The Second Look?
In the home-based job search, one day is very much like the next. Tuesday mornings provide something distinct to celebrate. Tuesday mornings open a little window on the wider world when I download the latest edition of the New Yorker magazine. Each new, vibrant cover is enough to color my familiar surroundings.
This reader's experience with the New Yorker allows for reaching back as well as reaching out. In manageable weekly installments, the magazine's missive provides access to an education better and more recent than mine. Unaccompanied, I would not mine the writings of Heraclitus, nor share them with my friends. Guided and goaded in the best sense, I hear Heraclitus offer from the unfamiliar days about 500 years before Christ, "No man steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man."
As similar as this midweek edition of our lives may appear to the ones that have come before it, it is not exactly the same. Nor are we. Realizing this continually requires some discipline, however. My other reading is in Power Broker, Robert Caro's tome on the way for building bureaucrat extraordinaire Robert Moses whose work in the middle of the 20th century did so much to shape New York City. Caro offers that at the zenith of his power, when Robert Moses had the power to speak into being the full realization of the considerable creativity he showed as a younger man, he wasn't interested.
Once he was recognized as gifted for a particular role, volume of opportunity narrowed the actual exercise of that potential. "When there is no time for original creation," Caro considers, "the tendency is to repeat what has been successful in the past." To a busy middle-aged, or mid-career, or mid-parenting or mid-ministry, or mid-marriage human, if the river we step into on Wednesday looks superficially the same since we didn't drown on Tuesday, we are unlikely to inquire into a different approach.
Even an intimate relationship with Wednesday's Creator and experience receiving His successful, specific guidance in the past is no guarantee against ennui. King David in the Bible had both of these to draw from. In 2 Samuel 5:19, early in his career but already an experienced warrior, he asks the Lord for particular guidance, receives it, and is successful. Beautifully, four verses later, facing another battle, David refuses to rely on rule, pattern, or habit instead of an ongoing relationship with the Lord. He asks again how to proceed, and this time he gets a different answer. The river has changed, and perhaps still had the man. Both permutations would continue, for the Bible reader does not witness David asking for such rudimentary assistance again – unless crisis shakes his assumptions.
What about us? Are we certain that both we and the rivers we crossed this Wednesday remain unchanged? Humility to recognize that we often see sameness where it no longer exists should drive us into the Presence of the Lord to ask for help in the most ordinary situations. If it is wariness of our weakness that summons us here, delight will keep us as long as possible. The author of the Bible's book of James is practical, yes, nearly barren of sentiment, and yet it is through James's straightforward letter that the Lord gives us a glimpse at His facial expression when we ask for help at every crossing. He assures James, and us, in James 1:15 that where we lack wisdom and know it, He gives liberally and without reproach.
This reader's experience with the New Yorker allows for reaching back as well as reaching out. In manageable weekly installments, the magazine's missive provides access to an education better and more recent than mine. Unaccompanied, I would not mine the writings of Heraclitus, nor share them with my friends. Guided and goaded in the best sense, I hear Heraclitus offer from the unfamiliar days about 500 years before Christ, "No man steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man."
As similar as this midweek edition of our lives may appear to the ones that have come before it, it is not exactly the same. Nor are we. Realizing this continually requires some discipline, however. My other reading is in Power Broker, Robert Caro's tome on the way for building bureaucrat extraordinaire Robert Moses whose work in the middle of the 20th century did so much to shape New York City. Caro offers that at the zenith of his power, when Robert Moses had the power to speak into being the full realization of the considerable creativity he showed as a younger man, he wasn't interested.
Once he was recognized as gifted for a particular role, volume of opportunity narrowed the actual exercise of that potential. "When there is no time for original creation," Caro considers, "the tendency is to repeat what has been successful in the past." To a busy middle-aged, or mid-career, or mid-parenting or mid-ministry, or mid-marriage human, if the river we step into on Wednesday looks superficially the same since we didn't drown on Tuesday, we are unlikely to inquire into a different approach.
Even an intimate relationship with Wednesday's Creator and experience receiving His successful, specific guidance in the past is no guarantee against ennui. King David in the Bible had both of these to draw from. In 2 Samuel 5:19, early in his career but already an experienced warrior, he asks the Lord for particular guidance, receives it, and is successful. Beautifully, four verses later, facing another battle, David refuses to rely on rule, pattern, or habit instead of an ongoing relationship with the Lord. He asks again how to proceed, and this time he gets a different answer. The river has changed, and perhaps still had the man. Both permutations would continue, for the Bible reader does not witness David asking for such rudimentary assistance again – unless crisis shakes his assumptions.
What about us? Are we certain that both we and the rivers we crossed this Wednesday remain unchanged? Humility to recognize that we often see sameness where it no longer exists should drive us into the Presence of the Lord to ask for help in the most ordinary situations. If it is wariness of our weakness that summons us here, delight will keep us as long as possible. The author of the Bible's book of James is practical, yes, nearly barren of sentiment, and yet it is through James's straightforward letter that the Lord gives us a glimpse at His facial expression when we ask for help at every crossing. He assures James, and us, in James 1:15 that where we lack wisdom and know it, He gives liberally and without reproach.
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