The unmowed lawn.

(Warning: this might be poetry.  i'm not real sure.  For the record, i don't even have a lawn.)

Father, forgive me, i know not what to do.

i’m surrounded by work that needs to be done.  

There’s a gathering tsunami of work coming.

i hate what i do.

i want to do something else.

What should i work on?

i’m not an artist.

i’m not an illustrator.

i’m not a writer.

i won’t be a carpenter for much longer.

i won’t be much longer.  Maybe i’m half way through?  

i don’t know.  

Do you care what i do?

Do you care about me?

i know you love me.

i have all the proof i need in Jesus.

i know you know me, i have all the proof i need in your word.

So who am i to you?  What am i to you?

The breeze stirs the trees.  The leaves whisper but not in words.

i’m certainly not a poet.

Is it enough to just seek my next meal?  To delight in my toil and thank you?

What will i measure?  The day you set me on your scales?  What will my life weigh?  

When will i do all the things i have to do?

i think i’ll take out the garbage.

After i finish my tea.

What is a day worth?  How much time is wasted?

Is there time to spend an afternoon in thought?

How much is a thought worth?

If on one side there was a thought or a poem or a song

and on the other side of the scale, there was a mowed lawn

which would be heavier?

Which is greater?  Sweat or thought?

What if it’s a riding mower?  Is it worth more or less?

Which is the greater travesty?  And unwritten blogpost?  Or an unmown lawn?

What if the most noble thing i do today

is take the trash cans to the curb?

The tea’s gone.

The day’s gone.

The thoughts roll on.

A riddle revealed

The riddle of Samson to me is this, if Christ Jesus and Samson were in the same party, to which would we gravitate?  Who would we want to be more like?  Who’s attention would we want?  Samson was an apparent demi-god.  Jesus had no beauty that we may behold.  Both men could attract a crowd.  Both men could dispel one too.  i think Samson might exist to show us that even at our best, and more than our best, the best we could do is bring more death.  Samson couldn’t change his own heart much less ours.

“Out of the eater

something to eat.

From the strong

came something sweet.”

Samson carved out his own path.  He sought his own vengeance.  He didn’t purposely seek his own glory.  Contrary to popular opinion, an alpha male doesn’t have any need to push himself to the fore.  To gain reputation.  They are alpha males precisely because they are already fully assured of their own reputations and greatness.  They have looked around and judged themselves, rightly or wrongly, as superior to what they see.  So they need not listen to inferiors.  They have no equals.  They see no reason to do things to impress the lesser men because lesser men’s opinions do not matter to them.  No, the glory of hoi polloi could not give anything to him so why seek it?  Samson simply did what he wanted.  

But for all his greatness, this paragon of man, this tragic superhero, all his vaunted strength, all his cleverness, he could not beat death, the eater of all life, and he could not find love, the very sweetness and joy of living.  A superhero couldn’t save us.  A prophet who could call down fire from heaven could not save us.  A king after God’s own heart could not save us.  A law, a tabernacle, a temple, a priesthood could not save us.  “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Rom 7

“What is stronger than Death?

What is sweeter than Love?”

Jesus, the prophesied one who would deliver God’s people from the hand of Death, the chosen one of God, begotten, not created, who was with God and was God from before the beginning, everlasting to everlasting, chose to intermingle with his enemies.  On his way to arrange his marriage, the evil one attacks him and he repels him with nothing but the Word of God.  The strong man tied up he proceeds to do what His Father wanted and nothing else.  This alpha male didn’t need anyone to tell him who he was.  He knew what was in man’s heart.  He does not seek the adoration and praise of men, though it is his due.  Nor did he have to shy away from it when it was truly given, because it is his due.  He did not consider himself greater than anyone but made himself instead a slave to all.  Doing for them what they could not do for themselves.  He used all his power and his strength to obey his Father and save his people.  Those the Father had given to him.  He became Prophet, Priest, King and Superhero.  For he answered the riddle once and for all.  

Out of death, the eater of life,

something to eat, 

“This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that someone may eat from it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats from this bread, he will live forever.  And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  John 6

From the strong, and what is stronger than God?

came something sweet.

“…that he may grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (you having been firmly rooted and established in love), in order that you may be strong enough to grasp together with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, in order that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”  Eph 3

“For while we were still helpless, yet at the proper time Christ died for the ungodly. For only rarely will someone die on behalf of a righteous person (for on behalf of a good person possibly someone might even dare to die), but God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Therefore, by much more, because we have been declared righteous now by his blood, we will be saved through him from the wrath. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, by much more, having been reconciled, we will be saved by his life. And not only this, but also we are boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.” Rom 5

Love came and love brought life.  And life everlasting.  Life abundant.  Life that flies in the face of Ecclesiastes.  Life above the sun.  If we live forever in Christ, then nothing we do for him is meaningless!  Death alone is meaningless for we are the resurrected.  God restores and adds to all we “lost”.  “For I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is about to be revealed to us.” Rom 8  This alpha male is worth following.  This is the one we’ve been waiting for.  This is the one we are waiting for.  He wasn’t the hero we deserved.  He’s not even the hero we wanted, Thank God!  He’s the hero we need.  Place your hope in Him.

