Psalm 27 - Has It Been Too Long?

I believe I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  Wait for the Lord.  Be strong, and let your heart take courage.  Wait for the Lord! (vs. 13-14)

The people of Samaria were starving.  Not only had they resorted to eating dove poop and donkey's head, they had to pay for the privilege.  Aram's King Ben-Hadad conquered them before he realized he had attained a problem.  While he was surveying the city in his ride along the top of its wall, a woman cried out to him for help. 

"If the Lord doesn't help you, how can I?"  he yelled back to her.  "I cannot fill the threshing floor with food or the winepress with grapes!"   Then, wouldn't you know, he asked:  "What is your problem, anyway?"

Turns out she had boiled her son the day before to feed herself and her starving neighbor.  They were supposed to eat the neighbor's son on this day, but the mother had hidden him. 

Sick to his stomach with grief at their having resorted to such savagery, the king tore his clothes and walked along the wall in sack cloth to display his sorrow.  Then he proclaimed that he would kill Elisha, the prophet, for this heinous famine.  To accomplish this, the king sent a messenger to Elisha's house. 

Prescient, Elisha locked him out.  When the messenger arrived, he yelled through the bolted door:  "This trouble has come from the Lord," says the king.  "Why should we wait for the Lord any longer?"

"You want to know what the Lord says?"  cried Elisha to the messenger.  "This is what He says: 'About this time tomorrow seven quarts of fine flour will be sold for two-fifths of an ounce of silver, and thirteen quarts of barley will be sold for two-fifths of an ounce of silver.  This will happen at the gates of Samaria.' "

"Ha!"  the officer cried.  "Even if the Lord opened up windows in the sky, that would not happen!"

Ooops!  He should not have said that.  He was summarily excused from the experience.

Now it did look as though there was no hope.  God had not done anything yet.  People were resorting to their own cruel, unthinkable fixes for the problems associated with the drought.  Waiting did not seem to do any good.  So, they decided to forget Him and take matters into their own hands.

Four leprous beggars who lived in the desert outside the city walls were God's answer to the hunger problems of the Samaritans.  Ha!!!  Love my God!  Who would expect the absolutely unexpected to happen.  Four men who knew they were going to die anyway find themselves ready to surrender to the enemy camped just a little way from the Samaritan city.  But when they arrive at camp, it is deserted.  The army foiled by a heavenly ruse.  There is plenty to eat.  Plenty to drink.  Silver in abundance.  New clothes to wear.  A treasure trove just waiting to be pilfered for the people of God. 

Back to the city wall they go, after having hidden some loot for themselves and filling their own bellies with rations left behind.  In the stampede of citizens rushing to the bounty of the enemy camp, the officer from the day before...remember, the one who said God couldn't do what Elisha pronounced?...was crushed to death.  He did not see the goodness of God in the land of the barely living.  But everyone else did.  Because they waited.  Forced to, you say.  Yes.  But when the king was ranting and the woman eating her own flesh, God was twenty-four hours away from blessing them.  Twenty-four hours.  Using the filth of humanity, as far as the citizens were concerned.  An  unexpected way.  Out of paradigm.  More miraculous, actually, than opening up heaven.  He fixed it in the "land of the living."  In the context of an ordinary day.  The flow of life bringing the answer to a problem we deemed unfixable....even with heavenly, extra-terrestrial intervention.

"Wait, I say, on the Lord!"  Could He ask anything harder?  We are hungry.  We are ill.  We are abandoned.  We are broke.  We are fearful.  We are lost.  And He says, "Wait."  What is our alternative, really?  Eating our children?  That is not God's plan.  The man with faith heard from His God.  The man who stayed close to Him knew His God would answer.  Hold on....wait.  Let your heart take courage.  Be strong.  Your God knows your needs before you ask and He is about coming to your aid. Be careful about what happens to your heart when you ask:  "Why should I wait on the Lord any longer?"  Before you kill the prophet or devour your own destiny, go again to God for the strength to wait and the wisdom to discern what He is doing in your life.

