PSALM 72 - Cliff Dwelling

God, give the king Your good judgment and the king's son Your goodness.  Help him judge Your people fairly and decide what is right for the poor.  Let there be peace on the mountains and goodness on the hills for the people.  Help him be fair to the poor and save the needy and punish those who hurt them.

May they respect You as long as the sun shines and the moon glows.  Let him be like rain on the grass, like showers that water the earth.  Let goodness be plentiful while he lives.  Let peace continue as long as there is a moon.    (Verses 1-7)

A heart like His.  Kings need it in order to reign in benevolence and wisdom.  In praying for David and his offspring from Solomon to Christ, the Messiah, the temple worshippers sang this song.  Jesus, of course, fulfilled all the hopes for a King Who is fair, powerful and in touch with the needs of those whom He rules.  It is He to Whom this psalm looks in ultimate hope.  It is He we now know to be its fulfillment.  Today we just might march over the fiscal cliff here in the United States as our Congress tries to come to some agreement about our financial welfare.  Politics as usual.  No benevolent king.  No Senate and House on their knees before the God of the Bible.  Just everyone doing what is right in his or her own eyes, it seems.  But what should we expect?  The kingdom of this psalm is higher than our earthly political arena.  It is everlasting, and God, Jahweh, is its ruler forever.  It is to Him we look for equity, equanimity and  justice. 

Still I pray today for our president and Congress.  They are not arbitrarily in Washington D.C. on this auspicous day.   God wasn't surprised by the elections that placed these men and women over us.  Whether they know it or not, our government officials need God.  His intervention into their hearts as well as their minds is the only way His will can be done.  And we, as Christians, must trust His will to be accomplished on earth as it is in heaven.  Not just in higher government, but in the governing of our own lives.

Today, I want to be concerned about what matters to God in my life.  In the governance of my will, my activities and my choices.  My God cares about the poor and needy.  So must I be.  If I'm not giving away some of my wealth to them, I'm not using it the way He wants me to.  I shouldn't depend upon the United States of America to do my giving for me.  It's my responsibility to care for those with less.  What I do with my thoughts matters to God.  How I rule over my mind.  What I let it think.  Judging others without condemnation.  Seeing their lives and wanting to make a difference because I know He loves them.  Not looking at their shortcomings or addictions and casting people off because they aren't righteous.....like me....who is nothing without the grace of God.  I need, like the king, to seek goodness.  Not my own.  Not much there to draw from.  But to conform to Christ daily, asking Him to rain living water down on me like showers that water the earth.  To grow me deep into the soil of His marvelous love so that I begin to think like Him, not like the religious or secular world.  I want a heart like His to give me a life like His in a world gone amok.  If I cannot govern my own life, how can I expect to impact the world? 

It has never been God's best for us that we trust in our kings.  There have been good ones and bad ones for centuries on centuries.  But it is interesting Jesus is called the King of Kings. The ultimate Benevolent.  He rules over the nations, but also directs the end of the ages just as He spoke the world into being in the first place.  So, lest we go over the cliff with our government, thinking our lives will be permanently messed up by their decrees, we must remember Who knows the future and ultimately holds it in His hands.  Jesus is still concerned about the same things that moved Him when He walked this earth.  Government wasn't one of the biggies.  People were.  Touching lives one at a time was.  Disciplining ourselves to walk a new way -- governing our own selves so we become proper citizens of heaven.

A new branch will grow from the stump of a tree; so a new king will come from the family of Jesse.  The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon that king.  The Spirit will give Him wisdom and understanding, guidance and power.  The Spirit will teach Him to know and respect the Lord.
Isaiah 11


 

PSALM 71 - The Road

Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens. You have done great things, O God.  Who is like You?  You Who have made me see troubles and calamities will revive me again. From the depths of the earth, You will bring me up again.  You will increase my greatness and comfort me again.   (Verses 19-21)

When I was young, I thought life was a straight line.  I would go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, mother them with great wisdom and care, help them to begin and sustain the whole process again.  I, of course, wanted to do everything right so my life would be blessed and unencumbered with grief or error.  It didn't quite go that way.  I'm guessing no one's does.  "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen" can be played on pretty much everyone's interior I-pod.  All my children have noted upon entering the adult world that it just isn't as fun as they thought it was going to be, this making of all our decisions and navigating our own stories.  At some point in time, we are all laid low by something.  It's what we do at the bottom -- in the depths of the earth -- that matters. 

A close friend of my daughter's longed for children before she finally conceived and bore a son near Christmas eight years ago.  Shortly afterward she had a daughter.  Life was full.  Christina's dreams realized.  But her son, Judson, began to have difficulty walking, keeping his balance, when he was only a toddler.  In less than a year, Judson died of a genetic horror, Krabbe's disease.  Life plummeted.  Sorrow overwhelming.  Christina and her husband looked to Christ.  Even then. Walked through, still walk  through, the calamity hand-in-hand with the One Who has used this amazing couple to raise awareness not only of the disease, but of the grace of God to bring us up from the depths of the earth back and comfort us.  Nothing, of course, can bring their son back, but the Lord has shown their family a way to navigate the pain with purpose.

Life can change in a sudden moment.  A friend of mine was returning from vacation with her family in two separate cars.  My friend was in one car with one son and her husband and other son in the car ahead.  While my friend watched, her husband and son were killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver.  How do we live through these things?   Heart attacks, strokes or accidents unforeseen when daylight dawned have taken someone away by sunset.  We have seen this.  It is life.  And it makes us rethink and reroute our journey. 

The comfort for we who know our God is that He isn't above it all looking down, chin in hand, just waiting to see how we will react.  Psalm 119:73 says:  Thy hands made me and fashioned me.  Fashioned literally means to set up, to make firm, to establish or to prepare.  O Lord, You have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I rise up.  You understand my thoughts from afar.  You scrutinize my path and my lying down and are intimately acquainted with all my ways.  Psalm 139.  So what do we do with a God Who allows our winding road?  The understanding is that He walks it with us.  Uphill and downhill.  The journey is purposeful, not arbitrary.  In the moment, none of it is comfortable and we almost always question His purposes.  If we are so granted, we might understand in hindsight what it was all about, but that isn't the point.  The Author and Finisher of the Book is also its main character.  Always involved in the action.  Always the hero on the white horse.  Never leaving His children at the bottom, disconsolate.  Powerful, our Father can take even the deepest catastrophe and bring victory from it.  There was a cross on a hill one Friday afternoon that proves it.  Even He didn't walk the earth without the cringing consequences of His calling.  But, as with our Savior, the depths are never for nothing.  And the deepest anguish never forever.

