Sounds like a pretty innocent question.

We get up every day. We have a list of jobs to get done. We work our way through the list and then we go to bed.

If you consider it, every item on today’s “to-do” list is done to create a benefit. Even the ugliest thing we have ever done was done to achieve some benefit for someone. And that is the object of the exercise today. I want to explore whom we are trying to benefit.

When I was in basic training, I knew with crystal clarity whom I served…….but how about you…….today?

In a word……just exactly whom are you and I working for?

No matter how high you are on the social or business ladder, you are working for the benefit of someone. Even the president, like him or hate him, is working for the benefit of someone else. When push comes to shove……we all serve.

We are all servants……….but to whom?

My spouse
My family
My boss
Me
My political party
My appetites
My anger

Take 3 seconds and answer the question:

Whom do you serve?

Because…..if you don’t know in 3 seconds…..if you have to think about it, you are adrift. If you don’t know immediately whom you are serving, is it any wonder that you sometimes do things that, in retrospect, make no sense?

I am a Christian. When I get confused…….and that is every day…….I go to the Bible. The Bible is extremely clear on this subject.

I am to serve God, my creator.

But, specifically how?

Here too, the Bible is extremely specific.

Love God…….love everybody else.

Intellectually, at least, that is my answer.

So, I start my day.

I walk outside, I say, “Good morning Lord”. I pray, meditate, read the Bible. I ask God if he has anything specific that he wants from me……today. So far so good. I do some chores. Then I get in my truck to run some errands. And the wheels start to come off. Does the way I drive serve God? Does my interaction with the clerk at the DMV serve God? Does my interaction with the waitress at Twin Peaks serve God…….and what am I even doing there in the first place?

You get the point. It doesn’t take very long for me to find myself serving someone or something else from my list of God substitutes. It’s a rare day that I don’t make it to the bottom of my list at least once. It’s a rare day that I don’t spend a little time serving my anger. And when I serve my anger…….aren’t I really serving the author of my anger…….Satan?

I need to spend more time recognizing that I am a servant…….and that I serve God.

This is a truth that is easy to lose sight of.

But it is the truth.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

Paul, Collosians 3:23-24, ESV

But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Joshua. 24:15, ESV

Every morning this week, as I sit on my patio watching the day begin, a coyote has run across my backyard. I think he lives just west of my yard. He is coming from the yard just east of my yard. He takes a short cut across my back yard to get back to his home. The family that lives on the east raises chickens. I suspect that the coyote has been looking for an easy breakfast. He may already have found it. The coyote is not malevolent. He is just being a coyote……doing coyote stuff…… eating chickens. He weighs the risks and rewards, considers his past successes in crossing my yard and justifies the trip. But, his plans for today run contrary to my plans and my neighbor’s plans.

So…..I am setting up an ambush. I will wait with a shotgun and put an end to this predator. I will pick a spot that offers me a nice, clean, safe, shot, load the shotgun with buckshot, and kill the coyote. Please understand, the coyote has done me no harm, though he may, some day. His only offense is that his plan for today just doesn’t fit into my plan for my yard and my neighborhood.

Here’s how it will work. I have chosen a 10 yard by 10 yard patch of lawn. There is a nice place nearby for me to hide. There is a clean 20 yard shot with a good backstop. The patch of lawn is right on his path from the chicken coop on the east to his den, somewhere on the west. If he steps into that patch, he will die and it will not be pretty. The way that this is set up, the coyote’s only hope for survival is to not set foot in that small patch of my yard.

You’ve probably sensed a metaphor here. But, in this metaphor, I am not the hunter. I am the coyote. I am not malevolent, I am just doing human stuff. And just like everybody else, not all of the stuff that I do is OK. I stand at the edge of a place that I know in my heart is a not a good place. But, there is something in there that I really want. I consider the reward, weigh the risks, and come up with a justification. On a good day, I can come up with several justifications. And sometimes…….I go for it.

Examples:

Using the copier at work for personal copies.

Parking in the handicapped spot…….just for a few minutes.

Carrying stuff in the bed of my pickup…..uncovered. Because sometimes it blows away.

Speeding……5-10 mph over the limit.

The problem is this: There is an intelligent, malevolent being who is working out his plan. He knows me. He knows my vulnerabilities. He is setting up his ambush. It is carefully designed, customized for me, and highly effective. If I set foot in his “kill zone,” he is confident that there is no escape for me. Furthermore, it is not just one ambush. He sets up dozens of them every day.

