The Quintessential Rearview Mirror

Friday, September 30, 2022

The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words.  I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.  Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:  The faithful love of the Lord never ends!  His mercies never cease.  Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.  I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”  The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.  So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.  Lamentations 3:19-26

When you’ve either been through, or going through a rough patch (COVID, War, Divorce, Prison, or a thousand other nightmares), the tendency is usually to stare into one of two places – the road ahead, or the rearview mirror.  To be glued to the rearview mirror is to hold on to the anguish and pain of the past, embracing the rough patch as the future.  To dwell on the past means you are driving blindly into the future, and we know where failing to keep your eyes on the road will lead.  (Laws against texting while driving were placed on the books for a reason!).

However painful the rearview mirror can be, at times we must shoot a quick look there, to be sure of two things:

1.    We are aware of what we left behind.

2.    We are still progressing away from the road that led to the rough patch.

If knowledge is power, running on a low battery is a dumb thing.  It is foolish to not remember what got you into the rough patch, or the dangers that might lead you back there.  Real wisdom is the common sense that puts knowledge (good or evil) to good use.  As the wise person once said:  if we fail to remember the mistakes of the past, we are doomed to repeat them in the future.

Even an ostrich in a hurricane has enough sense to look above the storm to chart his course.

For You Today

So, to be (at least) as wise as a bird-brain, use the rearview mirror to poke your head out of the hole in the ground so you can get above the harsh conditions, and get a bead on where you need to go.  In short, look above, you’ll find plenty of answers as the Lord leads you out of the rough patch, even if the road seems rocky.

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Has God Forgotten to Be Gracious? and Hard Times & Growing Churches   

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

The Glorious Needle in the Unfathomable Haystack

Thursday, September 29, 2022

O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!  Your glory is higher than the heavens.  You have taught children and infants to tell of your strength,
silencing your enemies and all who oppose you.  When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?  Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.  You gave them charge of everything you made, putting all things under their authority—the flocks and the herds and all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that swims the ocean currents.  O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!  Psalm 8:1-9

The Psalmist (in a big stage whisper) wonders aloud about how God could possibly be concerned about us humans.  Calvin, the precocious (some would say “obnoxious”) kid proclaims he’s SIGNIFICANT, just before allowing he’s quite small, compared to the universe.

Calvin and Hobbes is one of my many favorite cartoon strips.  That may be due to the author’s[1] theological bent which always catches my eye, and most often my admiration. 

I admire (and often envy) the way the creator of this ‘toon can present a complex Biblical theme on the meaning of life, with just four-panels and a precocious, self-absorbed six-year-old.  That may be because the creator, Bill Watterson, modeled the main characters, the boy, Calvin, and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, after a preacher and a moral, wondering cynic.  You gotta love it!

In the first and third panel, Calvin looks into the sky’s East, then West, as if he’s searching the whole of the heavens.  In the second panel he announces with certainty his significant place (as only a six-year-old can proclaim from his sandbox).  In the fourth, and final panel, Calvin concludes, and allows that he might be just a piece, a speck of dust in the big pile of the puzzle, and not the magnificent centerpiece his first statement demanded.

This is the ongoing human struggle for identity and perspective on the significance and purpose of life.  I suppose if I had Bill Watterson’s ability to get to the nub in so short a presentation (it only takes eight seconds to read), I guess my sermons would be a lot shorter, and my congregation would always beat the Baptist brethren to the local restaurants on Sunday.

For You Today

There will never be a test to pass on Sunday’s sermon.  So, here’s a delicious short-thought to ponder:  When the sermon is spoken this Sunday, whether you take notes, or not, take note of just one salient, provoking, life issue your pastor presents, and contemplate, think-deeply, and measure it against your life.  Take it home and see what God says to you in prayer that day, or the rest of the week.  And then find some way to put into action whatever God brings into your life that next week.  You may not have a stuffed tiger that will talk back to you like Calvin’s Hobbes, but the Holy Spirit will lead those who seriously seek the Lord.

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

We Mortals and How to Cure a Cosmic Headache  and When a Child Speaks

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] ©Bill Watterson named the characters Calvin (for John Calvin, 16^th century theologian) and Hobbes (for 17^th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes).  For much more background information see Wikipedia here.

