god

Resentment is an attempt to deny someone else salvation

Resentments are like a wedge in our hearts. They separate us from God and our fellows. In fact, resentments are an attempt to play God by not accepting what has happened as being in accordance with his will. By holding onto a resentment against someone else, we are essentially saying that we have the right to withhold love from them, that we have the power to withhold mercy from them, and that we have the desire to withhold salvation from them. 

In this way, holding onto a resentment against someone is an attempt to cut them off from God. It is to deny them love, mercy, and forgiveness. And this, according to Jesus is tantamount to murder. “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’” he said, “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to [the same] judgment [as one who has actually committed murder] (Matt 5:21-22).” 

When we are angry, we forget that only God has the power to withhold salvation. Only God has the authority to withhold mercy. And no matter what a person does, God never stops loving them. These are his gifts to give and we can do nothing to deserve or to earn them. They are freely given and we are free to accept or deny them. What we are not free to do, however, is to deny love, mercy, or for someone else, for we are not God. 

On the contrary, Jesus said, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:43-44, NIV).” He commands that, no matter the harm and no matter how many times we are hurt or offended, we are to forgive “not seven times, but seventy-seven times (Matt 18:21-22).” To hold a resentment, therefore, is not only to play God, but also to reject his teachings and deny his authority. 

Tragically, in our imperfection, in our flaws and brokenness, we are going to fall short of Jesus’s commandments. We will not always “Love the Lord God with all our heart… soul and… mind.” Nor will we always “Love [our] neighbor[s] as [ourselves] (Matt 22:37-39).” But we can pray. 

When we find ourselves being resentful toward someone, we can confess it to God and another person. We can pray and ask God to forgive us and help us show this person forgiveness, love, and mercy. And we can “go and be reconciled with them (Matt 5:23)” so that we can approach God with a open heart and a clean conscience. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

God got my attention today

I’m not a very patient person. Well, that’s not altogether true. I’m not very patient when it comes to waiting for other people. When it comes to me and my responsibilities, however, I’m more than patient. In fact, I’ve been known to take my sweet old time and wait until the absolute last minute to get things done. 

If I’m being honest, I have a plethora of double standards. It seems as though, as soon as I become too full of myself, God shows me the truth, which is that I’m just as flawed and broken as everyone else. By a Godly standard, I have no leg to stand on when it comes to judging or being impatient with other people. 

In spite of this, I’m still not a very patient person. This evening, for example, when my daughter and I got home from jiu-jitsu class, I got out of the car and started walking toward our house. I was hungry and looking forward to taking a hot shower and having dinner. But when I looked back, my daughter was still in the car. 

I immediately grew impatient. I stood there staring at her, wondering what was taking so long. Then, right as I was about to say something, I suddenly turned away and looked up at the evening sky. As I did, a peace came over me and it’s as if time slowed down. 

I stood there staring at the fluffy white clouds floating by atop a light blue backdrop and everything just felt okay. I was no longer agitated and I was no longer in a hurry. The only thing that existed was that moment, the clouds, the sky, and my awareness of them. 

I’m not sure how long I stood there, but it felt like both an eternity and an instant. Then, I heard my daughter scuffling around and I turned back to see what she was doing. As she got out of the car with her jiu-jitsu gear, her backpack, and her viola case, she said, “Daddy, can you help me shut the door?” 

A few things occurred to me in that moment. First, God is good and he is always there to remind me when I need to simply be still in his presence. Second, my daughter probably would have gotten out of the car sooner if I had offered to help her with her stuff. Finally, it’s really not that big of a deal. 

Sure I was hungry and sure I wanted to take a shower, but these selfish concerns were not and are not more important than being present to both God and my daughter. I can’t promise that I’ll do better next time, but the when next time comes, which it will, perhaps I’ll remember those clouds, that sky, and my daughter’s sweet voice asking me to help her. God got my attention today and I’m willing to change for his sake and hers. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Quality prayer is a lot like quality french toast

One of the go-to breakfasts I cook for my daughter is french toast.* It’s easy to make, it can be prepared in advance so that it can be cooked quickly, and, when made with a quality whole-grain bread, it’s a relatively healthy breakfast, combining just enough protein, carbohydrates, and fat to get my daughter through the first part of her day. Also, she likes it so there is never any complaining or procrastinating first thing in the morning when it’s time to eat. 

