Psalm 14 - What's It All About?

The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." (vs.1)

Just looked up the word for fool used here.  It doesn't mean someone who is simply ignorant.  The verse is not saying that those who just don't know any better think there is no God.  The word is nabal.  It means stupid.  The stupid person says there is no God.  And he or she says it in her heart.  Hmmm.  Why does her heart say that?  What makes her not want there to be a God when everything around her tells her that there is?

The word for heart is leb.  Very commonly used to mean the center of a thing.  In this instance, at her very center she stupidly rejects what she knows to be true.  She is not ignorant of God.  She just chooses, at her very core, to deny His existence.  Why, again, might that be?

1.  She is disappointed in God.
2.  God would make her do what she doesn't want to do.
3.  Those who say they believe in God have disappointed her.
4.  She wants to control her own destiny.
5.  The world seems a random place with too much suffering for there to be a God.
6.  She really hasn't given the possibility of God much thought.
7.  The Crusades.
8.  The Inquisition.
9.  She is too smart to believe in a fairy tale.
10.In her assumption that there is no God, she has never actually given that alternative idea any of her time.  She is ignorant of the evidence for a Creator-God.

Just a few of the reasons I have heard from people.  So what is at the heart of atheism?  Because the heart is central to the belief.  We have Backyard Skeptics here in our community.  In fact, the group made the paper again last week because of one of the billboards they erected near the 405 freeway.  It incorrectly quoted Thomas Jefferson, who, for some strange reason, has become their deceased spokesperson.  Backyard Skeptics had not researched whether Jefferson had actually said what he was quoted on a sign that must have cost the group a bundle.  Oooops..."We did not check it out."  Yet their most prevalent stated reason for being atheists is that those who believe in God are stupid.  Would be funny if it weren't so serious a subject.

Richard Dawkins, the voice of modern atheism, was raised in a Christian environment but gave up his faith in his late teens.  His core beliefs are that the universe is a random place ruled by natural selection.  When we die, we cease to exist in any form.  In his world existence is indifferent, the universe plugging along in a course set about by a chance bang in the cosmos billions of years ago. 

After sleeping through a hundred billion centuries, we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life.  Within decades, we must close our eyes again.   Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way, to spend our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?  This is how I answer when I am asked - as I am surprisingly often - why I bother to get up in the mornings.  To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born?  Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it? Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow.

Doesn't the question of "why" beg the question "Who"?  Can you ask why you are born of a random, meaningless, indifferent universe?  You could just as well be eaten alive today as make a great scientific discovery.  Nothing behind it.  No meaning, really.  Just randomness being random.  But our hearts don't let us think that way.  Not even his.  Science endeavors to discover the origins and workings of a universe too infinite to fathom yet refuses to believe in a Designer Who might just be allowing them to peek at the great intelligence that exploded it all into being.  It is like an ant describing Earth to its fellow ants.  Maybe not even that profound.  Science wanting to expel God in order to be a god.  What if God is allowing us a glimpse of His splendor in order for us to stand in awe of Him, not us.  That we glory in how smart He is, not in how great we are to have discovered the tip of the iceberg.  That is why it is a nabal who says in his heart, "There is no God."  A person has to ignore a lot of stuff to throw God away.  Like truth and nobility, enlightenment and beauty.  These are not scientific notions.  And they have no place in a random existence.  A sunset bursting with color, a symphony that stirs our hearts, love that changes our behavior, or the warmth of a little child's fingers wrapped around our own are not matters of science.  Man is the only part of creation that writes poetry or seeks to define how he feels.  In an indifferent universe, there is no "why was I born."

What if you really don't know if God exists?  What if you have spouted atheism and then discover there truly might be God?  Are you doomed?

I love Proverbs 24:12:

If you say, "But we didn't know about this," won't He Who weighs hearts consider it?  Won't He Who protects your life know?

Again with our hearts.  The center of what we believe.  If our God created a universe so vast and complex that we only know a finite piece of it, isn't it the height of stupidity to say that we are smart enough to figure it all out without Him?  At least say, "I don't really know about this."  That is reasonable.  But to look up at the stars or to understand all that the DNA from a single cell tells us about ourselves, to gasp at a rainbow painting the sky or to cry at the voice of a loved one on the other end of the line, and then to say we are random, out here as the prey for natural selection, gliding through life just to die is truly ignorant.

I just read the eulogy for Steve Jobs written by his sister.  Steve, a follower of Tibetan Buddhism, was only about fifty percent sure God existed.  Hopeful, of course, at the end that he would enjoy a "better place."  In his dying moment, Jobs seemed to see something beyond the loved ones by his bedside.  As his soul was leaving his body, his final words were: "Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow."  Of course, the world wants to know what he saw.  May I offer "what if's"? 
What if he saw that he was only 50% right? 
What if he saw his Creator sitting in His majesty above time and space and realized that he had missed the revelation that would gain him entrance?  Like when you walk past a jewelry store and are bedazzled by the brightness of a gorgeous diamond that you cannot afford but is beautiful all the same and out or your reach.
 Or, what if, in the privacy of his dying aloneness, he had stretched out his hand to the One Who had always been reaching out to him?
 We will never really know.  But the One Who knows our hearts will judge our ignorance, and one way or another, we will behold Him. 

Psalm 13 - Out of gas

Maybe one of the most important reasons God wants us to pour out our hearts to Him is that at the end of our pleadings we come to one thing:  Only He can do what we ask.  Surrender.  After looking inward at ourselves we must look upward to Him, acknowledging His omnipotence, wisdom and grace.  David ends his prayer with this:

But I have trusted in your steadfast love.  My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation.  I will sing to the Lord because He has dealt bountifully with me. (vs. 5-6)

I have seen my God do amazing things in the past, things I did not necessarily deserve.  He gave because His love is never changing.  It is immutable.  Can you remember the first thing you ever really trusted God for?  A time when if He did not come through you would sink?  I am thinking about that myself.  Of course, as a kid, I prayed all kinds of things.  But as an adult, I think it might have been on a trip with my husband coming  home from a three month stay in California.  We were driving our little hot red Mustang Mach I through the hills of western Arizona and having a deep conversation about the book of Revelation from Living Letters.  Bill and I were reading it together and were caught up in the excitement of the end times.  We should have been more cognizant of how much gas was in our gas tank, however.  Our heads were full but our tank was empty.  So as our conversation sped up the car slowed down and we realized we were out in the desert with a very thirsty coup.  At the top of a pretty steep hill, the Mustang spurt-spurted and that was it.  Nothing happening when Bill hit the accelerator.  Ooh, boy.  What to do. 

Pray.  Please get us to a gas station.  NO GAS FOR THE NEXT 20 MILES.  We had seen the sign a few miles back, but.....

Pray.  We were stupid.  But we trusted that if Bill just kept his foot off the brakes we would watch God take care of His young kids.  Down the hill.  A little too fast.  Up the hill.  A little too slow.  Down the next hill.  We were feeling the exhilaration of faith as our little car with its 351 engine moved along the highway without gas.  Thrilling.  What would God do?  We honestly did not doubt that we would be okay.  So ready were we to see our God be God.

Creeping up the last hill.....almost did not make it.  The little engine that could.  We are breathless.  We have to make the downhill.  We were sitting forward in our seats helping the car up and up.  An inch at a time it seemed.  We can do it.....we can do it....

At the crest of the hill, as our car started downward we spotted a little gas station out in the middle of nowhere.  "Look, Kay!"  Bill cried.  "Gas!"   But could we get there?  It was still quite far away. 

Pray.  Car careening down the last hill.  Reaching the bottom, it was still a good mile to our redemption.  Each roll of the tire was for us a test of faith.  Revolution after painfully slow revolution, the four little tires stopped right at the edge of the one gas station for miles and miles of Arizona highway.  Whew! 

That I call Situation A.  Unprepared to drive through the desert.  Not thinking ahead to get enough gas.  God is watching His newly wed kids blithely rolling across America.  Faithful to keep us, He is also faithful to teach us.  He took care of us in A.

