Revival and Renewal

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’ll let you in on a secret: I love the work of the poet-pastor George Herbert (late 16^th Century). His poems, regarded as some of the best ever written in the English language, so clearly encapsulate the life of faith. Herbert chose, instead of the avant-garde life of a poet, to take a post as an Anglican priest in a small backwater village in the English countryside. His flock were farmers, peasants, and servants. In this environment he bloomed.

Herbert, like few other Christians, recognized an aspect of the Christian life we often forget. In one of his most famous poems, “The Elixir,” Herbert writes as a prayer to God: 

All may of thee partake: 
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture (for thy sake),
Will not grow bright and clean.

A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine: 
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, 
Makes that and th’ action fine. 

This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold: 
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told. 

Our poet-pastor draws us to the old image of the philosopher’s stone, a myth that was popular in his day. This was the famed stone of alchemists which, in the right hand, was rumored to turn to gold anything that it touched. The alchemist would also create a “tincture”, a mysterious broth through which they would attempt to engolden common everyday items. Roving conmen would try to convince villages that they possessed this stone by which infinite wealth could be found, or that their tinctures could make you finally rich.  

Herbert uses the idea of this famous stone and the alchemist’s brew but applies his own alchemical twist and transforms it. He writes that if someone is part of Christ, nothing she does is “mean” (which in the olden days meant “common” or “shameful”). All duties, tasks, and minutes of our lives are transmuted by this divine “tincture” and grow “bright and clean.” The presence of Christ in our lives “makes drudgery divine,” so much so that whoever “sweeps a room” as for Jesus’ sake brings dignity both the room and the very action of sweeping! The Christ life in us is the true stone which “turneth all to gold,” and that includes our hopes, our jobs, our toils, and our story. Christ-in-you engoldens your Monday-Sunday, the dishes and the laundry, doing the taxes or helping others do their taxes. Raising the kids, watching the sunset, mowing the lawn. It’s all glorious. 

Be encouraged. Nothing in God’s kingdom is wasted or worthless. Whether it is what you do at church or in any area of your life, God is transforming it all so that it radiates the pure, transformed, eternal gold of grace.