To this end

I labor,

struggling with all his energy,

which so powerfully works

in me.

One thing I appreciate about the “YouVersion” app of the Bible on my phone and ipad is the feature that lets me hear the scripture spoken aloud. In listening to Colossians 1 this morning, the last verse in the chapter captured my attention. I’m not sure I’ve ever paid close attention to it before.

 To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.

Consider it with me.

1. Paul has a very clear goal or purpose at the very core of his life. “To this end”
2. He works hard. He struggles. In Paul’s day this word meant to wrestle or contend for victory in an athletic contest or to strain every nerve to the end of accomplishing the goal or to face opposition and strife and press forward. In other places he likens this struggle to the pains of childbirth.
3. Here’s the kicker– the energy for this effort comes from God. Paul does not muster up the strength. He isn’t digging deeper or reaching for the bootstraps to pull himself up. Paul participates with a source of power and strength that he is not generating.
4. This is not an impersonal “force” Paul somehow taps into (like a Jedi Knight). Paul is not “using” the force. This energy is “in” him.  This working of God happens “in me,” says Paul. Paul is “presenced” with God. He will go on to explicitly identify this dynamic energy  as “Christ in me.”
5. One might think “all his energy” might make things a bit easier for Paul. Not so. Paul seems to be living and laboring toward a goal –”this end”– that requires a different way to accomplish. I don’t think it means Paul is giving all his energy and God is giving all his energy. I think it means God is supplying all the energy and Paul is supplying all of the struggle and labor. What if the struggle is actually learning the human way of participating in the Divine nature.

What if it’s not Paul’s hard work that wears him out.? What if the struggle actually ensues from Paul’s  labor to work with this energy as a human person? What if the “energy of God” does not work like worldly power, triumphing and overcoming through dominance and force. What if Divine energy actually works completely opposite– through submission and suffering and humility; through poverty of spirit and meekness and purity of heart and through a voracious appetite for the highest good. What if that’s the struggle?    Isn’t that precisely what we behold in Jesus?

What if Christians are powerless because we completely misunderstand power? What if to work with the power of God is the greatest struggle because we do not understand how the power of God works?

A final question: To what “end” was Paul laboring?

Last week, while we slept, a crisis of life and death proportions erupted 220 miles above the Earth on the International Space Station. A piece of debris, aka “space-junk” was on a direct course to crash into the station. It was detected too late for the station to navigate out of the way. The result of a collision would be a violent decompression of the spacecraft and instant death for the astronauts. The astronauts prepared for an emergency exit.

The piece of debris was a mere six inches in length. It travelled at a velocity of 5 miles per second. Thats 18,000 miles per hour (do the math). At this speed, a collision meant catastrophe. Fortunately the debris changed course and missed the station by about 3 miles.

NASA constantly tracks more than 12,500 pieces of “space-junk” orbiting Earth. Estimates claim there are up to 370,000 pieces altogether.

The whole thing got me thinking about the “space-junk” that orbits our inner lives. We might call it “soul-junk.” The debris of the past can seem so small yet move at speeds capable of wrecking a life on impact. More often we live in the anxiety that it’s still there, orbiting the inner space of our soul, sabotaging our life. This is why making honest confession of sin and receiving complete pardon from God is so important. Apart from this, the debris of the past will constantly rob us of life and never go away. How many of us live in an inner turmoil over past mistakes, ruined relationships and traumatic memories. Even worse, how many of us numb ourselves to their ongoing reality. You violated your high school girlfriend twenty years ago. You got an abortion in response to an unwanted pregnancy. You had an undiscovered affair with another woman years back. You stole from your employer at a former job. Though the years pass, the debris of the past does not. Even the smallest 6 inch scraps.

It’s yet another reason why Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the World, is such good news. With a word, he banishes the soul junk, sending it from our innermost place through the cross and to the outermost black hole of hell.