A riddle

Samson, the prophesied one who would begin to deliver God’s people from the hand of the Philistines, found a young lady among the Philistines he wanted to marry.  The chosen one of God, dedicated to Him from birth, chose to intermingle with his people’s enemies.  On his way to arrange the wedding, a lion attacks him and he kills it with his bare hands.  He tells no one.  This isn’t really a big deal to him.  A little while later when he travels the same road to his wedding feast, he turns aside to see the lion’s body.  To gloat over his past kills perhaps?  To relive the excitement?  Curiosity?  What he finds is bees have made a nest in the rotting carcass, in a dry and arid environment, after the scavengers have eaten it out, the skin probably made a pretty good tent for the industrious little stingers.  Without mention of smoker or protective clothing, Samson reaches in and scoops out some honey and goes along his merry way enjoying the unforeseen fruits of his God-given strength.  And it gives him an idea.  He makes a wager with his groomsmen, his party-goers on the first day of his seven day feast.  Solve my riddle and i’ll give you all new clothes.  Do not solve it, and you gotta get me a month’s worth of new clothes.  A princely closet that would be in an age when most folk probably had one outfit and one Sunday-go-to-meeting’s.  

The riddle:

Out of the eater

something to eat.

From the strong

comes something sweet.

For six days they try and fail.  Then they threaten to burn down Samson’s fiancé in her father’s house and she pesters Sammy into telling her the answer.  The next day, with what i can only imagine are the smuggest sneers of feigned innocence, the Philistine guests propose…

What is sweeter than honey?

What is stronger than a lion?

To say Samson is incensed is fair.  After a crude reference to their cheating and calling his fiancé a cow, he kills thirty Philistines (different ones) and takes their clothes and gives them to his former guests.  At least he honored the bet, i suppose.  Samson himself is a bit of a riddle to me.  He’s comic book material.  His is the kind of story that makes the Bible sound like myth.  He’s uncomfortable to our theology: a Nazirite of God from birth, who drinks (we assume) touches dead animals and even eats out of them, who holds God in his debt, arrogant, swaggering, disdainful, a carouser with foreign women and prostitutes, essentially the worst stereotype of Alpha Male Jock and yet God miraculously blesses him.  Why?  What’s going on here?  Is it as a demotivational poster Matt Colflesh shared with me has said, “It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”?  A morality play then?  

i highly doubt it and here’s why, it has the opposite effect.  When i said that Samson is uncomfortable to our theology, that’s pretty much the only people he offends, well, other than Philistines, is theologians.  Otherwise, he’s the guy we wish we could be, the jerk the girls want to be with, the guy who without boasting or hyperbole, simply knows he can take anybody and everybody in the room.  Not just a pretty face and rippling pectorals, he’s often the smartest guy in the room too.  He’s living life on his terms, bowing to nothing and no one.  He’s everything Fakebook tells us we should be, inwardly mocking all the lesser mortals when he deigns to think about them at all.  Even his death brings the house down!  “And the dead whom he killed in his death were more than he killed in his life.”  Epic!  Why aren’t there more movies about this guy?  He’s a marvel superhero!  Flawed, powerful, tragic, heroic and lucratively larger-than-cgi cinematic!

And that is the point.  What is stronger than a lion?  Samson was.  What is stronger than Samson?  Death.  For all his muscles, for all his cleverness, for all his independence, this apex of masculinity could not beat death.  

What is sweeter than honey?  How about love?  For all his muscles, for all his cleverness, for all his independence, what he kept searching for and never finding was love, loyal, lasting and true.  Everyone feared Samson, no one cared for him.  He “knew” many women, but none knew him.  

Seriously, why isn’t there more movies about him?  Isn’t this the human condition?  No matter what we achieve, no matter how great we become, no matter what glories we garner, battles we win, vengeance we strangle out with our own two bloody hands, we can not beat death, we cannot find true love.  Even his death did not free the Israelites from the Philistines.  They would come back, eventually even killing Israel’s first King, Saul and his sons.  So what was the point?  What did this pinnacle of human virility accomplish?

A fitting epitaph on his stone could have been Solomon’s, “Vanity, vapor, a chasing after of the wind.”  Or perhaps, “Mene, Mene. Tekel. Upharsin.”  

But God…