Of course, ultimately our God will bring us up from the dead.  Into His presence.  The happy ending to all of our stories.  The culmination of all our struggles.  For the joy set before Him, even Jesus endured the cross.  That joy?  Us.  Union with Him forever in the actual garden from which Eden was imagined.  Then we will understand as we are understood and all will make sense.  Everything that was wrong made right.  We will see the greatness of God's plan, not just for us, but for all of mankind as the tapestry it is.   We will see how all things have worked together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes (Romans 8).  Until then, we trek.  With Him.  Up and down.  Holding onto our Father's strong right hand.

 

PSALM 71 - Ah, The Wrinkles And The Sagging.....

But I will hope continually and praise You yet more and more.  My mouth will tell of Your righteous acts, of Your deeds of salvation all day long, for their number is past my knowledge.  With the mighty deeds of the Lord God I will come.  I will remind them of Your righteousness, Yours alone.

O God, from my youth You have taught me, and I still  proclaim Your wondrous deeds.  So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me until I proclaim Your might to another generation, Your power to all those to come.  (Verses 14-18)

Despite the sagging and wrinkling of the "getting old" experience, there is a richness of experience that can only be accomplished by living.  It's a crying shame I didn't know when I was twenty what I now know about ....well, everything.  At twenty, I was married.  That's a scary thought now, at my current ripe old age.  I knew relatively little about being a wife, except I could cook and clean.  But Bill and I had to learn to relate to each other as the adults we barely were (though he was a much older twenty-four). Teaching high school, having children, moving around from state to state, crushing into each other's families, and having to be financially creative in order to live challenged us to trust our God.  On top of that were the hurts inevitable in living life.  Pressures from our world had increased to include all that happened to our children in their worlds.  Every life has in it quite enough drama for which it needs to rely on a strength greater than can be mustered alone.  Everyone must reach to something at some point, or points, in this sojourn on earth.  It matters to our particular story what we grasp. 

I can't remember a time when I didn't love Jesus. As a little Baptist girl growing up, I  heard (and heeded, as a good Baptist) the salvation story every week at least once in the church service.  I remember going forward time and time again because the ache in my heart to please Him could only be eased by confessing at the altar my need for Him.  I realize now it was a call to something more.  In high school I went to a retreat in Waco at a women's university there.  Alone in the chapel I felt God call me to a higher commitment to Him.  By the time I hit college myself, however, I had huge questions that took my mind past the walking the aisle experiences of my childhood.  But God knew my rebellion wasn't a way of carte blanch sinning -- an excuse for doing all I knew was wrong to do.  I really wanted to know the answers to the questions I thought maybe I was the only one asking.  Ignoring my hubris, my God navigated my confused little heart toward Truth.  And that has been our way, God and me.  I don't understand and run.  God chases me down and explains it...or salves it.  Too many times to number.  His reasons for loving me, past my knowledge.

I could recount all the issues of my life the past sixty years and all would know His particular greatness in my story.  We have walked together through deaths, tornadoes, hurricanes, births, travels, immense loss, unfathomable personal triumphs, unspeakable joy, gut-wrenching sorrow, prodigious forgiveness and mercy, soul-destroying confusion and foot-stomping victories.  In all of it, I have seen Him.  Sometimes in front of me....sometimes behind.  Usually frantic in the moment, though I have learned my God is faithful.  In my little life.  But that counts, doesn't it?  To be able to live out before our children, spiritual and begotten, a life that can be traced back to the faithfulness of God?  Not my own sweet victories.  There are truly few of those.  However, even in my squirming imperfections in the midst of chaos, God's hand in calming the storm shows even greater.  Grace abounds where even my sin looked to be an impossible mountain to overcome.  It's my life.  My one story.  Those who read it must see how, from start to finish, Jesus alone gives it meaning.  No victory without His having led the charge.  No sorrow borne alone.  No rebellion so deep He couldn't penetrate it.  No joy Jesus didn't share. 

My life isn't a perfect picture of His power, but I hope He is perfecting His grace in me.  Don't look to me for the rulebook -- the "Christianity for Dummies" -- though that would be an appropriate title.  You can't plan for the things that knock us down or lift us up in our surprising lives.  There are no rules on how to navigate a father being jailed for pedophilia.  Trust is all we have through much of our journey.  Parents die.  Sometimes children.  Jobs are won and lost.  Relationships jettisoned.  Money gone.  The future is insecure and iffy.  So the reader of my story won't find me always doing everything right.  It's a messy plot line with spikes and nadirs.  My God writes it.  The Author and Finisher of it.  If, at the end of my life, He is what the generation to follow me sees, that will be enough to warrant my lines and graying hair (I only assume it's gray...haven't seen the real color in years).  I will not have succeeded on any level except by His might....His alone.  Daily I acknowledge the great mercy of my Mentor.  This morning again, I trust Him to help me finish this story well.  My God is glorious in it because without Him I can do nothing.  Don't even want to.  But with God, all things are possible!

You have been borne by Me from before your birth, carried from the womb.  Even to old age, I am He, and to gray hairs I will carry you.  I have made, and I will bear.  I will carry and I will save.  Isaiah 46

 

PSALM 71 - Shepherds, Mangers And A Lamb

For You, O Lord, are my hope, my trust O Lord from my youth.  Upon You I leaned from before my birth.  You are He Who took me from my mother's womb.  My praise is continually of You.   (Verses 5-6)

Lambs are always born in mangers or out in the countryside.  Hopefully the shepherd is standing near, assisting and rejoicing in the new addition to the flock.  So it isn't any wonder it was to shepherds the Father first announced the birth of His Lamb.  Had the scribes and Pharisees had the prescience necessary to distill the prophecies concerning Messiah, they might've understood He was to be born a flawless sacrificial offering for sin.  I have heard this Christmas over and over again that the birth in the manger was about Christ's lowliness, which I guess is true.  But the bigger picture God was constructing must have been conceived before He spoke the world into being.   The manger wasn't about lowliness so much as it was a picture of what our Jesus came to be.  A Lamb.

Abraham and Isaac set the stage for Messiah.  The only son of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, was placed on an altar in the wilderness at God's command.  The father raised the knife to kill his only son.  But the angel of the Lord cried out to him:  "Don't kill him!  I know now you would not spare your son, your only son, in your reverence for me!"  And there was a ram already tangled in the bushes, prepared before time, to be the replacement on the altar.  It was our painting of His plan.

In exile in Egypt, the Jews were slaves to the Pharoah.  Their days were spent in hard labor, but their nights evidently were more interesting because they multiplied so much the Pharoah decided to kill their babies.  Moses was spared.  Grew up in royalty.  Murdered an Egyptian and fled.  He was a very old man when the Lord burned before him in a desert bush.  Commanded he take the children of Israel out of Egypt.  Stuttering forth with rod and an iffy brother, Aaron, Moses met with Pharoah and pleaded their case.  Plagues and natural catastrophes culminated in the death of the first born of everything.....except what was sprinkled with the blood of a perfect lamb.  Passover.

