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Yesterday I wrote about two beautiful gardens, each the product of one person’s vision and a lot of people’s work. Today, as another highlight of our Alaskan cruise, I want to share with you the beauty of the Tracy Arm Fjord, on the way to Juneau. This is the product of no person’s vision or work. No one built the waterway, and the mountains are as God put them.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1.1, ESV)

You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you. (Nehemiah 9.6, ESV)

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I wrote earlier about the power of people working together, an important concept. But more often than not, what people accomplish together is the product of one person’s vision. The Jews had been back in country after the Babylonian exile for 90 years, and no one had the vision to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem until Nehemiah.

Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.”  …And they said, “Let us rise up and build.”  (Nehemiah 2.17, 18, ESV)

On our Alaskan cruise, we saw this phenomenon twice in visits to two gardens: Glacier Gardens near Juneau and Butchart Gardens near Victoria, B.C. Both were the product of one person’s vision: Steve Bowhay, a landscape architect in Juneau, had the vision to reclaim land devastated by a major storm and landslide. The now world-famous “Flower Towers” in Glacier Gardens resulted from what they now refer to as “a beautiful accident.” Jennie Butchart, wife of Robert Butchart, owner of Portland Cement, had the vision to plant a garden to beautify a quarry originally used for cement. Both turned ugliness into beauty. 

Don’t underestimate the power of one. God chooses one to mobilize many. Does God want you to join a movement…or start one!

The angel of the Lord appeared to [Gideon] and said to him, “God is with you, O mighty man of valor…Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Do not I send you? (Judges 6.12, 14, ESV)

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I mentioned yesterday that we started our travel day Saturday before the cruise watching our son Mark (and cruise host!) winning the Mile Stadium stair race for the 5th straight year. Mark is a nationally ranked stair climber—these are people who race up skyscrapers. For example, one highlight of our trip was a visit to the Seattle Space Needle, an engineering marvel dedicated in 1962. (I actually saw it that summer as I was on tour with a musical group from my high school.) Anyway, Mark is one of five men in the world to run to the top of the Space Needle in less than 5 minutes!

So what does a nationally ranked stair climber do while on a vacation cruise? The same thing he does every other day: he trains! Mark had a training schedule mapped out before he left, including running laps around the ship using the jogging track, running up and down the stairs on the ship, and even getting into Skagway early to do a 90-minute trail run. The last night of the cruise, we all got in just before midnight. Mark was up at 5am running the ship’s stairs one more time. From Deck 6 to Deck 17 in 55 seconds with a leisurely 2-minute run down…13 times.

Train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. (1 Timothy 4.7, 8, ESV)

Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. (1 Corinthians 9.25, NIV)

One more thing. We don’t train spiritually just for ourselves—it’s for others. Bible study without application and passing it on is like going to the gym to get strong but never helping anyone move their piano!

Mark’s fitness is not just for himself as he demonstrated on the last day. The only way we could make our suitcases weigh less than the airline’s 50-pound weight limit was to put some excess into my backpack. Oops. I put more into it than my left knee (the one not replaced last year!) wanted to carry. So, Mark to the rescue.

Mark put Galatians 6.2 literally into practice! Another holy moment.

Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6.2, NIV)

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Saturday before the cruise was a long day. We had gotten up early to watch our son Mark run (and win!) the Mile-High Stadium run for the 5th straight year. Then straight to the airport, fly to Seattle, negotiate the commuter train system (thanks to the help of a friendly Seattle native) and arrive at our hotel in downtown Seattle about 12 hours after we had gotten out of bed. 

I had gotten a text saying, “Your room is ready. Just stop by the desk to pick up a key.” So we went into the hotel, and there was a desk with a young man behind it. I said, “I’m here for my room key that the text said would be ready.” He smiled and said, “No problem sir, let me have your identification, and I’ll get it for you.” 

Only after he had left did I realize I was at the concierge desk, not the check-in desk! A minute later he came back with a key and wished me a good day. As we made our way to the room, I noticed a long line to get to the check-in desk. My mistake and his cheerful response had saved us a lot of time when, as I said, we were tired.

It was a holy moment on his part for which we were very grateful. Most hotel employees, even at nice hotels, would have said to me, “Sir, the check-in desk is right over there. They will take care of you.” 

Do I do just the “letter-of-the-law” of my job, or am I willing to go above and beyond? 

