Speed and Status

This is a continuation of the theme from this day in the Junior Series of Pages.  The factors related to the issues of that Page must be addressed if we are to find some relief from the current misunderstandings, social tensions, cultural clashes, business uncertainties, human competitions, values that include an understanding of life and God’s evaluations of individuals and the management of society – and all that, for the Christian context of life biblically based.  The competitions now present among us must be turned into cooperation and integration.  (Unfriendly competition belongs to self-dealing individuals, so to exceed or match what that person has done along the way in the progress of life.)  It is clear that God chooses to give variant gifts and status to persons, but makes his evaluations on the basis of faithfulness in persons to believe that he means for them to achieve in life course in the context of what they find/choose to do and become.  The parent working well as a parent will be ahead with God and exceeding the life of the person working poorly as the leader of a nation.  God’s evaluations include considerable range for us to win in his evaluations, even providing choices and changes so to adapt to failures, accidents, omissions, but with sufficient flexibility that we can turn failure into success, decline into advance, and losing into winning.  Some persons sense that process, and foster it even when they do not believe in God.  Mankind lives and works in a time warp: God works in an eternal perception, with time permitted as a parenthesis provided for formation.  If following directions for that parenthesis, the individual is gifted with immortality.

There are several ways by which we can manage the excesses pressed upon our lives.  A major one is to know and apply the concepts related to waiting on the Lord.  This kind of waiting is related to prayer and thought.  Prayer is vital, as is reflective thought to perceptive directions and actions.  We take care to permit emotions to rest, and so gain knowledge about meaning of both friends and adversaries to concepts, sometimes changing, in the respect for human beings related to rights – identified as righteousness for biblical Christians.  They are found in the principles of moderation (related to a central concept between excesses); moderation related to measurement of time assignments; and understanding the concept of waiting through the time factors related to the best nurture, development, maturity of mankind and that with which mankind has to do.  The Psalms often address the concept of control through waiting.  Note especially Psalm 39.  (Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in thee – v.7)  We gain insight in the study of time disorientation in Israel, going into the promised land at the wrong time, and returning to Moses in defeat. A new generation had to be born to pick up the vision, and go forward, not limited by slavery years in Egypt. Even Moses was denied entrance to the reality of the vision, though permitted to view the promised land.

It is well for us to know that God is not so taken with time factors as we are.  If one never grows old and never dies, that is to be expected.  The wise persons we know have a grasp on time.  Jesus refused to be taken, when early in his public ministry they would dispatch him by throwing him from a cliff.  He aided them in time when his time had come.  It had to be at the Passover so to demonstrate, in part, the transition from law to grace.  The veil of the Temple had to be ripped from top to bottom at the right time.  The stories can be multiplied.  A pastor of an eminent mega-church, knew that the church he pastored would plateau unless a larger facility was provided.  Everything appeared to be in place, and resources would be provided with proper planning.  The pastor began the forward movement, but stopped everything in the activity accenting that the people were not really ready for the project.  He knew his people, and he knew how to avoid depressing conflict.  He prevailed, and two years later with enthusiastic people, decline in negative response, and an even greater pressure for better facilities, the work was approved, moved forward, and the success of the congregation was startling to those who followed events.  As this is being written several thousand Christians and their neighbors are benefitting from an even larger ministry in the same spiritually warm context as that attending when there were many fewer members.