Tuesday, July 31, 2012

PSALM 52 - No Defense for a Bad Offense

This is why God will bring you down forever.  He will take you, ripping you out of your tent.  He will uproot you from the land of the living.  The righteous will look on with awe and ridicule him:  "Here is the man who would not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his riches, taking refuge in his destructive behavior."  (vs. 5-7)

Taking refuge in our destructive behavior.  Hmmm.   Sounds like addiction, doesn't it?  Of course, Doeg and King Saul, about whom this psalm is written, literally destroyed the priests of God.  However, one could ask why.  Doeg was a warrior.  Prided himself in his "badness."  No mess he couldn't bloody up with a sledge hammer and a sword.  His name was Doeg, for Pete's sake!  Saul was another story.  With him it was personal.  God called him to be the first king of Israel because the people wanted a king.  Reticent at first, shy by nature, Saul trusted God for wisdom.  It didn't take long, though, before Saul took not only ruling Israel but also offering the priestly sacrifices in his stride. Born of pride and expedience.  God put His foot down.  Looked for another king.  Jesse's family was the focus when Samuel went to anoint a king to replace Saul.  Not any of the big handsome older sons of Jesse, but the shepherd kid who brought them lunch.  The one who slayed the giant Saul was afraid to approach....and did it with one smooth rock.  David was too small even to wear the kings proffered armor.  Insult on insult.  The child who would be king undaunted by what scared the pants off Saul's entire army.  The offense was born.  The seed of hate planted deeply within the insecure king of Israel.

So the king let it eat at him.  Brought David into his household.  Made the kid a fighter.  But, oh the folly of that.  David took down the enemy in droves. While Saul was only moderately successful.  Because of a wager, Saul had to give David his daughter.  Then the paranoia set in.  The king just knew David was out to get him.  So, he set about getting before he could get got!  Throwing spears at the young man who played the harp for him.   Chasing him out of the courts and into the wilderness.  Killing the priests of Nob and an entire community because he had become so insecure about his own destiny and self-worth that he thought David to be just like him.  Capable of the murderous motives which ate his soul alive.  Saul took refuge in his own thoughts.  Retreated to his own opinion of what was actually going on.  Finally couldn't even listen to reason.  Not only had he ultimately taken over the exercise of offering priestly sacrifices, but also justified murdering the priests of God.

Talk about destructive behavior. 

What do we run to when the going gets rough?  It matters.  Maybe it doesn't look as serious to us as Saul's taking refuge in his power.  But to be real, we are the rulers of our own lives to the extent we choose what to do with our disappointment and pain.  Whether we upend a bottle of booze or shoot up with heroin,  run away from a difficult marriage into adultery or eat ourselves into obesity, over-exercise or over indulge in some other way, if we choose to medicate, we choose destructive behavior that could be our ruin and the ruin of those we love.  The thing is, and I know this, for at least a little while we can justify destructive behavior.  We have, after all been hurt, rejected, abandoned, overlooked, etc.  Enemy territory.  Take all that out and play with it and anything imaginable can be justified with enemy logic.  "I deserve this." Those words can make anyone capable of any horrible thing.  I am convinced the devil's greatest pleasure is taking pain and dragging us with it into more pain.  Destructive behavior destroys!  Duh. 

Run to God.  Ironic.  But I believe you must be still to run to God.  He is the strong tower we run into.  Once there, though, we wait.  No frantic drinking from the cask of self-medication.  No immediate fix from shooting up artificial peace.  No human arms telling us they will make it all go away.  No.  Harboring.  Anchoring.  Stilling ourselves in Him and waiting as He takes over and wins the battle for us.  Not running to fix the unfixable.  Only He can do that.

The righteous run into the strong tower and are saved.  It will not be wrong for us in that day to look on the foolishness of the one who glories in her/his sin and say: "Here is the one who destroyed herself and others because she loved her offense more than God."  It isn't God's heart or ours, however, to let her go on in her destructive behavior.  That is why our God, in His great love and mercy, keeps the door open to the tower.  Run there!  and be saved.

Monday, July 30, 2012

PSALM 52 - A View From a Hill

Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man?
The steadfast love of the Lord endures all day long.
Your tongue plots destruction like a sharp razor,  you worker of deceit.
You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking what is right.
You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue.  (Vs. 1-4)

The king was in Gibeah when he heard the news.  David had made a covenant with Jonathan, King Saul's son.  They loved each other as brothers.  In fact, Saul told David to leave his extended family and serve the king.  Primogeniture called for Jonathan to inherit the throne and a double portion of the family fortune.  Jonathan would eventually give up any claim to the throne for David's sake.  Perhaps understanding what Saul did not.  David was God's choice.  The thing is, King Saul had not heard about the deep love between the two men.  It made him furious because by that time David had killed his ten thousands and the king was running scared.  Just knew David was out to kill him.

So Saul climbs up to a high point on a hill and sits down, spear in hand, under a spreading tamarisk tree.  Portable throne in place, he purveys the land from the height.  Mad as....he can be.  His servants stand about him as he says:  "Listen to me, you people of Benjamin!"  Yelling it.  "Will the son of Jesse give everyone of you fields and vineyards?  Will he make you all commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, that all of you have conspired against me?  No one discloses to me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse?  None of you is sorry for me or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?"

Doeg, the big Edomite, then tattles on David.  Says he saw the son of Jesse in Nob where he inquired of the Lord and received provisions from Ahimelech.  Show bread, even.  Allowed only to the priests.  Doeg was a foreigner.  Not a Jew.  No real connection to the Law of Moses.  No understanding of the God they worshipped. 

Ahimelech is fetched.  Accused.  Sentenced to death.  Along with the other eighty-four other priests of Nob.  The crime.  No one told Saul about David.  Ahimelech didn't tattle.  And, the priest heard from God for David and gave the son of Jesse God's word to him.  That was too threatening to Saul because he already knew his days were numbered as king.  In his head.  Still thought he could rearrange the outcome to his own advantage. The Israelites under Saul's command would not touch the priests.  They feared God more than the king.

"Doeg!  You turn and strike the priests!"  This guy would do it.  So figured the king.

And...he did.  Killed all eighty-five priests at Nob.   But he didn't stop there.  The old Doeg got a bit carried away with the smell of blood and revenge. Slaughtered women and infants, men and beasts, ox, donkeys and sheep.  A blood bath because the king's feelings were hurt.

Thus this psalm.  There is evil.  And men and women are driven by it to do the most heinous things.  Wars are being waged all over the earth for little more than the king's feelings of rejection.  Power and the smell of blood drives entire nations into battle.  They are also the catalyst for the destruction of marriages, friendships and our very lives. 

The constant?  The steadfast love of our God endures all day long.  For David and his calling.  For us in ours.  The sword King Saul held high in his hands that day on the hill in Gibeah he would soon fall upon to take his own life rather than be slaughtered by the enemy.  His enemy was not David.  It was his own hubris.  The origination of the most primal evil.  God will win in the end and His purposes completed.  Though we are plotted against and lied to and lied about by the enemy, all day long we are kept by the constant love and watchcare of our Father.  The father of lies is no match for the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Friday, July 27, 2012

PSALM 51 - Brick by Brick

Make Zion the place you delight in.   Repair Jerusalem's broken down walls.  Then You'll get real worship from us, acts of worship large and small, including all the bulls You can heave on Your altar.  (The Message Bible.  Vs. 18-19)

Zion.  Where God dwells.  Jerusalem His earthly city.  A picture of us, no doubt.  This temple in which He dwells has been broken down and needs repair. 

I was talking with a friend last night who had fallen into sin and lost what is most precious to her.  Not an uncommon story.  But the question she asked herself in our conversation was:  "How did I get there?"  At what point did the walls she had secured around her heart get broken down sufficiently to allow a sin completely counter to her understanding of what is right to overwhelm and conquer her? 