The lessons for B,C,D,E were exponentially tougher.  We were hopefully getting smarter.  But with each opportunity to trust, God gave us another reason to believe that He is faithful.  We were not always as successful as you might hope, but He never failed.

So, that is why David can say, "I have trusted your steadfast love."  Past tense.  You have been there for me in the past.  So, in this trying situation he knows that he "will rejoice in God's salvation."  The way in which God delivers David this time will be a future song because the Lord has always, in the past, "dealt bountifully" with the psalmist. 

In today's situation I want to remember how my God has saved and sustained me.  From the first leap of faith to the reasons He gives me this day to trust in His love - to believe that He sees me.  That He knows what I have need of before I even ask.  The trip might be a bit longer than the twenty minutes or so we in anticipation to see what He would do with an empty gas tank.  There might be a few hills that we think we cannot get up and over....even a few we roll back down a couple of times.  But our God is faithful, past, present and future, to be the energy that fills our hearts with faith and moves us into victory.  Hold your breath, because He is taking you on quite a ride!

Psalm 13 - "Getting" It

Each of my three children has, upon reaching a fair degree of maturity, expressed how disappointing becoming an adult is.  There is just so much one has to do.  Get a job, pay for groceries, come up with rent, deal with banks, and keep up with car insurance and gas.  Added to that mix is all the other complications of daily life, like marriage and family.  I think, though, most esoteric of all are the times when we are left alone to understand what God is doing with us.  He is our Father and has our lives on their own paths, so even family cannot fight our individual battles for us though they may be praying.

I have had some mountains to climb...and reclimb.  In 1985, I had a train wreck of circumstances that escalated to such a cataclysm that I could not see out over the rubble.  A confluence of bad things happening that left me doubting God's love for me.  I did ask with David:  "How long will I have sorrow in my heart all day long? (vs.2)  I lost weight.  Lost hope.  Lost my way.  The light was gone from my eyes.  Stumbling in the dark, I despaired.

The prayer in desperate times is also David's:  "Consider and answer me, O Lord, My God.  Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death."  Answer me or I will simply die!  Or, as I cried out over and over again, "What are You doing?"

During this time of great anxiety, I lay on my carpet face down and surrendered as best I could my situation to God.  Early one morning I remember receiving such devastating news that my life felt as though it would fall like a tower built of blocks when the last block on top makes the others crash to the floor.  Just one thing too much.  My daughter saw me crumbled and pleading on the floor of my closet.  We prayed together and she left for work.  As I heard her car drive away, I remember pleading with my Father:  "Please just show me what is going on!  If I only knew what You are doing, I could go forward."  Enlighten my eyes.....

A few minutes later, my daughter called me from her car.  "Mom, I don't usually function in this gift, but I think God has a word for you."

I cut off her stuttering, so desperate was I to hear from the God I had just begged to give me understanding.  "Just tell me what He said!  I was just now asking Him to tell me what He is doing."

Taken aback, my daughter took a deep breath, hoping her word was His word.  "Well, Mom,"  she began.  "He said you are in the lion's den, but don't be afraid because He has shut the mouths of the lions."

That was it!!!!  Enlightenment!  Okay.  I was in a lion's den.  Made a lot of sense because that is exactly what it felt like. And don't be fearful. Then I could, in my mind's eye, see those ferocious beasts before me.  Only they had backed away.  So, I spoke to them.  Because I knew what to say.  "Your mouths are shut.  You cannot hurt me!  So stay back!"

I know this sounds rather radical.  But, something came over me in that moment.  A new strength.  I prayed as I had not in months.  Over everything and everyone.  I was going to be more than all right because my Father showed me in the spirit what was manifesting on the planet. 

Some weeks later, when on a missionary trip to Cambodia, I was hit by an errant driver of a motor scooter.  His red vehicle screamed around a corner and ran into my left calf, lifting my body from the ground and slamming me to the hard dirt road with a crash that bruised my left side and clunked my head to the ground.  By the time I reached a nearby ice cream shop where the rest of the missionary team was slurping cones, my leg had a bruise the size of a golf ball rising up on it.  We iced it down and went on to the next orphanage.
A good friend rode with me in the tuk tuk.  She grabbed my hand and said:  "You know, back there when the scooter hit you?  I did not see a scooter, I saw a lion. He grabbed at you but couldn't quite get you, only knocked you down."

Hmmm.  She did not know what my Father had shown me a few weeks earlier.  But lest I forgot the word He had spoken, He reminded me through my friend that He was aware. 

Day after day, I saw the enemy defeated in his efforts to destroy me.  One thing after another worked out for my good, though it was not all at once.  However, the peace of having my eyes enlightened to what was happening gave me the courage to walk into each new day knowing that my God wins in the end.  And if He wins, I win!

Psalm 13 - Get Out of My Head!

How long shall I take counsel in my soul?

I spend an exorbitant amount of time living in my head.  That is not always a good thing.  I like to problem solve.  I love closure.  So, I dream up alternative fixes for every situation that I need an answer for.  Usually, I settle on one that I just know will be the outcome.  There!  Closed!  Don't have to think about it any more.  Except, I am often wrong, looking for something to happen that is not going to.  In my confusion, I have blamed God, in the past, for not coming through on what I had decided He was going to do.  He took the fall for my wrong scenario.

I love the story of Jesus and His mother, Mary, at the wedding in Cana.  They have all wined, dined and danced when the wine runs out.  Not a good thing to happen in the middle of a wedding.  Mary gets wind of the situation.  Her first thought is: "Jesus will fix this."  How did she know that?  She could not have believed that He and his friends were going to the local Albertson's to buy a couple cases of cheap wine.  Something in the history she had with her son made her know that He would do something out of the ordinary to fix this ordinary situation.  Not only that He could, but that He would.

Mary finds her son milling around the guests and pulls the sleeve of His tunic.  "Jesus, they have no more wine."

"Why are you telling me this, dear woman.  My time has not yet come."  But it was his mother who tugged at His clothing, looking with the greatest confidence into His eyes. 

Mary knows her son.  So, she goes to the servants, who are sweating over the party problem, and says to them:  "Do whatever He tells you to do."

That is what I should always be doing.  "Whatever He tells me to do."  Not telling Him what I think He should do.  It will probably not be any way I expect, anyhow.  I mean, who would have thought to tell Jesus to have the servants fill ceremonial washing jars full of water.  How could that make wine?  The questions I have about that fix are long and logical.  Therefore, my solution would be unimaginative and mundane.  It would not thrill me the way His plan does.  His thoughts are higher than mine. And He has a great deal more power.

A while ago the Lord gave me a visual of myself that I must refer to often in my walk with Him...er..ride with Him.  While I was praying, telling Him how to resolve my issue, I was taken in my mind to a car. I was in the front passenger seat and God was driving.  I could see His profile, the set of His jaw.  Not His face.  He asked me a question:  "Kay, wouldn't you be more comfortable in the back seat?"

I was immediately transported to the back seat, and I was six years old.  The window was rolled all the way down and summer air was blowing into my face.  I could feel the warmth of the sun on my skin.  Not a care in the world.  "See, there?"  He asked.

I am more comfortable in the back, letting my Father drive.  Like Mary, I need to just say: "Lord, do whatever You will."  He doesn't need my feedback.  The wedding would have been a bust had I been Mary, telling Jesus and his buddies to go to 7-Eleven to buy a bunch of Bud Light.  He had something way more exciting in mind.  I couldn't have dreamed it up no matter how many nights I had stayed up building imaginary endings to the story.  It is His desire to thrill us.  To get the best wine the best way.  And for us to leave it with Him, like Mary did.  Can't you just see her walking away from the servants absolutely confident that her son would take care of everything?  No worries.  She cast her care on Him, took off her sandals, and danced!

