Friday, May 31, 2013

PSALM 90 - Life Is A Numbers Game

So teach us to number our days so that we may get a heart of wisdom.  (Verse 12)

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, Who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith.  James 1

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.  James 3

Or, in other words, what's the point of living our lives if we live them stupidly. We have just so many years, months, weeks, days and minutes on planet Earth. So what are we going to do with them? Waste them? My hand is up as one who would take back several years if not days and weeks of time I've spent being unwise. At least it taught me that I'm not going to throw any more precious time down the toilet of temptation. I've learned, the hard way, where that swirling water leads. And it's smelly.

The point of our lives should be to get a heart of wisdom. Moses is remembering the bad old days in the desert when he speaks this prayer. The stupidity of the golden calf, the whining over the bad food, the grumbling about every possible thing that happened to the people in the desert. Of course, the very things that kept them in the desert! Had the first massive group of refugees from Egypt been wiser, Moses wouldn't just be looking over into a land he'd never visit. He'd be eating some of those huge grapes! But the people thought they'd be in the desert forever. Didn't trust God had a plan bigger than they could ever imagine. In the moment, out there in the wilderness with their iffy leader who kept disappearing up the mountain, all they could think was they'd be in the desert forever. Not just a season. It was stinking thinking that led to them getting just what they believed God for. It made them sin against the very One Who wanted health, wealth and prosperity for them. And it was right around the corner. In the process, God was teaching them how to wake up each day trusting His leading and fall asleep each night knowing He is good. That would be an important piece of wisdom when they had it all in the future. Not to forget how He'd provided for them out of nothing.

Instead of the whining and bitching, maybe we should shut our mouths and get wisdom! How you ask? That's right. Ask. It is one of the things God is most excited about giving us. He knows we can't go far down our path being stupid. And by stupid, I mean, trusting ourselves to know what only He can know. Like Pinocchio, finding ourselves at the fair because it sounds so fun then realizing the treachery of following after hedonism. Filling our vacuous souls to the brim with vaporous pleasure. All the while the meat of faith that sticks to our spiritual bones and grows us up is passed by because we just want to do our own thing. And we have that God-given privilege. But it's unwise. The pot saying to the potter: "Bug off. I don't want to be involved in what I was created for." Okay. But what a waste of days, months, years. To be going down the wrong road as fast as we can run.

Maybe wisdom sounds boring to some. It is first of all pure. Right there we have a problem, because we aren't pure. This is the thing we must love about our God. The very first thing we need to gain wisdom is something He provided in His Son. Our purity. For our sake He made Him to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 6). The miracle of our purity also reveals to us, through the Holy Spirit, the mind of Christ (For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2). We can think like God. Renew our minds. See Him leading us down the road He custom built for each one of us. That is a thrilling thought! God can grant me wisdom to see my way. A way He takes my hand and walks me down. Back to being a child of Israel in the desert when God provides every little and big thing we need only this time tabernacling in us. No Moses needed. God Himself, by the Holy Spirit, our GPS. If we'd stop complaining and whining, we'd get there so much faster. And we'd enjoy the journey more. Because gaining wisdom is also about the journey. The fruit of wisdom isn't gained simply by the getting there. That's the payoff. Starting with the purifying of our lives, we learn to be peaceable, gentle and open to reason. Not always having to be right...especially in our arguments with God. (Admit it. You argue with God.) Life in Christ teaches us mercy because we know we continue to need His. And when we understand all the stuff we're capable of, it should be easier to be impartial and sincere. There's no self-righteousness in wisdom. (See above on how you got pure in the first place.)

Moses ends this prayer like this: Satisfy us in the morning with Your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as You have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let Your work be shown to Your servants and Your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!

The fruit of wisdom! We are right smack dab in the middle of His best for us! The work of our hands is blessed. There is favor and we are humble. Because we learned in the journey that God's love and mercies are new every morning. A morning that may be the dawn of the only day we have left. Embrace it. Rejoice and be glad in it and all the days that our Father gives thereafter. For the journey is as important as the destination because it is there we gain a heart of wisdom without which the promised land becomes a land of forgetfulness.




 

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

PSALM 90 - A Roach In The Light

You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence. (Verse 8)

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful to even speak of the things they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Ephesians 5

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Isaiah 60

I awoke to see it crawling on the wall beside my bed. I screamed into the dark like one about to be murdered. Malda, my roommate, had turned on the light at our dresser in the dorm room to get ready for her early class at the University of Texas at Austin, exposing the enemy. The brightness of the 60 watt bulb made the thing scurry to hide again beneath my bed. The roach. Two inches long with little feelers moving like crazy, trying to sense danger. Blinded only briefly, caught in the act of foraging our room for leftover dinner...or whatever they eat to grow so enormous in Texas. Foiled by the light. I let Malda kill him. She, much braver than I. He left a huge gut wash on the wall. That was mine to deal with. Served him right. He should've stayed in the dark. I had no idea the roach was under my bed all this time.

Things done in the dark. Where we think no one sees. Like the boss who finally took his employee to bed one night while her husband was away. Both knew it was wrong, but she could lose her job if she didn't comply. The economy is tough. She couldn't afford to try again for another six months to find other work. He? Forgot himself in the moment. An elder at the local church. A pillar of the community. Good wife. A couple of kids. Who would know? The two of them certainly wouldn't tell. Only thing is, the woman became pregnant. With this guy's kid. What to do...what to do. Her husband would know it's not his. The boss couldn't afford the bad press. Abortion. The only answer. Again. No one would know. But she didn't want one. Would keep the baby. So what of the husband? The boss paid a low life to cause a wreck, force the husband's car off the road. He died instantly. An awful accident. Such a tragedy. He would've messed everything up. The woman went on to have the child. Everyone thought it was her dead husband's and rejoiced that she now had his baby as a remembrance. Whew! All fixed.

Months passed. The boss went on with life, but there was this thing that always sat on his stomach. A secret weighing heavily, a thing he didn't look at unless awakened suddenly in the night. He is a Christian. So he says. The thing just got out of control. Until one day his pastor made a visit to the man's office. "One of our congregation is going through a pretty rough patch," the pastor began. "I wanted your take on what we should do since you are an elder in our church."

"What happened?" asked the boss.

"A prominent member of our church has been involved in an adulterous relationship. The woman is pregnant. Her husband dead." The pastor waited. Breathless.

"Who is it?" asked the boss, feigning indignation.

"You."

The boss fell to his knees in surprise and fear. Light. Brilliant light on this things done in the dark.

The rest of the story is obvious. It's King David's story replayed a thousand thousand times since Bathsheba. Oh, that David had confessed at the outset. Not compounded darkness on darkness. Fallen asleep over his own sin. Glossed over it thinking, deadly wrong, that no one would ever know. God's response to David: "Behold, I will raise up evil against you in your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of the sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun"(2 Samuel 12). The sun shining on his secret sin! Ouch. Hey, everyone, look what David did! The roach exposed. God forgave his sin, but exacted punishment because the king's deed "utterly scorned the Lord."

Both stories would've played out differently if the thing done in the dark had been immediately confessed. Terrible as it was, the ramifications wouldn't have been so dire. Exposed to light by the perps instead of waiting for God to do it for them. The longer we wait, holding onto our secret addictions, relationships or habits, the harder to confess and the worse when they are discovered.

My father lived a double life until his arrest in 1985. The ramifications of his homosexual pedophilia were horrendous. A church deacon. A trusted father. All blown to smithereens with a call from jail. Just wondered over the years if my father had reached for help, shameful as his secret was, would things have turned out differently. Maybe he wouldn't have lost his reputation and his family. Certainly many children wouldn't have been so wounded. Shame keeps the cycle going. Light on shame is a blessing. Repenting before the light is the sun, brings healing. Stops shame in its tracks. No more stacking of garbage on garbage. A deep sighing, even if payment is jail, that the treadmill has ceased. No longer captive to the dark. Oh, to confess our secret sins to God while they are still a secret to everyone but Him. He always knows. Children of God can expect the sun to shine on what they do because we are children of the light. Progeny of the One in Whom there is no darkness at all.

Jesus is the Light of the world. He came to brighten it up. A floodlight on our dorm wall--our interior lives. Dare we look? Have we fallen asleep to our sin thinking: "Aaaa...no one has to know about this."? Awake, O sleeper. Arise, shine! Empty the garbage. Clean out the vessel. Walk in the light. We don't have to creep around as roaches in the dark!In fact, be as merciless with sin as Malda was with the roach! Kill it! We who are supposed to shine like stars!

