Brown's Daily Word 2-7-08

Praise the Lord for this Holy Season. The Lord who is Holy calls us to be holy . He calls us to be set apart, consecrated to Him and to His eternal and global cause of the Kingdom. To day we will look at " sloth", one of the seven deadly sins that clings to us like a blood sucking leach. Sloth suggests laziness, stupefied laziness, time-wasting, talent-wasting laziness. Sloth is the persistent state of being “tuned out”; of being unengaged; of relishing indifference. Sloth is the state of remaining uninvolved, uncommitted, uncaring. Sloth is the state of being a spectator in life, even willfully absent from life. We are seduced with a selfish desire to keep ourselves for ourselves, the “selfish” desire to keep our own life uncomplicated and unperturbed by ignoring people whose lives appear more difficult than ours, even endangered.
In my former life, I, worked in the Psychiatric hospital settings I remember people complain to me that life has cheated them, because they aren’t having a good time 24 hours per day without interruption.We all know, advertising has fostered utterly unrealistic expectations in people. Advertising has led people to believe that life is, or can be, or at least is meant to be, something like an endless beach holiday in the Bahamas : uninterrupted pleasure, no demands, no setbacks, no grief, everyone dancing and skipping in the company of “winners” with gorgeous bodies and fashionable clothes, no frustration or anxiety or pain. The problem, is that no one’s life is like this, and no one’s is ever going to be, even though too many people have been led to believe that what’s advertised is normal. To expect all this is to want sloth. The banality of many TV shows intensifies self-pampering. People who have been saturated in such shallowness aren’t going to immerse themselves in life, especially in someone else’s life, with its tides and turbulence, its summons to stand up, stand for, and stand with. Self-pampering fosters sloth. It is called deadly, obviously, because it’s a breeding ground for trivia. People who detach themselves from life with all of life’s tides and turbulence; people who want no part of challenge and struggle; these people invariably have large tracts of time on their hands. What do they do with vast stretches of unfilled time? They fill them up with trivia. They watch TV by the hour. They sleep. They become self-absorbed. Their self-absorption can appear harmless it can appear eccentric In any case the self-absorption is selfish, even when it appears virtuous. What else can be said of the 50-year old woman who spends three hours per day shaping her body? We won’t say “She has a remarkable body.” We won’t say it because the truth is, her remarkable body has been gained at the price of shriveled heart and mind and spirit. Where sloth abounds, time fills up with trivia as surely as motionless water fills up with algae. People are driven on a route Trivial Pursuit. Sloth is deadly, in that it withers human relationships. To step aside from life is necessarily to step aside from people. It’s to step aside from people to whom our help can mean the world; it’s to step aside from people who can mean the world to us. How many times in scripture are we told that the person we help renders us “Christ” to that person, as it were, while the person whom we allow to help us renders her the mirror-image of Christ to us? Of course other people are inconvenient. Then was Jean Paul Sartre correct when he wrote “Hell is other people”? Other people can be hellish; they can as readily be heavenly. Their arms embracing us, our arms embracing them, can as readily be those “everlasting arms” that are always and everywhere “underneath” us, even as the everlasting arms of God are most readily recognized in the arms of his human servants. If we detach ourselves from life we attempt to be entirely self-sufficient. No one can be, of course; but the desire for self-sufficiency and the attempt at it means that are trying to live in an ever-shrinking universe. Sloth is deadly just because it deadens. Sloth is deadly, in that it’s so very subtle. It’s like a hot cedar tub. Hot tubs can be enjoyable, even helpful -- if we need a hassle-free “time-out”. But there’s something wrong with the person who wants a “time-out” that goes on and on and on. Everyone knows what can happen in a hot tub. We luxuriate in the water. After a while it starts to feel cool (even though the water temperature hasn’t changed.) We make the water a little warmer. The process is repeated, several times over. Next morning the newspaper carries our obituary, and readers are told that our heart stopped beating. Sloth is just like this. Jesus calls men and women to be disciples. They respond with an initial surge of enthusiasm. Then the onerous aspect of discipleship’s collision with a hostile world, added to the normal wear-and-tear of life, gets them down. Easter morning finds Peter speaking for the rest: “What’s the point of it all? We did our best and it all boiled dry. Let’s go back to fishing.” Peter and his friends have plainly gone to the cave. Whereupon the risen Lord appears before them and pulls them out of the cave as he enlarges their faith and lends them resilience. Once more they step ahead in the task he has given them. As enlarged faith and greater faithfulness overturn our sloth we are going to find ourselves viewed as odd. A society bent on ease and drowsiness and self-gratification can’t understand why anyone would ever step out in a commitment that doesn’t promote ease and drowsiness and self-gratification. Still, we who are Christ’s people march to the beat of a different drummer. In the city of Lystra Paul was treated roughly. He didn’t take refuge in sloth, however, mumbling that he’d never return, never put himself out again for ungrateful people. Instead he said quietly to the Christians at Lystra, “It is through many tribulations that we enter the kingdom of God .” When we are called to take the stand that will always be unpopular; when we are summoned to make the sacrifice for the person who will never thank us; when we are called to do what’s right in an environment that rewards two-faced palm-greasers – in all these situations others are going to tell us we’re foolhardy. We, however, are going to be sustained by our vision of what’s right, as well as by a courage that rises in proportion to our vision. Vision and courage will reinforce each other. The temptation of sloth will recede. There are always people we must care for, even as there is evil we must resist, truth we must uphold, and a Lord whom we must obey. He, after all, has promised never to fail us or forsake us.
Lord Jesus, deliver us from slothfulness.

In Him,

Brown

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Dysfunctional Greeting Cards
I always wanted to have someone to hold, someone to love. And now that you've come into my life...
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Happy Birthday, Uncle Dad!
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Looking back over the years we've been together, I can't help but wonder...!
(Inside card) - What was I thinking?

Congratulations on your wedding day!...
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