This is my daily encounter……..with Satan. I wander into his trap and he wins a small battle. The ambush may not end up for me as badly as it might for the coyote. But, it will put a little more distance between me and the righteousness of God. The trouble is that the small battles add up. If I am not careful, I can get comfortable wandering around in the bad places. If I am not careful, I can dumb down my morality. If I am not careful, I can find myself separated from God.

Back to the metaphor. I know that you are wondering. How did my coyote ambush work out this morning?

Well, the coyote didn’t show up. He made a smart choice. He made it home to his family. Good for him.

But………. I’ll be back, maybe not tomorrow……..maybe next week……maybe somewhere else in my yard. You can count on it. I am nothing……if not persistent.

Satan is like that.

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

1 Peter, 5:8, ESV

I don’t know about women’s public restrooms. But, there is a curious phenomenon in the men’s room. I occasionally see a small pocket size, comic book by the sink. It was left there by someone before me. It was left there for me…….or someone like me…….by a stranger who wants to help me. In ten pages, it tells a story from the Bible. The purpose of this “tract” is to draw me closer to my creator……..or even better……..to introduce him to me for the first time. I typically glance at it and leave it there. The guy who put it there was trying to share something of great value…….and I just dismiss it and go on about my day. This actually happens many times, in many different ways every day. A Christian puts a message of faith, love, and hope in my path…..possibly a message like this blog……..and I blow right past it.

Why?

I am already a “sold out believer”. The tract tells me nothing new.

I am in a hurry and hanging out in a public toilet is not my thing.

It might be soiled.

I believe that the guy who left it is naive, though good intentioned. He is probably not too bright…….not as sophisticated as me. What could a guy who litters public toilets teach me about God?

Even if God is real……this is not where he would reach out to me.

It’s just another bit of superstitious dribble. Only a fool would buy it.

All of these things are untrue……some more than others.

It’s not the tract that concerns me today. It is my reaction to the tract. It is my reaction to the streetcorner preacher…..to the Jehovas witness who knocks on my door on Sunday morning…….to the two young Mormon men riding bikes down the road……to the billboard that says “where will you spend eternity?”…….to the parent trying to get the school board to allow prayer in her kid’s school.

Occasionally, I am annoyed. Often, I silently critique their message or their delivery. Or, perhaps, I say to myself, “I could do better than that.” I clearly recall walking past a streetcorner preacher who was shouting death and damnation to passers by and saying to myself, “you can’t annoy people into salvation.” And that may be true.

But, here’s the thing. All of the people that I have mentioned are evangelists. They are all giving up their time to depopulate hell. Some are more skilled than others. Some of them may be so unskilled that their work is counterproductive. But, if you look at their heart, they are trying to give us all something of great value. They are trying to share with all of us what is arguably the most valuable idea that has ever entered the human conscious.

Jesus saves.

I was once in the army. I get a discount at many businesses. The clerk often says, “thanks for your service”. That statement is a small thing, probably “pro forma”. But, it feels good to hear it. Maybe that is the correct response to the tract in the toilet.

Thanks for your service.

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.”

Jesus and John, Mark 9: 38-41, ESV

This is a follow up to a recent post on peace. The prior post dealt with the beauty, value, and desirability of peace. So far so good. But, how do you achieve peace? Do you find it? Do you ask for it? Is it a gift? Do you create it?

The answer is yes.

First, let me deal with what doesn’t work. This is a list of things that people do to get ahead, to find satisfaction, to find happiness:

Make a lot of money.
Attain power…….social, commercial, or political.
Become popular, an influencer.
Earn the admiration of their peers.

These things in themselves are not bad. The trouble is that in pursuing them you accumulate problems that you must sort out constantly in order to stay on top
It is not hard to find a celebrity who has achieved some or all of these things and yet is miserable. They often publish books whining to the rest of us about how hard their life is.

It turns out that peace is both easier and harder to attain than these paths that don’t work.

Peace is completely independent of money, power, influence, and prestige. Even more, peace is completely independent of your circumstances. Those are not the places to look for peace.

Peace is a characteristic of the spiritual realm……not the physical realm. To seek peace among the trappings of the physical world is a quest that is doomed to fail. The list of people who have figured this out as they are dieing…..or worse, who never figure it out, is long and storied.

In order to achieve peace……..find peace….receive peace……create peace…….you must get your spiritual house in order.