...be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life.  Philippians 2

 

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

PSALM 90 - Life Is A Lot Like That

You sweep them away as with a flood. They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.
(Verses 5-6)

Our lives are like floods, dreams and grasses. I'd like to take those one at a time. Remember it's Moses writing this psalm. He has a new group to take to the border of the Promised Land. He is not allowed to enter, though. Moses took on God's anger and disobeyed Him when he struck the rock in the wilderness instead of speaking to it as he was instructed (Numbers 20). After all the years of struggle with a "stiff-necked and stubborn" people, Moses is left out. He was eighty when God met him at the burning bush and commissioned him to free the Jews from Egypt. For forty more years the prophet walked around and around in the desert, waiting for a generation of griping, sinful people to die off. God got them out of Egypt but couldn't get Egypt out of them. Their children and grandchildren, who had no memory of the good ole days of slavery, were now ready to take all God had planned. So at the ripe old age of 120, Moses looks back at life--lives.

The flood. Moses watched as God's hand took several thousand people out at one time. Came in like a torrent flowing through a canyon and passed swift judgment on the fornicating, drunken and blaspheming nation as it built a golden calf out of the jewelry they took from Egypt. This, while Moses is up on a holy mountain receiving the law from God. The Israelites thought Moses died up there. It'd been over a month and they hadn't heard hide nor hair from him. Let's make up our own god! Why did that sound like such a good idea? Because their hearts were still trapped in Egypt. Many were born there and missed the food and their former culture. And, they were stuck in the desert. When Moses came down from the Mount Sinai, glowing from the presence of God, what he saw was an NC-17 scene playing out in the sand and a shining golden calf glistening in the sun. Furious, Moses broke the tablets. Broke the law...as they were. God was, of course, even more outraged by this people He loved enough to rescue from slavery. Whoosh. A flood of deaths to remind them of His holiness. Suddenly a plague overtook those who had made the golden calf and worshipped it. God might've destroyed them all, but Moses reminded Him of His promises.

The dream. I had one last night. It was so real I awakened from it with a sense it had actually taken place. Wide-eyed, I had trouble going back to sleep. But the dream came and went. A phantom of the night. Leaving its trace in my mind, but evaporating in the dark of my room. I'm sure as Moses stood on Mount Nebo and thought of all that he'd been through, it seemed to have gone by so quickly. Here they were, ready to go over into their dream land. He'd taken them through the nightmare, and all he could do was bask in one long glance at the green trees and lush fruits of his labors without touching them. Maybe he took a deep breath and thought, like I have lately, that it all went by so fast. Life, like a dream, that's left its aura on your soul and then is gone. Will the vapor that is me leave a mark to be remembered, or will I fade quickly into the background like my dream last night?

The grass. Renewed each morning by dew. Our youth is spent in growing, our strength encouraged by the water and sun pouring power into our heart and limbs. We get better. Wiser. Moses must've remembered his relative youthfulness when they all started out. The vigor with which he trusted his God to miraculously deliver His people. The energy to organize and drive a crowd of over a million people toward Cana. As the years passed, the weariness set in. The same old problems with the same old crowd. And, Moses was getting older. Evening was casting its shadow over his life. The dew wasn't quite as able to quench his thirst. Withering set in. Life was fading naturally into death.

Since we will go away someday, somehow, maybe it's the now we should involve ourselves in. Looking back to Egypt, that slavery we were caught up in and remember as being such a kick, might just sweep us away in a flood of misery and death. If life evaporates like a dream, with Moses, I want to do the thing God wants today. Leave a fragrance where I've been like the perfume of a woman stays on your clothes when she has walked away. That there is a trace of me that lingers for God's glory. If we are allowed to journey into dusk, fading and withering, our years are still few. But there are generations behind us who need to know in our twilight what our greener years were like. How God was faithful to us. How He loves us. Through the good and bad. So that no matter how they travel through, they end up rejoicing in heaven before a holy God. Now is the only day I'm promised. These hours are important in my short span.

 Lord, I want to seize today for You, not dwelling on the past nor fearing the future. Hold my hand because I want to go where You are going every minute of every day!

 

Monday, May 27, 2013

PSALM 90 - Aching With The Young Widow On Memorial Day

Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. You return man to dust and say, "Return, O children of man!" For a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. (Verses 1-4)

Man who is born of woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.   Job 14

There is an older house on Orange Street in Huntington Beach where we live. Surrounding its wooden frame on every side are rows of grandiflora roses that perfume the air and assault the eyes with color and form that makes us stop each time we walk by them just to breathe in the scent and marvel at their beauty. Some of the roses are huge, so heavy they tilt out into the sidewalk. Others stand straight and proud atop their long sturdy stems. We don't walk by every day, so we rarely see the same flower twice. The roses that were in full bloom, at the height of their glory, when we last stopped to admire them, are usually turning brown and dropping their petals within a week's time. Past their glory already, soon to be cut from the stem so other roses can bud in their places. The circle of life. The rose was created with fading beauty--a short but wondrous life cycle.

Time seems so important to us. As we rush here and there to get it done, maybe there is a part of us deep down that constantly reminds us that our life is but a vapor. Here one day and gone the next--like the roses on Orange Street. Moses wrote this psalm before the second generation of Israelites crossed into the land promised them by God. The prophet had seen the mothers and fathers of the Israelite children die off. Unfit for their destiny because of their failure to listen to and love the God Who dwelt among them, led them by fire and cloud, and went before them into battle. The eternal God, Who isn't tied to time, wasn't in a hurry. Isn't in a hurry to accomplish His will. But what we do with our lives obviously matters. It not only affects our path, but also our beauty--glory--while we bloom.

I'm haunted by a picture I saw a couple of days ago of a young woman in a stark military cemetery filled with small, uniformly fashioned headstones. She is young and in her left hand is a bouquet of flowers ready to be placed in the small receptacle lying lonely as it awaits its decoration. But the woman hasn't made it to the urn. No, she's fallen atop the length of the grave, for beneath the manicured lawn that blankets the graveyard is her husband, his crypt five feet below. It's all she has left of him, so she warms him with her body and wets the grass of his grave with her tears. Her heart aches to see him look at her again. Just once more. And she wonders if it was worth it. Her life blew apart when his did, and she doesn't know how to recover. She can't think she'll ever love again. Wishes she were with him there, in the dust, forever.

Struck down in their full glory, there are many, many more graves. And countless other broken hearts and lives. Given so that today we can wonder at our fragile freedom. Young men and women cut down like so many roses now buried in the soil they fought to preserve for you and me. The sorrow of some isn't their deaths but the lives they now are living without limbs, without jobs, or maybe, without the loved ones they hoped would be faithful. Some are home in full glory. But not unaffected by the scenes of battle, the loss of friends, the weight of war. The journey has been costly generation after generation.

It matters what we do with our short lives. Even if we lived to be a thousand, it is but a drop in the bucket compared to eternity. Everlasting to everlasting debunks the idea of time, for it's only an invention of the Creator Who someday, sooner or later, calls us to an end of ourselves. In our evanescence, may we be as courageous with our lives as those who died to make us free. May we stand for what we believe is true. Protect our freedoms from the tyranny of our own countrymen as well as the brutality of our enemies. May we live more exemplary lives filled with love, mercy, joy and devotion to America so that the young widow lying atop her husband's simple grave can know he didn't die in vain.
 

Friday, May 24, 2013

PSALM 89 - Semper fi - God Bless

"I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from My lips. Once for all I have sworn by my holiness. I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before Me. Like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies." God Almighty   (Verses 34-37)

Now as they were eating, Jesus took the bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat. This is my body." And He took the cup, and when He'd given thanks He gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."
Matthew 26

For all the promises of God find their Yes in Him.  2 Corinthians 1

She left her daughters when they were young to be with another man. It seemed so right, how could it be wrong? Besides, she was trapped in a marriage that stifled her. Married too young, she'd missed out on the dating scene. Was flattered by the attentions of an older man. That played itself out and she needed room to breathe. Only there were three little girls who needed their mommy. It was weeks after she left before they saw her again. The courts, of course, set up visitation times for every other weekend and a couple of nights during the week. Only thing was, that was somewhat burdensome, what with her job and boyfriend. "I'll be there at 6 o'clock." Maybe. Sometimes not at all. While they waited, dressed as if they were going on a date so happy were they to be with her. Over the years the promises were more brazen and the breaking of them more deadly. We can't trust what she tells us.

