Don’t Fly Away
(Part Four of a four-part series.)
Dead flies putrefy the perfumer’s ointment…
If the spirit of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your post; for
conciliation pacifies great offenses.
Ecclesiastes 10:1a,4
Contempt for authority! Just another fly in the ointment. Stand by the water cooler this week and I am sure you will hear plenty of grumbling and complaining about the person in charge. He is too harsh, too narrow-minded, too unrealistic in his expectations, too out of touch with reality…ad nauseum. Grumbling about authority – whether it is our national leaders, coaches, teachers, or bosses – is a favorite American pastime.
But there is the person who allows himself (herself) to become so bent by his (her) boss that he (she) just ups and quits. They throw up their hands and walk away.
Solomon urges you to take a deep breath. Maybe count to ten, if you must. Get alone and pray for the strength and grace to deal with your unreasonable superior. But don’t make a hasty decision in a heated moment. Don’t do in a fit of rage what you may regret when the smoke clears.
Again, I like the way the New Century Version puts it: “Don’t leave your job just because your boss is angry with you. Remaining calm solves great problems.”
That is sound advice. Sure, it may mean swallowing a little pride. But it may salvage a relationship, or save your job, and thereby secure your future.
There may arise a situation from which you must separate yourself. But make your decision prayerfully and deliberately, not hastily or in anger.
God bless your week…and beware of the water cooler gang!
A Prayer for Today: “Father, it is not easy to remain calm in a situation that makes me so tense and angry. But I pray for the strength to do and be right regardless of what those around me – or even those above me – are doing. May the way I handle adversity bring honor to You and peace and security to me. Amen.”
The Law of the Jungle and the Law of Christ
Galatians 6:2,5 (NKJV)
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ… For each one shall bear his own load.
From Rudyard Kipling’s timeless classic, The Jungle Book, comes this morsel of wisdom:
“Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break
it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and
back –
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is
the Pack.”
Pay especially close attention, if you will, to that last line: “The strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the pack.” There is so much instruction for us in that simple metaphorical statement, especially if we consider it in concert with the words of the Apostle Paul.
Allow me to break it down:
THE STRENGTH OF THE PACK IS THE WOLF.
You have heard, no doubt, that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In any place of community – whether a home, a church, a business organization, or whatever – the strength of the whole is contingent upon the contribution of each individual. Without the wolf, there is no pack. It is the strength and dedication of the wolf that makes the pack a possibility.
The same is true in your church or home or place of business.
Paul puts it this way: “For each one shall bear his own load.”
Let one soldier in a unit fail to do his job, and the entire unit is at risk. Let one member of a team be derelict in his duties and the whole team may fail. Let one church member fail to shoulder his part of the ministry burden, and the entire congregation is put at a disadvantage. Let one family member… well, you get the picture, right?
The strength of the pack is the wolf. You do matter. It IS important whether you do your part. No individual has ever lived and died to himself alone. Your influence and potential is greater than you may realize.
THE STRENGTH OF THE WOLF IS THE PACK
As strong and beautiful as the individual wolf may be, if he is alone, he is vulnerable. He is not a great solitary hunter. His safety and his strength is in the pack
For the church, Paul taps into this truth about the “pack mentality” in Galatians 6:2 when he instructs us to help bear the burdens of others. A community of believers is at its best when it rallies to the aid of a faltering member. Whether it is seeing a widow through the loss of her husband, or a young couple through the death of a child, or a family through the stress of unemployment, or simply lifting one another up in prayer before the throne of the grace.
Way back in Genesis, God saw and asserted that it was not “good” for a man to be alone. He needs companionship. He needs community. Let us beware of too much isolation. Let us be even more acutely aware of how vitally important the church, the home, the workplace, the nation, etc. is to our lives.
The point here is that we each have individual responsibilities, but we should not be individualists. We need each other. Together, with each of us doing our part, we are as formidable and as functional as the wolf pack.
And that, my friend, is the law of Christ…and the law of the jungle.
A PRAYER FOR TODAY:
“Father, I want to take the time today to be thankful for the places of community You have afforded me. (Be specific. Give thanks for your, family, church, workplace, country, etc.) I pray that I will never
take them for granted, and that I will fulfill my individual responsibility so that I am ever a blessing and never a burden. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
The Worst Day Fishing…
You have seen the bumper stickers and t-shirts declaring, “The worst day fishing is better than the best day working.” Yesterday, my brother and I put that theory to the test.
It was a gorgeous day, barely into the 80′s, sun shining brilliantly from it’s perch in a clear, blue sky. There was a breeze blowing across Lake Ray Hubbard…a breeze, not a wind, and on a lake given to choppy waves under the slightest provocation, that is an important detail. We had our bottles of water, roasted peanuts, and some fine cigars. We were set.
The boat was in good form, too. Once we puttered away from the no-wake zone, Don opened her up and we were flying across the glassy surface of our fishing heaven about 40 miles per hour. It felt good. I felt alive.
