Just an Old man out standing in his field

I’m in the process of taking one more step towards trying to understand what so called self-imposed “retirement” is. So, I’m rearranging, upgrading, and organizing my small home Study. The goal is to make it so appealing, warm, comfortable, even inspiring, that I’ll slowly wean myself away from getting up every morning, and driving robotically into my old Coming Home Network Office as I’ve done for over thirty years.

As you can see by the photo, my bookshelves are a haphazard throw-bag of all kinds of stuff. There are intermingled books and nick-nacks from my childhood, college, engineering, seminary, farming, and ministry years.

As I paused to sip some tea and procrastinate some more, I thought, “I wonder what people would conclude about me, after I’m gone, as they peruse this mess? Would they be surprised, given what they think they know of me? Would a book or two even shock them?”

“What the heck?! I can’t believe he’s got a copy of ______________ on his shelf!”

The real question, though, is: “Are there enough clues on this telltale bookshelf to convince any open-minded searcher as to what the center was in the mind and heart of this “old man out standing his field”?

If someone went through your stuff, either right now or someday after you’re gone, what would they conclude was the center of your heart?

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt. 6:21).

Maybe it would help to establish some clear telltale bookends to put everything else in-between into the right context. This may not explain why you might have some really outrageous, inexplicable “stuff” tucked away in some dark private corner, but maybe in general it would at least form a basis for tying most loose ends together.

So, maybe, as the first books on the far left of the upper top shelf, I could conveniently position the Bible, a Catechism, and maybe the writings of Early Church Fathers. Then, at the other end, to the far right of the bottom shelf, I could bunch together some of my favorite devotional books, biblical commentaries, and prayer-helps by popular spiritual giants. [Oh, and maybe smack dab in the middle, I could bunch a few of my own books, which you can check out here. ;-)] This way, if someone, for example, comes across my autographed copy of “Haunted Ohio”, they might position this somewhere between what the Bible might say and what a contemporary spiritual writer might say about ghosts, haunted houses, and other slimey things.

Do you have any telltale bookends in your life that would put everything in between in the right context for anyone trying, from your accumulated stuff, to figure out who you are and what is centrally important to your life? This is not all that rare of a quest, if you’ve ever tried, from genealogical data, to figure out what was centrally important in the lives of some long distant relative. Were they Christians and of what ilk? What were their politics? What were their views of the moral issues of their day? What kind of people were they?

I took a break from remodeling my study to run some errands into town. As I drove back down our long gravel driveway, I found staring at me a telltale bookmark I had erected years ago. Our house is located dead center of a woods on the top of what long ago was entitled “The Highlands”. Actually, we’re in a valley, surrounded on three sides by high ridges, with the fourth eastern side emptying down to a road following the meandering path of a spring-fed creek. Our actual address is way up on top of the western ridge, and our original driveway descends half way down to our house.

There long ago, right after we first moved here, I posted at the base of our home, the sculpture shrine of Jesus you see in the photo. Now for over twenty-five years, this face of Jesus has withstood the constant onslaught of the weather coming down the western slope. It was intended to greet anyone, friend or inquiring stranger, to let them know Who and WHAT we in this house consider the center of our lives.

The driveway coming down the west slope is quite steep. We discovered after only a few years that in the midst of bleak mid-winter, it became nearly impossible to get back out of this homestead, even with an AWD vehicle.

So, before we found ourselves entertaining, for the rest of the winter, all visitors unable to escape, I had the driveway extended past the house and down the valley to the road below. I’m just guessing, but I would say the difference in elevation between the top western ridge of our land and the bottom eastern creek bed is at least one thousand feet.

Then one day, when Marilyn I were away attending a conference, we found a vender selling handmade wooden shrines like the one pictured on the right. We had to buy one, and immediately erected it along the bottom driveway coming up towards the house. Again, this was to greet anyone coming up our driveway, friend or inquiring stranger, to let them know Who and WHAT we on this “cottage farm” consider the center of our lives.

It struck me that, in essence, these are the telltale bookmarks of our home. You can’t enter, either from the top or from the bottom, without encountering either the face of Jesus or the symbol of His self-less sacrifice on the cross.

As I drove down and parked before the shrine of His face, it also reminded me that these telltale bookends are not just for visitors. They are there as a reminder to us in this house WHO and WHAT always needs to be the center of our lives. Like the haphazard craziness of the bookshelves in my Study, our lives can so easily become a mix-mash of collectibles, a cacophony of conflicting voices, vying for the center of attention–and sometimes blinding us to what, over time, has taken over the center of our lives, minds, values, and hearts.

It is always crucially important to step back and examine our lives–and especially not wait until one’s entered the “Redzone” of retirement, where life-long ruts have become far too ingrown to climb out of.

What are the telltale bookends of your life? Are they a clear message to others? But more importantly, are they a clear reminder to you of who Created you in love, and who also gave himself in love for you?