PSALM 116 - Katniss and the Blue Pill

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


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




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




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


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


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

PSALM 116 - Pang: A Sudden Spasm of Pain

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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

PSALM 115 - I'll Take That!

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

PSALM 115 - All Hail Selfies

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

PSALM 115 - Shaking Like Ants On An Orange

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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