Quotes of the Week
Fields That We Know
by Tim Lien
It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they have is not ours to rule. - J.R.R. Tolkien
I just read this today. It made me think that our grooming of a global worldview has come at the price of ignoring our very own hearts, local context, and “common” life. Show me someone incessantly consumed with great causes, and I’ll show you someone very reluctant to develop intimacy with their immediate surroundings and/or relationships.
Posted by Tim Lien at May 21, 2008 02:49 PM
The abstract is so much easier to handle than flesh and blood. Real people and real relationships…that takes real time, real work, real wisdom…etc. It’s messier, and harder, than sitting in the armchair calling plays you’ll never have to personally execute. Paul told the Thessalonians to “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands.” Minding your own business as a Christian doesn’t mean isolation, it means, among other things, loving your neighbor as yourself…and not some “abstract neighbor” but the real one next door or sitting by you in church…real people in real time, or, as Tolkien so beautifully says, “the field you know.”