Beyond the Counting House
From Isaiah 1 (New King James Version) – 16 "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes: cease to do evil, 17 Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor, Defend the fatherless, plead for the widow."
Jacob Marley came to visit me over Christmas. Unlike his visit to Ebenezer Scrooge in The Christmas Carol, he came to me late on December 23 – and he stayed within the confines of my flatscreen to play his part in the movie. Nevertheless, his words might have been directed to me, and they have stayed with me these four months.
Marley tells Scrooge that since Marley's death, he has been wandering the Earth. This, says the ghost, is to compensate for the fact that in life Marley's spirit never left the counting house. He never shifted from, he confesses, the transactional mentality toward life that his job enforced. When Scrooge tries to comfort Marley that he was a good man of business, Marley is emphatic: "MANKIND WAS MY BUSINESS!"
So God implores in His own words in Isaiah 1:16-17. No messenger's paraphrase from Marley or Isaiah is sufficient to convey His conviction. At the very point at which His half-listening covenant people believe themselves to be transactionally clean because they have given offerings, He says as forcefully as a mother confronting attempted deceit: WASH YOUR HANDS. While you still think, He seems to say, you smell of parentally approved soap, you stink. The offering is over, but you are filthier than ever.
Transformation, He then insists, extends beyond the washroom, or the prayer closet. Clean hands, redeemed hands, will DO My work toward mankind who is their business. Just as David’s hands can learn to fight, redeemed hands can learn to do good, to act in tangible ways that reflect the heart’s complete conviction that vulnerable humans are made in the image of God. As the scrubbed hands move, so does the mouth in continuing, prayerful intercession that draws us closer to God as we see people His way.
Joblessness has me considering Marley's message, and God's as transcribed by Isaiah, from at least two angles that may resonate with the employed. How often, like Jacob Marley, does the perspective our work requires, the vocabulary it uses to describe, imprint itself on to our minds so that it has an unconscious impact on what we do away from work?
By His grace, God the Divine Optometrist has been removing such corrective or distorting lenses as I might have been wearing to look at the world as Professionally Harried and Important Counselor. My world is temporarily quieter, aside from my griping about it being quieter. Reflection apart from work's pressures and assumptions is being enforced by His rod and His staff which keep me from entering the fray until He is ready for me to do so. I may not know fully how differently I see work and world until I can compare work before my September 1, 2017 dismissal to work after it. For now, I can lay a foundation for those reflections with the fact that the sun continues to come up whether I am employed or not, and that daily bread continues to be provided – precisely as Christ taught us to ask for.
There is conviction here as well as comfort, and I lay my accountability before whomever perseveres in reading. If the life of my household has not had to change drastically since we lost the income I once thought of as "mine", then in times of working prosperity Marley could tell me that mankind was not sufficiently my business. With two incomes, we thought of ourselves as blessed, and we gave, we thought, accordingly. We certainly didn't, it turns out, give sacrificially, as life adjustments have proven. If we can miss my income without being in dire need of it, God, Isaiah, and Marley form an otherworldly trio challenging me to live, and give, more by faith when my work resumes. I've done my Marleyesque wandering the Earth, ironically housebound most of the time, and I have been challenged that ALL of mankind is my business, not just those to be counted to my credit in my immediate sphere.
Jacob Marley came to visit me over Christmas. Unlike his visit to Ebenezer Scrooge in The Christmas Carol, he came to me late on December 23 – and he stayed within the confines of my flatscreen to play his part in the movie. Nevertheless, his words might have been directed to me, and they have stayed with me these four months.
Marley tells Scrooge that since Marley's death, he has been wandering the Earth. This, says the ghost, is to compensate for the fact that in life Marley's spirit never left the counting house. He never shifted from, he confesses, the transactional mentality toward life that his job enforced. When Scrooge tries to comfort Marley that he was a good man of business, Marley is emphatic: "MANKIND WAS MY BUSINESS!"
So God implores in His own words in Isaiah 1:16-17. No messenger's paraphrase from Marley or Isaiah is sufficient to convey His conviction. At the very point at which His half-listening covenant people believe themselves to be transactionally clean because they have given offerings, He says as forcefully as a mother confronting attempted deceit: WASH YOUR HANDS. While you still think, He seems to say, you smell of parentally approved soap, you stink. The offering is over, but you are filthier than ever.
Transformation, He then insists, extends beyond the washroom, or the prayer closet. Clean hands, redeemed hands, will DO My work toward mankind who is their business. Just as David’s hands can learn to fight, redeemed hands can learn to do good, to act in tangible ways that reflect the heart’s complete conviction that vulnerable humans are made in the image of God. As the scrubbed hands move, so does the mouth in continuing, prayerful intercession that draws us closer to God as we see people His way.
Joblessness has me considering Marley's message, and God's as transcribed by Isaiah, from at least two angles that may resonate with the employed. How often, like Jacob Marley, does the perspective our work requires, the vocabulary it uses to describe, imprint itself on to our minds so that it has an unconscious impact on what we do away from work?
By His grace, God the Divine Optometrist has been removing such corrective or distorting lenses as I might have been wearing to look at the world as Professionally Harried and Important Counselor. My world is temporarily quieter, aside from my griping about it being quieter. Reflection apart from work's pressures and assumptions is being enforced by His rod and His staff which keep me from entering the fray until He is ready for me to do so. I may not know fully how differently I see work and world until I can compare work before my September 1, 2017 dismissal to work after it. For now, I can lay a foundation for those reflections with the fact that the sun continues to come up whether I am employed or not, and that daily bread continues to be provided – precisely as Christ taught us to ask for.
There is conviction here as well as comfort, and I lay my accountability before whomever perseveres in reading. If the life of my household has not had to change drastically since we lost the income I once thought of as "mine", then in times of working prosperity Marley could tell me that mankind was not sufficiently my business. With two incomes, we thought of ourselves as blessed, and we gave, we thought, accordingly. We certainly didn't, it turns out, give sacrificially, as life adjustments have proven. If we can miss my income without being in dire need of it, God, Isaiah, and Marley form an otherworldly trio challenging me to live, and give, more by faith when my work resumes. I've done my Marleyesque wandering the Earth, ironically housebound most of the time, and I have been challenged that ALL of mankind is my business, not just those to be counted to my credit in my immediate sphere.
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