Tag Archives: Union

Chapter-a-Day

Best of ’24: #4 Three Forces Rule the World

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For two weeks, while Wendy and I are away enjoying some warm weather, I’ll be counting down the top ten chapter-a-day posts of 2024 (based on total views and plays). It’ s always interesting which posts resonated with readers and listeners. The chapter for tomorrow’s post will be listed at the bottom.

Three Forces Rule the World (CaD Acts 19) – Wayfarer

The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there.
Acts 19:32 (NIV)

I saw a meme on social media over the weekend that caught my eye. It was a quote from Albert Einstein who said, “Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear, and greed.” The more I meditated on this notion, the more I realized the truth of it.

The quote came to mind this morning as I read today’s chapter because all three forces are at work during Paul’s stay in Ephesus. Paul’s presence and Jesus’ Message had a powerful effect in Ephesus. So many people were choosing to believe in Jesus that the local union of idol makers began to fear (there’s the fear) that they would lose significant income (there’s the greed). So, they grabbed two of Paul’s companions and started a protest in the city’s amphitheater. The protest grew into a confusing, riotous mob, and many of the people who joined in had no idea what they were rioting about (there’s the stupidity). Eventually, a local official got control of the crowd and convinced them to disperse and take up their grievances through proper legal channels.

The local Jews had been so obstinate in refusing to believe Jesus’ Message through Paul, that Paul gave up going to the local synagogue. I found it fascinating that the local Jews participated in the idol makers’ protest. How fascinating that for hundreds of years, God spoke through the prophets and sent His people into exile in part because they wouldn’t give up their idolatry. Here, the Jews of Ephesus reject God’s Son and support the local idolatry union. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In the quiet this morning, I found myself meditating on how the forces of fear, greed, and stupidity are at play in our own time and in our world. Paul and the disciples in Ephesus displayed the opposite of fear, greed, and stupidity. Paul was unafraid of the angry mob but wisely chose not to go to the theater and make a bad situation worse. When an entire group of sorcerers became believers, they chose to burn all of their sorcery and witchcraft scrolls which were worth fifty thousand drachmas. A greedy person would have sold them instead.

On the night of His arrest, Jesus told His disciples that He wanted them in the world proclaiming and living out His Message. In a world driven by fear, greed, and stupidity, Jesus wanted His disciples to live lives of peace, generosity, and wisdom so that others in the world could see the contrast, and be drawn to the Message. It’s a good reminder as I start another work week. Lord, help my daily life to be marked by your peace, generosity, and wisdom.

Tomorrow’s Chapter: Romans 10

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
Chapter-a-Day

Dirge for the “Indispensable”

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Dirge for the “Indispensable” (CaD Ezk 27) – Wayfarer

“‘The merchants among the nations scoff at you;
    you have come to a horrible end
    and will be no more.’”
Ezekiel 27:36 (NIV)

Just a week or so ago, the United States was threatened with a strike by the longshoremen’s union which controls all of the ports around our nation’s coasts. The strike was quickly postponed while sides negotiate a settlement, but it did give a hint of how badly a strike could cripple supply lines and the availability of products across the nation. Union leaders bragged at their power to cripple the nation and bring us to our knees:

“I will cripple you and you have no idea what that means...First week, it will be all over the news — boom, boom, boom. Second week, guys who sell cars can’t sell cars because the cars ain’t coming in off the ships. They get laid off. Third week, malls start closing down. They can’t get the goods from China. They can’t sell clothes. They can’t do this. Everything in the United States comes on on a ship. They go out of business. Construction workers get laid off because the materials aren’t coming . The steel i s not coming in. The lumber is not coming in. They lose their jobs.”
Harold Daggett as quoted by Quartz

The ancient nation of Tyre had a similar hubris. Because of their location on the Mediterranean, they were an essential trade port at the gateway to Mesopotamia. They did business with everyone and their trade ships went everywhere. Scholars argue that the King of Tyre was actually limited in power because Tyre had a cabal of powerful, wealthy oligarchs who wielded power in incense-filled rooms behind the throne. Tyre bragged of its beauty, its power, and its wealth. They believed themselves and their trade indispensable to the nations and therefore believed themselves untouchable.

Enter the prophet Ezekiel.

Today’s chapter is actually the lyrics to another funeral dirge. He used this same metaphorical device back in chapter 19 to lament the princes of Israel. This time, Ezekiel pens a City Lament. City Laments were a popular literary genre in ancient Mesopotamia. When a city was destroyed along with the temple of its patron deity, a City Lament would be written describing the siege, the destruction, along with an appeal for repentance and protection from the “council of gods” that will allow the city to be rebuilt.

Ezekiel writes a funeral dirge and City Lament for the nation of Tyre while she sat very much alive, fat, and sassy on the coast. Ezekiel’s contemporaries would probably have considered the dirge a bit of insane hubris on Ezekiel’s part to pen the song. No one believed that they would be touched. Their trade was too essential to too many national economies.