This morning, as I was prepping the french toast so that I could cook it when she woke up, it occurred to me that, in some ways, french toast is a lot like prayer. I know that sounds silly, and maybe it is, but it made sense to me at 5:30am. So please bear with me. 

French toast, is something that, if you want a good result, cannot be rushed. While the actual cooking of the french toast is a rather quick endeavor, prepping the french toast itself takes time. If you don’t allow the bread enough time to soak, the custard mixture will merely coat the bread superficially, instead of penetrating to the center, and the end result will be dry and unpleasant. 

In the same way, prayer takes time. Our time with God cannot be rushed if we want a good result. If we do not allow ourselves sufficient time in prayer, the Holy Spirit may only enter us superficially, instead of penetrating to our hearts, and our prayer life will feel dry and unpleasant as a result. 

In order to make french toast, you have to plan ahead. You can’t simply throw together french toast at the time you want to cook it and expect it to turn out the way you want. Good french toast requires some, albeit not much, amount of planning. 

Prayer, too, requires planning. This doesn’t mean that our prayers can’t or shouldn’t be spontaneous. Spontaneous prayer is wonderful. Any time we pray it is a good thing. But it is also important that we plan out time to pray, that we set aside time for God, and that we set and keep a schedule for and with him. If we don’t make our time for prayer a priority, the world will always find a way to prioritize itself for us. 

Good french toast requires bread that has the right amount of porousness and integrity. The bread has to be porous enough that, when we put it in the with the wet ingredients, it absorbs as much of the custard as possible. But it also has to be firm enough that it doesn’t simply fall apart once it is saturated. 

Likewise, in order for us to have a fruitful prayer life, we must have the right amount of porousness and integrity. We must be open enough to let God into our hearts, as well as pliable enough for him to do his work in us and to change us into who he wants us to be. But we also need to be strong and upright enough to stand up for the values he instills in us, and to live in the way that he commands. 

Like french toast, prayer takes time, planning, openness, and integrity. Without these ingredients in place, we may end up with something that resembles prayer, but the quality of it may not be what we desire. With these ingredients in place, however, we have a good recipe for making ourselves available for God to do his work in us in a way that is pleasing for both us and him. 

*For anyone wondering, here is a recipe for french toast that I use often and my daughter seems to like it:

INGREDIENTS (serves 2-3 people)
– Four slices of quality semi-stale whole grain bread
-Two large or three medium eggs
-Almond milk (or whatever milk you prefer) in an amount equal to the amount of liquid eggs
-1tsp each cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom
-Olive oil
-Maple syrup (the real stuff)

PREPARATION
-The night before, mix the wet ingredients in a sealable container
-Add the bread
-Flip the bread around in the custard mixture until all slices of bread are coated on all sides (you may have to do this more than once)
-Seal the container and place it in the refrigerator overnight

COOKING
-Place a medium sized non-stick pan on the stove
-Turn on burner to medium-high
-Once the pan is hot, add just enough olive oil to coat the pan
-Add the custard-soaked toast to the pan
-Cook on both sides
-Serve with maple syrup
-Pray
-Enjoy

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

The cave the fear and the treasure

The thing about fear is that no one can walk through it for us. In fact, they can’t even really walk through it with us, at least not our truest, deepest fears, the fears that define us and hold us back from becoming who we are destined to be. We must take the walk alone. 

Well, we aren’t really alone. God is always with us. But we often cannot feel his presence as we do the work of faith. We have to trust that he is there while we make the walk into darkness. 

Joseph Campbell said, “The cave [we] fear to enter holds the treasure [we] seek.” The challenge is that, not only is the fear ours, but the cave is ours also, and so is the treasure. It all exists inside of us. All anyone else can do is to point the way. 

And God knows all of this. He can see our hearts and he knows our needs. He is calling us into our cave of fear, promising that he will will not abandon us, telling us it will be okay. The challenge is that we have no way of knowing without doing the work, without facing our fears and taking the walk. 

God’s love and faithfulness is proven to us as we step out on the other side of the darkness. He is there to greet us and to assure us that we need only to trust him, that the treasure always belonged to us. It was and is ours to take any time we want. 

And yet, even as we know this, even as God proves his loyalty to us time and time again, we forget or we don’t believe it. Every new fear and every new trial feels like we are experiencing it for the first time, like this will be the time God forgets us and abandons us. 

