Of She Bears and Y2K
By Foy Valentine
"Whatsoever things are … lovely … think on these things"
Philippians 4:8
Virgil said he wrote poetry like a she bear, gradually licking the new born into shape. (It took him seven years to write the 2183 lines of the Georgics.)
I am a little bit like Virgil. Make that a little bitty bit.
This offering has only very slowly been licked into some semblance of shape. For five years, I have usually tried to sound in these essays a light and, I have hoped, a sometimes lilting note. Under the general rubric of Paul`s "…whatsoever things are…lovely…think on these things", I have aspired to elicit an occasional smile, spread a random ray of sunshine, accentuate the positive, and avoid making sows` ears out of silk purses.
At this moment, however, I feel under some constraint to be more sober.
The reasons: (1) this journal has now been published for five years, and this last issue of Volume 5 is something of a natural milestone ("curst be he," to borrow words from Shakespeare`s modest tombstone in Stratford who reads this as millstone); (2) in a few days now we are scheduled to close out one millennium and usher in a new one, a portentous occasion, as mortals reckon such things (I think it is to my credit that in five years I have never once in this column uttered the Y2K mantra); and (3) besides, at 76 I am terminally (I use the word, shall I say, macabrely) aware that I have not the leisure of eternity in which to prophesy for "the moving finger writes and having writ moves on" as old Khayyam put it. In the great Indianapolis 500 race of life the flags are long since down and the last laps have begun.
So, is there any word from the Lord?
One respected body of Christian believers, the Shorter Catechism Presbyterians, allows that the "chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever."
Unaccustomed as I am to doing everything "decently and in order," as those Presbyterians so admirably do, I am more inclined to pick at that morsel of truth than I am to swallow it whole; but, still it keeps rearing its handsome head to be the catalyst for this particular licking into shape of this particular cub.
What is to be said about this God we would glorify and enjoy forever?
God is. It is a faith declaration. As Job said, "I know that my Redeemer liveth" (19:25). In the late 1930s when Adolph Hitler was tightening his death grip on Germany, Karl Barth was driven from his teaching post at the University in Bonn. Fleeing to his native Switzerland he enlisted as a private in the army where he remained until the war was over. At that time he returned to his teaching position in Bonn. Amid the noise of the cranes and caterpillars rebuilding from the bombed rubble, Karl Barth assembled his first class for his first lecture. His first words were, "Ich glaube an Gott"–I believe in God. Those are the first words of the Apostles` Creed. And those must be my first words here, "I believe in God." They are words to carry us into the new millennium.
If we are to glorify God and enjoy him forever, we must "believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him" (Hebrews 11:6). Moreover we have to know something about him.
These things we believe we know.
God is One (Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29; 1 John 5:7). The people of God are totally immersed in this profoundest of convictions. It is the first of the commandments. It is the clearest and plainest of God`s revelations: God is one. He is "all and in all" (Col. 3:11), but he is not many. He is omnipresent, but he is not fragmented. God is one and his people are to be like him in singleness of heart and mind and vision with one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.
God is Holy (Leviticus 11:44; Psalm 99:9; 1 Peter 1:16). Holiness means whole, wholly other, exalted, worthy, sacred; but it also means morally pure, perfect in goodness, complete in righteousness, upright, clean, ethically uncompromised and uncompromising. As God is holy, so his people are ordered to be holy. A tall order. It is the labor of a lifetime as believers work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
God is Spirit (John 4:24). He is more than matter, above matter, under matter, beyond matter. That God is spirit does not mean that he is anti-matter but that he transcends matter. As God is spirit, so his people are to be spiritually oriented, not preoccupied with Pokemon trivia or all the other things of this world, laying not up for ourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal.
God is Peace (Judges 6:24 RSV). It would be shocking if the great God of peace who taught his people to say Shalom had not revealed himself precisely as he has done in Gideon`s words recorded in Judges 6:24, "The Lord is peace." Because God is peace, his peacemaker people are to do "the things that make for peace."
God is Light (1 John 1:5). In him is no darkness at all. He s characterized as shekinah glory, consummate brilliance, shining purifier, revealing redeemer, kindly light, "the Father of lights" (James 1:17). In the very beginning, as it is recorded in Genesis 1:3, God said, "`Let there be light`; and there was light." Joseph Haydn, on hearing the first public performance of "The Creation," leaped from his seat at the great choral refrain "and there was light" and cried out, "I didn`t write that. God did." So, God`s people as "children of light" (Ephesians 5:8) who are ordained to be "the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14) are to "walk in the light as he is in the light" (1 John 1:7).
God is Truth (1 John 5:6). Pilate`s question to Paul, "What is truth?" might rightly have been posed as "Who is truth?" for we believe not only that truth is of God, but that indeed God is truth. To say that the truth makes us free is to say that God makes us free. Like our Lord, "full of grace and truth" (John 1:14), Christians are to gird our loins with truth (Ephesians 6:14) and "provide things honest in the sight of all" (Romans 12:17).
God is Love (1 John 4:8, 16). This formulation identifying God with the self-giving, compassionate, outreaching, tender mercy which we call love is a wonderful way to say who God is. And the other side of the coin of love is justice for justice is love at a distance. God`s people are ordained to love him with all our whole hearts and our neighbors as ourselves (Mt. 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-28).
God is Word (John 1:1). Genesis starts with, "In the beginning God" and the Gospel of John opens with "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." A word is reason and reality expressed in a language that folks can understand. What an astounding and beautiful insight with which to consummate this licking. And what a wonderful thought it is to carry with us through the Christmas season and into the new millennium.
As morning stars sing again together and as all the children of God shout for joy (Job 38:7) in his grace, I hope we can join our lives in glorifying God and in accelerating our everlasting vocation of enjoying him forever.
Hey. The bird is on the wing. Put your machine in fast forward. Now is the time. This is the day.
