Eugene Peterson is an incredibly gifted communicator. His scripting of the love chapter of the bible is figuratively a home run, so to speak. He begins the 13th Chapter of 1 Corinthians this way: "If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate."
My dad seemingly was of the mindset that you can resolve a lot of difficulties with a roll of duct tape and a can of WD-40. Duct tape can hold things together rather than to allow them to fall apart. And of course, WD-40 takes away the irritating sound of the creaking of a rusty gate.
I particularly like the way Peterson scripts verses 12-13: "We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love."
There is something about a heavy fog that obscures the ability to see clearly. The past several mornings, it has been foggy in my neighborhood. As the sun rises in the east, I attempt to inventory the weather by simply looking outside.
I took the picture I posted with this blog one day last week. The fog served as a filter to minimize the view from the back deck of my home. On another morning, I made my way through the fog to the local grocery store and upon returning home, had difficulty locating where to turn left off the highway into my neighborhood.
There is a cellphone tower near the entrance to my neighborhood. Because of the fog, I could not see the tower at all. I almost missed the turn. It felt eerie.
Sometime our self-assessment of how well we're doing at trusting steadily in God, hoping unswervingly, and loving extravagantly reflects something other than reality. I suspect that we often give ourselves more credit than we have coming.
I don't remember the name of this poem written by Edgar A. Guest, but I think it offers direction in evaluating the aforementioned characteristics:
I watched them tearing a building down,
A gang of men in a busy town.
With a ho-heave-ho and lusty yell,
They swung a beam and a sidewall fell.
I asked the foreman, "Are these men skilled,
The men you'd hire if you had to build?"
He gave me a laugh and said, "No indeed!
Just common labor is all I need.
I can easily wreck in a day or two
What builders have taken a year to do."
And I thought to myself as I went my way,
Which of these two roles have I tried to play?
Am I a builder who works with care,
Measuring life by the rule and square?
Am I shaping my deeds by a well-made plan,
Patiently doing the best I can?
Or am I a wrecker who walks the town,
Content with the labor of tearing down?
All My Best! Don
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