Where would you like to go? If I was going to send you on a vacation, where do you want to go? Think of this vacation, as a big deal! Let’s say you take two whole weeks for your vacation. No, let’s say, you take a month off. A whole month away from work, or from laundry or ironing. A whole month that would fulfill your life like nothing else. Where are you going to go? Now, think big about this. Now, where do you want to go?
How about Hawaii? It’s a set of beautiful islands. You can go to Maui or to Kauai or maybe to the island of Hawaii itself. You can walk along the sands of the beach and enjoy the ocean’s role of waves. Or maybe you want to see sea turtles and go to a sea turtle beach. Or even, you can get into your car and try the endless roads that take you across the mountains and through cities. All of this is available in Hawaii.
Maybe you would like to take a river cruise on the Rhine, in Germany. There are lots of towns on the way and you could walk through them looking at the old parts of the town. Some of these buildings are thousands of years old and they really challenge the mind to what could have been. Or you could go to the historic district in view of an old church that is something like 800 or 900 years old. Or you can go shopping in lots of city centers all on the Rhine, which really has an acute European flavor. All this is yours if you want it.
Or you could go to Colorado, outside of Boulder. You could see the beautiful mountainsides. You can curl up next to a lake on a lawn chair and have a summer cabin with bunk beds, and a lake that hasn’t been swimming in for months. You can go hiking along some of the best mountain peaks you could ever imagine and here you can see the vast valleys below you. You can get on a horse and ride into the Rocky Mountain National Park, where you won’t see people for 100 miles and you can ride for days without seeing anybody around you. Is this what you’re looking for? Is this what makes your soul, sing?
What are you looking for? What are you really, looking for? How can you find this kind of vacation that could suit every part of your life? But what would happen if you went on that vacation and you really had the time of your life? You really loved it! It was wonderful and your wife or the other half also loved it. And if you have kids, well even they loved it!
This is really good, hah? This is really terrific! I hope you’re excited. Hope you really understand what I’m asking you. This could be the best vacation ever!
But then you come back, and you have to go to work. There is more laundry and ironing to do, and you can’t get away. It’s hard to go back to nothingness. It’s hard to really understand what your life could’ve been like. What might’ve happened, but didn’t happen.
But, then, a thought comes into your head, even though it was a great vacation, you still missed “something”. That “something” is there, but I don’t know what it is. That “something” is real, because I wanted to be real. It’s real because I’m looking for it, I wanted to be real. What is this “something”? What is this “something” that I really want? I love my wife or girlfriend, I love my kids, and I also love the people I’m with. But this “something” is there, I know it’s there, but what is it?
So, you go on another vacation, for four weeks and it is so good! It was so good! This is really wonderful and terrific and marvelous and spectacular! But then, when you’re back at work, you still have the same thought: what is this “something”, and why is it here? What does this “something” mean? How am I going to get this “something”? Where do I go? What does it mean? Why am I empty, instead of full? What is this “something”, and why do I need it?
This “something” is God’s word! Think of this “something”, this way:
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers and sisters. 17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave birth to us by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first-fruits of his creatures. (James 1:16 – 18)
This is, that “something”. God’s word is amazing. There is nothing that forms life like God’s word. And although it may be disdainful for us, it is still, God’s word. Let me give you some examples of what I’m talking about:
Let’s say you’re listening to music and it is not a single sound, but this is a symphony, and the music rolls over you and engages you in wonderful delights. Let’s say you’re at the seashore and you see a beautiful landscape behind you and you’re in love with the mountains as it comes down to the sea itself. Or perhaps you’re there with a beautiful woman whom you really love and who loves you so much you can’t tell who loves who more.
Here, James says that this is God’s gift given to you and for the others with you so you can enjoy God’s world. And when you are there God’s gift is right in front of you, that beautiful music, that beautiful landscape, that beautiful woman – you may be in front of a person you’re falling in love with. The good gifts: a beautiful face, a beautiful landscape, a beautiful piece of music. James says sometimes you get overtaken with a very, very palpable sense that you’re in the presence of something you’ve wanted all your life, and this embodies it. If you have this, you’ll finally be happy.
This is that “something”. There’s nothing like it! It is true and is real and it’s here waiting for you! This, is, that, “something” that you really want. And, it is good!
So, when that happens, what do you do? We say, marry him. Marry her. Build a house at the seashore. At least, buy the music. What happens is you go after the good gift. You say, “Finally!”
But when you get this, and you will get this, you’ll always find the vision fades. You marry the person. You build the house. In fact, you even take the CD home. I have found sometimes I know exactly what he’s talking about. I certainly hope you do too. Sometimes there’s a certain passage in the music, and it points to something. There’s some sort of atypical experience, some sense in which it seems to embody something you want, and every time the passage comes on by, there’s a thrill. But eventually, the vision fades and you are left with what?
