PSALM 117 - For God So Loved....

Praise the Lord, all nations! Extol Him, all peoples! For great is His steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord! (Verses 1-2)


Behold, my Servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at You--His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and His form beyond that of the children of mankind--so shall He sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of Him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand.  Isaiah 52   Italics, mine


Steadfast love goes back to before our before. When the Godhead saw the void and filled it with galaxies, planets and us. Isaiah wrote Chapter 52 before Jesus was born--way before His birth. His death conceived and sealed before the Spirit brooded over the void. And the plan was for the nations to know Jesus. For the world to be saved (John 3:16-17). Earth was made to look like a lesser heaven with massive green trees, luscious fruit and a pounding river running through the garden. God put man and woman in the midst and spoiled them with the joy of living among the landscape filled with the outcropping of God's divine imagination--plants, animals, seas, valleys, mountains, plains and rivers. And God, Who created them in love, walked with them in the cool of the day. For the joy of it. To be with His son and daughter.


But They foresaw the cross. God told Isaiah what to expect. A martyr. Bloodied like the bull of Leviticus 4. Jesus was His own high priest and sacrifice. And the blood sprinkled onto the swirling sand beneath His nail-pierced feet as the earth shook and sky went black was for the nations. For the whole world. The Far East, the Middle East, Europe, South America, America, the Arctic. All of it. Because walking with us on our own turf wasn't enough to save us. Oblivious to Who He really was when Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead, we finally cried out for His death. What kind of love does that? Hangs mutilated on a wooden death machine, nailed to its crossbeams for all of mankind? The ones who hiss His name or spit at His shame. The ones who go on television nightly and ridicule His sacrifice. The ones who don't give Him even that much thought. Why does He still choose to love us?


I know God loves me because I've been sprinkled. The blood that hit the ground on Calvary has been splashed upon my head by grace. Healed my sinful, messed up soul and washed away my dirty deeds. God steadfastly loves me because the splatterings of His Son's precious blood makes me precious, too. When the Father and Son conspired to save us through the mystery of the cross, long before we existed in any dimension but His great mind, they also purposed to love us. Always. Forever. And ever.


I compare that to the thin, puny strain of loves of which I'm capable. Use the word for some pretty mundane things. I love fried chicken. (I do, I really do.) I love to go to Disneyland. (Not so much, but you get the drift.) Watered down and used for everything. But love, real love, is costly. And endures. Rides out the good and the bad, the ups and downs. Never fails. And God has been steadfast with me. With all of us. And is, also, with the nations for which Christ died. I rarely think globally except to pray and be thankful for the missionaries who go into all the world to preach the gospel. But Jesus saw all of us when He said, "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they are doing." And the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus on the altar of the earth He made drenched the nations in forgiveness. Entire people groups. And a gift was given to all mankind. That which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand. Knowledge of the Most High, intimate and indwelling. Christ in us, the hope of glory. The hope of nations.


When Jesus comes again, it will be to the nations. Every knee bowing, every tongue confessing. It will be so obvious then. The clouds parted, the armies of heaven descending, the One on a white steed rushing down to Earth to judge what we did with His love. Some professing will do so under duress. No choice but to say, "It was true. All of it." His light so bright many will hide under rocks, crying out to be saved by them. In the centuries He's waited, patiently, lovingly, for us to bend a willful knee, Jesus has been merciful. Those of us washed clean by His blood also have the Spirit sent as the earnest, the down payment, on our future with God. We understand the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2) because He lives in us. Teaching us things we couldn't possibly understand before. A possibility open to every human being on the face of the earth! The divine plan to draw all people everywhere together as a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a chosen race and a people of His own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light (I Peter 2).


Oh, heart of mine, do away with shallow love that seeks only what is good for me. Throw off the desire to love only those who love me in return. Jesus help me to purpose, as You did, to love intentionally those who need to know the constancy of Christ-like steadfastness. Forgiving, for I've been forgiven so much. Embracing the whole world without prejudice, for Your love is global when mine often doesn't creep past my neighborhood.

PSALM 116 - Payback: Giving Him What He Deserves!

What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, I will pay my vows to the Lord, oh may it be in the presence of all His people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. O Lord, I am Your servant. I am Your servant, the son of Your maidservant. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord, oh may it be in the presence of all His people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in Your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord!  (Verses 12-19)


In love He predestined us for adoptions as sons (and daughters) through Jesus Christ...Ephesians 1


