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Message from Pastor Peter Marty

Our spiritual compass

By Pastor Peter Marty

In North America, summer will always be known as a time for travel. Whether it is that break from winter cold, or that natural inclination to forever orient our lives according to the school calendar of our childhood, summer is when people take off. They go places. Families pile into station wagons — I mean mini-vans and SUVs — and they discover whole worlds of otherwise pent-up adventure.

You may not think you are going anywhere this summer, but you are. You don’t have to be four-wheelin’ across the Sedona desert to consider yourself on vacation. I think of Louis Agassiz, the famous professor of natural science at Harvard during the 19th century. When asked how he planned to spend his upcoming summer, Agassiz indicated that he would be crawling across his backyard on his stomach, observing insect life, blades of grass, and such notable things as pebbles. His baffled questioner pressed on: “Then, what will you do with the rest of your time?” To that, the professor exclaimed, “Why, it’s going to take me the whole summer just to get halfway across the yard.” Summer discovery and travel involve more than going to faraway places.

It helps to have some dim idea of where you’re going if you want to make the most of your experience. A map, a GPS device, a rough itinerary, or even a ticket wouldn’t hurt if ever you wish to return home. Then too, there is something like a compass buried deep within us. At least, I think there is. Something keeps reminding us of who we are, where we’re headed, and what we’re capable of. It could be a strange sixth sense of direction, or some spontaneous instinct to orient our movements according to different magnetic fields. Who knows for certain?

Researchers have discovered that cows may have some kind of built-in compass. This is not bull. Using Google Earth to photograph over 300 pastures in different countries, scientists have observed that most cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction. Whether grazing or resting — it doesn’t matter — the vast majority of cows fall into this alignment pattern. Clearly, the magnetic field of the earth must be involved. The data is so conclusive that researchers are even studying the odd possibility that dairy cows facing east-west in a barn may have altered milk production.

The obvious question growing out of this animal magnetism is whether we might also have some kind of built-in compass. Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly organizing our lives around centers. There are fixed points that help us make sense of a chaotic world. We don’t need child researchers to tell us that children who have the values of a secure home life can make all kinds of creative forays into the world. Those who lack such a home life to center their security have a much harder time holding their fragile world together.

The ancient people of Israel knew the significance of an aligned life. Their spiritual compass kept drawing them back to Jerusalem, and to the temple which contained the throne room of the King of the universe. As Jewish Christians began to shape their worship life, facing east became the favored direction for prayer. Architects across the Roman Empire and later Europe designed churches to face eastward, the direction of the rising sun and the believed route from which Christ would return (Matthew 24:27).

In our own day and place, I am fond of making reference to the cross that stands tall above the St. Paul communion table. Every seat in our worship space is pointed in that direction. We could say that worship is nothing less than a weekly recalibration of our spiritual compasses.

There is a moment in the New Testament when Jesus gets irritated with some religious legalists eager to stone an adulterous woman (John 8). That’s when he stoops down and writes something in the dirt with his finger. We’ll never know exactly what he scrawled. My best guess is that it might have been an arrow. Jesus knew true north for spiritually-adrift lives. He understood how easily we lose our moral bearings if we lose sight of him. So he could say just a few verses later: “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness… for I know where I came from and where I am going.”

Pastor Peter Marty,

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