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Editorial | “Yes, straight away”
water; we got wet. But that response is to
continue all our days.
The good ground of the sower parable includes
all the positive aspects of the other ground
types. The seed “which fell on the rocky
ground… immediately sprang up” (Mk. 4:5).
And that was good. When you perceive an
opportunity to do the Lord's service, respond
immediately. See it as another opportunity for
“redeeming the time”. This is a major Biblical
theme. Israel were not to delay in offering
their first fruits to God (Ex. 22:29), lest their
intentions weren't translated into practice.
The Lord told another parable in which He
characterized those not worthy of Him as
those who thought they had valid reason to
delay their response to the call (Lk. 14:16-20).
They didn’t turn Him down, they just thought
He would understand if they delayed. But He
is a demanding Lord, in some ways. What He
seeks is an immediacy of response. All this is
not to say that we should rush off in hot-
headed enthusiasm, crushing the work and
systematic efforts of other brethren under
foot. But when we see the need, when we
catch the vision of service, let’s not hesitate
in our response, dilly-dallying until we are left
with simply a host of good intentions swim-
ming around in our brain cells.
We are to be like the man who traded his
talents “immediately” (Mt. 25:16). We cannot
be passive on receiving the opportunity to
serve God. We will urgently seek to do some-
thing with what we have been enabled to do
for the Lord. The law of the peace offerings
was designed so as to encourage the person
who decided to make such a freewill offering
to execute immediately- they were to eat it
the same day they offered it, and the sacrifice
would be totally unacceptable if it was killed
but left for some days (Lev. 19:5-7). If we have
an impulse to respond to the Lord, we should
respond to it immediately. This isn’t mere
impetuosity. The man who refuses to immedi-
ately respond to the Lord’s call to service says
that he must first go away from the Lord and
bury his father (Mt. 8:21); the young
man went away in sorrow (Mt. 19:22); people
hear the Gospel and then go away to all their
petty businesses of this life (Mt. 22:5).
Our Slowness
But children typically do not say or do ‘Yes’
straight away. There is a time lag, an inertia
element, and often the request has to be
repeated. This is usually not due to rank
disobedience, but because it takes them time
to process the request, and their slowness
tends to frustrate us. The Father and Son
must, albeit with greater patience, have
something of the same sense. As children
grow, lag time between hearing the word and
responding diminishes. And so it should be in
our path of spiritual growth. As we get older,
we ought to see that there is only one thing
that matters- our response to the Father and
Son. The flesh wants us to delay immediate
response, in the hope that we may in fact not
have to make the response. John the Baptist
aimed to prepare people for the Lord Jesus to
use them as a path upon which He would come
to Zion. His work was to “Make his paths
straight”; and that is the same word trans-
lated “immediate”. There was an intensity
and critical urgency about John and his
message. He warns people to “flee from the
wrath to come” along that straight or imme-
diate path (Lk. 3:7). This was what their
changed lives and baptisms were to be about-
a fleeing from the wrath to come. He speaks
as if that “wrath to come” is just about to
come, it’s staring them in the face like a wall
of forest fire, and they are to flee away from
it. So immediate response involves a seeing of
things as a ‘straight’ and plain path. This is not
an appeal for simplistic obedience with no
thought to consequence or wider contexts, but
it is true that we make our choices so difficult.
In issue after issue, the choice is in fact
simple- for the Lord’s way, or not. Our lives
become uncluttered and the decisions clear
once we are signed up to this principle of
immediate response. I wonder if it is inten-
tional that we read that Saul was baptized on
Straight street or way (Acts 9:11)- the very
same word used by John. ‘Immediate Avenue’,
we could translate. It is the only “right way”
~ continued ...