"Who's to say where the wind will take us? Who's to say what it is will break us? I don't know which way the wind will blow." - U2, Kite
My 13 year old son recently started a business and has made it his goal to earn $1000 this summer, building and selling Texas flags out of old wood and delivering them with me to his many paying customers. A few days ago he was outside painting one in the hot sun. It's a joy to watch him work, and even more so as he persists through adverse circumstances. Texas sun in July can be downright brutal, and to labor in it displays not only a firm devotion to one's calling, but an almost equally strong disregard for one's personal health.
I noticed as I walked outside that there had been a cloud covering him, helping to keep the heat of the sun at bay. As soon as I remarked on this out loud the cloud drifted away and my son looked at me as if I was somehow responsible for the sudden change in temperature.
It occurred to me that having the power to affect the weather is not something that I want. People tend to assume that just because you have the ability to do something, it means you are inclined to do it for them. So if word got out that I had the ability to make it warmer or colder depending upon my own whims, I can only imagine the frustration people would have with me when the weather didn't suit their needs.
"I haven't had a good rain in months," a farmer would tell me. "Why can't you just allow my crops a little bit of water so that I can continue to feed my family?"
"Really, today is not a good day for a storm. I planned a picnic in the park with my children," a frustrated parent might say.
And what if I hadn't even controlled the weather that week? It stands to reason that having such a power would not necessarily be something exclusive to me, but no doubt any time people were upset with their circumstances they would assume that it was I who had changed them for the negative. I might sleep in some lazy Saturday morning, only to be greeted upon departing my slumber by slews of people indignant that I had allowed a tsunami to destroy their beautiful beachfront properties.
Weather is one of many things that we accept as being completely out of our own control. Like the passing of time and the irrationality of illness, we've settled into the reality that life and circumstances will take place in ways that we cannot knowingly predict or adequately mitigate. And yet we have allowed ourselves to believe that taking certain drastic measures is necessary to prevent contracting a virus from which more than 99% of us will survive. We've sacrificed our work, our community, even our worship in the name of safety, neglecting to realize that adventure and experience are the reasons we were born in the first place. Teddy Roosevelt understood this, commanding the US Navy to continue to send its warships out to sea even in times of peace despite the potential risk to craft and crew. A 1901 newspaper quote reads: "President Roosevelt thinks that warships are not built to rust and rot in harbor. He wants them kept moving so that crews can keep in full practice at their seamanship, gunnery, etc. That sounds like hard sense."
John A Shedd said it even more succinctly in his book of adages written in 1928: "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
One might believe that staying at home and limiting our interactions is the surest way to prevent getting sick. While I could argue that doing so might cause irreparable harm to our own immune systems for lack of exposure, I'm far less concerned with that line of thinking than this: in allowing ourselves to stay confined in isolation, we have made the determination that our own personal safety is more important than the business of adventure that is our life. A people who once wholeheartedly agreed with William Wallace that every man dies, but not every man truly lives have now conceded that they are more concerned for their physical well-being than living out Christ's command to go into the world.
I'm not suggesting that we should have no regard for the safety and well-being of our neighbors. Doing so would violate an even more important command to love them as we love ourselves. But to discount their need for interaction and community is tantamount to deciding for them that it's better to live a reduced existence for a longer period of time than a full one for potentially less. I believe that this not only flies in the face of good sense, but I also find it uncannily prideful that a people of faith choose to place their hope in prevention and not in the God of Psalm 103 who heals us from all our diseases. The same God who the wind and the sea obey, and who sends both storms and droughts into our lives. Not because He wants us to suffer or shrink back in fear, but because the testing of our faith produces an endurance, and that endurance produces character, and that character produces a real hope which will not disappoint.
-----------------------
Truth without love is brutality. Love without truth is compromise.
My 13 year old son recently started a business and has made it his goal to earn $1000 this summer, building and selling Texas flags out of old wood and delivering them with me to his many paying customers. A few days ago he was outside painting one in the hot sun. It's a joy to watch him work, and even more so as he persists through adverse circumstances. Texas sun in July can be downright brutal, and to labor in it displays not only a firm devotion to one's calling, but an almost equally strong disregard for one's personal health.
I noticed as I walked outside that there had been a cloud covering him, helping to keep the heat of the sun at bay. As soon as I remarked on this out loud the cloud drifted away and my son looked at me as if I was somehow responsible for the sudden change in temperature.
It occurred to me that having the power to affect the weather is not something that I want. People tend to assume that just because you have the ability to do something, it means you are inclined to do it for them. So if word got out that I had the ability to make it warmer or colder depending upon my own whims, I can only imagine the frustration people would have with me when the weather didn't suit their needs.
"I haven't had a good rain in months," a farmer would tell me. "Why can't you just allow my crops a little bit of water so that I can continue to feed my family?"
"Really, today is not a good day for a storm. I planned a picnic in the park with my children," a frustrated parent might say.
And what if I hadn't even controlled the weather that week? It stands to reason that having such a power would not necessarily be something exclusive to me, but no doubt any time people were upset with their circumstances they would assume that it was I who had changed them for the negative. I might sleep in some lazy Saturday morning, only to be greeted upon departing my slumber by slews of people indignant that I had allowed a tsunami to destroy their beautiful beachfront properties.
Weather is one of many things that we accept as being completely out of our own control. Like the passing of time and the irrationality of illness, we've settled into the reality that life and circumstances will take place in ways that we cannot knowingly predict or adequately mitigate. And yet we have allowed ourselves to believe that taking certain drastic measures is necessary to prevent contracting a virus from which more than 99% of us will survive. We've sacrificed our work, our community, even our worship in the name of safety, neglecting to realize that adventure and experience are the reasons we were born in the first place. Teddy Roosevelt understood this, commanding the US Navy to continue to send its warships out to sea even in times of peace despite the potential risk to craft and crew. A 1901 newspaper quote reads: "President Roosevelt thinks that warships are not built to rust and rot in harbor. He wants them kept moving so that crews can keep in full practice at their seamanship, gunnery, etc. That sounds like hard sense."
John A Shedd said it even more succinctly in his book of adages written in 1928: "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
One might believe that staying at home and limiting our interactions is the surest way to prevent getting sick. While I could argue that doing so might cause irreparable harm to our own immune systems for lack of exposure, I'm far less concerned with that line of thinking than this: in allowing ourselves to stay confined in isolation, we have made the determination that our own personal safety is more important than the business of adventure that is our life. A people who once wholeheartedly agreed with William Wallace that every man dies, but not every man truly lives have now conceded that they are more concerned for their physical well-being than living out Christ's command to go into the world.
I'm not suggesting that we should have no regard for the safety and well-being of our neighbors. Doing so would violate an even more important command to love them as we love ourselves. But to discount their need for interaction and community is tantamount to deciding for them that it's better to live a reduced existence for a longer period of time than a full one for potentially less. I believe that this not only flies in the face of good sense, but I also find it uncannily prideful that a people of faith choose to place their hope in prevention and not in the God of Psalm 103 who heals us from all our diseases. The same God who the wind and the sea obey, and who sends both storms and droughts into our lives. Not because He wants us to suffer or shrink back in fear, but because the testing of our faith produces an endurance, and that endurance produces character, and that character produces a real hope which will not disappoint.
-----------------------
Truth without love is brutality. Love without truth is compromise.