Each of us is filled with raw materials that we call emotions. None of them are bad, really, because they’re each a gift of God. And if they’re a gift of God, then we can put each of them to some God-given use. The proof of this (to me, at least) is found in the Book of Psalms. There we can find just about every emotion being poured forth to God in prayer. Love, hate; anger, peace; assurance, turmoil; loving, indifference. You name it, it’s there.
If it seems odd that some of the emotions that we think of as negative are found in the Psalms, then we need to look at what happens to them there. For example, there are several prayers for vengeance in the Psalms. But if we remember that the psalter is a prayer book, then it’s helpful to remember that the answer to prayer is sometimes No. A few weeks ago, I talked about Israël in Babylonian Exile, and how it was in the 137th Psalm that we can read their first reaction to losing a war and being carted off to live the rest of their days in a foreign land. The psalm opens with an incredibly beautiful lament—perhaps one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ But how could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
Remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.
—Revelation 2:5a
We used to put the Pilgrims on a pedestal in this country. They represented all that was good about our beginnings. And of all the things about them that we idealized, it was their search for religious freedom that we found most inspiring.
The story of the first Thanksgiving was a subplot to the overall narrative. But it fit in quite nicely: After surviving a brutal winter, planting crops with the help of the people who were there first, and bringing in their first harvest, they invited their Native American neighbors to a feast to show their gratitude to God.
Never mind that we forget the Pilgrim calendar, that they didn’t celebrate holidays as we think of them—no Christmas, no saints days, nothing that we think of as a holiday at all really. Their calendar consisted six work days every week, and the only icing needed on that divinely baked cake was the Lord’s Day—the day of rest when they worshiped together as a community.
Headed up Torrey Pines Road a couple of weeks ago, I was behind an old car that looked like it'd been rear-ended. The whole back of the car seemed to be kept together by duct tape. I thought of that when I started writing this sermon. If I were to ask you, “What do you do to keep it together?” how would you answer? I hope you wouldn't answer that you use duct tape. I really mean, what is important enough in your life that you would turn to it to keep chaos at bay. What is it that, even when all else is lost, if you have this one thing, you can make it through.
For many of you it’s a grand concept like family—not just a person, and not just a certain set of people, but the idea that there are people held together by a common bond, regardless of who they are.
For others it’s service—service to country, service to a cause, and even (I hope) service to God.
A lot of people might say it’s their job. And in many cases, service and work are the same thing. I would hope most pastors would at least consider the work they do to be something that helps them to keep it together.
I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.
—Eph. 1:15-16
Not too long ago, airplane passengers flying into a small airport located in Northern Ireland began to notice something beneath them in the forest. There was an outline of something in the trees. It wasn’t always so striking, because the colors didn’t always stand out. But this year, when October rolled around, there was no denying it. In a woodland otherwise made up almost entirely of spruce trees, a different kind of tree (thousands of them!) had been planted. But the planting wasn’t done haphazardly. It was done very intentionally in the shape of an almost perfectly formed Celtic cross. The scale of the cross—over 300 feet long and over 70 feet wide—is so enormous that it cannot be perceived from the ground. Only from the air is it now visible. And because it’s autumn, the difference between the dark green spruce and the golden larch is breathtaking.
But you know what’s really weird? Nobody knew it was even there until just recently.
The cross was planted by a forester named Liam Emmery on the Irish Republic side of the border. But soon after he finished his work, he died at just 51 years of age. And though his wife knew something of the project, it had slipped her mind—understandable when one’s spouse is involved in a horrible accident. But nobody else had really heard anything about it. And so it wasn’t really until the cross appeared in all its glory, and people began noticing it, that his widow, Norma, realized what her husband had done. “Liam was in an accident,” she told a TV reporter, “and he was unwell for two years, and he had suffered brain damage; so that’s why, I suppose, I had forgotten about the plantation, because if he was here, we’d all have heard about it, because he would’ve been so proud.” [1]