Promises. Promises. I think most of us don't really expect people to do what they say they will. So many of us are now the products of half of the marriages that fail. Parents breaking promises to each other. "I do" but maybe not so much. From politicians to preachers, parents to teachers, siblings to friends, we hope they'll do what they said they would. Just don't bank on it. Even from the bank.

I think that's why we all have to learn that God keeps His promises. That since He swears by Himself, the words came from His own lips, it will be accomplished. God will keep the covenant He speaks to us. It was first a blood covenant with Abraham. God will bless his seed, the Jewish people, forever in a land they now possess once again. To David God swore a kingly line that would never end. Fulfilled in the coming of Jesus, Who made a new covenant with those who believe in Him. Sealed it with His own blood. Now as they were eating, Jesus took the bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take eat. This is my body." And He took the cup, and when He'd given thanks He gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom." This new covenant promises to free us from our sin (Revelation 1:5), make us right with God (Hebrews 13:12), and redeem us from slavery to this world (Ephesians 1:7). No longer bound by the impossible rules of the law, we now have them written on our hearts. The indwelling Holy Spirit, also a promised part of the covenant, now makes it even possible to know what God wants us to do and to perform it. We can count on that. And heaven. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not die but have life eternal." Jesus.

This Memorial Day weekend I'm struck by the blood oath made to Americans over and over again that men and women for over two centuries have kept. Semper fi. Always faithful. To protect us from the enemies who would destroy our way of life. Their blood has soaked the ground all over the world while they stood our ground against invaders and tyrants. Young soldiers promised to keep another 9/11 from happening on U.S. soil again. Stood faithful to that promise in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many bled the oath out there with their lives. Others lost limbs, buddies or faithful canine companions. To promise cost them something. There is always a price for the oath. To keep our word, semper fi, means no matter what. It's about honor. Character. Steadfastness of purpose. It reveals the character of God Whose Yes always means Yes.

I am thankful for all that Christ sacrificed to set me free and I want to honor His promise to me by being faithful to Him. I am thankful for all those in the military who have sacrificed to keep their oaths to this nation. It left a toll on them to have their Yes be Yes in Vietnam, Korea, Europe, Pearl Harbor all the way back to our beginnings. In a time when promises are so often left unkept, these men and women have reminded us that there is still honor in doing what they said they would do. I'm humbled by their sacrifice and thankful for their service. God bless America.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

PSALM 89 - Does True Love Overlook Wrong?

You have a mighty arm. Strong is Your hand; high Your right hand. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne. Steadfast love and faithfulness go before You. Blessed are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O Lord, in the light of Your face, who exult in Your name all day and in Your righteousness are exalted. For You are the glory of their strength. By Your favor our horn is exalted. For our shield belongs to the Lord, our king to the Holy One of Israel.  (Verses13-18)  Italics mine.

"I am He. I am the first and I am the last. My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens. When I call to them, they stand forth together." Isaiah 48

Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am."  John 8:58

I have been reading a book about a man who claims to have gone to heaven. There, the great and mighty unnamed god of the universe tells him three things: You are loved, you have nothing to fear, and you can't do anything wrong. Hmm. The God of the Bible would tell His children, those saved by the righteousness of Christ imputed to them, that the first two things are true, for sure. That last one, though, is a kicker. I know Christ would say, we can't, on our own strength, get anything right. We are born into sin and must be reborn out of it. Given a new nature. Even that new nature struggles with the old man and must be cleansed on a daily basis just like our earthly bodies need a good washing after the dirt they collect pursuing life on planet Earth.

The bigger question is this: If God is a God of love, can He look away from wrong and not deal with it. Under the premise of this "word" from the universal god, everyone goes to heaven. Everyone. No one has wronged humanity enough to merit judgment, or at all. That god has issues. Hitler, Idi Amin, serial killers, mass murderers like Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin, and the list of evil goes on and on, are enjoying the fruits of heaven alongside the greatest compassion and selflessness humanity expressed, including our sinless Savior. Since there is essentially no right or wrong, to borrow a phrase, "What difference does it make?" how we live our lives? How I treat my neighbor or my pet? I am okay just the way I am. Don't need to be better for I am fully loved as I hack a British soldier to death in the middle of a busy London street or bomb innocents in Boston or Baghdad.

The God of all is righteous and just. That is the very foundation of His throne. His character is built on the fact that He has established a right and a wrong. Good and evil exist and He alone parses them fairly. Because He can. But it isn't simply good and evil our God is interested in. Always going before His judgments are steadfast love and faithfulness. How perfect! Were Almighty God only about rewarding good and punishing evil, He would be as one-dimensional as the god of the book I'm reading. But always before He makes a final decision about His creation, love and faithfulness have spewed from His presence like perfume from an atomizer. Covering our sin with His grace and mercy. On only one condition.

This God of ours can't be separated from Jesus Who proclaimed clearly to the religious leaders of His day that He is the Great I Am spoken of in Exodus 3 when Moses asks God what he is to tell the people if they ask the name of his God. "I AM WHO I AM. Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" We have seen the face of God and understand His grace and might in the death and resurrection of Jesus. The First and the Last hung on a tree of His own creation to cover us in a righteousness we don't deserve. Raised Himself up on the third day to ascend once more to heaven from which Jesus came again through the Holy Spirit to give us that same power that brought Him from the tomb. So that...whosoever believes in Him, shall not die, but have eternal life. In this is the working of righteousness, our cleansing from all wrong, that we take on His rightness and exult in it, not in our own substandard, often murderously incorrect, sense of justice and goodness. Right and wrong are harsh and arbitrary when men and women decide it. It isn't permeated with steadfast love and faithfulness, but instead with "I'm right and you're wrong! Off with your head!". 

The one condition is the stumbling block. The mighty God of heaven and earth has a mighty arm ready to reach down to save us from ourselves and up to call off the enemy or signal legions of angels from heaven. Jesus is the way for us to know Him fully. The only way. For He is God Almighty, come in the flesh, to save us from our very propensity for wrong, not just from the awful things we do. If we think we can't sin, we think we don't need a Savior. If we think we can't do wrong, we are silly. And we listen to a silly god. We know this in our hearts. With or without Jesus.

I am happy today to know that I can boast about the lovely face of God reflected in the light of Jesus. That He is my righteousness. I know what it's like to shout from the rooftops His great love. To swim in the righteousness of Christ rather than drown in my own ridiculous attempts at earning rewards for my meager attempts at goodness. All of Jesus's perfection is given to me, imperfect, screwed up me, because, also by His great grace, I believe in Him for salvation. That isn't justice. I deserve to pay for all the dumb things I stumbled into as well as the overt wrongs I have committed that are downright evil. How merciful of the God of all to allow grace to trump the rules! Just one thing we need. Jesus. I AM made flesh to live among us. The glory of our strength.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

PSALM 89 - Moore Grace

Let the heavens praise Your wonders, O Lord, Your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones! For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord, a god greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around Him? O Lord God of hosts, Who is mighty as You are, O Lord, with Your faithfulness all around You? You rule the raging sea; when its waves rise, You still them. The heavens are Yours; the earth also is Yours. The world and all that is in it, You have founded them.  (Verses 5-9;11)

May 20, 2013, will be etched in the minds of the people from Moore, Oklahoma, forever now. It's the day their town was picked up and thrown back down in pieces by a two-mile-wide tornado that packed two hundred mile per hour winds and stayed on the ground for an astonishing forty minutes. It rumbled through town like a demonic freight train intent on devouring homes, schools, hospitals and shopping centers in an effort to feed its voracious appetite. In its wake, hundreds of people are bereaved, injured and homeless.

I know this monster. It ate Wichita Falls, Texas, on April 10, 1979. We'd just moved there the day before. Signed the papers on our new home on the southwest side of town, met our elderly neighbors and were on our way back to the motel we were staying in downtown when the sky turned a dark green hue and the clouds began to curl in wisps from their edges. At the drive-thru of the Wendy's we ordered hamburgers and Frosties. Then the tornado sirens whined their terrifying cry for us to take cover. "Get inside right now!" yelled the teenager at the drive-thru window. We grabbed our daughters and raced through the doors of the restaurant just as the monster put its enormous feet onto the southwest side of town. I turned to look just before the doors of the meat locker closed us in semi-darkness to wait out the storm. The F4 tornado devoured twenty percent of the town, killed forty-two people and left neighborhoods looking like a bomb had gone off.