But each of you is tempted when you are dragged away by your own evil desire and enticed.  Then after desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin.  And sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.  So, don't be deceived.  (James 1).  Chipping away.  One little thought at a time.  As Martin Luther said:  "You can't keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from making a nest in your hair."  In my conversation with my friend, it was clear when the first lustful thought came.  It was really a surprise.  Hmmm.  Where did that come from?  Then a latent neediness slowly pushed its way up and up to look again in a wrong direction.  Over weeks and months the "bird" nested until it felt almost familiar there.  Full-blown acting upon the thought became ultimately inevitable because her increasing sense of neediness fed her desire to justify a relationship like David's.  One which God didn't sanction.  Walls came crashing down!  The death of a family ensued.

I know this story, too.  The story of giving in.  Letting the walls fall down.  The devastation of the nesting birds.  You might, also.  Hope not.  But it gives me insight into why David would end this psalm in such a strange, religious-sounding way.  He goes from his sinfulness to God and Mount Zion.  What? 

Here is what I think.  Only the Sovereign God Who dwells in incomparable light and wields all-surpassing power from His throne in Zion is capable of rebuilding in us what has been broken down.  Even if we tore it apart with our very own hands.  (Which is usually case with us.)  If Zion is the ultimate dwelling place and we are Jerusalem, we must admit when we are falling apart.  When sin has imploded us and scattered the pieces of our former glory all over like shrapnel from a grenade.  The wounded soldier doesn't go forward and pick up his leg or arm and carry it back with him to base then try to figure out how to reattach it.  We are messed up like that when we sin.  Bleeding to death and in need of rescue and repair.  God doesn't turn away from such a one who calls out to Him for help.  The deep gratitude of one saved, forgiven and rebuilt is never-ending and heartfelt.  Jesus said:  "The one forgiven much, loves much."  Whatever Christ wants, we want to adoringly lay at His feet because we received mercy and healing though we didn't deserve it.  Makes the heart sing and the feet dance!  Fills our Jerusalems with palm branches.  To be restored and rebuilt after the ruin we have caused should make us run to find the sacrifices that please our God. Whatever makes Him happy.  So in love with the Beloved King of Zion are we!

My friend and I understand the amazing grace of restoration and rebuilding.  It is hard work.  We have had to help with the replacing of brick on brick.  The slavery we subjected ourselves to had to be escaped.  Our minds had to change.  Our feet had to face a different direction and walk out of ruin.  Picking up the pieces.  Handing them to Him.  Doing what He asks of us again.  Step by step.  Day by day.  But, as with David, the foundation had already been laid.  The Builder is able to reconstruct with us the structure built on Him.  Shored up and secured, perhaps the current glory will exceed the former glory because our God is faithful.

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon Me because the Lord has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on them a crown of beauty for ashes....."   Jesus

Thursday, July 26, 2012

PSALM 51 - Gracious. Gracious.

O, Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.  For You will not delight in sacrifice, or  I would give it.  You will not be pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.  (vs. 15-17)

I appeal to you, therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship.  Romans 12:1

People go to jail for what David did.  Some for the rest of their lives.  He plotted murder and had it carried out.  Said, "Whew!"  Then married the dead man's wife.  Evil.  Covering one sin with others, heaping condemnation upon himself.  The consequences he bore might actually have been worse than jail.  For his family fell apart.  One son rapes a sister.  Absalom chases David from Jerusalem, sleeps with his concubines on the palace rooftop to make a show of his coup, then plots to kill his father.  Though God forgave David's sin, the consequences were devastating and shameful.

When Nathan came to David, however, David's first response was not to go kill a bunch of cattle to make a bloody sacrifice.  To, in self-righteous piety, make a show of his grief over sin.  Instead, David hit the floor in acknowledgement of the fact he had grieved the heart of God.  He was set at a distance from the Lord.  David had never known this.  Always the hand of favor had been on the king's life.  Now God stood back, waiting for the heart change.  I can hear David wail as he understands fully his sin against God.  I can feel the "Please don't leave me!" of his pleading.  He screwed everything up. 

Grace.  Would you have forgiven David?  Can you accept that his man was freed to go on living though he took the life of Uriah?  Where is the limit of God's grace placed?  What does He not forgive?  Does grace give carte blanche?

For by grace you have been saved, by faith, and that is not even of yourselves.  It is a gift from God so that no one can boast.  (Ephesians)  Transgressing against our God is sinning against our relationship with Him.  That is the heart of sin.  Separating ourselves from Him.  Going our own way without regard for His sovereign love.  It hurts Him.  Devastates us.  Because God is love, He is, therefore, concerned primarily about our hearts.  So many bulls.  So much blood.  But without a truly penitent heart, it is just so much death.  David understood he had broken God's heart and that is what broke his.  The mending of the relationship took time.  David never again felt the strength of favor on his life.  I think he made some of his family decisions thereafter based upon the fact that he was such a sinner himself.  How could he then judge another?

Grace.  Bathsheba grieved over the loss of Uriah.  Placed in the palace with the other concubines.  One of many women David slept with.  Not the beloved sweetheart of her warrior husband.  But a woman brought in once in a while to satisfy the king.  Lost also the child of David which was the catalyst that caused him to marry her and then kill her man.  Grief on grief.  Hating this turn in her life.  Wailing for the days when she could just be at home with Uriah.   David lies with her to console her heart.  And to make another child.  The king has compassion on his new wife.  Solomon is formed, cell by cell, to be a child of grace.  For it is he who will be king.  Wise and powerful.  The man God chose to build the Temple in Jerusalem, though David wanted to do this thing himself.

The child of the adultery would be king.  The murderer forgiven.  It is not a straight line.  Grace never is.  That is why the heart of God desires a repentant heart.  He can work with that.  The one who wants to be made right by her own actions will always fail.  Really.  Always.  For rules are made to be broken.  Even our own.  Mercy has but one rule.  Repent and rely on the heart of God to forgive.  Mercy triumphs over judgment!  David didn't fall on his face and recount to God all the ways he had been such a good little Hebrew all those years.  It wouldn't have worked!  The king knew his God well enough to understand that what He wants is us.  All of us.  Our entirety.  It is only reasonable for us to present ourselves to Him as the ultimate sacrifice.  Because He knew we couldn't get it right, He became our righteousness by dying in our place.  That is why sin breaks the Father's heart.  That is why He wants it to break ours. 

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

PSALM 51 - Heifers and Birds

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.  Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.  Let me hear joy and gladness.  Let the bones that You have broken rejoice.
Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me.
Cast me not away from Your presence, and take not the Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of my salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. (vs. 7-12)

Hyssop.  In Leviticus 14 and Numbers 19, the cleansing ceremonies are described for the Israelites.  Leviticus defines cleansing for lepers, which I find interesting in relation to this song of David.  Hyssop is a plant with hairy leaves and branches which apparently made it perfect for dipping into blood and using for sprinkling as the sacrificial blood clung to it.  The priest would dip the hyssop into the offering and sprinkle it seven times upon the leper.

A leprous heart.  Numbed to feeling pain.  So much so that it could lose part of itself and not even know.  Lepers lose fingers and toes because they have lost feeling in the nerve endings and damage their digits in accidents.  Blindness also occurs.  So, David was leprous.  How else could he have gone on with life as usual as a man of God and a murderer.  Justification entered his bloodstream.  The disease spread to become full blown iniquity.  And he finally understood that.

How was it that David so easily saw the sin of the rich man in Nathan's story and missed his own?  Our sin becomes comfortable to us because....well...it is ours.  My father was molested when he was twelve years old.  After this horrifying encounter,  my father eventually became a molester himself.  We did not discover this until I was thirty-seven.  He was arrested for the molestation of a young man in his church.  Many years passed.  Many struggles with my father.  In the end, at age eighty-four, he received court-ordered help.  Left a journal when he died in 2007.  One of the most striking things about the therapy-driven diaries was his inability to see his sin against children as wrong.  There were many pages devoted to trying to empathize with victims.  My father's pedophilia had been a part of him for so long that it was, by that time, intrinsic.  In his bones.  Justifiable on some level.  He thought it love. 

