Stewarding Life in Chaotic Times: What a German Word and a Pair of Glasses Can Teach Us
Photo by Dingzeyu Li on Unsplash
Dunston fished around inside his tunic and produced a set of spectacles. He handed them to Steward.
“Here, for now you can borrow mine. They will help you discern what is real from what is illusion. Put these on and look back to your moor.”
Steward did as he was told, but when he turned again to look out over the moor, it was gone! In its place, Steward saw a meadow filled with wildflowers. His path ran through the flowers. He reached up and lifted the glasses from his face, and the moor with its foreboding fog and bubbling mud was there. Then he rested the glasses back onto his nose, and the meadow and wildflowers returned. Frustrated, he tore them off.
“This is a trick, some sort of illusion.”
“Yes, yes, you are right. It is an illusion.” The little man poked his stick again into Steward’s chest. “Only which of the two views is the illusion, and which one is real?”
Steward walked again to the edge of the moor. He placed his foot on the mud and pressed down until the mud oozed around his shoe and he felt the ground give way. He jerked it back.
“This is reality!”
“Is it? Put the spectacles back on.”
Steward placed the little glasses back on his face and again the beautiful meadow appeared. He watched as Dunston shuffled up to the path and began to walk through the wildflowers. He stopped and picked a bunch and held them to his nose. Then he continued strolling along in the warm sunshine.
“Dunston, how can you walk through the moor like that? I don’t understand!”
The creature looked back at him. “Leave the glasses on and walk out here with me.”
Steward took a deep breath and placed his foot on the path. Where seconds before the sucking mud threatened to pull him in, the path was now firm and sure. He stepped again and the ground was solid. He continued to look through the glasses and made his way out to Dunston, who waited for him, tapping one of his small feet.
“Come on, come on. You walk like an old lady.”
Steward looked in every direction. Beauty. “I don’t understand. How can these glasses change the ground?”
Dunston tapped the path with his stick. “Oh, they have changed nothing, young Steward. They have only allowed you to see what is truly real.”[1]
Max Dupree said famously, “The first job of a leader is to define reality.” Yet in an age of the dehumanizing effects of social media, propagandized news, politicization of almost every facet of our society and the rise of A.I., how do we know for certain what is real?
Add to this the sense of a loss of control we feel over most areas of life and work, and it is a challenging time for Christian leaders seeking to cast clear vision and mobilize people to move confidently into a chaotic future. We all believe God is in control, at least we like to use the line to calm our doubts. But what does that mean? Do we see a world being controlled by a loving, guiding hand? Or do we see a world careening toward catastrophe? Do we experience love and grace abounding or do we feel the anger, vitriol, and vileness of an increasingly godless global culture?
Robert Browning may have opined, “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world’” but it definitely does not seem that all is right. We relate more to the writer of Hebrews who spoke of the Father putting everything under the control of the Son, “Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” (Hebrews 2:8-9)
Jesus taught us to pray to the Father, “thy kingdom come.” (Luke 11:1-2) Jesus proclaimed, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 3:2) It seems that we are supposed to believe there is something present even when we cannot see it. Something that is true, that is absolutely real even when the world and our senses seem unrelenting in telling us the opposite.
Here is where we can benefit from Dunston’s spectacles. The lesson for young Steward was that the King’s kingdom could only be seen with eyes of faith. But when it was seen, that is all that you see. His spectacles were a way to understand that.
German theologians had a word for it; Heilsgeschichte. Translated it means salvation history. Simply put, God’s story of salvation, from “let there be light” in Genesis 1 to “behold, I make all things new” in Revelation 21, the history of the world is salvation history. Another way to say it is that God’s story is the reality of the world. Everything else is subservient to it. In many ways, everything that seems so worldly to us, so ungodly, dissected from the transcendent and devoid of the divine, yes, even the evil, the painful and the macabre, all of it is enveloped in God’s greater story.
What does that mean for us? Well, it means that wherever we look, we see God’s salvation history being worked out. It means there is a greater reality than our earthly eyes may see day to day. Perhaps that’s why scripture defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) What is not apparent, what we do not see as yet under Jesus’ feet, is still under his lordship. That is the reality of our very existence. We are children of God and active partners in his great story of salvation. Nothing falls outside it or escapes its all-pervasive realm. This is our Father’s world. The question is, will we believe it? Will our faith give us the vision to see it?
As stewards called to this moment in salvation history, will we live cautiously and timidly facing an uncertain and menacing future, or will we live with confidence and faith recognizing our role in God’s greater story for which the victory has already been won?
[1] Rodin, Scott. The Four Gifts of the King. (Morgan James Publishing: 2019) p. 118-119
