Repost from Feb 2, 2009

This I wrote as a response to a general comment about the time people take posting and reading blogs, Facebook, etc.

I think here too is where a gospel of grace, rather than the covenant of works prevails. Does your life flow out of duty or joy?

I think words are a tremendous ministry. One author recently in working on the issue of Biblical inspiration considered that all language is God’s invention to communicate his glory and his grace.It’s not too hard to discover if you come at it the other way around by realizing that all of creation is for this, so words as a subset gets you there too.

Yesterday I did a my Sunday School class on Revelation 4. (If you’ve got an hour to waste you can listen to the class. ) . Often things come together in my mind during the class prompted by the Q/A and the back and forth of the class discussion. The issue was this throne room scene of God and whether we’ll just be spending all of eternity in a really good church service. The 4 living creatures there are, according to some, and I agree with them, symbolic of the created order or the animal kingdom and they are there in the throne room of God evoking the praise of the 24 elders. This is precisely what the natural order does to and for us. Pagans go to the most beautiful places in the world because they claim to feel God there. I don’t doubt that they are right. It is the created order doing its work in their lives. We twist it of course, but all sin is seeking of shalom along the lines of God’s creation embedded in our natures.

So anyway, will we be spending all of eternity falling on our faces with the elders? First it would not be boring to do so because they are prompted by the awesome nature of God and the vision of his beauty. But would God be please with just that?

It occurred me that the reason God creates and expresses his glory in the created order is to multiply his glory. I think this is part of the reason for the third commandment and why even in the scene in Revelation 4 there is no description of the one seated on the throne. There is one of the Son of Man in Revelation 1, but not the one on the throne. Why? Because we are made to love God not just in formal worship, but in all of the activities of life in the all the diversity of his good and then renewed created order. Geologists, farmers, song writers, landscapers, etc. etc. all take a part in this. Adam was a gardener, and that didn’t just describe what he did, it described who he was and what he was for, to cultivate, develop, tend, multiply and magnify God’s work and therefore God’s glory.

Back to the subject.

God is not so narrow as to imagine that having a Henry Ford approach to time is the only way to live the Christian life. In the context of the great salvation we have received in Christ we are given the freedom to play. The best play is the most productive play, and for people who are gardeners with words this will mean poetry, writing, etc. One of the chief areas we are called to garden, especially for pastors, is people. My friend Rod is a word-gardener of people and so in God’s great freedom given to Rod by virtue of having paid it all on the cross Rodney is a word-gardener of people and blogs, Voices, Facebook, and whatever else he uses is amplifying the glory of God through Rodney’s word-gardener of people activity.

Now we in the context of the age of decay, our broken, sinful natures, can make poor and sinful use of time. There are lots of ways to do that, but let’s not allow Henry Ford or modern notions of productivity to dictate what sin is and isn’t. Love is of course the indicator. Is your gospel-freedom-gardener-play magnifying and expressing love of God and love of neighbor? If so, you’re probably on the right track and moving in the right direction.

Now, having written this, I will copy it to my blog, and to Facebook, and get responses from lots of people that aren’t on Voices. I too like to think of myself as a word-gardener of people and I’m blessed that we can use this strange cyber medium to garden people at a distance and delayed.