But as the Proverb says, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Tyre would fall just as Ezekiel pronounced.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself reflecting on a funeral that Wendy and I attended yesterday for a friend and colleague. It was one of those sudden and unexpected deaths. He just retired and had all of his golden years ahead of him. He seemed to be in great health. Then came a shocking diagnosis followed by a tragically rapid descent.

I have observed along my life journey that individuals’ hearts and minds tend to be more open to matters of the Spirit when there’s a dead body in the room.

Ezekiel’s lament was a warning to Tyre, but it’s really a warning to me, too. I don’t know what will happen today or tomorrow, of if I even have a tomorrow on this earth. It is hubris and human pride to assume differently.

I enter this day with the lyrics of another ancient song, penned by Moses, rattling around in my soul:

“Teach us to number our days, that we might gain a heart of wisdom.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Three Forces Rule the World

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Three Forces Rule the World (CaD Acts 19) – Wayfarer

The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there.
Acts 19:32 (NIV)

I saw a meme on social media over the weekend that caught my eye. It was a quote from Albert Einstein who said, “Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear, and greed.” The more I meditated on this notion, the more I realized the truth of it.

The quote came to mind this morning as I read today’s chapter because all three forces are at work during Paul’s stay in Ephesus. Paul’s presence and Jesus’ Message had a powerful effect in Ephesus. So many people were choosing to believe in Jesus that the local union of idol makers began to fear (there’s the fear) that they would lose significant income (there’s the greed). So, they grabbed two of Paul’s companions and started a protest in the city’s amphitheater. The protest grew into a confusing, riotous mob, and many of the people who joined in had no idea what they were rioting about (there’s the stupidity). Eventually, a local official got control of the crowd and convinced them to disperse and take up their grievances through proper legal channels.

The local Jews had been so obstinate in refusing to believe Jesus’ Message through Paul, that Paul gave up going to the local synagogue. I found it fascinating that the local Jews participated in the idol makers’ protest. How fascinating that for hundreds of years, God spoke through the prophets and sent His people into exile in part because they wouldn’t give up their idolatry. Here, the Jews of Ephesus reject God’s Son and support the local idolatry union. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In the quiet this morning, I found myself meditating on how the forces of fear, greed, and stupidity are at play in our own time and in our world. Paul and the disciples in Ephesus displayed the opposite of fear, greed, and stupidity. Paul was unafraid of the angry mob but wisely chose not to go to the theater and make a bad situation worse. When an entire group of sorcerers became believers, they chose to burn all of their sorcery and witchcraft scrolls which were worth fifty thousand drachmas. A greedy person would have sold them instead.

On the night of His arrest, Jesus told His disciples that He wanted them in the world proclaiming and living out His Message. In a world driven by fear, greed, and stupidity, Jesus wanted His disciples to live lives of peace, generosity, and wisdom so that others in the world could see the contrast, and be drawn to the Message. It’s a good reminder as I start another work week. Lord, help my daily life to be marked by your peace, generosity, and wisdom.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Of Mobs and Motives

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The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another.Most of the people did not even know why they were there.
Acts 19:32 (NIV)

While I was in high school there was a large education bill making its way through the state legislature. The teachers in my school began wearing “Save Our Schools” buttons. Some teachers spoke to us over a series of weeks about how important this bill was and predicted doom, gloom, and the end of education as we knew it were the law not to pass. Extra-curriclar programs would go away, athletics programs wouldn’t have the funding they needed, and students would suffer, we were told.

A short while later it was announced that on a certain afternoon any student who desired could take the afternoon off of school, ride a bus to the state capitol, and participate in a rally of teachers and students to march on the statehouse.

Afternoon off of school? Are you kidding me?! I’d go on a tour of a sewage treatment facility if it meant getting to skip English, Algebra II and American History.

And so it was I found myself in a mob of students and teachers from all over the area chanting “Save our schools!” as we marched up Capitol hill. We filed into the Statehouse and up into the gallery of the legislature where debate was taking place on the floor regarding the school bill. There I listened to the debate between legislators regarding the bill and found out that the bill was put forth by the teachers’ union and was primarily about teacher compensation. Now, I’m all for teachers being paid well and funding public education, but the more I listened to the debate and the particulars of the bill were revealed, the more I realized that the legislation itself wasn’t really about the things I had been told.

I will never forget sitting in that gallery and the sudden realization that I’d allowed myself to be a pawn in a political rally simply to get out of school for an afternoon. I even remembering watching the evening news and how the rally and the issues were described. The truth is, I hadn’t truly known what the issues really were, or why I was there. I vowed that day never to participate in anything like that again without being fully versed in the issues at stake and fully believing in the cause for which I marched.

In today’s chapter a riot breaks out in the city of Ephesus because Paul and the Jesus movement became a threat to the local trade union who made idols. Suddenly the Jews and the Tradesman, who would normally be antagonists (for what good Jew would support idolatry?) had a common political foe in Paul and the Jesus movement. A mob breaks out and  everyone in Ephesus runs to the local amphitheater to find out what’s going on.

