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A
pig and a chicken decided to leave the farm and head into the city to seek
their fortune, When they reached the city they came to a diner where the
sign in the window read, “Special today: ham and eggs.” The chicken
said, “Let’s go in here. Maybe we can get a job.” But the pig
hesitated. He told the chicken, “For you, that’s a donation, but for
me that’s total commitment.”
An
article was published a few years back called “If you’re 35 you have
500 days to live.” The author’s contention was that by the time you
deduct sleeping, working, personal hygiene, eating, driving and
miscellaneous time wasters, you’ll be left with 500 days—just 12,000
hours--to spend as you please. So I ask you, when all the necessary things
are done, how much time do you have left? Are you making the most of it?
Time is limited, and the wise spend it well. No wonder the psalmist wrote,
“So teach us to number our days, so that we may present to thee a heart
of wisdom.”
Now
wisdom is the kind of attribute that everybody wants and nobody wants to
do what’s needed to get it. Have you heard it said, “Everybody wants
to get to heaven but nobody wants to die?” That’s what wisdom is like.
People think that simply acquiring knowledge is the same as acquiring
wisdom. That’s not wisdom, that’s going on “Jeopardy.” Sometimes
the school of hard knocks is the best way of becoming wise. How many of us
have had to learn things the hard way sometimes? Yeah, me too. But
you’re better off for the experience. Wisdom knows the difference
between right and wrong. Wisdom understands that there is good and evil in
the world—and chooses good.
Many
people, especially older people, make the mistake of thinking that just
because they’ve been around for awhile, and have picked up more
knowledge, they are automatically wise.
But
Webster defines wisdom as “the ability to discern or judge what is true,
right or lasting.” Paul is right, then, when he tells the Ephesians,
“Do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” And
then act on it. It’s not enough to know the correct path, you’ve got
to walk the walk, too. Last week the governor of Connecticut publicly
apologized for taking kickbacks, saying “I should have known better, and
I did know better.” But knowledge just isn’t enough. The wise are
careful; they make the most of every opportunity to walk the walk.
One
of my favorite movies of all time is “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” Mister
Holland, played by Richard Dreyfuss, is a musician who wants to compose
great works. But he gets himself a family, so he needs a steady job and
finds one teaching music in high school. He still works on his symphony on
the side, but between his family and his job he finds less and less time
to spend composing. He is committed to going the extra mile both at home
and at school, but it frustrates him—frustrates him so much that
sometimes he can’t see that he’s having a tremendous impact on the
students in his classroom.
His
life kind of meanders along the way lives do, until the school board
decides to cut costs, and the first victim for the chopping block is the
music program. That’s the end of Mr. Holland’s teaching career. He’s
old, and he thinks of himself as a failure. He thought his composing would
make him rich and famous, and he is neither one. He packs up sadly on the
last day of the school year, about to trudge off into oblivion, when he
hears an odd commotion in the auditorium. He enters, and the whole place
erupts into applause. The whole school—the whole community—has turned
out to honor this man and his life’s work.
Mr.
Holland walks down the aisle in tears, shaking hands with people who love
him not because he’s famous, but because he gave himself away to make
their lives better. The last two he hugs are his son and his wife. But
then his wife introduces the main speaker for the program, the state’s
governor, and in strides this very self-confident, very able woman. Years
before, Mr. Holland had taken a girl at a very fragile age, painfully shy
with almost zero self-esteem, and taught her to play the clarinet.
That’s all—just given her something she was good at. That made all the
difference.
The
governor takes the mike and says, “I understand Mr. Holland believes
that his life is a failure because his symphony was never published. Look
around you, Mr. Holland. There isn’t a life in this room that you
haven’t touched. We’re your symphony, Mr. Holland. We’re your
melody.” And she goes up on stage and picks up her clarinet with the
rest of the orchestra as Mr. Holland is led to the podium by his wife to
conduct the debut of his composition, the American Symphony. Corny?
Absolutely. But that scene could make a stone statue cry.
Christians
have often mistakenly believed that the highest means of loving God is to
take yourself away from the world and live a life of solitude and prayer.
That’s what motivates the Amish to try to separate themselves from
modern society, a goal that is becoming impossible. But we were never
meant to be hermits. Christians were always meant to bloom where they’re
planted. We are to be in the world but not of the world. We are meant to
witness for our faith wherever we happen to be. Paul understood this, and
so did Jesus himself. Jesus didn’t shut himself up in the synagogue and
pray 24-7, he was out in the marketplace teaching.
No
Christian community in 2,000 years would have been more justified in
shutting itself off from the world than the one of Paul’s generation.
After all, they expected Christ to come back any day. And they lived under
the rule of some of most purely evil men who ever lived, emperors such as
Nero, Tiberius and Caligula. But Paul still urged them to make the most of
their time. We are not meant to escape from the times we live in, we are
meant to redeem them. That means the church must be strong and vital, and
to do that it needs leaders of total commitment.
In
Romans 6:13 Paul writes, “Give yourselves to God as those who have been
brought from death to life, and surrender your whole being to him, to be
used for righteous purposes.”
People
often ask, “What does God want from me,” and the answer is simple: he
wants your whole being, your total commitment. But I don’t want that to
scare you. Some people jump to the conclusion, “God doesn’t want me to
have any fun.” Far from it. God wants you to have recreation, he knows
you need it. He knows you need down time, because he’s the one who made
you. Why would he have wired you with certain needs, and then denied you
the fulfillment of those needs? No, God loves you beyond measure, he just
expects you to put him number one in your life.
I
am so proud of the people who have agreed to become elders and deacons
today. At the same time, I am very grateful for those who are stepping
down from the board, for the service they have given. In both cases, these
are people who indicated that they want the work of the Church, big C, and
the East Liberty church, little c, to go on, and not just go on, but to
flourish. Even as the world spins faster and faster with each passing day,
and the demands of routine life get worse, they have committed a big chunk
of their 500 days to God’s work. We celebrate them today, and rightly
so.
However,
that doesn’t mean the rest of us can sit back, relax and watch them do
the heavy lifting. Total commitment means we all must do our share. Paul
wrote to the Ephesians, “These are evil times.” Would anyone care to
debate my contention that these are still evil times?
Therefore none of us can afford to miss any opportunity, any chance we get
to do a little good in this world. We have only so many days, and Satan
would love to get us off the track and steal what little time we have. If
we waste our time on trivia, he has neutralized us. If we do not seize the
day, we may find ourselves like the five foolish virgins who let their oil
run out before the bridegroom arrived, and were shut out from the wedding
feast. We must make the best use of our 500 days while we have it to
spend.
At
the end of your life, what do you want your symphony to be? Harmony or
discord? Melody or noise? May God grant us all the wisdom to know the
difference. Amen.
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