The Lamb was always Jesus.  The picture of it always the portent of His coming.  God made the entire world to be taxed just to get Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem where He was prophecied to be born.  Angels in their glory first told shepherds.  Not because they were lowly.  But because they would know where to find a lamb in a manger.  The Lamb.  Perfect in every sense.  Born of the seed of God.  His Son now begotten, covered in flesh.  It would be thirty years before the connection was made.

At the river, John, the cousin of Jesus, was baptizing those who knew they needed to repent of their unclean ways.  A washing away with water of their filth.  But on one miraculous afternoon, Jesus comes to the river to be baptized.  Not for repentance, but to fulfill the plan of God so that we understand we die as He did and are raised with Him to new life.  The waters into which John dipped Jesus swirled with the sinfulness of mankind.  Every evil thing imaginable coursed through its waters.  The Cleanser took that sin even then and purified with living water the murky depths of its rebellion.   "Behold, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world!" John the Baptist proclaimed.  And the heavens opened to Him as the Spirit, Who would later baptize those who believe into Christ, flew to His shoulder in the form of a dove.  "This....This is My Beloved Son.  I am so pleased with Him!"  (emphasis mine)  The cry of the Father over His little Lamb.

Passover many months later.  After all the miracles of nature, the many healings, deliverances and teachings, Jesus had one last meal with His friends.  There was no mention of lamb being served that night.  No need for one.  God's ageold drama was climaxing.  The story of the lamb now taking form.  Wine an offering of His blood.  Bread sopped in it as picture of the sacrifice soaked in the bloody offering.  The last time death on an altar was demanded.   This Lamb's holy blood was what the story is all about.  From beginning to end. 

A risen Lamb, still carrying the scars of His earthly altar, strode into the throne room to the eerie stillness that gripped heaven after no one was declared worthy to open the scroll God held in His right hand.  A scroll that recorded all that was to happen next.  After Calvary.  Because that part of the story was finished.  No one in heaven knew what was next.  No one worthy enough to even look.  But there was a Lamb standing there.  It looked as though it had been slain.  The Lamb went to the throne of His Father and took the scroll from His hand.  Heaven fell down to its face and sang a new song to Messiah then:

Worthy are You to take the scroll and to open its seals, for You were slain, and by Your blood you ransomed the people of God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and You have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth!"

Then I looked, and heard around the throne...the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands and thousands, saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive  power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!" Revelation 5

And the Lamb opened the scroll and ushered in the age in which we live.  Ever slain, ever risen, He sits at the right hand of the throne of God.  His name still Lamb.  Always and forever.

Lowly manger?   Maybe.  But the only place to put a tiny sacrificial lamb.

PSALM 70 - Aha! The World Didn't End

Let them be turned back because of their shame who say, "Aha!  Aha!"  May all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You!  May all who love Your salvation say evermore, "God is great!"
(Verses 3-4)

It feels good to be right.  There are few of us who can be correct in silence.  Usually want acknowledgment of some sort that we are the brilliant one.  Today, so close to Christmas, I'm thinking how hard it must've been for Jesus to be completely right about everything, having made all of it, and to have been accused over and over again of blasphemy and worse.  Messiah was supposed to be born a king in the line of David.  Cradled in royalty instead of straw.  Should have been raised to rule instead of being reared by a carpenter in lackluster Nazareth.  Aha!  He's says He is the Christ, but no good comes out of Nazareth.  Aha!  This man can't be Messiah.  He is the bastard child of Mary. One broken person at a time, Jesus changed lives.  He heard the dying, the crying and the sighing of His creation and reached out to touch those formerly untouchable.  Aha!  He is a glutton and wine sipper!  No matter the blind man can now look upon the high priest in all his velvet splendor spitting venom as he demands to know how this poor man now sees.  Aha!  The blind see by the hand of Beelzebub!  This Jesus is possessed of a demon!  Messiah met merchants defiling His Father's House, selling pigeons and hawking sacrificial paraphernalia.  In this place where the Spirit of God dwelt in glory, bird poop mixed with money changing and stank to high heaven.  "You shall not make this house a den of thieves!"  And over went the kiosks as people and animals fled the scene.  Aha!  This man must be destroyed!  He gets away with anything because of the people.  The man's been dead for four whole days.  Lazarus stinks by then.  Body already in decay.  Jesus came too late, it seemed.  "Lazarus, Come forth!" made the body obey its Lord.  Aha!  We now must kill this Jesus or the whole world will believe a lie!  Arrested, beaten and bloody, stretched out upon the death machine that nailed Him to our sin, soldiers laughed about the sign proclaiming truth, He is the King.  "Come on down from there, kind sir!" they mocked.  "Surely You can save Yourself."  Aha!  This man is bleeding still Who said that He is God.  "Father, please forgive them.  They are dumb as sheep."  Aha!  He was  not Messiah, for, look, He's dead already.  Blackened skies, dark as midnight, showed the world its Light extinguished.  Shaking earth and opened tombs.  Aha!  It is finished.

There was a woman at the Sychar well, despised and shamed by choices other better women hadn't made.  He knew her inside out.  Could He be Messiah?  A thirsty Jesus chooses her to be the first to know, I AM He with Whom you speak.  Aha!  He is the Christ, friends, come and see!  She had no money left, the woman in the crowd.  Unclean and bleeding for many years, her lonely life in ruins.  Jesus was her last hope.  In faith, this woman touched the robe of the One Who gave her life.  Her destiny met Him eye to eye.  For such a time as this.  "Your faith, dear woman, has made you whole."  Untouchable now white as snow.  Aha!  Only God could heal her wound.  A funeral procession passed by with an only son carried aloft.   Grieving widow lost it all and wailed it to the crowd.  "Rise up, young boy!" the Word demanded.  With fresh breath in his lungs, the son beheld His Savior as the mother stood in awe.  Aha!  This man must be God.  Who else could do these things? 

Though demons fled and blind eyes saw,  the scoffers raised their fists.  Scripture says Messiah won't look at all like this.  Don't follow Him, you simpletons!  This Jesus is a charlatan.  Confusion mixed the minds so much the hearts could not be softened.  Those who touched the Master's hand knew differently, it seems.  But as they watched on Calvary, some said they were misled.  Aha! The high priests gloated as they put Him in a tomb.  Stay by to make sure His body is not somehow exhumed.  Not boulder, Roman soldier or royal edict could keep our God bound in funeral clothes.  Aha!  He walked out on His own leaving angels to proclaim:  "He is risen.  He's not here!"  Aha!  He's Who He said!

Centuries haven't changed some things.  Skeptics still laugh at the us for believing in the cross.  For thinking that our Jesus arose and lives today.  Just like the Mayan calendar, the cynics chide, the coming back of Jesus is a ruse and we are duped.  It's been two thousand years! Come on, get a grip!  Aha!  We're smarter than to believe this Jesus myth.

