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.