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Look here, you rich people:  Weep and groan with anguish because of all the terrible troubles ahead of you.  Your wealth is rotting away, and your fine clothes are moth-eaten rags.  Your gold and silver are corroded.  The very wealth you were counting on will eat away your flesh like fire.  This corroded treasure you have hoarded will testify against you on the day of judgment.  For listen!  Hear the cries of the field workers whom you have cheated of their pay.  The cries of those who harvest your fields have reached the ears of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.  James 5:1-4

Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town.  There was a man there named Zacchaeus.  He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich.  He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd.  So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.  When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down!  I must be a guest in your home today.”  Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy.  But the people were displeased.  “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled.  Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!”  Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”  Luke 19:1-10

It is easy to get the wrong idea if you focus too closely on any issue.  Both James and Luke were Apostles who knew Jesus firsthand.  If you focus on James’ text you could easily arrive at the conclusion any rich person is evil.  But your opinion will be tempered if you understand Luke’s account of what Jesus said about Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, an extremely rich man.  The chief difference between James’ harsh view, and Jesus’ tempered view, was how the riches were used.  In James the rich hoarded the wealth and glutted on it.  In Luke’s account, the rich man, Zacchaeus, repented of his previous selfishness and seriously set on a course of giving, rather than receiving.  

Fast forward two millennia:

The Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the poorest of nations in the world today, has a per capita median income of $1.09 per day.  By comparison, the number in the United States is $72.11.  If we temper all the reasons we know about how we will always have the poor with us,[1] by what we know about God’s view of selfishness, for a beliver and follower of Jesus, the commitment to be a giver will grow stronger, and hoarding will (eventually) disappear.

For You Today

This is a lesson, not just for the most wealthy, but everyone.  We will be judged on what we do with what has been placed in our hands.  When it comes to wealth of any kind, God measures our faithfulness to Him, and our worth in His Kingdom, not on how much we give, but on how much we have in our hands after we give.

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

What's in Your Wallet? and Buying God  and Basic Trust; Basic Fear

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Mark 4:7

Centering

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Don’t make your living by extortion or put your hope in stealing.  And if your wealth increases, don’t make it the center of your life.  God has spoken plainly, and I have heard it many times:  Power, O God, belongs to you; unfailing love, O Lord, is yours.  Surely you repay all people according to what they have done.  Psalm 62:10-12

Centering is the act of deciding on a focal point for your attention,  Related to life with faith in Christ, to center is putting every distraction, whether good things, or practices, on the outside of the center.  And barring access to all evil things.  Simply put, Christ must be the center of your life, or you violate the basic premise of being His disciple.  Christ is not a means to an end; He IS the end…the center point of the universe, and therefore, the target for everything we do.

The Psalmist held up the image of a powerful person (in a worldly sense), one who extorts secretly, or steals unashamedly, or both.  God says it plainly, this is dead-wrong.  But what about if your wealth increases honestly; even then the opportunity to sin is extant, if you allow wealth to become the center focus of your life.  The reason is, as the previous paragraph, it violates the priority God has laid out for believers – Jesus is the incontrovertible center of everything – money and power are a corrupting influence to the believer who would live godly.

And here’s an unsettling fact for those of us who might shrug that off, thinking since we are in no danger of being called “wealthy” by most of the world, it just doesn’t apply.  The reality of wealth is its’ relativity.  You can be just as centered on money when you’re on the poverty line, as you are living in a mansion you bought for $40-million dollars.

As a pastor, I’ve had much access to people’s thoughts as they share with me.  I have seen this principle of corruption at work in both the rich and poor, and everyone inbetween.  People on the margins of life are worrying about where the next meal might be found.  The person on the other side of the tracks, with cars, houses, and all kinds of toys and disposable income, fear that tomorrow’s stock report might take it all away.  Both persons are slave to things and the power to control them. 

But I have also known people on both sides of those economic tracks who trust God for everything.  They are those who are living the completely free life of a believer who is also a true disciple of Jesus.

For You Today

Let’s listen to Jesus for our final thought on this subject as he taught that famous Sermon on the Mount:

“No one can serve two masters.  For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.  “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear.  Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? 

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.  “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.  Matthew 6:24-25, 33-34

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Preciou$ Promi$e$ and Blank Check Theology  and Basic Trust; Basic Fear

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

King Down

Monday, September 26, 2022

I correct and discipline everyone I love.  So be diligent and turn from your indifference.  “Look! I stand at the door and knock.  If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.  Those who are victorious will sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat with my Father on his throne.  “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.”  Revelation 3:19-22

In chess, when an opponent has cornered your king, to the point there is no possible move without being taken by another piece, it is checkmate.  You have lost the game, and the acknowledgement of your loss is laying-down your king.  It is this picture that enters my mind whenever I think of Jesus’ followers placing the body of Jesus in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb…KING DOWN!  This describes the message of a popular hymn in many churches, Victory in Jesus:[1]  

I heard an old, old story, how a Savior came from glory,

how he gave his life on Calvary to save a wretch like me;

I heard about his groaning, of his precious blood’s atoning,

then I repented of my sins and won the victory.