The Lord is always faithful, though. It is we who are fickle and unreliable. We attribute to God our worst characteristics, forgetting that our brokenness is not God’s doing, nor is it a reflection of his nature. God gave us Eden and a life without fear or shame. 

It was our lack of faith, our inability to trust his word, that separated us from him and expelled us from the garden. He is constantly trying to draw us back there with him though. We need only believe we are worthy of the divine treasure that awaits us. It is not far off. In fact, the cave, the fear, and the treasure are actually one in the same. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Willingness is a prayer in itself

Centering prayer has become an integral part of my morning routine. Thomas Keating recommends doing two, twenty minute centering prayer sessions each day, one in the morning and one in the evening, however. For whatever reason, I find it difficult to make the time for an evening session. 

One of the issues I face is that, when I try to sit down to practice centering prayer in the evening, I almost always fall asleep. This isn’t a terrible problem to have, and it most likely just means I’m tired. But after a while, it can be discouraging to have a twenty minute silent prayer session turn into a twenty minute nap. 

In addition to my falling asleep, it can just be more difficult for me to find the quiet space and time necessary to practice centering prayer in the evening than in the morning. In the morning, I wake up before my wife and daughter, which allows me to make the time I need for this practice. In the evening, on the other hand, my schedule is more complicated. My daughter is home from school, I teach jiu-jitsu in the evenings, and when my wife comes home from work, I like to spend time with her. 

None of these are deal breakers though. I know that it’s possible to fit a second centering prayer session into my day. I simply haven’t found the right space or timing for it, which is to say that I have not yet made it a priority. The important thing is that I’m willing. 

Willingness is a prayer in itself. It’s my way of telling God that, with his help, I will make it happen. He need only show me the way. As long as I remain prayerful and willing, I’m sure that he will. He has yet to let me down thus far and I don’t think he’s going to start now. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Let us lean on Mary’s faith and faithfulness

It is not always easy to know where God is leading us. Sometimes he gives us clear signs and guidance, but other times we have to discern our course with little to no clarity at all. We must always rely on faith to bring us through whatever decisions we are making, but in these latter instances, where the path ahead is dark and confusing, we must rely upon it entirely. 

I often think about the story of the angel Gabriel visiting Mary in Luke 1:26-38. Imagine what Mary must have thought and felt during and after this encounter. Gabriel shows up out of nowhere and tells her not to be afraid, and that she, a virgin, has found favor with God, is going to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit, will give birth to a son whom she will name Jesus, and that Jesus will be the Son of God whose kingdom will never end. 

If that encounter wasn’t confusing or shocking enough, after Mary says (paraphrasing), “Okay. I’ll do whatever God wants me to do,” Gabriel just vanishes. He gives her no further instructions. He tells her nothing of what to expect or how to handle any of the trials and tribulations she will face, and he doesn’t say a word about what Jesus’s life or his death will be like. He simply disappears and is never seen or heard from by Mary again. 

With only that to work with, Mary has to figure out how to raise the Son of God. Of course, God is there through all of it and he provides her what she needs to do his work, but all she really had to go on was her faith, and it was enough. Our Heavenly Father tells and shows us over and over again that our faith is always enough. Like Gabriel said to Mary, “[We need] not be afraid… [for we] have found favor with God (Luke 1:30, NIV).”

The Lord will always guide us through fear, confusion, and darkness, but, like Mary, we must first put our faith in his word. While at first she is frightened by Gabriel’s greeting and questions how she is going to give birth to a son when she is a virgin, Mary never protests further (Luke 1:29 & 34). She simply trusts the will of God and, after hearing what Gabriel has to say, responds by saying, “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled (Luke 1:38).”

We should all pray to have faith as strong and steadfast as Mary’s. It isn’t easy. Life is full of all sorts of obstacles, trials, and difficult decisions. But if we are honest with ourselves, is God ever really asking more from us than he asked from Mary? Are our trials greater than hers? Is our cross heavier than the one she carried or the one she watched her son carry and die on? Likely not. 

So we can use Mary as an example of what our faith should look like. In times of trouble, confusion, or darkness, we can lean on Mary’s faith and her faithfulness, and know that God is with us, that even if we cannot hear his voice or see his face, that he has a plan for us and that it is good.

