PSALM 105 - Feeling Like a Balloon Filled With Helium

Oh, give thanks to the Lord! Call upon His name. Make known His deeds among the peoples! Sing to Him, sing praises to Him. Tell of all His wondrous works! Glory in His holy name. Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice! Seek the Lord and His strength. Seek His presence continually! Remember the wondrous works that He has done, His miracles and the judgments He uttered, O offspring of Abraham, His servant, children of Jacob, His chosen ones!
He is the Lord our God. His judgments are in all the earth. He remembers His covenant forever, the word that He commanded for a thousand generations, the covenant that He made with Abraham, His sworn promise to Isaac as an everlasting covenant, saying, "To you I will give the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance." (Verses 1-11)

But this is the new covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: "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 will 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," declares the Lord. "For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more." Jeremiah 31

I participated in the Philadelphia Harvest Crusade via satellite at my church on Saturday evening. Greg Laurie preached a stirring sermon that called many forward to ask Jesus into their hearts. They came in a steady stream from the many tiers of the auditorium and stood before Greg's podium as music played and singers sang and Jesus walked among them. As surely as He did when we could touch His flesh and brush against His clothing. Young men with tears spilling from their blue eyes. Young women with their hankies to their faces. And it all came flooding back to me. The catch in my chest. The need to cry almost choking me to death. Not knowing exactly what was going on, but understanding somewhere in the deepest part of me that I would never be the same.

 I was six years old. The preacher in our Baptist church asked us to come forward if we wanted Jesus in our hearts. I did. More than anything. I still do. More than anything. I knew Jesus died for me. Sunday after Sunday, as Baptist preachers tend to do, the sermons reminded me Jesus took my place. Not a rampant sinner at six, yet I knew I loved this Jesus. And He was pounding on the door to my heart (Revelation 3), not knocking quietly. In my crying, I gave away the old Kay...not very old, I know, but nevertheless needy...sobbed her straight out of me. Because, when I repeated the prayer of faith after my preacher, Someone Else took her place. And filled me like a balloon is filled with helium. My soul felt fat and light--wanted to soar above the pews and shout "Glory!" Only I didn't even know to shout such a thing then. I felt giggly. Like it was my birthday. Then for a whole week, all I wanted to do was die and go to heaven. Sincerely. But that's another story that needlessly worried my parents.

I need to remember that day more often. The wondrous work God did in my heart. That day He made a covenant with me. A covenant sealed with the blood of His Son. God means it. Forever. I belong to him for a thousand thousands of years and more. Never will He leave. Never has He. Never will He forsake me. Never has He. Jesus will stand before God, the Father, one day and, with His hands on my shoulders, He'll say, "This one's ours, You know. Kay belongs to us." Oh, my heart gives thanks! I want to tell the world about this Savior Who saw a little girl who'd need Him so. Who loved a little kid in the same measure He loves big people. My God wanted to dwell in my nascent soul--to grow me up in Him. So you don't have to ask me why I'd continually seek His presence or sing a love song to Jesus at the top of my voice. I am loved! I can walk right into God's presence. I can feel Him living in me. What does a person do without God Himself living in her heart? What fills that place? Oh, I know. I know. It's empty. A vacuum seeking everything and finding nothing. I barely remember it. Though I've taken my Savior to places I regret with all my heart, and though the place in me became almost incomprehensibly small, Jesus was still there. And I was still His. Life without Him must be so vastly hopeless. Yet God knows even those of us who don't know Him. Desires to take up residence in our lives--our actual bodies--and turn us into who He created us to be. That is quite an offer considering the misery without Him. Don't you think?

I am now sixty-five. For almost sixty years I've known Jesus. I haven't acted like it some of that time. And if His covenant with me weren't something God swore to me, we'd be done. I didn't keep my part of the bargain too many times to count. I broke covenant. God never has. On that December day of my sixth year, Jesus made me His forever. He's determined to finish in me what He started. Growing me up into heaven. Determined with all His strength to forgive my foolishness and willfulness. His covenant with me sealed with the blood from His palms and side. No. Jesus paid too big a price for my life to let me be. And rather than irk me, it makes me crazy in love with Him! Who would do that? Really? Love me that much? Live in the slums of my heart so He can eventually make a place in me fit for a King? Oh, Father, I do remember the wondrous work You've done! And now I know to say, "Glory!"

PSALM 104 - How Clean Is Your House?

Let the glory of the Lord endure forever. Let the Lord be glad in His works. He looks at the earth and it trembles. He touches the mountains and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. Let my meditation be pleasing to Him. As for me, I shall be glad in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, Oh my soul. Praise the Lord!  (Verses 31-35)

Arab. Pleasing. A primitive root: to braid, a pledge given in exchange for delivery of material goods. It implies sharing or association on a meaningful level. "Let my meditation braid me with God, as a pledge of my obedience to Him and His watch care over me."

During my morning devotional and prayers one morning, the sun came suddenly streaming through  one of the windows in my home. I know the light was caused by the day opening up more fully, but the drenching of my face in the warmth of the new day did something also to my heart. My meditation was on purity of heart and soul. My yearning to be cleansed--clean. And as if orchestrated by the lighting director of a Broadway play, this ray of golden hope struck my face as I was praying for my God to light the darkened places in my life. Then I saw a picture. In my spirit I traveled with God to my soul. The center of me. The light had traveled there also, showing cobwebs and doors ajar, behind which still hid deceits, hurts or ignominious thoughts. What I knew in an instant was the light longed to shine into all of me. To sweep down the walls, vacuum up the crumbs of fear and doubt, to swing open the hesitant doors still obscuring sin and make me shine clean for the presence of the Lord Who dwells in me. To give the Holy Spirit a spotless living quarters. A holy tabernacle.

I thought of that morning this morning as I read these verses. Our meditations braid us into God. Bond us with Him because our God meets us there. Our sin for His righteousness. Our worries for His power. Our death for His life. A holy pledge to us that our devotion to our God is reciprocated with His pleasure. Not pleased because we become obsequious slaves! No! Pleased because we seek Him out in order to know Him. God isn't different from us in that respect. Made in His image, I would argue that we are much like Him in that respect. God loves us! We need to soak in that knowledge a bit. The One Who can strike a mountain and make it smoke or just look at the earth and make it tremble, gently listens as I speak to Him. All-Power stoops to hear my stuff.

But, like all parents, my Father wants a clean room. Things put in order. After all, my Father lives in my home. By the Holy Spirit, I am a tent of God--a little tabernacle of the Holy of Holies. If God had come into my life and tried to clean me up all at once, I wouldn't have survived the house keeping. Too much in disarray. Too unkempt and untidy to throw it all out at once. So great is my Father's patience with the slums in which He took up residence that He makes rearranging my interior a process I can handle. We work together and in so doing become braided in trust, hope, faith, love and joy. I want an ever brighter home for my God. Sparkling, shiny, large and comfortable for the Holy Spirit to dwell there. So that my God knows this tabernacle is a sanctuary filled with light, transparent not only to Him but to all I meet. For my God to be glad as He sits in the easy chair of my soul as we talk of everything all day is my highest goal. To please Him with the intentions of my heart and the purity of my soul is still a work in progress. But I am glad of the process. Hopeful of the outcome. And intent on getting this house spotless.

PSALM 104 - Oblivious as a Dead Skunk?

These all look to You to give them their food in due season. When You give it to them, they gather it up. When You open Your hand, they are filled with good things. When You hide Your face, they are dismayed. When You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When You send forth Your Spirit, they are created and You renew the face of the ground.
(Verses 27-30)

We have some really big spiders who create quite extravagant webs among the trees of our neighborhood. Often the webs are spun over wide expanses from tree to tree. I have no idea how they do that--get from one tree to another without the web already existing. I know they can't fly. Caught in these webs are all manner of insects, large and small. Luscious lunch and dinner for the rotund arachnids waiting in the center of their home for the next unsuspecting bug. Food.

Unfortunately for some of the skunks who live in the wetlands nearby our home, cars still travel the streets at night when the black and whites go hunting. I saw one dead in the road with a group of hungry buzzards picking at it for lunch the other day. Munching on the remnants of the skunk's collision with a wheel. Food.

Hummingbirds fly freely from one blooming plant to another in our Southern California feasting haven. Happily filling their tiny bodies with the honeyed nectar. Coyotes hunt for rabbits in the brush in the flatlands. Rabbits eat the plants in the same plain. Plants drink the rain and peek out to see the sun as seedlings fresh born. Food.

And none of them is aware of where it comes from. They don't look up and say, "Thank you, God." They live until they die. They are then dust or a meal for something else. It is the cycle the Creator set in motion for all living things except man. We are supposed to be smarter than that. Imagined and made to know there is God and to understand it is He Who provides everything in due season. Raised up to understand God is good. And He gives good things from His open hand. Each time the Creator looked at what He'd brought forth, He said, "It is good." And set man over it all to rule and tend. Because we have the capacity to think like God. To understand the cycles of His care. And the heart to thank Him for the goodness of it all.

