PSALM 119 - Doggies and Lambs

Let me cry before You, O Lord. Give me understanding according to Your word! Let my plea come before You. Deliver me according to Your word. My lips will pour forth praise because You teach me Your statutes. My tongue will sing of Your word, for all Your commandments are right. Let Your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen Your precepts. I long for Your salvation, O Lord, and Your law is my delight. Let my soul live and praise You, and let Your rules help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Look for me, for I don't forget Your commandments.   (Verses 169-176)

"What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish."  Jesus, Matthew 18

We gave our dogs away when we moved to Riverside, California, in 1976. Our daughters were still very young and missed their pets. In response to Heather's constant question about when we were going to get another dog, I answered an ad that promised a darling five-year-old Lhasa Apso named Sidney. It took some adjusting for him. He'd been with the other family since he was born. But we stroked him, brushed him, played with him and walked him...and fed him, I'm sure the important thing in his doggie mind. But that little mind couldn't figure out what happened when we went back to Texas for Christmas and left him in the hands of a neighborhood teenager who forgot to let him back into the house one afternoon. Sidney panicked. Big time. Left abandoned and alone, the dog pretty much climbed the low back fence and headed out only God knows where. Sidney certainly didn't.

We returned late in the evening from our Christmas trip to find our home devoid of dog. We all panicked. The lateness of the hour didn't keep me from calling the young woman, and, trying to control my racing heart, asking her, if, well, she had any idea where our dog might be. Lost. He was lost, she said. She'd looked everywhere. Called the pound. Sidney had a collar with his information on it. They'd called the former owner. This I found out after a sleepless night of worry and mounting guilt.

"We found him running along the freeway," the pound worker told me. Running back to his old home. That was the general direction of Sidney's escape route. Some interior guidance system or just coincidence. I don't know. But when I saw him, I was devastated. Our doggie's beautiful golden hair was matted and filled with burrs and tiny sticks. There was a bloodied bump on his head near his eye and he was shaking with fear. Quaking with fear. I couldn't tell if Sidney was glad to see me or not. He did recognize me and tried to wag his pathetic tail. All I could do was stand there and cry. Our little lost pet had been through the ringer. "Is he okay to hold?" I asked. "Is he...broken?"

"No, ma'am," replied the young man helping me with the paperwork. "The dog seems to have come through it okay."

I held Sidney in my arms to quiet the quivering of his little body and stroked him while he whined his grief. Lost, alone and disoriented, he'd taken quite a beating. I drove home with him in my lap, took him inside then and drew a warm bath. I cut the dried blood and matted hair from his face while he looked mournfully at me. I did all this with tears streaming down my face. I could only imagine what he'd seen for the week of his lost-ness.

I have been astray. Run away in pain unspeakable to God only knew where. A lost sheep. We will finally get caught in some bramble or other. Stuck there to wait for our salvation. Like the psalmist, I yelled, "Look for me! O, Jesus, look for me!" 

If you think you've gone too far out. If you think He stopped caring about you years ago...or two minutes ago...you are wrong. If you ran in panic to another love. Drank from a wine goblet that has now turned your stomach and left you inebriated and confused. You are still worth finding. If you shook your fist in His face and left because you were disappointed, you are still loved, because Jesus doesn't want you to live or die without Him. The Good Shepherd knows His sheep by name (John 10) and gave His life to shepherd us home. Yes, Jesus will probably have to clean you up a bit. He might even remind you that staying near Him would be a good idea next time you are confused or heartbroken. But, trust me, He will bind up your broken heart and ease the quaking of your soul. Because He came to seek and to save what is lost. You may have gone a long way out...have a long way to go back...but you won't go it alone.

He will tend His flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in His arms and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those who are with young.  Isaiah 40

PSALM 119 - Hey, Where's the Map?