All this has me thinking of Tiger Woods, wondering about the chaotic debris orbiting his soul. Without doubt, one of the greatest athletes of our time, a would-be son of a perfect Father in Heaven, living in exile from life.

Britt Hume was right. Tiger, please listen.

Money litters the landscape of the Proverbs. Today I stopped at this one:

A rich man is wise in his own eyes, but a poor man who has understanding will find him out. 28:11

It made me remember this one from a few days back:

The reward for humility and fear of the LORD is riches and honor and life. 22:4

thinking through the nuance of these ideas I arrived at a proverb of my own:

Through wisdom one becomes wealthy, but wealth does not make one wise.

Money isn’t bad. It’s just dangerous. Here’s another one I’m crafting:

The lure of wealth robs one of wisdom, but the pursuit of wisdom brings the wealth that endures. Consider this bit from chapter 23:

Do not wear yourself out to get rich; do not trust your own cleverness.
Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle. 23:4-5

The Proverbs abound with counsel on how to reconcile wisdom and wealth. I boil the strategy down to two practices: gratitude and generosity. The wisdom of the wealthy praying, “Give us this day our daily bread,” is it places the wealthy in the posture of receiving bread as a gift, no matter how hard it was worked for. Asking awakens gratitude. Receiving inspires generosity. These practices transform our pity for the poor into the worship of God, unleashing Love’s generosity from our hands to theirs. Gratitude awakens us. Generosity saves us. The inability to receive signifies pride. The unwillingness to give reveals the worst poverty.

Think about what it felt like the last time someone really thanked you for something. Remember what it felt like the last time you made a generous gift to someone who couldn’t pay you back.

My son, eat honey, for it is good, and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste.  Know that wisdom is such to your soul; if you find it, there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off. proverbs 24:13-14

Wisdom reaches for irresistible metaphors like honey. It must be tasted. At the core of the Christian Tradition, which is a Wisdom tradition, we eat and drink together.

To follow Jesus is to embrace a Wisdom Tradition. By this I do not mean an esoteric variety of wisdom that requires some mystical cipher. At the same time, this Wisdom goes much deeper than the surface. Aristotle’s idea of phronesis gets at it. This is practical wisdom on one hand yet a deep kind of “knowing” on the other. This “knowing” transcends knowledge. Again, we aren’t referencing a secret knowledge. God makes this Wisdom known perfectly in the person of his son, Jesus, the Lord of Heaven and Earth. Jesus reveals how cosmic Wisdom inhabits a common body; the Word made flesh. Consider this bit from Psalm 19.

The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul.
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
The precepts of the LORD are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the LORD are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
The fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever.
The decrees of the LORD are firm,
and all of them are righteous.

They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold;

they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.
By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward. Psalm 19:7-11

If Wisdom has a secret it’s this: Behold Jesus. “Listen to Him.” He’s all this and more.

If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear. Winnie the Pooh

Make no friendship with an angry man,
And with a furious man do not go,
Lest you learn his ways
And set a snare for your soul. Proverbs 22:24-25

Anger. I wonder if a connection indeed exists with Danger. Anger reigns as the toxin of our time; the chief villain of community, the germinated seed of war.

The Bill Oreilly’s and the Keith Olberman’s of the world spend anger like a currency. And we eagerly buy it. It taps into our deepest darkness, strangely comforting our fears, temporarily alleviating our anxieties. Let’s be honest. Something about anger satisfies us.

So what’s the real issue? If anger cloaks our fear and anxiety, what subterraneanly sources our fear and anxiety. It’s insecurity. Somewhere along the way most of us have been injured by another, treated unfairly, suffered unjustly or experienced unbearable loss. Rather than process through it, we press on past it. Yet again, the proverb on the side mirror of our suburban sedans nails it: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”

These wounds, be they from parents, authority figures, institutions (yes–the church) or just garden variety traumatic loss. These wounds don’t disappear. They seed our experientially legitimated insecurities. Robbed of our inner confidence we become vulnerably exposed to fear and anxiety. And we’ll do just about anything to regain our security, from amassing wealth to maintaining “appearances” to stacking up achievements to abusing substances and mind altering medications. Anything we consistently turn to in order to source our insecurities may fairly be considered an addiction. Interestingly enough, this is how anger works. Something about it gives us a feeling of power or control. Anger medicates our deep seated anxiety with a temporary topical ointment. We human beings are created for one comprehensive dependence: FATHER-SON-HOLY SPIRIT.

