Dear Friends,
On a sunny Friday afternoon, I talk to a bond counsel about a pension plan issue. Later, I talk to the Executive Director of Corporate Compliance about a privacy issue.
In between I go into the backyard of the house serving as the Office of General Counsel to pick navel oranges and Meyer lemons. There is a bumper crop this winter.
Three financial executives and a psychiatrist join me there. One of them I talked into moving a scheduled meeting to be here. “You need the sunshine and the rest,” I said. It wasn’t a hard sell.
All of us have pressing responsibilities in an organization where the greatness of the mission and the meagerness of the resources to support that mission create a stressful tension. All of us have found prayer to our heavenly Father for the bountiful gifts of his love to be our most important asset in our lives and work.
Our prayerful commitment to service binds us together in the love of God and connects us to many others called to the same mission of “continuing the healing and teaching ministry of Jesus Christ.” Our work together is a fulfillment of Paul’s explanation of Christian life and service to the Corinthian church, “The love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all, therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (2 Cor 5:14-15).
For an hour we talk and laugh and fill boxes and bags with fruit. We divide up the bounty and take some pictures. My friends go their way and I return to my phone calls and contracts.
It was just an hour on a January workday afternoon, but an hour that would have been denied by schedules and tasks, if we had not intentionally decided to meet.
One of our organization’s stated values is “wholeness,” the balance of the mental, physical and spiritual in one’s life. We speak of it in terms of “whole person care” meaning attention to that balance in caring for our patients and students, but the intense effort required to deliver and support that care can leave the care-givers physically exhausted, emotionally stressed, and spiritually empty.
I am the oldest member by over two decades of the little group of fruit-pickers. Long experience has taught me that an hour or a day will most likely make no difference and few things that are off track can’t be set right again.
The most important thing I’ve learned is that our souls are cisterns, not natural springs. They will crack under stress and leak out the contents of virtue that we attempt to manufacture for ourselves in good behavior and emulation of Christ. Here is what God told Jeremiah about such efforts—
My people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water,
and dug out cisterns
for themselves,
cracked cisterns
that can hold no water.
(Jer 2:13)
There are many pressures to become cistern-builders even in a Christian organization. Performance is measured by benchmarks published on dashboards seeking constant improvement. So called labor-saving devices like email and cell-phones are really time-compression devices enlarging technological capacity for task at the cost of human time for reflection and deliberation.
Added into the mix is a management theory and practice called “continual improvement process.” An organization called the Institute of Quality Assurance defines the concept—
Continuous improvement [is] a gradual never-ending change which is: “… focused on increasing the effectiveness and/or efficiency of an organisation to fulfill its policy and objectives. It is not limited to quality initiatives. Improvement in business strategy, business results, customer, employee and supplier relationships can be subject to continual improvement. Put simply, it means ‘getting better all the time.” (Fryer, Karen J.; Antony, Jiju; Douglas, Alex (2007). “Critical success factors of continuous improvement in the public sector: A literature review and some key findings” (PDF). Total Quality Management. 19(5): 497–517)
It is hard to argue with words like “improvement,” “effectiveness,” “efficiency,” “quality,” “strategy,” “results,” “relationships,” and “better.” But they are words of demand, not words of life. They all add up to “more” – more performance, more effort, more production, more action, more resources, more energy, and more analysis. Paradoxically, they mean “less” – less time, less family, less reflection, less community, less solitude, less care.
These words bring to mind the plaint of Solomon—“Again, I saw vanity under the sun: the case of solitary individuals, without sons or brothers; yet there is no end to all their toil, and their eyes are never satisfied with riches. ‘For whom am I toiling,’ they ask, ‘and depriving myself of pleasure?’ This is also vanity and an unhappy business” (Ecc 4:7-8).
More than an unhappy business, the process of continuous improvement contributes to a graceless pattern of living that proves irresistible to guilt-ridden men and women raised in a legalistic Christian subculture that perpetually left them thinking they had never done enough.
It takes discernment provided by the Holy Spirit and nurtured with solitude and rest to relegate work to the office, shop, ward, or clinic and to leave it behind for God, family and friends. Yet, too few take the time of prayer and reflection necessary to connect with the Holy Spirit.
Somehow the urgent always demands priority over “Jesus’ timeless invitation, “Come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:28-30). Jesus’ gently told us that we need the experience of Mary before taking on the responsibilities of Martha (Luke 10:38:41).
I was thirty-seven, the age of my fruit-picking companions when I crashed and sank on the reef of performance. The temptation of work for good causes and the approval of the best people lured me into expending all of my mental and physical abilities. I had no time for spiritual things meaning my soul had no source of renewal. Husband, father, attorney, employer, colleague, friend – all God-given roles, proved to be outlets to the cistern I had dug for myself with no inlet for the Spirit to renew me.
