The Last Mournful Note

Why are so many of us obsessed with money? On one level, gold does glitter, giving the appearance of prominence and power for those who possess it. Money can create the illusion that time has been expelled from the premises; the lavish parties of the rich cast a spell of beauty and splendor and the music plays on as the quests dance into the early hours of the morning.

For a moment, everything appears to be perfect, but soon enough, time ripples over the scene and all that remains in the end is a wrecked vestige of what was before. The band is now playing its last mournful note, the guests are departing, and the despoiled tables have lost their ordered elegance.

Money has the power to withhold the ravages of time for an instant, but before long it will exact its sweet revenge. If we stake everything on the deceptive power of money, we will live in fear that the cold breath of mortality will find a way back into the innermost rooms of the guarded palace. For despite our futile efforts, we sense in our hearts that “our days are like a fleeting shadow” (Psalm 144:4) that “vanish like smoke.” (Psalm 102:3) Thus wisdom says, “Though your riches increase, do not set your hearts on them.”(Psalm 62:10)

Who Do I Love?

Because the “heart is deceitful above all things,” (Jeremiah 17:9) it is important to undergo a thorough and frequent heart checkup. But this is hard and often inconvenient, so we often spend valuable time inventing excuses for avoiding what might be unpleasant news.

If we refuse to undergo a daily “heart exam,” we might consider wearing a sign around our neck similar to the one found on the side of cigarette packs: “Caution: This heart may kill you!”

Left untreated by God, the human heart is the center of great turmoil and raging conflict. Our affections shift like an altimeter in a storm; one moment we yearn to follow the right way, then the next we turn our back on the Lord just as Peter did three times immediately after claiming eternal allegiance to him. The battle we face every day is over the hidden constancy of our wavering hearts.

In the end, the question for each of us amounts to one thing: whom do I love with all my heart? We can fool ourselves into believing that we have been exempted from an ultimate pledge of allegiance, but when we fall into this common form of self-deception, we are implicitly admitting that the darker impulses of the heart have already prevailed and that, as a consequence, our troubled lives will continue to be “like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”(James 1:6)

All Creatures Great and Small

A few years ago I walked 43 miles of the Appalachian Trail in central Pennsylvania. I have many reasons for wanting to get my feet back on the roots and rocks of the trail, but perhaps chief among them is the desire to break out of the artificial box I construct for myself as I maneuver through the concrete cityscape aspect of my life.

I suspect that I need to get closer to the earth itself to refresh my mind and memory to all the small marvels that move about with quiet intention all around my feet. Whole worlds of tiny beings seem to go about their important business, oblivious of my presence or even my existence. You can’t see any of this from the window of a speeding car.

The big things, like the mighty Susquehanna River, or a powerful midnight storm, or even the splendid beauty of the rolling hills of cultivated farmland, do generally catch the eye and cause us to stop in quiet wonder, but it is the smaller things of the land, the insects and tiny creatures when viewed through the lens of the poetic imagination that suggest order and resolve and purpose rather than inscrutability and aimless disorder. For me the trail suggests coherence, but I need to slow down to see it at work and that requires that I put aside my singular drive to get from here to there. So give me the trail any day, for it provides me with bigger themes through the miracle of its smallest creatures: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth....For he spoke and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.”

A Fellow Passenger

Years ago—I do not remember exactly how many—I was on an airplane heading for Nashville, and like almost everyone else, quietly minding my own business. But I did notice the lady sitting by the window on my aisle; she was looking out at the world beyond our cabin and in her hands was a Bible. She was an older black woman and she possessed a quiet strength and dignity.

Well into the two hour flight we began to talk about the usual superficial things, but I really wanted to talk to her about her Bible, as I had begun reading Scripture a few years earlier. I don’t remember most of the details of our conversation but I was startled when she told me that she was a missionary from Africa who had come to do God’s work here in the United States. Moreover, she told me that she often traveled from city to city without knowing where she would stay or who she would help. Then she told me that the verse that she loved the most was Psalm 121: “I lift my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”(v1) As it turned out, that verse was one of my own favorites.

I have always treasured that simple encounter on an otherwise unremarkable airplane ride to Nashville. My preconceptions were knocked off balance when I was forced to realize that we need missionaries here in America just as much as Africa might need them. But it was not the mission that impressed me. It was the person sitting in that seat by the window, so meek and unassuming, so gentle and faithful. She clearly was one of God’s children doing God’s business in a way that would not attract much notice, but still, she had that unique concentrated power that has been changing the world quietly and effectively one person at a time for over two thousand years.

The Bottom Line

Denying our own sinfulness is as old as human history itself. After succumbing to temptation, Adam and Eve come up with every unsupportable excuse in the book to explain why they recklessly betrayed God’s commandment. Eve said, “The serpent deceived me and I ate.” And the man said, “The woman...gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:13, 12)


When we indulge our sinful nature and give way to temptation, we immediately default to self-justification and excuse making. But behind the assertion that "I’ve done nothing wrong” is the uneasy knowledge that I have done something very wrong and my weak claim to innocence will not wash away my very real guilt and shame.

In the Midst of Trouble

Have you ever read a passage from a book and suddenly a line or word or phrase leaps right off the page and grabs you?

Often the eye skims over the surface of the page and the words fail to register on the mind and the heart. You may be thinking of something else or you find other passages more compelling. You read but do not absorb. Then, at another time you reread the passage and, for no apparent reason, that same passage becomes electric and now you see it and feel it for the first time ever.

That happened to me with this verse: “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life.” (Psalm 138) With twelve short words, I finally felt the universal truth of those words and how the applied to a crucial moment in my own life.

It would be easy to say that when trouble befell me, I met the challenge and conquered the foe. I could have claimed victory, but my heart told me that the victory wasn’t mine at all. I had walked in the midst of very real trouble, but the trouble never wounded me in a mortal way. I walked through the conflict as if I was an observer rather than one of the battling soldiers. This verse finally revealed to me why I survived. It was not my will that saved me and realizing where my help had come from has made all the difference.