The Lord Keeps Watch Over You

Monday, September 11, 2023

I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there?  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth!  He will not let you stumble; the one who watches over you will not slumber.  Indeed, he who watches over Israel never slumbers or sleeps.  The Lord himself watches over you!  The Lord stands beside you as your protective shade.  The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon at night.  The Lord keeps you from all harm and watches over your life.  The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever.  

Psalm 121:1-8

For more than two decades today’s date on the calendar brings remembrances of the coordinated attacks on American soil in 2001.  It also recalls other times when the sovereignty of our nation was tested.  By the late 1950’s Baby Boomers were losing sight of what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  Memories fade as generations age-out.  However, as the 2^nd-Century church father, Tertullian, wrote of the church being persecuted by Roman emperors:   We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed. 

This strong belief spawned the ideas of freedom, which produced this nation, birthed in the blood struggle of revolution.  Renewed times of sacrifice are the hallmark of any nation committed to living free.  We enjoy freedom, but the cost is anything but cheap.

The same can be said about the freedom of a human soul.  Such freedom is not from tyrants of flesh-and-blood.  Rather it is the enslavement of human will, chains that restrain us from living as intended by our Creator. 

Genesis records that when God made Adam and Eve, He blessed them.  It was that first blessing which instilled in humankind the desire for freedom.  That remains our heritage and future…freedom in Christ. 

Today’s text views how God intended for that to work.  When we feel small, weak, or threatened, we look for help.  The mountains are symbols of great strength and endurance.  The Psalmist asks:  will help come from what I can see…those mountains which are forever?  The question is rhetorical, and implies the answer with the absurdity of piles of dirt, rocks, and trees providing help.  Those hills are beautiful, but impersonal; they are impassable hinderances to travelers, or beautiful reminders of home and majesty, but help is something that comes from the Lord who watches over us.

So, it is folly to look to mountains for help.  Rather it is Scripture’s intent to remind us to look past the gift of such majestic beauty like mountains, or freedom.  Look past the gift…all the way to the Giver, He who created, and gifted those mountains to the likes of us.  Governments and their programs are gifts to us of order, controlling what might be the mayhem of evil.  Other humans are capable of both good to help, and evil to harm.  Your own strength is a gift, and God expects you to use it for his divine and benevolent purposes.  But ultimately, you can depend on nothing more (or less) than the divine, loving heart of God, filled with compassion and love for you.

For You Today 

It is right for us to honor the lives lost on September 11^th.  And all lives taken too soon by wars and all sorts of evil.  It is a Godly thing to remember, and bless that memory. 

Let us also go further than ceremony; let continued resolve recall the source of our freedom:  He who watches over us without sleeping or skipping a beat.  It was His blood which bought freedom for the soul.

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

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road library. 

Title Images:  Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain. Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©   

I Think I'm Having Stress

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Friday, November 2, 2018

Praise the Lord!  Let all that I am praise the Lord.  I will praise the Lord as long as I live.  I will sing praises to my God with my dying breath.  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.  He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them.  He keeps every promise forever.  He gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry.  The Lord frees the prisoners.  The Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  The Lord lifts up those who are weighed down.  The Lord loves the godly.  The Lord protects the foreigners among us.  He cares for the orphans and widows, but he frustrates the plans of the wicked.  The Lord will reign forever.  He will be your God, O Jerusalem, throughout the generations.  Praise the Lord!  Psalm 146:1-10(NLT)

A lady called a mother friend of hers to ask how she was getting along.  Said the voice on the other end of the phone:  I'm sick, the house is a mess, and the kids are making me crazy."  

Said the friend:  Don't move a muscle, I'll be right over; I'll cook and clean for you and keep your kids out of your hair until your husband, Sam gets home.   

Said the harried mother, Sam?  My husband's name isn't Sam!  

Said the other, Oh, I'm sorry.  I must have dialed the wrong number. 

After a brief pause the tired Mom said:  That's O.K., but.... you’re still coming over, aren't you?[2]

People find themselves under the effects of a load of stress these days.  Of course, it is no new thing; Adam and Eve had a pile of it to deal with, and then their younger son was murdered by his own brother.  Most stress is produced by breakdowns in relationship; mini-disagreements or maxi, as in the case of Cain and Abel.  But all conflict between humans produces tension and the threat of being overwhelmed. 

