Wednesday, February 28, 2007
The Real World
Wednesday mornings are becoming an almost automatic blogging time for me. With the wife and kids at Bible Study, and work not starting until the afternoon, it gives me time to write. Unfortunately for you all, Wednesday morning is also when I am at my most melancholy, so you will probably grow to find an odd sense of repetition on these Wednesday entries.
We live in a backwards world. We call the real world fantasy and the fake world real. What I have experienced over the last 2 days (family, leisure, contemplation of God, interaction with wife and children) is real. It is who God made us to be. God made us to relate to our fellow human beings, first and foremost. Work is a result of the fall. It is no more the real world than all the poverty and suffering in the world. We all know these things to be wrong. I see Oprah on the TV going to Africa to help eradicate poverty. She, like most people, realize something is not right with this kind of inequity in the world.
I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the results of the fall are so deep that we can never hope to fully eradicate work, poverty and suffering. They are realities of this fake world in which we live. Now the good news. I am blessed by the fact that I can spend 2 whole days a week (more than most both now and throughout history) engaging and interacting with my family. These two days are the real world. They are the closest thing to escaping what this world has become. Couple that with the connections at church and other family and friends, and we have a faint glimpse of the real world. I am so grateful for the job the Lord has given me, just as I am grateful for his work of salvation in my life. But it occurs to me that both of these things for which I am grateful will no longer be necessary in the World to come. I think that says something very interesting about how we should view our job and our lives on this planet, as we struggle to make sense of all the ills and the suffering around us.
We live in a backwards world. We call the real world fantasy and the fake world real. What I have experienced over the last 2 days (family, leisure, contemplation of God, interaction with wife and children) is real. It is who God made us to be. God made us to relate to our fellow human beings, first and foremost. Work is a result of the fall. It is no more the real world than all the poverty and suffering in the world. We all know these things to be wrong. I see Oprah on the TV going to Africa to help eradicate poverty. She, like most people, realize something is not right with this kind of inequity in the world.
I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the results of the fall are so deep that we can never hope to fully eradicate work, poverty and suffering. They are realities of this fake world in which we live. Now the good news. I am blessed by the fact that I can spend 2 whole days a week (more than most both now and throughout history) engaging and interacting with my family. These two days are the real world. They are the closest thing to escaping what this world has become. Couple that with the connections at church and other family and friends, and we have a faint glimpse of the real world. I am so grateful for the job the Lord has given me, just as I am grateful for his work of salvation in my life. But it occurs to me that both of these things for which I am grateful will no longer be necessary in the World to come. I think that says something very interesting about how we should view our job and our lives on this planet, as we struggle to make sense of all the ills and the suffering around us.
# posted by Unknown @ 10:50 AM 