Then, we came to another no-wake zone, crossing underneath Interstate 30. Don shut her down and we puttered politely past a couple of old men – who may have been brothers, as well – Crappie fishing in the shade provided by the busy Interstate overhead. We waved politely, got out into the open water and let the hammer down. Only this time, rather than the whir and hum of a healthy outboard, we heard it spit, sputter, and maybe cuss (or was that Don?), and then die. No problem. Just crank her back up.
Nope. She won’t fire. Turns over like she means to come alive, but just won’t fire. Ah well, the smell of gas is fairly pungent, and I suggest he flooded her like an idjit, so just let her rest. (I had pegged the wrong fisherman with that label, but that is beside the point.) Don decided, heck, we can put down the trolling motor and hug the west bank and see if there aren’t any Sand Bass a’bitin’.
He’s right. There aren’t. Well, one little fellow who would make better bait than dinner jumped on Don’s lure. We let him live and nary another bite.
Maybe 30 minutes passes, maybe 45. Don decides to give her another try. He cranks the cranky engine and she responds with total disinterest. Nothing. We realize this isn’t likely to change. Across the lake, about 3 or 30 miles, there is Chandler’s Landing…on the east bank, with her bevy of proud sailboats and fine cruisers, some of which look like miniature ocean liners. We guess we had better troll that direction and see if maybe there is a mechanic around. It is about 3pm.
It is a few minutes past five when we finally tie off to the dock and Don hops out to find our mechanic. He does find him…clocking out. But the mustachioed mechanic with the half-moon belly, lazy eyes and lazier drawl is kind. He is more than kind; he is awesome. He delays his dinner run to diagnose our problem.
Diagnosis: one cylinder (in four) completely and utterly shot. “Nope, you won’t be able to limp her back 6 or 8 miles to where you put in, boys.”
He is sorry to ruin a perfectly good Spring day with such annoying and expensive news, but what can we do? Shooting the messenger won’t heal a fried cylinder. Besides, he is a great guy who charged us not one thin dime to ruin our day.
Moreover, it was only just beginning to be ruined. First thing had to be done was hail someone to come pick up Don and transport him back to the truck and trailer whilst I attended the boat. An hour or so later, Don is back and we are untying. We intend to use the trolling motor to navigate around the rather large dock and back up to the ramp. Ah, but all that trolling across the great expanse of the lake had taken it’s toll. The battery on the trolling motor was done.
Nothing to do but haul out an oar. THE oar. The only one. And it is a fine oar if you are in a dadgum canoe and not a motorboat. We row, row, row the boat around the head of the dock. But when we start for shore, the breeze is more like a little wind and we are rowing, yes, but going pretty much nowhere. The waves want to carry us over to the boat slips and we decide, fine, go with the flow. We can use the noses of boats and pillars to grab and thrust ourselves toward shore, then I can jump out with the lead rope onto the bank and tug the boat on around to the trailer.
The plan works. It isn’t easy, but it works. I am ashore and pulling the boat with ease and success. It is the best headway we have made all day. I get her to the dock nearest the ramp and we tie her off. I stand there, pretty well gassed, watching Don back the trailer down. When he gets her situated, I turn to untie the boat…
But I was beaten to it. The boat had untied herself and was now 40 yards from shore and drifting out to sea. Cussing was invented for just such times and I realized where the term “cuss like a sailor” must have originated.
Don is standing beside me and we are watching the boat drift away.
“One of us is going to have to swim for her, Don.”
“Yeah.”
He agrees, but he isn’t taking off his dadgum shoes. I am. Off with the shoes. Here, hold my glasses, oh and my wallet and cell phone. How cold you reckon the water is?
So, here I am, roasted in the sun. Frazzled. Diving into the refreshingly cool water and swimming like Johnny Weismuller (and I don’t mean when he was a champion swimmer or playing Tarzan; I mean how he might swim today, being dead and all.) Actually, I am a pretty good swimmer. Pretty fast. For about 20 yards, maybe 30. But this is turning into a 100 yard dash.I know I have to swim faster than the boat drifts.
So, while the previously disinterested revelers around us watch and wag their heads, I am swimming in my cargo shorts, t shirt, and socks.
I do finally reach the boat. It is then that I realize all of my muscles are mush. Atrophied. Fried. Useless. I cannot haul myself out of the water and into the boat. I do finally get a leg hooked over the edge, and I am 3/4 of the way there when that sock I forgot to shed slides and slips and I splash right back into the water.
As I bobbed there beside the boat, wondering if this is how I would die, welcoming a watery grave because I am too tired to breathe anyway, I thought about that declaration…
The worst day fishing is better than the best day working.
Yeah. I can buy that.
Social Follow
Journey With...
-
The JourneyMan by D. Gene Strother is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at genestrother.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at permission@genestrother.com.
Here we go…
-
-
-