When we stand at the precipice, too afraid or uncertain to go forward, let us use Mary as inspiration and say, “I am your servant, Lord. Not my will, but yours be done,” and then let us step forth into the darkness, for we know that the Lord our God “rewards those who earnestly seek him (Hebrews 11:6).” 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Keeping my mind on God instead of on not-God

If I’m being honest, most of my waking hours are spent on not-God. Meaning, most of my time and attention is spent on concerns that feel separate from my conscious connection with God. I think, actually I know, that this is true for most people. But this is not the goal. This is not the direction in which I am headed. This is not my destiny. 

The goal is to give more of my time and attention to God than I give to not-God. The goal is to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for [me] (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, NIV).” This is the direction in which I am headed. This is my destiny. 

Prayer, however, must be practiced. It must be something toward which effort is put. And if one hopes to reap the benefits of prayer, it must be done consciously, sincerely, and faithfully. 

In the good times and the bad, upon awakening and when we retire at night, and all throughout the day, if we want to have a conscious contact with God, we must return to prayer as often as we can with the goal of, eventually, remaining in prayer regardless of our circumstances. 

Jesus wants us to “Remain in [him], as [he] also remains in [us]. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can [we] bear fruit unless [we] remain in [Jesus] (John 15:4).” For some people, perpetual consciousness of God may happen all at once, in an instant, but for most of us, it requires discipline and dedication. We must constantly remind ourselves to return to prayer and to return to God. 

This is an honorable task, however. In fact, it is the most honorable task. It is the greatest commandment of them all, to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Matthew 22:37),” according to Jesus. 

The late, great teacher of centering prayer, Father Thomas Keating, often told a story wherein a nun at one of his workshops lamented, “Father Thomas, I’m such a failure at centering prayer. In twenty minutes I’ve had ten thousand thoughts!”

“How lovely,” responded Keating, in his ever kind and joyful tone. “Ten thousand opportunities to return to God.”

This returning to God is the practice. It’s not easy, but if we are to develop and maintain a conscious contact with God, it is necessary. Prayer is the good work of loving God, and the more we pray, the more our time will be spent with our minds on God rather than with our minds on not-God. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Sabbath rest by choice or by force

Days like today make me realize how human I am. Once again, I have found myself overcommitted and overtrained which means that I was exhausted to the point of a migraine. Some ibuprofen, a hot shower, and an unusually long nap later, and I am still feeling the after-effects of the physical and emotional drain that a migraine can cause. 

My friend and jiu-jitsu mentor came in to teach this morning and, since he was coming down specifically to see and train with me, I didn’t want to miss it. As a result, what is normally a morning of rest and spiritual renewal for me turned into a morning of work, fun work, but work nonetheless. 

This isn’t a bad thing and I’m not complaining, mind you. I love jiu-jitsu and I’m glad I got to see my friend and learn some of his new strategies and techniques, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, and I paid the price after class. 

The older I get, the more I understand why God gave us the Sabbath rest. We only have so much physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy we can give to the world before we are drained. Once we are drained, if we keep going, instead of our labors making us stronger, sharper, and more useful, they make us weaker, sicker, and less effective for God and those around us. 

Each of us has a certain capacity for work, whether it be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, and that capacity is limited by the limited nature of our humanity. If we attempt to exceed this capacity, if we try to draw more from the well than the well has to give, we start taking from our health. Much like with finances, overdrawing from our well of health is an unsustainable way to live. 

In the past, I would have simply popped some ibuprofen, downed a cup of coffee or two, and kept going. Lacking the sense to see that my body was trying to tell me something, I have medicated my way through many a migraine over the years. While it made me relatively successful, this drive eventually led me to panic attacks and a near ruined marriage.

After several years of therapy, prayer, meditation, spiritual work, and a lot of soul searching, I have begun to see things from a different perspective than I was capable of in my younger years. The push forward is not as important as my health and longevity. And as I have gotten older and more sensitive to what God is trying to tell me, I’ve begun to see that sickness, in whatever form it takes, is my body or mind’s way of telling me to slow down, rest, and recover. 

So today, after I crashed from exhaustion and a migraine, I took a couple of ibuprofen, a hot shower, and a long nap. When I woke up, thinking about the rest of the week ahead and realizing that a decision to rest and recover now would mean that I will be more capable of doing the things that are required of me later, I rescheduled a private lesson I had set up for this afternoon and took some time for Sabbath rest. 

“The Sabbath was made for man,” as Jesus said in Mark 2:27 (NIV). It is a gift from God for us and it’s free. We need only accept it. And Sabbath rest is not only available to us on Sundays (or Saturdays depending on your belief). Sabbath rest is available to us any time we decide to set aside time for God and rest. My friend who is a pastor takes Monday as his Sabbath because, even though Sunday is a day of worship for him, it’s also a work day because he works at the church. 

