Thursday, January 31, 2013

PSALM 75 - Ah, Silly Little Ant


At the set time I appoint, I will judge with equity.  When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars.  I say to the boastful, “Do not boast,” and to the wicked, “Do not lift up your horn; do not lift up your horn on high, or speak with a haughty neck.”     God  (Verses 2-5)

Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.   Proverbs 16:18

 
The little ant is going about his business of traveling the road from the grassy area of my lawn toward my house where he and his tiny buddies want to explore the wonders of my kitchen cabinets, foraging them for easy food bits and perhaps even a chocolate dessert.  He doesn’t know I’m watching him until his little ant feet get right up to the door.  My shoe is in the way of his forward progress, so he endeavors to step around it in his determination to get what he wants.  I move.  My foot once again in the ant’s way.  The little guy doubles back.  I move again.  The tiny insect is now mad.  For a moment he stops to look at my Nike staring him down.  The head of the tiny ant rotates upward to see the ultimate goal of climbing the mountain that is me.  I’m guessing he counted some cost, but it didn’t take the ant long to scramble over the tip of my shoe and begin trekking up my leg.  Many obstacles slowed the progress.  Body hair, clothing.  It took the determined little guy hours to reach my ear.  Up on his hind legs at the rim of my earlobe the insignificant insect yelled at the top of his voice:  “Move!  You’re in my way!”

I laughed then.  With my finger and thumb I could, of course, squish the ant into nonexistence. Stupid little thing thinks he can tell me what to do and where to be.  That ant’s garish pride will be his undoing because there’s no way in the world I’m going to do what an insect of his size and intellect tells me to do.  Kinda wish he hadn’t been stupid enough to think he could order me around because we all know what I did.  Scratched my ear and pulled out a dead ant.

We ants have a problem.  It’s telling God what to do, where to be and how to think.  When He could squish us in a moment.  Light years of wisdom lie between us and our Creator.  He sees everything at once – past, present and future.  It is He Who keeps the entire universe in balance. So isn’t it obvious why our pride insults Him?  How ridiculous it is for us to have his ear only to order the Lord of all to “Move!”  This ant believes he has a better grasp of the situation than the One who could destroy it in a moment.

I think what is confusing to some is they are allowed to get away with, for now, flipping God off as they go about doing what they want.  Such heinous things go on all over the world on a daily basis that were I God, I don’t think I could stomach it.  How does He watch us make laws that affirm as good what He has called sin?  Shouldn’t God annihilate us individually for our own preened pride as we go about breaking His heart as well as His commandments?  No one is good….no, not one. No one understands.  No one seeks for God.  All have turned aside.  Together they have become worthless.  No one does good.  Not even one. (Romans 3)

Because only God is good.  Knowing Him – loving Him – is the only possible way we can achieve honor.  For the little ant to become like the human, understand how one thinks, know what motivates one, to love and respect the distance between itself and the higher being.  To pay homage to that difference in deference to the will of the human over the will of the insect.  I would, personally, protect an ant who loved me like that.  An ant that crawled the distance to my ear to proclaim: “You are much greater than I.  Please have mercy on me.”

Tinier, so much more obviously infinitesimal, are we before God than are ants to us, it is reasonable for Him to expect our respect for His prowess, prescience, wisdom and power.  But we tend to flip our hair back, raise our chins and proclaim our own greatness in a manner that insults His very throne.  Our only remedy from the squishing we deserve is grace.  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. (Romans 3)

So, fellow ant, rejoice with me today in His mercies, renewed every morning.  Dance around your particular ant hill exclaiming the riches of God’s grace toward you.  For not only does He not destroy those who are His, He dances with them.

 

 

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

PSALM 75 - Our Father

We give thanks to You, O God.  We give thanks, for Your name is near.  We recount Your wondrous deeds.   (Verse 1)

The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.  Psalm 145:18

The word (rhema) is near you, in your mouth and in your heart - that is the word of faith which we proclaim; because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.   Romans 10

When Heather, my oldest, was a toddler we had a play date with a little boy from church.  He came, with his mother, to our house mid-morning and stayed for grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  "Mommy," said Heather as she munched her lunch, "can I have more Kool-Aid?"

"That's not Mommy!" said  her playmate, indignant that she should call me by his mother's name.  Then the boy pointed his finger toward his mother sitting across from him at the table.  "That's Mommy!"

"No!" cried Heather.  "My mommy's name is Mommy!"

"No!" he responded with great fervor. "My mommy's name is Mommy!"

What's in a name?  When it comes to someone as precious to us as a mommy, pretty much everything.  It means comfort, safety, warmth, wisdom, unconditional love, provision, power.  To a kid, Mom and Dad are life.  To this day, when my kids call me Mommy, I melt.  I know what it entails when they use that term.

Abba.  Father.  Daddy.  His name is near, ringing through the darkest and brightest places of my heart.  Yesterday my mind wandered back (not a good direction!) to things it had no business wandering to.  There was my Father.  His nearness in warning, yes, but also in truth.  Standing there in the center of the path I was about to roam.  I would have to go past Him to continue my thoughts.  I love Abba.  I have forged a way around Him before and it broke both of our hearts.  His name, and all it means, kept my feet walking in the right direction. 

Also yesterday (I need Him pretty much with every breath) I was concerned about procuring a property for a client and felt like I might have blown it for her.  "Please, Father, give her this place despite the ignorance of my words."  She got the place,and, as it turns out, my words were actually turned for good.  It was helpful that I spoke them. 

Like a child crying out in the night after a bad dream, I call out the name of my God Who is near.  He comes because He knows the sound of His daughter's voice.  Because Abba loves me with unfailing, everlasting, unconditional love.  God is never far from His kids.  And we all get to call Him by His name.  Starting with the very first whimper from our newborn mouths:  "I believe that Jesus came to die for me and was raised from the dead for my eternal salvation. Because of that, I make Jesus my personal Lord and Savior."  The God of the universe hears that prayer from foxholes and mansions, ghettos and suburbs, from the powerful and the weak, the sinner and the religious zealot.   He will go to any hell or facsimile of heaven when His name is cried out from a desperate, believing heart.  You see, my Father loves to hear His children call Him Abba just like I love it when my kids say,  "Mommy." 

"I'm right here, baby,"  I coo in the dark when the dreams are more real that reality.  "Mommy's right here." 

"I will never leave you or forsake you, " says my Father as He cradles me in His arms.  What's in His name?  Everything.

Friday, January 25, 2013

PSALM 74 - How Can I Forget My King?

