tell a story about what I did to get their car back, but that would be a different post.)

What is true in the natural is true as well in the spiritual.  Western civilization is built upon the foundation of Judaism and Christianity.  It has enriched and enlightened us for centuries.  Much like the Prodigal, we have burned through this inheritance at an alarming rate.  Julie first brought this idea to my attention a couple of years back.  Many of us do not realize, and some actively deny, the role our traditional values, Judeo-Christian values, play in the culture we enjoy today.  That cultural and spiritual heritage was built up bit by bit by the Spirit of God from Abraham, Moses, and David, Christ Himself, Paul and Peter, Rome and the Church, Luther and the Reformation, Whitefield, Wesley, Edwards and the revivalists.  Christian thinking shaped and tempered the American Revolution and the founding of our Republic.  The secular revolution of France, though historically near was spiritually distant and led to a very different end. 

The people who escaped tyranny and found freedom from religious persecution understood the value of freedom.  Those who had lived in slavery, being denied the most basic of human rights understood.  The generations who had liberty and an enlightened culture and worldview handed to them on a silver platter understood less and less.  It’s not a new story.  You can see the cycle of liberation, prosperity, apathy, enslavement, and repentance in the Book of Judges.  As surely as the top of the wheel rolls to the bottom, destruction awaits those who were hastily blessed.

It is easy to look at the situation in this country, especially among those who call themselves Christians, and become discouraged.  As Jeremiah asked, “If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?  And if in a safe land you are so trusting, what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?”  If we refused to fight when we still could have won, will we fight when all is lost? 

I don’t think anyone imagined that it would get this bad.  I mean, it’s just a pack of cigarettes, right?  It’s just a coffee at Starbucks?  Five bucks, more or less, isn’t going to make or break anybody, is it?  So what if the kids at school don’t say the pledge, don’t pray, don’t learn to read?  What does it matter if the history they teach is exactly right or not?  After all, who really knows what happened?  All these politicians are the same.  It doesn’t matter which one you vote for.  Why bother to vote at all?  Remember how they told us that character didn’t matter?   Then they end up asking, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”  What difference does it make now that they misled and lied?  It’s just a little thing after all, and it’s already over and done. 

Little by little, bit by bit, one piece at a time, we have dismantled our culture and squandered our inheritance.  I hear people all over talking about revolution and armed conflict.  Bring it on, they say.  Many of us would like to see things set right in one bright, glorious moment of justice and restoration. 

It won’t happen.  If we build it back, we will have to build it back the same way we tore it down, piece by piece, heart by heart, minute by minute.  Don’t wait for the revolution, the apocalypse, or Armageddon.  Don’t even wait for tomorrow.    We don’t have to.  I can start working on my own heart today.  I can stop, today, making excuses for my own attitude.  A dollar is still a dollar.  It buys a lot less than it did back when Methuselah and I were in school, but you’ll never have two, or ten or a hundred, until you have one.  It’s the same way with anything of value.  A person doesn’t become stronger, healthier, richer,  a better husband or wife, a better Christian, a better father or mother, son or daughter,  or a better citizen  in one evening – the decision can be made in a moment, but the reality has to be lived out moment by moment. 

The Road Home

I have forsaken my house;
I have abandoned my heritage;
I have given the beloved of my soul
into the hands of her enemies.
My heritage has become to me
like a lion in the forest;
she has lifted up her voice against me;
therefore I hate her.
--Jeremiah 12:7-8

It is a frightening thing to contemplate that we might become God's enemies.  We can reject His grace, reject the reconciliation of the Cross, and, in doing so, we make ourselves hateful to God.  This is not something we usually think about or even like to consider.  What would it take for the Lord to forsake and abandon us?  What does it mean to lift up our voices against God?

The people of Jeremiah's time turned away from the LORD and denied Him.  They were openly hostile to His commandments, rejecting His law and all the benefits of the Covenant.  Like a son turning from his father, the hostility of the inhabitants of Jerusalem toward God brought hostility upon them.  In rejecting, they were rejected.  In fleeing, they were exiled.    

Peter and Judas both betrayed Christ.  Peter lied, cursed, and swore in his denial of his Lord.  Judas went out, stricken with regret, and hanged himself.

The road home from alienation is repentance, not regret. 

Prodigals

He also said: "A man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the estate I have coming to me.' So he distributed the assets to them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country, where he squandered his estate in foolish living. ... When he came to his senses [came to himself, KJV], he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have more than enough food, and here I am dying of hunger! I'll get up, go to my father ...'" -- Luke 15:11-18

We are all strangers in a strange land, though many do not recognize it and try to be at home. In a sense we are all prodigal sons. We all need to "come to ourselves".