Psalm 13 - Light Years Away

How long, O Lord?  Will You forget me forever?  Netsach is the word for forever here.  Listen to this.  Literally it means the bright object at a distance travelled toward; the most distant point of view. It is often used in scripture to ask if God has forgotten His people.  And to show that He has not!  In 1 Samuel 15: 29 God is described as the netash of Israel....it's glory, splendor, the brightest object in the universe, the One farthest out.

He is the forever.  He is the One out there to Whom we travel toward.  Our most distant point.  Light years away and more.  So how do we ever reach Him?  How does He even know we exist?  David is asking, "Will I keep travelling toward You while You keep moving away?"  God addresses this question about His seeming aloofness in Isaiah 45:

For thus says the Lord Who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it.  He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited).  "I am the Lord, and there is no one else.  I have not spoken in secret...in some dark land.  I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, 'Seek me in a waste place.'  I, the Lord, speak righteousness declaring things that are right."

This declaration is in direct response to the accusation in verse 15 that God is a God who hides Himself.  Hmm.  The gist of it is, I did not create a wasted thing.  I speak openly.  I am not teasing you, saying, "Seek me where I am not." 

So, why then does He feel so far away sometimes.  Our prayers go unanswered.  We stress and worry.  If we were God, we would have already taken this situation in hand and made an end to our misery.  Another poignant Facebook quote of the day:  Don't believe everything you think!  God's ways are not our ways, so if we go thinking He's thinking what we're thinking...well...that can go down a rat hole pretty quickly.

Daniel (a prophet with a book in the Bible named after him) prayed desperately for three weeks.  He could not eat, did not drink wine or properly clean himself, but sought a word from God.  Twenty-four days into the month, Daniel was standing beside the Tigris River when he looked up and saw a man dressed in fine linen with a belt of gold wrapped around his waist.  The man's body shone like yellow quartz, his face was as bright as lightning and his eyes were like fire.  His arms and legs were shining like polished bronze and his voice sounded like the roar of a crowd. 

What did Daniel do?  Fell face down..passed out!  The shining being raised Daniel to his hands and knees.  Daniel was so afraid, he was shaking all over.  And what was the first thing this angel said to Daniel?  "Daniel, God loves you very much." His unanswered prayers were not about God's forgetting about Him.  God was not hiding His face.  The angel continued:  "Some time ago you decided to get understanding and humble yourself before God.  Since that time, God has listened to you and I have come because of your prayers.  But the prince of Persia has been fighting against me for twenty-one days.  Then Michael, one of the most important angels, came to help me."

So you think God thinks you are unimportant.  He listens to your prayers.  He doesn't only hear them, saying: "Yeah, yeah.  I heard you."  Your prayers are so important that there is war over them!  They are sacrificial incense to our God. 

Why does He make us wait.  I do not know.  But He does.  And it is not that He does not love us. 

Psalm 13 - Just Can't Take It Anymore?

How long?  Ever asked this?  Or heard it? 
"How long 'til we get there, Mom?"
"How long 'til Christmas?"
"How long until school is out?"

We want to know when things will happen.  Waiting seems interminable, especially when the outcome is uncertain.  It makes us worry because we can think of an infinite number of scenarios depicting glorious and inglorious ends to the problem. We are impatient with a waitress who gets our food out a bit too late or a driver ahead of us who is just too slow.  The urge to kick our computer when it slows or to change lines in the bank because the lady in front of us is asking too many questions is evidence that we have forgotten patience.  My son is half way around the world this morning after 25 hours of flights and airports.  That is a long, tiring trip (he went business class, so don't feel sorry for him)....but think how long that used to take, before planes.  How impossible it would have been so long ago.  There must be something at the other end of our waiting worth the test of our patience.  If there does not seem to be a point, we despair, lose hope and are tempted to jump ship.

Hear David's lament in this psalm:
How long will you forget me, O Lord?  Forever?
How long will you hide from me?
How long must I worry and feel sad in my heart all day?
How long will my enemy win over me?

Of course, David knows in his heart that God has not forgotten, but honestly, sometimes it feels like God misplaced us and can't remember where He put us.  The despair that has seeped into our hearts after months of battling against the whispers that God does not care has wrapped its claws around our hope, choking it until it has all but died.  Our question then?  Will this go on forever?  We cannot see how it will be any different tomorrow than it is today.  What is there to look forward to but more of the same?  Our predicament.

Or maybe God is playing hide and seek.  Perhaps He wants us to go find Him in His hiding place.  A cosmic game that plays out badly for us.  He knows all the places to conceal Himself.  We are limited to the realm of our mere existence.  And.....why would He hide?  Did He make us then leave us here to fend for ourselves? 

It just gets plain wearying to worry all day long....and all night.  "What if's" can drive us crazy!  Pervasive sadness at the idea of being abandoned and having to work our fate out by ourselves is almost stultifying.  Afraid to do anything lest it be the wrong thing.  Afraid not to do anything because we just can't stay in this mess forever and need to do something.

Then there is the enemy.  Sickness.  Loss of job.  Crushed relationships.  Addiction.  Abandonment.  Rumors.  Or a physical enemy coming at you with a vengeance.  How long until you are free?  A close friend of mine, dying of cancer, told me, in her last conversation with me, that she did not think it would take so long to die.  Frustrated with the enemy overpowering her body, she was ready for the fight to be over.   How long, Lord?  How long?

There must be something on the other side of our longings worth fighting against despair for.  We must have a vision of an outcome worth the wait.  What do we trust in when we feel abandoned by our God?  When we cannot seem to grasp His plan for our apparent defeat? 

Answer:  Verse 5:  I trust in Your love. 

Seem too easy?  Seem pat?  It might just be the hardest thing you have ever done.  More to come.

Psalm 12 - Hot Air

What does your word mean?  When  you give it?  When you say tell someone you will do something, do you do it?  Words are so important that Jesus calls Himself the Word of God - the Logos - the expression of God.  In this psalm, David is trusting in the words of his God concerning His rising up and defending the helpless from the liars and flatterers around them. 

Lord,  You will keep us safe.  You will protect us from such people.  (vs.7)  How does David know this?  Because God's words are pure, refined, flawless.  David knows it because God said He would protect them.  The psalmist has faith in the word of God.  If He says He will do something,  you can bet on it.  Here is what God says about His own words:

"The words I speak will not return to me empty.  They make the things happen that I want to happen, and they succeed in doing what I send them to do."  Isaiah 55

Empty words.  Isn't that what makes us so upset?  Someone makes a promise and it is empty.  No action.  Pretty soon a friendship is in question - or even a marriage - because you cannot depend upon the other person to follow through.  Better to never promise.  Better to just keep quiet and hope you can do what you said rather than to promise and be a deadbeat.  I know so many adult children whose divorced parent failed to show up when she/he said she would.  Now grown, trust is a huge issue for them on other levels, too.  Our word says who we are.

I love the story in Matthew 21.  Jesus starts the story by saying:  "Tell me what you think about this."  Hmmm.  Jesus wants my response to this story of two brothers.  It goes like this.  A father approaches his sons, telling them to go out and work in the fields that day.  The first son says, "I won't do it."  Later, however, he thinks better of his response and goes.  The second son said:  "Oh, yes sir, Father.  I will go and work."  He did not.  The question from Jesus:  "Which one of these sons obeyed his father?"

Don't know what went on in the mind of the first son after he refused to go to work.  I'm guessing, though, that he regretted his disobedience, his curt manner with his father, and decided to repent of his bad attitude and get to work.  He loved his father enough to do what he did not want to do that day.  The other son?  My guess is that he never had any real intention of going to work.  Empty words.  Get Dad off my back.  Maybe he saw that his brother had changed his mind, so he did not need to go after all.  Clearly, though, only one obeyed the Father. Which is the point Jesus is trying to make.  Don't give lip service to God.  Do what He says.  Better yet!  Say it and do it!   What do you think about that?