God, You have been our King for a long time.  You bring salvation to the earth. You opened up the springs and streams and made the flowing rivers run dry.  Both day and night are Yours.  You made the sun and moon.  You set all the limits on the earth.  You created summer and winter.  (Verses 12,15-17)

My beautiful friend, Mary, and I were at lunch yesterday talking about our lives.  She has what I have always wanted:  a bunch of Ya-Ya sisters.  Because Mary has lived in the same area all of her adult life, her family has been intricately woven into the lives of families who also live near the beach.  Their kids have grown up together.  Mothers and fathers have experienced as a group the ups and downs of life - deaths, divorces, graduations, weddings, feuds and failures, successes and near misses.  It's rich in experience.  In the process of reminiscing about our friends, we also talked about the ones that, over the years, fell away from us.  The one thing that caused us to go on without these friends was that they always seemed to forget the efforts we made to love them.  Often unreciprocated, which is fine, but ultimately their sense of entitlement forced us to a place of empty friendship.  You just get dried up when you're always on the giving side.

I was rather horrified at the thought this morning that God could feel that way about me.  He has cared for me for a long time.  Given to me without measure.  Loved me when I have been utterly unlovable.  Forgiven me when I absolutely didn't deserve it.  Saved me from myself and countless pitfalls that pocked my path with danger.  Provided for my physical needs.  Blessed me with three beyond amazing children and an incomparable husband.  Guided me when I've been confused.  Stood between me and Satan.  Extended such grace to my stubbornness that I can't fathom His patience.  All this and more.  Add to my God's great personal love for me the evidence of His creation.  The intelligence and prescience of a mind well past our ability to adequately dissect.  Omnipotent.  Omniscient.  Omnipresent.  God of all.  How could we forget Him?

In the same way our friends forget us....or misuse our friendship.  He's always there.  The never ending fount of abundance for all our needs. When it flows our way, it's possible to take it for granted.  Then the moment anything goes wrong, to blame the very waters that quench our thirst for drying up or not rushing quickly enough to our open mouths.  Where is God?  I need Him now!  And if He doesn't get there on our timetable, we blast Him for His reticence.  Oops.  That is why I let friends go.  How must that attitude make my Father feel?  Why would He, then, ever draw me close to His heart again?

I am thankful Abba isn't a human as we are.  But I know He gave us a heart made in the image of His.  He hurts with the same things that hurt us.  My God wants me to remember, in the difficult times especially, how faithful He is to me in the good times.  To understand His presence and to know His heart in the times when life goes awry.  God was very angry with the Israelites in the wilderness for building a golden calf to worship just because Moses stayed on the mountain a little too long for their taste.  They had forgotten the plagues and the parting of the seas.  Had taken for granted the manna in the wilderness.  Guess we'll just have to get through this desert ourselves!  Really, now.  If you were God, that would make you furious, too!

Next time I am sitting in the hot sand of a desert floor bemoaning my circumstances, I hope I look up instead of in.  I want to bless the heart of my Father by saying with this psalmist, "I trust You in this moment because of Your unsurpassing faithfulness to me in all the years You have been my King."  May I reciprocate His love and not take it for granted even when there is no prophet in the land.

 

Thursday, January 24, 2013

PSALM 74 - On The Wings Of A Wounded Dove

Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs and a foolish people reviles Your name.  Do not deliver the soul of Your dove to the wild beasts. Do not forget the life of Your poor forever.

Have regard for the covenant, for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence.   (Verses 18-20)

"I will put My law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.  And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.  And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying,  'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know Me, from the least to the greatest, declares the Lord.  For I will forgive their inquity, and I will remember their sin no more."  Jeremiah 31

"When the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and will declare to you the things that are to come."  Jesus.  (John 16)

I heard this morning, that for the sake of the kids, Tiger Woods might be going back to his wife.  A friend joked, "There will be a pre-nup specifying 'no cheating.'  It's called the marriage vows."  Funny, but ironic, also.  The covenant between a man and woman joined in marriage should be enough.  But life happens, I guess.  The dark places of our land are inhabited with greasy arms that reach out and grab our innocence or delightful mirages that woo us from the real things of life into a greener pasture.  Always lurking, the enemy designs a plan to destroy our confidence in God's covenant love toward us, His dove.  The death of a loved one, the loss of a life's savings, sickness, accident...the things over which we seemed to have little or no control...can leave us in the dark.  There we are much more willing to listen to the voices that say our God doesn't care.  We are alone without hope and He is missing in action.

The little dove hops across the forest floor, wounded and flightless.  She looks for a place of safety.  Flight is her usual recourse from the beasts that would catch her in their jaws.  She tries again to lift herself from the leaf-covered grasses as she spies a high branch in a nearby tree.  It is useless.  Something has gone terribly wrong with her wing.  She dare not even coo as the enemy might hear and swoosh down upon her with deadly accuracy.  Will God save His little dove?  He Who has promised to care for her?  Help us because of Your covenant love!

His promise is to be our God and we, His people.  He has promised to forgive our sins and teach us about Himself.  God, through Jesus, has promised even more.  To live inside of us Himself.  To teach us from within.  Write His ways on our hearts.  Speak to us directly from the throne by the Holy Spirit.  Actively, daily to talk to His children via His Spirit.  That is thrilling!  Jesus is more constantly with me than He could even be with His disciples.  I have the full counsel of God 24/7.  These things my God has promised to me. 

So how do we reconcile the wounded dove in the forest with the mighty God within us?  The dove now has options.  Doesn't need a prophet to guide her through her ordeal because she has the direction of the Spirit.  That is God's covenant.  It's in us now.  This promise.  The divine plan to allow us to be in Him and Him to be in us and all of us to be in each other.  The same Spirit, promised by Christ on the night before His death, that raised our Lord from the dead now gives us all we need to power through, past or beyond the darkest habitations of violence.  The promise is to be with us...God's words written not on tablets of stone, but on our hearts.  It doesn't mean we, His little doves (Song of Solomon), won't face the broken wings and the frightening places.  It does mean, though, that He will be there with us, in us.  We have a Resource the rest of the wounded, struggling world does not.  His destiny took Jesus to the cross.  But that was only the beginning of His continued work in eternity.  So it is with us.  Though there be a cross, though it takes us from this earth, there is eternity with purpose, power and joy.  The little dove loved by her covenant God will get around, through or beyond because He promised she is His.

Suddenly the dove gets quiet.  She looks up past the dewy trees sparkling in the early light of dawn.  Fear shrouded her night as she settled down into her feathers behind a knotted, fallen log.  Her head was full of voices contradicting what she knew to be true, but they were so loud she couldn't hear the voice of reason.  Made her forget for a little while that she is loved.  Beating in her breast is a little heart that needs the reassurance that in this time of trying, her God will still be there.  "Be still," He says, "and know that I am God."  Other tiny wounded birds hop carelessly, aimlessly to their deaths that day, while she rests in the knowledge that, come what may, life or death, she will fly again.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

PSALM 74 - Why Play The Waiting Game?

