Tag: Matthew 25:14-30

The Big Picture Requires Lots of Dots

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20245 Comments

Dear Will:

The world is kind of a mess. Perhaps you’ve noticed. Public discourse has never been more vile, with so-called leaders modeling and encouraging the basest human behavior. The weather report seems to feature one cataclysm after the other, with record-setting heat in one place challenged by record-setting cold in another only to be interrupted by yet another Storm of the Century. The war in Ukraine seems unsolvable, but it’s easy to forget it’s even happening given the growing, unsolvable conflict in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Central Valley of California is sinking, the Great Salt Lake is drying up, and day after day we pull more water out than nature can put back in. I could go on. And on.

As I watch what’s happening it’s tempting to just throw up my hands and give up altogether. It seems like my best option might be to just hope—somehow—to survive the coming Apocalypse and hang on until the Second Coming, when Jesus will return to make things right again. (You know: “paradisiacal glory” and all that.) But as a “What Would Jesus Do?” sort of guy, I know in my heart that waiting around for someone else to solve the problem is not exactly the Jesus Way.

The other day I was reading my Bible (like you do) and the Jesus Way just leapt out of the Book of Matthew and kicked me right in the diaphragm. You remember from Sunday School the Parable of the Talents—that simple allegory about responsibility, effort, and expectations?  Jesus told of a rich man who traveled to a far country, leaving some of his fortune in the care of three servants, giving “to every man according to his several ability.” When finally he returned from his journey, the wealthy lord called his servants to give an account of what had taken place in his absence. Two “good and faithful” servants did wisely, investing what had been placed in their charge and returning to their boss double what they started with. The third servant, he who had been given least, was not so wise. He basically did nothing, returning to his lord the single coin he had been given without even a modicum of interest earned in the interim. His boss was so disappointed that he called him “wicked and slothful” and threw him out on the spot. Ouch.

I reflect on that passage in the New Testament and it becomes pretty clear—to me, anyway—that Jesus would not be cool with me just sitting around waiting for the world to implode so he can come clean up the mess. At the same time, I can sense that He doesn’t have huge, unreasonable expectations—of me, or of anyone, for that matter. What He does expect is that I’ll do what I can—even if the impact of my little acts is relatively insignificant. 

For instance: I cannot possibly reverse the effects of climate change, but I certainly can try to minimize the negative impact of how I live my life. That much I can do. I can’t bring peace to Gaza, but I can choose not to turn the next School Board meeting into some kind of warzone. And while I certainly can’t refill the Great Salt Lake or restore the Central Valley aquifer, as a homeowner I can at least stop watering the sidewalk (my sprinklers are blasting at full-spray even as I write this). And maybe—someday when I am ready—I might consider replacing my beautiful green lawn with something less thirsty. Every little bit helps, and lots of little bits help a lot. By small and simple things are great things brought to pass, as the saying goes. And even if my small and simple contributions are little more than a single violet dot within a massive pointillist landscape, in the big picture I will have made my contribution.

What about you? Perhaps you can do much more than I—perhaps much less—but everyone according to their several ability, as Jesus said. What do you touch? What can you say or do to lift others and make an impact for good? What can you influence to improve our community, to counteract the negative with something wonderful? I might ask the same thing of any student, mother, farmer, or legislator who is part of that community: Think about how you use land and resources, how you interact with those you disagree with. Think about what you prioritize, about how you cast your votes. Ask yourself if there isn’t something small that you could do to make your own small difference. Or something truly grand and consequential, for that matter. Regardless of your circumstances and your sphere of influence, doing the same old thing—whatever that might be—is probably not the best choice available.

Like you, I yearn for a better tomorrow. In the face of the many challenges before us, by all means we should continue to hope and pray for some divine intervention; but after all the hoping and praying, we have to get up and do something. That is the Jesus Way. None of us should be asked to run faster than we have strength, but at the same time it’s not too much to ask each of us to pick up the pace a little, to find ways each day to make our own corner of the world just a bit better—that is, before Jesus comes back to ask us what we did with what we have been given. 

PW

Image: Detail from Georges Seurat’s La Parade de Cirque courtesy of Principle Gallery

Enough IS Enough

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20172 Comments

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Dear Will:

Last week I found myself in Cody, Wyoming, for my mother’s interment. My six siblings and I enjoyed the opportunity to give my mother a final tribute and send-off, in spite of weather in the high 30s. (There’s a reason I live in California.)

On my final day there, I visited the Buffalo Bill Center of the West (highly recommended), a marvelous museum that features local and Native American artifacts, a natural history center, the largest collection of firearms you can imagine, and a wonderful display of Western art (including pieces by Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, and others). And buffalo. Lots and lots of buffalo. (Technically: the American Bison, but they didn’t call him Bison Bill, now did they?) The Center has such an abundance of paintings, sculptures, and artifacts that feature or include the buffalo that you get the accurate impression that that very big animal was a very big deal back in the day. (One source estimates that at one point 20 to 30 million bison roamed North America.) For the Lakota and other native tribes, the beast was essential for food, shelter, clothing, and culture—a sacred symbol of life itself.

In contrast, one exhibit describes how fur traders in the 1800s swept through the area, slaughtering buffalo by the hundreds, hauling off their pelts and leaving the remaining carcasses to rot on the windblown prairie. To reinforce the disparity in attitude and approach, the display includes a huge pile of buffalo hides seemingly ready to ship off to market, with a reminder nearby that at one point there may have been as few as 300 bison—TOTAL—left in the world. For me, the display was particularly poignant because I was in the midst of reading Jack London’s classic White Fang, where, in one particularly vivid scene, London describes how the indigenous people of the Yukon resorted to eating their sled dogs during one harsh, winter famine. As I imagined the Wyoming landscape, dotted with discarded buffalo meat, I thought of how White Fang’s captors even found themselves eating hunks of leather to stay alive.

Some might see the traders’ excesses as the natural course of things—the mere harvesting of what God set out on this planet for His children. After all, has He not said: “For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare” (D&C 104:17)? That is true. But at the same time He has also said: “For it is expedient that I, the Lord, should make every man accountable, as a steward over earthly blessings, which I have made and prepared for my creatures” (D&C 104:13).

The Parable of the Talents makes this point clear. You’ll recall that in that parable Jesus tells of a rich man who, prior to a long journey, gives each of three servants money “according to his several ability.” Upon his return, the rich man rewards those servants who judiciously invested and thus increased their endowment, and he chastises the one who failed in his stewardship. To me it is apparent that God will hold each of us accountable for how we use (or misuse) the abundance with which He blesses us. There may be “enough and to spare,” but there is nothing in that promise of bounty to suggest that we should be profligate or wasteful with regard to what we have been given.

The good news in all of this is that the bison are making a dramatic comeback, with a current population of around half a million—a huge improvement over the last 100+ years. In our drive through Yellowstone last weekend, they wandered freely, even stopping our car at one point while they lolled about on the highway. Carefully, we maneuvered around them, grateful for the chance to see up close this mighty symbol of God’s bounteous goodness.

PW