Jesus, the Word of God become flesh, tells us to pray in His name.  By His integrity.  Like David, we can know that the words of Jesus are pure, flawless and powerful, because He keeps His word.  He came and did what He said He would before the foundations of the world when it was clear that He would be our Lamb, sacrificed for our sins.  He did not want to suffer all that He did....cried in the garden that the Father not give Him the cup of suffering.  But like the faithful brother, He did what He did not want to do in order to fulfill what the Father wanted.  That is radical.  That is Someone whose every word we can trust.

Ever thought that God really wants reciprocal love and trust from us.  It is not a one-way street all the time.  If the discussion is always God's trustworthiness, then what of the part we play?  Shouldn't He be able to trust our word?  Shouldn't He be able to depend upon us to do what He asks?  As His dear children, shouldn't we say yes to working in the fields today even if we don't really want to expend that kind of energy?  Say yes!  It does the Father's heart good.

Psalm 12 - Wish I Hadn't Said That

Every word of God is tested (tried, purged, purified with all impurities melted away). Proverbs 30:5

The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times.  (Psalm 12:6)

If God says He will rise up, count on it!  If He says He loves you, there is no insincerity in the statement.  His tongue is pure, lips speaking only truth, unadulterated by lies and flattery.  Look to Him to be completely honest with you.  No bull.  That is at once terrifying and comforting.  David is comparing God's tongue to that of the flattering liar who goes after the naive and destitute.  Filth in the presence of purest gold.  The untrustworthy up against the All-Faithful God.

Our mouths.  Oh, dear.  Sigh with me.  So many thousands of words dripping or exploding from my own mouth...words I wish I could stuff back where they came from.  Take a broom and sweep them from the floor now soiled with their intent.  Grab them back from the heart they stuck to when I struck it with them.  James, the brother of Jesus, said:  The tongue is a small member (of our body) yet it boasts great things.  How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire.  And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness...staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life.  Wow..that is serious!  A whole life course can be changed by what is said.  That is why it is so important that we heed what God says.  That changes our entire life, too.

At the turnaround place of my beach walk there are two large dumpsters set up to hold the garbage that is collected from the trash containers along the beach.  I turn to head home slightly before I get there because the smell is horrible.  It is the one place on the beach that is defiled with this pungent smell.  Trash that has not been purified.  Reminds me of trash talk.  Maybe that is why it is labeled thus.  It reeks of the detritus of our lives.  It "stinks to high heaven," as my Mother would say.  Maybe we should be as concerned about how our words smell as we are about whether or not our breath stinks.

When, in Isaiah 6, Isaiah sees the Lord, the first thing that occurs to him is this:  "Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips."  He did not say, "I am such a sinner...I have done this and that."  Isaiah knew that in the presence of holiness, his mouth was the most unclean, unredeemed thing about him and his society.  When God had one of the seraphim take a coal from the altar of incense and place it on Isaiah's tongue, the angel pronounced Isaiah clean, forgiven of his guilt, his sin atoned for.  Because the prophets lips were clean, he was clean.  Isaiah was going to speak for God.  His words had to match the purity of the One he would represent.  That coal had been taken with tongs from the altar of sacrifice and placed on the altar of incense.  Holy fire burned away the dross...melted off the impurity.  Isaiah was ready to speak for God.

How about us?  I am trying to imagine my entrance into the throne room of God.  Knowing that my turn is next, seeing the alphabet splayed before me, forming words on the ground around me and the air above me, words that I regret, words that wounded, words that were just dumb, I would grab for them and try to hide them from His gaze.  Ashamed that I did not test them.  Refine my speech before I blabbed whatever was on my mind at the time.  The door then would open, light pouring from the throne and I would step into His presence defiled.  I would not stand there for long.  Overwhelmed by His purity, covered in my rags, I would drop to my knees.  No words.  I have nothing to say that matches the moment.  I am emptied of any expression.  In the presence of The Word, I would be speechless.  I know I would want to say nothing that did not come from Him.  All other words would fall worthless from my lips.  I would yearn for holy fire to burn away the impurities, melt the meaning of all the words I have spoken that started fires, large and small.  I would want a cleaned up mouth, holy lips.

Oh, Father,  today  Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to You, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Psalm 12 - Uh-Oh!

I love the picture David paints of God "having enough."  I have heard my children bickering at each other and let it go for a while.  Then the bickering turned to more of a fight.  I thought, "Oh, just let them work it out."  Then it escalates to a place where I am just done!  Don't want to hear another sniveling word.  And I get up from what I am doing and break it up.  Take over.  There will be no more of this!  Stop it!

"Because of the oppression of the afflicted and the groaning of the poor, I will now rise up," says the Lord.  "I will put the one who longs for it in a safe place."

Daddy got up.  Might be a good idea to just shut up.  This is not just any Daddy.  It is Abba.  Jahweh.  God Almighty.  When He has had enough, watch out!   But look what He rises up to do!  Not to splatter the brains and body parts of the offenders all over creation.  Not to wave His mighty scepter around, knocking off heads.  He rises up to bring people into a safe place!  Stunning.  The answer to affliction and poverty...either physically or spiritually...is to bring us to safety.

I love the word "now" in this declaration.  It is as if He has said:  "I have watched this for a while.  Hoping those who are guilty might just find their way.  I have watched that wife put up with abuse.  I have seen that man work hard for nothing.  My eyes have seen the treachery of the unfaithful husband/wife.  My ears have heard the awful things that have been said to the precious children who do not deserve such callousness.  I cannot abide this any more!  I am going to intervene.  I am getting UP!"

So if you long to be saved, He will save you.  On the other hand, you might find other ways of handling what is going on in your life.  Medicating it with all sorts of things that numb the pain.  You name it.  Adultery.  Drugs.  Money.  Power.  Alcohol.  Food.  Exercise.  Whatever you make a god out of will keep you from longing for the real thing.  He will not save those who have chosen something else.  Not until they come to the point where they long to be saved.  Do you hear His words, though?   When you long for that, He stands up! 

Psalm 12 - Alone

Help, O Lord, for there is no longer anyone who is godly.  The faithful have disappeared from humankind. (Verse 1).

Ever trusted in someone you thought would never fail you?  Lying in the arms of your lover thinking your soul mate is finally here.  Gone into business with someone who you thought had such a great idea and such energy for the project at hand.  Been promised by a friend that she would never talk about you behind your back.  She would be your BFF. And then had that very person be the most unsafe of people?  Had a son or daughter betray the very umbilical that should have brought trust to the relationship?

Then you know what David is talking about.  Who, really, is faithful anymore?  Where did they go?  I had to think of the book of Micah, chapter 7:  How sad for me!  For I am like one who - when the summer fruit has been gathered after the gleaning of the grape harvest - finds no grape cluster to eat, no early fig, which I crave.  Godly people have vanished from the land.  There is no one upright among the people.  All of them wait in ambush to shed blood.  They hunt each other with a net....The best of them is like a brier.  The most upright is worse than a hedge of thorns.....Do not rely on a friend.  Don't trust in a close companion.  Seal your mouth from the woman who lies in your arms......BUT I will wait for the Lord.  I will wait for the God of my salvation.  MY GOD WILL HEAR ME.

Sighing yet?  I did when I read this again.  Once again the knowledge that if I put my trust in people...even those closest to me...to be absolutely faithful to me, I will be disappointed.  Many of them mean well, I know.  I have recently been so disappointed by a friendship that I spent two days on the floor of my bedroom crying out to God in what amounted to grief over the loss of it.  She betrayed me in such a way that I cannot even understand it.  Probably not because she is unrighteous, but because she did not have much discernment.  Crushing all the same.  And it makes me not want to share deeply with others for fear of once again being misunderstood and left barren and vulnerable.

Here's the thing.  God hears me.  Not just what I am saying.  He gets ME.  Where I am coming from.  What I mean when I tell Him my heart.  So, with Micah I must say, I will tell my deepest stuff ONLY to God because only HE is trustworthy in this screwed up world we live in.  He not only listens.....He hears.

Psalm 12 - Don't Lie to Me!