"Wait, I say, on the Lord!"

Psalm 27 - The Blessing Count

Lord, hear me when I call.  Have mercy on me and answer me.  My heart said, "Go worship Him."  So I come to worship You, Lord.  Do not turn away from me.  Do not turn your servant away in anger.  You have helped me.  Do not push me away or leave me alone, God, my Savior.  If my father and mother leave me, the Lord will take me in.  (vs. 8-10)

Lost both parents yet?  My husband and I have.  And even though we are in our sixties now, we still feel a bit like orphans.  Funny.  It is simply the thought that you are now the parents people look to.  Many have experienced this at a much younger age than we have, but all to whom I have spoken have had the same reaction:  We are now orphaned.  Thank God He is our Father.  He took us in a long time ago, and we are secure in our adoption into His family.  He took us in.  We are His very own. 

I have to admit that I woke up a little lost this morning.  Just feeling like everything I am doing right now goes round in circles.  Wondering if the Lord is blessing it.  Or, more to the point, why it seems He is not.  Do I need to clean my spiritual house?  Are the things I am doing coming from my own self instead of having begun in Him?  Spinning wheels on the pavement.  I asked my Father to show me what He will bless so I can be about that.  Not a time-waster.  Never have been.  But that makes me a terrible waiter....patience not my strong suit. 

At Bible study this morning in the book of James, I read:  The one who peers into the perfect law of liberty and fixes her attention there, and does not become a forgetful listener but who lives it out - she will be blessed in whatever she does.  This verse cross-referenced this passage in Isaiah 66:  "These are the people I am pleased with:  those who are not proud or stubborn and those who revere My Word.

This afternoon I am rethinking my understanding of what a blessing is.  This morning I was simply looking at what I am gaining, particularly financially, from my endeavors.  Work stuff.  This afternoon  I am throwing that out of the window.  Basically because it doesn't seem to matter to God.  All He wants is for me to study the word and do it!  Blessings are His concern.  I am to do what is in front of me in terms of work for hire.  Again He calls out to my heart and mind to be His so that I do with my strength all He calls me to do.  Period.  I am not to weigh blessings on my scale.  He metes it out.  He measures it.  Not I.  His glory is delivered through His Word - the book and the Man.  The Logos of God. 

James reminded me today that it is Jesus Who owns me.  I can tell you with all my heart that it is that very fact that makes me crazy just thinking that I might be doing the wrong things with my time.  When I was young it was these things that I used to talk over with my mother.  She knew me so well.  She has been gone for a long time, but I still need that kind of guidance from a wiser person than I.  So my heart says:  "Go, worship Him!!"  My Father waits to hear my voice in praise for my adoption.  I yearn to let Him know how secure I feel in His love.  How thankful I am that He blesses this daughter of His in ways she could never have fathomed.  Oh, I love my Father Who will never leave me orphaned.

Psalm 27 - I'm a Little Chick

For in the day of trouble, He will conceal me in His tabernacle.  In the secret place of His tent He will hide me.  He will lift me up on a rock.  (vs 5)

Yahweh, You are my God!  I will exalt You.  I will praise Your name, for You have accomplished wonders, plans formed long ago, with perfect faithfulness.....For You have been a stronghold for the poor, a stronghold for the needy person in distress, a refuge from the rain, a shade from the heat.  When the breath of the violent is like rain against a wall, like heat in dry land, You subdue the uproar of barbarians.  As the shade of a cloud cools the heat of day, so He silences the song of the violent.  Isaiah 25

Ever just want to hide from your life?  Just want relief from the stresses that keep you up at night?  I have felt that.  I have wanted to be a child again and sit in my mother's lap, hide my face in her chest and know that I am safe.  To know that my struggles are not my own to fix, but someone else's.  To hear again, "It's all right, precious."