 Leaders attack me for no reason, but I fear Your law in my heart. I am as happy over Your promises as if I had found a great treasure. I hate and despise lies, but I love Your teachings. Seven times a day I praise You for Your fair laws. Those who love Your teachings will find true peace, and nothing will defeat them. I am waiting for You to save me, Lord. I will obey Your commands. I obey Your rules, and I love them very much. I obey Your orders and rules because You know everything I do.  (Verses 161-168)

God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything.  1 John 3

I always used to wonder how my mother knew things I'd done that she didn't see me do. Wrong things, usually. "I have eyes in the back of my head," she'd say. Then I became a mother and grew a pair of those eyes, too. It's that connection with your kids that renders a prescience about their activities. But it's not really so magical as it used to seem to me or my kids. The truth of the matter is I was bigger than they, smarter than they and watching them more carefully than they thought. A two-year-old is pretty predictable, too. Steady by then on chubby legs, she will, without doubt, be rummaging through all the stuff she could only look at and covet touching before she could actually get to it. It's just in the nature of things that kids will test boundaries because they now have them in the mobile, fascinating world of walking about. Three-year-olds are faster. A little smarter. Understand a few of their boundaries and step over them just to see what happens. In our home, it happened fast! Of course, the bigger the kid, the harder it is to always see where they are or what they're doing. If, by the time our children are driving around instead of toddling, we haven't instilled boundaries in them so that they become the child's boundaries, also, we will be awake lots and lots of very long nights.

This world is dangerous. A labyrinth of wrong turns and scary creatures popping up to scare us to death. No longer do we navigate the living room of our home on unsteady legs. Our world is now the universe and we are in it to decide what direction we will go. Without running into the walls or falling off the edge of a cliff. How is that possible? Everywhere we go are beggars wanting us to take care of them or charlatans wanting us to buy into their various medications to ease the pain of the journey. It's a macrocosm and we are but a tiny speck maneuvering around it. It seems to me we need a map. Guidelines for living that keep us safe. So that when we find ourselves lost and alone we can check it for the way out. Or in. Or through. Imagine how relieved you'd be if you felt hopelessly lost and then your GPS kicked in to show you the way home. Whew! You'd want to kiss the map. It then becomes a "treasure map."

How is it then that we think we can navigate this world without God's help? He sees everything, all at once. And not just the physical stuff, but the way things work, the heart of each person, the past, present and future, and how it all plays out. He knows, from beginning to end, the plan and how best to walk in these troubled times. Do you? I don't. I need Him. God is so much bigger than I was to my children. The comparison is almost silly except it's all I have. The Father's realm is far, far more immense than the earthly parameters my rules for our kids set. He knows we have to get out there and make life happen in the vastness that exists under heaven. That's why God didn't leave us without a navigation system. Certain rules of the road without which we are certain to crash. Pretty loving of Him, isn't it? And when you think of all the people who refuse the assistance, like a husband who won't stop at the service station to ask for directions, it's no wonder we are all careening into each other's lives, wreaking havoc.

Peace is hard to come by in our world. We have so many reasonable facsimiles, synthetics, that mask our need for it. If we drink enough, take enough drugs, work hard enough, make enough money, get enough power, find a person who makes us think we are loved...name it, the panacea...we can for a short time forget that we are, interiorally, messed up and off course. That's why the map, the directions, are so handy. We might have driven headlong into the far country where we find ourselves, but God's directions will get us out. It might be quite the road trip, but we can use the map, kiss it's wisdom like we've found great treasure, and get on down the path blowing bubbles in the back seat while our Father drives the car!


 

PSALM 119 - Mercy, mercy me!

Look on my affliction and deliver me, for I do not forget Your law. Plead my cause and redeem me. Give me life according to Your promise! Salvation is far from the wicked, for they do not seek Your statutes. Great is Your mercy, O Lord. Give me life according to Your rules. Many are my persecutors and my adversaries, but I do not swerve from Your testimonies. I look at the faithless with disgust, because they do not keep Your commands. Consider how I love Your precepts! Give me life according to Your steadfast love. The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous rules endures forever. (Verses 153-160)

Mercy triumphs over judgment.    James 2

She lived next door to us for the six weeks we were in Atlanta. Her long fingernails were painted red, her hair was dyed a bright blond, and her t-shirts were cut very low. She had a rather foul mouth and a bawdy sense of humor. Her two kids played with my two kids. And so it began. The conversations about Jesus. My neighbor didn't disgust me, though she certainly didn't keep God's laws. I loved her. Fed her kids lunch and took them to the park with mine. But God knew I didn't have much time. I'd known her only a couple of weeks before she asked Jesus into her heart. She was really hungry for Him. Like she'd been waiting all her adult life for someone to move in next door and tell her about God's love. At first, nothing much changed. Hair, nails, clothes, cursing. By God's grace, I didn't judge her, though. I knew God had changed me. I hadn't changed myself. So we prayed together every day despite the fact she didn't look like a Christian yet. One morning she came over for coffee wearing a different kind of t-shirt. No cleavage. And her fingernails were cut and painted a light pink. (Not that red fingernails are a sign of anything. I love red fingernails!) That was the first thing I noticed. "You changed your nail polish!" I said in surprise. "I couldn't look at them any more. The long red fingernails," she said, as she held her hands out for me to see. "And I don't feel right about my clothes any more, either. It's like something's changed inside of me."