Then Luke makes an astute observation: Most of the people did not even know why they were there.

Along my life journey I’ve observed just what lemmings human beings can be. My experience at the school rally and my studies of mass media have made me discerning regarding what I’m told and shown in the news as it relates to political rallies. Even as I worship among my local gathering of believers, I sometimes wonder how many truly come because they believe and how many are there because it’s what they were taught they should do by the family or societal systems that raised them.

Of course, I can’t control or even really know the motives of others, but I know and am responsible for myself. This morning in the quiet I find myself thinking about the things I do each day, each week, and the events to which I give my time.

Do I even know why I am there?

 

Chapter-a-Day

Catch and Release

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Catch

Chapter-a-Day Psalm 45

Listen to me, O royal daughter; take to heart what I say.
    Forget your people and your family far away.
Psalm 45:10 (NLT)

When it comes to family, I have come to believe that our life journey is a never ending process of separation and union. We get this picture at the very beginning of God’s Message when it says a man will leave his father and mother, the woman will leave her home, and the two will become one. Two individuals separate from their respective family systems. They cut the apron strings. They join together in spiritual, emotional, relational, and functional union and begin the process of establishing their own family system.

Release

I have observed over time that many (if not most) conflicts and struggles in our lives, marriages, families, and communities can be traced back to a failure to get this process right. The system becomes over protective and possessive of the individual, and refuses to let the child go. The individual becomes to dependent on the system or the system becomes dependent on the individual. There is a refusal (often an unconscious one) to fully separate. Subsequent union with another individual can’t successfully be accomplished because one or both individuals are still entangled in their respective family systems.

Separation is not, however, alienation. It was never intended to be. As an individual, differentiated from my family system in a healthy way, I am now even more capable of returning and creating a new and different union with my family which is critical for that family system’s growth and continuous development. I am able to help the system continue the never ending process of refinement because I can approach it with a new, objective and healthy perspective.

From the time our daughters were young, I can best describe my approach to fatherhood as: “catch and release.” I sought to captivate my daughters’ with my love, but it was always with the knowledge and intention that I was preparing them for Father God to captivate them with His perfect love, and perhaps for another man who might someday captivate them and take them away from me. Despite my strong desire to cling and not let go, I realized that this was the way God designed it. For a critical stretch of their own journeys I was there to catch them in their stumbling and falling away. I was also there to constantly instill in them the truth that they were lovable, valuable and capable of more than they felt or knew, and to release them into the world to discover the truth of it for themselves. My job was to release, to launch, and to let go with the knowledge that they would return to me as even more capable individuals and we would both be the better for it.

Believe me, I have not been perfect. But then again, neither have my children, or my wife, my parents, my siblings or my in-laws. The process of separation and union inherently creates conflict, but my wife reminded me yesterday that conflict is not a bad thing. Conflict is a healthy part of the process of both individual and relational definition and development. It is the inescapable reality of living together and walking this journey together as imperfect people in a fallen world. Our shortcomings and failures in the process are a constant reminder of our need of both receiving and extending grace and forgiveness. We separate a loved one from their failures and embrace them with unmerited love. Separation and union. Catch and release.

Into this day, the process and the journey continue.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Hosea 12

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source: vad levin via Flickr

So now, come back to your God.
    Act with love and justice,
    and always depend on him.
Hosea 12:6 (NLT)

I’m not a very religious person. You might find that a silly statement since I’m all about this God talk with my blog posts and all. But, when it comes to all the traditional religious trappings and traditions of the organized local church, I’m not a mindless lemming. In fact, with all of my experience with different churches through the years I tend to approach the organized church with a suspicious eye and a sarcastic spirit. Call it a love-hate relationship. When it comes to the local church, I tend to find myself more comfortably relating to the non-believers and prodigal children of the community.

That being said, I have a heart for and struggle beside those who’ve never believed or those who’ve walked away from God because of the failings of the church. These folks tend to confuse a sincere and personal relationship with the Creator with card carrying membership in the local union organization of God followers (read: church). It’s an easy mistake to make. You’d assume that the organization who claims to represent the Almighty would provide the best representation, but I’ve found that not to be the case. Not only that, but it seems to be a bit of a universal theme in history. Those who enmesh themselves with the organization tend to gravitate towards keeping up appearances and worshipping the trappings and traditions instead of focusing on what Hosea encouraged in today’s chapter: “Act with love and justice, and always depend on [God].”

For those individuals souls who, as it relates to God, feel like they are languishing in the spiritual wilderness in anger, fear, alienation, disappointment, or misguided belief that God could never forgive what you’ve done – today’s call from Hosea is an honest one. God says it over and over and over again throughout His Message: come back. Don’t come back to religiosity, legalistic traditions and empty rituals, but come back to a relationship with God who loves you so much that He sacrificed His own Son that you might experience life, love, and forgiveness. Don’t come back to lock-step church membership, but do come back to God’s prescribed path of living out love and justice on day at a time.

Don’t be confused. There is a difference.