But what I know, this Christmas season on the day the world should've ended, is I have life because of Him.  History bears out His story.  I didn't bypass my brains to believe the good news.  But just as with the scribes and Pharisees, I will not argue into the kingdom those who say Aha!  And rather than their shame I pray that when He passes by, they will know the time of their visitation and that their well is dry.  I have something the skeptic can never fully realize.  Joy.  Great is my God Who became flesh and lived among us, and I have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1).  One day He will return and all the earth will bow, and things under the earth and in the sea.  Everything will say: "Aha!"

Then I saw heaven open, and behold, a white horse.  The One sitting on it is called Faithful and True...His eyes are like a flame of fire and on His head are many diadems , and He has a name written that no one knows but Himself.  He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which He is called is THE WORD OF GOD...On His robe and on His thigh He has a name written,  KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS!   Revelation 19


 

PSALM 70 - Being Poked In The Eye

Let them be put to shame and confusion who seek my life!  Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt!   (Verse 2)

...he who touches you, touches the apple (pupil) of His eye.   Zechariah 2:8

What goes around comes around.  I've heard that a million times.  But that is what the psalmist asks for here.  Turn back on my enemy what my enemy is trying to do to me.  Is that a fair prayer?  It seems to be, especially in light of the fact David is asking God to take charge.  He isn't interested in being judge and jury himself.  Let God put the enemy to shame and confusion.

Twice I have had damage to the cornea of my eyes.  Once, and don't judge me here, I had eyeliner tattooed around my eyelids.  I live in California, what can I say.  The numbing compound got into my left eye and burned it so badly I had to go to the opthamologist the next day.  He chuckled, said his wife had her eyes tattooed also, and gave me some medication to ease the absolute misery of the burn.  It took a couple of days to go back to normal, but oh the pain.  The second time, don't judge me here, either, I stuck a brush bristle in my eye.  How does she do it?  That is what you are asking.  I know you by now.  But that is not the point - that, being my propensity for self-induced pain.  It hurts to have something stuck in your eyeball!  It makes the victim mad - fighting mad! 

I am learning that when I am oppressed by those who would hurt me, the best solution is to trust God for any comeuppance that might be appropriate.  I belong to my Father so whoever hurts me, hurts Him.  Like any great parent, my Father understands the situation from a higher perspective than I do.  That means sometimes when I think I have been seriously wronged, He must show me I am the one in need of correction.  But when that's not the case, watch out!  I have seen Him turn things around on those who have seriously wronged me, and it wasn't pretty nor did I particularly enjoy watching it.  Not overnight, of course.  But in time, He took charge because the offender made my Father mad, too.

I changed schools in the ninth grade and left my best friends on the other side of town.  We moved on up, so the kids I was used to were not so well-heeled and snooty as the ones I then found myself in the midst of.  However, there was a boy I had grown up around in my freshman class in high school the next year.  Our families got together fairly regularly when we were in elementary school as our mothers were long-time friends.   We will call him Harry.  Harry was in my home room along with the entire football team.  They all wore their letter jackets even in Texas September when the temperatures still hover near 100 degrees.  There were no assigned seats that I knew of in home room.  But Danny Hoover (not his real name), half-back extraordinaire, came in one particular morning and saw me sitting in what he moments later decided was his desk.  "Make like a sewer and get the @#@# out of here," he said, sweat beading on his forehead, dripping hubris like anointing oil all over his upper lip.

Of course, I moved.  Good old Harry said nothing.  Pretended he didn't know me so well.  Completely ashamed, I headed to the bathroom at lunch and ate mine there.  For several days.  I thought I was what Danny called me.  My family asked me questions at dinner with only harumphs for answers. 

"What is wrong with you, Kay?"  my father asked a few days later.  "You aren't yourself."

"Nothing."  How could I tell even him what someone said to me.

"Yes, there is."  Daddy put his arms around me.  The killer response.  So I blubbered the entire story into his shoulder.

My daddy was mad.  Like someone had stuck his finger into Daddy's eye on purpose.  "This boy will apologize to you tomorrow!"

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  Daddy went Braveheart, and it was a little scary.

"What is this kid's name?"  Daddy demanded. 

"Danny Hoover," I replied.

My father proceeded to call every Hoover in the phone book until he found the one with a kid named Danny who went to my high school.

"Your son will apologize to my daughter tomorrow or I will know the reason why!"  Click.  Done.

A rather drooping Danny Hoover was waiting for me at my locker the next morning.  Still the jacket without the flair.  Head down.  Mumbling at first.

"What did you say?"  Forgive me, but it felt good.

"Sorry I said that to you yesterday."  Not much bravado, but my young lady heart had healing poured over it.

I know more about who I am now and Danny wouldn't have had the same power over me today, though I'm sure it would hurt....my slapping, him, I mean. (Ahem)  More importantly, I know I am a child of the Most High God.  With that comes the responsibility of acting and reacting like He would have me to.  That means leaving retribution and justice up to Him, knowing I am my Lord's beloved. I go forward in forgiveness, dropping off those who would not pursue good with me, and keep on holding Abba's hand.

PSALM 70 - When Evil Raises Its Ugly Head

Make haste, O God, to deliver me!  O Lord, make haste to help me.   (Verse 1)

Jesus says,  "Surely I am coming soon."  Amen.  Come, Lord Jesus!   Revelation 22:20

I don't think there is a way to make sense of evil.  We know it prowls about in our world.  Sometimes, like last Friday morning, it raises its ugly head and devours us.  And we don't know what to say.  Our hearts ache each time we inhale.  We exhale the loss in a stream of grief for those parents and loved ones whose children, wives and lovers lay on a cold classroom floor for hours after evil mixed his blood with theirs. They couldn't even hold them.  And where was God?  I've heard this now so much from those who want the answer from a Christian.  Some sincerely.  Some in mocking skepticism.

Some say this holocaust happened because we left Him out of schools.  Because we all have guns.  That must be it.  Kids these days watch violence on television and play video games with weapons used to wipe out the image of their enemy on the screen.   Mothers daily kill their preborns before they ever even get to kindergarten. We have desensitized to death. Our mental health system is terribly broken.  Why didn't someone reach out and understand the kid in whom a seed of rage was planted and grew into full bloom on Friday?  All interesting perspectives with some truth.  But none explains the carnage.  We all want to direct our outrage and, with some, maybe before we've had a chance to let it settle for a bit.  Just cry with those who weep over what we cannot explain.

I took a walk on the beach Saturday morning and pounded out the grief with each step I took.  I needed to clear my response.  Make it my own, unfiltered by the thoughts of others.  I live in this world and I want to know what my God would have me think.  Where was He?  He, of course, is everywhere.  We can't throw Him out of schools, either.  I took Him there with me every day I taught. We have free will, though, lest we be puppets dangling from the ropes God uses to manipulate our responses.  Love must be chosen.  And shown.  Christ became flesh and dwelt among us, and we slaughtered Him in a bloody massacre on a Friday afternoon.  So, He gets it.   God saw what we saw and feels what we feel.  Don't doubt it.  And one day He will arise and crush evil forever.  He is coming back to judge and all eyes will behold it.

