PSALM 89 - Semper fi - God Bless

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PSALM 89 - Does True Love Overlook Wrong?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PSALM 89 - Moore Grace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PSALM 89 - When The Root Becomes The Fruit

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

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

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

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

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

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



 

PSALM 88 - Screamed Your Pain to God Much Lately?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PSALM 88 - What's With Unanswered Prayers?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PSALM 88 - Jars of Clay, Chipped Maybe

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

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

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

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

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

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