An idea formed in His great mind. Sons and daughters. Children made like Him--the Godhead. In their image (Genesis). An eternal household of precious progeny to grace His courts in never-ending joy and fellowship. Conceived in every detail--eye color, hair color, gender, race, intelligence, beauty, faults and strengths. No two alike. Ever. Like the eventual snowflakes Jesus would command into existence. DNA conceived without pencil, paper, slide rule or computer. Just there for the mere desire for its uncanny ability to describe a human's particularity. Each child of His who would ever live on the earth He'd yet to design conceived in the mind of God to become an object of His love. Designed in love as the passionate love of a man and a woman plant the seed of intimacy that becomes a child. The universe came next. A dazzling display of God's glory ablaze in the skies of His firmament to delight and guide the children of His heart. Earth. A tiny planet over which the Spirit brooded, awaiting the commands of the Word Who spoke the mountains, streams, oceans, meadows, deserts and jungles. Light and dark, animals and vegetation. All created for the first man of the Creator's dream. Adam. Eve, his helper, lover and friend. It was good. All good. And God walked with them on the tiny globe. In the cool of the day, spoke with His good creation. Loved them as His children. Hoped only to be loved in return. Reciprocally. Set in a paradise that was a replica of the heaven where He lives, how could this man and woman, made in His own image, not return in kind God's great love? But choice proved the foil, the devil in disguise. We chose to love ourselves more fully than our God. And so to prove His greater love, to draw us once more into the love with which He predestined us, God came down, the Word Who spoke us into being, made flesh to define "love."


So what shall I render to God for His great benefits? How, now that I have received my daughtership and salvation, do I love God appropriately? I am precious to Him, more precious than any created thing. God is my Father Who awaits my full arrival into His presence in much the same way, I suppose, that I anxiously await the arrivals of my children when they come home. I was always glad to see them when they awakened every morning, their faces sleepy-eyed and the hair tussled. Never got over the wonder that they were ours. Looked a little like each of us parents. Acted like us, too. My babies. Conceived in love. That my heavenly Father is that crazy about me is mind boggling, but it shouldn't be. If I am made like Him then it should be more surprising to Him that I can love like He does! My love for my kids is probably greatly inferior to His perfect love. I want to reciprocate that. To show my Father that His love for me isn't wasted. Isn't taken for granted. How do I do that? How can I ever love God as much as He loves me?


I have a daily prayer. It goes like this. "Help me to love You without fear." There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us (1 John 4). What I want my heart to know is that I don't have to be afraid of my Father. That if I love Him with abandon, He'll send me to the remotest parts of the earth to struggle in a far-off mission field. Or that He'll then cast on me a dread disease. I've heard so often from people that I shouldn't pray for faith because then God will make my life a living hell so that I'll need just that--faith. To love me without conditions cost my God His Son. So, it might cost me something to reciprocate. To say my life is His to do with whatever He wants. But if I've been loved since before the foundations of the world by a Father Who created me for His pleasure, what do I really have to fear? I am, for a very short time considering never-ending eternity, a soul here in a body. Readying myself to go home to a Father Who is patiently awaiting my arrival. Pleasing Him, loving Him as perfectly as I can right now, sharing the joys of relationship with Him with every person with whom I come into contact, is my joy. Raving about how wonderful my Father is. Learning more and more to trust His good will, even in the most trying of times. I wish I knew how to lavish God with the love He deserves. Someday in His courts, in the midst of all of His people, I will pay my vows. Bow in His presence, dance before His throne and shout forever how I love Him. Today, may God perfect in me a love that makes Him smile.

PSALM 116 - Katniss and the Blue Pill

For You have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed, even when I spoke, "I am greatly afflicted." I said in my alarm, "All men are liars."  (Verses 8-11)


In what storm, in what affliction, with tears streaming down your face as you tried to walk forward in pain, have you said, "I still believe."? Before you were delivered from the grief and saved from your stumbling in perplexity at the horrible circumstances in which you found yourself? Perhaps a disease, the loss of a loved one, financial stress or facing the ramifications of your own waywardness. It is the test, isn't it? If when things fall apart, we can still attest to our faith in a good God Whose lovingkindness will get us through. When we can't answer the question, "What is God doing?" When all we have is our trust in the character and love of our Savior...and the hope in His Word that "joy comes in the morning." Maybe that's why Paul referred to this psalm when he wrote, in 2 Corinthians 4: But 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.




 I was reading Mockingjay before I went to bed last night. In the story, Plutarch, the leader of the revolt against the capitol, gives Katniss Everdeen a blue pill to take just in case the danger she finds herself in proves hopeless. The suicide pill will give her a painless death. Put her to sleep forever instead of the alternative--to be captured and tortured by the regime. When she swallows the pill, Plutarch promises Katniss her troubles will be gone. She hides it in her clothing. A panacea. A treasure to be taken out only in the most dire of emergencies. A comfort. Katniss has a way out if she needs one. If she doesn't overcome her enemies and is overtaken.




This may seem like a stretch to some, but I thought of her as I read the psalm today. As I thought about the many Christians all over the world right now in prison for their faith. Crushed. Afflicted. And friends I have who are in this moment battling illnesses that only God can heal. There are people I love who have lost spouses and children. I cried out today for a family whose little girl is dying from cancer and rendered helpless by the chemotherapy that is trying to kill it. What all these people have in common, though, is like Katniss's blue pill. A panacea for the pain. Not ingested for the purposes of escape. The treasure hidden in their earthly bodies is the Spirit of God. Come to assure them that in all of this, deep within and crying out on their behalf, is the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead. Moving and brooding as He did over the face of the waters when it all began for planet Earth, is God. Never leaving. Never forsaking. Crying out with us, hovering near, speaking peace to the storms that were meant to destroy us. The God of everything sharing intimately with us when all seems lost. Promising life eternal. Giving us the down payment on heaven by living in our earthly bodies. So that, even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we fear no evil (Psalm 23) because He is with us.