My Father wants to be just that to me.  A refuge in the storm.  A stronghold when I am needy and in distress.  The picture inherent in the words for conceal and hide is that of a mother bird gathering her chicks beneath her wings so that they cannot be detected.  I think that is interesting when I think about God making me invisible to my troubles.  If the arrows come, He stands up and takes them for me because I am hidden in Him.  My life is hidden with Christ in God.  If God is for me, who can be against me?  If He spared not His only Son won't He then freely give me all things? 

So here is the picture of my God, my Stronghold.  I am a baby chick pecking about the barnyard.  Oblivious to the dangers that lurk there.  A bird dog comes my way and I panic.  Don't know what to do.  I look around for safety, maybe under a feeding trough...but the dog can reach me there.  Then I hear the loud clucking of my mama and turn.  She is there with her wings spread, beckoning me to take cover in her.  I run...fast as my fat little chick legs can carry me.  Dog after me.  My heart pounding.  I slide under just in time.  Mama's wings fold up tight.  I am safe.  That dog cannot even see me.  It is now Mama's fight.

My Father is shade when I am hot, rain when I am dry, and a stronghold when I am pursued.  But I must run to His tent.  That is where He dwells.  My heart must go home when it needs to be fortified.  There I can find peace and quiet.  There I can hear His voice.  It is from His throne that He commands the forces that beat against my life to be quiet.  He has my life in a secret place where the enemy can never fully destroy me.  Our God has faithfully committed Himself to us since before He formed us.  He is trustworthy to protect us. 

This little chicken loves being under the wings of the mama bird, close to her heart, feeling her warmth, hidden from all the world has to fling at her.  Feathered wings holding her tight against the storm. 

He will cover You with His feathers.  You will take refuge under His wings.  Psalm 91

Psalm 27 - You Are So Beautiful To Me....

I ask only one thing from the Lord.  This is what I want:  Let me live in the Lord's house all my life.  Let me see the Lord's beauty and look with my own eyes at His Temple. (vs.4)

I did not see a temple in the city because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the city's temple.  The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, because the glory of God is its light and Lamb is the city's lamp....Only those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life will enter the city.....The throne of God and the Lamb will be there, and God's servants will worship Him.  THEY WILL SEE HIS FACE AND HIS NAME WILL BE WRITTEN ON THEIR FOREHEADS.  Revelation 21,22

Today is a day I have looked forward to since I began this journey into the Psalms.  This is my favorite verse in all the songs.  Yet, I am now somewhat speechless.  How can I say more than David already has? 

Here goes.  When I think about seeing Christ, the Lamb, and my heavenly Father face to face, I always tear up.  I already have people I have loved so dearly on this earth who are looking even now at the face of God.  Who worship with the multitudes before a throne shot through with a rainbow of colors, drenched in emerald light, noisy with thunderings and loud praises.  Those who now swim in the River of Life and eat from the harvestings of the Tree in the garden there.  In worship, I join my voices with theirs, realizing that here is merely a foretaste of there. 

I have become a lowly earthly dwelling  place for the Spirit of the Lord.  A tabernacle in which He lives, imperfectly, I know.  But I am always trying to make more room for Him - a brighter dwelling.  I want Him to give this sanctuary light.  Want Him to be comfortable in this particular tent.  "For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect and deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy." (Deuteronomy 23)  In His moving around in me, this camp He lives in, may He be comfortable.  I give Him permission to clean it up.

How, you ask, can you see the beauty of the Lord?  You who have not seen His face?

I am glad you asked that.  I would like to answer with one-word responses.  Mercy.  Love.  Grace.  Peace.  Protection.  Power.  Watch-care.  Favor.  Compassion.  Wisdom.  Prescience.  Justice.  Tenderness.  Righteousness.  Understanding.  Patience.  Long-suffering.  Gentleness.  Provision.   Sovereignty.  These I see every day.  The lovely attributes of my God.  Would that I become one who sees them in everything all the time.  You see, it the heart of God that is so breathtakingly beautiful - the heart He shares with me.  How could He? Why would He? But He has!  Beauty is too small a word for that, don't you think?  He is transplendent! 