I have lived with sins I needed to excise from my heart.  I understand the longer we allow the disease to overtake us, the harder it is to purge.  There is not enough blood and hyssop in the world to cleanse a heart that is hardened, numbed and blinded.  Leprous to the core.  A leper who loves his disease will stay a leper. 

Remember when Jesus met the man at the pool of Bethesda - the Mercy Pool?  The man had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.  Around him lay all kinds of invalids - the blind, lame and paralyzed.  Because the water in the pool was supposed to bring healing, these needy souls gathered there awaiting an angel to stir it up.  Think Lourdes. 

Jesus approached this man, knowing he had been lying there for a long time.  "Do you want to be healed?"  Christ asked.  A crazy question.  Right?

"Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up,"  he whined.  "And while I am going, another steps down before me."  Not the answer to the question, is it?  Justification for staying by the pool.  For not changing his life.

"Get up.  Take your bed with you. And walk!"  Jesus giving him the opportunity to change his life.  To recognize not only his pitiful need but the powerful answer to it.  A merciful response to a failed answer.

Ah,  the leprous soul cries out,  "Create in me a new heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me!"

Her God replies:  "Do you want to be clean?  Really?  With all your heart?"

On her knees now, for she has seen the numbness, the brokenness, and can finally call it what it is...disease...sin.  "Please don't leave me!  Don't hide Your face from me because You are my only hope of ever being cleansed.  Wash me now!"

The hyssop branch in the hand of God is dipped into the blood and pure water of the sacrifice and sprinkled generously seven times upon the leper's filth.  This time not from the veins of tiny birds or stomping heifers.  This blood comes from a fountain gushing ever clean from the side of a wounded Lamb.  Scarlet, it flows freely as our God trades His sacrifice for our iniquity.

"You are clean!" our Great High Priest declares.  "Though your sins were scarlet, you are now white as snow!"

His grace is not fair, but it is free.  To us.  At great cost to Him.  So that even our bones rejoice, freed from the aching malady which coursed through our marrow. 

Do we want to be healed?  We can.  If we come to the fountain.

Monday, July 23, 2012

PSALM 51 - Shame on You!

Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your steadfast love.  According to Your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.  Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.  Against You, and You only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be justified in Your words and blameless in Your judgments.  Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, You delight in truth in the inward being, and You teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
(Vs. 1-6.  Italics mine)

I have been grieved like all of America since the young man killed the theatergoers in Aurora, Colorado, last week.  Friends and relatives say he is quiet, closed off.  In fact, no one seems to know him.  Really.  But clearly, beneath the scholarly exterior and shy demeanor lurked a dangerously angry person.  His secret heart somehow shriveled into evil.  Who knew?

David, of course, wrote this psalm after Nathan pointed out his secret sins:  Adultery with Bathsheba that left her pregnant and the subsequent murder of her husband, Uriah, to cover David's butt.  David is sitting alone, maybe on the palace terrace, Bathsheba now his bride whose abdomen is rounding with the child of a king.  Life has gone on for David.  Maybe he thinks Israel cannot count.  But it won't be long before they realize Bathsheba must have been pregnant before Uriah died.  Her husband was killed in battle, though.  After David tried twice to trick him to come home and lie with his wife.  Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

But this day the sun was warm on David's face and the storm seemed to pass.  Sorry about what happened to Uriah, but that is the nature of war.  At least David will take good care of his poor wife.  Always down there, though, in his interior was the knowledge that he was terribly, terribly wrong.  Being king did not entitle him to adultery and murder.  Pride made him try to cover his tracks.  A king who decided to stay home when his troops went to war.  Took another man's wife on a lazy day at the office.  Didn't love her.  Just thought she was pretty bathing there on the roof.  Wasn't expecting a pregnancy.   Complications from the fulfillment of his fantasy. He was a "man after God's own heart."  How could David let others know he had blown it big time?  Anyway, other things had come by this day to fill his time and mind, for kings are busy.

Nathan, the trusted counsel to David and a prophet of God, was instructed by the Lord to expose David's secret sin.  Thinking Nathan was a little sick to his stomach before this confrontation.  On two levels.  David is king and could have his head for the audacity of the charge.  But there is the outrage of the sin.  How could he so betray his God and his people?

"There was a rich man and a poor one living in the same city.  The rich man, of course, had lots of lambs and flocks.  The poor man, only a little lamb he loved like his own daughter.  Fed it table scraps, laughed while it played with his kids, and held it in his arms while it slept," Nathan regaled. 
"A traveler came to visit the rich man and was in need of supper.  But the rich man didn't want to kill from his own flocks for dinner, so he took the only lamb of the poor man, slaughtered it and ate it."

"Oh, my God!"  screamed David.  "Has the man no pity?  He deserves to die for this!  Make him restore fourfold to the poor man!"

"You are the man!"

Then Nathan pronounces the Lord's judgment against David.  A harsh prescience of family discord that will never cease.  The death of the child Bathsheba carried.  "For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun," declared the Lord through Nathan.

On his face.  Emptied of pride as the confession of his sin vomits from him.  "I have sinned against the Lord!"  Tears of remorse cannot save his newborn.  Though his own life is spared, it will never be what it had once been.  He forfeited the favor that had once crowned him.  David had debased his God when he chose to commit adultery then murder.  Something had gone deeply wrong in his inward being.

Had he forgotten why he was king?  So much distance had grown from the time the Lord called a little shepherd to kill a lion, a bear and a giant?  Running from Saul was ancient history.  The crown on his head might have gone to his head, leaving him feeling entitled to whatever he wanted whenever he called.  Dangerous territory. 

The stunning thing is that, though he suffered consequences for his deplorable behavior, his God still adored him.  Knew the heart He had given him still beat beneath the hubris of his sinfulness.  Called out to David there and the king fell to his face in repentance.  Pled with God to save Bathsheba's baby-- her loss now doubled.  There must have been some relief in the secret life coming clean.  Not having the invisible barrier between David and his God anymore.  Not living a lie.  How would the story have been different if David had not lived the secret?  If he had confessed from the beginning his sin with Bathsheba and not murdered to cover it up? 

Secrets.  Even small ones create shame.  Shame is the dark knight of our interior, sabotaging our clearer needs, stabbing vulnerability in the heart, and draping us with a persona that is a lie.  If we let the secret life rule us in shame, we will act shamefully.  It is a plan of the enemy to destroy us and others this way.  Chances are our secret lives are not really that well hidden, anyway.  Someone knows.  And He will expose it to the light of the sun because He won't live in shame with us.  Better we fall on our faces before He confronts us.  Better our sin be confessed to Him alone than that He must point His finger as Nathan did and bring our house down with us.

Friday, July 20, 2012

PSALM 50 - A Simple Thanks Will Do

"Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver!  The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies Me.  To one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!" (Vs. 22-23)

Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have not compassion on the son of her womb?  Even these may forget, but I will never forget you.  Isaiah 49

It was a very warm day in the desert near Samaria.  Ten lepers, pariahs to their neighbors, had been banished by their uncleanness to the outskirts of town where they couldn't infect others with their filthy, disfiguring disease.  Day after day they struggled to stay alive.  Hopelessness had drained them of the will to live.  Some had no fingers or toes.  Others had lost a foot or hand.  Their wounds oozed, adding to the odor of their soiled clothing and unwashed bodies.  The men had become a band of brothers with misery as their common denominator.

Jesus was walking to Jerusalem on this particular day.  Outside a village between Samaria and Galilee the men saw Him.  "Is that Jesus of Nazareth?" one of them asked the others.

"I think so," replied another.  "But we can't even go near Him.  We're unclean, man!"

That didn't matter to the others who began immediately to scream at Christ.  "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"  It filled the desert, echoing over cactus and rock.  "Please, Master, heal us!"

The lepers were still very far off when Jesus turned to see them jumping up and down, crying out with all their might to Him. 

"Go and show yourselves to the priests,"  was His command.  Counter intuitive because they couldn't do that.  They were unclean.