The first lie in the Garden of Eden was when the serpent questioned God's character, His goodness. Essentially, Satan said, "If God were good, He'd want you to be wise like He is. That's why He doesn't want you to eat from the tree in the midst of the garden. He's keeping the best thing from you." Provision--extravagant provision--was all around the man and woman. All they could see when the devil got through with them was the one thing they didn't have. The serpent didn't try to trick the spider, the wolf or the elephant. They didn't care. Mankind does. In accusing God, they sinned and lost the joy of living with the One Who made it all "good" for them to enjoy.

Plan A. All along. Send the Spirit so that mankind isn't only created to look like God, but also to have Him live within. Create in us a new heart. Provide for us a new birth into life that doesn't die when our bodies turn to dust. Walk again with mankind and take the beatings and the sneers of the enemy once more. Finish it forever. The accusation God isn't good. For He provides not only our food in due season, but our salvation forever. None of creation knows this secret but mankind. They go about spinning, soaring, hunting and scavenging unaware of the magnificence of the cycle. While the God of All, Whose heavens stretch past man's ever fully comprehending and Whose mind is infinite in imagination, knowledge and wisdom offers His open hand and heart to us.

"Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" Jesus

"Which one of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone instead? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, Who is in heaven, give good things to those who as Him!" Jesus

PSALM 104 - Big Mommas With Their Kids

He made the moon to mark the seasons. The sun knows its time for setting. You make darkness, and it is night, when all the beasts of the forest creep about. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking food from their God. When the sun rises, they steal away and lie down in their dens. Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening. O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your creatures. Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both great and small. There go the ships and Leviathan, which You formed to play in it.  (Verses 19-26)

In March of 2003, Bill and I traveled to the tip of Baja California, Mexico, to go whale watching. There is nothing there but sand and a little brush. The whale watching adventure was a "green" expedition, so everything had to be environmentally safe, including toilets and showers. They used the word shower loosely. We had what looked like enema bags filled with water. These were set in the sun early in the morning in order to gather enough heat from the sun to produce water warm enough to get us sufficiently wet to wash our hair and suds our bodies. If we ran out, we ran out. But, I digress. It had been a dream of mine to go out in the small motor boat and fellowship with Leviathan for years. In March, the mother gray whales appear with their calves and some whale lovemaking also is in order. We were told that many of the mothers had themselves been babies when boats such as ours cruised into the waters with spectators reaching out their hands or setting up their cameras for a moment of connection with these giant sea mammals. Thus, the speculation the mommies were unafraid to push their spawn close to the boat for a bit of human babysitting while they swam free in the waters around us.

Our first trip out was in the morning. "We don't see whales on each of our forays," explained the captain of our eight-man motor boat. "Hopefully we will today." My heart was beating with excitement as we sped out over the dark blue water. Then we saw little geysers spewing from the water and the boat slowed. Up from near the boat rose a gray whale, spy-hopping fewer than ten feet away. Looking with her steady eye at we humans in the boat. Beside her was her calf.

As if on cue, the baby came swimming over to the boat and nudged it with its nose. "If you put your hand into the corner of its mouth, the whale will open its mouth and let you scratch her baleen," instructed the captain. "They love that!"

He didn't have to ask me twice. I leaned over the boat and coaxed the calf to my waiting hand and found the corner of its mouth. The next thing I knew, my entire hand was inside the mouth of a waiting whale who seemed to laugh with joy that I was giving a free sea massage.

Then the mother bumped the boat, scratching herself as if to say, "What about me?" She emerged on the other side. Signaling playtime was over.

Every time we went out to search, we saw whales. Up close. All sixty to eighty feet of them, splashing, diving, spy-hopping, and yes, mating. The massive space that is the ocean makes even them small in comparison. Playing. Living with family. Eating. Sleeping. Traveling from one end of the earth to the other. All in the world over which we travel in ships and planes. In the depths where mountains can be 13,000 feet high. A macrocosm of teeming life. Another world.

Out of the ocean yesterday an entire island sprouted. The earth shook violently in Pakistan and the ocean floor spit up a brand new piece of land. The miracle of the mixing gases in the layers of the earth looking for and finding release as they blow through Earth's crust. Mysterious movements we aren't aware of in a world just beneath our feet.

I just read an article describing the Hubble telescope's searches into what scientists thought were black holes. After leaving the telescope in the same place for eleven days, thinking there would be nothing but blackness recorded there at the end of that time, what was revealed was a depth of number of galaxies amazing in scope. What we thought was only darkness was in reality a window into more galaxies than we could count. There are over one hundred billion galaxies in space, at last count. In an ever expanding cosmos, will we ever discover all of them? There just might be an infinite number. We just don't have the power to see them yet...or never.

It's just too big. This created world. It's ordered and intentional. The moon and sun controlling tides, animal habits and habitats, vegetation and seasons. Oh, our God wants us to look at it and marvel. Wonder at His mind. Glory in His imagination. Joy that we are made in His image, able to reason and reach for what He knows so we can know Him more fully. Not so we can rule God out as Designer, but so we can capture for this world all that the Godhead meant in the beginning, "Let us make man in our own image." And God said when He looked on all He'd made, "It is very good."

PSALM 104 - God's Zoo

You make springs gush forth in the valleys. They flow between the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field. They wild donkeys quench their thirst. Beside them the birds of heaven dwell. They sing among the branches. From Your lofty abode, You water the mountains. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of Your work. You cause grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man's heart. The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that He planted. In them the birds build their nests. The stork has her home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats. The rocks are a refuge for the rock badger.  (Verses 10-16)

Adam stood up and took his first few God-given breaths. His surroundings were lush with vegetation. The mighty trees that banked the flowing river were heavy with luscious fruit that scented the dewy air with sweetness. The woman by his side was beautiful beyond belief. "Ah-ha!" he'd cried. "Finally bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I am not alone!" Hand in hand the lovers walked with the God of their creation learning the garden and its secrets. Mountains arose in the distance, rocky crags glistening in the sunshine. Streams flowed swiftly from their heights into valleys painted rich emerald green. Moving on the slopes were goats and gnus, badgers and skunks, elk and deer, horses and wild dogs. A menagerie of brilliance. "How did you come up with these?" Adam must have asked his God. Giggles of glee arose in the man as he watched a gopher burrow beneath the ground and a serpent slither out of sight. Monkeys swung from tree to tree calling loudly to each other in a language only they understood. The activity swirled under, around, above and beneath the new man and woman. A showcase of newly minted Earth.

I remember the first time I took Heather, our first born, to the zoo. I'd grown accustomed to elephants, zebras, gorillas and yak. Knew the smell of the zoo as well as the circus where watching lions and tigers as they yawned their boredom or jumped through hoops had become less wonderful for me. But with Heather, I saw them all for the first time as she jumped up and down with the apes (she would make gorilla faces for months afterward), squealed at the lumbering elephants, and marveled at the barking seals. A wonderland of animals almost too marvelous to comprehend. Butterflies and hummingbirds, flamingos and parrots painted by God in carnival colors. And again, the question, "How did you come up with these, Father?" Too distinct in design to be random. Too specific in purpose to be unplanned. What a mind my Father has!

Unforgotten. The tiniest to the greatest of His specific beasts are cared for by the winds and rains, sunlight and starshine of His earth. God takes care to feed His little birds and cloak the hillsides with glory (Matthew 6). The ecosystem is a masterfully planned to restore and reconstitute itself. Each element of creation is intentional and interdependent. Order doesn't just happen. We don't throw pieces of a watch up into the air and wait for them to create a time piece. Someone thinks how to design and produce a watch. We don't question that. So why the questions about God's creation?

As created beings ourselves, we've been made in His image. Out of all the animals in God's famous zoo, we are specially designed to know and yearn for Him. But we are a bunch of smarty pants. The minds God bestowed on us are a double-edged sword. And just as Adam and Eve in the garden, we've listened to the world tell us just how brilliant we are. So much so that we don't need God. And, quite frankly, we don't want Him butting in on our business.We can explain away the rhinoceros and the emu. And our brilliant explanation? Oh, they just happened. And God would chuckle if the conclusion weren't so absurd and self-destroying. All creation is designed to point to Him. And we have turned the finger the other direction. In our hubris. To our shame. And our God would pour out on us without measure His grace, love, guidance and salvation. He wills to make our faces shine with an abundance of oil and our hearts to sing with new wine. It is still His desire to walk with us in the garden, talking about our day, examining our lives, wondering at His goodness. God still wants to provide for us as surely as He feeds the wild goats on the hillside and the dolphins in the sea.