I'm wondering this morning where my friend would be today if I'd written her off at first blush. Thought how disgusting her clothes and short shorts. Thinking I wouldn't defile my kids with hers because they weren't Christians. Thought to myself how I was better than she because, after all, I go to church. I could have.  And I think the spirit of this psalm could be misrepresented to say we Christians should be thinking like that. What I've discovered is that most people know when they are doing wrong things. Pointing it out to them simply makes them defensive. It makes all of us defensive. So what is this disgust the psalmist feels? Is it toward the world without Christ or is it toward those who know Him and leave? Who trust in their own goodness to save them?

The woman at the well had been married five times and the man she was with wasn't her husband. The woman found in the very act of adultery knew she was guilty when the religious men picked up stones to throw at her. When Jesus cast the demons out of the crazed man in the country of the Gerasenes, the man knew he'd been delivered from something very evil. The lepers Jesus touched were so unclean they had to live separately from the rest of society. Touching them made the religious socially and physically soiled, too. Disgusting. All of them. The pure walked on the other side of the street. Pulled water from the well at a different time of day. Bloodied the dust around the temple with the residue of stonings that made everything all right again. Religion. Haughty and unforgiving. Purging sinners ever more deeply into sin. But Jesus touched them. How could He judge them when they didn't know? After all, Jesus came into the world to save it, not condemn it (John 3:16-17). So it was that Jesus told the story of the sinner and the saint. Two men went to church to pray. One was a despised tax collector whose profession made it easy for him to cheat people. Hated by everyone. Worse than the IRS. This man had big sin problems. The other man? A pillar of the church. A teacher in the local temple. A man spotless in reputation. He climbed the temple steps, elevated himself upon the great porch and stood praying aloud to God. "God, I thank you that I'm not disgusting like those who are unjust, extortioners, adulterers, or.." and the man looked down at the tax collector praying at the bottom of the steps..."even like this tax collector." As the man continued in prayer, he commended himself to God. "I fast twice a week when I only have to once a year. I give tithes of all that I get." Love me, God, because I'm so perfect.

The tax collector couldn't even look to heaven. So aware was he that he wasn't good enough for God. And hearing the loud prayer of the self-righteous man humbled him further. The godly man was right. He was a better person than the IRS agent. Deeply aware of his need for mercy, the man beat his chest and cried out in his desperation, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"

It was the tax collector who went home justified, said Jesus. Why? Because he understood what the self-righteous church-goer didn't. It's God's mercy that saves us. God's not pleased when we stand before Him pointing out how great we are, and especially not when we compare our piety with someone else's sinfulness. If we don't know we are all saved by grace, we won't extend it to others
The only thing Jesus found to be disgusting was the judgment of the righteous toward the sinner. Because God's heart is to save...to seek and to save...that which is lost (Luke 19:10).

PSALM 119 - She Didn't Tell Him She Was Dying...

With my whole heart I cry. Answer me, O Lord! I will keep Your statutes. I call to You. Save me that I may observe Your testimonies. I rise before dawn and cry for help. I hope in Your words. My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on Your promise. Hear my voice according to Your steadfast love. O Lord, according to Your justice, give me life. They draw near who persecute me with evil purpose. They are far from Your law. But You are near, O Lord, and all Your commandments are true. Long have I known from Your testimonies that You have founded them forever.  (Verses 145-152)

He told me his mother used to sit by the window all night looking out at the streets. That she often had this really sad look on her face that he felt responsible for erasing somehow. She was dying, but she didn't let him know that because he was only eight. Jay (not his real name) thought all mothers had a wig and sometimes stayed in bed for days. It was his world. Cathette, his mother, was my best friend. Though she lived a thousand miles away, we were always close. I went to visit her right before she died of the breast cancer that ultimately ravaged the rest of her body, too. She and her husband adopted two sons after her initial diagnosis and the aftermath of chemotherapy and radiation stole her chances of conceiving children on her own. The boys were young when the cancer returned. I spoke with my beautiful friend on that visit a few months before she died. "Have you talked to the boys about your death?" I asked. "No." Tears sparkled in her eyes. "No, I haven't." The reason, it seems, is that if she had spoken to them it would mean she'd given up. That then it would be reality.