Do you have anger issues? Ask those around you for their assessment. Now ask yourself, where could that anger be coming from. It’s usually not the thing that made you mad. Could something from your distant past be tail-gating you?

Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water,
But a person of understanding will draw it out. Proverbs 20:5

Most often when we approach another person for advice, they will readily offer it. The truly wise person often withholds their advice, instead opting to help the other understand what they themselves most deeply think.

That’s what I think this proverb teaches us. I like the way Martin Buber describes it,
      
“The greatest thing any person can do for another is to confirm the deepest thing in him, in her—to take the time and have the discernment to see what’s most deeply there, most fully that person, and then confirm it by recognizing and encouraging it.”

There’s a word for this. Friendship.

The possibility is before us constantly. Everyone thirsts for it.

A joyful heart is good medicine. A crushed spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22

According to Wisdom, joy medicates. Joy creates wellness. Joy makes us well. Yet we cannot control joy like a pill. We can’t schedule it like exercise. We can’t find it in eating the right foods or in sleeping the right amount of time. Joy isn’t the byproduct of Omega 3 fats or two massive fish oil capsules a day. Joy comes not through exposure to natural light and vitamin D tablets. And yet joy is likened to good medicine. Joy is a phenomenon of the spirit which manifests itself through the physical body.

Joy, according to Scripture, is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. So the secret of Joy births from the ancient prayer, “Come Holy  Spirit!”

So what about the range of practices I reference above? I practice them all. Here’s why. The enemy of joy is not our circumstances. In fact, difficult circumstances really make true joy shine. The enemy of joy is anxiety. Anxiety produces fear and impatience and unkindness and harshness and unfaithfulness and the need to control others and manipulate situations and stinginess and disregulated emotional chaos. Just as joy impacts our physical body, so does anxiety. Anxiety kills joy and so disintegrates the body. Anxiety literally remaps the brain, training us to live in slavery to fear or the constant dread that something bad is about to happen. Anxiety can actually change the chemical properties of the brain. Could this explain why 27  million of us take medication to deal with it. Unbridled anxiety creates mental illness.

The practices above help us steward the physical wellness of our bodies. Even antidepressants help replenish the severe depletion anxiety wreaks on the brain. But what if we thought of Joy as a drug, as medicine? Joy is the medicinal work of the Holy Spirit on the human spirit. Joy is spiritual therapy. (I don’t mean to create  duality between the physical and the spiritual, as much as I’m trying to think through the wholeness of our lives from different angles).

So if anxiety is the sickness and Joy is the medicine, what would a treatment plan look like? I think it would begin with a thoroughgoing practice of this.

A joyful heart is good medicine. A crushed spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22

No sooner than we are talking about “desire” and guarding our heart, (ch.4), old Solomon cuts right to the chase. He goes for the jugular: a man’s desire for a woman (and I would add– vice-versa). Get a load of this from Proverbs 5 (message translation):

^3-6 The lips of a seductive woman are oh so sweet,
her soft words are oh so smooth.
But it won’t be long before she’s gravel in your mouth,
a pain in your gut, a wound in your heart.
She’s dancing down the primrose path to Death;
she’s headed straight for Hell and taking you with her.
She hasn’t a clue about Real Life,
about who she is or where she’s going.

These are warnings against adultery (which again is an equal opportunity sin). Affairs abound.  One is happening in your neighborhood right now. Bet on it. It mostly happens to the people who don’t think it could never happen to them. The writer spends a little time coaching the defense, but focuses on offense.