Look around at His global zoo today. The world is open to us to marvel at the ocean and its depths or the mountains and their heights. Landscapes extravagantly created and sustained by their Designer. Watch ants march and butterflies flit, puppies snuggle and cats prowl, eagles soar and fish jump, deer pose and skunks scurry. Take it in. It's made for your delight in and worship of God.

For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from our birth over and around us lies, Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the wonder of each hour of the day and of the night, hill and vale, and tree and flow'r, sun and moon and stars of light; Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth, and friends above, for all gentle thoughts and mild, Lord of all, to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of ear and eye, for the heart and mind's delight, for the mystic harmony linking sense to sound and sight, Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.

For Thyself, best Gift Divine! To our race so freely giv'n; for that great, great love of Thine, peace on earth and joy in heaven, Lord of all to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise!
Folliott S. Pierpoint

And the congregation said: "Amen!"

PSALM 104 - The Grand Master in His Studio

Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord, my God, You are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering Yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent. He lays the beams of His chambers on the waters; He makes the clouds His chariot; He rides on the wings of the winds, His ministers a flaming fire. He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment. The waters stood above the mountains. At Your rebuke they fled. At the sound of Your thunder they took flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that You appointed them. You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.
(Verses 1-9)

Man is the only created being who can fully appreciation creation. We are born with a sense of wonder and awe at things too great for us. The Grand Canyon is called just that "grand." So magnificent we catch our breath. The ocean when it's calm or roiling, filled with sea life we are still discovering. So deep that volcanoes spew beneath the service and squid live their lives in depths we haven't delved into. Forests covered in butterflies so thick we can't see the vegetation for their habitation on the limbs of every available tree. Flowing streams with fish that jump for joy. Highest peaks, snow-capped and glistening pink in the sunset of winter. Color, texture, composition all speak  of the One Who composed it for our delight.

Man is the only created being who can express appreciation for creation. Dogs don't write songs about the beauty of their surroundings. We do. Monet used to sit and paint one scene as it looks in the morning, midday and evening. To capture its beauty as if with a time-lapse camera. Hymns and symphonies extol the wonders of the universe. Only man looks at the stars and wonders how far away they are. Sets about discovering the indiscoverable out of the awe inherent in us.

Man is created to worship the Creator. To look to the One Who is behind designing the tiniest cell in our bodies, programmed to predict and produce one unique human being. To long for relationship with God out of the sheer amazement at His brilliance. At His immensity. At His complexity. God made us in His image so we'd want to know Who our real Father is and look for Him. The created universe assures us that we don't have to look very far nor very hard. God wows me with the new bird of paradise that just peeped out of its green shoot this morning to greet me when I walked out onto my patio. The hummingbird singing in the tree outside my window today as its little chest heaves and its feathers vibrate with the work of it feels like a tiny gift to me as it winds its way from flower to flower. Like my Father is winking at me. "Slow down and look around at all I've made. It will still you. Center you. Make you look at Me." And it does. The God of All, paintbrush in hand, with our joy in mind, spent six days splashing color and texture, with broad strokes and finite details, onto Earth's canvas so we'd look upon it as an artist studies a masterpiece in the National Museum of Art. Studying His technique. Appreciating His talent. Adoring His mind. The grand master is still lord over all of it. And I am His.

PSALM 103 - God Is Not An Egomaniac

The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all. Bless the Lord, O you, His angels, you mighty ones who do His word, obeying the voice of His word! Bless the Lord, all His hosts, His ministers who do His will! Bless the Lord, all His works, in all places of His dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul!  (Verses 19-22)

 Every country has its Obama, Putin, Castro, Queen Elizabeth or Assad. Rulers freely chosen or those who've taken over in tyranny. Somebody heads us up wherever we live. A certain eminence accompanies their reign. The position brings, to a greater or lesser degree, weightiness. Glory. CEO's are paid more than hourly employees. Bosses have more power than the ones they manage. And, the greater the power, the greater the responsibility. Greater honor for the good; deeper ignominy for the bad. It's interesting to me that we all recognize this until it comes to God. I've heard people castigate our God for seeking glory for Himself. For wanting us to praise Him--creating us for that purpose. The irony, of course, is that since He has dominion over all things, He doesn't need for us to honor Him. It doesn't massage His ego as it does the pride of men and women. Our God simply deserves all honor, glory and praise because He is! The Lord of all--every dominion, kingdom, republic, monarchy--rules all. Unquestionably, eternally, benevolently. All heads of state, all lowly servants, will answer only to Him. Do answer only to Him whether acknowledged or not.

Around the mighty throne are living beings and angels. Praising Him day and night. When God speaks to the angels, they listen to His words and obey His commands. Often on our behalf. Hebrews says "they are sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation (Chapter 1)." In our world today, angels move among us, seen and unseen, doing what Jesus tells them to. Protecting or announcing, serving or directing, they ascend and descend at any given moment from the throne room to us. Straight from His presence into our chaos. They know what we don't. They see what we can't, yet. How thrilling to serve the Almighty One this way. We are made a little lower than they, yet our salvation is something they will never experience. The plan of God--the mystery of the ages--to tabernacle in mankind was revealed to the angels in the death and resurrection of Christ. God didn't tell His angels what He was doing beforehand (Ephesians 3). It was a mystery into which they longed to be included (1 Peter 1). So God didn't necessarily explain to Gabriel the entire plan when the angel was sent to speak with Mary about the baby conceived of the Holy Spirit. But imagine the crackling energy it created in him to finally announce part of it. God born of woman. Both God and man. Trusted enough by the Father to carry the message to Earth. The angels have eyes to see all we will one day marvel at. Our salvation will be central to their praise. O bless our God, you His angels!

How blessed are the armies sent to do battle for Him. Who are assured of victory even before pursuit. The hosts of heaven. Since Earth's foundation, God's hosts have battled for those God loves. Elisha saw them when the king of Syria was after him in Dothan. Surrounded by an army with horses and chariots, Elisha was unafraid. Told his trembling servant, "Those who are with us are more than those against us." God opened the servant's eyes to see a mountain filled with horses and chariots of fire all around them. Then there was Michael, the archangel, whose fight with the princes of darkness who controlled Persia and Greece was revealed to Daniel. Mighty warriors facing off in a realm that controls the event of ours. Yet given the privilege of announcing God's heart to those who wait for an answer from Him. The hosts of God. Revelation 19 describes the armies of heaven following Jesus as He captures the beast, who has gathered the armies of the world to make war against Him at the end of it all. The outcome? The destruction of evil forever. Imagine seeing God the Son hung in shame on a cross on a hill on our tiny planet. Disturbed and curious, outraged and at the ready, to rescue Jesus from the brutality of the men and women their God made. How they must have had to stand their ground, feet firmly planted on heaven's firmament, unmoving, and without command from the Lord of Hosts. Faithful warriors who attend the imperatives of the Almighty God had to stand aside and watch the Lamb of God slaughtered. But what rejoicing there was when Jesus entered heaven and sat down in His rightful place beside the Father. Shouts of victory! Blessings to their God! And a first glimpse into the Godhead's great salvation.

Oceans, plants, streams and stars proclaim the unmatched brilliance of our Lord. The singing of the birds, the movement of Earth upon its axis, the changing tides, hurricanes and earthquakes, sunshine and twilight, mountain heights and volcanoes in the depths of the sea all proclaim the imagination of a Creator too vast to fully comprehend. DNA--a single cell--the blueprint for every function of each individual's design. No two people alike. God's incomprehensible attention to detail. The colors that brush across the sky at sunset, the dew that wets the grass at dawn, the warm hand of a child, the encouragement of a smile...we bless Him with our acknowledgment that He is too wonderful for us. That we acquiesce to the fact we are small and He is great. Not so we grovel. But so we rejoice that a personality so far beyond our grasp chooses to engage with our humanity because He loves us. God wants us to marvel at and bless Him. To bask in the glory Jesus died to share with us. To dwell with our God forever in the splendor He has lavished upon us.

PSALM 103 - I'm Blown Away

Human life is like grass. We grow like a flower in the field. After the wind blows, the flower is gone, and there is no sign of where it was. But the Lord's love for those who respect Him continues forever and ever, and His goodness continues to their grandchildren, and to those who keep His agreement and who remember to obey His orders.  (Verses 15-18)

On April 10, 1979, we closed escrow on our new home in Wichita Falls, Texas. We were moving back to Texas from California and were staying in a motel in downtown Wichita Falls. I was unfamiliar with the town, so my daughters and I spent the morning discovering where the local bank was located, and the grocery store, the Jo-Ann's Fabric store (I made all our clothes back then), the dry cleaners...every place I knew we'd be needing in the coming weeks. We visited our new home once more before we headed back to have dinner at the Wendy's restaurant (term used loosely) near the motel. The dark green storm clouds were whirling even then, curling into tiny funnels. By the time we got downtown, the tornado sirens were blaring and we were forced into the meat locker at Wendy's while an F-4 tornado ripped our side of town to shreds. In the morning light of the next day, as we traveled back to our house, the devastation was absolute and seemingly random. Like an enormous monster movie giant had crashed through the southwest side of town stomping it down with his weight and bulk. Our home was still standing. Only lost a few shingles. While others a block away had been carried completely away by the storm. Gone as if they'd never been there. As were the grocery store, the bank (except for the vault the brick structure was simply gone), and every other landmark my children and I had discovered the day before. Vanished in the wind. Bricks and semis. Homes and office buildings. Taken up into the sky and deposited in desultory fierceness somewhere else. There one moment and gone the next. With no sign, save the cleared foundations, that anything had been there.