I want to live with Him...here and there!  The one thing I ask.  To know Him now.  To see Him then. 

Watched the TV show Mobbed while I worked out yesterday.  A young man had an online relationship for five years with a young woman he had come to love.  They had never physically met.  Don't know why.  But  he got on the show in order to meet her for the first time with a bang!  A flash mob, his band singing, an intricate ruse to get her to Hollywood Boulevard and yellow umbrellas symbolizing daffodils.  The young man overwhelmed her with his desire to court her further.  Her first words when she saw him:  "You do exist! You are real!"  She had only heard him, never seen him.  She knew him.  Said he was her best friend.  But she had never looked on his face before that moment.  All he could say was:  "You are so beautiful."  But he already knew that.  Because he knew the heart of his best friend.

So how do I know He is beautiful.  I have heard His voice.  I have seen His heart.  I don't need to see His face to know that He is more lovely than can be imagined with my little mind.  And someday, with joy, I will look upon Him...actually...and I will shout:  "You do exist!!  You are real!  I knew it all along!"  And He....He will hold out His arms to me and say:  "And you are beautiful."

Psalm 27 - Fraidy Cats

The Lord is my light and the One Who saves me.  I fear no one.  The Lord protects my life.  I am afraid of no one.  Evil people may try to destroy my body.  My enemies and those who hate me, attack me, but they are overwhelmed and defeated.  If an army surrounds me, I will not be afraid.  If war breaks out I will trust the Lord.  (vs. 1-3)

Wow!  Look at the times fear is mentioned in these verses.  Fear.  Bigger than the army that encamps around us or the enemy who wants to kill us.  Fiercer than the attacks of those who hate us.  Fear makes us crouch.  Fear makes us run.  Fear makes us doubt.  Fear stymies our progress into victory.  Fear makes us lie down and play dead.

When Jesus is with the disciples in the storm as it rages around them, He is sleeping in the back of the boat as if nothing is happening.  Meanwhile the disciples are losing their minds!  Jettisoning their catch, perhaps, and tugging at the sails...they are in a maelstrom with a napping Savior.  Remember what He said after they awakened them?  "Why are you afraid?"   Why?  Really?  Why?  Seems like it should've been bleeding obvious.  They were an inch from capsizing!  So the problem was, they did not really know Who was in the boat. 

Jesus meets a man at the pool near the Sheep Gate.  The pool was said to have healing waters.  This poor man had been ailing for 38 years.  The question Jesus asked:  "Do you want to be well?"  Silly question?  Maybe not.  He has been comfortable in his complaining about not being like others for many years.  What if he is healed and his life is not any different?  Better to give excuses why he has not had the courage before to get into that water.  Jesus does heal him.  But, the man had to get up.

Again with the boat.  The disciples alone.  Struggling with the blowing wind and the darkness.  Jesus sees them between the hours of six and three a.m., so He starts walking across the water in a wind storm.  Forget the idea that this is glassy calm.  The disciples are not making any progress rowing in the waves.  When they see a figure coming toward them, they are freaked out!  "It's a ghost!!"  Bad enough they had to row in the waves, but now a ghost is gonna get them! 

"Get a grip!"  cries Jesus.  "Be men of courage!  Don't be afraid."

Peter wants to try it.  Swallows fear and walks out to the Lord, leaving the sissies in the boat.  Sure he sank for a minute and swallowed water, too.   but he took His Savior at his word and is probably the only other person you know of who has ever walked on the waves.

A couple has lost their daughter.  She is dead.  In her bed.  Hope gone.  Her daddy goes to Jesus.  Skeptics tell the father not to bother Jesus because his baby has already taken her last breath.   The first words Jesus says to the mourning father are:  "Don't be afraid.  Just believe.  And your daughter will be made well."

Perfect love has no fear in it.  Let me say that again.  Perfect love has no fear in it.  Pray for that.  Seek that.  I am.  Daily.  Because I am prone to fear.  All the "what if's" possible to conjure, my mind will play with until I have not the courage to move at all.  Stultifying fear is the enemy of faith!  Trust that His love for you will not take you anywhere that He cannot protect you.  War.  Famine.  Attack.  Abandonment.