What happens when the vision fades? What do we do with ourselves when something is wrong? Can we fix it? If your marriage is wrong, do you go through a divorce, or 2 of them (?), or maybe 3 of them? What do you do if your kids are wrong, what do you do then? How can “wrongness” be the gift that gives forever?
Is this not your vacation? Is this not the way you felt at work when you needed that “something”? Is this that odd “something” that you wanted? What is this “something”, and how do I fix it?
As we stand before our gift and we see that beautiful and list seashore, and we hear that wonderful beautiful music and were with a beautiful wonderful woman who was everything to us, but still within us that beautiful gift, fades. Is this a problem? Is this the way of the world around us? Is it only me, or is this you as well? Do we all see that fading away of what could have been amazing?
No! But it is not what we had hoped for. A beautiful woman is here to help us build a relationship with us and will carry us much further than beauty could ever carry us forward. And the music is there to remind us that there is so much more for us to learn that we can’t really comprehend it all in a moment. And after the vision fades after the seashore fades away from us, and were looking at mountains and the sea, yes, we still feel the excitement of this wondrous place, but we don’t feel the wonder anymore because it has left us.
But that is the difference between what nature can give us and what is in God’s word because God’s word can fill us with beauty and majesty and will stay with us forever. our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. We are to shine as the sun and be given the Morning Star. This is God’s word! We want to be given the Morning Star, and this is how we get it.
“We do not merely want to see beauty. We want something hard to be able to be put into words. We want to be united with the beauty we see. We want to pass on it. We want to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it, but this is the promise of the gospel, that one day God will give us the Morning Star and put on the splendor of the Son. The leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that someday, God willing, we will get in. We will put on the glory of nature, or, rather, of that greater glory of which nature is only the first sketch.”
This is what we want! This is that “something”! This is that “something” we have been looking for forever and now that we have found it, we will never let it go! But here it is for us to understand and to grapple with and feel good about. And so how do we dive into God’s word, because this can be really hard.
You could start with Genesis, it’s hard but you go through all of the discussions as it was for a Jew. But this won’t help you, because the New Testament is really important. And it’s so important that it changes what you hear and see from the Old Testament. Because the New Testament is talking about who we are, and what really matters to us.
Let’s say we started with Genesis. There is a story that starts in chapter 25 of the book of Genesis, and it’s a story of Esau and Jacob. Esau was the first one born and Jacob was the second one born, but Jacob had his hand wrapped around Esau’s ankle. And when they were grown men, Esau was a man of the field, he was a hunter when he knew the fields well and he was amazing at catching animals. And Jacob was a quiet man who stayed in tents.
But one day when Jacob was out in the fields and he came home, he was really hungry. He was so close to death and he was so famished, that he really wanted something to eat, quickly. (Genesis 25: 19-25)
“Gimme some of that’s red stuff and some bread, now!”, says Esau.
“Why should I? This is mine. I did it. I cooked it.”, says Jacob.
“I’ll do anything for that stew.”
“Well, okay, give me the birthright.”
“Sure. I’m starving to death. What good is it having an inheritance if I don’t eat this?”
So, for his morning breakfast, he gives up his inheritance to Jacob. You say, “This is incredible. What an idiot! Who would put all of his inheritance and his money into something like this? Who would do such a thing?”
You and me. Why? Because you marry the woman or the man, and then when they don’t turn out to really make you happy, you’re so upset with them. You’re so angry with them, and you say, “This is Ridiculous.” So, you divorce her or him. And if you think life stinks then, ho, life stinks now! The detriment that we feel when our relationships a ruined is akin, to going to hell.
Don’t give something up that means so much to you. Don’t fumble with what you are doing, with your personhood and the individuals of your best and closest friends. This will kill you.
But this also means that he gave up the dream. He gave up the beautiful woman or man. He gave up the seaside. He gave up the music that inspired him and created this wonderful lifting into heaven. These are the things he gave up because he couldn’t understand what he was doing.
Why would you give up your vacation? Why would you give up the things that matter most to you? Do you not care? Does this mean nothing?
No! This means everything to you! And therefore, we should make sense of what we’re doing and why we care. A vacation is only the start of where we’re going, but there is much more at stake here.
When James writes: “giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights”.(James 1:17) He saying that God has provided you with this perfect gift, and now you must go forward with this gift and make it right. Not just right, but right for you and her. You and I are the only people, and sometimes people get it wrong. But “wrong” doesn’t mean “the end”, and so we must understand what we’re doing.
So, what can we do, how can we jump into the Lord’s word without feeling like fools?
Do I need to talk to the Lord and who is He to me?
Review other papers:
“The Prayer Guide”, “What is God’s Peace?”,
“The Grace of God”
This work was taken from:
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
New Revised Standard Version – Updated Edition (NRSVUE)
C. S. Lewis’s, The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis’s, Mere Christianity