Our lives are like that. Bill and I were speaking last night of deaths of his sister and her husband. He was near death from pancreatic cancer. Had days left. Everyone wondering what his sister would do without her husband of forty years. Pati got up on a Monday morning and staggered out of her bedroom, needing help. Fell against the hallway wall. Asked for her phone which by then she couldn't see. And then she was gone. Just like that. Tom left this world ten  days later. And it was over. There isn't a trace of them now. Home sold. Belongings dispersed. Only the memory of who they were. Flowers taken by the wind. Uprooted.

We are evanescent. Built to die. But the love of God continues into forever from forever and is lavished on Earth and into eternity upon those who love Him. A simple promise filled with unbelievable hope. When I'm gone, I can be assured that His love for me does and will extend to my grandchildren. I love and obey Christ and He is so thrilled by that, He will bless my kids and their kids. Nothing can blow that love away. It's indestructible and sure. And here's what I think. If we love the Lord now with all our hearts, bless Him with our whole beings, we are reflecting to our children God's glory, which is His goodness. Our obedience doesn't necessarily assure our children of salvation, as they come to Christ themselves, but it does give them a world rich with the cream obedience out of love for Christ brings to the top. Our children should live in the sweet overflow of our faith and joy. They should feel alienated and strange in a different world. Like paupers when they are princes and princesses. And they should come running home if they do stray. Because obedience and love for Christ has benefits! Remember? Forgiveness of sins, healing of diseases, salvation from our pit dwelling, crowns because of love and mercy, renewed strength for this life and satisfaction loaded with good things. Lavish love. Unbridled mercy. Protection, peace and joy. The ice cream of life fed to us by the hand of God. If we are living life to the fullest, which can't be done without obedience to our benevolent Father, our kids should be basking in the Sonshine every day. And want that for themselves.

And we don't vanish forever. We transition. Unlike the flower, forgotten and replaced by its seeds, we live on to enjoy, face to face, our Father and His kingdom. Hanging fruit, a mighty rushing river, a city glistening with colored jewels, massive choirs of angels, breathtaking vistas and quiet oases and, in the middle of it all, Jesus, waiting with open arms to show us our new home. A home that winds can't blow away. A life now safe with Him. And joy unspeakable and full of glory. We obeyed because He died. We follow His rules because we love Him. We live forever because He lives forever. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits! 

PSALM 103 - What Are You Made Of?

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him. For He knows our frame. He remembers we are dust. (Verses 11-14)

Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of His inheritance? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in steadfast love.
Micah 7:18

Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend. You are My friends if you do what I command you. Jesus. John 15

The heavens and earth were finished. And God rested from the work of creation. He looked over it, and there wasn't yet a bush on any of the land or even a small plant anywhere. There hadn't been rain. And there was no one to work the ground. One morning in the early mist that covered the whole earth, the Lord took up a fist of dust and formed a man--Adam. Into the form God blew His own breath. And the man became a living creature. Just like that. And God has never forgotten that day. He sees it with all other days past and yet to come in one timeline stretched before Him. Our God knows what we're made of. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them (Genesis1).

The God Who made us, loves us. Delights to love us! Steadfastly and ferociously. Jealous over His people, for He bought us back from the slippery snake and our bent to sin. Our Father doesn't want to be mad at us. Contrary to the belief of some, Abba wants to give to us. "It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom (Luke 12). He wants children on whom He can lavish His steadfast love. Some of us don't have a father we can understand in this context. Some don't have experiences in the local church that uphold this ideal of our Father. There He's often the master of the house, barking rules that He can't wait for us to break so that He can call down fire from heaven. So maybe that's why it's hard for us to embrace the Father of the Bible. The One Who sings over us with gladness and quiets us with His love (Zephaniah 3). The One Who loves us so much our names are etched on the palms of His hands (Isaiah 49). Our Father swears that even though a mother might be capable of not having compassion on the child of her womb (oh, my, that's another story altogether), He will never forget us (Isaiah 49). Lovingly our Father knitted us together in our mother's wombs, forming our inward parts. He watched as we grew in the secret place of our mother's bodies and wrote our individual stories as our cells multiplied and our features were formed (Psalm 139). In His last words to His disciples before His crucifixion, Jesus proclaimed, In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf, for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me (John 16). You and I have a Father Who knows our name. It delights Him to love us. He knows we're not perfect, but if we have done the one thing that pleases Him most, believe in the One Who came to die in our place as the ultimate sacrifice for sin, we are children of the Living God. We can dance in circles around the throne, delighting our Father with our joyful, thankful, whole hearts. Obeying Him is our glory. Reflecting the light of His face. Not trudging through life and hoping to get lucky some day and be in heaven. But experiencing the benefits of heaven here and now. We can only do that when we know how precious we are to the Father Who remembers what we're made of.

We are a generation that throws many of our babies into the trashcans of America's abortion clinics every minute of every day. So maybe it's become more difficult to understand the sheer pleasure God takes in those of us who've chosen to follow His Son into adoption as children. The kind of love that looks at a newborn and knows for certain that we are looking at the first person we've ever met that we'd unquestionably die for. We'd lay down our lives for the vulnerable and beautiful flesh of our bodies. It's the way God loves us. To the moon and back...as high as the heavens are above earth. He loves us this much. It's why He forgives us...and forgets our sins. Not because of our first birth, but because we were born again into His family. That is the birth that makes the angels sing Hallelujahs all over heaven. It's God's intent to slather us with compassion, mercy, protection, purpose, power, joy, peace and faithfulness. Do you know you are loved like that? Do you know this Father Who would stoop down on His haunches to look you in the eye and instruct you in greatness (Psalm 18)? Who is a God like Him Who would lay down His own life for ours? And our response to so great a love? For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not irksome (burdensome). 1 John 5

It's what makes us serve the Lord with gladness and come into His courts with praise. To slam tambourines, pound drums, strike chords and sing with all our might! I am loved! Bathed in its purity and clothed in its honor! All the mundane minutes of my day and all the switchbacks on my path are carefully overseen by my Father's watchful eyes. He knows my name and my way. It's written down and sure. Carried along by the One Whose arms I finish to fall into.

PSALM 103 - Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God

The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will He keep His anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay according to our iniquities. (Verses 6-10)

God had had it with Israel. Sure, He'd let them go on in to the Promised Land, but without Him. To His very core He was done with their sinfulness and complaining. Moses was on Mt. Sinai with his God for over a month, receiving from Him the instructions for the covenant of the law written by the hand of God on two tablets of stone. But...when Moses came back down the mountain, aglow with the residual presence of God and carrying the sacred law, the people were dancing around naked and stoned to foreign music around a giant golden calf before which they'd fornicated and worshipped. Aaron was stuttering something about throwing in all the jewelry and "out came this calf," when Moses threw the words of God to the ground, breaking them. What an unholy mess.

"I'm not going with you," God told Moses. "They make me so mad--this stiff-necked, stubborn people--that if I go I will consume them with anger on the way."

"Show me Your ways, if I have found favor with You. You have said you know me by name, and I've found favor in Your sight. So help me know what I need to do to with this nation of people who belong to You." Moses changed God's mind.

"I will go. But not with this generation."

The next morning, very early, Moses met God again on Mt. Sinai. Just God and His friend. No animals could graze nearby. No one else could be on all the mountain. Carrying two new stone tablets, Moses alone met with God, Who descended in a cloud and stood with him. There God proclaimed His name. "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but Who will by no means clear the guilty" (Exodus 34).

Israel tried again. Cleansed themselves in order to receive the law on the second set of tablets. And God allowed them to wander in the wilderness until they died off. It was the next generation who saw the land promised to them. Joshua and Caleb led them in. What did the first generation say to the ones who finally conquered to make them ready? I think, "God was merciful to us. Didn't kill us in the wilderness. There is still a land out there, son, that we'll never see, but you will. Just wait." Forty years. A long time. Will it ever manifest? It was a rocky journey to fulfillment. And mercy took them there.

