Mushrooms and Psalm 1

Talk about “night visitors”! As I went outside juggling a basket of wet laundry, I almost stepped on some surprise squatters. These brown umbrella disks had popped overnight through some scraggly grass where I’d overwatered. If you didn’t know, a mushroom is a fast-growing fungus that feeds off decaying matter and is common in moist places. I knew they wouldn’t last more than a few days, but went ahead and snapped them away, depositing them in the garbage.  I’d recently studied Psalm 1 and toyed with how verse 3 (about the godly man) would read if mushrooms were substituted for that tree planted by streams of water:

He is like a mushroom that pops up in moist places. He feeds on decay, and in a couple days withers away.

Obviously, the analogy doesn’t work. The psalmist made the perfect analogy to a sturdy fruit tree whose roots grow deep, producing fruit season after season. The application, of course, is sending out deep spiritual roots that will support the growing of spiritual fruit.

This is the growth process J. Oswald Sanders wrote about in The Joy of Following Jesus: “It is the responsibility of the disciple to be the best he or she can be for God.  To please Him is a most worthy aim. He wants us to realize the full purpose of our creation; He does not want us to be content with bland mediocrity” (Moody, 1994, p. 63).

Perhaps it’s because I’m so aware of media addictions that this quote burns into my heart. The “mushroom mentality” feeds on the world’s decay, widely served up enticingly with the click of a computer mouse or a TV remote. Every morning, for example, when I open up my computer’s “home page” to check the weather or start some research, I’m blindsided by what someone thinks is “news” or “trend.” The computer helps me as a writer on spiritual topics, but I could waste hours following cutesy animal videos, celebrity gossip, fashion, sports, games, or personal trivia.

Sanders hit it on the nail: “Many fail to achieve anything significant for God or man because they lack a dominating ambition.  No great task was ever achieved without the complete abandonment to it that a worthy ambition inspires.” How we use our time is a choice—for good or bad. Sanders cited the story of Thomas Scott (1747-1821), who was the low-achiever of his school.  In those days they called him the “dunce.”  Most of his teachers expected little of him.  But someone, somewhere, said something that awakened in him a master ambition.  Slowly, steadily he worked toward it. Sanders continued, “He grew to be a strong and worthy man”—so well-regarded that he succeeded John Newton (former slave trader-turned-believer, best known for “Amazing Grace”) as rector of the church at Aston Sandford.

 

He also wrote a large commentary on the whole Bible that influenced his generation and is still consulted. Scott didn’t achieve that feeding on the decay of the world.  His roots went down deep with God. His life yielded fruit. His leaves didn’t wither. What he did, prospered.

“Mushroom” choices aren’t anything new. The apostle Paul anguished over those he saw in his times, and encouraged stronger believers to help those so entrapped. But he offered a warning for the “helpers” as well: be careful. His counsel in Galatians 6:1 (at right) is a good “screen saver”!

Center of attention

Thank you, family cat, for plopping inside a bike tire on the deck one day.  Nearby, an upside-down bike waited to have its flat repaired.  But the cat, who in its cat-way likes to be the center of attention (“brush me,” “feed me”) gave my heart a prod about times I’m tempted to play “Center of My Universe.”

 We understand when babies act like that. “Diaper me,” “feed me,” “play with me,” “accept my bad moods”—they’re too young and helpless to know life has different rules as you grow up. Maturity comes with stepping outside your preoccupation with your needs. Spiritual maturity comes with learning to think and act as Christ, our role model for servanthood. The One we call the King of Kings came not to be served, but to serve, including the ultimate serving: “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Dwelling within little circles of “self” leads to loneliness and self-pity, a problem that author J. Oswald Sanders calls “that dismal fungus.” He writes further in The Joy of Following Jesus (pp. 125-26): “If we persist in focusing our thoughts on ourselves, that will only serve to fuel the fires of loneliness.  If, instead, we turn our thoughts outward and begin caring for others, then our condition can be reversed, and we will be able to break out of the shell of our own desolation.”

            Among his other suggestions for those afflicted with loneliness:

            *God knows—believe it! (Isaiah 41:10, Heb. 13:4-5)

            * “If outward circumstances cannot be changed, inward attitudes can and should be adjusted.”

            * “Clear the ground spiritually.” Confess and forsake any contributing sin.

            * “Learn to live with some unsolved problems. Jesus told us to do this when He said, ‘You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand’ (John 13:7).”

What if you’re on the “outside” of someone’s sad circle? I think poet Edward Markham (1852-1940) had a memorable image in his poem, “Outwitted”:

He drew a circle that shut me out—

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win.

We drew a circle and took him in.

 I easily substitute “Jesus” for the word “love.”  He alone is the true center of the universe, and draws the bigger circle to bring people in.  His “drawing instrument” was the cross, and His love is big enough for those “heretics,” “rebels,” and any who think their lives have no hope.

Beyond cocoons

I’d just come back from my morning walk, a bit discouraged from a time of talking to God about hurting people I know, when He surprised me with a gift the size of a quarter. On a dead rose I spotted a tiny butterfly with exquisite black and white wings. “I made that,” God seemed to be reminding me. “I planned the process through which caterpillars become butterflies or moths. Can you trust me for greater things in these persons’ lives?”

“Metamorphosis”—that’s the scientific term for the process through which caterpillars turn into winged beauties. I recall it being one of those wicked “challenge” words for Third Grade Spelling. But as an adult I realized how God used this miracle of nature to illustrate what can happen in a human heart. The word shows up in the original Greek of New Testament scriptures: metamorphoo, meaning “to change into another form.” One place it’s used is Romans 12:2: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Another is 2 Corinthians 3:18: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory” (boldface added).

In both cases, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary, the word expresses a complete change of human character and conduct under the power of God.

In the natural world, a caterpillar doesn’t suddenly become a butterfly. There’s a dying, then a hidden creative process of a new likeness. Breaking out of the chrysalis to become a butterfly is a strenuous process. Once out, it must join the halves of its proboscis together, pump up and dry out the wings, harden the exoskeleton, and firm up legs and other body parts.

In the spiritual world, in being “transformed” into Christ’s likeness, we’re up against more—a lot more. Obeying God in changing things about one’s life isn’t easy. And some simply resist that change. So why pray for these stubborn believers?

J. Oswald Sanders, whose insightful book Spiritual Leadership I try to read every few years, helped lead me to an answer. “People are difficult to move,” he wrote. “It is much easier to pray for things or provisions than to deal with the stubbornness of the human heart. But in just these intricate situations the leader must use God’s power to move human hearts in the direction he believes to be the will of God. Through prayer the leader has the key to that complicated lock” (Moody, 1994, p. 90).

So, for now, even though I see these people preferring their confining cocoons of old ways, I keep praying. God sees what they could become through spiritual metamorphosis, and His plan is beautiful--like that little butterfly who, after my “grace lesson,” flitted away.