So when she died, Jay, the elder of the sons, was devastated. It completely blindsided him, though she'd lain in a coma for many, many days before she left this world to be with Jesus. His father took him to counseling. Tried to understand what made his son act out. But counseling didn't help. Jay refused to communicate. A couple of years later, the three of them came out to California for a visit and stayed with us. We did the usual southern California things like Disneyland, but it was a day in the San Jacinto Mountains that lay snow-covered and ominous above the blistering heat of Palm Springs that changed Jay's heart forever. We rode the tram to the walking trails that are carved out between the massive pines and firs that cover the mountain and perfume the air. "Tell me, how did you know my mom?" he asked as we walked alone together up an easy trail. "I met her on our first day as teachers," I responded. Then I told him of her gorgeous thick brown hair and impossibly deep dimples, and how she was as tall as I am. How we looked across the room where orientation was going on and both of us knew we'd made a friend...for life."

I told Jay how his mother yearned for marriage and children and saw me through the births of all three of mine. How she found out she had cancer the day I found out I was pregnant with our son. Gushed, really, about what an amazing friend she was. How I loved her. How happy I was when she got married. How devastated when the first news of her cancer rocked her life before her first wedding anniversary. How she called me with the news that she had a boy! Born on my birthday! Jay. Joy in the morning. The answer to years of praying by the window through the night.

Then he spilled his heart. He couldn't stop talking about all he'd felt. About how he thought he could've saved her. Didn't know she was dying. Wanted a mother who would play at the park instead of just watching him. Because...because he didn't know she was so sick. If only he'd known...And there it was. The guilt that had been eating him for many grieving months. He could've been a better son. He wished he could tell her that.

The gift I could give him was that I knew what his mother was praying for as she sat by the window in the watches of the night when she arose before dawn to cry out for God's help. She'd told me on that visit of the sleepless, seemingly endless nights when she contemplated her death. How it would be for the boys. For her husband. How they would go forward without her. How she could think to let them. "But I'm praying now for their comfort. For them to be strong and survive." She choked up, of course, talking about it. "That someone will be there to help them understand because I can't."

Jay was still talking about his feelings two hours later back at our house as we got food ready to cook out. He helped in the kitchen and set the table, all the while asking questions and revealing, for the first time, all he thought. "Why didn't you tell the counselor all of this?" I asked.

"Because she didn't know my mother."

It was clear in that moment to both Jay and to me that God was answering Cathette's nighttime pleas. The comfort her son needed. All she tried to visualize as the tears spilled down her cheeks before the sun came up. God took her son a thousand miles from home to get the comfort he needed. "She loved you so much, Jay. She didn't want to leave you. That's why she didn't tell you she was dying. Hoping beyond hope that the Father she spoke to at midnight would decide to heal her. Let her stay here." We sat down on the back porch waiting for the chicken to grill. It was where I sat when I last heard Cathette's voice telling me good-bye. "You were an awesome son, Jay. She left because God called her home to be with Him. And you are here with me because she prayed with all her heart you would be comforted."

Tears glistened in our eyes as we hugged each other. It doesn't always go the way we hope when we plead with God to save us. But He is always near and the testimonies of His steadfast love are forever. And into forever. Where Cathette is today, whole and shining. Knowing as she is known. No more tears or sickness. Answered prayer for her, too. With the God she loves with her whole heart. The end of a victorious journey into unimaginable glory. And Jay? He's doing just fine.

 

PSALM 119 - You Still Standing?