Those who are against You shouted in Your meeting place and raised their flags there.  They came with axes raised as if to cut down forest trees.  They smashed the carved panels with their axes and hatchets.  They burned Your temple to the ground.  They have made the place where You live unclean.  They thought,  "We will completely crush them!"  They burned every place where God was worshiped in the land.

We do not see any signs.  There are no more prophets, and no one knows how long this will last.  God, how much longer will the enemy make fun of You?  Will they insult You forever?  Why do You hold back Your hand?  Your right hand?  Take it from the fold of Your garment and destroy them!  (Verses 4-11)

There are places right now in the world where churches are being burned down and Christians tortured and killed for their faith.  Often by other religious zealots not wanting the mixed theologies that would complicate their national religion.  But here in America, so far, we are pretty free to love Jesus and express it in local churches.  Maybe not in homes where parking is a problem, as here in Southern California recently.  I mean, we have our priorities.  Wondering then, as I was reading this portion of the Psalms today what it means to me in my world.  Nietzsche proclaimed God to be dead.  (Of course, He rose again, but that is beside the point here.)  Bill Maher made a documentary on how ridiculous we who believe in God are. Ricky Gervais has a routine about being nice to those of us who believe.  It's okay with him if it helps us, but he knows there isn't a god.  These people aren't going to burn down the little church I attend or come for me with axes and hatchets...yet, anyway.  But they are profaning God just the same.  And that is the point for me.  I talk with enough people who've given up on God to have been the brunt of their jokes as they look down on me as less than vaguely unaware of the scientific workings of the universe.  If I weren't so dumb...naive, kindly...I would agree there is no God.

Richard Dawkins described the God of the Bible this way: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”   If God were at all as Dawkins describes, Dawkins wouldn't be alive to be quoted. If there is no God, of course, there are no vices, either.  Dawkins's judgments of God would be idiotic.  As animals, there is no reason why we cannot be characterized by all the ugly attributes he ascribes to our Maker.  Right and wrong in a random universe doesn't exist. The picture of the Lord in this psalm is that He stands and takes the bullying Himself and waits.  God's strong right hand resting against His heart in the fold of His garment.  What's He waiting for?  Why doesn't He deal....and show up in a way that these haters will see that He is God?  Of course, we understand that when He is insulted, we are insulted. We can't defend Him because we don't know what He is doing.  For some of us, it begs the question:  "Does God really exist if it takes Him this long to intervene?"  But the Father is holding back.  The creator of the world could certainly shake it loose in a moment....will someday. 

He has been very patient and kind, waiting for you to change, but you think nothing of His kindness.  Perhaps you do not understand that God is kind to you so you will change your hearts and lives.  Romans 2    When I consider all God, if He exists, of course, must watch humans do every day, I am amazed we are not destroyed by fire, consumed by our own awfulness.  Rape, murder, sexual abuse, physical abuse, lying, cheating, stealing, coveting, infanticide, genocide, starvation and greed.  These are things we are guilty of.  Not God.  If He is the God of Dawkins, He should vaporize us on the spot.  Were God unforgiving, we should all be doomed to our own devices.  But God waits, even for Dawkins.  Wanting until the last minute for us to get it.  I know this sounds like a cop out to the atheist.  We are giving an excuse for God to not do anything by saying we are waiting for Him to do something.  But for those of us who are have allowed Him into our lives, believe me, we have seen Him do some things.  Perhaps not measurably on a scientific scale.  But daily things go on that science can't explain.  Daily science changes its mind.  Christ, historically valid and exhaustively validated, cannot be argued.  He is a person.  Not an idea or a religion.  It is He Who shows Himself to mankind.  Argue theology if you will.  Jesus, however, was either Who He said He was or a lying lunatic.  And the heart of God is obvious to all who will read the history of the cross.  Even from there, bloodied by the very skeptics who called Him a ridiculous blasphemer, Jesus forgave them.  Why?   They didn't know what they were talking about. 

The Lord wants to show His mercy to you.  He wants to rise and comfort you.  The Lord is a fair God, and everyone who waits for His help will be happy.   Isaiah 30:18


 

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

PSALM 74 - The Sacred Sanctuary

Oh, God.  Why do You cast us off forever?  Why does Your anger smoke against the sheep of Your pasture?  Remember Your congregation which You have purchased of old, which You have redeemed to be the tribe of Your heritage!...Direct Your steps to the perpetual ruins.  The enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary.   (Verses 1-3)

The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother He named my name.."Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?  Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.  Look!  I have engraved you on the palms of My hands....."  Isaiah 49

I was teaching ninth grade general English.  Since I was also the high school debate coach, it was always in my syllabus to introduce the English classes to critical thinking skills.  Each year I arranged for my classes to go to the library to research a topic to argue in class.  Without exception, the ninth graders chose abortion.  Usually the classes were equally divided between the pro-abortion and pro-life sides.  By this time, horrifying as it seems, many of the girls had either an abortion or knew a friend who'd taken the life of a preborn.  So the argument was personal on many levels.  One of my students, Terri, worked hard on her pro-abortion debate speech.  She would often come to my desk and ask questions like:  "What does it mean the fetus is viable?"  I would always answer with a semantical response that finally she questioned.  "It means the baby can live on its own."

"Why do you keep calling it a baby?'' she finally asked in frustration.

"Terri," I said, "look up the word fetus in the dictionary."

She came back to my desk with tears in her eyes.  "Mrs. Farish, I didn't know a fetus was a baby."  She changed her side of the debate. 

But that was several years ago.  We now know what we are doing when we vacuum life out of our wombs.  We are invading a private sanctuary where a person should feel the most sacred protection possible.  Though pictures of the horror of actual abortions are banned from clinics because of their emotional baggage, we know in our hearts we killed a child.  At its most vulnerable. The procedure  paid for and, today, even celebrated by the very mothers who should have loved them into the world.