This world is not my home.  I am appointed once to die.  My days are numbered, as He knows them all.  Psalm 139.  It just might be that running through heaven in this moment are 20 little children who are swimming in the river of life that flows from the throne of God.  Death is not for our Father what it is for us.  The Lord of All waits with open arms to receive His children like I wait for mine when they drive up to my door. With the anticipation of big hugs.  We are left bereft.  They, released to joy.  And evil?  The young man whose story we don't know yet.  I must leave his recompense to the Judge of all.  But I fear he isn't experiencing the peace he thought his death would buy.

While I linger here, I believe God showed me what I, as a child of His, must do.  Maybe all of us.  Be salt.  Be light.  In a way we've never been before.  The only way to accomplish that is to get closer to the our Father.  To cluster as chicks beneath His wing.  To listen to his heartbeat.  To care about what and who He cares about.  One person at a time.  I can't be saltier alone.  My light is dim to burned out without it being a reflection of God's exquisite brilliance.  I  must know Him in a deeper way.  Like Jesus, I need to know the hearts of people I meet every day.  One person at a time.  Because it is hearts that must change.  Herod killed all the children under two years old in Bethlehem without a gun.  Mass murder isn't about weapons.  It's about hearts.  Choices.  Rage.  Power.  Evil.  We can't annihilate wickedness.  Only God can....and will.  But we can overcome evil with good one circumstance, one person, one day at a time until we are called home as those precious babies were on Friday.

In the meantime, our hope is in Christ Who will one day burst through the clouds when the Father stands up and says:  "Enough!"  Wickedness will drown in its own blood and so shall we ever be with the Lord.  Maranantha!  Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

PSALM 69 - Alexander And Answered Prayer

I will praise the Lord with a song.  I will magnify Him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs.  When the humble see it they will be glad. You who seek God, let your hearts revive.  For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise His own people who are prisoners.
Let heaven and earth praise Him, the seas and everything that moves in them.   (Verses30-34)

My good friend, Deb, said something I will never forget.  "If I didn't believe in God, who would I thank for all the great things that happen in my life?"  She and I would miss the joy of extending our personal gratitude to our genuinely benevolent Father.  Never mind the world blames Him for all its ills.  What about all the inexplicable beauty and abundance of the universe?  My grandson, Alex, at Christmas is, to me, the epitome of what our gratefulness to the Father should look like.

Last year Alexander was five years old.  His Christmas list was exact.  Not much expensive to purchase, but he knew what he wanted.  I doubt he was expecting all of it.  In fact, I would venture to say that by the time Christmas morning arrived he'd forgotten much of what he'd requested a month or so before.  He and his brother, Nicholas, trade off being Santa and passing out gifts on the Christmases we get to have them with us.  Each boy is really good about making sure the gifts are evenly distributed.  Not grabbing at what is theirs, but waiting a turn to open gifts to them.  But here is what we all had to love about our Alexander.  Each time he tore the carefully wrapped paper off a gift as if it were the only one he'd ever received, threw the ribbon across the room and finally glimpsed what might be in the box, he just shouted and danced and thanked and thanked and thanked whoever gave him such an amazing present.  The gift, like a trophy, was  held up for all to see and rejoice in with Alexander.  That boy knows how to  make Santa smile.

Answered prayer is like that.  Unwrapping perhaps something we forgot we asked for, even.  I got an incredible answered prayer this week that concerns my writing.  A rare gift that I am humbled by more than I can say.  It set my feet to dancing and made my heart sing!  I hope my God knows I feel like Alexander at Christmas.  I know my joy makes Him smile.  I'm confident my joy was on His mind when He answered the prayer...my blessedness and His glory.  Thankfulness is a reflection of His character.  It is an acknowledgment that I am heard by a powerful God who is attentive to my call. Like Alexander's, my expressed gratitude is my way of telling my Father He is wonderful for caring.  That I just am amazed I got what I wanted when I unwrapped the thing my Father had hidden behind His back to surprise me with.  It's not hard to see why the Lord would rather have us jumping and skipping and praising Him more than He wants a somber sacrifice. 

Every mother and father wants to hear they are doing well with their kids.  My children tell me I'm the best mother in the whole world on a regular basis.  I know that's not true, but I love hearing it.  It means they know I'm trying to be the best.  But my heavenly Father is the hallmark of parenthood.  And I know He loves to hear us tell Him what a great Father He is.  We let Him know we know that He's amazing as we dance around, shouting out in incredulity that He heard what we asked for and gave it to us.  The gift of answered prayer also builds the faith of those around us.  Revives their trust in Christ.  Allows them to persevere in hope.  Points us all to the fact that Jahweh is sovereign over everything in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and He will use what is in His power to rescue the needy and those of His who are trapped by the enemy.  Our God brings us gifts no one else could purchase.  Finds a way where this is no way.  And in giving Himself for us has shown that nothing is impossible for those who believe.

Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it.  Shout, O depths of the earth.  Break forth into singing, O mountains,  O forest and every tree in it!  Isaiah 44

PSALM 69 - Stuck In The Mud?

Deliver me from sinking in the mire.  Let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.  Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me.
Answer me, O Lord, for Your steadfast love is good.  According to Your abundant mercy, turn to me.  Hide not Your face from Your servant, for I am in distress.  Make haste to answer me. Draw near to my soul, redeem me.  Ransom me because of my enemies!   (Verses 14-18)

Stuck?  Sinking?  Feel like you are being swept along in the flood waters with no recourse?  Fallen so deep into a pit that you can't see daylight?  Life offers us in varied measure deep wells and damning deluges.  Grief, loss, death, betrayal, abandonment, financial ruin...just to name a few.  But some of the things which keep our feet in the miry clay are not that obvious.  Stinking thinking might be one.  Listening to a tape recorder, installed by the enemy, looping in our heads agreements we have made with him that are lies. Ways of behaving that we excuse because "that's just the way I am."  Being comfortable in our shame because it allows us to continue sick or abusive behavior.  The inability to move forward in relationships or careers because we are quaking with fear.  All of these plunge us into deep waters, too.  Captured and carried along in the same old rising tide.  Drowning in a swirling river or despairing in the rancid pit.  Either way, we are inert.

First we have to know our condition.  I think, in this world, there are so many who have succumbed to the notion they are doing just fine as they drown that we might be numbed to the knowledge we need to be saved from anything.  Salvation is an "old timey" word that doesn't carry much meaning.  People are partying in the pit and dancing on its rim without recognizing it for the hell it is.  So, what then?  Rehabs are overflowing with souls overwhelmed in the flood or trying to come up for air from the depths of their captivity.  On some level there is ultimately a tipping point and we are out of control.  Desperate.  Needing a hand to reach down and pull us to safety lest we perish. 