Our home received minor damage, but two streets over concrete foundations were swept clean, looking as if there'd never been homes built upon them. Even the bricks were gone. We drove in the night with no street lights into the mess. When roads became impassable, we walked with flashlights the rest of the way to our house, not very hopeful there would be one standing. And there it was, its white brick glowing in the milky moonlight. I shook so hard I thought I might come apart. Then we went to see our neighbors who'd tried to outrun the thing. They made it. Many of the forty-two hadn't been so lucky.

In the aftermath, our lives were, for a while, a complicated mess. And we had a house! Bill went to his office from the motel the next morning. His boss was there. "The phone lines are out," he informed Bill. But the red light kept blinking, so Bill picked up the receiver. It was the driver of our moving van trying to get ahold of us. Small miracle. The man was on the highway where semis were taken up like Tonka trucks and thrown for several feet before they landed in desultory heaps all over the landscape. All he wanted to do was get out of Wichita Falls! My parents showed up, miraculously let through the roadblocks, and helped us and the mover get the furniture into the house. There was no water or electricity. The motel filled up with homeless families. Every grocery store in town was emptied of food. Restaurants served without benefit of replenishing their food supplies because deliveries were halted. We had no groceries, limited water and we were hungry. That first night we drove an hour and a half out of town to find a diner where our family waited for over an hour and ate whatever they had left to serve us. It was days later before things were even nearing normalcy for us. It was years later for so many others.

As I watched last night's twister eat Moore, I wondered why there are tornadoes. It seems that might have been what took the lives of Job's kids. "Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, and behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you." (Job 1) We know God rules the waves and the winds, and we know He sometimes gets in the boat with us when they are ripping through our lives. In fact, Jesus walked on the waves when they were so tumultuous the disciples feared drowning. "Why are you afraid?" He asked them. Really? Because a Leviathan is ripping through town crushing us. But if God understands the weather patterns, they must not be completely arbitrary. Nature is fierce, fueled by highs and lows, warmth and coolness, and winds and calm. Mixing and stirring to blow in from the ocean as a hurricane, to funnel down and vacuum the plains, or to rattle and shake the earth. God didn't say He'd take us out of the storm. Jesus promised to be in it with us. With big and little mercies. Like the lady whose dog wriggled out of the rubble as she was speaking to a reporter yesterday. Or the Bible that was found opened to Isaiah 32: Each will be like a hiding place from the wind, a shelter from the storm, like streams of water in a dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land.

I know there are some who will make this out to be God's judgment on Moore. Third tornado since 1999. But they live in the way of storms. The residents know that. Before subdivisions were built, tornadoes took holiday there, playing with trees and fences. It's called Tornado Alley. Wichita Falls sits there, too, with warnings going off yesterday there as well. I live near the San Andreas fault line. Florida and the Gulf of Mexico are sitting ducks during hurricane season. Nature's going to do what it's going to do. God created it to function. But what I learned from my experience with the monster F4 back in Texas is that He is doing, for sure, miracles of His presence in every life affected by the storm yesterday. Even in the ultimate cross of loss of loved ones, Jesus is in the boat. Walking through the ruins of both houses and lives to comfort and restore. I am praying today that every person affected by the massive catastrophe will feel His grace in a tangible way and see His provision when it looks like all is lost. The heavens are His. The earth also is His. The world and all that is in it, He has founded. Whether we are reeling from the devastation of a weather system or we have found ourselves in the path of a different kind of storm, we can trust that our God is with us. We can rest with our Savior in the boat.

Monday, May 20, 2013

PSALM 89 - When The Root Becomes The Fruit

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever. With my mouth I will make known Your faithfulness to all generations.
For I said: "Steadfast love will be built up forever. In the heavens You will establish Your faithfulness."
You have said, "I have made a covenant with my chosen one. I have sworn to David, My servant: I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations."
Let the heavens praise Your wonders, O Lord, Your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones!   (Verses 1-5)  Italics mine

"I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star."  Jesus, Revelation 22

Here is a thought for a Monday morning. The root of the plant becomes the fruit of it. Hmm. God established David as king, having created the young shepherd for just that purpose, then comes to earth as a descendant (the fruit of) David's line. Indeed, let the heavens praise His wonders. Our God Who established his steadfast love for a young man tending sheep in the fields of his father so that God Himself could be born as a man, Jesus Christ, and establish not only David's kingly line but an eternal one. Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

That God actually initiates oaths with men is bind bending for me. God swears by Himself, because there is none higher. The Old Testament law was a covenant begun by God and sworn to by men. The New Testament covenant was also made by God to man: "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God and they will 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 of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more." Why would God swear such an oath to us in our puny human state? Why would He care?

Because God is love--steadfast love. He can't help but love. The holy ones who surround His throne, the angelic beings who relay His will and messages, the moon and stars, mountains and streams, emu and buffalo--and us. In love, He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will. Love birthed the whole idea of having us become God's children. Before God built the universe and all that sustains it, He knew us. Loved us. And swore to love us for eternity. The root blessing the fruit that will come from its branches. But not before the root sprang forth as fruit itself. God prepared David's life and the generations that unfolded from it in such a way that it would bear the blossom that would rule all generations for all time and eternity. Our God isn't arbitrary. He is a mastermind whose glorious creation moves intentionally through time, covered in steady, faithful love. No mistakes grace God's world. No afterthoughts move their feet on Earth's dusty crust. Love holds our destiny in His hands.

Not only did God make a covenant with David, His servant, but also with His Chosen One. God raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things under his feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church. (Ephesians 1) Destined for all eternity to be Lord of all, Jesus is the fruit of His Father's grand scheme. As the Word of God, His Logos, Jesus is also the very One Who spoke the world into being. All things were made through Him and without Him, nothing was made that was made (John 1). Our salvation was established in the heavenlies forever ago to last forever more. God decided to become the fruit of the root He established in mankind so that mankind could partake of the unfathomable riches of relationship with Him. Love, faithful love, has guided its course from glory, throughout history, and will lead us home.



 

Friday, May 17, 2013

PSALM 88 - Screamed Your Pain to God Much Lately?

Your wrath has swept over me. Your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me altogether. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness.  (Verses 16-18)

Why so downcast, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall praise Him again...Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls. All Your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands His steadfast love, and at night His song is within me, a prayer to the God of my life.  Psalm 42

Wednesday night was a reminder to me of the great grace of God to heal our wounds--to help us through the pain of life back into light. I sat beside a young sophomore I'd met before as I listened with great joy to our daughter in Christ give her story of God's faithfulness to her at a late evening chapel on the campus of Biola University. I'd met the young man to my left at our home a month or so before. Standing across from me as we assembled pizzas and munched veggies, he told me the story of his pain. Only last year his father was taken suddenly from the family, leaving them in grief and confusion. The young man thought he hadn't been the son he'd like to have been, had some regrets about that, but the pain of loss had sent him into a depression he then brought along with him to school in the fall.

It wasn't until we talked on Wednesday night that I got the story of his healing. We had more time to speak with each other and I have to say I was so proud of the way this young man has weathered his storm, head against the wind, rain beating his face, as he gutted it out with God. It wasn't long into the first semester of school this year that his depression turned to anger. When before he'd awakened every day feeling only enough energy to make it out of bed and through his routine, now he was getting up ready for a fight. We, as Christians, often feel like it's sinning to tell God how it is with us. So for a while, the young student held it in. Didn't deal. Only stomped his way past the anger. But deep calls to deep. Heavenly Father to hurting kid. Come let us reason together.

"All right. All right! You took my dad away!" Poured out like vomit. The ugly accusation that was the conviction of his soul wreaking havoc on his faith. The great ball of hate the circumstances had planted into the young man's heart had grown into a palpable, throbbing entity he felt he could reach into himself and extract. It needed unwinding, like a ball of knitting yarn. "I hate what You did, God!"

I know that pain. God allowing the bursting of his child's heart. Tell me more. I'm listening.

And there was more. Lots more. For days my young friend reasoned with God. The beautiful part of this story, as I listened to it while staring into his bright brown eyes, was the peace the young man has come to now. After the pus of his sore soul poured out before the Father Who will never leave him or forsake him, God could begin to heal the hurt. Looking for an honest heart, the Father found one in my friend. Loves him and holds him, for deep calls to deep.

Our daughter in Christ was so amazing in her testimony of God's process of healing her profound hurts. As part of her staff, she saw the young man's anguish and gave him a hand in walking out his emotions. Because when we know from experience the power of honesty with God, when we've been through the grinding mill of heartache and confusion, and come out in love with Jesus, we cannot help but comfort the afflicted. The love of Jesus will take us over the waves, finally calming the turmoil, fulfilling hope again.

