August 13, 2015
Workmanship
Bill spent last weekend in a
booth helping fellow wood turners sell their creations at a local event. Some
of the works of art (bowls, candlesticks, vases, and platters) were priced in
the thousands. Shoppers appreciated the aesthetics of the pieces on display, while at the same time learning about the type of wood used, how segmented pieces were crafted using
different types of wood, and how a live-edge on the natural wood was retained. I’m
embarrassed to admit that more often than not I fail to recognize and
appreciate God’s workmanship in fellow believers. Paul said, “For we are God’s
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in
advance for us to do” (Eph 2:10 NIV).
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Gail;
-----Moses implored the Lord to teach us to number our days so that we might get a heart of wisdom (Ps 90:12.) I don’t know what knowing the number of your days has to do with getting wise. But I’ve come to consider God’s Word as a book of revelation rather than a book of suggestion. When I don’t have any other way to understand something in it which I really want to know, I try on what it says, and then I study the resulting affects. In this case, I must start with calculating how many days I’ve been alive.
-----The math is simple. The measure isn’t. Do I use a solar day or a sidereal one? And should whichever of those be an apparent one or a mean one? There are about 365 apparent solar days in a year, but there are about 366 apparent sidereal ones in the same course around the sun. The difference is in which reference point we pick to make our measurement. The solar day uses the sun. The sidereal day uses a star. We are a lot closer to the sun by very, very, very far than to any star, so the nearly eight-hundred thousand miles the earth travels in a twenty-four hour period makes a greater margin of error when referencing the sun than it does when referencing a star. The reason there is a margin of error at all is due to the fact that the only available reference points for making this measurement are within the same system we are trying to measure.
-----The Bible is our scale for measuring the work we do, too, though the measure has nothing to do with time, distance, weight, or intensity. It’s a scale of appropriateness, benefit, mere side effect, detriment, etc. Like determining what markings in the sky to use to frame a span of time representing what we can call a day is subjective within the same system being measured, the benchmarks for measuring ethical, moral, or merely useful considerations spelled out in even the Bible can only come from your own experiences. Yes, what the Bible says is concretely true like a specific one three-hundred-sixtieth part of our trek around the sun is concretely a day. But the concrete remains abstract to every individual until the time that individual has concluded what reference points within his realm of experience will be used for dissolving its abstractness by measurements. Those reference points can only be within the individual’s realm of experience, because all of the things any individual knows are limited to only those things inside his realm of experience. And that is the essence of subjective.
-----So don’t be alarmed when you fail to recognize and appreciate God’s workmanship in fellow believers. We all measure by somewhat different units because all our realms of experience are somewhat different. I think God made subjectivity specifically to avoid being bored, because if everyone were absolutely objective all the time, everyone’s thoughts would be much more alike. And that would certainly bore a God who knows them all. Just take comfort in His relating to absolutely correct measurements according to immeasurable grace. Hallelujah! And so we should also measure one another with a gracious benefit of the doubt.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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