Having a whole day each week for God and rest is obviously desirable. God gave it to us for us to take advantage of. But that doesn’t mean we must limit ourselves to only that day for Sabbath rest. God is happy to spend as much time with us as we are willing to spend with him, whenever and wherever we are willing and able to do so. We don’t have to wait until we crash before we rest in God, like I often do. His arms are open for us now and forever. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Committing murder in my heart on the highway

Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. (Matthew 5:21-22, NIV).” 

I was running late for jiu-jitsu this morning, not too late, but late enough to be in a hurry, and I was getting annoyed by slow drivers and traffic lights. At one point, I even honked at the driver in front me for not turning when the light was green. It became clear to me later, after being stuck behind him for a while, that he was most likely lost and trying to figure out where he was going, and my attempts to hurry him along were not helping. 

As I got on the highway, I moved over to the left lane so that I could get where I was going more quickly. That is to say, I was speeding. Unfortunately for me, there was a big white pickup truck with shiny chrome wheels ahead of me in the left lane who was content to go just fast enough that no one could pass him and just slow enough to get on my nerves. 

The further I drove, the more frustrated I became. It was’t just the pickup truck in front of me. Everyone around me was annoying me. Either they weren’t going fast enough or they weren’t using their turn signal or I didn’t like the color of their car or they had a bumper sticker that offended me. It became increasingly clear to me that either something was wrong with everyone else or something was wrong with me. 

Just then, the thought came to me, “How many people have you murdered in your heart today while driving to jiu-jitsu?” I knew this was a reference to Matthew 5:21-22. I also knew that it was a lot of people. In fact, it was too many people to count. 

Then, as my mind tends to do, I extrapolated this out to all of the people I had ever been angry at or annoyed by any time I have ever driven anywhere for the thirty or so years that I’ve been driving. For many years, as a coffee equipment technician, I essentially drove for a living, meaning I was on the road for many hours a day encountering many hundreds of drivers each day, a lot of whom were not driving how I wanted. 

With this in mind, it occurred to me that, if I were to take Jesus seriously, and I do, I am guilty of murdering many hundreds, really thousands of people in my heart. Being subject to judgement by God for my anger, as if it were in fact murder, I realized that I have a very severe punishment coming my way. God being the just God that he is, I will eventually have to pay for these crimes of the heart against my brothers and sisters. 

But God is not merely a just God. He is also a loving and merciful God. He knows that we cannot possibly live up to his perfect standards nor perfectly obey his commandments. The entire Old Testament proves this over and over again. And so after many attempts to reconcile with us and forgive us for our transgressions, God finally made the greatest sacrifice a father can make, and he sent his own son to die for every wrong we have ever done or will ever do so that, through Jesus Christ, we may be forgiven once and for all. 

This knowledge, once accepted as the truth it is, should make us nicer. It should make us so grateful and so humbled that we could not possibly sin against the Lord ever again. And yet, we are selfish, broken, and extremely short-sighted creatures for whom nothing is ever really good enough. 

No matter what God does for us, including sacrificing his own son so that we may live, we still have lapses in love, compassion, and goodness. I, for one, had many this morning on my short drive to jiu-jitsu. Somehow, because I was late for class and in a hurry, I completely forgot that I have been saved through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and I opted instead to get angry at every driver who crossed my path. 

Sometimes I think God allows us to have these moments of weakness just so that we can see how broken we are and how much we need him to make us whole. While this incident and this realization resulted in my praying for both forgiveness and for love and patience for my fellows, I know that this will not be the last time I get angry at another driver and commit murder in my heart. I hope and pray, however, that these incidents become fewer and farther between as God heals my heart and forms me into the type of person he would have me be. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Walking the path of righteousness or at least not trespassing

For several years now, the county within which I live has been building a paved bike trail that will span the entire length of my town, from the beach to a pre-existing bike trail in the next town over. Once the trail is complete, my family and many others will have a safe way to travel and exercise by bike or by foot across over twenty miles of paved trails spanning multiple towns. I am quite excited for the project to finish so that we can take advantage of this amenity. 