We stood and sang together, all of us, "He loves me, Oh, how He loves me" with our hands raised and our hearts bursting. This time with joy instead of the infection of life's crushing diseases. Unable on our own to produce such adoration. But all three of us, our precious spiritual child, the young man and I, know what it's like to feel assaulted and destroyed by the world, those we love taken from us, left angry and hopeless. We are rescued from the flood, pulled out of the overwhelming waves, no longer dripping the residue of the world but becoming rooted and grounded in the soil of His marvelous love. The greater the struggle Jesus brings us through, the greater is our love for Him and our understanding of His steadfast commitment to bind us to Himself by grace. "Oh, how we love Him."

For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 
Ephesians 3

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

PSALM 88 - What's With Unanswered Prayers?

But, Lord, I have called out to You for help. Every morning I pray to You. Lord, why do You reject me? Why do You hide from me?  (Verses 13-14)

Timing is everything. So what is God doing when we pray and don't get answers? I know we often feel as though He isn't listening or doesn't care, as this psalmist puts out there. But could it be something else?

Daniel was a man of prayer. It almost cost him his life to come before His God three times a day despite the ruling of a king who wanted all glory for himself. The Israelites were in Babylonian captivity during this time. They'd been ruthlessly unfaithful to God, so He dispersed them, in love, in Babylon. To teach them what it's like to be away from Him. God set a time limit on the exile. Purged a generation of their idolatry, then sent them back. Into the scene, early on, the Lord put Daniel and a few of his young friends. Daniel became a ruler in his later years, a confidant to the king. His heart, though, always yearned for home and for the repentance of the Jewish people. In dreams and visions, God showed Daniel what would happen in his time and in ours. This was a man whose prayers should've been answered on time. If righteousness and self-control are what's needed to please God, then why would God wait to answer such a man? But He did. On his face, fasting and pleading, Daniel's experienced a God who was silent. For three weeks. When Daniel urgently needed an answer.

The Bible doesn't say if Daniel had the same attitude as the psalmist in these verses. Did the captive Israelite doubt an answer was on its way? Perhaps he wondered if he was praying incorrectly. I think he must have had some feelings that leaned that way. At the end of the three weeks, Daniel went out to stand beside the Tigris River. When he looked up he saw a man who shone like brilliant yellow quartz. He was wearing a white linen garment cinched with a golden belt. The face of the man was bright like lightning; his eyes like fire. When he spoke it sounded like the roar of a crowd. The men with Daniel were so scared they ran and hid. Helpless and weak, Daniel was left alone. The man reached toward Daniel and touched him, sending the prophet to his hands and knees where he shook like a leaf. Yet the first words from the man's mouth were: "Daniel, God loves you very much." Unsaid was: "I know you probably doubted that since your prayers have gone unanswered."

Of course, for those of us who know the story, the delay in the answers had to do with a mighty battle in the spirit realm. The man continued: "Daniel, don't be afraid. Some time ago you decided to get understanding and humble yourself before God. Since that time God has listened to you. I have come because of your prayers. But the prince of Persia has been fighting against me for twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the most important angels, came to help me." (Daniel 8, italics, mine)

So what's going on in the heavenlies over our prayers and our lives today? Trust me, if we know Christ, there is a battle for our earthly walk. If the enemy can make us believe God has abandoned us, doesn't care about us anymore, or never loved us in the first place, he wins. The angel of the Lord wanted Daniel to know two things right off the bat. Primarily, God loves him. And me and you. And then, that God hears when we pray. We must believe those two things in order to walk out this crazy, confusing life. If we have unanswered prayers today, it isn't because God doesn't love His child. And it isn't because He's not listening. So it has to be some other reason. In my life, I have to say I'm glad He didn't answer all my prayers the way I prayed them. Some of them were just stupid. Some I still wait on and pray about every day. Some I will never get satisfaction on in this world and may not even want to know about in the next. But I cannot think God isn't good because He doesn't meet my expectations. I need to be more interested in meeting His and in letting Him have the last word on the process here.

In the old tabernacle, the incense was set on fire by the coals from the altar of sacrifice, making it holy fire mixed with the dripping blood of the sacrificial animal. In heaven, according to Revelation 8, in the end times an angel will carry a golden pan filled to overflowing with incense which the angel will take to the golden altar before the throne of God. There the angel will offer the incense along with the prayers of all of God's people. The fragrance of the incense will go from the angel's hand up to the very nostrils of God. Then the angel lights the incense pan with fire from that altar and throws it on the earth, creating earthquakes, lightning and thunder. Retribution for all the wrongs that arise from the incense-scented prayers of His kids.

One day all wrongs will be righted. All prayers answered. Even the ones we can't understand His silence concerning today. Leviticus 1 says the burnt offerings are a "sweet aroma to the Lord's nostrils." Remember the incense, our prayers, are ignited by the fire from the altar of Christ's sacrifice. The Lord God cannot but hear the prayers dipped in His Son's blood. So we wait, if we need to, without accusation that our God doesn't care. He loves us and hears us. We reciprocate that love and stay still before Him.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

PSALM 88 - Jars of Clay, Chipped Maybe

You have brought me close to death; I am almost in the dark place of the dead. You have been very angry with me; all Your waves crush me. You have taken my friends away from me and have made them hate me. I am trapped and cannot escape. My eyes are weak from crying. Lord, I have prayed to you every day; I have lifted my hands to You in prayer. Do You show Your miracles to the dead? Do their spirits rise up and praise You?   (Verses 6-10)

Where can I go to get away from Your Spirit? Where can I run from You? If I go up to the heavens, You are there. If I lie down in the grave, You are there. If I rise with the sun in the east and settle in the west beyond the sea, even there You will guide me. With Your right hand, You hold me.       Psalm 139

You ever notice how sometimes when a person asks you how you are they don't really want to know? Especially at church. Where we're all supposed to be fixed because we're, well, Christians. Perfected in Christ without the struggles of the common pagan. Eh-hem. Someone asked me not too long ago, when I asked, "How's your life?" if I really wanted to know. Because it wasn't pretty. Just like the psalmist, the person wasn't having a bad day, but a bad season. Was I prepared to listen? Yes. I was. Was I prepared to not show horror at her brokenness? Yes, I was. We are all broken. Even the best of us aren't living the Christian life on our own or we are a sham. Dressed in Sunday clothes trying, without the Holy Spirit, to do what only Christ can do in us. And that is make us whole. Because, as I already pointed out, we are broken.

For those of us who've had a season of crying our eyes out because of loss, abandonment, confusion and betrayal, we get this psalm. It feels like God is angry, too. That He feels just like the rest of the world does. And it doesn't seem to matter that we call out to our God with great fervor only to be greeted with His perceived silence. But what if the miracle we want is the one God wants to do in us, instead of for us? What if, with David in Psalm 139, we concentrate on the fact that we aren't anywhere, as His children, that He is not. Even in Sheol, the place of the dead. In fact, He holds us in our place of pain. Waiting with us for His salvation. Which will come! Our Father knows something cracked us, made a fissure on the surface of our lives or cut us deeply to the core. Restoring pieces in the re-creation of the jars of clay we who know Him are is a touchy job. If our pot fell apart, we need lots of renovation. Aren't we glad God cares enough to make us beautiful again? But in the process, we're a work in progress.

So, if my sister wants to tell me today that God is just not to be found in her life, that things since the divorce or betrayal (or both) haven't gone well at all, that she's found a new guy and is contemplating a relationship that isn't God-glorifying because she doesn't know what to do with her pain, I will listen. Without judgment, I hope. Because I know my own brokenness. That's not to say I won't encourage her to keep allowing God's process in her life instead of creating more broken pieces out of her mutiny. But since God loves my sister more than I ever could, He will go to hell and get her if she chooses to go there. I know this. For a fact. I've had my hair singed there.