If we fear, we run.  And God knows where some of us have found ourselves then.  Love trusts.  Beyond what it looks like to us.  And it has looked really bad before.  Believe me.  And I have feared before.  Ugh.  The results not so pretty.  Hear Your Savior say today:  "Do not be afraid.  Only believe.  I am in the boat."

Psalm 26 - Stuck in Mire

My foot stands on a level place.  In the congregations I will bless the Lord. (vs.12)

I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined to me and heard my cry.  He brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay.  He set my feet upon a rock making my steps firm.  And He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.  Psalm 40

Ever lose your footing?  I did last week.  Slipped down a step on my front porch when I was washing it down barefoot.  It wrenched my knee which still hurts enough that I am sitting here with heat on it while I type.  To lose my spiritual footing in the past has been even more painful.  No heating pad for that kind of aching. 

When I was thirty-seven, my father was arrested while sitting in a car in a park molesting a thirteen-year-old boy from his church.  My mother was dying of cancer at the time.  I was there visiting them from a two hour drive away.  My weekly visit to make bread and fix my mother's hair.  The phone call from jail came after we had eaten lunch without Daddy, wondering where he could be.  Mother did not want to go get him.  Heartbroken and disgusted.  We finally picked him up from jail, my handcuffed, shamed father.  And all the way home he wailed:  "I loved him.  I loved him."

Mother died of her own volition that August.  Just wanted to go home to escape the ignominy.  There was no air for me to breathe, but I had three children and a husband.  Cannot settle in to synthesize when life keeps barrelling forward.  But I was bloodied in this battle.  And the forging forth above the line of pain that ever ached and was exacerbated by the continued pedophilia of my father led me down a wrong way street.  There I found myself, came to my senses, cried out from a horrible pit, stuck in miry clay from which I did not think I could ever be extricated.  Wounds still bleeding from years before.  Raw with anger.  Alone in the dark. 

"Jesus."  Just a thought at first, so deep was I in the dungeon of my own making.

"Jesus..."  Stronger now, hoping He would still  listen to this wayward child of His covered in the sludge at the bottom of her cell.

"Jesus!"  Louder.  A tiny ray of light appearing through the darkness like a passage out of hell.

Then down He came.  Into my prison.  He did not stand up there at the rim looking down on me taunting with the words that I knew to be true:  "You jumped in there all by yourself."

I was so filthy when He lifted me up.  Unafraid of my besmirching His holiness, He carried me in His arms up the slippery walls I could not ascend.  Gently, daily He washed me clean of the mire.  Talked to me about forgiveness....made  me forgive Him as He had already forgiven me.  Can you see why I love Him so? 

Eventually, my feet hit solid ground.  No slipping from the residue of slime that had attached itself to my soles.  No fear of the pit again.  But a healthy recognition of how I got there and why I don't ever want to return.  And...a new understanding of those who have lost their footing.  Who need level ground.  The hard work of going uphill to do the work toward a flat, even place.  To undo the freefall when they raced to the bottom in their downhill flight and found that it was hell.  No judgment from me these days.  No, "I would never do that!"  Nope.  God showed me what I am made of without Him.  And it ain't pretty.

I wake up with songs in the night now.  New songs.  My very own hymns of praise.  Peons of joy.  Why?  Because finally I stand on a level place...a firm foundation built on my faith in Christ not on my faith in me.  I know why I do not wobble now.  I take heed of where I stand because I know that if I do not build on the foundation of faith in Him I will build on one that will crack. 

So put me anywhere and I will tell of my God!  My Savior.  My Lord.  A Lover of my soul who went to hell to get me out!  I will sing of His love forever!