The ten plagues, the Passover of the angel of death, the parting of the Red Sea, the drowning of the Egyptian army, manna, springs of water gushing out of rock, flocks of birds for food and the very presence of God leading His people by night and day in cloud and fire. They should've known their God better than they did. Intentionally, sovereignly, He'd seen their need in Egypt, the deaths of their baby sons, the oppression of the government on their heads, and clutched a baby from a gentle stream to save them years before they even knew it. Thinking ahead about how He would deliver His precious people from bondage. Because He loves them. Couldn't watch them suffer any longer. Knew He needed to deal with their oppressors. Steadfast love. It doesn't change. And for the eighty years Moses had to grow into his leadership position, were they complaining? Thinking their God just didn't care? See where I'm going with this?

It wasn't enough. The Presence in the tabernacle. Ten laws became hundreds as man decided to fine tune the old covenant into a morass of tenets impossible to keep. So they could brag about how good they were and how bad the next person. The very law they claimed to keep showed what big sinners they actually were. The society of the self-righteous was as oppressive as the Roman government.

"We must show them." The Godhead, ready for the plan to save us all--not just Israel any more.

And Steadfast Love. The Lord. The Lord, Merciful and Gracious, Slow to Anger, the Faithful One did for us what we couldn't do. Enough of watching us struggle with our sinful nature that forgets Him and builds idols to replace our God in times when we can't understand His ways. In the years when He seems silent while perhaps He lets His anger rest...taking it slow...so as not to consume us. All along He's forming a plan for the deliverance of His stiff-necked children. No more smoky mountain tops or God-filled clouds of guidance. "I must go down to them."

In death, our God released His Spirit into carnal flesh to live forever among and in our flawed world. To tabernacle in all the earth in little temples of glory. Changing from the inside what the law of Moses couldn't. Our hearts. Oh, Jesus didn't deal with us according to our sins! No! The Lord, the Lord wrote a new covenant that wiped them completely away, smearing His blood on the tablets of our hearts when what we deserve is the death penalty. The All-right, All-just Judge of All robed me in His perfection, dissolved my wrongs in dust, and declared me "Not guilty!" Because...because He took my place. The Almighty God descended onto the whole earth, not just Mt. Sinai, this time, and became, instead of a golden calf, the Lamb of God Who took away the sins of the world. The Lord! The Lord! Bless the Lord, O my soul!

PSALM 103 - What's In It For Me?

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits, Who forgives all your iniquity, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from the pit, Who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, Who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. (Verses 1-5)

What a way to start the week! I couldn't wait to get to Psalm 103 and now I feel daunted at the idea of doing it justice in any way. However, if you awakened with the Monday blues, repeat these verses over and over again to your soul!

Self-talk. What to say to my soul today to enliven and rejuvenate it. Espresso for the spirit. Bless the Lord! Everything in me! A mighty shout. A glorious song. Hands up, head heavenward, cry out, my soul! Because I know this God, my Father, the Savior of my soul and Lord of my life! Exhale the doubt and fear that hides or hovers. Breathe in the joy of sins forgiven and a life redeemed! Whether we feel like it or not today, bless His name! For in so doing, we remember Who He is and Whose we are.

I am a sinner. He is a Savior. My God knows I need to be rescued from my carnality and the repercussions of my bending to it. I must be redeemed from the claws of the enemy of my soul and washed clean of the filth attached to my disobedience and rebellion. My God loves me so much, and He loved me before I ever gave Him a thought. "I will bleed and save her," Jesus declared. "I will enter the amphitheater of her challenge and defeat the roaring lion." But that's not all. Jesus then forgave me all the treachery that brought me to the battle I deserved. Put a royal robe on me and said, "All your sins are forgiven. Every single one. Now and forever more." I don't have to hope He'll look with favor on me. Scared at every turn that if I get it wrong, though I try to get it right, that Jesus will one day look at my puny performance and kick me out of the family. And when I've confessed my sinfulness to Him then bring it up again, my God says, "What are you talking about?  I forgot about all of that. It's back there covered in redemptive blood (Psalm 103:12)."

I am sick. God is my healer. Not just of my physical ailments. Sin makes us sick. Look around. I don't have to look further than the story of my own life. Depression. Fear. Addiction. The mutinies of our souls without Him. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. For you were like straying sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls (1 Peter 2). Jailed by the heaviness of my soul's afflictions, I'm hopeless until He touches me. Leprosy of spirit, cancer of soul, diseased of heart and lame, blind and deaf--my condition when we met. Jesus didn't draw back in disgust, though He should have. Instead His holy hand deigned to touch my neediness to trade His purity for my afflictions. Whole now! Bless the Lord, O my soul!

I am a pit-dweller. Jesus if my heavenly SEAL. Sea, air or land. No matter where I dig my pit, no matter how hopelessly stuck I am in its mire, not matter how deep the ocean or how high I float above it all in some sin-induced stupor, my God will find me. Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there! (Psalm 139) Made a bed in hell lately? Ever? Personally, I know what it feels like to have Jesus walk into that fiery hot mess and say, "Enough!" I've felt the arms of rescue as He yanks me out of the quicksand into which I've fallen. I've seen the light of day as my Savior brings me up from the darkness of my near demise. Oh, Bless the Lord, O my soul!!! I am delivered from myself.

I am a plebeian. He is a prince. But if all the other benefits weren't enough, Jesus gives me a crown. Blessed is the one who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him (James 1). The King of Kings and Lord of Lords has made me His sister. I am a princess. Don't laugh! I am! I'm part of a holy nation, a royal priesthood. Adopted through the blood of Christ into God's own family! Because of His great love and stunning mercy, God chose me before the foundations of the earth to be His daughter (Ephesians 1). He loved me while I was still sinning away. Cognizant or incognizant of His far-reaching knowledge of my every thought and action. My God saw me sweeping chimney ashes, beaten down by my aggressor and decided I needed a pair of golden slippers. The King to Whom I belong is the Wonderful Counselor, the Prince of Peace, Mighty God and Everlasting Father! I may look like Cinderella before the ball, but my Father has given me a royal tiara. More and more I want to be comfortable in the regal garb and act like a proper princess should. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Would you look at me now!

My soul is uniquely unsatisfied in this life. My God renews and satisfies. He made us for Himself. Created us to love. Him. First. When Moses asked to see God's glory, God's answer was, "I will make all my goodness pass before you." Goodness is the very glory of my God. We've been tricked into thinking God only wants to control us. Not so! He wants to be good to us. To be the One thing that deeply satisfies our hearts. To provide for us. To protect us. To teach us wisdom. To give us a hope and a future. Uh...when was the last time our current addictions brought such depth into our puny existence? God wants me strong all the way into His arms. Bless the Lord, O my soul! My God is all I need!

Arms raised! Head heavenward! Heart beating with joy! Bless the Lord! Bless Him with your whole being! He deserves it, enjoys it, waits for it and acknowledges it! O, how I love Him, benefits and all!
 

PSALM 102 - Are You Listening?

Of old You laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You will remain. They will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away. But You are the same and Your years never end. The children of Your servants shall dwell secure. Their offspring shall be established before You.
(Verses 25-28)

I am He. The first and 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

In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him. Without Him nothing was made that was made.  John 1

Logos. The Greek word for word. Divine self-expression or speech. Jesus is how God speaks. Jesus is the One Who said: "Let there be light." And there was light. Nothing that we see, touch, taste or feel came into being without Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17). Jesus made it all and keeps it from falling apart. In the vastness that is forever, Jesus is I AM (Exodus 3). The First and the Last. The Alpha and the Omega. In everything and before everything from A to Z. Jesus is God. The part of the Triune Godhead Who speaks life into being. It is He Who chose to come to earth, touch our dust, eat our food and die our death. It is He Who now drives history toward its final hours. Jesus is the One worthy to open the scroll of the end times and speak the world's events into being. Jesus is the One Who speaks with a still small voice to our hearts. We, His sheep, can hear the Logos in our ears. Are we listening?

It is amazing to me how powerful the Word of God is. When Bill and I were first married, we found ourselves discipling several students who came to the Lord while I was teaching. We spent Bible study and worship time with them each week on Saturday, but many of them were in and out of our home during the week, also. One of the young men stopped coming for a while. Though we were concerned about him, we didn't pressure him to attend the coffee house Bible studies. But a few weeks down the line, we were all at a potluck supper together. Bill always waits until the last to go through the line. (Which, by the way, always made me antsy, as all the best pieces of fried chicken were always gone by the time we made it through.) This young man noticed. "You and Kay are way back there," he said with a smile. "And the first shall be last," Bill quipped, not thinking of ministry but of being funny. But the high schooler was back at Bible Study the next week. "When you quoted that scripture, Bill, it changed my heart." Hmmm.