The encouragement is that we are the apple of His eye whether we feel like it or not today. Our God not only holds us together, He keep everything together, from the tiniest atom to the largest planet(Ephesians 4:6). Part of loving our brothers and sisters in Christ is to listen to and encourage them when things are really tough. I confess, when I read this portion of the Psalms this morning, I sighed, asking God what I should do with the fact it's such a downer. I had to smile as my Father lovingly reminded me of some of the things I've prayed. It sounded all too familiar. Thankful that Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit as the indwelling power for our lives, I hurt for the psalmist who lived in times before the outpouring of this extraordinarily generous and powerful gift from God. The first fruit of all we have awaiting us in heaven living in us, giving us conviction of sin, direction for life, and instruction for living the way God wants. Wow! We have the privilege of speaking, Christian to Christian, the truth to each other in love, because the Way, the Truth and the Life lives in us. So putting judgment behind, I want to listen to the distress calls of my sisters and brothers as well as rejoicing in their triumphs. I might need their ears myself because life is hard, full of surprises and an enemy lurks looking for an opportunity to steal our joy. I want to encourage others to hold onto God because He has us in His hand. Don't jump out of it. Our Father is molding it for its glorious purposes in Him. With God's power working in us, God can do much, much more than we can ask or imagine.  Ephesians 3:20

Monday, May 13, 2013

PSALM 87 - That Darned Toaster!

Lord, You are the God Who saves me. I cry out to you day and night. Receive my prayer, and listen to my cry. My life is full of troubles, and I am nearly dead. They think I am on the way to my grave. I am like a man with no strength. I have been left as dead, like a body lying in a grave whom You don't remember any more, cut off from Your care.  (Verses 1-5)

"Be strong and brave. Don't be afraid of them and don't be frightened, because the Lord your God will go with you. He will not leave you or forget about you." Deuteronomy 31/Hebrews 13

 But He said to me, "My grace is enough for you. When you are weak, My power is made perfect in you." So I am very happy to brag about my weaknesses. Then Christ's power can live in me. For this reason I am happy when I have weaknesses, insults, hard times, sufferings and all kinds of troubles for Christ. Because when I am weak, than I am truly strong. 
(2 Corinthians 12)

I stumbled to the kitchen early one morning and somehow, with my bleary eyes, found the coffee pot. I filled it with water and poured in the grounds, waiting for even the aroma of it brewing to awaken me from the lingering anesthesia of sleep. Somehow I found my vitamins and chocolate milk (a daily indulgence I will avow always makes taking all those pills possible) and swallowed the things without their becoming stuck in my throat. I cut a piece of bread and threw it in the toaster, pushed the button down, and poured myself a half cup of coffee (couldn't wait for the coffee maker to brew an entire mug's worth). I could already taste that piece of toast. Slathered in both real butter and apple butter. I love it when they melt together on the bread. Nothing was happening, though, with that darn toast. I couldn't smell it crisping in the little red lights of the chrome machine that should make my breakfast appear any moment now. I peeked in. No lights. Nothing. My bread sat there waiting on a toaster that was...okay, it was unplugged. I told you I was sleepy. It's amazing how well the toaster worked when I gave it a little electricity.

Like me. Unplugged, I pretty much just sit there. No ideas. No real ability to make things happen. But the fact that I'm powerless without Christ makes anything possible with Him. I think about the discussions Bill and I had about how we were going to put three kids through college without bankrupting our future and theirs. We prayed and prayed about it, saved what we could (we live in California), and trusted Him. I took a job as a director of a learning center. Within months, it was taken over by Sylvan Learning Centers. Then the corporation originally owning it wanted to sell it to us. We, who had to have a job in order to survive. However, when they accepted the very low price I offered, we understood once again that unless we plugged into Him, we didn't have enough money even for that. Miraculously, truly miraculously, God provided the money. The business grew. Big enough to pay for college and then some. When our son finished his last semester, it became clear God wanted us to sell the business. Turns out it was at just the right time. Although I thought it premature in the moment.

I have also experienced the power failure when I get far enough away from the outlet that I have stretched the cord too far. I was upset with God. Didn't understand too many whys. In my life and in the lives of those I loved. Satan uses the idea that God isn't good, as he did with Eve in the garden, to cause us to slowly remove our lives from their very Source. Now don't get me wrong. God didn't move. I did. It's at this point I relate to the psalmist this morning. A limp fish, lying on my bed, crying and moaning about all that is wrong. It's not that his troubles, and mine, weren't real. Life is chock full of stuff to get over, around or through. For the whiner or for the brave. And it's very brave to face, unafraid and full of faith, the train wrecks that may come our way. It's counter intuitive to unplug at just the time we need power. Just like it seems to make no sense to be undaunted in the face of the daunting. That same power Who raised Christ from the dead dwells in me!!! (Romans 8) So He can also raise me from my bed of pain and doubt, strengthen my wobbly legs, teach my wandering mind and quell my deepest fears. If He can't, I'm as effective as my toaster without electricity. But I must engage. Make myself available again in faith, not trusting in the plan, but in the Planner. Not drawing close because I understand how it will all work out, but allowing Him to make a way where this is no way! That's how I become strong when I am weak. Here I am, Lord, plug me in! Then I get to observe His great power as it surges through a useless toaster. To see all that He can do when I think I'm almost dead, full of troubles and on my way to the grave.

As Moses said to Joshua and the children of Israel before he died, "Be strong and brave because the Lord is with you and won't forget about you." Run, walk or crawl back to the Source today. It might take a while to get there, depending upon how far away you've wandered. But the outlet is alive. The power is available. And your God is waiting for you to let go of your weakness so He can show you how strong He is.

Friday, May 10, 2013

PSALM 87 - The Gift of Home

They will dance and sing, "All good things come from Jerusalem (Zion)!" (Verse 7)

Every good action and perfect gift is from God. These good gifts come down from the Creator of the sun, moon and stars, Who does not change like their shifting shadows. God decided to give us life through the word of truth so we might be the most important of all the things He made.   James 1:17

I was talking with my daughter, Vanessa, last night about how challenging this world is for the collective "us." We know many people in distress right now, people we love. And there seems to be no explanation nor any way we can actually help make their pain easier. It's called life. There are times of great rejoicing and then there are the times of struggle. But what I have learned from having lived sixty-four years now is this. Struggle can also be a gift. And a good one. Because it refines and maybe even defines us.

The thought is choking me up right now because it was in my most intense struggle with God that I fell most deeply in love with Him. I learned we can fight with Him with gut-wrenching tears and clenched fists. He would rather I scream my pain at Him while I'm in my car driving aimlessly around because it's the only place no one but He will hear me than have me run away from the issues. My Father can take it. He listened to Job and the poor man's friends until He'd had enough. But answered! Talked Job through the pain. And, evidently, finally let His child know what was up since we have the full story of Satan's challenges over Job in heaven. There are times when we can't know why. Maybe never will. But if God has us on our faces, pouring out our hearts to Him, we are in a very safe place. And a place of blessing. We are the most important of God's created beings. Nothing can separate us from His love or His presence. Not even our darkest hours.

It is why Zion is so desirable. Vanessa asked me last night if we are just here to live our lives waiting for heaven. That's a good question. Christ is our foretaste of home. Here is what Paul said in Romans 8: These sufferings that we have now are nothing compared to the great glory that will be shown us. Everything God made is waiting with excitement for God to show His children's glory completely...We know that everything God made has been waiting until now in pain, like a woman ready to give birth. Not only the world, but we also have been waiting with pain inside us. We have the Spirit as the first part of God's promise. So we are waiting for God to finish making us His own children, which means our bodies will be made free. We were saved, and we have this hope. It's not that God expects us to live only in expectation of heaven, but what a gift to know this existence isn't all there is. What a miracle to realize that even our crooked paths on this daunting earth lead to Zion, where we were born. And if born there, we belong there. Not here.

That is the ultimate good and perfect gift, our salvation. Come to us from above. Costly and thoughtful--transportation home when the time comes. When the tent is left behind and we reach the gates of Zion it will matter what we did with the dusty roads on Earth. It will matter that we allowed our God to be Lord of the whiplash as well as the smooth, straight roads that sometimes lift us up. We are in the womb of life right now, awaiting birth into Zion forever. Born out of flesh, flying into spirit, renamed and fresh. I don't think we live our lives only for our entrance through the gates our Lord loves so much, but I believe that is why they are so dear to Him. We come through them one day. Our Father must feel as I do when the kids come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and we are all together again. Everyone eating, joking around, hugging and kissing. Home. Yeah. I think we should be living to go home. It makes perfect sense.
 

