And He Will Exalt You

(This post was inspired by the current sermon series being preached at my church, by our wonderful Pastor Steve, but I assure you my mangled, tangential analogy below in no way resembles any of Steve’s awesome sermons or study sessions.)

(Also, the dogs are imaginary.  This is not a direct commentary on my two dogs, Pixie and Bella, a.k.a. Pickie Lu and Bella Wella, both of whom capture my heart on a daily basis.)

The passage is James 4:5-10 (NRSV)

[5] Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, ‘God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us’?  [6] But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says,
‘God opposes the proud,
but gives grace to the humble.’
[7] Submit yourselves therefore to God.  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  [8] Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.  Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.  [9] Lament and mourn and weep.  Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection.  [10] Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

(Note:  It is not clear to which scripture James refers in verse 5, but it could possibly be a reference to the jealousy of God mentioned in Exodus 20:5.  Some other translations attribute the jealousy to humans, which totally changes the verse and seems to help the flow into verse 6.  However, I very much prefer the translation above.)

My analogy:

Imagine you have two small dogs.  (In this analogy, you represent God, and the dogs represent your children, so if you would rather imagine human children, just make the necessary mental adjustments to the analogy.)

You love both dogs and they both love you.  They love being around you.

However, one of the dogs is a bit headstrong.  She knows exactly what she wants, and to some extent her relationship with you is one of convenience.  She wants to see over the fence, and sometimes it’s not what you know as much as whom you know.  She knows that if she can get you to pick her up, her personal goal will be within reach.  She tries to jump directly into your arms.  She sits next to you and paws you.  She stares at you innocently and bats her eyes.

You know exactly what she wants.  Because you love her, you sometimes pick her up, but just as often you tell her “no” and leave her to pursue her other worldly interests (bugs, geckos, mushrooms that you overlooked, leftovers dropped from the trees by squirrels, etc).

The other dog mostly just loves you.  She is content just to be around you.  She knows you always have nothing but love for her, your simple presence obviously fills her with joy, but even after many years, she still often approaches you timidly, head down and tail shaking uncertainly.  She comes close enough to sit next to your foot and lean against your leg, and she will stay there for an hour if you don’t move.

But you do move.  You reach down and pick her up.  You know her heart is genuine.  You caress her and murmur assurances into her ear.  And you say, “Do you want to see over the fence?  Here, let me lift you a little higher.”

So that’s the analogy.  Our very natural arrogance and pride (discussed throughout the rest of James chapter 4) causes us to lift ourselves up to the point that we lean on our own understanding and use it to judge others (4:11-12), causes us to belittle others in favor of our own interpretations (4:1), and causes us to plan our days as though God is little more than a spectator and admirer who might be willing to help us get to where we want to be (4:13-17).

But God, although he loves us, is in opposition to our natural tendencies toward pride and arrogance (4:6), characteristics that only serve a desire for self exaltation.

On the other hand, if we choose to humble ourselves before God, to simply live within his love and grace, He will be the one to lift us up.  He will help us to see over the fence.

He will exalt us.

That’s what I get out of this passage, and out of this chapter (from this wonderful little letter from James).

But then, this is just my own little interpretation, and I would love to hear yours, as well.

 

A Bit of Disclosure

Just a few scattered but personal things (about me) that you might find humorous or mildly interesting:

I think I’ve seen Dark Knight five times now, but I’m also a sucker for a good romantic comedy.  Yes, they are predictable and formulaic, but if they were easy to make, there would be a lot more good ones.  The only thing is, the happy endings always turn me into mush.

While traveling home on leave (from Okinawa) in 1982, and already back in the States (but not yet in Texas), I got so drunk in an airport bar that I missed my flight to Dallas and woke up the next morning sitting in a stall in the women’s restroom, and with a huge black hole in my memory.  My wallet (along with my money) was gone, but I still had one of those little airport locker keys in my pocket.  When I opened the locker,

 

Funny Dream

I had a funny dream last night:

I guess I had won a contest or something because I was scheduled to accompany a space shuttle crew on one of their missions.  I was pretty stoked about it – my son-in-law taught me that word, stoked — and was trying to make mental plans for how to snap some good photographs through the shuttle’s little portal window once I got into orbit.  But then my doctor called to inform me that I had a condition that could basically end my life at any moment.  I was pretty sure this would disqualify me from the shuttle mission, and that made me sad.

So (still dreaming, and therefore magically transported) I was standing and talking to some friends at my church telling them about the lost shuttle mission and the impending death, and this wonderful woman — I know who it was in the dream, but it could just as easily have been any of my wonderful friends from church — was telling me how very sorry she was, and I said something ridiculous like “Don’t worry about it.  Everybody’s gotta die sometime!” Then my head started to shake, sort of a Parkinson’s kind of shaking, and it was definitely the beginnings of a seizure, and

 

Dinosaurs, Airplanes, and the Human Computer

I believe in dinosaurs.  Not that I’m a dinosaur fanatic or anything; it’s just that, in spite of the most popular and pervasive interpretations of the book of Genesis, I simply don’t believe our planet (along with the rest of the universe) was instantly created 5,000 years ago with dinosaur bones already buried in the ground simply for creative effect (and to mess with our feeble little minds).