I have a friend who was not a Christian when I first met her. At least, if she was it wasn't the driving motivation of her life. But I really loved my friend. She was always and is always there for me. In a God-breathed quest to understand the Bible better, she began attending an in depth study once a week. There was lots of homework between sessions that she was willing to do. Though the teacher began with Genesis, my friend was blown away by the God revealed in His Word. After a year of this, everything about her is different. That's what she says. The Bible changed her heart. She simply didn't know God until she read His mind. And in so doing discovered His heart.

If the One Who spoke the world into being and continues to hold it together has something to say, shouldn't we find out what that is? Wouldn't it be important to memorize and meditate upon the thoughts of such a One? For the Logos of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of the soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and discerning the intentions and thoughts of the heart (Hebrews 4). For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct Him. But we have the mind of Christ (I Corinthians 2). The miracle is that Jesus, the Logos, the verbal expression of God, speaks a never-changing, heart melting, mind bending, life altering message to the world. Some sit with their hands over their ears. But those of us who have ears to hear, must listen. For the Lord Himself will shake the foundations of this earth as one shakes out a robe, and it will be gone. But He will remain forever. And He wants us with Him.

PSALM 102 - Take Notes

Write these things for the future so that people who are not yet born will praise the Lord. The Lord looked down from His holy place above; from heaven He looked down at the earth. He heard the moans of the prisoners, and He freed those sentenced to die. The name of the Lord will be heard in Jerusalem. His praise will be heard there. People will come together, and kingdoms will serve the Lord. (Verses 18-22)

The Lord God has put His Spirit in Me, because the Lord has appointed Me to tell the good news to the poor. He has sent Me to comfort those whose hearts are broken, to tell the captives they are free, and to tell the prisoners they are released. He has sent Me to announce the time when the Lord will show kindness.  Isaiah 61

I am awed this morning that I am reading these words. Written centuries ago for me to see today. Even the psalmist had no clear idea then that not only did the Lord look down from His holy place to see the sufferings of men and women, but He also knew what He would do about it. There was a perfect time. A day He had in mind. On that day He said to God the Son, "It's time." To Gabriel, His mighty angel, God said, "Go tell Mary I have chosen her." And heaven played more loudly on the strings of its symphonies as angelic hosts filled heaven with praise. The spectacle to them that is our lives here on earth was approaching its apex. Perfect holiness was going to dwell in the womb of a young Jewish girl picked from before the foundations of the earth to mix her DNA with God's. To marvel for nine months over her growing belly and the words of an angel, "Listen! You will become pregnant and give birth to a Son, and you will call Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High." An unusual star was placed in the sky, a marvel to the astrologers and astronomers who studied the heavens. The stage was set for the history of the world to change.

I don't know what the thoughts of the newborn Jesus were past wanting to nurse and perhaps crying through some colicky nights. Aware only as much as other babies that his needs must be met. But by the time He was twelve years old, His calling was clear. He knew then that the Temple was His Father's house. He taught there with such wisdom that the elders marveled at his preteen prescience. His fleshly life dropped more and more away as He neared His thirty-third year. Mary must have seen her Jesus do the miraculous before that day in Cana when He launched His ministry at her command to the servant at a wedding to do whatever He told them to do. There was no more wine. The celebration was spoiled unless Jesus did what she knew He could. Save things. Make a way when there is no way. How did she know her Son was capable of making wine in a moment?

Then the God Who looked down from heaven at the misery Satan wreaked on His creation met the enemy face to face. Tempted to be merely human. To crunch the fruit forbidden and ruin God's plan of the ages. Hungry Himself from day after day of denying Himself food and drink, the One Who disregarded His flesh in preference for His calling resisted Satan by the power of His own words. "It is written..." And the enemy fled in terror. Anointed and victorious, Jesus showed us how God deals with our captivity and pain. Spoke to our addictions and stripped us of our diseases. Because God is compassionate and caring. Because to show us He can heal our bodies reveals His power to also heal our spirits. We aren't captive only when we are behind bars. We are prisoners of whatever passion or pain controls our hearts and minds. The One Who can heal a crippled body can restore a crippled mind, mend a broken heart and forgive our heinous sin. Jesus came to reveal the heart of God.

Prisoners are usually in jail for the wrongs they've done. Some are wrongly accused and languish in the injustices of their incarceration. Paying for what someone else has done. But none of us is squeaky clean. All of us have sinned. Fall short of a perfect life. We all deserve to be punished. On His way to the cross via the triumphal entry into Jerusalem during Passover week, Jesus cried over the crowds who saw Him and yet didn't understand. "Oh, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and stone to death those sent to you. Many times I wanted to gather you people as a hen gathers her chicks, but you did not let Me." That rebellion had to be atoned. On a Friday afternoon. On a cross with criminals to either side bleeding with them for my crimes, not His. Beaten beyond recognition. Nailed to a cross made of the wood Jesus created, He bore the punishment for the prisoners we'd become.  The cry from His crucible was, "It is finished!" Dropping flesh to be robed in splendor once more. Now the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.

Write these things down for future generations to read and give praise to Jesus. I was a sinner doomed to die and God Himself took my place. Sing it in a song. Rhyme it in a poem. Speak it to the crowds. Whisper it to the dying. Live it for your children. Write it with your life. We have been set free, healed and delivered now and forever more.

 

PSALM 102 - Are You Just Taking Up Space?

All the day my enemies taunt me. Those who deride me use my name for a curse. For I eat ashes like bread and mingle tears with my drink because of Your indignation and anger. For you have taken me up and thrown me down. My days are like an evening shadow. I wither away like grass. But You, O Lord, are enthroned forever. You are remembered throughout all generations. You will arise and have pity on Zion. It is the time to favor her. The appointed time has come. For Your servants hold her stones dear and have pity on her dust. Nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth will fear His glory. For the Lord builds up Zion. He appears in His glory. He regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer.    (Verses 8-17, italics mine)

Ever feel like you're just taking up space in this world. That, like the evening shadow, you're fading quickly. Or your place in life is like a patch of dead grass in the midst of all that green? No appetite. Many tears. Hollowed out and devastated. I have to say there have been a few days in my life when I felt picked up and thrown down, like a lady wrestler whose opponent got the better of her. Slammed against the ropes and it felt intentional. Like God was mad at me. For no good reason.

That's pretty much what this psalmist is describing. But...then He remembers his God. The One Who is forever. Never withers. Takes up all space and time. And Who has a plan. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Corinthians 4). Life on earth isn't eternal. Thank God. It's an adventure. A traveling through. A maze, the solving of which ends up in eternal life. So, yes, there is some picking up and throwing down that comes our way. No straight lines. Earlier in 2 Corinthians, Paul described what his suffering was. For we don't want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we suffered in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God Who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us again. On Him we have set our hope that He will deliver us again. Taking up space. Almost out of hope. Beyond their strength to bear. But God...

Our God has a plan for us and for the universe. Both intentional and particular. Though life seems random and arbitrary sometimes. It's not. I have a place in the larger picture. It's tiny, but it's important to God. Important enough to Him that He stepped into my shoes in order for me to fulfill His will here on planet Earth. My God hears the cries of the afflicted. You have kept count of my tossings, put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book? (Psalm 56). It's easy to take life personally when we are thrown down. It's easy to think we've done something to deserve the wrath of God in our lives. My mother died of cancer. A well meaning Christian in our family told her she had cancer because of unforgiveness in her life. Mother struggled with those words. Because cancer is ugly and fierce and feels like a punishment. I've also had two dear friends struggle to the end with this treacherous disease. Part of their struggle shouldn't have been over what they did to deserve it. But it was. Because it feels like being thrown down by God. But you know what? They are with Him now forever. The maze completed for them as they took the victory lap and wound up home. Which is our goal and God's for us. We get home somehow. Once here, death is our final enemy. Defeated by a suffering Jesus Who knows what it's like to be tossed up and thrown down, yet He understood it was for a greater glory. Not because He was as sinner, but because we are.

Life will finally end and we'll be in Zion. The heavenly Jerusalem. With Jesus. No longer imagining His glory, but participating in it. No longer finite but eternal. No more agony. No more tears. The book is closed on our suffering there. Yet each tear, each day of stretching just beyond what we can bear, has been written there. God's journal of my life. His record of my path as I breathed through the pain and believed in His goodness, or withered in a heap and cried in my drink. All there. Because my God hears the cries of my affliction and answers them. The Father knows my purposes and how I fit into the larger picture of His designs for Earth. When I remember He is good and just, I can lift my head in a storm and know there is purpose--possibly great purpose--in the shifting winds.
 