The pig pen is not a physical situation but a spiritual one. The materialists and the nominally religious may live in nice houses and eat the finest foods, but it is no more than the filth of the sty and the empty, unsatisfying husks to the real life that awaits them. In the end, it is not where you are or what you have that counts, but the relationship with the father. The elder brother was as much a "husk-eater" as the prodigal.

Did you ever look up "prodigal" in the dictionary? Luke 15:11-32 is one of those things that everyone has heard about, whether or not they have actually read the story. It is a powerful and moving tale, beautifully and succinctly told. It has been such an influence on Western civilization that the term used to describe the wandering younger son has taken on a different meaning. We often use the word to mean someone who lives wildly and recklessly. After all, the elder brother accused the returning son of wasting the father's money on -- as we might say -- sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Prodigal can refer to be excessively or recklessly wasteful, or a spendthrift. But it also means exceedingly generous, or lavish.

In a way, the father was rather prodigal. The son asked for his share, and the father unhesitatingly handed it over to him. When he had wasted his inheritance and returned, again the father eagerly and enthusiastically showered him with gifts and a renewed status. He drew from his bounty to lavish good things upon his son. The younger boy was much more his father's son than the elder. They shared the desire to express their love through generosity. The son was wrong only in his youthful lack of wisdom.

The elder brothers are so much wiser, so they think. They would never have given the boy a bagful of money to blow senselessly. They certainly would never have been taken in when he came crawling back -- and he would have crawled if the elder brother had been in charge. He might have been given a chance to prove himself worthy of returning; he would never have been trusted again. He would have been the lowest of servants. The elder would have recouped his losses eventually, while bitterly grinding the younger's soul.

Yet it takes little thought to see who would have been the more devoted son thereafter. Would the prodigal have gone a day without somehow expressing his gratitude to his generous father? Would he have been less lavish with his thanks, his praise or his efforts to please than he had been with his money? Would the younger son have missed any opportunity to do his father's will and thus express his love?

Did the elder brother ever "come to himself" and go home?

Baby Talk

We have spoken of the need of revelation, of faith and of consecration, if we are to live a normal Christian life. But unless we see the end God has in view, we shall never clearly understand why these steps are necessary to lead us to that end. ... What is God’s purpose in creation, and what is his purpose in redemption? Watchman Nee from The Normal Christian Life

Creation and, consequently, redemption have a goal. God, it says, knows the end from the beginning. In the same chapter as the initial quote above, Nee relates the story of meeting an old saint who told him, “Brother, do you know, I cannot do without him? And do you know, he cannot do without me?” The Father will not be satisfied without His children. We are as important to Him as He is to us.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father.” Paul says we have the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, “Abba, Father.” Abba -- not to be confused with that dreadful ‘70’s pop group for which Sweden owes us reparations – ‘abba’ is the familiar Aramaic name for father, equivalent to ‘dada’ or ‘daddy’ in English, one of the first words a child says. Interestingly, the use of abba or daddy is not derived from the adult so much as from the infant. Babies make all sorts of ba-ba, a-ba-ba, dah, and mah noises. The parents encourage and reinforce these sounds helping the baby to string them together and make everyone happy by saying at some point “mah-mah” or “dah-dah”. We get excited and the baby no doubt thinks, “Cool. I wonder what brought that on?”

So it is with the Father. There is nothing unnatural or formal about our relationship to God in Christ. Through faith we are adopted. The Son of God is our elder Brother and the Father is our Daddy. Our relationship to Him is as loving and close as any parent-child relationship. In a good relationship, the parent is understanding and forgiving; the child is obedient and respectful. As a child I realize my Father has knowledge and wisdom that I do not possess and that there are things I can’t handle.

When I read the story of the Prodigal in Luke 15, I usually think of the son – his errors, his suffering and his restoration. But, as Watchman Nee points out, the story is really about the father who say, “My son who was lost is now found.” This is what God our Father seeks. He wants His children found and returned. God’s purpose in creation was to have sons, to replicate Himself and express His Nature through them. So, too, in redemption He has provided a way of return for those who have strayed.

Once we understand the reason why we are here – that we are created and redeemed to be sons and daughters of God – we can better comprehend why our Father requires certain things. No father likes to see his child unhappy, but no wise father makes a child’s way too easy. Maybe that’s why God is our Father and not our Mother.

As we get the proper perspective, some of the things that happen along the way matter less while others take on greater significance. Our journey begins to make sense. We begin to see how the Father took our mumblings and stumbling and gave them meaning and direction. We see that there was a Hand supporting and steadying us as we took a few steps. We see the Father smile at our childish pride in the “help” we gave Him lifting a load. When I tried but became too weary He carried me.