I remember the words of my dying friend as she lay in her hospital bed. "I am the Lord's." Great peace in the declaration. She believed, even when she said, "I'm dying." And because Jesus promised it, I know she is now indeed praising God in the land of the truly living. Eyes dried, feet steady, soul perfected. I've also seen the earthy victory that snags us from the snares of death and heals us to stay another day on Earth. My business sold, not ruined; my home not destroyed with the neighborhood in the biggest tornado ever to hit North Texas; grabbed by the hand of my Father out of life destroying sin; good come from evil; mourning turned to joy. This treasure--vast and priceless--resides permanently within me to power me through even the throes of death. No blue pill. To end the woes. But an immeasurable gift--the power of God--to enable me to say, "Even when I am afflicted, I still believe!"


I think we are going to need our treasure more and more in these confusing days of our lives here. Troubles. All around. Nationally and worldwide. Even the shaking of the earth last night here in Southern California was a reminder that our planet is uneasy and volatile. Jesus told His disciples on the night of His arrest that we'd all see trouble. Even He. Foretold their hypocrisy. That they'd all leave Him alone. "Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with Me. I have said these things to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." (John 16) Triumphant in heaven, conquering not only His own death, but ours as well, Jesus sent His very Spirit to make us more than conquerors here. Treasure the gift. It was given at great cost.

PSALM 116 - Pang: A Sudden Spasm of Pain

I love the Lord because He has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call on Him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me. The pangs of Sheol laid hold on me. I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord. "O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!" Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple. When I was brought low, He saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
(Verses 1-7)


But He gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.  James 4


Been singed lately by the coals of Sheol? I have. Satan wants us to feel like we're in hell with him if only for a little while. Embarking on my annual fasting in January was a relief to me. So many open-ended prayer requests. So much busyness between me and my God over the holidays with the baking, visiting, shopping and playing with grandsons--all so incredibly fun--left me hungry to be with Him in quiet and contemplation. I always start the twenty-one day modified fasting with a three day food fast. Monday was the first day. Tuesday afternoon the enemy showed up with a vengeance. Attacked my heart. Threw me into an emotional tizzy. Singed my righteous robes with his lies. He wanted me to experience a little hell on earth--pangs of anguish that permeate his domain. Fortunately, the rancid odor of  Sheol drove me more furiously to the throne of God. Unwilling to allow the enemy to lay me low. It took a couple of days for God to sort out the mess in me and for me, but He did. I hope I don't smell like smoke. But I read these verses on Saturday morning when the issues causing my distress were working themselves out with a lot more clarity.


I do love the Lord because He heard me in my distress and anguish of heart. I do love Him because He stands there between me and the enemy, His shadow covering me as He rebukes the slimy creature who would rule my heart if he could. I grab the edge of my Father's robe as the enemy slinks away. That was on Wednesday. My job after that was to keep him away from me. Stronger because of the intervention of my God, it is necessary that I resist the devil. What I always notice when the enemy catches me off-guard is that I think the attack is all my fault. I've made a mess. I've done something heinous, unforgivable. I am a worm. That keeps me from standing up and facing my enemy dressed in my full armor. It also makes life too much about...me. And, it's not what God has taught me. I'm supposed to know I'm at war. All the time. Every day. Fighting in my own personal Fallujah. Sleep with one eye open. Sword of the spirit ever ready. It's way easier to detect the nature of the battle in someone else's life. Harder to detect the odor of the enemy in my own camp.


You keep him/her in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he/she trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock (Isaiah 26). And isn't that the answer? Where we look? When the enemy can get me all tied up in myself, one who is terribly flawed and in need of mercy, I can wallow in all that's wrong for eternity. My simple response should always be to put my mind back on Him. That is what saved me on Thursday evening. God spoke to me through my own mouth. Vanessa was asking me how God was working out the problem and I said, "God began this work I am about. It was all His doing. I am sure He will bring it all to completion and those of us who are involved to great peace." It was more prophetic than an affirmation of something I'd heard all day. Because I hadn't. It was new information. Made me look up. Understand that Satan's schemes were all smoke and mirrors because in that moment I hovered above the circumstances looking down on them as God does. Peace. Because if God isn't in a thing, it should die. And if He is in it, because of His great grace and mercy, He will bring it to pass despite our misgivings and mistakes. When all I want is what He wants, I can rest assured that when I do my part, God will do His. Even when I've accomplished mine imperfectly.


Today I've still got some work to do. Humbled and healing from the bruising of the pangs of Sheol, but fully armed with the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth and the shoes of the gospel of peace, I take up the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit and wield these weapons against the evil one in the power of Christ. He has been stripped of all his authority over me at the cross of Jesus. Satan has no power I don't grant him. He is a toothless roaring lion out to scare us to death. To make us look at ourselves and our circumstances instead of following the General Who leads us from glory to glory. And even when life is at its end for some of us, there is no victory for the lord of Sheol, for we live and will never die. As C.S. Lewis has said, "We are a soul. We have a body." May our souls be at rest, return to the peace that passes all understanding. For when we allow the enemy to steal our peace, he has a chink in our armor that can torment our souls. The Lord, Who always deals bountifully with us, will take our simple trust in Him and pour hot coals upon the one who would singe our lives with the smell of hell. Then our God will cause us to triumph in Christ Jesus!