^15-16 Do you know the saying, “Drink from your own rain barrel,
draw water from your own spring-fed well”?
It’s true. Otherwise, you may one day come home
and find your barrel empty and your well polluted.

^17-20 Your spring water is for you and you only,
not to be passed around among strangers.
Bless your fresh-flowing fountain!
Enjoy the wife you married as a young man!
Lovely as an angel, beautiful as a rose—
don’t ever quit taking delight in her body.
Never take her love for granted!
Why would you trade enduring intimacies for cheap thrills with a whore?
for dalliance with a promiscuous stranger?

It would be a mistake, though, to think this is all about sex. Human sexuality is so powerful because it holds the power to orient all of one’s desires in an embodied (physical) way. Sexuality unites our desires for love, intimacy, security, belonging, purpose and meaning and expresses them through the fullness of the human body. When we sin sexually it dis-integrates us at the very core of our personhood. The typical challenge of marriage is the man wants desire to be enacted in a bodily way without the heart of it and a woman wants desire to be enacted in a spiritual way without the flesh of it. Dis-integrated desire becomes a dis-integrated marriage. And we are back at v.3 again. So given that, what’s a man and woman to do. What does a wise marriage look like? (sorry for the 100 word overage)

In Proverbs 4 we see a verse with striking clarity.

Watch over your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Proverbs 4:23 (my translation)

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and Time Magazines person of the year, is worth somewhere shy of 7 billion dollars. On his Facebook page among his various listed “interests,” is this one: “Eliminating desire for all that doesn’t really matter.” Time quotes Zuckerberg, “I think its probably Buddhist? To me it’s just– I don’t know, I think it would be very easy to get distracted and caught up in short-term things or material things that don’t matter.”

The young billionaire-genius hints at Proverbs 4:23. He seeks to guard his heart. But “eliminating desire?” It’s one of Buddhisms core teachings, that desire leads to suffering so we must eliminate desire. Desire lives at the core of our existence, our heart. Desire is a fundamentally good thing; however, it is also the most dangerous. Wisdom does not say “eliminate desire.” Wisdom says, “Above all else guard your heart.” One of the core essences of Christian worship is the aiming of our desires toward the true and living God. The problem is the way our desires blind us to God.  Nothing deceives or tricks the mind more than the desires of one’s heart. This is the essence of rationalization.

Take 10 seconds, click on this link and read the text. It’s a stunning compendium in 72 words of all I’m trying to say.

Our desires readily become our gods and their fulfillment becomes our worship. Is this not the essence of addiction; taking a false god into one’s inmost self and allowing it to control one’s entire life. Some call addiction the holy disorder because of the singularity of its quest.

For these reasons I consider true worship as the only remedy. To behold the God of Israel and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only way of guarding our heart. The heart of wisdom is worship. Jesus Christ is the Wisdom of God. It takes us back to yesterday– Bowing before God is the beginning of Wisdom. To rid one’self of idols requires a thorough-going, Spirit empowered examination of one’s desires.

Help me think about this.

So what’s the most important word in the bible that fails to be translated into most English translations?

IDOU! It means BEHOLD!

How did they not see this? (pun maybe intended)

Behold captures the most important and consequently, most challenging dynamic of being human: being fully present and totally attentive. To behold brings together hearing and seeing in a combustive simultaneity. (think burning bush)

This little word defines the line demarcating the two kinds of people in the world at the most fundamental level. Consider the last words we have in the biblical account of the earliest church:

They disagreed among themselves and began to leave after Paul had made this final statement: “The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your ancestors when he said through Isaiah the prophet:

“‘Go to this people and say, “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.”
For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’” The Acts of the Apostles 28:25-27.

In the end, “behold” matters so much because it cuts to the core level of humanity: the heart. To behold means to see and hear and to live from one’s deepest most inmost place.

According to Scripture, in the final judgment, when the line is finally drawn, there will be only one question. And it will be our question.

Anyone know what it is?