Some parts of the trail have been completed for quite a while now, some parts are mostly finished, and some have yet to be started. Where the project is mostly finished, there are large spans of paved trail that are safe to walk on, at least as far as I can tell, but which are still closed off to the public. When I was out for a walk the other day, in spite of the sign that said, “Do Not Enter,” I walked one of these sections of the trail instead of walking on the side of the busy road. 

Admittedly, it was quite nice to have a safe place to walk and the trail allowed me to go farther than I would have if it were not there. I knew I wasn’t supposed to walk on it. I read the sign after all, but I really didn’t think much of it because it seemed safe and there was no one around to stop me. 

As I stepped over the mesh plastic barricade which has clearly been stepped or ridden over many times before, the thought occurred to me, “It’s not a big deal if I do this, but obviously it would be a problem if everyone did it. I’m not everyone though, so it’s okay.” The whole while walking on the trail, however, I had the feeling that someone was watching me and I started to hurry my way along so that I could get off before I was noticed by passersby. 

I made my way to the next cross street which has no trail or sidewalk and I walked hurriedly to the next intersection where there was a sidewalk. From there, I walked my normal route home, went inside, and went about my day. But the whole day, I had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind about whether I had done the right thing or whether or not I would do it again.

The next morning, my wife and I had the opportunity to walk together. There are several ways we can go when we walk, but I wanted to show her the new, albeit unfinished, trail that I had “discovered” the day before. As we approached the trail, I told my wife where we were going to go and she immediately bristled at the proposition. 

She said, “I’m not walking on there. It’s not finished yet. It’s not safe.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” I said, “I walked on it yesterday.” “Why would you do that?” she asked, “There’s clearly a sign that says, “Do Not Enter.” “Yeah, but it’s fine,” I insisted, “I’ve seen plenty of people walking and biking on it, and it’s safer than walking next to the road.” 

“Don’t be that kind of person,” she replied, “Be a good citizen. Set a good example for others. Just walk the way you normally walk and stay on the sidewalk. We can go that way when the trail is done.” 

For whatever reason, those words, “Be a good citizen. Set a good example for others,” really hit me hard. I never really thought about it from that perspective. I do my best to be a good person. I don’t intentionally lie, cheat, or steal. I try to be honest, I’m faithful to my wife, I go to church on Sundays, I repay my debts, I pay my taxes, and I own multiple businesses that serve the community. “Of course I’m a good citizen,” I thought to myself. 

But as I sat with her words for a while, I started to see her point. As a Christian, I am called to live by a higher standard. This means that I must not only follow the laws of the land within which I live, which includes not trespassing, but I must also live a righteous life for God and not for my selfish desires. Christ’s example is one of self denial for the sake of God and humanity, not of selfishly taking advantage of opportunities and breaking laws simply because no one appears to be watching. 

Jesus tells us, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48, NIV).” He doesn’t mean that we should be good only when other people are watching. Rather, we are to be good always because God is always watching. “The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good (Proverbs 15:3).” No wonder I felt like someone was watching me while I was walking on the trail. God was watching me and my conscience was letting me know it. 

There is nothing we do that is outside of God’s sight. Whether it’s sneaking an extra cookie at night when we think no one else is awake, embellishing our timecard when our supervisor isn’t paying attention, or peaking at an attractive woman when we think no one will notice, God sees us. And he holds us Christians to a higher standard because he loves us and, through the Holy Spirit, he is teaching us to be perfect. 

Of course, we should be good citizens. My wife is not wrong about that. We must go beyond that and be good Christians. That means not trying to get away with petty infractions of law or morality simply because we can. It means being impeccable in word and deed, and when we fail, which we will, admitting our mistake and, to the best of our ability, making things right. 

God requires more from us because we are the standard bearers of his name. What we do is a reflection of his love, his mercy, and his grace, but also of his son, Jesus Christ. We are called to live as Jesus did (1 John 2:6), to sacrifice anything and everything that stands in the way of our relationship with him (Matt 19:21), and to give up our worldly desires for the sake of heavenly standards (Titus 2:11-13). And, we are called to walk the narrow path of righteousness, even if it is inconvenient or less attractive (Matt 7:13-14). 

So no matter how much I want to, no matter how tempting it is, I will no longer be walking on the unfinished trail until it’s open to the public. It may seem silly or like a little thing, I know it did to me, but the little things add up in the eyes of God and in our consciences. There are plenty of places by my house for me to walk without trespassing, and it is better to be inconvenienced by what is best than to have an easy life full of good enough. Good enough is not good enough for God. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

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