Remembering

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.  You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world.  He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.  All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature.  By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.  But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead.  (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!)  For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.  So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus.  God saved you by his grace when you believed.  And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.  Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.  For we are God’s masterpiece.  He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.  Ephesians 2:1-10

Particularly among Evangelicals, the last few verses of this text get the press.  Grace alone was the main thrust of Martin Luther’s reformation.  And, while there is no argument on my part that God’s grace deserves first seat in Christian doctrine and practice, I have a high place in my heart and mind for resurrection; both from the grave, and from the death of what used to be.

The gist of that to which I’m pointing is similar to the history my bride and I share.  We’ve been married a long time.  Occasionally we will just sit together with almost no conversation.  Inevitably, one of us will begin to marvel aloud at the history we have together, and how God has led us through so much.  The marvelous part of it is how we both understand we’d never be on this end of our journey, still together, and still wanting to be together, had it not been for the grace of God providing some pretty awesome strength for that journey; especially during the lean and difficult years.  Life can (and does) test any marriage up to, and beyond, the breaking point!

Grace enters this conversation Elizabeth and I have about our history because we both understand the power that has seen us through many dangers, toils, and snares, is the undeserved, but unreserved kindness and mercy of God in Christ Jesus.  It is that power which holds all things together; from the molecules he first created eons ago, and then re-formed from chaos into the wondrous order of all we see in the earth and universe, all the way to the forces, events, and even thoughts in our minds…it is prevenient, provident, and beneficent grace that God bestows upon us.  Our lives, even the next breath you take, are an impossibility, except for the hand of Jesus Christ.  I see that in the same way the apostle Paul wrote about it:

Everything was created through him and for him.  He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.          Colossians 1:16b-17

For You Today

Take it from a genetic introvert; while you’re stuck at home it’s a blessing you’ll not regret to look back and see how God has held you together through life.  Take a little time today to thank Him for where He’s got you right now!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on Ephesians 2:  see Turn Back...and Live   and  Grace Alone – Part 1 and    Grace Alone – Part 2 and   James the Just – Part 6 The Upward Spiral of Metamorphosis  

Deepening

Monday, March 30, 2020

Hear my prayer, O Lord; listen to my plea!  Answer me because you are faithful and righteous.  Don’t put your servant on trial, for no one is innocent before you.  My enemy has chased me.  He has knocked me to the ground and forces me to live in darkness like those in the grave.  I am losing all hope; I am paralyzed with fear.  I remember the days of old.  I ponder all your great works and think about what you have done.  I lift my hands to you in prayer.  I thirst for you as parched land thirsts for rain.       Interlude   Come quickly, Lord, and answer me, for my depression deepens.  Don’t turn away from me, or I will die.  Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning, for I am trusting you.  Show me where to walk, for I give myself to you.  Rescue me from my enemies, Lord; I run to you to hide me.  Teach me to do your will, for you are my God.  May your gracious Spirit lead me forward on a firm footing.  For the glory of your name, O Lord, preserve my life.  Because of your faithfulness, bring me out of this distress.  In your unfailing love, silence all my enemies and destroy all my foes, for I am your servant.  Psalm 143:1-12

Young David had been the rising star of Israel, having defeated Goliath, called to the palace to be advisor, spiritual mentor, and chief music therapist to King Saul.  When David later wrote this Psalm, he was remembering the aftermath of Saul’s paranoiac rage that drove David not only from the palace, but from any kind of life at all.  David was hounded by Saul’s armies, forced to live with the spiders and scorpions in caves, or just anywhere out of Saul’s reach.  In light of his reputation, position, calling, service and his very life hanging by a thread, we can understand the future king’s deepening into the downward spiral of depression!

If you’re one of those A-type, always up, optimistic persons who has never had a down moment, blessed with an always-full-and-running-over glass – on behalf of 99.75% of the world…you’re really annoying to the rest of us who live in reality!