I just saw this Facebook post:  Rumors are carried by haters, spread by fools and accepted by idiots.
Lots of "likes" had sprung up around it.  What's not to like?  It is the truth, though a bit harshly put.  You think this is rough, listen to David's rendition of the same idea in Psalm 12:

Help, Lord, for the godly are no more.  The faithful have vanished from among men.  Everyone lies to his neighbor.  Their flattering lips speak with deception.  May the Lord cut off all flattering lips and every boastful tongue!"

Okay.  I would be lipless.  For I have surely lied in my time.  Don't look so righteous.  You have at least fibbed.  Usually to cover your butt.  But we do not, hopefully, make a practice of overt deception - lying with abandon with either your own self-interest at stake or the ruining of another's heart and life your aim.  I am ashamed that I have lied.  I have been forgiven of it and truly want my life to speak truth, as well as my lips. 

I have met many habitual liars in my life.  The treacherous thing about them is that it takes a while to discover they rarely speak the truth.  They are neighbors, coworkers, and people in your church or community.  Liars do not wear a sign that says:  "Don't believe a thing I say."  So we assume they are telling the truth until one day something just doesn't make sense.  They are finally found out, but often not until after they have married someone or run off with someone's life savings.  Their words can be deadly.   But they are not packing a Lying Gun so that you can see right off the danger of hanging around with them.

Proverbs 26: 28:  A lying tongue hates those it hurts, and a flattering mouth works ruin.  How does lying become hate?  Think about it.  The one who lies to me all the time thinks I am stupid, for one.  I have put my trust in the words this person speaks, so she can tell me anything and I will be dumb enough to believe it.  She has stolen my trust to use it for her advantage.  The thievery would be more obvious to me if she had taken my purse.  Lying is manipulation to the liar's advantage.  Only someone who has no regard for you will manipulate you.  Someone who hates you enough to use you as a puppet with no feelings. 

Watch out for flattery.  Liars use it to build you up.  A man who flatters his neighbor is spreading a net for his steps.  Proverbs 29:5.  So funny - when I looked up flatter in dictionary, I found all these words: butter up, suck up to, sweet talk.  In other words, over praise.  You know what is unfortunate about flattery is that all of us yearn to be affirmed.  So when someone says how gorgeous we are, how accomplished, what a great mom, scholar, cook - what a great figure, great eyes, great hair (and by that I don't mean big hair)...and so on,  we LOVE it!  Our little hearts soak it up because we need to hear that we are wonderful.  And we are!  But be careful of the over-praiser.  He manipulates that need to his advantage, and before you know it, you are caught in a spider's web.  Don't be surprised if the flattery ceases then, because it is no longer useful.  See how that is hate?  The spider is fat and happy - the prey in need of rescue.

How do we escape?  We weigh words with character.  We guard our hearts, needy as they may be.  And we give our hearts to the One Who can be trusted with them.  He is our Beloved Who defines who we are.  The closer we get to His heart,  hear it beat for us and speak its love for us into the core of who we are, the less we feel compelled to listen to those who suck up to us, butter us up and sweet talk in our ears.  We have already heard the sweetest words known to man:

I am my Beloved's and He is mine.   Song of Solomon 2

Psalm 11 - "I Feel Your Pain"

For we do not have a great high priest who cannot be touched by the feeling of our infirmity. (Hebrews 4)

I have been thinking a lot about the phrase in Psalm 11 that God's very soul hates violence.  To the core of Him He hates it.  What else does He hate?  Proverbs 6:16 gives a list:  pride, lying, murder of the innocent, a mind that thinks up evil plans, feet that are quick to do evil, a witness who lies, and someone who starts arguments among families.  Hate is a really strong word.  But these are the things we hate, too.  The thought that He hates like we hate is astonishing.  That He chooses to feel what we feel, not just set our emotions in place and then back off to see where that takes us. 

In his book ADDICTION AND GRACE, Dr. May discusses God as both transcendent and imminent at once.  He knows all...transcends time and space and is therefore apart from it though in control of it.  The imminent God, however, chooses to be close and to experience our feelings.  When we are upset, He is upset.  He feels with us.

I remember discussing His imminence with my daughter when she was teaching middle schoolers in an at-risk school in Los Angeles.  The cycle of poverty, violence and abuse spilled over into the children's lives to such a point that it daily disrupted classes. Students brought guns to school, one time shooting the principal, sending him to the hospital.  My child's need to reach and change this climate - to somehow stir these kids to a higher hope - seemed to her a mountain she would never be able to climb.  She ultimately became so ill she had to quit the job, and she felt like an utter failure.  The experience also made her wonder where her God was to allow this to continue.  I reminded her that God sees what she sees and is just as broken over it as she was.  He is not sitting on His throne "tsk-tsking" our pain.  He is experiencing it.   He chooses to feel with us.  Just like we feel with our kids, family and friends. 

"I love you people with a love that will last forever.  That is why I have continued showing you kindness."  (God in Jeremiah 31)   Our God reaches down into our history, which He sees as one continuum of time, and decides to engage in our joy and our pain.  To show us love and kindness.  Listen to His language toward His people in the book of Hosea:  "

When Israel was a child, I loved him and I called him out of Egypt.  But when I called the people of Israel, they went away from Me.  It was I who taught Israel how to walk, and I took them by the arms, but they did not understand that I had healed them.  I led them with cords of human kindness - with ropes of love.  I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down and fed them.....How can I give up on you?  My heart beats for you, and my love for you stirs up my pity...I am God and not human; I am the Holy One, and I am among you...I will not come against you in anger."

Though jilted, He pursues us.  His heart beats for His people.....He sees us and is stirred up with compassion for our lives and circumstances.  He feels like we do.....or, we feel like He does.  Made in His image.  Made for fellowship with Him. 

Lord, let me feel what you feel.  Love with Your heart.  Discern with Your mind.  Made in Your likeness, may I trust the One who is teaching me to walk.  Who bent down and fed me when I had only recently been delivered from my slavery, unfettered from the chains of bondage.  Who lifted me up with Your hands under my armpits, as I would lift a toddler, so that we could smile at each other face-to-face and wonder at my rescue.  Please never give up on me.  May Your everlasting love be enough.

Psalm 11 - What's In A Face?

For the Lord is righteous and He loves righteousness (integrity, justice, right actions and attitudes).  The upright will behold His face. (vs. 7)

What must that be like - to see the face of God?  I often wonder what He will look like.  Before my mother died, we spent many hours talking about heaven because she was preparing to go there.  It is a rather lonesome journey, dying of cancer in a house with a husband who has betrayed you after 40 some odd years of marriage.  Death is solitary, anyway.   Like birth, you leave by yourself.   So we talked.  What is the journey to heaven like?  Will her parents and siblings be there to greet her?  What will her first glimpse of Jesus be like?  His radiance enveloping her - His arms receiving her.  If there is any way, Mother, let me know you are there when that time comes.  She promised.

On the day of her funeral, I was sitting on the back porch where we had sat much of that summer talking of her life and her death.  Relatives and friends were in my mother's kitchen bustling about without her usual presence, and that unnerved me.  The solitude on the back porch on that scorching day in August was a welcome retreat for me.  I looked out over Mother's garden - bumble bees flitting around her roses and birds perching in the foliage of her large trees.  Not much on my mind.  Just glad to be away from people.  I looked up at the perfectly blue sky.  And there she was!  Her face before me, radiant, aglow with heaven.
"It's all right, precious.  It's all right."  Smiling...more than smiling, but I don't have a word for it.  My mother floating before me, my soul caressed with comfort and the joy of her peace.  She had seen Him and was beautiful with the aura of that glance.

I know it was not Mother, really, but my Father allowing me a glimpse of what He saw.  A child restored to glory.  A precious daughter made whole in His presence.  He was looking at her in that same moment.  His face beholding my mother.  I have never thought about heaven in the same way since. 

What do we do with the face of God?  We already know that He is watching us - looking intently into our lives to test our attitudes and actions.  If we acknowledge that fact, and love Him as He loves us, we will be looking for a smile there.   A "well done!"  He will exult over you with joy! ....He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy!"  (Zephaniah 3)  Imagine the heart of your God shouting with joy over you because He loves you so much!!!