The men looked around at each other, checking out their limbs, seeing if they were healed.  Nothing had changed from the Master's command to go into the village priests.  Confused, they stood a minute wondering.  But Jesus said go, so they hurried into the village.  On their way, all of them were healed of leprosy.  Imagine their joy.  The miraculous cleansing of their bodies.  The return to the families from which they had been separated.  The synagogue priests declared them clean against the odds.  New life. 

Maybe it was because the joy of reunion with loved ones made them preoccupied with getting a bath,  putting on a new shirt and sitting down to dinner with their wives and kids that they forgot Who healed them.  Forgot to find Him and  offer Him the gratitude He deserved.  Maybe they didn't think He would still be where He was when they left Him.  That Jesus had traveled on and they wouldn't be able to find Him.  The thing is, they forgot on some level to say thanks.  A basic courtesy.  For small things, too.  But for healing?  For changing your life in a moment's time.  One would think one would think to go find Jesus no matter how much the effort.

Joy indescribable gripped one of the lepers, a Samaritan.  He kept looking at his hands and feet.  Something more happened to him than physical healing when the priest looked at his body and pronounced it clean.  A shifting.  Jesus had seen not only his leprous skin, but also his deeper need.  He had to find Jesus. Wherever He was.   Running from the synagogue, back out the city gates with the hot sand burning his feet, the man caught up to Jesus. 

"Master!"  the man cried out.

Jesus turned to see him approaching and stopped.  It is the Samaritan. 

"Praise the God of Israel!"  the man was crying.  "Thank you, Jesus of Nazareth!  I am well!"

Jesus looked around to see if the others were coming behind him.  There were, after all, ten men huddled together in their leprous companionship.  Only one. 

"Where are the other guys?"  Jesus asked. 

The Samaritan fell on his face, grasped the feet of Jesus, and continued to give thanks for the amazing thing that just happened to him. 

"There were ten men.  Nine Jewish.  And you.  A Samaritan.  Was no one except this foreigner grateful enough to find me and give thanks?"  Jesus making a point.  Not about the fact this man was foreign.  But that He is looking for the thankful heart, even outside of Judaism.  If the ones to whom He came forgot Him, He would reach out to a people who had not been His people. 

"Rise up, man, and go your way.  You have been healed because of your faith in Me!"  Jesus said as He took the man's hand and helped him to his feet.

Leaping and jumping, abandoning himself to the joy of his personal salvation, the man hurried back to town to live his life again.

Thanksgiving shows our hearts.  Did the other nine have a sense of entitlement?  Why did they not run back with humility and gratitude to find Jesus?  What is going on in a heart that forgets? 

God doesn't want our sacrifices -- the ones showing just how pious we are.  He wants us to be thankful.  We are to bring our tithes and offerings with hilarity to the altar, thankful for all we have to give back.  Joyful for all we have been given.  Dancing around the throne of grace, kissing the Son and giving glory to the Father. Forgetting ourselves.  Remembering His goodness, grace and mercy.

Who takes a gift without saying, "Thanks" anyway.


Thursday, July 19, 2012

PSALM 50 - Open The Door

Next, God calls up the wicked:

"What are you up to, quoting My laws, talking like we are good friends?  You never answer the door when I call; you treat My words like garbage.  If you find a thief,  you make him your buddy; adulterers are your friends of choice.  Your  mouth drools filth; lying is a serious art form with you.  You stab your own brother in the back, rip off your little sister.

I kept a quiet patience while you did these things.  You thought I went along with your game.
I'm calling you on the carpet, now, laying your wickedness out in plain sight."  The Message Bible, Vs. 16-21

"Those things you have done, and I have been silent.  You thought the I AM was just like yourself."  ESV, Vs. 21

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts."  Isaiah 55

Over the years I've had many conversations with those who feel they know God without Christ.  Many of them are really good people, maybe better than some of us Christians.  They say things like, "How could a loving God condemn me?  I feed the poor every Saturday."  "That is a pretty narrow view of religion, don't you think?  I know God sees what I do.  I don't need Jesus to be a good person."  Or worse:  "God helps those who help themselves."  "God is too busy to hear my puny prayer."  "God loves everyone and would never send a person to hell."  "I always follow the Golden Rule:  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  God would not condemn me since I am such a caring person."

But here is the thing.  Jesus says:  "Behold, I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with Me." Rev. 3:20
If you never answer the door, you remain locked inside of your own spiritual paradigm, thinking you know something about God because you have heard about Him from friends or listened to TBN once in your life.  That is not enough for God.  Don't quote the Ten Commandments as if you live them out, while your mouth is drooling the F-word every time you speak.  When lying is as easy as breathing, or you have been living with your boyfriend for the past few years because society winks at it.  God must, too, huh?  Pornography is not even under the mattress anymore.  Survival of the fittest is the rationale for screwing your friends and even relatives out of time and money.  But, hey, God is a God of grace, isn't He?  I haven't killed anyone.  I'm no pedophile.  Hell is for the really bad!  Church is passe.  The modern lapsed Christian doesn't need it any more.  Out on the lake with the boat.  Had too much alcohol on Saturday night with the peeps.  But, God in His heaven is winking at all of this, because, well, it's you.  He is a loving God.  And, well, your life's still going great, so He must not be wielding that old bat of His at you for the peccadilloes of your life.

The big mistake here:  We have thought that the great I AM is just like us.  Ew, boy.  And by His great grace we are not consumed.  He waits for us to answer the door.   To read His Word in an effort to understand Him instead of in an effort to get a pass on our bad behavior.  Knocking.  Knocking.  Hear Him?  Opening the door to Christ in order to gain a relationship with the Father is what God demands.  By the Holy Spirit He actually comes into us.  Lives in us.  This was the big secret of redemption into which the angels longed to look.  We now know that God wants to dwell with us so much that He sent His only Son to make that happen.  To diminish that grace by waving off the One Who knocks at the door is to laugh off the blood of Christ as unimportant and useless.  The highest offense to the great I AM.

By the grace of God, we can know how God thinks.  And, trust me, it is not like we do!  He understands the universe He created, down to the DNA "cities" that form everything in the world.  He is brilliant!  Creative!  Omnipotent!  Relational!  Intentional!  Our sin is an abomination to Him.  He cannot look at it, much less wink at its hold on us. 

I remember the very instant I asked Christ into my life.  A miraculous shifting that was palpable in my spirit and heart.  The Bible I had struggled to understand suddenly made sense.  I began to love people I had trouble even liking before.  Prayers were answered.  The light came on in me.  It seemed like opening the door to Jesus chased the darkness away.  Shined the spotlight on the dirty crevices hidden in my interior.  But I didn't hear Him say, "Now you clean up this mess and I'll come back in a few days (months, years, etc.) to see how you are coming along."  No!  He lives there now.  The Holy God of All lives in me.  Daily. 

One day a couple of years ago I was praying in the morning as the sun began to cast its first light through my bedroom window.  The streams of sunlight warmed my face as I felt His closeness to me.  I had just remodeled the condo I was kneeling and praying in, so the thought was on my mind about redoing a home.  My home.  His home.  Wanting this light shining on my face to be shining in on the place He dwells in me.  Clean and sparkling.  New paint.  New flooring.  Fresh and bright. A place where the Almighty enjoys reclining with me for conversation and a good meal.  "Help me clean it up, Lord.  Every cobweb, every dirty corner, every place You don't feel comfortable in me."  I still picture Him there when we speak together daily.  Take a broom each morning to the floor and Windex to the windows of my home.  I don't want Him to wink at the dirt, but to help me, by His power, to vacuum any residue of sin so that I sparkle. 

Now, if you don't see me "sparkle" today, I admit to my imperfections.  What I don't admit to is any lack of desire to have a clean dwelling place.  To understand and know my God.  To read His Word so that I know His heart.  To endeavor daily to think more like He thinks so I won't expect Him to wink at my sin....so I will know what He thinks is sin!  All this not because I want brownie points.  That was the whole point of His speaking of the sacrifices earlier in this psalm.  I want to please the One I love.  To think like He thinks.  Love what He loves.  Hate what He hates.  Do what I see Him do.  I take Him with me into whatever I am about.  He reads what I read. Watches what I watch.  Hears what I say and knows my thoughts.  Daily I pray to think more like Him.  Make His thoughts my thoughts.  His ways my ways.  I don't want Him to be like me. 

