Chronicles of Crank

“Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”  (Luke 17:7-10)

                My son recently joined the US Air Force. Right now he is in Basic Training learning his rightful place. Although we as parents didn’t succumb to the prevalent societal opinion that his “self-esteem” was fragile and needed to be constantly propped up, he did know the security of a family that loved him and cared for him, and, I believe, he would express that if he were asked.

But there is something good about learning that we are on the bottom of the ladder; there is something good about understanding that we are the servants rather than the masters. We in the American Church have fallen into the vile condition where we expect God to do our bidding rather than the other way around. We want to be the General, not the Private. Hardship is unknown to us, or, if we do experience it, we expect some fantastic reward at the end. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says that our “chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”Note the order of this. “Enjoy” follows “glorify.” We don’t glorify God IF He lets us enjoy life; we glorify Him and the result will be that He will give us joy, though there is no promise that the joy will be immediate.

All of the saints of Scripture understood this principle. A cursory reading of the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11 will reveal that hardship was their lot, and they didn’t complain about it. Paul told Timothy to “suffer hardship as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (II Tim. 2:3). While we tend to see these great saints as exemplary – and they are – they probably would not have considered themselves to be exemplary, just servants.

Hardship refines us, burning away impurities in our lives, especially the impure thought that we deserve more. It is especially important that we see this when we are young. Jeremiah wrote, “It is good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth.” When we bear this hardship and still can see God as loving and merciful toward us, our lives will be characterized with joy in the end (consider Psalm 90:14).

Military service often changes our young men and women. We often hear that “it makes a man out of him” or matures him. It is interesting how being immersed in a strict authoritarian structure makes us mature. I’m anxious to see how it affects my son; I’m praying that it will impact his spiritual life in a similar way.