Level You Legs

In ministry there are so many unfinished projects. In fact, most of ministry seems unfinished; very seldom as pastor's do we fill like we get to tie a neat little bow on something and call it finished. While in seminary, one of my mentor pastors gave the old-timey image of a circus act where someone took thin poles and spun plates on them. He remarked that, "Ministry is like spinning plates in the air, you move from one plate to the next hoping to keep them all going so they don't lose momentum and fall on the ground."

I suppose that's why in my personal life I chose hobbies that I can finish. Something I can complete, stand back, look admiringly on and say "I am done." Woodworking has probably been my longest hobby to date. It is a hobby that allows for learning, refinement; but, also finished projects. The pinnacle of fine woodworking is building a chair. Most woodworking projects are a box, just in different forms. A dresser is a box with boxes inside it called drawers. Cabinets are boxes with doors. But a chair is not a box. A chair requires mastery over almost all the attributes of fine woodworking; pattern making, design, selecting wood that is strong in all the right orientations, shaping, using different joints, cutting compound angles in multifaceted directions.

In its simplest form a chair is nothing more than something to sit on. A stump is something to sit on next to a campfire. But when refined and designed well a chair can be uniquely beautiful. A chair when designed well can redefine the whole room it is in. This is why design professionals can become famous by the chairs they design. A chair fully presents itself when done. Small pieces of wood are joined together in a particular way. It's design features are easily noticed as the completed work "sits" before you. You can immediately tell by its ascetic if it is correct in its proportion; if it is desirable in its design. By looking at it and not measuring you can tell if it is good or bad--ugly or pleasing. The last step is to see if it is level. Setting it on the ground, wiggling it a bit, jostling it back and forth you immediately know if the chair is level. Most chairs aren't when first built. You can measure correctly, design affectively, but the finished project seems to need to be leveled.

How do you do that?

Easy, you take a super flat surface and a scoring knife. Not a pencil, the line is too thick. A scoring knife is accurate to the fraction of a millimeter. You put the chair on the flat surface and raise one part of the leg until the flat of the seat is perpendicular to the ground (or level to the ground). Then rotating the chair you score a line on each leg all around to cut off excess and leave a leg which is level to the other legs.

If the surface you place it on is not flat and accurate, the chair will continue to wobbly. If the lines you mark on the legs are not all around or easily read the saw won't know which line to track. You need something to level the legs to. In discipleship we have plenty of people, organizations, easy quick social media quotes that claim to be level. They are catchy, pithy, and beautiful in the design. They want us to score our legs to their particular way of following Jesus; to a particular way of being a Christian. However, we must be clear on the surface we are asked to level our legs up against so that we don't wobbly back and forth.

Love; straight and true, flat and solid is the surface that the prophets, apostles and Jesus himself asks us to level our legs up against. Does it produce love of neighbor and love of God? Is it level in the sight of God. Acting in love, leveling in love requires a keen intention and a listening ear. We must listen to the needs of others to know what feels like love to them. We must have a driven intention to stay on track so that we can hope to complete the task of loving our neighbor.

As disciples we can feel like the ministry is never finished (maybe that is because we can always get better at showing love) but that doesn't mean we haven't done something. We might not have done everything possible, perfection is hard to obtain, but we might have completed something which showed love. Little shavings taken off here and there, little score marks on that and this, little by little we get better and more level. The test of love presents the best score lines of our faith to know if we are becoming level in the way of God. So, pickup your scoring knives and place your faith on the level table of God's love, rock it back and forth to find the low and high spots and mark each leg with that which is perpendicular to the way of Christ. As you practice the markers of love it becomes more clear what to do. As you practice the areas that need to be shaved away will present themselves.

Level your Legs and take a good seat on the work God has done in your life.

• Pastor Jon Bailey