"For who has understood the mind of the Lord that we might instruct Him?"  But we have the mind of Christ.    1 Corinthians 2:16



Tuesday, July 17, 2012

PSALM 50 - Good Little Baptist Girl

Listen, My people, and I will speak.  I will testify against you, Israel.  I am God.  Your God. I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices or for your burnt offerings, which are continually before Me.  I will not accept a bull from your household or male goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is Mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.  I know every bird of the mountains, and the creatures of the field are Mine.  If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and everything in it is Mine.  Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?  Sacrifice a thank offering to God, and pay vows to the Most High.  Call on Me in a day of trouble.  I will rescue you, and you will honor Me."  Vs. 7-15

There was a time when I thought my God loved me because I was such a good little Baptist girl.  Being a  middle child, I have always wanted to please.  Obedience gained a pat on the head not only from my parents, but also from teachers, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.  I still love the accolades for doing something right or accomplishing a task well.  Tell me I am not alone.  We all want approval and acknowledgement.  One of the things I am most proud of in our children is that if we (or you) ask them to do something and they say they will do it, they do it.  We can forget about it and count it accomplished.  That is so commendable. 

Jesus told a story of two brothers and their father.  My amplified version:

One morning very early, Jacobi went to wake his eldest son who had been out drinking the night before and had a very bad hangover.  Drowsy and bothered by a throbbing headache, Simon rolled over and put his hand to his face to block out the early morning sun. 

"Get up, Simon," said Jacobi as he jabbed his son's knee with his fist.  "The vineyard is short of pickers today and you must help!"

"Wha...?"  Simon rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on the face of his dad.  Cotton-mouth and the foul odor of stale alcohol made even Simon nauseated as he ventured a reply.  "No!"

The son rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

Thaddeus was sleeping in another part of the house.  He is a good boy.  Doesn't drink, smoke, carouse...likes the pat on the head for being a pansy. 

"Wake up, Thad!"  calls Jacobi.  "I need some help in the vineyard today or the grapes will grow bad on the vines!"

Jacobi throws the covers from his son then prods him out of bed.  "Did you hear me?"

"Yes, sir!  I will."  Thaddeus, such a good boy.

Ah...Thad got busy.  Combing his silky beard took a little longer than he thought.  Then he had to text his girlfriend, brush his teeth, eat breakfast, get gas in the car......anything to not go to the fields.  But, hey, he was a good kid.  Didn't do all those bad things Simon did.  Dad would give him a pass because of that. 

But Simon cannot go back to sleep.  His father asked him to help.  That kept playing with his heart.  So he got his drunken body out of bed, threw on his work clothes (never mind the beard and the girlfriend) and went to the vineyard to save the grapes.  No big fanfare.  Not a word to Jacobi about how great he was to forfeit his sleep for the old man's vineyard.  Just knew he had to help out because he loved his father too much not to go.

It matters to God why we give to Him.  Why we obey.  Our Father doesn't need our sacrifices.  He doesn't eat them.  Nor does He drink the sacrificial blood given up to Him. His rebuke against His children was not that they did not sacrifice, but that they did it with the wrong heart.  So he likens the brothers to prostitutes and tax collectors and all the nice church people who give out of duty with no understanding of the heart of God.  If the one forgiven much is the one who loves much, it would behoove us to understand how much we are forgiven even if we are too good to be true.

It took life to show me that being a good little Baptist girl was not enough.  When good Baptist girls go bad, what then do they do?  How then can they be saved?  There are not enough goats and bulls to cover her when her exhaustive list of humble righteousness falls flat.  Precious the realization that "I don't drink, and I don't chew, and I don't go with the boys that do" is sacrificial baloney (or bull) if behind the abstinence there is no real understanding of the love of God.   He doesn't want my stuff.....He wants my heart.  If He has that, He has my stuff, too.  And even on a day when I say, "I don't wanna do that, Father," I am compelled from busyness or lethargy to get out of bed and do His will.

Monday, July 16, 2012

PSALM 50 - He Knows My Name

The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.  Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.

Our God comes.  He does not keep silence.  Before Him is a devouring fire, around Him a mighty tempest.  He summons the heavens above and the earth, that He may judge His people:
"Gather to Me My faithful ones, who made a covenant with Me by sacrifice!" 

The heavens declare His righteousness, for God Himself is Judge!
(Vs. 1-6)

Qara.  To summon by name. I just saw a video of quite an amazing thunderstorm in the desert.  God's very own fireworks display.  Nature is powerful.  Volcanoes.  Hurricanes.  Tornadoes.  Floods.  Tsunamis.  Wind storms.  All of these are loud, too!  Hard to miss.  Man has little recourse against the deluge.  With all of our technologies, the best we can do is "Get to a safe place!"

If God summons the earth by name, calling to her to obey Him in every respect, we best be on His side.  The word for God as judge means governor, ruling authority.  Not just that He is sitting on His pious throne in heaven waiting to wield a club against sinners, but that He is ensconced in power above all things to reign.  The Sovereign over nature and man.  It is He Who speaks to the universe and to the hearts of man.  He knows the stars by name.  Our Mighty God calls out to them in their orbits.  From morning to morning, He is delivering orders to each thing in the universe....and calling them by name. 

Never fear.  Our God comes!  To our rescue.  To our provision.  To our summoning Him by Name.  Our God comes!  Riding in a chariot of fire, fast and furious as an F- 5 tornado, turning heaven and earth upside down to accomplish His will on earth and in our lives.  How do we know this?  Any of us who have trusted Him for long know this by experience.  Why did we trust in the first place?  Because His Word promises us our Mighty Abba is Father and Source to those of us who have made a new covenant with Him by the sacrifice of His very own blood. 

"This is the new covenant I will make with them," declares the Lord.  "I will put My law within them, on their heart I will write it.  I will be their God and they will be My people.  And they shall not teach each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the Lord, "for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin, and I will remember no more."  Jeremiah 31

One day He will call me by my name.  "Look," He said.  "I have engraved you on the palms of My hands."  (Isaiah 49)  He will summon me before His throne as one who made covenant with Him.  As His child, adopted into His family, bearing His name.  I will not drop to my knees in shame.  I will not cower before Him as one without hope.  Face down, perhaps, but not out of fear.  With deepest reverence I will be there, covered in covenant blood, holding the hand scarred with my name.  Summoned by the Mighty One to give an account of the Magnificent Lamb slaughtered for me.  Nothing I can say about myself.  Any good thing I could conjure to speak of came from His abundant grace.  Every bad thing I could recount forgotten by His unfathomable mercy. 

"The one who conquers will be clothed in white garments, and I will never blot her/his name out of the book of life.  I will confess her/his name before My Father and before His angels."
Jesus, Revelation 3

Friday, July 13, 2012

PSALM 49 - Two Cents Worth

So don't be impressed by those who get rich and pile up fame and fortune.  They can't take it with them.  Fame and fortune all get left behind.  Just when they think they've arrived and people praise them because they've made good, they enter the family burial plot where they'll never see sunshine again.
We aren't immortal.  We don't last long.  Like our dogs, we age and weaken.  And die.
(The Message Bible, Vs. 16-20)

Happy Friday the 13th!  The message from The Message is sobering and could start the day all wrong except that it teaches about focus.  There is something wrong in the heart that envies the rich.  We all want to be comfortable and not to have to worry about money.  A friend of mine told the story of his work day yesterday.  He is an electrician and was working in a boom about thirty feet in the air when he noticed a newer model Toyota pull up into a nearby parking lot.  Out of the car stepped a nicely dressed woman who proceeded to get into her back seat and change clothes.  The next time she stepped out, she was wearing the trappings of a homeless woman and carrying a sign as she headed to the street corner to beg for money.  A couple of hours later she returned to her car, changed clothes once again, and drove off.  It's a job.  Making people feel good about giving to the poor.  I'm sure that is how she justifies it.  Perhaps the money she cons from well-meaning people pays her car payment.  Hopefully it feeds her kids.  Maybe it buys her drugs.  Who knows?  Maybe she lives out of her new Toyota.  Perhaps it was stolen.  But on some level her earnings are the result of a scam.

