Chopping wood and carrying water

“That day he made the Gibeonite s woodcutters and water carriers for the assembly. And that is what they are to this day” (Joshua 9:27).

It is a little more than a week before our national election as I compose this column. Perhaps by the time it reaches newsstands, mailboxes and in boxes, we will have an idea of who will fill the executive branch for the next four years. Perhaps.

What I believe most people are really anxious about is what will occur socially in the days and weeks before, and immediately after, the presidential inauguration. What will life be like in the United States? Will we still be united? What are the actual possibilities of a civil war? Will the price of commodities explode? Will the sky fall?

During my senior year in high school, 1971, Hal Lindsey wrote the book The Late Great Planet Earth, the first Christian prophecy book to be published by a secular publisher. Lindsey compared end-time prophecies in the Bible with then-current events in an attempt to predict future scenarios resulting in the rapture of believers before the Great Tribulation and Second Coming of Jesus.

Lindsey asserted that “in the Bible” one generation is forty years. Some readers accepted this as an indication that the Tribulation or the Rapture would occur no later than 1988. Gullible human that I am, when I finished reading the book, I solemnly closed its cover, walked into the front yard, sat down cross-legged in the grass and waited for the world to end.

In 1999, Y2K (year 2000), just before all computerized elements in the world were to adjust their clocks, there were millions of people, all over the world and here in Rockdale, who believed computers couldn’t handle it, and civilization would be plunged into the Dark Ages. Individuals dug shelters and stockpiled necessities, and congregations knelt to pray for God’s deliverance. But at midnight, when year 2000 was ushered in, the day was as normal as any other day.

Now, it is certain that as politically divided as we seem to be, half of us will be satisfied after the election and half of us will not be satisfi ed. Well, as far back as I can remember, that has been the case. I have lived under 14 U.S. Presidents. The first opportunity I had to cast a ballot was in 1976 when Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were their party’s nominees. There has never been a time when half of America was not disgruntled after a presidential election, and, most likely, so will it forever be. And so, so what?

There is a popular proverbial saying passed down to us from Buddhism: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” What this says to me is that despite those changes that seem to be especially significant, we will still be doing those things that being a human being requires.

I remember a preaching teacher once telling us: “It is not the crisis counseling, the appointments to higher ranks of ministry, pomp of formal weddings, or ministry in profound losses that will test your mettle, but the unrelenting approach of Sunday mornings.” It is not the spectacular we are called to endure, but the day-today life of being human.

Whatever your spiritual orientation, whatever your station in life, at whatever stage you are in, whoever is in the White House or Congress or on the Court, we will still be chopping wood and carrying water—we will be going about our lives. And that is good. And that is God.