Righteous are you, O Lord, and right are Your rules. You have appointed Your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness. My zeal consumes me, because my foes forgot Your words. Your promise is well tried, and Your servant loves it. I am small and despised, yet I do not forget Your precepts. Your righteousness is righteous forever, and Your law is true. Trouble and anguish have found me out, but Your commandments are my delight. Your testimonies are righteous forever. Give me understanding that I may live. (Verses 137-144)

"Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, and the floods came, and winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them will be like foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it."   Jesus, Matthew 7

I love my friend. I've known her now almost all our lives. Both of us were raised in the Baptist church. Both of us married young. And we both love Jesus with our whole hearts. But that didn't stop the winds coming and the rain pouring down. And the spiritual weather that beat upon my friend's house was brutal. Breast cancer--a ravaging, fast moving storm--laid her in the hospital, after her mastectomy, in an experimental study that would hopefully save her life. It was its own hurricane. A bone marrow transplant that left her eyelashes swimming in her eyes as they fell prey to the chemicals that were another death to her. The cleansing of her blood cells left her immune system compromised. Another storm to weather. I called her the day her lashes fell into her eyes. The day she wondered what all of this was for. Next to her was her husband. Loving her. A masked compadre sitting vigil to her pain. Also sitting there. Jesus. To my friend as real as her husband. And without that Presence her heart might have failed. It walked a thin line in the storm, I know. Because we all want a reason for the winds blowing and beating on the house. Sometimes it must be enough, in the moment, that we are not alone in the maelstrom. My beautiful friend lived. To see her gaggle of grandchildren. How blessed she is these more than twenty-five years later! Her life built on a Rock. Made to weather and endure. Past this life. But when the storms come, if we don't know Whose we are, we might just be taken away in the debris that is left. If we don't know the promises of God to us, haven't been trained by the ups and downs of life to trust that He is good, we will be destroyed.

Pain is the storm. Not just the physical pain of disease, but the gut-wrenching, soul crushing thought that perhaps the winds blow on us because we are unworthy, sinful or unloved. The lights go out in the house, darkness creeps up on us, whispering we will die there, in the storm. That's what happened to me. And to my friend, April (not her real name). Saved from her addictions through a Christian program, she met and married a man much older than she. He'd been married twice before, had grown kids and a poor track record. But he was a Christian graduate of the same program. For a while their marriage seemed to work. His family was wealthy. Pillars of the church. When he and April moved near the extended family, they bought a home and she began a successful business there. But her husband had internet issues. And after over a decade of marriage, left her in an ugly scene. Though she struggled to survive the abandonment, the sandy soil of her relationship with Jesus sent her, in her pain, back to her former medications. Unfortunately, they were unlawful, too. Ironically, it was in jail that she discovered God to be her Rock. He has been miraculously there with and for her. In ways I hope to write about one day soon. Would that she had been more safely anchored to Him in the days of her pain. I know that story all too well from personal experience.

What all three of us knows now, though, is that God's promises are well tried by now. Does He mean it or not when He says we can trust in Him? Have we needed to know that and  found God faithful? Storms are out there brewing for everyone--Christians and non-Christians. We aren't exempt because we know Christ. He wasn't exempt. What makes the difference is where we are anchored in the typhoon. Are we tethered to Him or floundering in a sea of doubt? Our way with Jesus should be marked with testimonies of His faithfulness in sunshine or blizzard. Those times we can remember when things are bleak to assure us He is good and that God loves us. When I know God's promises and I've seen that He fulfills them, it makes the storm endurable because I know I'm anchored to His faithfulness. Jesus said that when I hear the Word and then do it, I will be on solid, immovable ground. Because I've tested it. Not just read it. Not just thought, "Oh, that's a wise saying--a good perspective." The Word of God was never meant to be the sayings of a kindly prophet. The Word of God is bread, life, alive--conversation with the Living God. If He says, "Do this and live!" I should do it. And the more I experience the truth of His words, the more my testimony will be, "Your testimonies are right forever. Help me understand them that I may live!"

Our foundations may quiver in the storm. We might be a little--or a lot--afraid. I remember holding my father-in-law's hand as he lay dying two years ago. The look in his clear blue eyes was far away when he opened them to peer into mine. Like he was trying to see me from someplace in the distance. But he held my hand tightly, like a person dangling from a cliff not wanting to let go. For several hours we sat like that, his large, cooling hand in mine. It wasn't until the last few minutes of his life that Papa eased his grip. Seeing someplace better, I hope. Willing to leave my grasp to take hold of another hand. It reminds me that I hold God's hand that way. Gripping it for strength and the knowledge that I'm loved. Holding on even more tightly in the storms. In life and death, Jesus has me. Has my back. Holds onto me. Under girds the foundations of my life when I totter and doubt. Even if the foundation cracks a bit so that after the storm we need some repair, we can rejoice that we still stand. Steadfast, immovable (1 Corinthians 15). Trouble and anguish may have found me out, but I'm still standing!