We saw the face of God, you know.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1)  I cringe when I think of what we did with it.  And after weaving a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand; and they kneeled down before Him and mocked Him, saying: "Hail, King of the Jews!"  And they spat in His face and took the reed and began to beat Him on His head.  This we did to the God who would sing over us with joy.  Then He was beaten with rods until He was unrecognizable, hung naked on a cross, and offered up as the ultimate sacrifice for my sin. 

My sin still is spit upon His face.  My rebellion no less hurtful than the beating.  For I know that He died for me.  How then can I live in mocking of His love.  I have before.  I never intend to again.  I know Him better now, so I would seek to heal His woundedness and cause His face to smile.  I don't always get it right, so don't expect perfection from me.  But expect me to try.  Chide me when I don't, please!  For someday I will behold Him face to face.  "Those who win the victory will be dressed in white clothes. And I will not erase their names from the Book of Life, but I will say they belong to Me before my Father and the angels. (Rev. 3)  My Jesus will look my way, extend His hand to me, and draw me to His side, presenting me to the Father as one who belongs to Them.  And I will see His face.

Psalm 11 - Gunshots at the Beach

The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked.  The one who loves violence, His soul hates. (vs.5)

Yesterday was an absolutely stunning day at the beach.  I had gotten home earlier than usual from work, so I hurriedly donned my work-out digs and hit the sand for a power walk.  Dolphins were playing in the same waves close to the beach as the surfers were.  The breeze was light, the sun hot, and everyone was smiling.  So, when I heard the keening of the fire engines and saw their blinking lights as they raced down Pacific Coast Highway, they seemed incongruous with the lovely day.  I wondered about the wreck that must be down the road toward Long Beach.

Shattering the crystalline air of our October summer day, however, were gunshots in Seal Beach.   A madman with a violent purpose in his heart opened fire on his ex-wife in the beauty salon where she worked, killing her and at least seven others.  Randomly.  Just mad.  Deserved the release that killing brought.  She had been unfair in the child custody proceedings, in his mind.  So, kill her.  And anyone else he felt like taking out in the moment.  Evil.  On his way out, just shoots a man in a Land Rover because it feels good to get it all out of his system....and I am walking along the beach feeling so blessed to be alive on this perfect Wednesday.

God saw.  And God hates this!  His very soul hates this!  That encouraged me today because I keep wishing someone had shot the shooter!  It seems unjust that he is walking around alive today, even in a jail cell, when he has been judge and jury for the innocent.  Upon the wicked He will rain snares; fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup.  For the Lord is righteous. (vs. 6 - 7a)  Hell forever.  Starting now, and forever.  God knows this man's way and his secret intentions. Our God hates what he did!  Knows what he deserves. And He does what is right. Because the Lord tests both those who love Him and those who are wicked.

The word for test is bachan which means to examine, to try, to prove.  As in the testing of metals.  God is determined to purge away the dross to leave us pure.  To grow us up into spiritual maturity.  We do this with our kids if we are at all interested in being good parents.  We teach them something valuable.  Do not lie.  What do we do when they lie?  We purge that out of them as best we can because they will be cruel and treacherous in this world if they continue that behavior.  It would be our desire to help them replace lying with a great love of the truth.  So, our Father does with us.  Testing us.  Making us pure gold. 

The man who slaughtered yesterday is also examined by the King of Everything.  Be assured that his shattering of the glory of a perfect day - his violent taking of lives - will not go unpunished.  God is not mocked.  But in His great mercy, may He surround the families of those who have lost so much, including this man's only son who is now without a mother and a father, with the grace of great comfort in the knowledge that a holy God will pour out His wrath on people who love violence and that He cares for the widows and orphans this shooter has created.

Psalm 11 - My Goodness!

Been trying to picture my God on His throne.  What must that look like?  Isaiah 6 has a visual:

I saw the Lord sitting on a very high throne.  His long robe filled the temple.  Heavenly creatures of fire stood above Him....Each creature was calling to the others: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.  His glory fills the whole earth!'  Their calling caused the frame of the door to shake as the temple filled with smoke.
I said:  "Oh, no!  I will be destroyed.  I am not pure, and I live among people who are not pure, but I have seen the King!"

Moses lived among the Israelites in their years of wandering in the desert on the way to the Promised Land.  God said He spoke with Moses as a man speaks with his friend, and those conversations most often took place in the Tent of Meeting that Moses set up on the edge of the camp.  Everyone was welcome into the tent, but when Moses went in, things were different.  As he edged his way through the thousands of dwellings in the camps of the tribes of Israel, the people would peer from their opened tent flaps to watch him as he entered the meeting tent.  When the flap closed, the cloud that led the group by day, fell across the opening of the tent and Moses was alone with God.  Just the cloud caused the people to stop and worship.

On one of these occasions, recorded in Exodus 33, Moses wants to make certain that God will go with them on the journey to the land promised to them.  The Lord assures Moses that He will go with them because Moses had found favor in His sight and God knows him by name.  Then Moses goes a step further:
"I pray that You will show me Your glory!"

I think God's answer is astonishing:  "I, Myself, will make all my goodness pass before you....but you cannot see my face, for no man can see my face and live."

Moses asked to see God's glory.  God promises to show His goodness.  He put Moses in the cleft of a rock the next day, and as He passed by in front of him, He said: 

"The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and truth; Who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, forgives iniquity, transgression and sin, yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations!"

That's it!  God's glory is His goodness - His great compassion.  The King of Everything sits on a throne lit by holy fire in the midst of incense and angelic snake-like, winged beings who constantly praise Him whose glory fills the whole earth!  All loving and all just!  This is what He wants us to know about Him. 

Can you go into that throne room with me?  Take a deep breath and feel the altar incense fill your nostrils.  Marvel at the crimson of His robe flowing like a mighty river from His shoulders to fill the entire temple with its majesty.  Close your eyes as the Seraphim shout to each other over and over proclaiming the surpassing glory of the King.  Are you still standing? I am not.  I doubt you are either.  For the power in the room is so great that the floor shakes as the altar incense sweetens the air. That heavenly incense is the prayers of His children, and it touches His heart because He chooses to feel what we feel. 

 He is holy.  Separate.  Set apart.  No one is like our God. And when He rose from His throne to meet Moses in the wilderness, what He wanted us to know is that He is good. 

Psalm 11 - This Isn't Queen Elizabeth

The Lord is in His holy temple.  Let all the earth keep silent before Him. ( Habakkuk 2:20)

I wonder how many of us would just rush into the presence of a king.  Go willy-nilly, barefoot and unprepared to see Queen Elizabeth.  We could not even get near her, much less approach her throne, without express invitation and much adherence to protocol.  Then, like Esther, a queen herself, we would not speak until given permission.....until spoken to.  There is just something awesome about royalty.

Our King....well, He is King of Everything.  We, His subjects, need to develop a healthy reverence for His might.  He can SEE us from His throne.  He is watching and ruling, not just what we do with our lives, but what we do with our hearts. 

Psalm 11:4  The Lord is in His holy temple.  The Lord's throne is in heaven.  His eyes see, His eyelids test the children of men.  

When my mother wanted to know if I was being truthful, she would look a little closer into my eyes, her eyelids closed ever so slightly, as she peered into my eyes for the truth.  God looks at us that way.  Peering into our motives, narrowing in on our actions, watching intently our lives.  The King of Everything is that interested and invested in us. 

God is in His holy temple. The word is qodesh - something consecrated, set aside for sacred use.  Undefiled.  From this place the Lord watches all sorts of defilement and cruelty.  The Great Undefiled must test and measure the defiled.  What joy it must bring Him to see His children really putting out the effort to make His eyes dance.  While He is watching me today, I really want to be conscious of His holiness.  To be in awe of the fact that He watches and does not yet destroy.  To look in His face, having been properly prepared to enter His throne room by the Lamb at His side, and seek favor and direction.  To kiss the Son.  To have the King say:  "She is getting it right.  She is finally getting it right."

