PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “DON’T SURRENDER YOUR DREAM-WHISTLING THROUGH THE TOMBSTONES!”
By: Ron Woodrum
In his great classic The City of God Augustine describes our condition on earth as a form of citizenship in two cities, the city of man and the City of God. The lure of the city of man often silences the summons of the call of the City of God. Earth’s city is visible, solid, apparent to our senses and always alluring. God’s city, by contrast, appears hidden, uncertain and very far away. But appearances are deceptive, for the City of God is the real, the substantial and the lasting, while the city of man proves fleeting and vain. Next to the immediacy of the city of man, which promises to meet our needs right now, God’s promise does not seem like much. But when broken promises of the city of man are strewn like cast-off baubles in the ash heaps of life, it means everything to know that we can know God, and in knowing Him find the one thing, above all other things, that our hearts long for! Those truths caused Augustine to say, “We are restless until we find our rest in thee Oh God!” That is what C.S. Lewis called “the secret signature of the human soul”. In his book The Problem of Pain, he wrote, “There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven: (intimate relationship with God); but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts we have ever desired anything else…it is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable desire, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work….All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have finally attained it!”
C.K. Chesterton contrasted the lack of such signature in animals, with the image of it in humankind. He wrote, “who has ever found an ant hill decorated with statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee hive carved up with images of gorgeous queens of old?” But man does those things! He continues, “The fact that apes have hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does nothing with them! He does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or mutton; People talk of barbaric achitecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a rococo style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, even though they are equipped with enough material out of which they could make many camel’s hair brushes!” Blaise Pascal highlighted this unique signature of the soul too when he said, “The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proven by his wretchedness. For what in animals is called nature we call wretchedness in man; by which we recognize that, his nature now being like that of animals, has fallen from a better nature which once was his. For who is unhappy at not being a king except a deposed king!” (Pensees). Fallen man is a deposed King. We were made for fellowship with God. Not just any fellowship with God. God is to be our number one passion. Even as Christians who love God we often let the city of man take priority and rob us of experiencing the fullness we should be enjoying with Him every day of our lives. That is why, as Emerson said, “we live lives of quiet desperation”. C.S. Lewis also called that “man’s inconsolable secret”. He wrote in The Weight of Glory, “We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be take of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of the inconsolable secret…our life-long nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe we now feel cut off from, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fantasy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all of our merits and also the healing of that old ache”
Man has an inconsolable secret…and old ache that we live with every day that knaws at us deep inside. We were made for intimacy with God. Even though being born again has restored that fellowship, we do not give our whole hearts to that intimacy with proper fervor and passion. There in defines the struggle of the Christian life. We give more time, more attention and more love to the blessings than the Blesser. We find ourselves more attached to the gifts that the Giver. Scott Wesley Brown has written a song titled Things that warns us about the danger of surrendering the fulfillment of our spiritual dreams by whistling through the tombstones of the city of man!
Things
Things on the mantle, things on the shelf
Things that others gave me, Things I gave myself
Things I’ve stored in boxes, Things that don’t mean much anymore
Old magazines and memories Behind the Attic Door
Things on hooks and hangers, Things on ropes and rings
Things I guard that blind me, to the pettiness of other things
Am I like the Rich Young Ruler, ruled by all I own
If Jesus came and asked me, could I leave them all alone?
Oh Lord, I look to heaven, beyond the veil of time
To gain eternal insight that nothing is really mine
And to only ask for daily bread, and all that contentment brings
To find freedom as your servant, in the midst of all these things
For discarded in the junkyards, rusting in the rain
Lie things that took my finest years, of my lifetime to obtain
And whistling through these tombstones, the hollow breezes sing
A song of dreams surrendered to the tyranny of things!
“Don’t surrender your intimacy with God-whistling through the tombstones of the lesser things of the city of man!”