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

PSALM 87 - I'm Not From Around Here, Maám


The Lord records as He registers the peoples, "This one was born there." (Verse 6)

At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of Your people. And there shall be a time of trouble such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time Your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.  Daniel 12

Then I saw a great white throne and Him Who was seated on it. From His presence fled earth and sky, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Than another book was opened, which is the book of life. And he dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.
Revelation 20

And of the New Jerusalem, Zion, it is written: Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.
Revelation 21
(Italics mine)

When I was a student at the University of Texas at Austin, I briefly dated a young man who was from New Jersey. He used to crack me up because of the way he talked. This from a girl from Texas who drawled y'all and said she was tawred (translation - tired). It seems people from Jersey have trouble with er and oi.  My friend always wanted to go to the terlet (toilet) and would point toward toitles (turtles) at the zoo. He went for an erl change and talked about his mom's goidle (girdle). See how crazy he was to listen to?

Another boyfriend was from New York where life is lived in the fast lane. We went on a date to a local restaurant in Austin and had the usual greasy fare: chicken fried steak, gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans, followed of course with some kind of pie with homemade crust to cut the grease. Lol. Because the diner wasn't fancy, he paid up front when we left. My date dutifully handed the aproned waitress his money, took the change and began escorting me out when we heard the slow drawl of the waitress as she said, "Y'all come back now!" My date immediately turned and started walking back to the register. "Where are you going?" I asked. "She told us to come back," he replied, worried. I laughed so hard. Couldn't help it. I'd heard that so many times growing up that I didn't even hear it any more. "Oh, my gosh," I said. "She's just bein' nice."

Ways to know "You're not from around here, are you?" Some things just stick out all over us when we get out of our familiar environments. Tall blonds in China, for instance. Bill and I were celebrities when we visited there in 1983. Just because we were so different from the cultural norm. So, how would someone know we are from Zion?  One who was born there? What does it mean that God registers His people? Does He keep a list of those who are going to live in Zion one day?

Seems the answer to the last question is absolutely yes. It is in the Lamb's book of life. Because it is the Lamb Who purchased our ability to be registered there. The lack of our name on a line in the text means Zion is not our eternal home. We didn't measure up, so we live forever out of the presence of God. Hmm. Does that seem unfair? How about these words of Jesus: "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe in Him is condemned already, because He has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." John 3
Wow! That sounds too easy, doesn't it. It doesn't sound like we are judged by a mean old God Who can't wait for us to do a wrong thing so He can waterboard and beat us. If we want our names written forever in the book of life, we believe in Jesus as the Only Son of God. We trust in Him for the salvation  we can never gain through our own puny self-righteousness. God wants this for the whole world! We only fall short by resisting the provision God gave us freely and free. No working for it. Only accepting the gift of it.

So, what's the problem? Sin, really. We want to rule our own lives without the parameters God might put on us because we embrace Jesus. The heart that wants to know Him is the heart God registers in His book. Born not of the womb of woman, but of the new birth given by the Holy Spirit when a sinner sees her need of a life not bound by flesh. And that makes us talk differently. Gives us priorities different from the culture we live in, usually. As we grow up in Christ, we won't be sounding like many of those around us because we are new...different. Our minds have been changed by the mind of Christ. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him/her, and he/she is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned...for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2 

I'm feeling more and more like a stranger here. My heart and mind out of sync with the society. But that shouldn't surprise me, because I'm not from around here. I've been registered in Zion. That doesn't make me brag. Quite the opposite. I know I'm saved...from my own folly and self-righteousness. When the Lamb looks at me one day, He will see my sin covered with His own dear blood. And when the book of life is opened and the Lamb of God reads the names, it will be only because of Jesus that I will be able to say, "Here!"

"Behold (Look!)  I have engraved you on the palms of My hands." God, Isaiah 49

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

PSALM 87 - Born To Be Free

Among those who know Me I mention Rahab and Babylon; behold Philisitia and Tyre, with Cush--"This one was born there," they say. And of Zion it shall be said, "This one and that one were born in her"; for the Most High Himself will establish her. The Lord records as He registers the peoples, "This one was born there."  (Verses 4-6)

Her inn was built into the city wall of Jericho. A prostitute, she was open for business when two men approached her door for lodging. They were Israelites. It made Rahab's heart beat faster. Their God was mighty. News of Israel's many victories and their escape from Egypt was miraculous--seas dried up and plagues called forth. All her adult life those stories made her increasingly curious about a God who would love a people so much He would accompany them out of bondage. She served the men a meal of lamb and bread, wondering if this was finally the time Israel would take over Jericho.

Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door. "Go," she told the Jewish men. "Go up to the roof and hide yourselves in the stalks of flax!" She motioned with her hands in the direction the men should go as she smoothed her tunic and brushed food from her face.

"Where are they?" the soldiers of the king demanded. "We heard the Jewish men came in here earlier this afternoon! Bring them out. They came to search our land."

"True,"said Rahab. "They came here, but when the gate was about to be closed for dark, they left."

"Where were they going?" The larger of the two soldiers got right into her face. "What did they tell you?"

"I don't know where they went." Rahab's breathing was coming too quickly. She could only hope they didn't notice. "You need to hurry if you want to catch them. You could probably overtake them."

When they hurriedly left, Rahab closed her door and leaned against it while her heartbeat slowed. The men scurried out of the gates toward the Jordan River right before they closed for the day. The Jewish men were safe for now.

In the quiet of the night, Rahab climbed to the rooftop of the lodging and found the Israelite spies. After removing the stalks of flack and helping the men brush the residue from their garments, Rahab said, "I know the Lord has given you this land. Your God rescued you from Egypt and gave your armies victory over the Amorite kings. When we all heard about it, our hearts melted. Everyone in Jericho is afraid of you because of your God. I know the Lord your God, He is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath."

The two men were stunned at her declaration of faith. First of all, because she was an unclean woman. A Gentile whore. That revelation of the Most High would come to her seemed unlikely, at best.

"Here," continued the harlot. "Take the end of this rope and I will let you down the wall. Hide in the woods for three days until your pursuers have stopped looking for you. But you must promise me that on the day you take Jericho, you will spare my family."

"Tie a scarlet rope from this same window so we see it hanging on the wall, and we will spare your family. All your relatives must be in the house with you or their blood is not on our hands." The oath was made, and the men were set free.

And Rahab? She and her family were spared because of her faith in the God of Israel. She believed with a faith that is a gift. If from the womb God knows our paths (Psalm 139), then the prostitute was in God's sights all her life. It was He Who revealed Himself to her, for no one can come to God unless He draws that person to Him (John 6). But how could that be? She made her living as a prostitute? She wasn't a Jew. Jericho didn't live by the Ten Commandments. She'd only heard of a God who chose a specific nation to love and care for. What made her think His mercy could extend to her? For how long had she mulled over in her mind what she would do when the Jews came for Jericho? What gave her even the smallest hope that God would save someone like her? Yet, He did see her. Pick her out of the entire city as the one He would save. She lived alongside the Jewish women in God's Promised Land. She was a direct ancestor of Jesus. Our Lord came from her family.

There will probably be people in heaven we don't expect. Zion will be filled with people God saw and we missed. Prostitutes who finally found love in Him. Murderers and cheats in whose lives Jesus intervened. Europeans, Asian, Arabs and neighbors who God chose to love when maybe we couldn't. Born onto Earth from the loins of His grace to one day be called "the children of God." So that one day, when it's all said and done, the records will show our Father pointing to even the least of us and saying, "That one? Yes, that one was born here in Zion before the foundations of the earth."




 

Monday, May 6, 2013

PSALM 87 - Why Are We Homesick Here?

On the holy mount stands the city He founded. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God.  (Verses 1-3)

Home. It's why God loves it so. Those gates open wide to receive His children and He lives with them forever in Zion, the New Jerusalem. Biblically, Zion is referenced as both a heavenly city and the earthly Jerusalem. This all speaks a deeper thought to me this morning. That Earth is a shadow of the real. A peek at eternity. Here's why I say this.

The Bible begins as God speaks creation into being, first the heavens then the earth. It's into a garden God places first animals then man and woman. Through the garden runs a beautiful river. The greenery is lush. A remarkable tree stands in its midst--the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And God walks with His creation, living with it in intimacy and joy. Until...well, we all know the sorrow of Adam and Eve. This Eden seems a foretaste of Zion, for the Bible ends with a description of heaven, Zion, the New Jerusalem. "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God." God once again living daily with His children. Where? Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. Also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit yielding its fruit each month. (Revelation) A garden.