PSALM 115 - Her Casket Wasn't the End of Things

May the Lord give you increase, you and your children! May you be blessed by the Lord Who made heaven and earth! The heavens are the Lord's heavens, but the earth He has given to the children of man. The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence. But we will bless the Lord, from this time forth and forever more. Praise the Lord! (Verses 14-18)


Mother lay on an embalming table dressed in the pink shantung suit she'd picked out months earlier to wear in her casket. I'd helped her, one balmy late spring day in 1985. Pink was her signature color, pink lipstick to match always slathered across her beautiful arched lips. "Would you do my hair?" she asked that day. "Like you did Irene's?"


At thirteen years old, I'd gone to the mortuary at the request of my Uncle Buster to fix my aunt's hair as I'd done every week for her long battle with cancer. He wanted her to look as she had during those difficult days. My doing her hair had been such a blessing, he'd said. She would be so pleased. Mother was hesitant to allow this. I was so young, and all. But I was undaunted by the idea. As it turned out, Mother and another aunt went with me as we coiffed Irene's hair and manicured her body's nails in preparation for her viewing later in the day. It really didn't seem that odd to me. My aunt was so desperately sick. She'd seemed almost gone so much of the past few months. I was glad to see Uncle Buster so relieved. So glad to see his bride looking so lovely lying there.


Mother, however, was a different thing. I wasn't sure I could do it. "I'll try, Mother."


What made it possible, though, was our conversations about where she'd be when I was touching the mommy that was gone from the tent she'd been occupying for her seventy-one years. My little sister came with me, not free of some trepidation, but bravely. We both knew our tasks as soon as we saw Mother's face. Made up like a kewpie doll, blue eye shadow and red lipstick. I curled our mother's hair while Chris wiped her face and started over. Mother's beautiful skin finally shone through, a touch of pink on her cheeks and pink on her mouth. We noticed, though, as we walked away, that Mother's eyes had been slightly opened in the process of reconstructing her. She looked as if she were playing possum--peeking out to see what was going on. They stayed that way throughout her visitation and funeral. Mother seeing just who cared and who didn't, it seemed to me.


"You are holy...holy...holy," Mother would say to the Lord at the end of each of her earthly prayers that season of her dying. A worship from a child of God's soon to look upon His beaming face as He welcomed her home. Her physical body now was no longer able to speak it. Dead now to the ability to praise Him on this earth. Radiant and transformed, her new self danced and cried it to the Lord upon His throne. But she used up all her earthly words the day she died. Time up for speaking blessing. Time also up to pour into her children the rich cache of spiritual lessons Earth taught her. But I could caress the body she'd occupied and straighten the curious mask only because I knew she was praising the Lord from that time forth.


Thus the blessing in this psalm, I think. Bless our time here on Earth, Father! Increase the richness of our lives. May the cream of our relationship with the Father spill onto our kids so they know at the time when we are silenced here that we are shouting there! That forever our blessing God on Earth continues into eternity. And the spiritual inheritance of our children is an increased faith, powerful prayer lives, a deeper knowledge of the Father and peace. Man rules the earth on which we stand, and we are the trumpets that declare to him or her that the Lord made heaven and earth, while we live and breathe. Our time here is brief. Let us declare Him while we can!

PSALM 115 - I'll Take That!

O Israel, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield. O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield. The Lord has remembered us. He will bless us. He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the Lord, both the small and the great.   (Verses 9-13)


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


When Heather, our first child, was moving around my womb promising to arrive soon, I had a pervasive worry. What if I dropped her? What if this newborn, who trusts me for her care, falls on her head because my arms weren't all they promised to be? While she was cooing in the hospital room and I was being sutured from the C-section that made her presence real, all I could think of was how precious the sight of her was. My first indication of my human frailty didn't crash upon me until a week after I took my sweet baby home. I noticed her fingernails were too long. Because her hands were always messing with her face, I knew it was time. My first tool related endeavor to care for an infant. The first couple of fingernails flew off with ease. Calmed me into trying for the others. Somewhere in the ten digit process, though, the clippers nipped Heather's brand new skin. A first drop of blood. The wounding committed by her very own mother. I cried and cried. My perfect child now scarred. I knew it. I wasn't going to be a great mom. To be fair, I never dropped her or her two siblings. But the point was, could they trust me to get them to adulthood without my major mistakes scarring them for life? I hope they have. Most of my mistakes had nothing to do with wounding them physically, but I know I haven't been nearly perfect with other decisions in my life. May God have mercy there.