 

PSALM 119 - New York City In The Dark

Your testimonies are wonderful, therefore my soul keeps them. The unfolding of Your words gives light. It imparts understanding to the simple. I open my mouth and pant, because I long for Your commandments. Turn to me and be gracious to me, as is Your way with those who love Your name. Keep steady my steps according to Your promise, and let no iniquity get dominion over me. Redeem me from man's oppression, that I may keep Your precepts. May Your face shine upon Your servant, and teach me Your statutes. My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep Your law.  (Verses 129-136)

On Thursday, August 14, 2003, Heather, her baby son, Nicholas, and I were on our way to Penn Station in downtown New York City pushing a stroller and dragging our luggage as we hailed a cab. We were going back to Alexandria, Virginia, after a few days of enjoying the city for our joint birthday celebration. Suddenly, the cab driver noticed that all the signal lights weren't working. "That's odd," said Heather. Then she noticed all the neon signs that normally light up the many shops were also dark. "Must be an electrical failure of some sort." Not worried, though, about Penn Station.

The taxi dumped us and all our stuff out at the station and drove off. We couldn't shake the ominous feeling that all looked a bit too dark inside. It was after four in the afternoon. The electricity to the entire city was completely out. Our ride home was going to be delayed. So, we went outside to mill around with every passenger waiting for a train. It was far too dark and far too hot to sit inside. Still almost ninety degrees outside, and muggy. We sat sweating, thinking any minute the electricity would come back on and we'd be on our way. It was dark before we knew for sure that we weren't going anywhere that night. New York City was black by the time we started trying to find our way back to the Marriott where we'd stayed the night before. The blackness panicked New Yorkers. It felt, by then, like another terrorist attack. People began streaming across the bridge and out of harm's way. We, stroller, luggage and all, walked alone in the dark. The very dark. It's hard to describe how black it was because the enormous buildings also closed in on us, blocking stars and moon. No flashlight. Only Heather's great navigation skills (I get lost easily). We were so relieved when we saw, way up in the distance, a tiny light, possibly from a generator, guiding our path. Giving us at least a destination to aim for. Light for our way. Desperate to get off the streets, not knowing what lurked in the crevices of the locked down businesses or in the alleys we kept passing. Desperate for guidance to a safe place. We needed some illumination.

That's what God's Word does for our path in this dark world. Opens up a road that's safe and purposeful. Like Heather, Nicolas and me, the world gropes blindly toward a non-specific goal because they can't see the Truth. They bump into those of us who know Jesus from time to time. Crash into the Light and share our illumination for the moment. We who used to walk in dark are now light, not only a beacon for those searching but a revealer of things done in the dark. So we either rescue or intimidate. At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible for anything that becomes visible is light (Ephesians 5).

That's why the unfolding of the Word is wonderful to us. It lightens the path more and more. No longer do we need to shuffle around trying to figure out where to go and what to do. Our path is illumined, and it's so much easier to walk in the light! I yearn for more. Maybe not panted in the physical sense, but surely in my heart. Hungry and thirsty to know my God better, because the more I know about Who He is and what He desires, the brighter things become for me. God's shining face is my ultimate destination, alit with the joy of His love for and favor toward me. It's why I don't want to go astray. Don't want the dominion of darkness any more. If I keep my eyes focused on that face, I won't be looking for the thrills some find in the darkness. They die out there, alone. Wandering around, always needing more and more of their particular addiction to hide the fact that they are wandering blind.

The light we saw that black night was coming from a generator in the Marriott. Full now with people clambering for escape from the darkness. There was nourishment, too. The restaurant chef set up a buffet of all the food that would spoil in the refrigerator and gave it to us free. The dim lighting was a refuge as we crammed our luggage between the hundreds of people and found a space on the floor. Drawn to the hotel like moths to a flame, we weren't the only ones who needed to see in order to be safe. The Marriott was a haven for the lost that night because the light was on. May ours be, also. A haven. May I light up any room into which I walk. Not with any earthly attribute, but with the joy of knowing the indwelling Spirit of the God of All Who permeates the darkest regions of our souls and floods them with the light of His Word. His little light bulb reflecting my Father's glory.