What has happened to us?  When I was a young woman reading my Bible, I came across this verse: Understand this.  In the last days there will be times of difficulty.  For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without natural affection.  The word is astorgos and originates from alpha and storge meaning family affection.  The Greek means more specifically, without natural affection to their own children.  Intemperate.  Fierce.  I honestly couldn't ever see that coming.  How could mothers or fathers ever hate their own kids?  Where does that originate?  But  own generation planted the seed.  A child of the sixties, I was there when women cried out to have the same sexual rights as men.  In other words, they wanted indiscriminate sexual intercourse without the ramifications.  Babies are ramifications. Roe vs. Wade established that women should not have to pay any consequences men don't have to.  They have equal freedom under the law from bearing unwanted children.  Guilt-free, because the Supremes said we were, we murdered our own.  Our sovereign body parts trumped theirs, and so natural affection grows colder and colder.  I spoke with a lady not long ago who had a child out of wedlock.  Because he turned out to be so much work, she wished she had aborted him.  There is really no comeback for that.  I wish my child were dead because he's such a lot of work

So we who know our God cry out.  Where are you, Lord, when the young in their sanctuaries are destroyed?  Where is Your anger?  How can You let this holocaust continue?  Fifty-five million children never saw the face of their mommy nor took their first step.  President Obama has declared that we need to make our nation safe for children in the same breath he celebrates forty years of the right of a woman to choose to kill her children because of the passage of Roe vs. Wade.  There is a disconnect.  He has rightly declared that how a nation treats its children is how it will be judged. God help us, then.  For we murder them in a wholesale manner and throw their bodies in garbage heaps behind abortion clinics or ravage them for their cells.  And we know they are babies.  We aren't that dumb.

God sees this.  Make no mistake.  Though our mothers and fathers forsake us, He never will.  These little people who never took a breath of earthly air, are still precious to God Who named them and knows them and keeps them even now.  He is a God of justice.  Slow to anger.  But the death toll from the violated sanctuaries where the hearts of His most vulnerable creation beat in anticipation of a mother's loving arms and a life with destiny and purpose is being counted.  And God won't always hold back the wrath He feels at our selfish need to freely pursue our sexual freedom at the expense of the children planted their in our wantonness.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

PSALM 73 - Get A Little Closer

But for me, it is good to be near God.  I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.  (Verse 28)

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.  James 4

Only a few hours ago I sat cuddled next to Alexander on the couch at my daughter's Virginia home.  It was cold and rainy outside, so we built a fire in the fireplace, wrapped ourselves in Alex's blanket and read the book of Ruth together out of the new Bible I got for him at the bookstore earlier in the day.  A first-grader, my grandson reads like a pro.  I beamed with pride at both his comprehension skills and his choice of reading material.  I love the little guy so much.  Today I miss the warmth of his body, the lilt of his voice, the smell of his hair, the look in his eyes....I miss being near to him.  It is good to be with Alexander.

And, for me, it is good in the same way to be near my God.  In my prayer time this morning, with tears in my eyes, I say what I say pretty much every day, "Father, don't leave me today.  Be near.  I can't live without You."  Oh, I can exist.  For sure.  I can go through the motions of life, but really live?  No.  I have been in a faraway land, spiritually speaking, and know what it's like to miss my Father.  To reminisce about the times we used to have.  To watch others interact with Him in the way I once did.  But I'd lost contact.  In the quiet of the night, I would try to conjure what it felt like to talk with my Abba intimately, trusting that He heard.  It was as if I had moved to the middle of the Mojave without a tent and could only remember a rushing river and the lush greenness of a peaceful pasture.  That was from a different world and I was lost.  Thirsty and dry, I yearned for long draughts of living water only faintly remembering its sweetness.

Lazarus had been dead for four days.  His body was decomposing and he stank.  Jesus was away when the brother of Mary and Martha died.  Though the family called for Jesus to come, He waited. For the bigger miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead.  But they wanted Jesus to be near.  Right there at the bedside.  When Jesus didn't show up when they thought He should, they lost a little faith in Him.  Why had he not come?  Didn't He care about them any more?  If You'd only been here, our brother wouldn't have died.  The reassurance of His touch.  The joy of Jesus sitting in their home eating their food and laughing with them. The sound of His voice.  His nearness was important.  Because when Jesus comes close, things change.  Mary at His feet, listening to the Word of God speak.  When He's there, a refuge from the wracking winsomeness of the world, we know everything's gonna be all right.  With her brother back, living and breathing, alive and well, Mary rejoices that Lazarus eats, sleeps, prays and works at the house again.  Every day she rises to see his face, not decaying and gone, but restored and new.  The joy of it is priceless. 

When Passover approached that year, Jesus came to see this family He loved so much. They had a dinner party and invited friends over to be with Jesus.  Lots of food, I'm sure, that Martha made in her fussy kitchen.  Wine and conversation.  Less than a week before Jesus wouldn't be near again.  Less than a week before the feet Mary decided to anoint with a half liter of very expensive fragrant oil would carry Jesus out of Jerusalem on a dusty road to His death.  But she looked forward to this meal.  Jesus at her house.  How to show Him her grateful heart?  Break the alabaster jar of sweet perfume, pour its anointing slipperiness onto the arch of His foot, bathing toes and ankles in the aroma of thankfulness.  Touching Jesus in His nearness.  Not understanding He would never be with her quite like this again. The salt of her tears mixing with the nard.  Thank You for being here when we needed You.  And she wiped the residue with the strands of her hair. 

In my wilderness, I was never alone.  I just hadn't invited Jesus to my party in a long time.  No dinner ready for Him.  I ate with disappointment and disillusionment.  Not very good company.  But when I got hungry enough....thirsty enough...all I wanted was to sit on the couch with Jesus again and listen to His words, feel the touch of His hand and anoint His feet in thankfulness that my Friend would journey to my desert so I wouldn't have to be alone.


 

Monday, January 14, 2013

PSALM 73 - Bound To Nicholas Forever


Whom have I in heaven but You?  And there is nothing on earth I desire when it is set beside You.  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.  For behold, those who are far from You shall perish.  You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to You.  But for me, it is good to be near God.  I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all Your works.   (Verses 25-28)

In the baptistery of the big church in Alexandria, Virginia, the pastor held out his hand and beckoned the lone candidate for baptism into the water as the choir sang its opening hymn. As the strains of the medley rang through the church, the young boy looked around, trying to spot his family in the second row where he was told they would be.  His dark blond hair and olive skin were a contrast to the white-haired preacher who put his hand on the boy's back and waited for the choir to be seated.  As the preacher began to speak, the boy looked straight ahead, listening for his cue.  "Who is Jesus to you?"

Nicholas, my first grandson, then looked to the congregation and said in a loud voice,  "He is my Lord."

With his arms folded over his chest, Nicholas was dipped into the warm baptismal water and raised immediately up out of it, dripping, like Jesus before Him, raised up to walk out the Christian faith hand in hand with God.  Tears kept stinging my eyes as I tried to focus on the immersion and emersion of my Nicholas.  Jesus lives in him.  Making room for Himself in this child who is willing to follow Him as Lord.  I know Nicholas doesn't know all that will mean to him in the future.  I don't either.  But Jesus does.  Following Him first in the obedience of baptism and then into a world that needs a Savior.  We are saved to walk in the good works Jesus has already prepared for us.  One step at a time.  I am praying for each of my grandson's footprints in an ever-changing, ever more difficult world.