It is no surprise to me that the most successful rehabilitation programs are based on calling on God for His help.  Dr. Gerald May, in his book ADDICTION AND GRACE, said that after all the years he worked with addicts, none truly was set free without the obvious working of God's grace.  No progress until the Lord chose to look on the one who cried out and offer His mercy to her captivity.  There is no pleading our righteousness.  That won't fly.  Just mercy, Lord, mercy!  If You don't save us, we will die.  We must be ransomed from the enemy who made us slaves.  Redeemed.  Bought back.  It will cost us as it cost Him.  God will do something to make it possible for us to swim to shore or climb out of the pit because His love is unfathomably deep and His mercy beyond understanding.  But we need to know we need salvation.  That Jesus Christ is our ransom, paid in full.  We have been redeemed from the flood and rescued from the pit by His substitutionary death.  And we must be willing to leave the pit!  We can't drag our old life into the new.  It must be left there and we have to trust that the One Who swam to give us a hand can lead us to drier, higher ground.

If you really want deliverance, stop whining about how hard it is and start crying out to the only One capable of pulling you out of the mire in which you are stuck.  Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved!   Romans 10

 

PSALM 69 - When Heaven Went To Hell

For it is for Your sake I have borne reproach, that dishonor has covered my face.  I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons.
For zeal for Your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.  When I wept and humbled my soul with fasting, it became my reproach.  When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became a byword to them.  I am the talk of those who sit at the gate, and the drunkards make songs about me.
But as for me, my prayer is to You, O Lord.  At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of Your steadfast love answer me in Your saving faithfulness.   (Verses 7-13)

Nicholas, my grandson, was sitting in his classroom across from another boy he likes very much.  They were discussing 12-21-12. The day the Mayans declared the world would end.  Nicholas's classmate was concerned about the event.  Wondering what that meant for him, personally.  Nicholas tried to assuage the fear of the end by saying he wasn't worried because he was going to heaven. 

"How do you know that?" queried his friend.

"Because I have Jesus in my heart," Nicholas averred.

"I don't have him in my heart.  I haven't done that," answered the fearful classmate.  "Does that mean I will go to hell?"

Ooops.  The discussion went to hell.  Heaven was Nicholas's hope.  Hadn't thought about the alternative on his birthday.  Nicholas came into the world on 12-21-01.  Going to heaven would be a much better trip than Disneyland to celebrate the occasion.  Couldn't imagine going to hell instead.  Also couldn't imagine telling his friend he would go there.  "Maybe." 

Another classmate was listening to this conversation.  He is a friend of both boys, but was offended that Nicholas would tell their friend he was going to hell.  It all blew up in my grandson's face.  All he was trying to do was comfort a friend with his own comfort.  Instead, the reproach of the cross became Nicholas's also.  It has all worked out.  The mother of the boy in question is a fabulous mom with a great understanding of what happened.

But....it made me think about the challenges we Christians face now and our children will face in the future in a world that would rather hear about heaven than hell.  Pluralism, hedonism and the smearing of moral values makes being a Christian unpopular.  More and more we will bear the reproach that Christ Himself bore if we dare to expose darkness to the Light.  Christ spoke the truth and for it, the religious leaders dragged Him into secular courts so that all men chose to kill Him rather than put up with the heresy of His proclamation to be God, the Son.  In a world where we kill our babies in wholesale fashion and dump their little bodies into trash cans, where we make wrong, right, and justify it by our own hubris and where "do what feels good" is the motto of the day, we should expect reproach for believing there is a God in heaven Who came to earth to save us.  Jesus was not political.  Not a good man or a great moral teacher.  He came into the world to save us from our sins.  If we don't acknowledge our sinfulness, we don't understand our need for salvation.  Can't comprehend why there would even be a hell.

While the Bill Maher's of the world crack jokes about Christians and mayors and govenors strike His name from Christmas, we know this:  We pray to a God Who hears us, loves us and saves us.  When we, as Daniel, bow and pray in the face of ridicule and rage, we aren't simply being religious.  Our God is powerful to save us because of His great love.  Oh, they sadly miss that.  Those who would laugh Him off.  His neverending love is the pearl of great price.  It is the one thing we cannot live without as it covers us in this world.  Rather than caving to the ideology of our craven world, we can say with David:  But as for me, my prayer is to You, O Lord. 

PSALM 69 - Someone Besides Santa Is Watching You

Save me, O God!  For the waters have come up to my neck.  I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold.  I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.  I am weary with crying out.  My throat is parched.  My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.....

O  God, you know my folly.  The wrongs I have done are not hidden from You.

Let not those who hope in You be put to shame through me, O God of hosts.  Let not those who seek You be brought to dishonor through me, O God of Israel.   (Verses 1-3; 5-6)

It matters to God how we endure the struggle.  And it matters to others who are watching us.  I know that in many of my trials my handling of them hasn't been a pretty sight.  Waters up to my neck, my feet kicking and as I gasp for breath I accuse God and man for my calamity.  Victimize myself as I cry....instead of cry out.  Oh, yes.  I have done this.  I have walked over the rim of the pit and fallen into mud so thick I couldn't step out of it.  Weary with the fight, I have given up.  And I sat there, parched and hopeless, waiting for my God.  I will not hide this fact from you or from my Father.  I have been a complete mess.  You probably have, too.  Even if you won't admit it.

So there are the two problems.  We are all messes.  Broken.  In need of deliverance and salvation.  Either we own up to it or we play like we are all that.  However we handle our own carnality and propensity for sin, the world is watching us.  Because we say we have a Savior Who changes our lives.  Because there is a standard by which we claim to live.  Other Christians judge our relationship with Christ this way, too.  Some of them cannot take the honest reality that we are still human and make mistakes.  We are then set up to be super-human instead of sinners in need of a Savior.

As a maturing child of God, I must be aware that I am surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who are judging God by judging me.  When the flood waters come, will I drown?  If I do, will I still rely on Christ to turn it around for me?  Or will I shake my fist in His face and rue the day I was born?  Will I pretend I am not struggling?  Wave at those watching my struggle and say, falsely, that this doesn't even hurt?  What standard of truth has that set for them when the mud is thick and the waters too swift?  Will their hopes be dashed because I didn't show those who have just trusted our God that I am imperfect in the flood but He is not?  The point is, we can't save ourselves where there is no foothold.  We have to be rescued.  It is God we wait for, not our own self-righteousness.

