Between my 60hr/wk job, my client’s web sites, mlmstuff.com, and being sick for two months… well, I’ve sort of neglected this place. I just don’t have time to think about anything of any great importance. God willing that will change very soon, and I will once again be able to grace the world with fun and interesting things to read. *puke*
A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words redistribution of wealth. She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.
One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school. Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn’t even have time for a boyfriend, and didn’t really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.
Her father listened and then asked, “How is your friend Audrey doing?”
She replied, “Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She’s always invited to all the parties and lots of times she doesn’t even show up for classes because she’s too hung over.”
Her wise father asked his daughter, “Why don’t you go to the Dean’s office and ask him to deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.”
The daughter, visibly shocked by her father’s suggestion, angrily fired back, “That’s a crazy idea, and how would that be fair! I’ve worked really hard for my grades! I’ve invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail
off!”
The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, “Welcome to the Republican party.”
[Source: Email Forward]
My dad grew up on a 160 acre farm in the small Southwest Missouri farming community of Bendavis. I don’t recall us ever calling it anything other than simply “the farm.” This, however, shouldn’t lead anyone to think of it as a place that is not special. Sometimes uncreative people will call their cat “cat” or their dog “dog,” and to me these folks are idiots; they had the perfect opportunity to give their pets an important name like Captain Wiggles or Mr. Happy or some other descriptive yet powerful name. But, a rose would smell just as sweet regardless of what we call it; therefore “the farm” is a perfectly appropriate name.
So, what makes this piece of property in the middle of nowhere so special you ask? Perhaps it’s the fact that the wind is always blowing – cooling your brow on hot Summer days wrestling the cows or reminding of our Lord, the Unmoved Mover. Or maybe it’s all of the imagery of a simpler time – the old tractor, rusted hay rake, weathered fence corner posts or the proud Prairie barn. It could even be because everywhere you turn your eyes you see something that Grandpa and Grandma Robertson touched – the Cherry, Buckeye, and Walnut trees that Grandma Annie planted and the buildings that Grandpa Glenn built with Depression Era tools and practically no money. Maybe it’s the pristine views (click the gas tank image above). All of these are great examples of the specialness of “the farm,” yet I can’t help but consider the fact that when I walk all the way to the back of the property to my favorite place I feel like I’m standing in the presence of God.
I am absolutely loving the book Desiring God! And as you can tell from a couple of my previous posts the subject of Joy has been on my spirit lately. The following is a phenomenal excerpt. Are we slowly putting together an ingredient list for Joy?
“But the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or any thing – strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least…
I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” The Psalmist in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.” (C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 93-5)
“There is the solution! We praise what we enjoy because the delight is incomplete until it is expressed in praise. If we were not allowed to speak of what we value and celebrate what we love and praise what we admire, our joy would not be full. So if God loves us enough to make our joy full, He must not only give us Himself; He must also win from us the praise of our hearts – not because He needs to shore up some weakness in Himself or compensate for some deficiency, but because He loves us and seeks the fullness of our joy that can be found only in knowing and praising Him, the most magnificent of all Beings. If He is truly for us, He must be fore Himself!” (John Piper, Desiring God, 49)
I’m currently working on a web site for an old college buddy (Bret Toth) who now runs a counseling center in the area. Buried in the middle of about a dozen pages of stuff he had typed up for me I ran into the following quote from a Stephen King novel. It’s good stuff, and so true – having never read any of his novels it just never dawned on me that he had this type of writing in them.
“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them – words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear.”
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