Psalm 26 - The Insufficient Check

I raise my voice in praise and tell of all the miracles You have done. (vs. 7)

I have been walking through the wilderness with the children of Israel lately.  Daily I am feeling the hot sun on their faces and the burning sand between their toes.  My mouth is dry with their thirst and my tunic stinks with their sweat.  The growlings of their empty stomachs and the weariness of their aching bodies wear me out as I read.  And there were not just a few of these tired souls walking in exodus through the desert.  Up to a million, maybe.  Hungry, thirsty and in a bad mood.

If I look at them from afar, I judge them.  How could they have seen the Almighty God send plagues, part seas, confuse and defeat an entire army and then complain against Him when things got rough?  I would never have done that.  Pshaw!  I am made just like they are.  And it has not been pretty for me to see that.

This week my husband received payment from the company for which he had worked for over 20 years. It had declared bankruptcy and gone out of business....with $100,000 of Bill's money plus unused vacation.  Hopeful, we have waited for three years to receive a portion of Bill's money from the many lawyers who have made themselves and the former CEO's fat from the losses.  $3000.00.  That is what we got.  Bill's money down the toilet.  My first reaction was just like the children of Israel ( I don't say this to my credit!!).  What the heck?  Really?  You've got to be kidding!  Blah!  Blah!  Blah!

Later when my spirit was quieter, I heard the gentle reminder that my manna comes from Him.  How about a thank you?  It must be enough for us.  Because it is not a failed company or its lawyers who provides for our needs.   It is God who does that.  I am so sorry, Father.  Thank you for your daily  provision for all of our needs.  With tears of shame.

That our hearts are ungrateful must constantly hurt His.  Yesterday I reread the story of the children of Israel when Moses stayed on the mountain too long getting the commandments from God.  They thought Moses was dead and gone and here they were out in the wilderness without leadership or a god to worship.  So, the brother of Moses accepts the onus of building them an idol.  Throw all of the gold jewelry accumulated for the building of the tabernacle to God into a blazing fire.  Out pops a golden cow!!  Just like that!  A miracle!  So Aaron proposes a fiesta to God!  Really?  An altar to a cow.  Then a ceremony...wonder what that looked like?   Then everyone has rampart sexual relations all over the desert!!  Wow!

Who noticed?  Well, God, of course.  And He wasn't a little mad.  Can you imagine His heart?  Can you hear it breaking?  Can these people not hang on for forty days? 

"Go down from this mountain because your people, the people you brought out of the land of Egypt have ruined themselves!"  Ruined themselves!!!  I cried when I read this because I have also ruined myself on occasion.  Forgotten Whom I love and Who loves me.  Been dry and parched, weary of life, hurt, disillusioned, and hungry.  Mind turned inward.  Heart walled up hard.  Needing a god of the moment instead of the God of All. 

Moses pleaded with His God to not destroy the people and to still go forward with them into the Promised Land, but not before The Judge exacted punishment for this most egregious sin against Him.  Moses melted down the golden idol, ground it into powder and made the sojourners drink the ashes!  The Levites, the priests of Israel were assigned the task of killing off 3000 of their kin.  Their blood soaked up into the sand.  Their names removed from God's book.  Because they forgot..... like I have.

The most astounding miracle of all has kept my name in the book and spared my life from the edge of the sword.  In another desert later on blood poured into the sand which drank it up with its chapped and arid lips.  This time, though, it was the blood of God.  Paying for my inattentiveness and ungrateful heart.  It was not enough, the blood of wayward saints or calves and bulls.  The miracle is that I am covered in the sweaty outpouring of sanctified lifeblood from a death that should have been mine.  Though I forget, He does not.  Though I am unfaithful, He is faithful.  The slaughtering is over.  His love so deep, He came for me because nothing else was sufficient for my sin.  Oh, the miracle.  That there have been others is almost too much!  That I would expect more from His hand than He provided with His death is flagrant extravagance!  The most selfish expectation!  Yet.....Yet, He overflows to me daily, hourly, minute to minute.  Me.  Who deserves nothing.  Given gifts in this life before He ushers me into His eternal presence, clean.  A child He adopted and paid for.

I raise my voice in praise and tell of the miracles You have done!!!!!