When you begin to parse the words from the hymn, groaning, blood, sins, wretch, and envision Jesus’ last moments on Golgotha’s hill, there doesn’t seem to be much “victory” in it.  It reminds me of Homer Rothrock, a member of a church I once served.  Homer was suffering from a gastro-intestinal block.  He was in the hospital, in great pain, waiting on the doctors to decide whether to operate.       As I stood next to my friend I asked him how it was going.  He looked at me with weary eyes and said:  I’ll tell ya, preacher; there ain’t much romance in it!  

Thinking about Homer’s statement has always brought a smile for the way he could maintain a sense of humor, even in the tough times.  It also drives me to the issue of human pain in life, and how going through a rough patch makes us put aside the mundane, in favor of the grand. 

Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis pushed us towards the grand and noble when he wrote:  Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

“Moderate” is the lukewarm word of Jesus’ message to the church of Laodicea, that group of believers who were once white-hot for Jesus, and had cooled-off, like lava from a vocanic erruption that loses its’ heat, losing its’ ability to move, and eventually forming into a heap of hardened slag…a small hill of moderate uselessness.  For a church, that is an epitaph of shame…once vital, we cooled off and stopped where we were comfortable.

For You Today

Wall Street marketing ideas would not include suffering, bleeding, and dying as a great invitation to belong to anything.  Yet, this is precisely what Jesus said led to his victory, and sitting on Heaven’s throne.  And He invites everyone to join him. 

So, are you ready to join King Down?  Or stay with the Indifferent Slow Down Slag?

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Game Over and After the Disaster  and It’s Just a Job and Open Door Policy

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Eugene Bartlett ^©1939

Where is God?

Friday, September 23, 2022

Am I a God who is only close at hand?” says the Lord.  “No, I am far away at the same time.  Can anyone hide from me in a secret place?  Am I not everywhere in all the heavens and earth?” says the Lord.  Jeremiah 23:23-24

There are at least two different ways to interpret the question:  Where is God?  You can be asking about location, in the sense that you want to find God’s presence, either out of curiosity, or, more profoundly, out of need to know you’re not alone in this universe.  The second, and more publicly common way to ask, is the defiance motive…you’re asking about God’s location, or more accurately, his absence during an event that could have been prevented from becoming a tragedy.  It’s asking:  Where was God when my child died?  The first kind of interpretation is a seeker of God; the second is a judge of God.  Truth be told, it could always be both.

Some would deny ever being angry with God.  I’m not one of them…now!  I could never quite bring myself to admit it, but there have been those times.  One of those was when my grandmother died.  I loved Grandma Carrie.  She had a kind face, and was not above slipping a cookie in your hand, even just before dinnertime.  She was a patient sort; married to an alcoholic, she had to have the patience of Job.  When cancer took her from us, I cried for weeks.  As a pre-teen, anger was my emotional response to the grief that told me I would never see her again.  A lot older now, and, hopefully, a little wiser, I realize Russell, the child, was asking the defiant kind of question born of pain:  God…where were you when cancer took my Grandma? 

As a child I had to lay the blame for what was wrong in my life on someone.  Just as Adam passed along his guilt onto Eve, making God the culprit of Adam’s sin and failure for giving him that dangerous play toy, God was also to be my whipping boy.  He should have been there…and He wasn’t. 

Now, as an adult, with the blessing of a rearview mirror, the guidance of God’s Spirit through God’s Word, plus a whole lifetime of experience, the question I have no longer focuses on the whereabouts of God.  Life and God’s gentle guidance have taught me of His omnipresence in every moment and place I’ve ever walked.  Now the question is more appropriate:  Where is Russell?  Where is Russell’s mind and heart, in relationship to the God who is everywhere, sees everything, and understands every DNA molecule He used to fashion my body, and stamped on my invisible soul?  Mr. Wesley’s question:  How is it with your soul…is the question I now ask in the mirror every day.

For You Today

If you’ve been through some tough living, and you’re tempted to ask the judging question, it would be better to stand facing the mirror.  But if the pain is too great, go ahead and ask God where He’s been…He’s got big shoulders.  My experience is that He will gently remind you that He’s where He’s always been, right next to you, waiting for you to turn….so He can wrap His arms around you.

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

In That Day and The Doily

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©