Like newborns, though, we trust our God. Rely on, put our faith in, Him. All day long, from the moment we awaken, we put faith in other stuff. The lights to come on, the car to run, the chairs we sit in to hold us up. We rely on our computers to store what we input, our grocery stores to have food, our paycheck to come on time. We go about life relying on some really pretty flimsy circumstances and products. Faith isn't as esoteric as it seems. And life more fragile than we admit.


So should we be afraid in the arms of God? There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us. 1 John 4.  It's been one of three requests I pray for daily: Please help me to love You without fear. And not just fear of punishment, but fear that He might not be doing what is best for me. Truly understanding that He's not going to prick even my little finger out of malice or neglect, but that as my Father, God loved me before I even knew Him. Created me in love for good works which He prepared for me ahead of time. He's on my side, working things out in me. Goading me to know Him better. Not waiting to smash my butt when I get the least bit out of line. Disciplining me when I stretch my own will too far and head toward my own destruction. Standing between me and the foolish prayers I've prayed when I become angry with Him for not answering them. Stomping my feet and throwing a wall-eyed fit because I don't get my way. God, the Father, wouldn't love me if He let me get away with that.


There have been times in my life when I know God has stood between me and what I thought I wanted. Blocked my path and made me furious. He was always waiting for the right circumstance at the right time. I just wanted what I wanted. The one time I persevered in my own pursuit regardless of my Father's many warnings, I found myself in a pit so deep I couldn't do anything but quietly whine His name. A shield and rescuer He is! If we trust Him to have our best interest at heart. And it doesn't matter if you're three or ninety, our Father is faithful to take us where we are and bless us.


 The Berachot used by the Jewish faith for blessings contains hundreds of them. Talmud Berachot 35A says that if we enjoy something without saying a blessing over it, it's like we stole it. The tradition Jesus knew was that the Jews were to bless the Lord for all the details of life. Food, water, health, family...barukh, the Hebrew word for blessing, is close to the word Hebrew word for knee (berekh). When Jesus broke the bread and blessed it, He was following the custom of being thankful and acknowledging this good thing came from God.  Humbling ourselves and being blessed are linked not only in our acknowledgement of God's hand in our lives, but also of our lives in His hands. When the God of the universe and all that is deigns to speak blessing over us, He stoops down. To make us great. To pour over us the love and power of heaven...because He chose to love us first. To create an eternal pathway to His home so we could know and love our Father for an eternity. That is how God blesses us, here and now, there and then. Why would anyone want to miss out on that just to do whatever they feel like doing on Earth?


And better yet, the blessings of God are attainable. When we begin to understand that we don't have to fear God as in "be afraid of Him," but we can revere His greatness, acknowledge His rightful place of power and majesty and step close to His mouth to hear His blessings over us, we are freed to enjoy life to the fullest. Even a child can understand God loves her. Can nestle close when she's afraid. We don't gain them by being a goodie-two-shoes. We gain them by loving God. He's crazy about us. Like I am about my kids. I love them enough to rein them in and to also give them some space to learn. To shield them and help them when necessary. How much more our great God Who has written His laws upon our hearts, great and small, through the death and resurrection of His Son and the indwelling Holy Spirit! He wills to bless us! I'll take that!

PSALM 115 - All Hail Selfies

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them.  (Verses 4-8)


I have been to several nail salons in my California city where Buddhist women have placed the little fat-bellied idol of their god in a prominent place and lovingly set oranges and incense before his squatting golden frame. Buddha, who didn't want to be a god to anyone, now is an icon for millions of priests and acolytes. Lest we Christians judge, I've seen crucifixes and sculptures of Biblical heroes carved in churches and in homes all over the world. Perhaps these have become idols for some. Those who need a physical representation--a visual prompt--in order to feel their relationship to God is more substantial. I think that's the reason God said early on: "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water underneath the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord am a jealous God." Not jealous of a stupid idol. Jealous over our hearts. God isn't daunted by a thing that can't talk, walk, eat, sleep, smell, hear or feel. But He knows how He made us. To worship. And He wants it made clear that there is no power in a thing we've built. A golden cow we formed in our own rebellion.


Most of us probably don't fall down in front of a household idol and pray. But if we think we don't have idols, we are mistaken. Our idols grin at us from celluloid, prance for us on our computer screens, beckon us from the bottom of a bottle, scream for our attention when our bodies run out of the drugs, the power, the money or the mindset that has us hooked. Asherah was the goddess wife of Molech, the Baal of the Canaanites. It was at the feet of the wooden statues of Asherah that the pagans sacrificed their children. Trading their own flesh for their flimsy salvation. Are we different? Our gods are less visible, but we have shaped them in our hearts. They loom large in our spirits. And we bow down to the god of self gratification. A god that need not be formed with our hands into a wooden idol for we carry it everywhere we go. It has overtaken us. We have become it. More shattering still than Asherah. We sacrifice our lives to our own godlike selves.