PSALM 102 - The Sparrow on the Housetop

Hear my prayer, O Lord. Let my cry come to You! Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my distress! Incline Your ear to me. Answer me speedily in the day when I call! For my days pass like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is struck down like grass and has withered. I forget to eat bread. Because of my loud groaning, my bones cling to my flesh. I am like an owl in the wilderness, like an owl of the waste places. I lie awake. I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop.  (Verses 1-7)

Alone. In pain. Pain that seemingly no one else notices or understands. Pain separates. Wraps itself around us in a bubble that drifts with the air current to some nameless, arbitrary place. Pops one day and leaves us there in the desert to figure it out. A lone bird on a rooftop. An owl alone in the waste places. No appetite. No desire to get up in the morning. Living in the fog that has become existence. Sleepless nights and pointless days. Trying to fill the hours up and move one foot in front of the other. Straining to pray. Hoping to still punctuate your despair with exclamation points. Desperation giving life enough to call out to God instead of leaving just enough hope to whisper His name. Pain.

I've known this kind of aching. Crushed in the crucible of heartache so that I can't breathe. Squeezed by circumstances into a corner, trapped in despair, almost hopeless. It hurt to breathe deeply. It hurt too much to cry. And though I was surrounded by those who loved and needed me, I could have sworn I was alone. But I wasn't. And I'm not. And the very God to Whom I cried out isn't ignorant of such need. He spoke to Job, man to man. Answered Job's probing questions as the man sat in the dust of his broken life, covered in oozing boils and demanding an answer to Why?. Why him? Why his kids? Why now? The immediate response from God wasn't the human inevitable Why not you? Instead, God first showed Job His magnificence. His prescience and omnipotence. Pain had a plan. It didn't make it less painful, but more endurable. The outcome?  More abundance than Job had ever imagined. Heartbreak in his past, for sure. But centuries later, Job is with his God, the One he loved. And the blueprint Job left for dealing with pain is forever recorded for we who are owls in a desert.

But there is life after Job. Centuries of it. A plan unfolding over time that deals once and for all with the maladies of planet Earth. God Himself stepping once again onto the sphere of His heart and walking in our hopelessness and humanity. Feeling what we feel. Crying when we cry. Holding us when our hearts are broken. Breathing life into death. Commanding disease and its misery to be gone. Chasing our demons over the cliff then sitting down to eat a meal in our home. If that were all, it would be a lovely story of a man who could do great things. But that's not all we needed. Healings and exorcisms. Our hearts needed to be changed. Our minds renewed. Our lives restored. Forever. Only God can do that. So He did. When He died. Took it all on Himself. From Job backward and forward to today. All of it. The pain. The loneliness. Brokenhearted and deserted, like a bird on a rooftop, like the raven in the desert, He died. So don't go thinking you live alone in pain. Not anymore. Jesus felt it all so when you cry out, He understands and feels with you. And don't go thinking it will never end. Jesus rose again, and so will we. The other side of pain is glory, here and there. Because all things work together for the good for those who love God. The Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (Romans 8) If you're in pain today, the Spirit of God within you is groaning over the same things you groan over. When there aren't words for the depth of misery you feel, there aren't words for the Spirit, either. Let that sink in. In the middle of the night when you lie there aching, He aches and groans in rhythm with you. Before the throne of God Whose Spirit we possess. Not forsaken, but abiding even in our most desperate need. The One Who loved you first loves you enough to cry out over the all that makes you grieve. And He intends to bring a phoenix from the ashes. Guaranteed.

For we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.   2 Corinthians 4

PSALM 101 - Veneer on a Clay Pot

No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house. No one who utters lie will continue before my eyes.  (Verse 7)

Liars hate the people they hurt, and false praise can ruin others.  Proverbs 26:28

I've met some pathological liars in my time. Now this is not to say that I've never lied. I have. And I'm ashamed of it. Thankfully, though, I've never been comfortable telling a falsehood. It's made me sick to my stomach because I know I've deceived. So, lying isn't something I practice. And it's been a thing I try to rectify quickly. For most of us, it's about saving face. Covering up a thing worse than the lie. Not wanting to be caught in a bigger sin. The thing about lying, though, is generally one lie isn't enough because it creates a false situation that then must also be defended. Ah, what a tangled web we weave.....

It takes some time to discover a liar. What usually trips one up is they can't always remember the stories they've told. There are just so darned many of them. And if you are with a liar for any length of time and have believed what they said, you've put some degree of trust in them. So the first few times they are caught in what seems to be a contradiction, they say you are wrong. They didn't say such and such or you misheard. Okay. I still like this woman. Surely she wouldn't just tell me a boldfaced lie. I misheard. But when this becomes a pattern, it's nauseating. You know you've been had. Your friend has created a straw person who doesn't exist. The real person is someone altogether different. And the sickening thing? She fooled you. Used your time and compassion. Took from you in a way that only someone who hates you would. No way to regain trust. She moves onto some other naïve people. Lying to them because she can't face who she really is.

Obviously, such a person can't live in your house. Or share intimately with you. Must be shunned. Without remorse. Because liars are dangerous. Cannot be trusted. Like Martha (not her real name) who came to California from Texas to stay with Bill and me for a few days while she went looking for the young Marine who she said impregnated her. Martha went on a mission to find him. Even to his commander. The Marine wouldn't see her. Devastated, she came back to our house, wailing her grief. But something about her story didn't ring true. First of all, that she was pregnant. I finally asked her the name of her Texas doctor because I'd lived in the same city as she for several years. I called him. "No, no. She's not pregnant." Hmm. Turns out none of Martha's story was true. She'd tricked the young soldier into believing that her father would pay for an expensive sports car he purchased on that promise. There was no money from the father. The lies were so complex and convoluted that it had me in tears just trying to figure out what grain of truth might actually be buried in her stories. Only one thing. She wanted to marry the guy. And whatever she had to promise, whether she could possibly deliver or not, she'd promise. So we packed her bags and told her to leave. Prayed over her heart as she pulled out of the driveway, but couldn't allow her to continue to pursue her lies from under out roof. Besides, we were simply a means to an end for her. Sadly.

God hates lies because He can't stand anything false. He wants the real me...ironically, even if I come to Him in order to quit lying. The accomplished liar has lied to himself for so long even he doesn't know who stands up when asked where the real person is. Harder and harder to come to our transparent and holy God when you don't know who you are. Lying isn't the way to get out of trouble but the way to deepen it. Perhaps God knows that lying to ourselves is one of the most dangerous sins because then we can't come fully to Him in our self-degradation. The false self presented to God is prideful and unrepentant. Whether the liar puts on a show before us or before the Father, it's still a veneer. Kind words from a wicked mind are like a shiny coating on a clay pot. Those who hate you may try to fool you with their words, but in their minds they're planning evil. People's words may be kind, but don't believe them, because their minds are full of evil thoughts. Lies can hide hate, but the evil will be plain to everyone.  Proverbs 26: 23-27

Most importantly, my life needs to be transparent and open to my God. When I sin, and I do and will, I must immediately agree with Him that I'm wrong. When I sin, it is always against Him first. The beauty of this is that if I am cleaning my soul from all that would stain it, I'm less likely to sin against you. My friends and family. Because confession has made me humble before God, abashed and sorry. His unfathomable forgiveness makes me reticent to sin again. If I can lie to Him, I can lie to you. But if I must come clean before a holy God, I must live honestly with you, too.

 

PSALM 101 - Putting My Words on a Diet

Whoever slanders his neighbor secretly, I will destroy. Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not endure. I will look with favor on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me. He who walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me.  (Verses 5-6)

For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.  James 3

King David wrote this psalm. Setting for himself the parameters for those who were given the privilege of getting up close to the king. It was a matter of highest political and spiritual importance to David that he surround himself with other people of deep faith and a high degree of integrity toward those strongly held beliefs. Because a little leaven leavens the whole lump (I Corinthians 5). If those the king most trusted for their advice and counsel were haughty and self-seeking, gossiping about and slandering him behind his back, they could not be counted upon for their allegiance to him or his God. Their words and actions would poison the leadership and ideals of David's sovereign reign. How would David know whether he'd selected blameless men? Their walk. With God. Not their talk about Him.

Faithfulness. In heart as well as in deed. And if we are the kind of people who can measure what we say, we will be able to control also what we do. That is a stunning thought. Especially for someone like me who loves words. I have so many of them flying around in my skull all day and sometimes all night. I often wish I could shut the thinking off for a while. Self-talk and problem solving and my brain just yaks and yaks. It's why I often lie down on the floor and just get quiet before Him. Drain out all the bombarding words and wait for my Father. I must admit I've not always been nor always am in control of these words. I say it to my shame. For some, especially those who don't like conflict, the inability to speak is a boon. They don't make some of the mistakes I have. But I don't think what James is saying and what David wanted was someone who was afraid to say anything. It is what we say and when we say it that matters. Controlling our words for the edification and instruction of others. Neither vomiting them up nor hiding them from view. But ready, instead, to preach the word in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching (2 Timothy 4). To be faithful with my words means I can be counted upon to seek the mind of Christ from His Word and from prayer as well as wise counsel from others. That in my heart I know my motive in speech isn't self-aggrandizement or selfish gain. It's not my intention to hurt or defame. In order to do this, someone like me has to put my mouth on a diet. No, you can't say that. Why are you even thinking it...sort of thing. I have to think about the repercussions of my words before I allow them to spill willy-nilly from my lips. Speak to others as if I were already speaking to the King. If out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks (Matthew 12), it's right that we are judged by what we say. Our words display our heart. Right out there for everyone to see.