It boggles my mind that God created earth to be similar enough to heaven that it becomes a picture of the divine for us. He brought home to planet Earth. A taste of heaven to man. Maybe so that when we see the pounding rivers, the majestic mountains, the roaring seas, hanging fruit and luscious plant life, we get a little homesick. Some of us don't know the feeling to be that. But it seems that built into us is a desire for living water and communion with God. What if we were to be believed by every person on the earth that God, THE GOD, wants relationship with them. That when we see sunsets and rainbows, get that deep inexplicable yearning that the beauty of the earth stirs in us, it means the Creator is hinting at so much more to be enjoyed forever. What if one day we participated in beauty in such a way that we no longer describe it but are a part of it? If fruit on the earth is sweet and delicious, how much more the real fruit of heaven. For the earthly is only a shadow of the real Zion.
Would anyone then refuse God?

And why does God love Zion so? It's home. The Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, lives in splendor undefined by anything here on Earth. God Almighty, glowing from His own brilliance like diamonds and jasper, reigns from a throne set in the midst of a rainbow of emerald hues too intense for the human eye to view. In constant harmony, heavenly beings praise Him day and night as thunder crashes and lightning flashes in an explosion of power God cannot keep leashed. Jesus is there. The Lamb. He will rise soon to Mount Zion and command the end times. (Revelation 14) From Zion the politics of the nations are decreed. It is the center of everything. The real. Insinuating itself upon the shadow.

But one day we will know as we are known. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
1 Corinthians 13. We will go home. And realize we've been living in a crummy apartment when a palace awaits. All our sensory experiences will have been drab in comparison to the richness of heavenly fare. We in Him and He in us and all in the Father, ravished and completed by the consummation of a love we all desire but can't quite reach on Earth. We will walk through the door, Jesus, the gate of heaven, and participate eternally in "the glorious things" spoken about the city of God.
 

Friday, May 3, 2013

PSALM 86 - An Oncoming Train And God

Lord, teach me what You want me to do, and I will live by Your truth. Teach me to respect You completely. Lord, my God, I will praise You with all my heart, and I will honor Your name forever. You have great love for me. You have saved me from death.  (Verses 11-13)

On August 3, 1974, I held a little eight pound miracle in my arms. Heather. Rosy cheeked and ruby lipped, she didn't even cry. Simply looked around the operating room as if she'd been wondering for a while what the world outside the womb must be like. So this is it, huh? And so it began. The nursing and rocking, the cooing and pacing. Orienting our baby to life on Earth. Far from the place of perceived destiny when she was envisioned by her heavenly Father. What to do with her now? How to teach her what she needs to know to live well. A huge responsibility.

Fortunately I'd been a teacher. Middle school and high school. That gave me perspective. Mainly, I knew what I didn't want my children to be like. Behaviors I understood would damage them, cause them pain too early. Where to start? Where to start? "Don't touch!" Of course, she touched. Found out for herself what hot means. "Be still." Wriggling and toppling in response. "Put your books away." Heather still sat reading despite the imperative. I had to discipline her else she wouldn't understand right from wrong. I've had three children. Trust me, kids need to be taught the right thing. The students I've taught and interfaced with who don't know the kind and correct way to act toward others are miserable and very mistake prone. Always looking for a boundary. Because boundaries are safe. They mean someone cares that we don't cross a line, sees when we do, and rescues us from ourselves.

There was a train behind our home.  It whistled and rumbled past several times a day. I often thought about a story I'd heard of a mother and her child who were walking near the tracks of a similar train one day when the toddler let loose of her mother's hand and ran toward the oncoming train. "Lie down!" screamed the mother, who wasn't fast enough to get to her child. "Lie down on the tracks!"
The child immediately complied. Safe in the cradle between the rails, she was saved from death because she obeyed. I thought of this story many times a day during the first years of being a mommy. It's important my kids understood first time obedience. For the little girl on the tracks, there would be no counting to three. No, "Young lady, you better do what I said!" Now was the only time the mother had. Maybe in Target it's not so important, but in bigger things, it just might be a matter of life and death. I have stopped the car on more occasions than my children want to remember to carry out the punishment I promised when I said, "If you don't obey right now, I will stop this car!"

So, what on earth does this have to do with Psalm 86? Everything. My rebirth in Christ has made me a child of God. Freshly minted and in dire need of instruction concerning how to live as a Christian. I can't count on watching everyone else. I need to learn God from God. He speaks. That's why we have a Bible. So I must learn what He wants as a new baby learns from her mother. At first, my Father does pretty much everything for me. Caresses and encourages me. Helps me walk. Picks me up when I trip along toward maturity in Him. But as I grow older in Christ, I am expected to know more and act like it. To respect my Father's authority. To comply with His heart instead of thumbing my nose at Him and doing what feels good or right to me. To trust He has my best interest and His glory in mind with each and every boundary He throws up. Because there just might be a train a-comin' that will crush me into a thousand pieces. so when my Father says, "Lie down!" I better lie down! (I haven't always...learned hot the hard way, too.)

There's the holding of His hand, too. The warmth of it in mine as my Father leads me along in love. He only disciplines me because of His great affection for this child of His. It is the Father's greatest joy to see me carry on His legacy of love, faith and self-control. To speak with me as a mature child, able to think as He does in the situations facing me on a daily basis. That I have caught what my Father has taught so that I am more and more acting and reacting as He would. I'm not perfect. Don't expect that. But with the sons of Korah, who wrote this psalm, I can say, "Teach me to respect You completely, because I praise You with all of my heart. You, my God and Father, have certainly saved me from death!"

 

Thursday, May 2, 2013

PSALM 86 - Little g's

There is none like You among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like Yours. All the nations You have made shall come and worship before You, O Lord, and shall glorify Your name. For You are great and do wondrous things. You alone are God. (Verses 8-10)

...we know that an idol has no real existence, and that there is no God but one. For although there may be many so-called gods in heaven or on earth--as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords"--yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
1 Corinthians 8:4-6

There is only one God with a capital G. Oh, there are other little g's trying to lord it over us, but they are not as powerful as they want to make us think. Idols, really. Manmade. Like movie stars. Or tyrants. Or the little Buddhas that stare at me in the nail salon as they sit, belly forward, surrounded by oranges. Pretty much anything can become an idol. Whatever becomes the most important thing in our lives. We may not know we are worshipping it until we realize we must have it or die. Alcohol, for instance. When drinking is more important than going home to family. Drugs, maybe. The high they give as they travel through the bloodstream to the brain telling us we must worship it or die. Some literally do--die, that is, for love of substance. It's perhaps not so obvious in our day, this idol worship. We aren't building a golden cow as the Israelites did in the wilderness and ascribing to what we just created out of gold some godlike power over us. The thing is, though, we are made to worship. To adore. Not to be adored. So the one we make into a god will topple and fall on us.

What then? Our little g's are at least visible. God we cannot see. Or touch. There is no longer an altar on which we can sacrifice to Him. No temple where He dwells in a resplendent glory. We trick ourselves with this thinking because a God we could access so easily wouldn't be the great God over all. How could He hold the world in His hands, fling stars and design galaxies if He were so small He could live forever, physically, in our midst? Our God would be too small, then.

In God's sweetness, He came down. We touched Him. Laughed with Him. God, through Jesus, looked into the eyes of those He'd made and pronounced His great love. Jesus ate our grain and drank our drink. Healed our bodies and forgave our sins. In synagogue, Messiah told the self-righteous that their rules were death and He is life. Dead people returned to life and worthless fig trees were put to death. Seas roared at us, but Jesus stepped out on them and walked the waves without a wake board. When there wasn't enough for five thousand people to eat, Jesus sat everyone down and fed them from five little loaves of bread and two fish. For this, we killed our God. Out of paradigm and irritating in His honesty, religion couldn't look at true righteousness without disgust. Pinned against a cross set up against the afternoon sky, Messiah cried out for our forgiveness, then commanded His Spirit to leave His broken body. God wasn't done, though, of course. Up and out of the tomb, raising Himself from the dead, Jesus lives still. The only true God. Our Lord. Every other idol is vain for it has no power in itself to deal with what we really need. With the reason we look for idols in the first place. We are empty.

On His last night with the disciples, Jesus promised to fill that empty space with the living water provided by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Joy unspeakable. Power unlimited. Access unprecedented. God, through Christ, in us!  The hope of glory. Charging our existence with dynamite for living. We look to our idol, as Christians, and feel Him stirring change in us. Creating love where there was none. Hope in the impossible. Peace in the storm. Power in the process. Oh, yes. The Lord is our God and there is none like Him. Throw away the lesser gods. They still leave us empty, wanting more. Only God, with a capital, can make our lives more than just an existence because He made us and knows why He did.