Now, admittedly, that is not very pastoral sounding!  (Ya think, Russell?).  The only problem with a pastor not saying that would be an ethical disconnect from truth.  The fact remains that depression, either occasionally, or as a lifelong battle, is part of the typical experience of fallen humanity.  If you doubt that, you’re behind on your Bible reading, and/or need a reality check.  We live in an anti-depressant saturated society.  And it’s deepening!

I love old sayings (not just because I’m old – I’ve loved hearing them all my life).  One of those sayings is MISERY LOVES COMPANY – but, frankly, who wants another depressed person around when you’re already hanging on for dear life?  Answer:  just about everybody.  And with good reason; when you’re depressed who wants a Jack Russell Springer jumping up and down with a dog-toothy smile, wanting to play?  No, we want a Bassett Hound, willing to just lay next to us with body heat and a slow pulse we can feel in rhythm with our own.  We want someone who has, or is, walking where we’re drowning.  We don’t want to be told cheer up…it’s a beautiful day; we want to be understood, because whatever beauty God’s created to see out there, on our inside it’s darker than midnight!

For You Today

King David walked there, and he thought deeply about it, and gives us the kind of lifeline that brings a little refreshing rain on the parched ground of souls that have been ground down like powder and swept away with the wind of chance.  And David knows the only genuinely sane way out is the way of the upward; it’s to take the deepening sense of depression and own it before God.  Only there is the beginning of restoration.  Let’s face it, you can’t climb out of the pit; you must be led-out, by the Hand of One who has conquered it!  So, if you’re ready, He is!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For another post on battling depression Psalm 143:  see Zombie No Longer

What Calls from Below

Friday, March 27, 2020

“Son of man, give the people of Israel this message:  You are saying, ‘Our sins are heavy upon us; we are wasting away!  How can we survive?’  As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live.  Turn!  Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel!  Why should you die?  

“Son of man, give your people this message:  The righteous behavior of righteous people will not save them if they turn to sin, nor will the wicked behavior of wicked people destroy them if they repent and turn from their sins.  When I tell righteous people that they will live, but then they sin, expecting their past righteousness to save them, then none of their righteous acts will be remembered.  I will destroy them for their sins.  And suppose I tell some wicked people that they will surely die, but then they turn from their sins and do what is just and right.  For instance, they might give back a debtor’s security, return what they have stolen, and obey my life-giving laws, no longer doing what is evil.  If they do this, then they will surely live and not die.  None of their past sins will be brought up again, for they have done what is just and right, and they will surely live.  Ezekiel 33:10-16

According to Scripture’s over-arching lessons there is no Switzerland-like neutral category when it comes to behavior; there is only good and evil.  Adam and Eve were created, then God said that was not just good, but very good!  God warned our great-great ancestors to stay away from the tree in the middle of the garden.  When they didn’t obey, God said it was bad (we’ve been finding out it was very bad ever since).  By the time their firstborn (Cain) killed his brother (Abel) it’s clear that what calls from below is the blood of our sins.

The prophet Ezekiel’s clear watchman message on the absence of a neutral position on sin is that, it matters what you do with what’s in front of you, much more so than what you did yesterday. 

Some of the conversations I’ve had with people since the onslaught of the newest plague, Covid-19, have turned to whether or not this is the beginning of the End-Time judgment of God.  Is the blood of past sins calling down the wrath of God on humankind?  There’s a case to be made for that; some would say a strong case!  After all, God does not wink at sin.  All the way through Scripture it is presented clearly that sin’s penalty is death.  From the very first warning of God to Adam and Eve, that, in the day they sinned their souls would experience death’s sting…through the cursing of the ground, decline of health and life’s longevity, and the displays of God’s willingness to save from sin, this has been the human story:  we sin, experience a little more hell until we repent; God forgives and covers the sin with His righteousness.  And we hardly learn the lesson.  It’s like the shampoo bottle instructions – lather, rinse, repeat. 

So, is Covid-19 God’s judgment gavel about to hit the bench?  Are we toast?  The answer is threefold, yes, no, and I really don’t know. 

Yes …is the sense that God always judges humankind’s sin.

No …is the sense that we humans were created in the image of God, but that image is dimmed so much by our wickedness, we hardly can understand the concept of God’s will and righteousness, much less know what God is up to.

