April 1, 2001
CYBERCOLUMN:
Waiting or green
___By John Duncan
___I am sitting here under the old oak tree, contemplating green.
___ I wait in haste for the coming of spring, that season in Texas when winter's yellow colors the world in fields of green. It will soon happen on my front lawn. But already green stains the glorious fields in England. While riding the train recently from London to Cambridge, I noticed sheep grazing in leafy green pastures. Beauty indeed!
___ One day in Cambridge. I found myself standing in the square at the Trinity College campus. In the center, a neatly patterned square patch of green decorated the plaza. My mind drifts back to the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The whole world is charged with the grandeur of God!" God's grandeur blossoms in green!
JOHN DUNCAN
___ A leaflet at Trinity College in Cambridge leads you on a tour. Face east, and you will see a marble statue of the college's founder, King Henry VIII. Face south, and you will see a statue of queen Elizabeth I over the archway. Face west, and you will see the towering great hall with a statue of King James I, infamous for ordering the compilation of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611. Face north and look up, and you will see a clock with gold letters. Even if you have never been to Cambridge, this clock may look familiar. It is the clock used in the movie "Chariots of Fire" in the race between Harold Abrahams and Lord Burghley. The boys raced around the courtyard in the time it took the clock to strike noon. I love the statement near the middle of the movie made by Eric Liddel, "If I win, I win for God." "Winning for God" might be a good title for a sermon.
___ Tour guides will point a finger over the green patch in the middle of the courtyard to a window. Then they will tell you W.M. Thackeray (1811-1863) lived there and wrote "Vanity Fair." They will mention the names of people who walked the libraries and great halls, including Sir Isaac Newton and the poet Lord Tennyson. The library houses two valued manuscripts: the original manuscript by AA Milne on Winnie-the-Pooh and an eighth century copy of the epistles of the Apostle Paul. During World War I, curtains blocked off the halls, and a makeshift hospital treated wounded soldiers in pain.
___I learned all of this while standing on the edge of green. And now I am thinking. We live in a world where people try to find direction; a world of vanity; a world where time presses us in the race of life; a world of mathematics, like balancing the checkbook, or a world of poetry with words flying into our ears in this information age. We live in a world of spiritual warfare, where God and Satan war and aim to penetrate the soul; a world where Winnie-the-Pooh plays and the Apostle Paul seeks to freshen the heart like a child; a world of pain where, in words of C.S. Lewis, "God shouts in our pleasures, but whispers in our pain."
___ And so here I am under the old oak tree, saying that if your soul will grow green, follow Jesus, yet know that it takes God's rain sprinkling the soul with grace in a world where so much stuff keeps coming at us. Life is certainly no picnic, but a place fully alive when you drink in the grandeur of all God offers.
___ Jesus, the shepherd. invites you. "He wants to lead you to green pastures" (Psalm 23). If you walk with Jesus, you, his "righteous," will "thrive like a green leaf." The person who trusts and hopes in God will be blessed:
___For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters,
___Which spreads out its roots by the river,
___And will not fear when the heat comes;
___But its leaf will be green,
___And will not be anxious in the year of drought,
___ Nor will it cease from yielding fruit (Jeremiah 17:7-8).
___ Even Jesus invited people to the green. "Then Jesus directed them (the disciples) to have all the people to sit down on the green grass" (Mark 6:39). And here's what he told them: Bear fruit!
___ I am under the tree, waiting for green and wishing for you a heart of green. Yes, I wanted to sit down on the grass at Trinity College, but a sign said, "Keep off the grass." Now here's my sign, "Keep on bearing fruit."
___ John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines.
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