I also believe in God.  I realize the concept of God doesn’t compute for many people, but for me, there is simply no alternative.  Correct or not — I know I’m correct, but you might not — I have always sensed an overriding and attentive presence, and when I look at trees, or clouds, or animals, I see creations.  And I can’t believe the forces — or the concepts — of good and evil are no more significant than positive and negative magnetic forces, or that the spiritual implications of good and evil are simply a product of erroneous human perception.  I just can’t think that way.  Good is clearly good, and evil is clearly evil.  To me, at least.  (On the other hand, I think it’s very careless to label individuals, or groups of people, as being “evil.”  Evil, like good, is a force that can, and does, live in all of us to various degrees.)

Now, I know it’s wrong (in the eyes of many, many believers) to suggest that God doesn’t do everything with absolute perfection, right from the very beginning, but sometimes,

 

Trying Contacts Again

Although it has probably been close to 15 years since I last tried contact lenses, I decided to give them another try because I’m so sick of wearing glasses every waking minute of my day and I don’t want to pay however many thousands of dollars it costs to have someone shoot destructive laser beams into my eyes (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

So the other day I walked into an optometrist’s office without an appointment, and about one hour later I walked out wearing a trial pair of contacts, which I will wear until my real trial lenses arrive in about a week.

I told the optometrist I didn’t think I was interested in trying any kind of multifocal (i.e., bifocal or progressive) options, but she said “Yes you are, you have to at least try them,” so I’m currently rigged up for

 

Not Getting Any Older

I don’t think I’m getting any older.

Oh sure, my body is aging, seriously impacting my ability to get around in a quick, pain-free manner, and yes, my brain is quite apparently aging, affecting my ability to access my memories as efficiently as I once did.  Or at least I think I did.  Didn’t I?

And I don’t mean to imply that I’m not growing.  I’m still learning and gaining experience.  My perspective on life is constantly evolving.  These and many other good things are still coming to me with the passage of years.

It’s just that, sometimes, in spite of these changes, I feel like the most essential part of me has never really changed at all.  I’m talking about the person I am, my personality or my psyche.  Perhaps you would call this my spirit or soul (which occupies and drives the vehicle that is my body), or my mind (which uses the computer that is my brain).  However you might define it, it’s just the thing that is me.  It’s not physical, it’s just tied to the physical (or so I believe).

And it hasn’t really changed.  Essentially, I still have the same strengths, talents, weaknesses, and insecurities I’ve always had.  I may be a little better at managing some of those aspects of myself, but

 

I paid for this MP3 player! I should be able to open the stupid package!

How many people with heart conditions have succumbed to the stress that can result from trying to open a plastic “clamshell” package containing some newly-purchased item?  I assume these difficult-to-open packages are intended to curtail shoplifting, but I still think there should be a requirement for warning labels that would put these packages into the same category as roller coasters:

“WARNING!  Before purchasing this item, please note that you should be in good health and free from high blood pressure, heart, back or neck problems, or other conditions that could be aggravated by multiple futile attempts to open this package. Expectant mothers should not attempt to open this package.”

or maybe,

“Requires 2 AAA batteries and 1 heavy-duty pneumatic reciprocating ‘Mini-Jaws-of-Life’ package opening system (not included).”

 

Driving Fast and Eating Fast

So my daughter was just learning how to drive — several years ago now — and it fell to me to ride in the passenger seat during some of her early driving forays.  I remember thinking at the time that there couldn’t be too many things in life scarier than riding in a car with an extremely inexperienced driver.  “No, the brake! the BRAKE!!!”

Maybe sucide bombers are scarier.  And urinary catheters.  But there aren’t any roller coasters that can compete.

Within a very short time, however, she became an exceptionally good driver, and I was amazed at how safe I felt while riding with her.  But now I was thinking, “Is she just driving this way because I’m in the car with her?”  (Her mother, as a teenager, never seemed to be happy when all four of her wheels were touching the road, or the grass, or the sidewalk, or whatever, at the same time.)

Anyway, my daughter and I were both driving standard transmissions (i.e., “stick shifts”) around this time, and I began to notice

 

Why does each year seem to pass more quickly?

Here are my less-than-scientific theories about this terribly puzzling and highly trivial matter, culminated from my own thoughts and a number of conversations with friends.

Splicing theory

Memory loss leaves holes.  However, remaining memories do not play back like a tape on which areas have been erased, and on which the “empty” spots or silent areas still take up time when played back.  Rather, the remaining memories are “spliced” together, leaving no time gaps.  This results in a “condensed” memory continuum.  Because the frequency of memory loss increases each year, leaving fewer “fragments” from which to construct the memorized year just past, each year that passes seems shorter (in memory) than the one that preceded it.  (Or at least it would seem shorter if you could still remember the one that preceded it.)

Absorption vs. Deflection theory

As children, we pay close attention to everything happening around us, and we absorb sensory input like sponges.  As we age and begin to take a lot of familiar sensory input for granted, we start to “deflect” or “discard” large portions of our daily experiences.  This is a different take on the splicing theory above, in which involuntary memory loss is the culprit.  The deflection theory contends that at least some of the memory loss is a