Olive Crest United Methodist Church
7180 North 60th Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68152

Our Pastor

Rev. Debra Tompsett-Welch

Need a Daycare?

Hearts

Minds

Doors

The Spiritual Life

July 1998

Seeing Harmony,in Leaf Filtered Light

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

After getting to "Narnia", the Earl Ranch, for my 8 days of vacation I was pretty tired. It is almost 30 hours to get there and then you have to row across the Snake River. So that afternoon I took a nap and while I was out of it, everyone else took off. I woke up and was wondering what to do with myself when Elmer "Papa" Earl decided to come by and "visit". He is 82 years old and still lays water pipe, works in his garden, fixes the truck and goes across the river and into town for parties. He has written and published a book about the Snake River and is a practicing homespun philosopher. So when I get a chance to talk to him, I listen. That day he was frustrated by people being so self centered that they won't take the time to work on being in harmony, especially couples. He said that people are like "two trains on a track, it don't matter if they're going 30 or 80, as long as their going the same speed." And I thought to myself, if they give each other a little space, then they can even change speeds once in a while and still be going the same direction.

The day of the "green tunnel", I was still thinking about what Papa Earl had said. Val woke me up, told me to wear a heavy long sleeve shirt and tough pants. That should have given me a clue. We climbed into the "almost" dead pickup, along with 300 feet of 1" water pipe and took off for Buffalo Eddy. The idea was to climb up the mountain to where the southern spring was and put new pipe in for the 30 year old pipe that was leaking all the water out. The only problem is that those 300 feet are completely covered by blackberry vine. Very pointy and sharp blackberry vine. The only way to get there is to cut a tunnel through the middle while avoiding the Poison Ivy and the Yellow Star thistle. I got the leather gloves on and we took the loppers and started in. Because it was so slippery, we went up the side of the mountain to get above the creek and cut our way down. It was about an hour and a half into the cutting that it happened. We had to take turns being point with cutting and the second person widening out and stomping down the canes. (By the way, after cutting a 300 foot tunnel, we made hardly a dent in the blackberry bushes. There will be lots of jelly next year.) Anyway, Val was cutting away when a cane she cut lashed out and grabbed my shoulder, sticking through my shirt and into my arm. I calmly stopped and cut away the cane to take the pressure off, then pulled it out and stomped it down. I don't think Val even knew it happened. Then a little while later I cut a cane that sprung up and grabbed her leg. She stopped, carefully cut away the cane to take the pressure off, flicked it away and then went back to cutting ahead.

If you look around, you can see people dealing with situations like that all day long. Situations that are irritating, frustrating, and even painful, but are small bounces in life. Like when someone cuts you off merging into traffic, or the mail is slow getting delivered, or the person on the phone from the credit card treats you like a criminal when your payment was late. Small but painful things that can take us out of harmony with each other and with God. Are we trying to work together, to go the same direction, or are we insisting on doing it our way? When the cane lashed out at me, I could have seen myself as attacked and defended myself, yelled and gotten mad. Val could have done the same thing, "Why didn't you pay more attention, etc." But then we wouldn't have been working together. We would have sacrificed our harmony for our "rights" and our own false pride. Pride based on fear and insecurity, not on love and the presence of God. Hours later we were trying to roll the 300 foot roll of water pipe up the hill. I was rolling the front and steering while Val was pushing the back. It was hard, and took coordination, which we didn't always have. But we were working at it. If we had started yelling the time it got loose and fell, nothing would have gotten done. This was too much work to waste any energy on fussing. When we finally got it rolled up to a flat spot with traction I got it up on my shoulder and could climb the rest of the way up the creek. But I couldn't have done it by myself. We only could have done it together.

Life is too hard to do it by yourself. God never intended us to all be "Lone Rangers". God intended that we live in family, the family of God, that we might get the help we need to live abundantly. To do that we have to live in harmony and that takes work. It does not come "naturally". It takes intentional effort to live in harmony with other people, as it does to live as husband and wife. You start with a decision to act lovingly, looking for harmony, and then discover to your surprise that your life is rich. If we do reach out to each other that way, there is no limit to the work we can do, building each other up as we build the kingdom of God. Thank you for your supporting me as I went on vacation. Without your encouragement I would never have felt that I could take eight days away. Because I knew we were all working on this together, and the "work" for God would get done, I could go and have this rich experience. You were in it with me. Our work together is making the world a brighter place. May God continue to bless you and Thank You.

Your brother-in-Christ, Reverend Michael Lee Burgess

Back to Top     The Spitual Life Article Menu     Home Page

Upcoming Events