A classical guitarist was playing a medley of hymns when Nicholas joined us on the second row of seats at church.  His hair still wet and glistening with baptismal dew, my grandson came to sit beside me.  He threw his arms around me as I sat there, and we held each other tightly, my cheek against the dampness of his head, until the last chord died away into the quietness of the church.  Not just bond of grandmother to grandson.....more.  We are now two Christians, brother and sister in Him, clinging to our Lord and learning together how to walk with Him.

You can't buy this.  It's not for sale.  Nothing earthly compares to what we have in Christ.  Nothing here is forever.   Anything I have that I set beside Christ falls woefully short.  No matter how wonderful it might be.  When I put any earthly possession or accomplishment next to Christ and look at it, it becomes very small.  Nicholas and I are family here, but now we are family there, too.  The moment he asked Jesus into his heart, we became eternal parts of each other as children of God. The gift of adoption. That is what our family felt yesterday.  That is what made my grandson and I hug and hug.  Like a soft rope had been coiled around us, binding our hearts for a few lovely moments.  Looking into each other's eyes with a new sense of who the other is.  Near to each other at the same time we are near to God.  It was good to be in His presence.  Practice for eternity.  Empowered to go out and light the world and salt the earth because we know how precious it is to be a child of God.

I am praying for Nicholas and me today.  For all of us.  It is in that nearness to God that we learn about Him.  Bound together with Him in love, we venture out to do exploits in His name.  Energized and led by the Holy Spirit, we see Jesus recreate, restore, and resurrect.  From our refuge in Him we watch as He creates something out of nothing, binds up broken hearts, feeds the hungry, releases the captive from the enemy and protects the widow and orphan.  But, also, in our nearness to Him we get closer to each other, basking in the fellowship that comes from Jesus sitting in the center of our individual lives.  When we touch one another, we touch Him.  That is what Nicholas and I had yesterday.  A new touch.  Jesus in me loving Jesus in him.  May we all draw ever closer to the Father Who is uniquely God yet walked among us, touched and kissed us, blessed and anointed us, and waits for us to be with Him eternally where we will enjoy Him together forever.  And may we love each other in His name.

Let us draw near with a pure heart and with full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  Let us hold fast the confession of our faith without wavering, for He Who promised is faithful.  Hebrews 10
 

Thursday, January 10, 2013

PSALM 73 - Braying Much?

When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant. I was like a beast toward You.  Nevertheless, I am continually with You.  You hold my right hand. You guide me with Your counsel, and afterward You will receive me to glory. (Verses 21-24)

But a stupid man will get understanding when a wild donkey's colt is born a man!  Job 11

I can attest to the fact that a wounded heart and a bitter spirit can make a person do really stupid things.  Act like a jackass.  Bray and spit and kick into the air.  I'm quite sure I'm not the only one who has acted foolishly like this.  I've seen it and recognize it all too well.  Once planted, the root of bitterness makes us see things askew.  Anything in life that doesn't go our way can make us mad at God, accusing Him of not caring about us...or worse, not even existing.

The train wreck that was 1985 for my sisters and me left us bereft of both father and mother.  Cancer took Mother.  Jail took Daddy.  The one-two punch of it could've been making my faith pure gold, but instead, a seed of doubt about God's goodness was planted in my heart.  Lots of questions day in and day out chipped away at my trust.  The sheer magnitude of trying to understanding a perversion I couldn't even articulate crushed me in a way I still have difficulty expressing.  The slow death of cancer, watching someone I loved so deeply turn saffron-yellow as her body shriveled and her heart broke, was excruciating and soul sapping.  On top of that, two of my best friends died of breast cancer within months of each other.  It felt like God kills His children.  Like things run amok while He bides His time.  I listened to those lies loop in my soul, playing the recording over and over again, ever louder, for months.  They fed my pricked heart.  My paradigm of who I thought God to be shifted.  I lost my spiritual footing.  And started running.  And kicking.  And braying.  Ignorant and stubborn in my anger.  How could God.....?

The result of this was my acting dumb.  Really.  A wild donkey just goes where a wild donkey wants to go.  Does what a mule does.  When called to the corral, she balks.  When warned of a cliff, she gets to the very edge....maybe even goes over it.  When the One Who loves her comes near, she kicks and brays.  He wants to keep her from what she wants to do.  She loved Him once, but now He has disappointed her.  Tried to rein her in and pulled the bit too tightly.  It hurt.  Why would she let Him near her again?

The thing is, my heart was numb.  Scared and confused, it felt good to kick the air and scream and run. Brutish in its primal response, my soul didn't do what a redeemed soul should.  Get quiet and think.  Not just feel.  Had I pressed into God instead of accusing Him, I might have come out pure gold.  A shining example of how to endure all I couldn't possibly understand.  Because life gives us things to handle that are beyond our comprehension.  Like Job, we don't get what God is doing in a realm we can't see.  My one dimensional view of Him was that He'd removed Himself somehow from my holocaust, taken two mothers away from their children and left me with no adequate response.  No way to explain Him to myself or anyone else.  Hee-haw.  That's about all I could come up with as I ran toward the precipice.

 Nevertheless.....But God....loved His little mule.  Understood what she was going through.  Why she was acting like a beast with no sense.  I brayed and jumped....stranded in midair, flailing my legs in sudden realization of my stupidity, but it was too late.  Falling fast.  About to splat in a mess of body parts at the bottom of a hopeless pit.  But He grabbed me by the ears and caught me up.  You know, that hurt, too.  Rescue felt like another punch in the gut.  It took a minute or ten to realize I was saved.  Again!  He'd never left me.  Even when I acted the fool.  Although I made Him look stupid along with me.  I know I hurt others during that time.  Made them see my Lord incorrectly.  I am deeply sorry for that.  But I hope in watching His compassion toward me, they understand how deeply He can love even the most foolish of us.


Tuesday, January 8, 2013

PSALM 73 - Mining For Gold

So why have I kept my heart pure?  Why have I kept my hands from doing wrong?  I have suffered all day long.  I have been punished every morning.  God, if I had decided to talk like this, I would have let Your people down.

I tried to understand all this, but it was too hard for me to see until I went into the temple of God.  Then I understood what will happen to them.  (Verses 13-17)

Since life is difficult and presents quandaries often too deep to answer easily, there are some things best pondered before uttered.  There have been very trying times during the forty plus years Bill and I have been married.  We moved from one state to another when we had two daughters under the age of three.  I didn't sit them down during the long months when Bill lived in Georgia and I stayed back in Texas to sell the house and tell my daughters about my struggle with the Lord over what proved to be a very trying ordeal.  "Now, girls, Mommy is wondering what the Lord is doing in this situation.  I got into the closet last night and cried my eyes out in frustration."  Yes.  That helps. 

