Sermonette: July 24, 2023

'Come and see'

Once upon a time, my wife and I were resident assistants at our college. As resident assistants, our job was two-fold. First, we were responsible for the physical life in our respective dorms. Maintain the rules; make sure no one burned the place down, etc. Second, we were also responsible for the emotional needs of the students; make sure freshman weren’t crying their way through first semester, keeping the sophomores off each other, checking on juniors to make sure they were still sleeping occasionally between finals. Despite our having the same job description, my wife and my experiences were completely different. She got to do fun things like take her girls to Wal-Mart at 2 a.m., have dance parties, and she formed tons of friendships she has to this day. On the other hand, my experience consisted of primarily of one word: think. “What were you thinking smoking right outside my window?” “What were you thinking climbing on to the roof?” “What were you thinking jumping out your window?” As you can guess, there isn’t an answer to these questions because they assume something that just isn’t true for college men: thought, planning, consideration.

Certainly, college men are the absolute extreme example for lack of thought, but really how often do you think about your life? Do you ever find yourself just sitting in your easy chair, with the TV off, contemplating how your life is going? I know we all have some thoughts about our life. There are things that we like, that we are proud of, or look forward to. There are things that we don’t like that we hide, lie about and complain about. Beyond the few good and bad things that you talk about or pointedly don’t talk about, do you ever think about the direction your life is going? If your life is a movie, have you ever watched it, getting the big picture thus far? I don’t. Being 37, it is a daily battle just to not become consumed with living in the here and now. If I were to give in to my own desires, I would only concern myself with today. Maybe occasionally I’d think about tomorrow, but I would never consider yesterday or the overall direction of my life.

Then I found a little verse in a little book. Haggai 1:5, “Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways.” The back story to this passage is the Israelites had returned home from exile because of the mercy of God. They had been home for some time, but they still hadn’t rebuilt the temple: the one connection between man and God. They had focused upon day to day, getting houses built and farms established. Then Haggai shows up, pointing out that their harvests are getting smaller and smaller. Their clothes are wearing out prematurely. Their wages are gone as soon as they come in. Haggai points this out saying “God is doing this. He’s trying to get your attention.” See, people don’t usually listen to God attentively when they are blessed. That leaves only cursing to get people’s attention. God was working against the Israelites until they started to listen. Like a driving instructor slowly applying his brake until the student driver listens to him. Haggai’s command is merely a command to think. Notice that God is against you. He is trying to get your attention and won’t give up without success; right now it’s bad harvests and pockets with holes. Tomorrow it might be an invasion. So stop working. Listen. Talk to God and get back with his plan. Only there will you find sustainable success.

The command is timeless, I believe. Many of us still work ourselves to the point that we can’t hear our spouses, let alone God. This becomes a problem when God has something to say to us. Sometimes life gets hard because existence on this sinful world is difficult, period. Sometimes life gets harder and harder, but it’s merely God knocking on the door, just trying to say something. The only way to differentiate between the two is to think. Like Haggai says, “think about your life.” Take some time, be quiet, and think about your life. Think about where you’ve been, where you are, and what direction you are heading. See if God is trying to say something to you. It’s through this sort of thinking that we can live our lives like Christians pursing God’s will, and not college men pursing ... something. I think.