Switzerland is a remarkable land. It is famous for its beautiful scenery, high ‘ snow-capped mountains, cascading water falls and lovely glacier lakes.
But it is remarkable in another way. It has a wonderful transportation system with trains, busses, cog railways, funiculars which travel thousands of feet right up the side of the mountain, ships, huge gondolas, and chair lifts. These crisscross the country and transport millions of travelers to every corner of this beautiful land.
The time schedules are all printed in advance and those who study them can travel for hours, changing from a funicular to a bus, to a cog railway, to a train, and make connections each time with only two or three minutes in between.
What spiritual lesson can we learn from this? Those who use these man made timetables are able to travel and get about with ease.
No one claims these timetables are divinely inspired but their reliability can be trusted. We have some man made documents that can help us also. They are not inspired by God but are the work of conscientious and dedicated brethren who have written our statement of faith, our Ecclesial Guide, our constitutions and ecclesial procedures for the orderly functioning of our community. We need to be familiar with these documents and give them their proper respect.
In many countries, the populace seems to regard regulations as something to be broken and only observed if the consequences of breaking them are too severe. As a result, there is often mass confusion and chaos, but in Switzerland there is order.
We need to respect and obey the procedures of our ecclesia and our brotherhood.
Peter rightly said, “We ought to obey God rather than man” but none of our ecclesial guidelines violates His commands. Paul instructed us that “the rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.” He was speaking of the worldly rulers. If the saints are expected to “be subject, not only for wrath but for conscience sake to those who have the rule over us,” how much more should we be respectful of ecclesial decorum?
Jesus told us that “the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” Let us learn a lesson from the Swiss people. They know and respect the rules of their country. They study their books of schedules and they trust that things will go according to plan. Unfortunately, none of their well-laid plans are able to make them wise unto salvation, and this is sad.
God sent Jeremiah to the house of the Rechabites to learn a spiritual lesson from a man made stipulation. Their father Jonadab had made a decree that none of his offspring should ever drink wine and his children were faithful to that decision. God’s lesson was that they obeyed their human father, yet the children of Israel did not obey their Heavenly Father.
Let us have respect for the procedures of our ecclesial family. God blessed the Rechabites because they were faithful to their father. None of us is bigger than our community.
The Swiss people are an example of how a nation can function smoothly by knowing and observing its well-laid schedules. Let us learn from their example and lift this to a spiritual level. Let us follow God’s book of life and let us “render therefore to all their dues…Let us walk honestly, as in the day…”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One