Why would God be jealous of this? Why does any good parent grieve at the self-destructive behavior of her child? Rehabs are filled with children who have been overtaken by an idol. Marriages are broken because the god of self rose up and ate the joy once present in a home. Devoured the covenant, then roared with laughter as circumstances plunged to a new depth. God is jealous because He knows the one behind the idols. All of them. Wooden, metal, gold and straw. The same old lies trap us in the same old ways. "You shall not surely die. For when you eat of the fruit of this tree your eyes will be opened and you will be like God." You will have control. And the same old lie produces the same old results. We fall down. First in front of the selfies we've become. Then all the way down into hopelessness and defeat. Addicted. Overcome. Sorry and destructive. For "the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy (John 10)." But God, in Jesus, came to bring us life...and that abundantly. So how loving would our God be if He weren't jealous of our following after something or someone else?


I watched a woman struggle on her bloody knees for blocks and blocks when Bill and I honeymooned in Mexico City. She was on her way to the steps of the Basilica of Our Lady Guadalupe, doing penance. Her mission was to get to the shrine of the Lady and plead for someone or for herself. I stood and cried because I knew not only was this unnecessary, but futile. There are no heavenly saints answering our prayers. Mary herself is enjoying heaven with the Son who saved her. The bloody sides and oozing stripes of Jesus had already paid the woman's penance. The veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom so she could run boldly into His presence. Petition His grace, face to face, heart to heart. Why would our God not be jealous over her, knowing she was crawling toward an idol when He was standing near enough to whisper in her ear?


And we become eventually like what we worship. Eyes that can no longer see the destruction of the path. My father had to be counseled that his pedophilia was wrong. It had been a part of his life for so long, he couldn't think about it correctly. The drug becomes us. Life centers around having to have a fix. Or a drink. Our politics of self drive us to believe we have a right to sacrifice our children to the goddesses we are. Convinced that it can't be wrong when it feels so right, we destroy our homes for what drives us. Money is king. All we live for is to acquire it. Control is power. So we become controlled by our own need for it. And we are numbed to all else, just like the ridiculous wooden idols have no senses. We become like what or who we worship. And God wants His children to look like Him. Know Him. Have life to the fullest.


It means recognizing we have idols, though. Allowing God to point out the lie we've believed so long we don't even remember when we first heard it. Looking around the house not for the thing that peers at us with its four eyes and six legs--the obvious crazy image we know isn't really god. But allowing God to clean up the interior temple where our gods sit comfortable and happy. Controlling us from the thrones of our own hearts. Let Jesus cast out in anger what has taken over the place where God should dwell. Not because He has to be numero uno or else. But because the center of our beings were designed at their core for only One God. And He is light, love, peace and hope. Come to indwell by the power of the Holy Spirit. And He must cast out our idols in order to be King.

PSALM 115 - Shaking Like Ants On An Orange

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your name be the glory, for the sake of Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness. Why should the nations say, "Where is their God?" Our God is in the heavens. He does what He pleases.   (Verses 1-3)

"For My name's sake I defer My anger, for the sake of My praise I restrain it from you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver. I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For My own sake, for My own sake I do it, for how should My name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another."  God.  Isaiah 48

I know. I know. There are many who would read these verses and think what a haughty God we have. All He wants is glory for Himself. Richard Dawkins, the noted atheist, describes our God this way: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." Whew! That's quite a vendetta on a "fictional" God. Seems to me Dawkins is pretty mad at the God of a fairy tale. But is that really the God of the Bible?

Of course, as the psalm today spells out quite clearly, God can do whatever He wants, if He's the God of all. Were God to present Himself to be exactly as Dawkins's paints Him, He'd have every right to all the actions of which the atheist accuses Him. The irony is, according to the psalmist, God allows Dawkins to rail against Him. Doesn't strike him down mid-sentence...or mid-book. Were God the master of malevolence Dawkins claims Him to be, there would be no Dawkins to complain. The reason we are to give God glory is that He doesn't destroy us!

So what is God doing to please Himself? According to His steadfast love and faithfulness? The God of heaven and earth has to stomach our genocides, infanticides, murders, lies, adulteries, addictions, wars, and injustices. Maybe our question should be, "Why has He put up with our degenerate hearts for so long?" We should be looking up in wonder at God's grace toward a world spinning totally out of control. Dawkins looks at the God of the Old Testament with one eye shut. The one that should be looking at us. It would be just for God to take the sphere on which we dwell into His hands and shake us off it like so many ants on an orange. Throw us all into oblivion and start over with humans who understand Him to be full of lovingkindness and compassion. It is those Godly traits that keep our feet glued to the gravity of our planet. In fact, we might ask the opposite question, "How long will evil reign before God just has enough of it?"

God loves Richard Dawkins. The man can run away in protest, but he's allowed to spew against God because God's anger hasn't killed him. God defers His anger in the hope that His character will not be profaned. God's patience to bring us to repentance is awe inspiring. Sometimes that involves an affliction that presents us with our need for God. All the foxholes where we've prayed because it's our only alternative become the yellow brick roads that lead us to our God. Affliction for the sake of affliction isn't God's motive. If we're stuck, it's so He can be lauded for rescuing us. God loves us! But He's also just. Completely holy. The definition of love and the Only Righteous Judge. Deserving of our flat out worship regardless of whether or not we like Him. God restrains Himself when it comes to our judgment in order to prove He is loving and faithful. So that we can look at Him and acknowledge that, yes, He justifies what He says about Himself. We are not destroyed in His anger. Not yet.