Jesus took a seat opposite the Temple treasury in Jerusalem and watched as people came by with their offerings to God.  Many rich people, with much fanfare, put in large sums of money in a show of piety and righteousness.  Others simply dropped from their earnings the tithe demanded of them by the Law.  The thing is, Jesus knew their hearts as they walked by.  Unaware that the God Who had made them was sitting on the other side of the street watching them give, they performed the function as normal.  Then she walked by.  Her husband had recently died.  She had nothing to give but the last two copper coins in the jar in her kitchen.  Those she clasped in her hand as she followed the rich and middle class Jews in front of her down the line to the box into which all put their alms and tithes.  No one else but God would have noticed her.  She was nobody giving nothing.  The coins represented a day's work for a laborer....a fraction of a cent.  Laughable really that she thought the pittance would somehow be of value to the church.  It would buy pretty much nothing to grace the golden interior nor buy any significant thing for even the poor of Jerusalem.  Why give it?  Jesus knew.  She needed her money, BUT she loved God more. 

Jesus couldn't take His eyes off her.  "Come here."  He waved His disciples over to the curb to sit with Him.  "Look at that widow,"  He said. 

They saw a widow.  Nothing more.  A little confused at the rapt attention she was drawing from Jesus.

"She just gave more than all of these people."

Oh, now they get it.  She looks like she has nothing but she's really rich!  "Wow!  How much did she give?"

"Everything she had."  Jesus has a half-smile playing on His lips.  "The last two coins.   She needed them to live on but gave them anyway."

Okay.  He lost them again.

"The others gave out of their surplus.  I love this woman's heart because she loves God enough to trust that even if she gives it all,  He will take care of her....but even if He didn't..."  Jesus is shaking His head at how amazing this is.  At the heart of the woman who loves God more than she loves her own life.  Actually.  No fanfare.  No, "Look at me!!!  I am giving it all for Jesus!!"  Just a widow walking by an offering box and giving,  then walking away.  But He saw her.  Knew her.  Admired her.  Praised her.  Showed her off to those closest to Him.  And she never knew it.

I am certain God took care of her.  There is nothing in the Bible that says what happened to the widow, but there are promises connected to the heart that gives back to God in reciprocal love.  The others?  He didn't speak of their hearts.  One way or the other.  The fact that this woman was willing to give Him everything was important to Him.  Would she have given it all had she vast wealth?  Don't know.  Would that have meant more to Him than her giving of her last two coins?  No, I don't think so.  It was why she gave, not what.  The humility and reverence in her heart that says money is not as important to me as He is. Had she had more, perhaps wealth would have gotten in the way of her devotion.  But that is not the way the story went. 

If money is so important to us that we will do anything to make it or keep it, it is an idol.  It can be wielded as a weapon, used in a scam, given for self-glorification or squandered in hedonism.  If we know it is fickle and fleeting, we will not attach our hearts to it so that we cannot let it go before death takes it from us anyway.  We will sow with it.  We will handle it lightly as we do all earthly treasures allowed to us by God.  For ultimately it is my heart He weighs, not the coins I put in the box.


Thursday, July 12, 2012

PSALM 49 - Billionaires and Beggars

This is what will happen to those who trust in themselves and to their followers who believe them. Like sheep, they must die, and death will be their shepherd.  Honest people will rule over  them in the morning, and their bodies will rot in a grave far from home.

But God will save my life and will take me from the grave.  (vs. 13-15)

I just read an article about a woman who took her own life with a drug overdose.  She was a billionaire.  Lived in the multimillion dollar mansion in which her dead body was found.  With the ability to purchase her own happiness, she bought the best cocaine available.  Probably in an effort to fill the aching void that is in everyone, rich or poor.  The God-shaped vacuum fashioned by a Creator Who wants us to desire Him as much as He desires us. 

Along with the article was one about a homeless man found dead in a park. Beneath some bleachers.  It wasn't clear how he died, but it looked as though he had been coughing up blood.  Perhaps drugs were involved.  Probably not the purest of drugs.  Maybe even the bad stuff.  All the transient had left in the world was in a shopping cart nearby.  Guessing it is now at the dump because his treasures would not necessarily be counted as someone's vast inheritance.

Both left it all behind.  Lay down in death to take nothing with them. Shepherded away by the Grim Reaper to a grave from which they will not rise if they did not acknowledge Christ.  It made my stomach knot this morning when I read these tandem articles.  Addiction to anything is a sign of a deep need to be fulfilled.  And rich or poor, that is a universal desire.  The outcome of addictions makes evident the fact that whatever one has stuffed into her soul to fill the void doesn't fit.  It is shaped for greater use.  Higher purpose.  There is no joy to me in thinking where these two might be now, without God, without hope.

I know the psalmist is most upset with the rich who lord their riches over others and use their wealth to oppress the poor.  They will have their day, is the argument.  If they trust only in themselves, they will have only themselves in the end.  And it will not be enough.  They cannot leave with all their riches and write a check to God to get out of hell at any cost.  Nor can the self-righteous, whose checkbook is all the good they have done for the world, with or without a relationship with God, present a list of their good and humble deeds and expect entrance.  Both are trusting in their own abilities to do what God has already done at great cost to Himself.

I watched in horror last week as a news story played itself out on television.  A gray-haired man in a dark suit, clutching a briefcase was sitting at a table awaiting the decision from a jury concerning an arson fire that had destroyed his multi-million dollar home.  He was a high-paid financier who lost much of his wealth in the crash of the banking industry.  It seems he had burned his own home down to collect the insurance or to keep from paying further mortgage.  Stripped of his income and his dignity, he sat awaiting the verdict. 

"Guilty."  We heard it read with him.

The man put his hands to his face, elbows resting on the defense table.  But....it was clear he slipped something into his mouth as he did so.  Moments later he took some Gatorade, I think, from his briefcase, lifted it to his lips and swallowed deeply.  What was too heinous to show further on television was the rigorous seizures that followed momentarily, as his face turned red and the man collapsed onto the floor.  He was dead.  Before he got to the hospital.  Judged himself guilty of the death penalty.  Nothing left for which to live although he had children.  Without the money which had defined him, he had committed arson and suicide. 

There is nothing in this life that is sure.  We cannot trust in another person and there is not enough money that it cannot be taken from us in an instant.  All is evanescent.  Nothing is permanent in this life.  All of us will fall short and disappoint others.  Even your own genius cannot be relied upon.  We are created to live another way.  It is not God's hope that He throw these people into the pit!  He has made provision for everyone to come to him.  The plan is, of course, brilliant, because it is complicated enough for us to search the Scriptures forever to understand the magnitude of its ramifications and design, but simple enough for a child to grasp.  It doesn't take great riches to earn.  The poorest are invited in. 

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes on (trusts in,  relies on) Him may not be lost, but have eternal life.  God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world guilty, but to save the world through Him. People who believe in God's Son are not judged guilty.  Those who do not believe have already been judge guilty, because they have not believed in God's one and only Son.  They are judged by this fact:  The Light came into the world, but they did not want light.    John 3:16-19  (italic mine)





Wednesday, July 11, 2012

PSALM 49 - "Occupy Psalms"

For He sees that even the wise die; the fool and the stupid alike must perish and leave their wealth to others.  Their graves are their homes forever, their dwelling places to all generations, though they called their lands by their own names.  Man in his pomp will not remain.  He is like the beasts that perish.  (vs. 10-12)

The second we appear into the world fresh from our mother's womb, we are assured of one thing.  We will die.  We will leave this world one day.   Sooner or later.  It is a constant that brings together rich and poor, smart and foolish, from every nation and every continent.  Funny.  We don't think about it that much.  We live like we will be here forever.  It was certainly not anywhere in my train of thought when I held my babies for the first time and wondered at their tiny fingers and toes. 