Psalm 11 - Fly Like a Bird

I trust in the Lord for protection.  So why do you say to me:  "Fly like a bird to your mountain.  Like hunters, the wicked string their bows; they set their arrows on bowstrings. They shoot from dark places at those who are honest. When all that is good falls apart, what can people do?"

Wow!  Great question!!  What do we who know God do when all that is good falls apart?  Lots of things.  Most of which are counterproductive, of course.  The best advice for David was "fly like a bird to your mountain."  Run away.  Get the heck away from the problem.  As far away as you can.

Hmmmm.  I have found that in the running away, I take the problem with me.  Well, I must admit, that possibly, unlike David, I am often my problem.  But let's say I am not the cause of my present trouble.  Everything has fallen apart around me.  My enemy, the ruler of this present world, has emptied his quite healthy arsenal of weaponry on my puny self. This little bird that I am, defenseless except for my tiny wings that can fly me away from the situation.  Where is my mountain?  What is my mountain?  I think if we take the advice given to David, we might just choose the wrong mountain. ( I have.... )

So, what to do when things fall apart.  Because they will.  If you live long enough, they will fall apart more than once and we cannot always just fly off to whatever comfort we choose.  David asks a great question, too.  Why?  Why do you tell me to run from my troubles.  The King was a warrior.  Mighty in battle.  Had killed lions and bears and giants.  He knew where his strength came from.  He was no little bird.  And he wasn't flying anywhere.  Except to the Lord, his Protection.

The Lord is like a strong tower; those who do right can run to Him for safety. ( Proverbs 18:10)  Run there, mighty warrior.  It is not for the faint of heart - this Christian walk...er..warfare.  On the battlefield that is our daily life, there is only one place to which it is safe to run.  Hide in the tower of His might.  Press into its inner chambers and rest in its light.  He has not called you to fight without weapons.  But when the battle is not going all that well, Run!!!!!  Into Him.  And you will be saved!

Psalm 10 - Lord, Clean House!

The Lord is King forever and ever.  Destroy from Your land those nations that do not worship You.  Lord, You have heard what the poor people want.  Do what they ask, and listen to them. Protect the orphans and put an end to suffering so they will no longer be afraid of evil people. (vs. 16-18)

The king rules over his kingdom.  That is why he is a king.  Our King just happens to rule over all other kingdoms, both physical and metaphysical.  He is the King over the air, the oceans, atoms and stars; demons and angels, presidents and tyrants.  He is busy.  Powerful.  Omnipresent.  And...He is King forever.  So time for Him does not exist as it does for us.  He has all of history stretched out before Him to look at from beginning to end.  Our God is not worried about tomorrow.  Is not cramped into our time and space problems.  Maybe this is why when we cry out and He is not on it the moment we get doubtful and full of fear and angry that He waits.

David cannot understand how this King could look on suffering and not just blow up the nations that are against Him.  That is what David, as King of Israel, would be about doing if he were God.  That is actually what kings do.  So where is this King of Righteousness when the orphans and the oppressed are crying out? David, like us, wants an end to all suffering so that our fear of evil people will be vanquished.  But God does not seem to have answered that prayer and David is getting antsy for it.

What is the answer to this?  It is still our question.  Why do people suffer?  We could understand the suffering of the evil.  Welcome it, even.  But the suffering of the poor?  Children who wander the streets?  Where is God?  Why does He not bring down fire from heaven and swoop these evil people up in a great conflagration?  Now!

I know I cannot fully answer this age-old question, but I am going to try to shed a little light on it for myself today.  2 Peter 3:  It is most important for you to understand what will happen in the last days.  People will laugh at you.  They will live doing the evil things they want to do.  They will say: "Jesus promised to come again.  Where is He?  Our fathers have died, but the world continues as it has since the day it was made."  But they do not want to remember what happened long ago.  By the word of God heaven was made, and the earth was made from water and with water.  Then the world was flooded and destroyed with water.  And that same Word of God is keeping heaven and earth that we now have in order that it be destroyed by fire.  They are being kept for the Judgment Day and the destruction of all who are against God.  But do not forget this one thing:  To the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day.  The Lord is not slow in doing what He promised - the way some people understand slowness.  But God is being patient with you.

If God is being patient with me because He is being patient with the whole mess His world has become, then I rejoice that He is also patient with the evil, hoping they will turn and repent and not wanting to incinerate the entire earth because some are evil.  He will have enough one day, though.  That day will come when evil will be annihilated, reduced to ashes.  David's desire to see orphans free to play in the streets will be answered fully.  Because we will be adopted into His Kingdom, children of the only lasting royalty, and we will run on pavement of transparent gold, eat from the tree of life and splash in the river that runs from the throne.

Psalm 10 - The Jury

Psalm 10: 7-11
The Prosecutor rises to address the jury.  In a seat at the counsel table is a woman who looks just like everyone else.  That is probably the most heinous of her many sins.  You cannot tell by looking at her that she is treacherous beyond belief.  The litany of her crimes?  She is violent,even in her speech.  Waiting in ambush, she kills the innocent in secret places where no one will see.  Always she is looking for the helpless in her attempt to tear them to pieces.  Like a lion in a thicket she lurks in order to attack by surprise the unwary walking past.  She grabs the unsuspecting innocent and drags her prey away into the thicket.  Helpless, her prey is lost, beaten down, defeated completely.  On many different occasions the defendant has boasted that she will never be caught!  She is too smart!  Too good at her criminal behavior.  Many have heard her screeching laughter as she ends their lives. There are graphic photographs of her terror. What do we do with her?  We, the jury?

We cry out to the Judge!  We say with David:  Rise  up, Lord God!  Lift up Your hand!  Do not forget the afflicted.  Why has the wicked person despised God?   He says to himself,  " You will not demand an account." But You Yourself have seen trouble and grief, observing it in order to take the matter into Your own hands. The helpless entrust themselves to You.  You are the Helper of the fatherless.  Break the arm of the wicked and evil person.  Call his wickedness into account until nothing remains of it!

Too harsh?  Really?  Then what of the innocent?  Do their lives not count?  Can evil reign because we are too afraid to ask for justice from God?  He is not mocked.  We will reap, if not now, then eventually, what we sow.  The Judge is watching.  Readying for trial.  Do not think that evil will reign forever.  What does the defendant deserve?  Death. 

Here is the miraculous thing, though.  Hold on.  Don't judge the Judge yet.  What if this criminal changes her heart?  Can she be forgiven?  Can she be set free?  That would be so unjust!!!  Look at what she has done!  Grace is hard to look at when it comes to sins we have already judged.  But here is what Peter says of God in 2 Peter:  God is being patient with you.  He does not want anyone to be lost, but He wants everyone to change their hearts and lives....Remember that we are saved because God is patient.

Ouch!  This horrid woman could be saved?  What of what she has done to others?  Does God not take that into account?  Big topic for a little blog, huh?  There are those who would accuse God that there is a hell for such criminals.  Now we accuse Him that He is too soft with this grace stuff. 

Let  us remember that we are all saved by GRACE.  None of us approaches God based on our great life of good deeds.  Read this slowly:  For by GRACE you have been saved and that grace did not come from you.  God gave it to you so you could believe lest you boast in your own goodness.   That GRACE is the free gift of God to anyone who believes.  (Ephesians 2)  This is the single most remarkable thing about the ransom of Christ.  Salvation is not based either on our good works or our evil works but on God's grace toward us.  If Jesus stood in my place when I was the defendant, unworthy of life now or eternally, then He stands in the place of ALL who will believe, repent and turn from their old lives.  He is the One Who gives me the faith to understand and believe this. 

I am she.  The woman who deserves to die.  I cannot plead my own innocence.  He stands in the courtroom in my place, walks into the death chamber for me, and takes what I deserve so that I can go free.  I am forever grateful that His grace can cover even me.