I Really Don’t Know …is my final answer – God has reserved the timing of his judgment to himself.  As Jesus told his followers…no one but the Father knows that day

For You Today

Considering we cannot know, when judgment will come, or even if Covid-19 is part of it, it is much smarter to do what Ezekiel suggested…turn…turn!  The Bible word for turning is repent; to repent is to turn away from sin and turn to God.

Remember, Ezekiel said that God said your past wickedness can’t destroy you if you turn to Him.  So…are you waiting for a particular reason other than unbelief?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For another post on Ezekiel 33:  see The Lord's Consuming Fire

What the Angel Said

Thursday, March 26, 2020

From the depths of despair, O Lord, I call for your help.  Hear my cry, O Lord.  Pay attention to my prayer.  Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?  But you offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear you.  I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him.  I have put my hope in his word.                             Psalm 130:1-5

The readings for this day include passages from Ezekiel and Revelation, both of which have the small scrolls as centerpiece.  Both the prophet and the beloved apostle are told to eat the scroll; both remarked that it tasted as sweet as honey.  In Ezekiel’s vision the message is a funeral kind of dark:

Then I looked and saw a hand reaching out to me.  It held a scroll, which he unrolled.  And I saw that both sides were covered with funeral songs, words of sorrow, and pronouncements of doom.  Ezekiel 2:9-10

In John’s meeting with the angel the message is even more foreboding; for him, once the sweet-as-honey scroll is eaten, it turns his stomach sour:

[the angel] said, “There will be no more delay.  When the seventh angel blows his trumpet, God’s mysterious plan will be fulfilled.  It will happen just as he announced it to his servants the prophets.”  Revelation 10:6b-7

Both the apostle and prophet speak of God’s judgment.  And the Psalm for today connects each of us with that coming judgment; our dilemma is that every person is accountable for our behavior before Almighty God:

Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?  Psalm 130:3

Who could ever survive God’s judgment?  It’s a very good question; it’s a question with only one answer – nobody survives the holiness CT scan.  

Frankly, if you see a guy on the street corner holding a sign that says REPENT, what do you think; what do you do?  For most of us, you almost don’t see the guy or his sign.  In complacency we shed messages like that and move along to the dental appointment or trip to the mall.  But Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, as well as Paul, the New Testament apostle, tell us God scans the entirety of our lives, including what we do, say, or even think[1].  Every attitude and action of rebellion against God’s will is written on those scrolls.  Every time God brings a message across the screen of our lives, and we fail to remember, like the Psalmist remembered and repented, that we are imperfect creatures, not perfect Creator, another entry shows up in the log.  No one survives such scrutiny!

But the Psalmist holds the one thread of hope in all that; God offers forgiveness!

Lenten season is a time for that hope’s renewal, a time to remember who we are, and that to which we’re called to be – children of the Most High God.  It is a time to be penitent and be renewed, trusting in God’s promise to save those who reject evil in all its forms, turning to the Christ of the cross in faith.

Repentance is not a popular pill to swallow.  It tastes bitter and goes against the grain of our sin nature to confess we are not God.  But true repentance is unlike Ezekiel and John’s little scrolls – honey to the taste, but when it was all settled into the fabric of a man’s being, it turned their whole existence sour!  True repentance may be a little bitter going down, but it opens up an eternity of health lived in sweet reunion with God.

For You Today

Like addictions of any kind, it is the sweet (but false) promise of the next dose of our sins that keep pride in the way of our repenting, and having a joyful, forgiven, free-to-love and serve life.  Sweet and sour are both on the menu; as always, which one will we choose?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For another post on Romans 3:  see A Light Shines in My Heart or The Scroll

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[1] See Isaiah 53:6 and Romans 3:10

Rivers of Living Water

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, “Anyone who is thirsty may come to me!  Anyone who believes in me may come and drink!  For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’”  (When he said “living water,” he was speaking of the Spirit, who would be given to everyone believing in him.  But the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet entered into his glory.)          John 7:37-39

Our dear friends, John and Anne live in Waynesville, North Carolina, a place close to the hearts of many North Carolina Methodists, right next to Lake Junaluska’s campgrounds.  Anne writes about their life in the mountains.  This past week they were (once again) on the Blue Ridge Parkway enjoying the falls:

[Grandson] David and I enjoyed Sunburst Falls. I said we had silent worship there with the falling water. I always think of living water welling up to eternal life and paused to thank God for what He does for us.[1]

Elizabeth and I have travelled some of the Pisgah National Forrest’s trail of waterfalls, and I’ve stood near them many times.  Somehow the idea of silent worship (as Anne called it) never entered my mind.  But so it is. 