I proved inadequate to the demands for my performance. At my lowest point, God intervened and I repented, which means changing direction. I headed towards God and accepted my dependence on his grace instead of seeking success on my own. Heading towards God puts me in the backyard of my office picking fruit with my laughing friends on a Friday afternoon instead of plowing through the paperwork on my desk.
Work remains an unavoidable challenge, of course. Work is a gift by which God provides for the sustenance of our earthly lives. But when God says, things like “my grace is sufficient for you,” or “Six days shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work,” or “Come to me . . . and I will give you rest” (2 Cor 12:9, Deut 5:13; Matt 12:28), he is telling us that our dependent relationship with Him defines our lives, not our gifts. To get this wrong is to be a cistern, rather than a conduit for the flow of his life.
I like to work too much. The idolatry of work is my equivalent to the Apostle Paul’s thorn in the flesh. I wrestled with this for years, but too much of my identity was in my work to give it up. I represented many Christian organizations which made it all the harder since the work had a good purpose.
Finally, I pled with God to heal me of this addiction to work. He led me to submit all of my work to him as an act of faith. “We live by faith, not by sight,” said Paul (2 Cor 5:7). How do we live by faith? This description by the Christian evangelist/author Ian Thomas matches my experience.
How do you walk by faith? By exposing every new situation to the Lord Jesus who, as God, lives in you through the Holy Spirit. Nothing sensational, nothing spectacular, just expose every situation to Christ: every threat, promise, opportunity, responsibility, problem, no matter what. Stand back and say, “Thank You for all of this, Lord Jesus. Thank You for what You will do so that I can live miraculously. You have been waiting for me to be available so You can live Your life through me, which would otherwise be utterly impossible for me.” Giving thanks in this way is the evidence of true faith.
The Lord Jesus Christ claims the use of your body, your whole being, yourcomplete personality, so that as you give yourself to Him through the eternal Spirit, He may give Himself to you through the eternal Spirit, that all your activity as a human being on earth may be His activity in and through you; so that every step you take, every word you speak, everything you do, everything you are, may be an expression of the Son of God living in you. It means letting Him think through your thinking, letting Him react through your reactions, letting Him decide through your decisions (The Indwelling Life of Christ [Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2006], p 101).
It took time, but there was no alternative to the Lord taking over my entire life including my work. He either has all of me, or he has none of me. I kept making mistakes, years of mistakes and sins, by presuming, attempting to control, and taking short cuts on the Lord’s instruction.
Then in a three day span of time in December someone spoke to me of my ministering to them over a long span of time that included stressful moments and disagreements. Someone else spoke of my legal advocacy and support as making a difference of grace in the cause of the poor and afflicted.
A woman at a luncheon said she appreciated my visits to her office because “you always walk in with a prayer on your lips.”
“Really,” I said, “I am a bad-tempered, surly lawyer. I don’t remember praying with you.”
Her colleague spoke up. “We are all bad-tempered and surly at times. That’s not the point. The point is what the Lord does in you, with you and through you. That’s what makes a difference in the room.”
I wept on the way home. Christ is worthy, I am not. He is worthy and it’s enough.
Along the way, I have learned I can’t change anything and have stopped trying. Instead, I’ve been called to be a subversive for Jesus. By prayer and acts of grace, I, a recovering workaholic and driven Type “A” personality, try to reverse the conditions of obligation, desperation and despair that oppress so many in quiet ways.
So I invite my young professional friends in to my office back yard and away from their phones, computers and schedules as an act of subversion. Nothing is lost to them, but something is gained.
They pick fruit that grows by God’s grace, but can’t be manufactured by human hands. The fruit, full of flavor and nutrition, is grown on trees planted long before they were born. People of faith plant trees so that future generations can enjoy the fruit.
The Tulip House is the name of my office because it is located on Tulip Street, but it is a nice name for a law office. It is a pleasant place, a retreat center for the tired and the stressed to come for some quiet, an encouraging word, and prayer. One executive refers to it as the “House of Refuge.”
Having a law office that is a place people want to come for nurture rather than conflict fulfills my calling to be a subversive for Jesus. Taking the instruments of conflict and business – my laptop, cell phone, office, a meeting with a colleague or client or an adversary – and letting God breathe grace through the device and into the circumstance is my subversion against the powers of this world who only know how to take, to punish or to win.
If I remember to let Christ take the lead, things go well. If I act in my own strength on my own will, things go “iffy” or badly. Christ teaches me by experience to let him take the lead in all things.
My prayer is that my young colleagues will find being a subversive for Jesus is appealing and they will join the revolution too.
“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8)
Under the mercy of Christ,
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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.
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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.
Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.