The first thing that you must do is to resign your position as CEO of the universe. You are not in charge. You are not big enough, powerful enough, smart enough, or capable enough. Neither am I, for what it’s worth. In a word, you and I lack the authority to reign. There are a lot of problems with Islam; but, they got one thing right. The very word Islam translates into “submission”. This is the starting point. This is, without a doubt, the hardest part of the process.

After you cede control of the universe in general…….and control of your life in particular………you need to find out who is actually in charge. There are a lot of candidates. Every few years we hear of a cult led by a guy who has claimed this authority…….they typically end badly. I am a Christian. I believe that the Bible has the answer to this question……and many more. You may reject the Bible…..but, if you do, I have one question, “Have you actually read it?” Because, If you haven’t, you are like my granddaughter. I asked her if she liked to eat charred octopus. She said, “Ewwe no! That’s gross!” She still hasn’t tried it. That leaves more octopus for me. The Bible is a very complicated book. This should not be surprising…..it’s a complicated world. The old testament has a lot of history…….and a lot of rules. But, it has one central theme: The old testament teaches us that God, the Trinity, is in absolute charge. The new testament tells us what he expects us to do. We often don’t agree with God. We sometimes don’t like what he expects of us. My only answer is that God is in charge not me. Deal with it.

Having identified the guy in charge and submitted to his authority, we simply follow his instructions. Sounds tough. Here is the “Cliff Notes” version:

Love God…..love everybody else.

There it is:

Give up control.
Recognize God’s absolute authority.
Obey him…….that is……love him and everybody else.

Do these things and you will achieve, find, and receive peace. Even better, your peace will spread to the people around you. You will create peace.

It turns out that it’s simpler than you thought. But, it’s still not easy. You will fail…..every day……same as me. But, the process will lead you to peace.

the saints are just the sinners
Who fall down and get up

Bob Carlisle

I am retired. The heart of retirement is time. In a way, my time is limited. After all, I’m 71 years old. But, in another way, I have a lot of time. For 40 years, between school and my job, I worked. I was fortunate in that my job gave me more time off than most. As a wild guess, I had about 6 hours a day, 100,000 hours total, of what I would call free time while I was working. If I am retired for 25 years, I will have about 10 hours a day, 100,000 hours total, of free time. These numbers are a bit surprising, even to me. My free time comes in larger chunks these days. It seems as though I have more free time now than ever before. So…..what do I do with all of this free time?  When I look at how I spend my days, I find that the two biggest ways that I spend my time are hobbies and sitting in a chair on my back patio enjoying the view. I am blessed in that the view from my patio is really nice. It is a view of nature. There are trees, wildlife, a valley, and hills or even mountains. There are very few people. There are no problems. There is no anger, crime, or meanness. There is no talking head on the TV trying to get me worked up over his political problem du jour.

In a word, my patio time can be summed up in one word……peace.

I spend my time as though it were a limited resource, because it is. I spend my time on the things that I value the most. And from my chair on the patio, I have concluded that one of the things that I value the most in the closing years of my life……..is peace. People around me find it frustrating that I don’t worry a lot about problems…..the federal debt, immigration policy, wars, crabgrass. But, I just don’t. Perhaps I am ignoring all of these important problems. Could be. But, the truth is that I am pursuing something immeasurably more important, more valuable than crabgrass. I am looking for peace.

I have a good friend who is a Bhuddist. He spends a lot of his free time seeking nirvana. I haven’t studied Bhuddism a lot, but it seems that nirvana and peace are very closely related. We are so different in many ways. And yet, we both are pursuing what is essentially the same thing.

I can only conclude that peace is a need, a goal, a destination that is deeply embedded in the human heart…….Christian or Bhuddist.  I am convinced that most of the problems in our culture….in our world……come down to our pursuit of things other than peace.

If you are not at peace……..you cannot be happy………regardless of your situation.

If you can find peace……grow peace…….you will be happy…….regardless of your situation.

I am a Christian. I follow God and God’s wish for me is peace. The path that I try to follow in my quest for peace is codified in the Bible……especially in the teachings of Jesus. It is said that the two signs of the presence of God are joy and peace.

So…….what does Jesus say about peace?

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But, take heart, I have overcome the world.”

Jesus, John 16:33, ESV

“Peace I leave you: my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

Jesus, John 14:27, ESV

And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness, and trust forever.

Isaiah, 32:17, ESV

If possible, so far as it depends on you, Live peaceably with all.

Paul, Romans, 12:18, ESV

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Desiderata