My children watch.  My friends and neighbors are looking out their windows.  The church is judging my relationship with Christ by how I do in the hurricane.  Was my faith a crock?  Did I stumble right into that pit designed by the enemy for my destruction?  I pray for a walk that others can follow.  It hasn't always been so.  God knows my weaknesses and failures.  But they have instructed and informed my choices today.  What I want is for them to follow me as I follow Christ..not follow me over a cliff.  I am all of Christ that some know today.  My hope in Him should be contagious.  My life foster faith instead of failure.  And if I trip and fall, I need to admit it.   Get up and go forward again instead of lying there in the mire bemoaning the fact I didn't get it right.  Those watching me won't get it right sometimes, either.  They need to know my God still loves me...and them.  That He gets the hose out and washes me down, chastises my stupidity if need be, then sends me back out to try again to trust in a way that makes Him proud. 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  Hebrews 12

PSALM 68 - I've Looked At Clouds From Both Sides, Now

O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God!  Sing praises to the Lord, to Him Who rides in the heaven of heavens, the ancient heavens.  Behold, He sends out His voice, His mighty voice.  Ascribe power to God, Whose majesty is over Israel, and Whose power is in the skies.  Awesome is God from His sanctuary, the God of Israel -- He is the One Who gives power and strength to His people.  Blessed be God!  (Verses 32-35)

(God) Who rides the heavens to your help, and through the skies in His majesty.  The eternal God is a dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.  And He drove out the enemy from before you.    Moses in Deuteronomy 33

We need a cloud to guide us.  A vapor which rests on us when we are to be still.  A puff of ancient wisdom which moves us forward from our comfort zone.  We need a God Who knows what was before the before -- in the ancient times when there was no universe -- and what is in our moment of wanderings.  Humans have no real prescience, just a history book to see the mistakes and fortuitous victories of our forerunners.  But today, in my own busy life, I need His cloud.

God used the heavens to make His presence known to the trekking Israelites.  If they were to move camp during the day, a cloud went before them into the desert.  Should the Lord decide to decamp at night, a pillar of fire led their way.  The procession was protected from potential enemies by the Presence they followed in their journeys.  All the Lord had to do was to speak to the circumstances and they submitted.  But He isn't as arbitrary as some might think.  When Pharaoh was finally convinced by all the plagues to throw the Israelites out of Egypt, God reasoned why He decided to take them around the long way.  The shorter route would've led them through the land of the Philistines, who would surely fight against their journey.   God said:  "I don't want the people to change their minds and run back to Egypt because of a war."  So, it's not like God isn't thinking about our way.  Judging where to take us because He knows us so well.  Even knows ahead of time the circumstances to which He must speak.

Yesterday in my prayer time I was talking to God about a prayer request I have on the table before Him.  It appears to me that nothing is going on in relation to an answer.  I cannot know, really, what God is doing.  I must wait beneath the cloud of "stay put."  But He reminded me that doesn't mean He isn't doing anything because God goes before me to create all the possibilities and sure things I haven't walked into yet.  The Almighty has ridden the clouds since He spoke them into being.  Has imparted some of His radiance since He said to the surface of the deep,  "Let there be light!" and there was.  Sitting in splendor above it all, our majestic Lord watches all of time unfold at once before Him.  Understands the scope of our small history.  What it's all about.  And plays it out before us and in us.  God stepped into His own history when His Son, Jesus, began forming in the body of a young Jewish girl.  The seed of the Almighty mixed with human flesh.  The Word become man to live among us.  Not the rumbling fiery God of Mount Sinai upon whom no one could look this time.  The cloud took on form and showed Himself to us.  Though the bloody death of the Messiah looked like the end of hope, Jesus got up from the grave, left the sweetly scented wrappings of His anointed burial all neatly arranged in a borrowed tomb and forever changed the way the Father speaks to His children.  The Holy Spirit set upon the world in the season of Pentecost.  To whoever wills there is now a way to hear the voice that once thundered in the heavens.  The One Who spoke from the clouds now speaks from the Father's throne.  The Word made flesh now indwells those who are His very own.

So sing, nations!  There is a God in heaven Who avails Himself to man!  Emmanuel, God with us, rides the heavens in His glory and will come again in the clouds to receive us to Himself!  Shout for joy, that the Almighty Creator of Everything sanctuaries in His people to save them from their enemies and to strengthen them for the journey!  And still our God rides before us into all we cannot see and makes a way where there is no way to create our personal history.  And underneath it all, in every circumstance and through every stormy battle, there are the Everlasting Arms, open, bidding us abide in the warmth and safety of their embrace!  Blessed indeed be my God!

 

PSALM 68 - Little Old Me

Mount Bashan is God's towering mountain.  Mount Bashan is a mountain of many peaks.  Why gaze with envy, you mountain peaks, at the mountain God desired for His dwelling?  The Lord will live there forever.  God's chariots are tens of thousands, thousands and thousands.  The Lord is among them in holiness as He was at Sinai.   (Verses 15-17)

The Lord came from Sinai and appeared to them from Seir.  He shone on them from Mount Paran  and came with ten thousand holy ones, with fiery law from His right hand for them.  Indeed He loves the people. (italics mine) All Your holy ones are in Your hand, and they assemble at Your feet.  Each receives Your words.  Deuteronomy 33

Towering over the smaller mountain, Zion, are the peaks of the great Bashan range.  God made those mountains also, but chose to live at Zion.  God Almighty can choose.  We mortals can fight about that all we want, but it doesn't change the fact.  The Sovereign God can do what He wants.  And He also chose little Israel to be His people.  Why?  Because.  God took the smaller and called it great.  As the evening dusk paints the snowy peaks of Bashan pink and golden, the smaller mountain is in the shadow of its grandeur.  But Zion doesn't need the sun because its light is God.  Jealous, Bashan brags of its height and drinks in the morning sun to shine on the horizon in its grand hubris.  But God didn't chose Bashan.  Its glory, God-given, is fading and temporal.  Mount Zion is forever.

Before his death, Moses blessed the Jewish people.  He began by reminding them that God took them through the desert, passing by mountains of great height on the way.  Accompanied by His host of thousands of holy angels, the Lord God took them through the wilderness.  Driven by His choice to love this vagabond group of wayfarers, the Lord showed them a way to live.  Different from the rest.  Then gave them a land in which to dwell.  Jealous, the greater nations even today are jealous of God's picking of the tiny nation of Israel.  They will be so angry finally that Armageddon will bathe their lands in blood. 

The problem for the other mountains is God's love for Zion.  And His plans and purposes for all who are His children.  It bothers them that in all their majesty they were not picked.  It only makes sense to choose the most beautiful place in which to live and the mightiest army with which to fight.  Why would God seem to pick the insignificant for His glory?  Why, indeed.