Later on, when my father was arrested, there were three children under the age of nine.  I didn't say: "Granddaddy, whom you adore, was caught in a car with a thirteen-year-old."  Too much even for me.  It was years later, when they individually asked what had happened, that we told them. 

Some things, to my shame, they walked through with me because they lived with me.  Even then, though, the deepest woundings and scariest doubts, I kept to myself or blubbered to God.  Why?  I didn't want to destroy their faith.  Didn't want to let them down.  And I didn't want to impeach others in front of my children.  There is enough in this world for them to doubt on their own without my jaded misrepresentation of what is going on with God's sovereign will and my journey.  Some things I take to God in private.  I don't want to talk smack about Him and have it perceived as truth.  My Father can handle my deepest doubts and fears, others perhaps cannot.

It is our sense of entitlement that often gets us into trouble when we think about what God owes us.  I mean, look, there are those who make movies about Him being ridiculous or laugh at those of us with faith as if we are the craziest people on earth.  We only know what they think about us because these people are rich and famous enough to have a platform.  How is that fair?  Shouldn't we who love God be the rich ones?  The famous?  That's the argument here.  Why do bad things happen to good people while the haughty, self-satisfied go on to greater riches?  This question, the psalmist knew, was the kind of query not posed to anyone but God.  The only One who can answer such a question is God Himself so airing this grievance with other Christians just makes them feel rotten, too. 

The psalmist went to church.  Got alone with God.  "Why, Lord?"  Let it all out.  Literally, the Bible says, "I turned my gaze toward" God.  We are often looking in the wrong direction for the answer to life.  Entitlement is all about self.  What is owed me.  Slippery slope stuff.  Especially when I understand how big my God is and how little I am.  Contentment will never be found in the junk we own or the fame we acquire.  As a matter of fact, that might be the most empty kind of life to live.  There are not enough designer jeans or private jets, fancy restaurants and martini bars, luxury homes and global vacations to fill the vacuum in the heart of man.  Cram as much down in there as you wish, but that place is made for God and only He can satiate its cravings.  That is what God showed the psalmist.  Those who rely on anything else but God don't end well even if we think they live well.  Check their closets with hundreds of pairs of shoes and their bank accounts with millions - billions, maybe - of dollars.  Good for them.  On this earth.  What we have in God cannot be purchased.  It is free. Available to rich and poor alike.  But if we have all the money in the world and don't take the proffered gift of God, we lose.  In the end we are all alike except for that one thing.  No rich and poor in death.  Shoes gather dust in the closet.  Money is spent by the heirs.  Earth and its glories a vapor.  Our sense of our own entitlement crumbles in the face of the Judge before Whom we will all stand to give an account. 

God's answer to the psalmist?  I am Your worth.  I give your life value.  In their chasing after the wind, they have picked up their feet and are carried along by its whim.  But you?  You are the precious child of the One Who owns and created everything.  What is it you need?  I will provide.  By My strong right hand out of My abundance.  If you have Me, you inherit all that is Mine, now and forever.  True riches in this life and in the one to come.

The teachings of the Lord are perfect.  They give new strength.  The rules of the Lord can be trusted.  They make plain people wise.  The orders of the Lord are right.  They make people happy.  The commands of the Lord are pure.  They light up the way.  Respect for the Lord is good.  It will last forever.  The judgments of the Lord are true.  They are completely right.  They are worth more than gold, even the purest gold.  Psalm 19

Monday, January 7, 2013

PSALM 73 - A Lesson From Downton

Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.  But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.  For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.  For they have no fangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are.  They are not stricken like the rest of mankind.  Therefore, pride is their necklace.  Violence covers them like a garment.  Their  eyes swell out through fatness.  The imaginations of their heart run riot...They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.  Therefore his people turn back to them and the waters of a full cup are drained by them.  And they say, "How can God know?  Is there knowledge in the Most High?"  Behold, these are the wicked.  Always at ease, they increase in riches.    (Verses 1-12)

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.  Jesus (Mark 10)

I watched the season three opener of Downton Abbey last night.  For two hours, all of us who tuned in got to catch up on the Crawley family's melodrama.  It seems they are out of money.  Bad investment deal by his lordship.  The answer?  Suck up to the American grandma no one really likes to see if they can bleed more money out of her or Matthew must besmirch his honor and take an inheritance from the dead wife he didn't love all that much.  What we do for money and position.  Well, not we, really, as most of us aren't the filthy rich.  Our norm isn't the manse, the servants and breakfast in bed.  No one draws my drapes each morning and combs my not so lustrous locks of hair.  I prepare my own dinner, wash my own dishes and make my own bed.  I live near Hollywood but am not of it.

Who are the one percent?  Those with bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and mansions all over the world?  Movie stars.  Flaunting their bodies and their bank accounts when they aren't in rehab for the addictions that often come from too much wealth and idle time.  Entrepreneurs.  Good ideas and hard work have paid off in businesses that more than flourish.  Inherited wealth.  The progeny with no idea what it took to become wealthy but who enjoy the clout of the home in the Hamptons.  I wouldn't call them wicked as this psalm does.  The psalmist admits his bitterness at their having so much when he has so little.  It seems to him that his relationship with God should result in a life of more ease.  How is it fair that those who don't even know God should never feel the pain the rest of us endure?  Whatever they can imagine, they can buy, these rich folks.  Never without friends who are willing to drink their cup dry with them, the rich travel with an entourage of hangers-on.  Death seems to be the only thing that makes the one percent just like us. 

All wealthy people are not as depicted here, I'm sure.  But wealth has become just as much an idol to the psalmist as it has to those he envies.  That is why he describes himself as nearly stumbling in his path.  He would like a little taste of the easy life.  The Plaza instead of Motel 6.  Steak instead of the fish he caught earlier in the day.  Armani instead of Lee's.  Just for once.  To know what it feels like to not have a care in the world.  Envying those who have is just as bad as their insulated world of wealth.  Both are destructive.  Both idolatry.  Great wealth and position, though heady stuff, doesn't make us better people.  If riches give us a false sense of security so that we don't recognize our need for God, we are paupers.  Buy the whole world only to lose our very souls.  But for the other ninety-nine percent of us, craving what the fat-eyed, sleek-bodied filthy rich have is a waste of time and energy.  While they trust in their money, we have the privilege of trusting in our God for provision.  We get to see Him come through for us in ways they can't imagine.  And while the facade of riches covers their lives from view, they are all people just like us.  It's merely easier for them to believe they don't need God.  And it's easier for them to buy a panacea for the aching need that is in all of us for something more.

One of my friends works at a large Santa Monica hospital on the psyche ward.  There is always a rich celebrity or two drying out there.  Admitted with entourage in tow, demanding special meals and better televisions.  Admitted also with a sense of entitlement overflowing into the hallways.  Money has made them mad...caused them to slip and stumble and fumble their way into an addiction they must also buy their way out of.  Nothing to envy there.  We serve God or money.  One never fails.  The other?  Gone in a mini-series minute like all of Lady Crawley's inheritance.

