I’ve been thinking lately about the value of just doing a thing for its own sake. Being a westerner who grew up lower class, I find myself often driven by accomplishment. To be an artist, for example, is to have accomplished some art of significance. Finding that perfect job, or as Christians, that perfect ministry (you know, the one that impacts God’s kingdom THE MOST), achieving and maintaining that perfect economic status (for some, middle class, for some upper class, for some there is great pride in achieving poverty). Whatever it may be, I think the western mindset likes to say it looks forward, but only counts what it can see when looking back. Having done something is far more important than the doing.
I have lived this way for… well, probably my entire life. Certainly as far back as I can remember. When you throw in that I’ve been overweight for most of my life, was teased, mocked, by both schoolyard bullies and sometimes family members, and have had far less opportunities to acquire the means to accomplish the things I really want to — well, its easy to see where a blinding hunger to have done was always distracting from the doing now.
It wasn’t until the last year of college that I began to enjoy the doing. Whether it was the scholarly pursuit of the Psalms, or maybe the challenge of getting excellent grades in math, or, whatever, I spent a year enjoying the doing. When the satisfaction of the doing is married to the having done, let me tell you, life is nectar sweet.
The distraction of wanting to have done things also created tension in me as an artist. Its easy to become frustrated and overwhelmed with all the things that need to be done to have finished anything media related. When you’re desperately seeking to have accomplished, you have no way of experiencing the day-to-day problem solving that gets you there. So the problems seem like they have no solutions, and its easy to give up. Throw in a healthy dose of fear, the proverbial truth that to create is to open up a vein and share your lifeblood with others, and creativity can be deeply intimidating. So you never reach the have done. You spin your wheels gearing up.
Way back in the Garden, there was something wonderful. Yes, Adam spent a great deal of time naming and ordering things, but after that he and Eve settle into a life of… taking care of the Garden. What that entails, we don’t know, but seems like a perpetual thing with no end. There was life and joy and rightness and accomplishment — an abiding satisfaction — in simply doing the work in front of them.I wonder if the truth of that existence, before the fall, is something Jesus is getting at when he tells us to let tomorrow worry about itself. I can’t, of course, say for sure, but I think the general principle might be rattling around in what otherwise reads like a statement about dealing with trouble and provision. Maybe the greater idea is about tending the Garden and walking with the Lord in the cool of the day. Rod Lewis and others use an app that posts the miles they’ve run in a given exercise period, and some sort of statement about how it felt or what it was like. Such as, “Rod ran 5 miles and it felt good.” One like that is part of my thinking about this. If I were to try and run 5 miles, the whole time I’d be thinking about the end result of having lost a hundred and fifty pounds and being lean and good looking and fit and healthy and how good I might look in newer, more stylish clothes. But when I finish the run, I’ve accomplished none of that. But what if I ran just to feel the burn in my muscles, the beating of my heart, the rush of a heightened intake of oxygen? What if I pushed my body just because God gave me an incredible biological machine that can be pushed — and it just felt good?
I’ve worshiped. Maybe I’ve waved to brother Adam, tending his garden if I do that. I’ve lived a little, God help me.What if I sit down and write a screenplay for the mental exercise, for the surprise of character taking on a life of their own and doing things, for seeing my brain work out concepts through my fingers, using the amazing gift of creativity that God has given me?
I’ve worshiped. I’ve tended the Garden a little. I’ve lived into the day, not just lived through it.
What if we did things because God gave us the ability? Breathing, thinking, running, making, working — whatever! Not for status or accomplishment or definition. What if we lived like definition was for the dead — like life is in the ever present defining?What if we tended the Garden, and walked with the Lord in the cool of the day?