Here is God's heart: Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone," declares the Lord God. "So turn and live."  Ezekiel 18

Compared to His great grace, we are puny and insignificant in our petty forgivenesses or in our ridiculous hubris. We will never be able to forgive others their wrongs against us to the degree that God has erased and forgotten ours against Him. We can't take pride and congratulate ourselves that we do so much less than God has done for us through Christ Jesus, His Son. Not to us, but to Him, be the glory. And while many of us shake our bony index fingers in God's radiant face and accuse Him of atrocities He is too holy to endure, He listens to our silly hearts, waiting. While we have breath, we still have a chance to choose. With His breath, God could blow us into oblivion. But His name restrains Him: Wonderful Counselor, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace, Mighty God. Our God is in the heavens and He does what pleases Him: Love us.

PSALM 114 - "Can't" Isn't A Word In His Dictionary!

What ails you, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back? O mountains, that you skip like rams? O hills, like lambs? Tremble, O Earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, Who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.
(Verses 5-8)

"Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything to hard for Me?"  God, Jeremiah 32:27

How big is God? I watched a documentary with my family over the holidays, "The Star of Bethlehem." Mike Cunningham has spent years researching the star the Bible says stopped over Bethlehem the night Christ was born. Using mathematical calculations with the help of the internet, which can now show us the actual position of the stars centuries ago, Mr. Cunningham was able to pinpoint the day the star appeared and why it was followed by astronomers. Why it stopped. Where the star was in the constellations. And why not everyone was as aware of it as were the magi who came seeking a king. The facts of the heavens and their use by God to foretell His will is mind blowing.

Not only was Mr. Cunningham able to solve the mystery of the star of Bethlehem, but he also was able to pinpoint the day of the crucifixion based on the fact that there was a total eclipse of the sun and the moon was blood red. April 3, 33 A.D.  If you have an hour, download it and watch. (You tube: The Star of Bethelem)  I was in such wonder that it was difficult for me to sleep that night. We sometimes have God way up there or out there, uninterested in our time zones and struggles. But if Cunningham and the Bible are correct, the stars even tell His story.

Is it possible that the God of all communicates with us through the glory of His creation? If so, isn't it reasonable to believe that He can bring water from rocks and something from nothing? In fact, what could a God so big not do?  Perhaps it is just those of us who are flesh who have trouble understanding there is nothing too hard for Him. The earth and stars, the tides and weather patterns, the seeds and the sprigs, and the oceans and mountains do what God tells them to. Earth knows that were its axis off by only a fraction, all things balanced would shift and change. Monarch butterflies know to go to Mexico. Gray whales know to retreat to Baja. But God is also the God of all flesh. Us. And the question He has for our human souls demands an answer. "Is there anything too hard for Me?"

I know this has been a really tough year for many people. Loss. I think that sums up death, financial ruin, abandonment, failing health. We grapple with that when we try to answer God's question. If nothing is too hard for Him, then why did she die, why are we in such need, why are we alone? I know this much. When God came as He promised to live in a fleshy body, He experienced all of these things with us. So He knows. Even that is too hard for false gods. An impossibility for our idols. Only the God of the Universe came to hold us in His arms, relieve us of our diseases, find taxes in the mouths of fishes or feed us when we were hungry. But all of that was to allow us to understand the greater truth: God came to save us forever. Our free ticket out of the shadow of this reality and into the glory of the real. Here we watch life as if it were a reality show. Wondering at the good and the bad. And no matter how large the screen on which we view it, the whole story isn't revealed. Only a picture limited by the inches of our LG. We are scripted to move about, engage and disrupt, love and hate, but without a consistent view that only the Writer has. She knows how it all plays out in the end. What it's all for. Those of us who know God will someday take a look from the other side of His epic story. See the picture from beginning to end, on the widescreen provided by the Alpha and Omega. And I know I'll be in awe of how it all fit together. The whys answered. If I even care then. For all wrongs will be made right. Even that is not too hard for Him.

This dance we do with our Beloved Savior. This moving in and out of with the rhythm of His songs. This trust we have in the warmth of His hand guiding our every move must assure us that if things are not as we hoped, it's not because He can't. There is no can't with Him. Perhaps with our Savior, it's not always about the earthly outcome. His certainly wasn't pretty. But Jesus finally did the thing "too hard." He strangled death, vanquished the enemy of our souls and opened the doors of heaven in order to give us access to the God of All as our Father, here and there. Jesus rose up from the dead to enter heaven as the Lamb of God Who even now has the destiny of this puny world in His control. Just like the stars tell the story of His will, displayed and revealed to men, so God holds our lives close and we must trust that getting us safely to Him, a thing impossible for us to do alone, will be accomplished by the wondrous God of all flesh.

PSALM 114 - It Can All Change In A Millisecond!

When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah became His sanctuary, Israel His dominion. The sea looked and fled. Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs.  (Verses 1-4)

It was a brand new day for Israel when Pharaoh finally declared, "Go!" Millions of Jewish people packed up their belongings in carts and on pack animals, corralled their flocks, accepted the offerings of jewelry and other goods from the Egyptians who bade them leave so the plagues would cease. One day they were slaves, the next their feet stepped into freedom. What would they do with this opportunity to start anew in a promised land set aside for them by the God Who chose to journey with them?

