Earlier this week, I sent an email notification to family, friends, and colleagues about a column I'd posted on this site and said that I'd planned on posting a number of new columns throughout the week.
I learned again the wisdom of Father Myke, the NYFD chaplain killed in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him what you're doing tomorrow."
His words echo those of James in the New Testament: "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.' Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring...Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil." (James 4:13-17)
Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. (Thank you, John Lennon.) So, this past week, instead of stockpiling columns, as I'd planned, life happened and I wrote one column. (My other posts here this week weren't, for the most part, written for the column I write for the Community Press newspapers. They were posts written just for the blog, like this one.)
One of the reasons I wasn't as prolific as I'd hoped to be was the honest, prayerful wrestling I've done this week with the text on which I'll be preaching---God willing---this coming Sunday morning: Jesus' words in Matthew 5:9. There He says, "Blessed [happy, blissed-out] are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."
The more I studied---in, among other places, commentaries by Lenski as well as Albright and Mann, Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, and the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible---the more complicated and daunting these seemingly simple words from Jesus became.
The passage also sent me to a book I hadn't read in many years. To some, it may seem dated, but it spoke to me again and provided a hefty amount of inspiration for me as I prepared my message. It was John and Mary Schramm's 1976 book, Things That Make for Peace. If you can get your hands on a copy of it, this book is well worth the short amount of time it takes to read. It's nothing more than a journal, incorporating reflections on personal experience, reading, and current events. It is in many ways, a very political book and I don't always agree with its politics. But it is at root, a deeply spiritual book written by two people struggling to define how they will live their faith in Christ in the social, political, and economic spheres of life. The book is a period piece, in a way, recalling a time when "Christian political activism" was almost always associated with the political left, the opposite of today. But, in what could be a lesson for today's Christian political activists, right and left, the Schramms begin not from a triumphant, holier-than-thou perspective, but from the cross of Jesus, displaying a humble willingness to take Jesus literally when He exhorts His followers to "take up their crosses and follow Him." You'll see how this book influenced me again with this week's reading of it when I post my Sunday sermon in a few days---God willing.
Things That Make for Peace also referred me another book that has been collecting dust on one of my bookshelves, John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus. I did read it more than twenty years ago, but hadn't cracked it open in a long time. While I only had time to make a small dent in the process of re-reading it, I'm enjoying it too.
I also finished reading an interesting little book this week: Simple Matters: Almost Everything You Need to Know About Life, Relationships, and Knowing God by two guys who write under the names Bruce and Stan. (They're really Bruce Bickel, an attorney, and Stan Jantz, a PR guy for Berean Book Stores, a very good "in" for one who wants get published.) I like the breezy and frankly, simple, style of this book which was probably written to be a gift for high school or college graduates. But people of all ages might read (and re-read) it profitably.
With few exceptions, I like the advice they give on a variety of topics, ranging from "Stuff" to "Patience," from "Goals" to "Conflict." Their advice on "Common Sense" will figure in a column on which I'm working and hope---God willing---to complete tomorrow.
Before going to bed at night (or while waiting to see my physical therapist), I've also been continuing to read Stephen Ambrose's one-volume biography of Eisenhower. Ike has just started his first term as president in my reading. This is a really good book!
I will close now. God bless you...thanks for reading!
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