“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,” said Henry David Thoreau in Walden Pond.
I went to the woods last week because, in the busyness of mixing life, ministry, and prayer, I sensed a loss of living with deliberation. High on a ridge in the Kentucky Appalachians, I spent six days watching a young squirrel learn how to navigate tree limbs, so he could be who God created him to be. I listened and watched as the wind freight-trained across the ridge top—while trees just over the cliff barely russled a leaf. I watched bees boring, inchworms inching, and butterflies sipping nectar from mountain laurel.
It was almost heaven. Like Thoreau at Walden Pond, I found a clarity of purpose when the clutter of internet, appointments, and even church was left miles below. It was in that context that I read and prayed today’s readings. One way to look at them is through the lens of living deliberately.
Stephen
In the reading from Acts, Stephen, one of the first deacons, was living deliberately. He served the practical needs of widows and others in need of extra attention in the church, as he was called to do. That freed up the apostles to teach and preach. “Stephen, filled with grace and power, was working great wonders and signs among the people,” our passage begins. He might have seemed to have a lesser role, but God was using him in a glorious way. He was teaching and preaching, too, so effectively that he triggered resistance. People came forward and “debated with Stephen, but they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke.” Stephen was living deliberately. He attracted people, as deliberate living does.
Jesus
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is following up with the people who were attracted to him when he fed the 5000. He sent the disciples away…then he walked across the sea back to Capernaum. He was living deliberately when he fed the people. Now he lives deliberately again as he tells those who sought him out,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me
not because you saw signs
but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.
For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.”While the conversation gets deeper and more troublesome for these would-be disciples, they are still intrigued. “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” they ask.
Jesus answer is perhaps only understood in light of his Passion…or maybe not fully understood until Stephen and Peter and Paul gave witness. He said, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.“
Sounds Simple Enough
Maybe…if we live in a Christian society where most everybody believes in God, in Christ. Believe. Join the crowd. Join the culture.
But it is not simple in this day in this time…both because of the clutter of our culture and because we (I) can forget that each of us has a purpose…a tiny part in building the Kingdom. Jesus made it all possible, but he didn’t do it all…he left it to his disciples. Stephen served only a short time.
It is not simple because we (I) can be too much like those disciples chasing free food: I want to do the works of God…instead of simply letting God feed me and letting me live my little role in the forest of the Kingdom. Instead of focusing on what is simple, doable–not free bread, but living bread–the bread of God in living persons, living ordinary–yet holy–lives.
Living deliberately was not easy for Jesus or his disciples. It was not easy for Stephen or those in the early church.
It is not easy for us today. For me, with information and To Do List clutter, the difficulty is to remain focused on what is important–essential in life and essential in my life: the squirrel did not need to learn to inch like the inchworm; he needed to navigate tree limbs that moved in the wind.
I do not need to do everything I might do. I need to do what essential. In the same paragraph from Walden Pond, Thoreau went on to say, “I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”
Yes. The Holy Spirit moved when Jesus and Stephen did that. God acted.
Application
As I watched squirrels and inchworms and felt the wind, I realized how distracted I am as person, as Christian. I do a little of this because it needs to be done. Then a little of that because someone asks me. Then more of yet another thing because, well, it’s a good thing to do and I want it. I somehow try to become squirrel and inchworm and wind…when God calls me to be myself, concerning myself with what God gives me…no more, no less.
Prayer:
Lord, as I return now to my ordinary, crowded life, lead me and guide me to be like Jesus and like Stephen: focused on what matters for me to do, living deliberately, focused. Help me prune what needs pruning, nurture what you want me to do, and leave the rest to You.