Do everything readily and cheerfully… (Philippians 2.14, MSG)

Put your heart and soul into every activity you do, as though you are doing it for the Lord himself and not merely for others. (Colossians 3.23, Passion Translation)

Encourage the believers to be passionately devoted to beautiful works of righteousness by meeting the urgent needs of others and not be unfruitful. (Titus 3.14, Passion Translation)

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I write from time to time about the importance of good work, well done. We serve people by our work, we serve people at our work, and, if we are believers, we have an opportunity to advance the Kingdom from our work. I’m a huge fan of excellent work. The world is full of artists: some are carpenter artists who frame houses, some are programming artists who write elegant (or even just functional!) code, some exercise their art by fixing cars.

We were blessed on our cruise by the serving artistry of Nestor, from the Philippines, our head waiter at the evening dinner venue. 

Nestor is 42 years old and has been with the cruise line for 19 years. He works with enthusiasm and joy despite the demand: 12 hours/day, 7 days a week, 10 months out of the year. He works to support his family who is back in the Philippines, including sending his sons to college. He paid attention to detail remembering the extra red pepper for our grandson, watermelon appetizer for our granddaughter, and when he heard that June was allergic to onions in a salad asked, “We can bring you another salad with no onions, what dressing would you like?” June replied, “The original dressing is fine.” Nestor said, “No ma’am. It is onion-based, too.”

I don’t know whether or not Nestor is a believer. I left him with one of my books (The Disciple’s Work), which does have the gospel in it. But for us, we would do well to work with the same zeal and spirit of excellence.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. (Colossians 3.23, 24, ESV)

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Continuing lessons learned/observed on our Alaskan cruise, let’s think about the crew a little more. According to the fact sheet, there were 1100 of them! 

And they were all different. Different jobs. Different nationalities—as nearly as I could tell, there were no U.S. citizens on the hotel staff of the ship except, perhaps, a few of the entertainers. Men and women. Old and young. Our primary server at dinner, Nestor, about whom I’ll write later, is from the Philippines, 43 years old, and has worked for the cruise lines for 19 years. 

And what they want as individuals doesn’t matter. It’s what the cruise line wants. All were neatly groomed. All were in their appropriate uniforms. All did their assigned jobs cheerfully, correctly, without fanfare, and in English, regardless of what their native language was. 

The application to our churches is obvious:

You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything…Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive. I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. (1 Corinthians 12.12 – 14, MSG)

He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christians in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ. (Ephesians 4.11 – 13, MSG)

Each soldier does what he’s told, so disciplined, so determined. They don’t get in each other’s way. Each one knows his job and does it. (Joel 2.7, 8, MSG)

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We just returned from our first cruise (a gift from our oldest son, Mark), the inside passage to Alaska. I won’t use this space to bore you with a travelogue, but I will tell you we had a fabulous time: sightseeing in Seattle before and after the cruise, visits to Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway in Alaska, each with its own highlights, and Victoria, B.C. 

The Ewellogy, as always, is about observations and lessons learned.

We were on the Star Princess, not the largest cruise ship out there, but plenty big enough: 17 decks, 1297 guest cabins, just 204 cabins fewer than the number of rooms in the Gaylord of the Rockies, the largest hotel in Colorado.

As I expected, the crew of our ship functioned like a well-oiled machine. There are two major divisions of the crew: the mariners responsible for the ship itself and the folks who ran the “hotel.” The mariners were largely invisible to us. I never saw the captain and only occasionally did I see an officer or a maintenance man walking around the ship. 

The hotel staff were a different story of course. They are everywhere. Housekeepers (“stewards”), chefs and their assistants, waiters at every venue serving food or drink, bartenders, baristas, “front desk” people, storekeepers, and a host of unseen staff as well. The ship had the look and feel of a luxury hotel.

When you think of it, the crew’s job is to create “holy moments,” not for themselves, but for us. They don’t know us. For the most part, they will never see us again, and yet their job is to serve…continually. The last sign I saw as I left the ship Sunday morning read something like:

All passengers will be on board by 3p. All crew must be on board by 2:30. We sail for Ketchikan at 4p.

In other words, less then 5 hours after we had breakfast in the Deck 14 buffet, they were serving lunch to the next group of passengers!

A number of years ago, there was a newspaper story about a church in Colorado Springs in which the church leadership made the point that their “customers” were not their own members. They said something like, 

Our job is not to serve our members. Our job is to teach our members to serve the community. The whole church is to be more like the employees at Walmart.

Today, I would say that the church would do well to see themselves as the staff of a cruise ship, not serving each other, but working together to serve the people in their environment—for them, the ship; for us, our neighborhoods, workplaces, and families. Perhaps, in addition to trips to Branson for seniors and ski trips for our youth, we need more mission trips—or, even better—more emphasis on the fact that we are on mission all the time.