Friday, January 4, 2013

PSALM 72 - What Does It Take?

Blessed be the Lord God, the God of  Israel, Who alone works wonders.  And blessed be His glorious name forever. And may the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and Amen.
(Verses 18-19)

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.  Isaiah 11:9

I have often thought about his question:  How can people see the miracles of God and miss Him?  Ancient Egypt had plagues delivered to them on a platter.  Frogs, locusts, boils, hail, insects and darkness preceded the deaths of all the firstborn in the land.  Granted, magicians were able to counterfeit some of them, but probably because the Lord allowed even that.  The acknowledgment  of God in the plagues came only after the devastation became personal.

Elijah, the prophet, later stood on Mount Carmel waiting for the god, Baal, to bring down fire from heaven and destroy the ox sacrificed on the pagan altar.  The six priests of Baal sweated it out, leaping around in a frenzy calling out to their god to light the fire without a match.  Elijah cajoled and teased them:  "Where is your god?  Maybe he is relieving himself somewhere.  Stepped out to take a pee.  Perhaps your god is out of the country or asleep?"  In a frantic show of loyalty, the priests then yelled louder and cut themselves with swords until the blood gushed out of them.  Their Baal?  Still sleeping...or whatever.  It seems that after high noon, they were kind of out of their heads with the whole worship thing.  However, when Elijah took his turn to call fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice, he poured so much water on and around the altar it looked even more impossible to set ablaze.  Then he prayed:  "O Lord, today let it be known that You are God in Israel and I am your servant.  Answer me, O Lord, that this people may know that You, O Lord, are God, and that You have turned their heart back again."  Then, fire!  Miraculous, immediate and fierce.  God Himself swirling in crackling assurance that He is unmatched in power.  The rocks, the wood and even the dust was demolished when the sacrifice was consumed.  Yet, the people didn't have a change of heart and the queen came after Elijah's life.

God came to us to show us the miraculous.  Wore flesh like ours. Touched lepers and raised the dead.  Loved on children and ate with commoners.  And?  We killed Him. 

So what is it about the wonders of God in our faces that we reject?  His power, I think.  For if God is powerful enough to work the miracles only He can perform, that means He could take control of my puny self, and that is power I want.  Ultimately, God had His way in all three scenarios above.  Because, whether we like it or not, He is sovereign.  But, it's clear, that just because God does what only He can do, if our hearts aren't changed, we will reject the idea that God made something happen.  Elijah fell into a deep depression after Mount Carmel largely because the magnificent manifestation of the power of God didn't bring the hearts of the Israelites back to God.  The revival Elijah expected because God showed up in an extraordinary display of fireworks fizzled with an edict from a wicked Jezebel.  Not only had the sacrifice been consumed, but God also sent rain that very afternoon to a land parched with drought.  What on earth does it take for people to turn to the Lord?

In our hubris, we think we live our lives to ourselves.  Oh, yeah, sometimes the show God puts on is amusing, but we don't want Him messing in our lives, telling us what to do.  The stars glistening on the ocean's waters or pink-tinted snow-capped mountains gleaming majestic at dusk will make us wonder at nature or tickle our fancy that maybe there is something bigger than ourselves.  We just don't want that something or someone larger than life to meddle in ours.  Make us change to fit His rules.  So we go on, walking right past the obvious, toward uncertain circumstances of our own making.

But, the glory of the Lord still fills the whole earth.  As God showed Moses, His glory is His goodness.  Creation shouts to us with every blade of grass and every ray of morning sunshine.  The complexity of DNA, which holds every indicator of who each of us is, makes a mockery of those who don't want a Designer involved in their lives.  The whole earth is supposed to speak to our senses and encourage our faith in a God Who is involved with us.  But it seems we can see the glory of God without the knowledge of that glory.  We can accept it as the backdrop of our existence without thinking too much about Who began it and Who will complete its cycle.

 One day it will be obvious.  The clouds will part and the King of Kings will mount His steed and burst on the scene in full power.  And there was a great earthquake and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree sheds its unripe fruit when shaken by a great wind.  The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.  Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, saying to the rocks and the mountains, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne!"  Revelation 6 (italics mine)

Unbelief clinging to a rock, praying to a mountain for salvation, instead bowing to the King coming down out of heaven!  Missing the glory of God when it's in our faces rather than be trapped in a relationship with a Creator Who might want to go against our wills to enforce His own.  Just because the whole earth is filled with the glory of God doesn't mean it understands what it sees.  That takes a different heart.

He was in the world and the world was made through Him and the world did not know Him.  He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.  But as many as did receive Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believed on His name....and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory.  John 1


 

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

PSALM 72 - I'm Trying, Mother!

Long may he live; may gold of Sheba be given to him!  May prayer be made for him continually, and blessings invoked for him all the day!  May there be abundance of grain in the land.  On the tops of the mountains may it wave.  May its fruits be like Lebanon, and may people blossom like grass of the field!  May his name endure forever, his fame continue as long as the sun!    (Verses 15-17)

After my father's arrest in 1985, my mother anguished over her choice to marry him in the first place.  I didn't know until that spring as I sat for hours listening to her tell me the particulars of her life, how very minimal her marriage was and how desert dry her emotional life.  Daddy spurned her years before, a thing she couldn't talk to anyone about.  Until the arrest.  There was an awakening then that her inadequacy wasn't the reason the well of intimacy dried up years before.  Her man had other needs no wife could fill.  The dessication of her soul in response to her husband's abandonment of a love life was not her fault.  But his.  From day one of their marriage, my father's admission that he had difficulty there should have given her pause.  All their issues with intimacy could've been traced back to that first night had she been less willing to take full responsibility for all that was wrong with their union.  But he told her she was less than.  And she believed it.  Beaten and shamed by her first husband, Mother once again was allowed to believe she deserved her path.  But God gave her a time of reflection in the eight months between Daddy's arrest and her death in August of 1985.  And the big question for her as she faced her earthly end was why she had lived in the first place.  My father's shame initially became hers...and ours.  But in our day-long weekly conversations, Mother tried to work out in her heart and mind what her life meant.  Had it been wasted on a man who really couldn't love her as his wife given his sexual propensity.  And why had he told her all those years it was she who was inadequate?  And what would her life have looked like with another man?  Another place?  She feared she'd missed her destiny.  And our footprints matter.  We all want to know we are here for a purpose and that we fulfill it. 