The psalm seeks to solve a riddle.  Why do faithful people have troubles and the rich get a free pass?  Sound like Occupy Psalms?  Think the answer is "spread the wealth around"?   Shouldn't God be showing His partiality to the righteous by how He treats them?  Those who turn their backs on Him because they have great wealth shouldn't have such ease in life.  They don't even know God!

The answer.  Death.  It is the great leveler.  Even if you have tall NYC buildings named after you, your eternal fate is the pit without Christ.  Even if you think you know enough to know there is no God, there is, and you will be like the dogs that perish without hope.  That is what you would claim, anyway.  Dust to dust.  Whatever one accumulates here and now will not go there when.  Some kid who doesn't know the value of a dollar will spend all your wealth when you die.  So, what is the point of trusting in your riches past your time on this earth.  "Do not gather for yourselves riches on earth where they rot and turn to dust, but gain heavenly riches that are never corrupted." Jesus. 

If the final weighing in on life is death, maybe we should be thinking a little bit more about it.  Nothing wrong with riches.  Lots wrong with loving them.  Money doesn't last.  Fame is fickle. Pomp is as fading as the evanescent things we become so proud about.  Earth is a type and shadow of the reality, which is heaven.  If you think about it that way, it is really stupid to spend so much of our lives investing in the shadow instead of preparing for the reality.  Feeling envious of those whose money buys them a modicum of earthly comfort and happiness is missing the joy of understanding that because we have a Father Who lives to be in relationship with us, we have everything we need for life here and there!  We may not be able to go to the cellar and run our hands through all the gold we have stashed in crates there or count the billions we have in Swiss bank accounts, but the reality is our Father owns it all.  And He can take it or give it at will.  To them or to us.  The thing  is, we know this fact.  And it should change our perspective.  If we have a need, we look to Him.  It is not as concrete as going to the cellar or looking under the mattress, but it is just as sure. 

When we get to heaven,  Christ will not ask about our commercial real estate.  Whether He has given us millions or not, we will be accountable to Him for our lives based upon our relationship to Him.  That should be what is most valuable today and in death.  That we belong to Him.  That He bought and paid for our adoption into the family of God.  God, the Father, takes care of His own.   All the way through.  From birth to death to life hereafter.  All is left behind on earth for us to gain the pearl of great price.

Monday, July 9, 2012

PSALM 49 - How Much You Got?

Hear this, all you peoples.  Listen, all who inhabit the world, both low and high, rich and poor together.  My mouth speaks wisdom.  My heart's meditation brings understanding.  I turn my ear to a proverb.  I explain my riddle with a lyre.

Why should I fear in times of trouble?  The iniquity of my foes surrounds me.  They trust in their wealth and boast of their abundant riches.  Yet these cannot redeem a person or pay his ransom to God - since the price of redeeming him is too costly.  One should forever stop trying!  So that he may live forever and not see the "Pit."  (Vs. 1-9)  Emphasis mine.

Anyone trusting in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like foliage.  Proverbs 11:28

Money is tight in our household right now.  My guess is that ours is not much different from others living in these tight economic times.  I just read in the morning paper that Mitt Romney was at a fundraiser in the northeast at the home of a billionaire.  Tickets to the function were $50,000 a person or $75,000 per couple.  An entire year's wages blown on dinner with Mitt.  I understand the importance of politics in our nation today, also.  But I had a hard time fathoming how one could get enough dinner guests with that kind of money together to raise millions...with an "s"... for the Republican Party. 

Last week we assessed our assets and it gave me a chance to fear.  Lucky me.  What if we live to be in our nineties?  Will we have enough?  One thing is for sure.  Bill and I will not be trusting in our wealth!  But we should also not fear.  Have to remember good old Belshazzar again.  For all his confidence in the next twenty years of his life, it ended abruptly a few hours into a great celebration of his wealth and security.  As Jesus said, I could gain the whole world and lose my eternal soul.  In fact, gaining the false security of wealth might make me miss my need for gaining my eternal soul.  Ernest Borgnine died yesterday at the age of 95.  He won an Oscar for his role in the film "Marty" in 1966.  Until then he was not a star.  In later years Mr. Borgnine put his wealth and fame into perspective when he said: "The Oscar made me a star, and I'm grateful.  But I feel had I not won the Oscar I wouldn't have gotten into the messes I did in my personal life."  Money doesn't make us happy.  Maybe just the opposite, because when it becomes an idol, it takes the place in our hearts created to be satisfied only by a relationship with our God.

Whether we try to gain our redemption with money or good works - an abundance of both - we are trusting in our ability to buy what is too costly.   We will never have enough of either to purchase our ransom from sin.  It costs a life.  And the Lord Who was willing to give His for us, is uninterested in our money or our self-righteousness, though they may be immense in volume and quality, if we think they will buy what He has already paid for.  It is easy to get caught up in the desire for money as a means of making everything all right.  Or to buy into the idea that in order to be righteous we have to have an abundance of charitable works that we can hang around our necks as a sign of our humility and worthiness.  But if that is what we trust in, we will always be in fear - that it is not enough. 

To be really rich is to know the One Who gave His Only Beloved Son as the ransom for us.  It covers everyone!  Rich and poor.  Big and small.  This treasure, which is above all treasures, cannot be bought!  So it doesn't matter how much I have.  I could give everything....even my body to be burned (I Corinthians 13) ...and it would be unnoticed if I don't recognize it is not my doing that brings my salvation.  I must forever stop trying to buy what has already been paid for!  Respond to the love that is necessarily behind such a trade-off.  Because, just as I cannot buy my way into heaven, I cannot buy my way out of the Pit.  Of course, that is what we are ransomed from!  And, according to Mr. Borgnine, the very thing we trust will bring us all we want just might take us to the very rim of the Pit itself.

So, as soon as that ugly fear raised its head last week, I chose to trust in my Redeemer.  He has always been our Provider.  Never has He taken His eyes off of us....even when we looked the other way.  His commitment to me predates my very earthly existence.  His love for me is predicated on the fact that I am His child by the blood of Christ.  I am a ransomed, redeemed and restored princess, daughter of the King of Kings, whose life remains in the hands of the Sovereign God of all.  Of course this cannot be purchased with our silly money.  Not thirty pieces of silver or billions of American dollars.  For it is priceless.

Friday, July 6, 2012

PSALM 48 - MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN

Go around Zion.  Encircle it.  Count its towers.  Note its ramparts. Tour its citadels so that you can tell a future generation:  "This God, our God forever and ever - He will always lead us.  (vs. 12-1)

The Lord will always lead you, satisfy you in a parched land and strengthen your bones.  You will be like a watered garden and like a spring whose waters never run dry.   Isaiah 58

Shoot!  I can't physically walk around Mount Zion this morning and experience the joy of looking at the stronghold of our God.  How cool would it be to see the actual buildings surrounding and erected upon His Holy Mountain?   From there, God directs the nations.  Decides their fates no matter how prosperous and never-ending their various regimes may look to the naked eye.  Remember Belshazzar's great feast celebrating the prosperity of Babylon?  The king had enough supplies for the next twenty years and a vast water system that would sustain him and his minions.  He was feeling pretty good about all he had accomplished for himself.  Too good, in fact.  He ordered the holy vessels from the Jerusalem temple to be brought to the feast so that he and his concubines could drink from them.  Oops.  God saw from His Holy Mountain and made a decision.  MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN.  "Your days are numbered because you have been weighed in the balance and have been found wanting.  So, your kingdom has been given to the Medes and Persians."  God wrote this on the plaster of the wall at the king's big bash, scaring Belshazzar so much that his hip joints shook and his legs gave way.  That very night his kingdom was taken by the Darius, the Mede.  Daniel's words to Belshazzar right before he lost it all:  "You have not glorified the God Who holds your life-breath in His hand and who controls the course of your life."