Sometimes the silence invoked by the overpowering noise water makes crushing against ageless stone overwhelms a soul.  Anne’s timely piece on how life can be tossed upside down in a week – her word picture is Viral Pan-Panic – is a stark reminder that our days are looming, threatening any sense of normalcy. 

In such a world it’s easier to wander into fear, loathing the darkness.  It’s totally counter-intuitive to stop and thank God amidst the news media’s onslaught of disaster piled on calamity concerning the Covid-19 virus.  We are so conditioned lately to what the next morning’s game changing event will bring, you almost hate to turn on the TV.  One Facebook friend, whom I’ve known since kindergarten, posted that her husband is currently in the hospital with a bacterial infection, in isolation.  She was very quick to point out he did NOT have the Corona Virus.  A month ago none of us would have leaped to that conclusion of pandemic in a high school buddy.  Now, everything’s changed!

And that is the point for the church, and every follower of Jesus Christ; everything has changed.  No longer is there an inviolability of same ol’ – same ol’; no footsteps are heard in the Sanctuary on Sunday mornings at 11am.  It isn’t business as usual, and the waters are highly uncharted as to what that means for the future. 

And, if this pandemic viral bug can toss everything on it’s ear, grabbing the whole world’s attention and economic stability in two news cycles, think what the antidote of living water can accomplish for eternity if we who believe and follow Jesus Christ see that opportunity before us to interpret to 21^st century culture that whatever it is that kills the body is to be feared much less than He who holds our souls in his power.

“Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  Matthew 10:28

For You Today

The current crisis may or may not be a judgment of God, or simply a genetic evil cooked up in a petri dish.  But it certainly should help us focus on the only real center for disease control!  Two thousand years ago it was set up on a hill that looks like a skull.  And it was set up to battle the virus of sin – the ultimate pandemic crisis for humanity’s eternity. 

And Christ beat the stuffing out of the Lucifer virus!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Anne Mehrling original work, used with permission             Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

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[1] You can catch-up with Anne at Mehrling Muse – Life in the Mountains

A Father's Best Advice and Wisest Prayer

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

If anyone is truly honest, one thing which could never be said is how they wouldn’t change a thing; no human (with the exception of Jesus) has ever lived a perfect life.  With that said, when I look back at being a father, I tried to do two things with our children…always give them sound advice, and pray for them to enter God’s holy family by faith, and that they would walk in that faith.  And I’m certain those were the best targets a father can hold up for his children.

The Advice

Don’t put your confidence in powerful people; there is no help for you there.  When they breathe their last, they return to the earth, and all their plans die with them.  But joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper, whose hope is in the Lord their God.  Psalm 146:3-5

The Prayer

So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you.  We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding.  Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit.  All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.  We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need.  May you be filled with joy, always thanking the Father.  He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light.  For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.  Colossians 1:9-14

King David understood power and powerful people, and how fragile trust can be misused and broken if placed in another human’s hands, even if that person genuinely tried to be honorable and faithful.  David knew the best advice he could give to his son was to look to a much higher authority and source for finding his life’s pathway. 

He also knew praying for his son was the best legacy he could leave.

For You Today

Those are two very lofty targets to hold up for your children to hit…

1.     Get your advice from God.

2.     Pray without ceasing.

If you are to accomplish that well in your children, grandchildren, and for anyone which your life touches, those targets must first be yours.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts:  Psalm 146 see I Think I'm Having Stress  or  Colossians 1:7-10  It's the Circle of Life