I can't imagine the chaos of the change. Infants and elderly, healthy and weak, strong-willed and obsequious--such a crowd of contradictions. Led by one man and his brother. God in their midst. A pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day, He promised to get them through. And He did. With the Egyptian army at their heels, hope dimming, fear mounting, God Himself opened up the waters of the Red Sea so His dwelling place could cross it on dry land. How does one forget that miracle? The Egyptian army was drowned as the sea closed upon them, washing away chariots, horses, riders. It was God's plan His people were following. So why would they be surprised that He could tell the waters to stand up, then tell them to close? What He ordains, He sustains.

There was manna and water. For sure, there was a desert to cross. One step at a time. The journey should've taken only weeks. God didn't want a forty year wilderness experience. He would've taken them straight to the Promised Land but for one thing: disobedience. And God wasn't asking them to do difficult religious things. The children of Israel found waiting for Moses to come down from Mt. Sinai the most troubling of their experiences. To the degree that they made a calf out of their gold and worshipped it instead of God. Moses, of course, was never coming back down from his heights, and they wanted to party. For such a little thing, they lost their footing and their children had to wait out their deaths in order to receive all the promises they could've enjoyed.

The impressive thing about God in all of this to me, as I look into a new year and ponder 2014, is His commitment to us to move heaven and earth, mountains and water, leaders and kings, to accomplish His plan. Just like my salvation, one day I was a slave to sin, and the next I was set free and delivered from the enemy of my soul. One day I had no hope, the next I was a child of God the King. Many things in my life right now are open-ended with no answer in sight. I have no prescience concerning the outcomes. My earthly mind can't see how things will ever be any different. But God knows the exact month, day, hour and minute when He'll step in and part the seas and shake the mountains that stand in the way of what He has planned for me.

I was thinking in the night about the first big move our family made as a result of a new job Bill took. I was left in Texas to sell our home, the one we'd built thinking we'd be in it for the next twenty years or so, and Bill went on to Atlanta, Georgia, to start his job. The task for me took four months with many ups and downs. When we finally sold our home, it was a complicated deal. The person buying our home was selling his to a family friend. All the transactions had to work for our home to close escrow. The person buying our home was, to say the least, difficult. But we plodded through to what we thought was the end. We were to close the day the moving company sent a packer over early in the morning to help me get our life into boxes while corralling two small children. Mid-way through the morning, our house a destroyed mess of emptied cabinets and strewn linens and clothing, open suitcases and designated trash, the buyer's wife came knocking at my door. In her arms was a bedspread. We'd agreed she could have the red, white and blue one I had for the master. She brought her old one as a trade-off I'd not asked for. "We're not buying your house," she said. "But I wanted you to have this bedspread anyway."

"What?" Stunned beyond responding any other way.

"My husband doesn't think the deal we got on our house was good enough, so he backed out of that sale, which means we have to back out of this one." She was embarrassed. Visibly so, but she'd been sent on a mission.

"You can't do this." I grabbed her hand. "Pray with me right now that your husband will change his mind." Jesus, you know our situation. "In Jesus's name, Father we agree together that this man will change his mind and buy our house today." That was it. All I could come up with. And the woman walked away wagging the bedspread behind her.

But my heart wasn't finished. I knew God wanted our family together. I knew God could do anything. So, I grabbed the hand of the obviously confused packer. I still don't know whether she was a believer or not. At the moment it didn't matter. "I need you to agree with me in prayer." And I bowed my head and began before she could object. "Dear Jesus, make a way today. Change hearts and minds. Bill is on his way to come and get us, the packer is here, the van due tomorrow. And I don't see any way we can move if You don't intervene. Please help us!"

I dropped her hand, took a deep breath and looked into her astonished face. "Thank you," I said.

"Uh..." she began, "do you want me to keep on packing?"

"Yes." It was a wavering affirmative, but I trusted God would somehow answer the prayer.

Bill arrived from the airport. I told him of our dilemma. We prayed together in the late afternoon with our house packed up around us. There was a knock on the door around four. It was our realtor with a check in her hands. The home closed. On time. She'd given the buyer back some of her commission because she loved us. That's what she said. Because she loved us. We could begin a new season of our lives because our God loved us through our realtor. Parted a sea. Shook a mountain. Set us free.

When things seem hopeless, stuck in idle or even sliding backward, we know that in a moment, God's millisecond, it can all change. Mary was oblivious to her calling until the exact moment Gabriel made her aware that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit. Jesus was born into a world primarily incognizant of the import. One minute the God of heaven, the next the Son of Man. We can live in hope. Because we have an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God Who cares about and intervenes in the most intimate and exhausting details of our lives in order to complete in us that which He has created us to do and be. So, for 2014, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of  God in Christ Jesus! (Philippians 3).  I expect my Father to make a way where there is no way. My only job? Obey. Happy, blessed, and purposeful New Year!