So the root of it all always go back to my heart beating with His. Getting His mind (I Corinthians 2:16) on things before I share a piece of my minds I can't afford to lose. How do we know the mind of Christ? First we have to read the Bible. It is interpreted for us by the Holy Spirit. It is alive and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword, able to uncover even the intents of our heart ((Hebrews 4). I have been chastised and elated by His Word. As if He's sitting with me declaring its import to me. Second, by the Spirit Himself. The person of the Godhead living within me. Jesus promised in His last conversation with the disciples before His death that He would send the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit would tell us what Jesus told Him to tell us. Talk back and forth with us by the power of the indwelling Spirit. It is when I'm more interested in what Jesus thinks than what I do that I will be most powerful for Him and most edifying to others. I have a long way to go, but I'm learning to diet. To tell my silly mouth to give way to the wise one. To bring my heart before His throne so that from it flows honey instead of vinegar. And when I then speak, the overflow of my life spews wisdom and love, language fit for the presence of the King.
 

PSALM 101 - Strutting My Stuff?

A perverse heart will be far from me. I will know nothing of evil.  (Verse 4)

Jesus said the first and greatest commandment was to love the Lord with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves. Proverbs 4:23 warns us to "Guard your heart with great diligence for from it flow the springs of life." Our hearts show on our lives. "As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man." It's unlikely that Jesus can be enthroned in our hearts and that evil will sit right beside Him. One of them will leave the presence of the other. No man can serve two masters. And Jesus won't share that place with another. So there is the Christian quandary. We come to Jesus in need of a new heart because the very essence of sin is rebellion against God. That we have other gods who have been telling us what to do. Power, sex, money, drugs...and pretty much any other thing we love more than we love Jesus...have sat at the center of our lives for the many or few years we've lived until we meet Jesus. Then we have a choice.

Choice is supernatural. It's a miracle of grace. Before I met Christ, my life was controlled by my passions and desires. Completely selfish, I was driven by my ignorance of consequences and my own wants and needs. Satan had me by the hair of my head, dragging me into one scheme after another. In my naivete, I thought I ruled my own decisions. Wrong. But on the day I met Jesus, He presented me with a way out of the cycle and rescue from my bondage to the enemy. I could follow Him. With my heart instead of my basest desires. I could actually go somewhere, instead of leaving the evidence of my being dragged along the dust behind me by one who hasn't even the smallest regard for my well-being. The problem was my heart. It was used to evil. "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? But I, the Lord, search the heart and test the mind." Jeremiah 17. "Desperately sick" means more literally, beyond cure, without medical recourse. Perversion of heart is a fatal disease. There is no hope for it apart from Jesus. Our hearts will ultimately kill us. Knowing this, Jesus came to bring us the cure.

"I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and to obey my rules." What a choice! Old heart for new. Old stupid, self-destroying, fatally diseased heart for a brand new one! It's like someone offering us a brand new Rolls for our beat up trike! The trade is a no-brainer...or should be.

The problem of this psalm, though, is what do I do with my new heart? It seems to me that I need to take very good care of it. After all, I traded in my trike heart of it, and my trike was rusted and squeaky. Why would I want the Rolls to look like a jalopy? I don't want perversity to sit beside me in my shiny ride. To leave its odor on the seats. To tell me which roads to take that will smear it with dirt or dent its beauty. I must take care of the new heart entrusted to me. Trust the Spirit Who now journeys with me. In fact, let Him drive my heart. Steer me away from the diseases that used to threaten my life. Guard my heart with all diligence. Say no when I should say no. Resist the enemy who'd drive me back to the old way. It's okay to hate evil and to scream back at the enemy when he's tailgating. When I traded the trike for the Rolls, I left nothing good back there. My sparkling new heart knows nothing of evil except what I expose it to. With intentionality, I must drive past, looking straight ahead, even when catcalls from the sidewalk call me a holy-roller or a goody-two-shoes. My Rolls might look like I'm flaunting my stuff, but it's what my Father gave me to drive around in and I'm not going back to the trike. All I can do is shout as I pass by, "You could choose to have a Rolls, too! There really is a choice!"

PSALM 101 - Be Careful Little Mind What You See

I will sing of steadfast love and justice. To You, O Lord, I will make music. I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will You come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house. I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away. It shall not cling to me.   (Verses 1-3)

Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Philippians 4:8 (italics, mine)

Solomon was, in his day, touted as being the wisest man who ever lived. When he reigned over Israel, he wrote Ecclesiastes, a book of wisdom. His summary of our senses: All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing. Even then the great king adjured that nothing is new under the sun. We're doing what we've always done. Sinning in the same old ways. Because we just can't get enough of the world. Or can we? Ever just been utterly weary of this life? Of walking through the muck in order to get to the gold?

I remember when I was a kid, my father allowed me to watch the movie "The Incredible Shrinking Man" thinking it wouldn't scare me. At first it was interesting to see this daddy, who had a wife and kids, start his diminishing on the screen before me. All the objects around him changed perspective and he finally got lost in his own home. The tiny man's frantic wife was always looking for him. Didn't know where he'd turn up next. Then it morphed into the horrific. Somehow he was down in the basement and a tarantula was thinking the little guy would make a very nice dinner. Of course, the tarantula was huge and the man, by now, the size of a fly. Where to run? How to hide from the eight-legged monster about to destroy him? In his panic, the man discovered a nearby matchbox and ran as fast as his minuscule legs could carry him into the apparent safety of the box. On its eight tippy-toes, the spider came menacingly toward the man then jumped upon his hiding place. And...I screamed bloody murder! Oh, my gosh! Am I still afraid of spiders? Yep.

The visual is still with me. As are the visuals of other things I have allowed myself to gaze upon. Stuck there. Filling the places that other thoughts could fill if they weren't sometimes crowded out with worthless thoughts and visions. Television, movies, videos, books are engorged with mixed messages and images and dialogue that are constantly defining our culture--our thoughts and actions. And we let them. Foul language is now the standard for movies that glory in sex and murder. "The Incredible Shrinking Man" is so tame compared to the death and debauchery that is normal with every click of the remote. We are anesthetized--drugged into a stupor by a culture lost in images too dark for our Father to even look upon.

So, when I woke up yesterday, my thoughts wandered into foul territory. Don't judge. Your thoughts go there, too, if you're honest. What I know is that I have a choice to not think about the unlovely, nugatory stuff and instead intentionally change the channel my mind turned to upon opening up to the day. Just like I don't have to turn on the TV or go to an iffy movie, I don't have to think about worthless things. I don't! But I have to be willing to change channels. Pick up my Bible, or pray, or choose another image and sound bite to dwell upon. That must be more difficult the more we've allowed pornography, sleazy movies, violent images from video games and soft porn novels to infiltrate our subconscious. If the eye is never full of seeing all it desires and the ear is never satiated with gossip and filth, we are in big trouble if we can't control what we see and hear. We need a mental shower. To be cleansed. To be washed with the water of the Word. Sometimes we can't help what we come in contact with, but we don't have to let it clothe us. Let it cling to us like a bad odor. Because what we lap up will consume us. That's what addiction is. Losing the ability to say no.

The flip side is that there are wonderful things to think about. Images too glorious for words abound in the Book my Father wrote. And there is the beauty of nature to mesmerize me out of my worldly cares. Walking the beach while dolphins play in the ocean always brings my thoughts to "whatsoever things are worthy of praise." Remembering my own need for grace reminds me of "whatsoever things are just," just in case my thoughts become haughty and unforgiving. And when I judge others it's best if first I look to making my own way blameless--that my walk is right with God. No casting the first stone when the mote in my own eye could knock someone down. No dwelling on offenses. No spreading gossip. And for those who've fallen away, who call to me to join the ranks of the over-satiated and indulge in whatsoever fails to glorify God, I must also choose to let them walk their path without me. The disease which infects them could easily infect me if I turn to the left or to the right away from the excellence my Father calls me to.

And I want my heart to sing a new song. I want my mind to be filled with thoughts of the One I love. Crowd my senses with His nearness and joy in my relationship with my Beloved. The more I love Him, the less I love the worthless things. In fact, He is my motive for looking away. Not religious "have-to's" but my desire to have one love, unmarred by the stench of my old sins. Faithful in thought and deed to the One Who is ever faithful to me.