Psalm 10 - Practice What I Preach

Psalm 10:6&11  They say to themselves, "Nothing bad will ever happen to me;  I will never be ruined."
The wicked think,  "God has forgotten us.  He doesn't see what is happening."

Remember that bike from a couple of blog posts back?  I am riding it today.  My husband and I on separate bikes, but riding together.  He lost his job yesterday.  So, when he came home to tell me, we had several choices of reactions, nothwithstanding the sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs that cannot be avoided.  Choice #1:  Complete panic!  Choice #2:  Crying (not Bill's choice, but definitely mine).  Choice # 3:  Curse God and die! (Job's wife made this one popular).  Choice #4:  Hold hands and thank God for whatever it is He is doing.  We chose #4.  I had make-up on and was going out for the evening with my daughter....didn't want to reapply, so couldn't cry.  Panic is way too much trouble.  Never had much of a thing for Job's wife and her reaction to his pain.  Also, we have been through this scenario several times before after 42 years of marriage. 

I remember the first time Bill came home, having lost his job.  I was six months pregnant with our second child.  I opened the garage door to welcome him home that night, and saw that our little orange VW Beetle was loaded to the gills with all his office stuff.  That time I did cry.  Had no plans for the evening!  However, as has become our habit, we finally calmed me down and thanked our God for His future provision.  It all worked out.  For the better.  It really did!  And every time since then.  We will not be ruined.  Make some adjustments to how we live?  Maybe.  But ruined?  Never.  That is a promise we have over those who do not have our Father.

To those who feel no need of God and yet prosper, taking opportunity to use their relative ease to make others uncomfortable at best and ruined at worst, God has a time of reckoning.  In Isaiah 47, God has a word for them:
Now listen, you lover of pleasure.  You think you are safe.  You tell yourself, "I am the only important person.  I will never be a widow or lose my children."  Two things will happen to you suddenly, in a single day.  You will lose your children and your husband.  These things will truly happen to you in spite of all your magic, in spite of your powerful tricks.  You do evil, but you feel safe and say, "No one sees what I do."  Your wisdom and knowledge have fooled you.  You say to yourself, "I am God, and no one is equal to me."  But troubles will come to you, and you will not know how to stop them.   Disaster will fall on you, and you will not be able to keep it away.

The point here is not that I want bad things to happen to bad people.  David did.  But that is not my point.  All of us have problems.  If the "lovers of pleasure" tell you they don't have any, maybe you could ask why they spend so much time seeking pleasure then.  Those plowing headfirst into a life that is only about themselves will ultimately run into a wall.  Not so much a curse as a fact of life. 

Here is what our Father says to us who love Him in the next chapter of Isaiah: I have carried you since you were born.  I have taken care of you since birth.  Even when you are old, I will be the same.  Even when your hair is gray, I will take care of you.  I made you and will take care of you.  I will carry you and save you.

I just read this to my husband.  Because we are old and his hair is gray....don't know what color mine is, really.  Relatively certain it's gray, too, but I don't want to know for sure.  Our Father has been there from the beginning and will carry us through to the end.  So I will trust.  With thanksgiving.  And be assured that we will not come to ruin.  Not because I think I am a god unto myself, but because I am the daughter of a God so much bigger than I that I can only anticipate how He will thrill and surprise us in this new season. (Really...this is what I feel today, by His grace!).

Psalm 10 - Patty's Offering

I met a woman a few days ago who is homeless.  Her drug addiction, she said, has cost her her family.  They do not care anymore about her life.  Picked up off the streets by a Christian half-way house, Patty has been drug free one day at a time for thirteen months.  Patty was an orphan.  Wandering alone without hope.  Until...until her God saw her there, alone.  Granted, she made her own pain.  But that does not seem to matter to her Father when He hears her cry for help.  This child of God says that she always trusts Him for the day ahead.  Looks no further.  Just one day at a time.  Just like a kid.

I was collecting money that day for the homeless.  Ironic, I know.  She was out of the halfway house because a friend, who was getting a manicure at the time, had come to give her a day out at the beach.  After our conversation, Patty walked away.  Fifteen minutes later, she returned with three one dollar bills in her hand.  She wanted to give her only money to the homeless shelter for which we were gathering donations. She adamant that she had received so much from people who cared that she wanted give back.  That was that.

It made me think how all of us are homeless until we meet Him.  He is our home.  And He loves orphans....and widows.  Part of the old law is dedicated to protecting them.  Exodus 22:22: Do not cheat a widow or an orphan. If you do, and they cry out to Me for help, I will certainly hear their cry.  I will be very angry and kill you in war so that your children will be fatherless.  Cringing a little with me?  I know.  Sounds pretty hardcore.  But our God is indignant with taking advantage of the poor, the widows and the orphans.

In Psalm 10, it is this kind of evil behavior that David sees and it makes him so angry.  He wants God to do something, already!  Lord, rise up and punish the wicked.  Don't forget those who need help....Lord, surely you see these cruel and evil things; look at them and do something.  People in trouble look to You for help.  You are the One who helps the orphans.  Break the power of the wicked people.  Punish them for the evil they have done.

God promised to see, hear and help.  And heaven help those who oppress,because it makes God really mad.  Rightfully so.  It even looks unfair to us, and we only have a finite understanding of justice. 

When Jesus talked over Passover seder with his disciples, He wanted to make sure they understood that His going away was not abandonment.  He will never leave us or forsake us.  "I will not leave you as orphans," He promised.  "I will come back to you."  And He did.  He rose again.  Then sent the Holy Spirit, that Spirit by which we are able to call out "Abba!"  That Spirit that brings us, adopted, into the family of God.  No longer orphans.  Fatherless.  Homeless.  But rich beyond measure.  Robed extravagantly by a Father Who is so crazy about us that He has our names written on His palm.  We no longer need to beg because He has rescued us from the streets, and we are empowered to live a different life.  Even the wicked can partake if they turn.  Because God loves those who cry out to Him.

Psalm 10 - Hide and Seek

Psalm 10 starts out with a question that is on our minds, too, when we just don't get what God is doing.  When it feels like He is playing hide-n-seek with us.  Sometimes I feel like He is so close that I could touch His face, hear His heartbeat.  Other times, I just don't know where He went.  I know I am not alone in this.

David must have been going through a dry period with God when his faith was being tested.  What he was seeing was the unfairness of the poor being suppressed and exploited by the "wicked," who seem to be those who believe, in their arrogance, that they are not accountable to God.  David counts himself among the "afflicted" when He cries out to His God in verse one:

Lord, why do You stand so far away?  Why do You hide in times of trouble?

Great question!  Our God has said He will never fail us or forsake us.  So, is He really hiding?  I think about the father who is teaching his child to ride a bike or walk or play a sport.  First the instruction is very hands-on.  Holding a little hand or running behind a wobbly bike.  There comes a time, though, when Mommy or Daddy lets go. You know how.  Now, practice!  I remember quite a few less than perfect rides down the sidewalk when I fell off the bike.  But if Daddy had not ever let go....well...That would look silly now.  I had to learn how to stay on the darn thing by myself.  Faith is learning how to hang on.  To balance and pedal.  To understand our instruction and put it into practice.  The Father is never far off.  He is there making sure everything will be all right.....and to rescue if we don't do it quite right.  But we will have to get back on the bike.

Listen to Isaiah' words:  The Lord will hear your crying and He will comfort you.   When He hears you, He will help you.  The Lord has given you sorrow like the bread and the water you eat everyday.  He is your Teacher.  He will not continue to hide from you, but you will see your teacher with your own eyes.  If you go the wrong way - to the right or the left - you will hear a voice behind you saying:  "This is the right way.  You should go this way."

Don't worry today if things seem desperate and you feel that God is not busy watching over you.  Don't panic.  Listen.  Do what is in front of you.  If you hear a voice directing you, listen.  Heed.  Most importantly remember your Teacher.  He will comfort you....He will help you.  He is not hiding.  Ride the bike and make Him proud.