Pre:

This is the promised re-run sermon, that you chose by popular vote. Portions of it may sound familiar to you if you attended Morning Star during the summer of 1994, or if you have read my book, Turning Points.

When we are looking for truth, we often turn to the great poets who with their creative wisdom and insight are able to capture truth and communicate it in such a way that the truth captures our hearts. I'd like to share two such poems with you today, and lay them side by side to see what light they shed on God's truth. One is Psalm 8 written by David, the other is a poem written in the mid-1800's by William Wordsworth.

Read the Psalm

And now, Wordsworth's Poem, The World Is Too Much With Us:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. -- Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

What a stark contrast this poem is to the exultant cry of the Psalmist: "O Lord our Lord how majestic is thy name in all the earth."

In his poem, Wordsworth expresses his grief about the state of spirituality in his contemporary world. A world that is "too much with us." So much with us that we have "given our hearts away." In our getting and spending, we have laid waste our powers. We've become spiritually impotent. Because of this world that is too much with us.

Whether Wordsworth knew it or not, his use of the phrase "the world" is very like the way the biblical writers use it. For instance, Jesus says that his disciples are not of this world; and Paul says that Christians should not be conformed to this world.

The world in these references is not the physical or geographical world. Not the hills and valleys, the oceans and stars. It's not the world that God created and called good.

Rather this is the world that is created by people. We might even better call it the world "order" because it has to do with how people organize themselves and their lives in order to make sense out of things. It's how people organize relationships; set priorities; how people organize their time; how people negotiate power. This world is a place in which the priority tends to be on material possessions; position; power. A world in which the focus is on getting ahead, climbing the ladder of success. It is a world in which people's thoughts are earthbound. A world in which human beings and our human concerns loom large; and God is but a small part of it.

The world that is too much with us can take many forms--the world of school and its activities; the world of business and trying to support ourselves and our family; the world of the family itself, the relationships and the problems that exist there; or the world of our own pain, and our desire to rid ourselves of that pain. The world that is too much with us is anything that so captures our attention and absorbs our time that we ultimately find ourselves captive to it. We have "given our hearts away." It is such a world, which when turned in on itself, creates crime and injustice and all kinds of addiction; which cares nothing about polluting someone else's water or hurting someone else's future; it is a world that cares only for its own comfort and its own advancement.

Is it any wonder that the poet in his despair, says that he would much rather be an honest pagan who could still thrill to the sound of the wind and the waves; rather than to be a party to the pretense of spirituality that he sees around him?

William Wordsworth died in 1850; yet his scathing criticism has a very contemporary ring. Some of us have given our hearts away to someone or something other than God. Many of us have become very earthbound in our thinking; and lost our spiritual power.

It's a matter of focus, really. Kind of like playing a game of tennis. Tennis happens to be my all time favorite sport (though I do have to admit that I have given it a rest for several years now). But if I never play another game of tennis, I will still remember the cardinal rule in that sport. It's the same rule that is primary in any sport involving a small ball. Keep your eye on the ball. Now, there are lots of techniques and fine points to be learned about the game of tennis. But nothing is more crucial to the game than that one simple rule. You stop watching the ball and your game goes to pot, no matter how many other techniques you know.

The Christian life has one cardinal rule, too. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. No matter what other life skills we develop, no matter what other information we learn, this remains our most basic task. To love God with all that we have.

It can be easy to lose this focus, to take our mind and heart away from the love of God, and invest them in our own self-created world--the world that is too much with us. When this happens, we need to change our perspective and refocus our lives.

It's like what happened to the Navy officer who had always dreamed of commanding a battleship. He finally achieved that dream and was given commission of the newest and proudest ship in the fleet. One stormy night, as the ship plowed through the seas, the captain was on duty on the bridge when off to the port he spotted a strange light rapidly closing with his own vessel. Immediately he ordered the signalman to flash the message to the unidentified craft, "Alter your course ten degrees to the south." Only a moment had passed before the reply came: "Alter your course ten degrees to the north." Determined that his ship would take a backseat to no other, the captain snapped out the order to be sent: "Alter course ten degrees--I am the captain!" The response came back: "Alter your course ten degrees--I am Seaman Third Class Jones." Now infuriated, the captain grabbed the signal light with his own hands and fired off: "Alter course, I am a battleship." The reply came back, "Alter your course, I am a lighthouse."

No matter how big or important or busy any of us think we are, God's Word stands forth as an unchanging beacon. All other courses must be altered. (Illustrations Unlimited, 208)

The writer of Psalm 8 takes us back to the kind of perspective that we need to recover. "When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou has established; what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?" How is it that God can care for us mortals, small and insignificant as we are? And yet, God does.

I remember clear, dark summer nights back on the farm in South Dakota--looking up at the Milky Way, trying to even imagine how big a number you would have to create in order to say how many stars there were. And I remember riding a very fast elevator to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, and seeing traffic from that perspective for the first time. And thinking, If two cars were to collide way down there, and I could chance to see it, how very distant and detached I would feel. Certainly my small collisions with life must seem awfully small to a God who created so many stars and planets. And yet, amazing as it sounds, God has the hairs on my head numbered; and God cares when I am hurting.

What could be more awesome than that?

The God who created the universe, cares about me and cares about you. The God who created the universe took the form of a little baby, who grew up to be an adult, who died on a cross for you and for me. God's love was poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

We need to change our perspective.

Several years ago, when Ed and I were vacationing in Central Oregon, we spent a couple of very long days fishing at a lake called Crane Prairie Reservoir. It's a man-made lake; and all over the lake dead trees stick their necks high above water, as monuments to its sylvan past and as hazards to boaters. It is also touted to be one of the best trout fisheries in the area. The preferred method for trout fishing at Crane Prairieis to tie up to one of those snags out in the middle of the lake at mid-day, put a dragonfly nymph on your hook, tie on a bobber; then toss the thing into the water and just wait.

We sat wordlessly in our boat, tied up to a snag, staring at the red and white bobbers that refused to bob. The sun shone hotter and hotter, while our temperaments became less and less pleasant. We continued to watch the inactive bobbers as the hours passed. We became bored and more than a little disgruntled.

From time to time I would look up and take in the beauty of the place: regal osprey sitting high above the water in their nests, bald eagles swooping down to scoop a fish out of the water (notably more successful than we were!), the noisy cormorants using the lake as a runway, wings splashing the water, then whistling in the air, as they called to one another with their humorous throaty voices. And the lake itself: a mirror reflecting Mounts Bachelor, Brokentop and South Sister, along with the surrealistic look of the dead trees, standing like guardians over the mythical schools of trout living in their shadows.

At those times when I would look up from my discouragement, away from the motionless bobbers, without bidding, this verse would spring to mind: "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!" When we look at God's heavens, the work of God's hands, we have to wonder--who are we that God should care for us? And yet, God does.

A good lesson to take to heart on an unsuccessful day of fishing. And on other days as well.

How often it is that we continue to look down, staring at the source of our discouragement. But if we look up, we may be amazed at the beauty and grace in God's world. If we look up, we may just rediscover the awesome greatness of our God.