Before her death, Mother wrote a letter to her family to be delivered to them at her funeral.  She gave it to me to distribute although I didn't read it until my sisters did, also.  This is what it said, in part:
And for my girls -- when we started planning for our family we asked you, Lord, to give us mentally, physically and spiritually healthy bundles from heaven.  Since you always give us more than we dreamed of asking, we were overwhelmed at the beauty of each 'flower' you presented to us.  Each flower was a different color and design with unique petals and form.  Slowly they unfolded at first, giving us glimpses of the talents and abilities that were part of the whole plant -- the plan and design of their lives.  Then it seemed, Lord, we turned around one day to see each flower fully opened and we realized you had blessed each girl beyond all we had ever expected.  As their Creator, Lord, don't ever let them become complacent about or lazy with their miraculous gifts.  May they use them, Lord, to fulfill the separate, individual destinies for which You created them.

It was on her mind....our destinies.  Over and over when she asked me why she had lived in the first place, I reminded her of us -- her "flowers."   We would have no destiny without her womb.  No chance to make our mark on the world without the birth pangs that delivered us into this world.  That she lived matters even today, years after she began her dance in heaven.


David wanted to know that the life of the king was going to go on for generations.  That the world would be blessed because God assigned him and Solomon to the throne.  He had quite the prayer for his realm -- that it endure forever...his fame as long as the sun!  Wow!  Let me be a good enough king that no one will ever forget me!  Interestingly, that prayer came from the heart of God because the King of Kings came from the loins of David through Solomon.  So, there you have it.  David's prayer for his destiny didn't go unheard.  It was God's plan all along to bring Messiah from the shepherd boy's line.  Though the kid with the slingshot made horrific mistakes, the "gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." (Romans 11)  David's destiny sure though his path could've been straighter.

Maybe our prayers aren't as lofty as David's or as desperate as Mother's, but we all want to do what we came here to do.  To be remembered for our contribution to history, however small it might seem.  Woven into the fabric of time, is our skein, in hue perfect for the place where the needle threads it into the entire picture.  The tapestry incomplete without the loop of our lives sewn in.  I think, in heaven, when all is said and done, some of the smallest threads will be deemed the most important.  Presidents and kings, actors and diplomats, billionaires and philanthropists will take a backseat to missionaries and mothers, bakers and butchers, teachers and telemarketers.  In all these things what matters to my God is that I surrendered my way to Him.  That He walks it through with me makes it miraculous and powerful to do whatever He has called me to.  Christ locked arms with fishermen and tax collectors, ate with sinners and let harlots wash His feet with their hair.  We know these people because they followed Jesus.  That is what made them worth hearing about two thousand years after they dusted the sand from their feet and lay down to die.  That is what makes my life significant today. 

Mother died praying for me to do it all!  Every last shred of destiny in my cache.  To not take for granted my giftings and my calling.  I'm trying, Mother!  May Jesus help me all the way home.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

PSALM 72 - I Am Precious

And let all the kings bow down before Him, all the nations serve Him.  For He will deliver the needy when he cries for help, the afflicted also, and him who has no helper.  He will have compassion on the poor and needy, and the lives of the needy He will save.  He will rescue their life from oppression and violence; and their blood will be precious in His sight.   (Verses 11-14)

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of His godly ones.   Psalm 116

My mother used to call me "Precious."  It is an endearing term that made me feel special in a way that "Sweetie" or "Cutie" wouldn't have.   Precious:  much prized, of great value and worth, invaluable, cherished, esteemed, adored, hallowed.  My own children are precious to me as is my husband, my wedding ring, my faith, my Bible and my relationship with Christ.  Some metals are precious; some are ordinary.  To be invaluable something or someone must be extraordinary.  To be cherished, it must melt your heart.  This is how our Father sees the needy.  Which includes me.  For I have discovered that without Him I am oppressed and helpless.  So lest I think this psalm is only for those who are literally without food or clothing and oppressed by a government which strips them of everything, I need to realize my own sad predicament without this King in my life.

Jesus warned us about thinking we have so much we don't need Him anymore.  "..you say, 'I am  rich; I have become wealthy and need nothing,' and you don't know that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.  I advise you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire so that you may be rich, white clothes so that you may be dressed and your shameful nakedness not be exposed, and ointment to spread on your eyes so that you may see."  Revelation 3  It is our recognition of our need for God that stirs His heart on our behalf.  Our vulnerability.  Of course, God literally cares about the poor and oppressed.  It is at the very center of His being to champion the widow and orphan.  That, in fact, is true religion according to James.  Knowing Christ, however, is the mirror we hold up to ourselves to see our own neediness.  When He walked the earth and moved through a crowd, people climbed trees, grabbed at His clothing, cried out for healing, followed Him into the desert and knelt at the foot of His cross because His presence magnified their need.  Jesus looked into their eyes and they understood they were precious.  He saw each person for the creation they were.  Cared about their hearts -- rich and poor alike in their wretchedness.  Perhaps until we are stripped of all we depend upon to make us happy, we are unaware that we are poor, miserable, blind and naked without Jesus.  Maybe it's a gift to see ourselves from His perspective.  Because until we know we are oppressed by the enemy of our souls and in bondage to his whims, we will not know how valuable our lives are to a God Who would come to save us.  Precious blood was spilled for blood precious to Him. 

The word for blood in the psalm is dam which means shed blood or the juice of grapes.  Interesting when I think about the last supper Jesus had with His disciples.  He passed around the Passover wine telling his followers that it was His blood, shed for them.  It is the same word in Greek, aima. The juice of grapes.  Altar sacrifices.  This blood is hallowed.  Given in sacrifice to Him.  The blood of the innocent.  The sacrifice of a life given over to Him.  We are no longer required to bleed an animal and sprinkle its holiness over our sinfulness.  Once for all that has been done.  Blood for blood.  Sprinkled over me...over you..by the great High Priest, Who is also the Lamb.  Covered in the purifying flow of its miraculous value, God sees the aima of His Son when He sees me.  I have been purchased by One Who paid a great price.  I am highly valued, cherished, adored, esteemed and hallowed because I cried out in my neediness and Jesus rescued me from the oppressor and made me a child of God with royal blood in my veins.  A daughter of the Most High God, adopted into His kingdom, I am the apple of His eye, His Bride, beloved and smitten by my precious Savior.

This year I want to remember with my every breath how dear I am to God.  How much He gave to make me His.  That my life here and there belong to Him in a way that it would were I to physically get upon an altar and sacrifice it.  Of course, if I don't give it over to Him, I will offer it to something or someone else because we are created to worship.  To serve God or man.  I will bleed a little either way.  I know.  But my life is unimportant to the world which demands its servitude without reward.  To my Father, every moment of my life counts.  He will be doing a thousand things of which I'm unaware every day this new year and watching over my comings and goings as a father hovers over the child of his body.  And.....my Father calls me "Precious."