Going on about Bob

I have a new job!

I'm working as a general get 'er done guy at a cartographic library/museum. That means maps, son, and don't you forget it.

Actually, this institution is a division of the university library where I have worked for the past 7 years or so, so I'm still swimming in the same pool, ya might say.

Which has little to do with what I was going to say. I was going to say, I really like Ray Ortlund's blog, Christ is Deeper Still. That's a good title, don't you think? By way of personal application:

Christ is deeper still than my new job.

There you go! And all the stuff going on at that job, and the pressures and "circumstances" associated with it. In fact, speaking of circumstances, Ray recently quoted Francis Schaeffer concerning them:

The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us [nor, I would add today, postmodernism or materialistic consumerism or visceral sensualism or whatever]. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.

Wonderful startling truth, that. Again, by way of application: whatever is going on around you at your job (conflict with your boss, boring work, low pay, etc.), the real problem, Schaeffer would say, is in you trying to deal with these things and navigate these circumstances "in the power of the flesh."

Hmmm. I plead guilty. Guilty as it gets.

Along the same lines, Ray recently excerpted a 1987 interview with one of my spiritual heroes, Eugene Peterson, in which Peterson said this:

...my job is not to solve people's problems or make them happy, but to help them to see the grace that is operating in their lives. It's hard to do, because our whole culture is going the other direction, saying that if you're smart enough and get the right kind of help, you can solve all your problems. . . . The work of spirituality is to recognize where we are -- the particular circumstances of our lives -- to recognize grace and say, "Do you suppose God wants to be with me in a way that does not involve changing my spouse or getting rid of my spouse or my kids, but in changing me, and doing something in my life that maybe I could never experience without this pain and this suffering?"

Ah, circumstances again. Have you noticed that we use that word as a euphemism for things we'd rather not be going through. I mean, a heavy debt load is a "circumstance," but a holiday in Hawaii certainly is not. Which leads me to this thought: we're so emotionally preoccupied with wishing things were not the way they are. Have you ever noticed that? As an alternative, we might want to try being preoccupied with what God would like to do in and through us right there in the midst of the circumstances.

Well, that's all. Now go over to Christ is Deeper Still and just read. Good stuff over there.