Bittersweet Farm

Donald Whitney’s writing is always fresh, practical, simple, profound, and biblical. He has posted a helpful article called “The Sinkhole Syndrome” here. It’s worth taking three or four minutes to read. It might keep you out of deep, deep trouble.

Since 2005, Don Whitney has been Associate Professor of Biblical Spirituality at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also serves as Senior Associate Dean. He doesn’t know it yet but I’m pretty sure he is coming to Evangel in the future for a spiritual enrichment weekend. Here is a link to some very helpful books he has written. I couldn’t resist one more good link. This is a chapter from one of his books.

Never let springtime come without drinking in its fragrance and filling your heart with its color like paints on the pallet of your heart. God has filled the world with things to taste, sounds to hear, colors and forms to see, textures to caress, and fragrances that call back memories from times forgotten. And for spirit-filled believers there is a sense beyond senses. It is a spiritual sensitivity activated by the indwelling Spirit of God. There is within a sense of wonder and awe. It is a sense of joy, peace, contentment, fulfillment, and satisfaction. These are feelings impossible to describe.

It is imperative that you fulfill your duties in life and keep your promises to others, but you should never loose sight of the fact that one of your primary duties to God and to yourself and those around you is to give the attention appropriate to God’s creation. He placed clues in creation and gave you eyes and ears and hands and a heart to enjoy them. Can it be less than a duty to do so?

Who is it but God who made a heart to leap up at the sound of a loved one’s voice?
Who but God put the fragrance and color in a flower?
Who put life and energy in your four-year-old sister Hope?
Who bathed creation in color and beauty?
Who was it who gave each bird his own score to sing?
Who created the brook that gurgles over smooth stones as it tumbles off the mountain?
Who was it who made the puppy to chase the boy and the kittens to tumble over one another?
Who made the eagle to bolt from the heavens to its prey?
Who made the checkered loon on the lake with its haunting call at dusk?

The One who made all of these is the same One who gave you the capacity to enjoy all of them. Can it be less than your duty to do so? It is pitiful, even sinful to ignore all the clues the Creator left for his children to follow. Never be guilty of that. To have eyes that are blind to beauty and ears that are deaf to birdsong is to squander the good and perfect gifts that come down from the Father of lights.

I think I told you before that my grandfather repeated himself a lot. Did I already tell you that? Here is one of the stories he repeated frequently.

It’s lunchtime in the factory. A couple guys open their lunch buckets. One of them unwraps a sandwich and then throws it back into the lunch bucket in disgust. “Peanut Butter. Every day lousy Peanut Butter. I hate that stuff.”

The other guys says; “Why don’t you tell your wife to pack something different if you don’t like peanut butter?”

He growls, “I pack my own lunch.”

That’s it. That’s the whole joke. I always laughed with my grandpa to make him happy, but I never thought the joke was that funny, not that I didn’t understand the joke. It made sense to me, it just wasn’t that funny.

The other morning Holly was packing a peanut butter sandwich for her lunch and I remembered my grandpa’s lame joke.

After all these years, and applying my very best storytelling skills, that joke still isn’t funny but it does make more sense now. I have been a pastor for thirty years and I have noticed there are a lot of people who are angry every day. They live with a little edge. They have a short fuse. They sputter and spout and keep everyone around them on-edge, but when you get down to the heart of things, they really did pack their own lunch.

Hurts in this life are inevitable. Hardships are unavoidable. Pain is a part of living. Sinners are going to sin against you and you will have your own regrets to live with, but you don’t have to put it all in your lunch box every day. You don’t have to make it a regular part of your every day.

In Christ you have the means to forgive and heal and move on. When you get right down to it, you pack your own lunch every day.

When I think of this I hear the words of Ephesians 4:32 in my mother’s voice: “…be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.”

Every day you pack your own lunch.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
May 31, 2010