Settling For Less
Paul was a strange character. He careered off across
half the world preaching ceaselessly about peace and freedom and seemed
to have neither. Was there ever a man more driven? Was there ever a man
who made himself a servant to so many? The truth is we know or know
about thousands of men, women, boys and girls who were driven and
joyfully discontent. They saw things and were seized by them and for
love of them their whole lives were brought to heel in a holy obedience.
The magic about such people is that their peace and freedom so
out-strips our own that we don't recognise it as freedom and peace.
But
in our more lucid moments we remember that true lovers find full
freedom in their refusal to be free and that the most contented people
are those who sell everything they have for a pearl of great price.
Edmund Gosse got it right when he told about a swan that grew tired of
the murky water and the narrow boundaries of the local pond, tired of
the crumbs thrown to it and tired of the clinging reeds and the cramped
space. (I've watched such swans in Ward Park, in a little pond not too
far from where I lived for years.) Gosse's swan headed out for distant
places where the waters were cold, where the wind was often a gale and
where many of its free bothers and sisters already were. And having done
that, Gosse says, it never regretted what it tossed away. It refused to
settle for less. And so it is, he thought, with all those glad, mad
people who are a vision to behold and about whom we write songs and
poetry.
So sails the soul, and cannot rest,Having found [because he had been found by] Jesus Christ Paul took a new view of all the good and wonderful things in his life—they took on a new complexion. Though they remained fine things that others might well enjoy he now saw them as so much rubbish (Philippians 3:4-8). But that is only a relative or comparative remark and he says it only because he compares those things with Jesus Christ. And as Jesus looked at his own status of equality with God and didn't see it as something to be exploited (2:5-7, NRSV) and so emptied himself Paul saw his giftedness and privilege in the same way. He gladly suffered the loss of those things because he wanted to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:4-14).
Inglorious in the marsh of peace;
But leaves the good, to seek the best,
Though all its calms and comforts cease,—
Though what it seem'd to hold be lost,
Though that grow far which once was nigh—
By torturing hope in anguish tossed,
The awakened soul must sail or die.
It just isn't possible for all of us to be Pauls; we have neither the temperament nor the specific calling for it; but it's certainly possible by God's grace to have the mind of Jesus Christ (Philippians 2:5) that so shapes our hearts and minds that we can't be satisfied with cheaper and lesser views of life and what it's all about.
Let me say it again: it isn't possible for each one of us to live out his or her life as Paul lived his out but within the parameters of a gloriously "ordinary" life there is a way of seeing life, a way of fleshing out the gospel of Jesus Christ; there's a spirit that defies the world spirit that says we're to be all belly and pelvis and no head or heart. Life can be lived in the spirit of Jesus in truth and vision and adventure—and it should be. Anything other and anything less is settling for less.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.