Jesus.  The child of a young virgin, born in a manger.  His ancestors?  Rahab, a harlot.  Ruth, a Moabite woman.  Bathsheba, the woman David took from Uriah in an adulterous affair.  Common people.  His lifestyle inglorious.  His death ignominious.  Then suddenly the common became glorious because Almighty God chose to save us with a resurrection so blinding it burst through a sealed tomb and blazed across time and space to bring salvation to anyone who would believe.  If that is not enough, Jesus chose me.  Insignificant and unworthy.  Now His holy one, I am in His hand.  My life narrowed down from many others more lovely and more righteous.  For some reason, God said, "This one's Mine."  I know it makes the other mountains scratch their heads.  They would never pick me for their team. It's folly, really, that I should be called a child of God.  His choice doesn't necessarily make sense.  But, indeed, He loves me.  And I will spend eternity in Zion sitting at His feet and listening to His words.  And God's mountain is big enough for everyone.

Not many are wise from a human perspective, not many powerful, not many of noble birth.  Instead, God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong.  God has chosen what is insignificant and despised in the world -- what is viewed as nothing -- to bring to nothing what is viewed as something so that no one can boast in His Presence.    I Corinthians 1
 

PSALM 68 - He Puts Up With Us

O God, when You went out before Your people, when You marched through the wilderness, the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain, before God, the One of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel.  Rain in abundance, O God, You shed abroad.  You restored Your inheritance as it languished.  Your flock found a dwelling in it.  In Your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy.  (Verses 7-10)

Don't you think it's interesting that God went the children of Israel through the wilderness and into their promised land, God's inheritance according to His covenant with them?  I do.  God with me in the triumphs.  That I get.  Thundering before me with mighty angels carving the way for me to a victorious life.  That I understand.  But trudging with me through my wanderings.  Putting up with my complaints.  Providing though I whine it is not enough.  That is beyond the hearts of the pale idols others serve.  My Lord lives in the dusty, dry and barren places with me until I get to water in abundance.

Moses had to argue with the Lord for Him to make the choice to trek the forty long years with his stubborn people.  At first He wasn't about to:  "Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey.  But I won't go up among you lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stubborn and stiff-necked people."  Further, God told the people:  "If for a single moment I should go up with you, I would consume you."  Ouch!  That scared the mass of people so much they mourned and stripped off their jewelry.  Unadorned they humbled themselves before God.  Though He promised mighty angels to go before them and protect them, Moses wasn't about to start out with these people God made him lead out of Egypt without the power of God to guide them.  Moses was smart enough to know God Almighty made Pharaoh let the people go.  Not Moses. 

A friend of God.  One who has intimate conversations with Him.  Moses dares ask to see God's glory.  Personally.  Not with frogs, locusts or bloody rivers.  God shows Moses His goodness as He passes by when Moses hides in the cleft of a rock.  It is that goodness that causes God to change His mind about putting up with His children in their wilderness.  And, oh, it wasn't pretty. 

Eventually, His people entered their promised country where God rained down abundance.  Even as His kids languished in the wilderness thinking they would eat manna forever, God called it time.  But He never left them.  God went through it all with them.  His Presence guiding them every day into, through and out of the sandy hot desert.  Because He has a personality and character, God took their ups and downs (some major downs, here) and marched through with them to the end.

In a wilderness?  Thinking you are alone?  Our God is familiar with the solitary places where our faith is tested and our souls are dried up.  Just as He was with the Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace, walking around in their hell, Jesus is with us mingling His glory with our ignominy.  Nothing can separate us from His love, remember?  Not nakedness, tribulation, distress, persecution, or famine or danger or the sword.  Not one thing!  The One Who was willing to come to earth to walk His own solitary way to the cross will never leave us or forsake us.  Even if we step into a hell of our own making.  As David said, "If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there!" (Psalm 139) 

What is Jesus after on this journey He willingly takes with us?  Restoration. Plumping up the languishing heart in giving, by His goodness, what we need in order to have abundant life.  I am near speechless as I think about the kind of love that sweats out my salvation with me.  The kind of benevolence that sees the life I will live on the other side of the desolation I might be in and weathers with me driving sandstorms and parching sun in order to bring me to the oasis He knew was there all along.


 

PSALM 68 - He Rides Through The Desert

God shall arise, His enemies shall be scattered, and those who hate Him shall flee before Him!  As smoke is driven away, so shall You drive them away.  As wax melts before fire, so the wicked shall perish before God! But the righteous shall be glad.  They shall exult before God. They shall be jubilant with joy!

Sing to God!  Sing praises to His name.  Lift up a song to Him Who rides through the deserts.  His name is the Lord!  Exult before Him!

Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in His holy habitation.  God settles the lonely in a home.  He leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious dwell in a parched land.    (Verses 1 -6)

David is quoting Moses in the first verse.  As the children of Israel set out across the desert on their way to the land promised them by God, the presence of God led their way.  The ark that held the covenant of the Lord with His people would be carried ahead of the Israelites.  It departed three days before the nation moved forward under the cloud of God's presence.  Whenever the ark set out ahead of them, Moses would say:  "Arise, O Lord, and let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee from before You."  And when the ark rested in a place, Moses would say:  "Return, O Lord, to the ten thousand thousands of Israel." 

"Rise up from Your throne to help us, O God.  Lead us on, our Father.  Show us the way.  Clear the path before us as we walk in this world.  Defeat the enemy who would have our souls, our lives, our destinies.  Then, Lord, return to us because we can't live without You.  Don't take Your Presence from us because our joy and our rightness and our peace are all wrapped up in You."  My version.

The children of Israel followed a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to walk through the desert.  Before them, the Lord God rode ahead, blistering along to the next place He had ordained them to land.  Sing to the One Who leads the way!  Who fights our battles and clears our paths.  Sing with all your heart to the One Who gave us His righteousness in exchange for our filth and rebellion!  Who makes right all our wrongs because He chooses to.  A very uneven arrangement.  His life for mine.  But by that, and that alone, I am one of the righteous ones.  As if I'd never sinned!  A child of the Living God.  I shall be glad - jubilant with joy!

If that were not enough, my Father takes care of me.  Watches over me from His holy home.  Fathering the fatherless and protecting the most vulnerable of us as He involves Himself in our lives.  We are rich with intangibles like peace, joy, faith, hope, love and self control.   Favor and purpose follow us and lead us.  Living water pumps through us until we overflow.  Or, at least that is the plan.  That we have mouths open to the filling of our beings with His goodness.

The rebellious, however, are parched.  Thirsty for other waters.  Eschewing the rich flow of goodness that comes from only One Well.  There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of other places to get a drink from inferior fountains.  The taste at first is sweet, but the body eventually rejects the quaff that can't quench real thirst.  All along, mouth dry and soul withering, they look on the fountain of Life and growl at its promises to plump and feed the spirit.  Laugh at the naivete of our clinking glasses while they languish in their desert.  We must hand them a drink because we are no more worthy of the luxury of this water than they.  The only difference is that we took the cup from His hand and drank and drank and drank.

Oh, come to the fountain where a Father awaits.  Arms outstretched and available to all who are fatherless and lonely.  All who need to know the way through the desert.  Our God still moves through our Saharas sweeping them clean of traps and schemes of the enemy so that we can walk through it to claim His promises for us.