For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. (Mark 10.45)

Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing. (Philippians 2.14 – 16, MSG)

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As you read this, July 29 (or after!), we will have just returned from an Alaskan cruise, courtesy of our oldest son, Mark, July 21 – 28. In order not to have to depend on Internet availability I know nothing about, in addition to shipboard activities and excursions, I set a goal for myself to have these blogs published before I left. And, by God’s grace, I’ve done it! I especially enjoyed writing about the 50th anniversary of the moon landing as well as the other topics that crossed my path since returning from Spring Canyon on July 6.

I was going to say that goal-setting and planning are uniquely human activities, but that’s not quite right:

Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer. (Proverbs 30.25, NIV)

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. (Proverbs 6.6 – 8, NIV)

Beginning tomorrow, I hope to be publishing blogs about things we saw or learned on the cruise. I won’t be surprised if some of those things have to do with what I hope is a well-oiled machine. I can’t imagine 2600 passengers, and 1100 crew on a ship that’s longer than 2 1/2 football fields.

I hope you’re having a good summer: rest, recreation, AND planning for the fall. We all have work to do.

Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands! (Psalm 90.17, ESV)

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him… Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. (Colossians 3.17…23, 24, ESV)

To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1.11, 12, ESV)

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I was struck by David’s enthusiasm for God in Psalm 16.5, 6:

You are my prize, my pleasure, and my portion. I leave my destiny and its timing in your hands. Your pleasant path leads me to pleasant places. I’m overwhelmed by the privileges that come with following you, for you have given me the best! (The Passion Translation)

My question is, when in David’s life was this written: pre-Bathsheba or post? (You can read about David’s shameful behavior with Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11.) If post, then the Psalm speaks to reflecting over his life and deciding that following God was the best thing to do–not following God didn’t work out so well. That’s fine.

But if it’s pre-Bathsheba, then we have a warning. How I feel about God today is no guarantee I’ll feel that way tomorrow. We know that Psalm 57 was written pre-Bathsheba. It was pre-everything since he was still running from Saul and hiding in caves! Here’s the official (part of the text) introduction to the Psalm:

A Miktam of David when he fled from Saul, in the cave. 

And David writes glowing things about God here also:

My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast! I will sing and make melody! Awake, my glory! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn! I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. (Psalm 57.7 – 9, ESV)

Yet after that, well after that, when the kingdom is established, and David is wealthy and at ease, he commits adultery and murder. It gives one pause. The Christian life is daily, and as C.S. Lewis wrote in an excellent essay, “The Sermon and the Lunch:” 

There is nowhere this side of heaven where one can safely lay the reins on the horse’s neck. It will never be lawful simply to ‘be ourselves’ until ‘ourselves’ have become sons of God. It is all there in the hymn–‘Christian, seek not yet repose.’

Yet repose is precisely what David was practicing:

…David dispatched Joab and his fighting men of Israel in full force to destroy the Ammonites for good…but David stayed in Jerusalem. One late afternoon, David got up from taking his nap and was strolling on the roof of the palace. From his vantage point on the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was stunningly beautiful. (2 Samuel 11.1, 2, MSG, emphasis mine)

I’m 72, and I want to finish strong. So I tell myself, keep up the disciplines, don’t let anything come between me and God.

So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! (1 Corinthians 10.12, NIV)

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My friend Rod and I go back to high school days (not the same high school, and he was a year ahead!). Anyway, Rod grew up in South Carolina, too, and he shared a funny story with me the other day:

I can’t remember if I have told you the following:  Do you ever listen/watch Paul Finebaum on ESPN/SEC network?  Someone called in to his show and was ranting about those Clemson fans who swarmed into towns and passed around all those phony 2-dollar bills, bilking the local merchants.  Paul said, “Um, I hate to tell you, but, those 2-dollar bills are real currency!”  It was so funny!  The guy actually thought the bills were fake!  LOL

I’ll have to admit that I didn’t know about the tradition: I haven’t been to a Clemson game since I graduated in 1968, and the tradition started in 1977.

Here’s my point: Mark E commented on one of my posts: “Recreational outrage is America’s most popular indoor sport.” Here’s an example of a fellow upset, taking the time and energy to call a sports talk show, ranting about something he knows nothing about. In an age where it’s common for people to say that there’s no such thing as truth, that your truth is your truth, and my truth is my truth, this dude was wrong…and upset over nothing.

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” (John 18.38, ESV)

He who answers a matter before he hears it, It is folly and shame to him. (Proverbs 18.13, NKJV)