Last night Father woke me to insert an additional blog, interrupting my further answer to the question “What can the righteous do?” ……or maybe giving another perspective on how that question can be answered?
He brought to mind someone I have not thought about for many years. A man called Stewart Black.
Stewarty as we knew him was a very attractive person. Physically his handsome looks were topped off by a very distinctive head of thick white hair that he must have had from a very young age.
His character was also admirable. He was an “elder” in our church, and when the Holy Spirit was poured out and all sorts of rumors began circulating about the strange “Unpresbyterian” things happening in the youth group, Stewarty was the only member of the Kirk session who came to see for himself…..and ended up staying! “
Another reason everyone loved Stewartty was because of his sense of humor.He always had a funny take on things which would bring a smile to our faces and help us young people not take ourselves too seriously.
Father, then said to me…… pairing Stewarty’s name and hair
“it’s Black And White”
Now I realized that you can take this in two different ways. Firstly when the expression is used to indicate that something is OBVIOUSLY right (and something else is obviously wrong) ……“It’s so black and white!!!’
This might be described as somehing becoming ‘politicized’ or ‘weaponized’ where we have taken a side. It could also be described in biblical terms as having eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Someone sent me an article recently from a Christian magazine entitled” Why I am Wearing a Face Mask to Church.” The author argued from scripture why he thought this was the right decision he had made now that church services were starting up again. I have written a few times and linked you to the medical references as to why we think medically speaking wearing a mask does not make sense, and could mistakenly be thought to be taking a side in a debate….where at the end we take a vote and one side wins and the other looses.
That however is not my intention and would I believe be missing the “Soft Stand’ point I wanted to make at the end of the last blog
Father said to me this morning, “ It’s not about the mask .It’s about the smile“ In other words it is not about taking a side, it’s about giving a smile, because we are no longer living from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but from the tree of life.
It is not about your choosing between something that you believe is right as opposed to something you believe is wrong. it is about choosing to follow what the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is showing you will bring life to others.
The first tree produces the fruit of self righteousness ……..I’m right (and by the way you are wrong) The second tree produces the fruit of joy .
It’s not whether or not I have transmitted a virus or not, it’s about whether I have transmitted life and health or not and it centers around whether my motive is loving from a pure heart when I am on everyone’s side, or living from a political heart when I am on one side and not on another.
And so what Father was emphasizing was that it is not
BLACK and WHITE
but…….
black AND white.……….like Stewarty!
The name Stewart (which happens to be the maiden name of both my mother and Hilary’s mother) means a servant. Our goal is, like Jesus Christ not to take a political side, but to be a servant of all, not by trying to please everyone, but by following in his footsteps, not as a moral teacher but as a living savior who has given us His Spirit that, as I said in the last blog, we might out of a place of rest, having surrendered up our “ political/tree of the knowledge of good and evil ‘’ opinions, hear instead his word of life in any and every situation.
As these thoughts were coalescing in my mind today, Hilary and I were staring out over Boston Bay from the harbor wall. The sight and sound of the sea awakened a longing in me for, as my father used to say, ‘ a dip’
“ I wonder if I would be allowed to have a swim here or not?“ I said, tongue in cheek to Hilary.
”Well it wouldn’t do your health any good.” She replied, eyeing the dirty water.
It dawned on me I had just asked my question from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and she had answered from the tree of life.
The wind of evil I pointed to in the last blog seeks to kill. Under the guise of protecting us from something that will harm us it is in fact I believe hindering us from receiving something that will heal us……..a life giving smile, This is the reason why in public I continue to, from a respectful distance, give an open faced smile to everyone I meet.
In taking a stand in this loving way I have found many people literally disarmed by the smile. That shaming look from behind the mask which might have been an initial response quite often yields to acceptance if not full smile. And in the unmasked I encounter whose first instinct is to nervously grope for their fig leaf lest they be shamefully ‘found out’ my smile invites them to ‘just chill’.
This is how I have been lead. How you are lead is for you to discern.
In this simple and practical way I find an outworking of Colossians 2:15 as the devil is disarmed of those two weapons I mentioned in the last blog, scaring and shaming, as with a simple smile I convey the love that casts out fear and the acceptance that counters judgement and rejection.
And so Stewarty I salute you with the finishing flag, my beloved BLACK and WHITE brother who is now in a perpetual state of staring into his Father’s face, having heard the words,
”Well done good and faithful Stewarty. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”
………..and with an open face, he reciprocates that smile, as a true ‘chip off the old block’😊