"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father, Who is in heaven."  Jesus.   Matthew 5


 

Stuff Happens

I have done what is just and right. Please do not leave me to my oppressors! Give Your servant a pledge of good. Let not the insolent oppress me. My eyes long for Your salvation and the fulfillment of Your righteous promise. Deal with Your servant according to Your steadfast love, and teach me Your statues. I am Your servant. Give me understanding, that I may know Your testimonies! It is time for the Lord to act, for Your law has been broken. Therefore I love Your commandments above gold, fine gold. Therefore I consider all Your precepts to be right. I hate every false way.   (Verses 121-128)

Raised in a Christian home, Jon (not his real name) played by the rules. Didn't drink, smoke or have premarital sex. Married a virgin as a virgin. Believed in following God's statutes and precepts, expecting to receive the blessings of his chastity to the law. But his wife left him for another man. Turned his world upside down. Head spinning, heart crushed, faith destroyed. He'd done it all right and God allowed it all to go to hell. So, if God failed him, Jon, by God, would do whatever felt good. All the things he'd wanted to do but didn't. Sleep around, drink too much and sleep on Sundays when he used to go to church. And in his self-righteous anger, Jon is out to destroy his wife and her new lover. Actively. With great vengeance. Unlike the psalmist, Jon's attitude is, "Your laws have been broken and it's time for me to act because I don't trust You any more to do the right thing!"

Many of us have been raised in the church to trust in our own right living to garner us favor with God. I used to think God loved me because I was such a good little girl. Always wanting to do what He said. Closing my eyes to see God pat me on my little blond head. May I say this? God will dig that out of us if we are His children. It's a completely wrong perception of God's heart. We cannot ever be good enough to merit His favor! If we think we are loved and accepted by God because of our strict adherence to the Ten Commandments, we are serving Him out of a wrong heart. And it's dangerous. Because if we believe all our blessings flow because we are obedient from a heart that stacks up points for our side every time we do something good, and God is weighing our goodness against the few small peccadilloes of our waywardness, we will fall apart when things fall apart. I know. I did. Jon is. And Jon's testing God to see if he will still be loved after he goes to the pit, which is where he will end up because God loves him. Jon still needs his Father. But for the rest of his life Jon needs to know that Jesus loves him because He loves him. Because He is good, not because Jon is.

Our love for God is false if it is attached in any way to our own self-righteousness. Once that has been excavated from our souls, we know what it means to love God because He first loved us and gave Himself for us. If I'm counting on things to go well in my life because I merit it with my excellent behavior, Satan has totally set me up to crash and burn. Things will not always go well in anybody's life. Jon's wife chose to leave him. God didn't choose that. In Jon's heart all along has been the desire to break the rules. This gave him the opportunity to do so. The law begs us to break it! If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kind of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead...The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it, killed me (Romans 7). I love the example I heard years ago. The law, rules of faith, demand from us NOT to do something. It's like telling someone NOT to think about a red-faced monkey. Of course, the first thing that enters our minds is a RED-FACED MONKEY! Jesus came to kill that monkey! Dead! And write the rules of His heart onto ours.

The law is flesh. The Spirit makes alive. Our Father, knowing we couldn't keep the law that tells us what we cannot do, gave us His Spirit to teach us what pleases the One Who died for us. We don't follow the Ten Commandments because we want them to make us good enough for God. We follow the precepts of our Father because we love Him for loving us unconditionally. Rules now written on our hearts are "gold, above fine gold." Precious to us in a way we couldn't have understood before we knew God loves us despite our falling short or even in our belief that we don't. But until we are made aware of the fact that we are not rewarded with a problem-free life because we are so right and good, we will be tripped up by the ups and downs of our journey.

Jon's wife is a Christian, too. Messed up by her own emotions, for sure. But God will deal with her. And the pain she's caused Jon is God's to address. When it is "time for the Lord to act" on her betrayal, He will. Maybe when Jon gets out of the way. Looks at his own heart for the reasons he's walked away from his God. The Lord hates false ways. Wants both of these Christians to be children who now long for His salvation from righteousness or from adultery. Each needs its own deliverance.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit...For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed it cannot! Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.  Romans 8  (Italics, mine)