What I can do today is reflect on the Powerful God Who in this moment reigns universally and personally over me.  Nations do His bidding whether they know it or not.  History flows as He saw it before the before.  His prescience is inescapable as He leads world events to the climax He has already designed.  I am but a minute part of this flow, but I am, no less a part.  Designed also with purpose before the foundations of the world.  He will always lead me on.  God, Who began a good work in me, will be faithful to complete it in me. ( Philippians 1)  Because from eternity past and into eternity to come, He is preeminent forever and forever. 

Even though we walk through the valley  of the shadow of death or through the deserts of despair or abandonment, the Lord will always lead us.   In the bone-wearying stuff of life, He promises to strengthen us.  From Mount Zion He sends His warriors to cover us in battle.  From its ramparts God watches the battles and lifts His hand to say:  "Enough!"  From the city of our Great God commerce is driven, nations fall and rise, and wars are won and lost as He moves history around to accomplish His plans.  In other words, He is sovereign.  This is why we march our children around His omnipotence and say, "Look at our powerful God!  Remember He can do anything!  See that everything is held together by the Word of His mouth.  He is our God forever.  This great God will always lead you when you belong to Him!"

There is a river -- its streams delight the city of God, the holy dwelling place of the Most High. God is within her.  She will not be toppled.  God will help her when morning dawns.  (Psalm 46:4-5)  The water from this river is mine to taste today though I cannot physically go there yet. The water of life flows freely from the streams of that river and whets my thirsty soul, plumping my parched heart with its joys.  Though I cannot with my own two feet today march around the eternal city, I can see with my own two eyes and understand with my imperfect heart that He is there watching over me, the smallest and most unworthy of vessels, just as my God oversees the events that will draw this world to its ultimate close.  All things are under His care.  In His divine plan, I have a place to which He will lead me, always, forever and forever.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

PSALM 48 - The Heart of It

We have thought on Your steadfast love , O God, in the midst of Your temple.  As Your name, O God, so Your praise reaches to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with righteousness.  Let Mount Zion be glad!  Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of Your judgments!  (Vs. 9-11)

Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11)

On that day when the sky turned black in the middle of the afternoon and the earth quaked its disbelief at the death of the One hanging blood-soaked and emptied on a hillside cross between two thieves, something happened downtown in the Temple of the Jews.  Something crazy and amazing.  The inner Holy of Holies, the midst of the temple, its guts and most sacred sanctuary, was opened bare.  The ten foot veil tore in half, from top to bottom, exposing the place where God dwelt in Shakina Gloria.  Only the high priest, once a year, could enter this most holy room.  He had to be cleansed and made ready to perform His duties before his God.  Sacrificial blood preceded and followed the priest into the sanctum where God decided to forgive or not His people of their sins. 

"It is finished!"  cried the Lamb.  Then the earth quaked and hell cried out, for the enemy of our souls had lost forever his quest to keep us from our God.  Stripped of all his authority at the sacrifice of Christ, the evil one shrieked and convulsed.  For now the very name of Jesus was his defeat.  Released into the world was the privilege of daring to go behind the veil into the very presence of God, sprinkled once and for all with holy blood.  God, with His strong right hand, ripped to shreds our own imperfect righteousness and gave us His own. Traded places not only with us but with that which we sacrificed.  Lamb and sinner at once, we put it all on Him.  Finally done with self-righteousness and piety, the Father tore away the curtain that separates us from the Holy of Holies so we could stand in His presence redeemed and adopted!  It was violent.  Judgment became Mercy in earthshaking, blood-dripping, light-blinding power.  Jesus.  It was Jesus who bought us out of bondage.  It is Jesus who is still purchases our freedom with His Name.

The word for "midst" in this psalm is the Hebrew word for "bowels."  The inner most part.  The heart.  I love this.  When I go to my Father in prayer, in the name of my Savior, Jesus, I stand in the bowels of the temple.  The Holiest Place where God still dwells in incomparable light.  There I want to throw up my hands, or drop to my knees or dance til I drop!  My God has allowed me to enter His very heart and praise Him there.  Covered me in His steadfast love.  Showered me with grace.  Justified my sinfulness with His jaw-dropping mercy.  And....not only that....I am His kid!  I belong to Him now.  Should I not then just be a bouncing bundle of unbridled joy?  And my joy is multiplied to every nation and tribe on earth.  Doesn't matter that we don't speak the same language or eat the same food.  All are welcome by the blood of Jesus to partake of intimacy with the Father behind the veil.  That same strong right hand that delivered salvation to me will today reach out and deliver me still.  I am safe to pour out to Him my whole heart - from the depths of my own being - because He spared nothing to bring me into deep intimacy with Him. 

Saying His name today. Jesus.  Jesus.  Jesus.  Wanting to wear it with humility and wonder.  "Lord, Jesus, I am a daughter of the Father whose deepest desire is to bring the wonders of Your great love to the ends of the earth.  I am imperfect.  I have shamed You.  But my being right does not rest on my merits, but Yours.  Thank you that mercy triumphs over judgment because You are my righteousness!   Cover me today in the atoning blood of Your sacrifice.  And as perfectly as I am able, help me to declare Your praise to the ends of the earth!"

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

PSALM 48 - It Isn't Quite Finished

The Lord is great. He should be praised in the city of our God, on His holy mountain. It is high and beautiful and brings joy to the whole world.....God is within its palaces. He is known as it's defender....it is the city of the Lord All-powerful- the city of our God! (vs.1-3,8)

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.....and I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It was prepared like a bride dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now God's presence is with people, and He will live with them, and they will be His people. God Himself will be with them and He will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death, sadness, crying or pain, because all the old ways are gone." The One sitting on the throne said, "Look! I am making everything new!". Then He said, "Write this down, because these words are true and can be trusted" The One sitting on the throne said, "It is finished." Revelation 21

Just returned home from a few days in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Lake Tahoe where the majesty of God's creative powers can hardly be disputed. There is Lake Mono - 760,000 years old, blue like London topaz with stalagmites bursting through its surfaces. Lake Tahoe holds enough water that if it were to be dispersed over the California land mass, it would be over a foot deep all over the state. 1.4 million tons of water evaporate from Lake Tahoe every day, but it only shrinks by one-tenth of an inch. Azures, shades of emerald, white and black granite, purple wildflowers all sparkle and play like prisms in the sun. Pine-scented air and the sounds of rushing waterfalls emptying into the Truckee River invigorate body and spirit. So when I read about God on His holy mountain I have some small context this morning. It is difficult to look up at Mt. Whitney's peak and not think, "How great is my God!"

From the beginning He has chosen to live with us. Eden was perfect. God walked with us there until we chose to corrupt perfection. Then He dwelt in the tabernacle in the wilderness until Solomon built the Jerusalem temple. Destroyed in 70 AD, it has not been rebuilt. But God's plan all along was to live somewhere else. To be in a place where He was not isolated nor relegated to a specific building. His plan was to live in us! The psalmist didn't know this secret when he wrote this song, but we do! Our God dwells in us by the Spirit. We are the temple...God tabernacling in our own tents! Our God is within the palaces we have become. Anywhere He is is great! Wherever He lives there is to be joy felt by the whole world. Our access to Him is unprecedented and bold because He still dwells with His children. He has never left His creation, but it groans for the perfection it once knew. We all do. We live with innate homesickness for what we know we lost along the way....God's ideal.

He has not forgotten what it was He wanted in the first place - to live with us in purity and joy. He has a plan and it is big! To start over! Clearly there will come a day when He looks at the whole scheme of things and declares it finished. Our God will be ready then to make a new universe where He is able to walk with us, touch our eyes and wipe them free of tears, our hearts to make them free of pain and our bodies to give them life forever! To laugh and talk with us....to walk beside the streams of heaven and to share with us the fruit of its trees from which we can freely eat. To revel in our raucous praise and accept our humblest gratitude. Joy unspeakable in His great presence for eternity as we live with Him in the New Jerusalem, the city of our Great God! If I were a skeptic, I would still take my chances on heaven just to be sure I didn't miss out on such never-ending glory. I would be sobered by God's promise: "These words are true and can be trusted!".

Great is our Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God and in the temples we have become!