We look in all sorts of directions for help, personal coping mechanisms, friends, neighbors, programs that promise help or resources.  There are self-help books, retreats, gurus and, the prize-winner in all the competition to ease your troubled mind: dropping-out.  The opting-out of tension dimension is filled with more choices:  TV, adulterous affairs, drugs that numb your ability to feel, and too many more to list.

I have heard the concept that tension can be good or bad.  Eustress is the good kind; like the tension on the strings of a violin, tightened just enough to be in perfect tune.  This is like the push-and-pull of a healthy relationship between co-workers who respect each other’s contribution to a project.  But, if the roles, established authority patterns, or lines of communication get confused, or just plain shattered, like a violin string pulled too tightly --- SNAP!

Our Psalmist was no stranger to stress; he knew the effects of being weighed down like an overburdened pack animal.  He knew the prison of empty promises and false friendships.  He understood the loneliness of being a powerless outsider without hope.  And so, this man said goodbye to counting on the powerful of this earth to bring him any relief; he turned his heart Heavenward.  And, there he found hope, joy, and the lift of a friend.

I’m not dissing the whole human race here; we need to learn and practice knowing, understanding, and helping each other; that’s a godly thing!  But, my whole point is to give trust slowly and carefully.  If we entrust ourselves to anyone else’s leading, just because they sound good when they talk, we will soon find that trust violated (and maybe our pocket picked!).

Rather, trust freely and quickly in the Lord; never a promise broken there!

For You Today

How’s it going in that stress department?  Are your stripes unravelling?  Here’s a gentle reminder where to turn:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.
Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.  Proverbs 3:5-6(NLT)

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

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of John Wilcock's the column of lasting insignificance 2-8-14

[2] Stressed Mom image, Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Remembering

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Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Dedicate to me every firstborn among the Israelites. The first offspring to be born, of both humans and animals, belongs to me.”  So Moses said to the people, “This is a day to remember forever—the day you left Egypt, the place of your slavery.  Today the Lord has brought you out by the power of his mighty hand….“On the seventh day you must explain to your children, ‘I am celebrating what the Lord did for me when I left Egypt.’  This annual festival will be a visible sign to you, like a mark branded on your hand or your forehead. Let it remind you always to recite this teaching of the Lord:  ‘With a strong hand, the Lord rescued you from Egypt.’  So observe the decree of this festival at the appointed time each year.  Exodus 13:1-3, 8-10^(NLT)

With each passing year it becomes more difficult to keep the past alive.  Memory is a fading thing.  This is why we RE-member; we put back together that which has been DIS-membered from us (no matter how imperceptibly or how dramatically).  We regather our sense of that moment in time when things changed. 

Some things need to be kept alive.  For a nation at war, there needs to be a recalling of why we do what we do – why we continue to send our sons and daughters into harm’s way.  Because once purpose fails in our memory, once reasoning is put aside in favor of action, that which remains becomes grotesquely horrid, a caricature of what was once a noble quest, and now a thing filled only with the carnage of blood and future victims of PTSD.  War becomes our reason for war.

Like Israel, we are to remember the place of our slavery.  When we remember why we embarked upon a bloody course of fighting, we can re-focus on where the goal is, and when enough will be enough.  We remember to keep our direction sure and our course to our objective of peace straight.

This is what a memorial is supposed to teach, how things went wrong, and how it was put right.  In so doing we teach our young ones who were born into the chaos we now experience – those who have no memory of why the chaos began – that chaos is not our target; our target is an end to chaos.

Another memorial was created to teach how things went wrong.  We call it by many names:  the Supper, Communion, Ordinance, Sacrament, Eucharist and more.  There are not many moving parts…a bit of bread, a sip of wine.  But as the simplicity of the 9/11 memorial begs a storehouse of nightmarish memories 16 years ago, the Lord’s Table envisions the war of the ages begun in Eden.  It is the covering of blood over the sin of our species.  It is the event of the cross where we RE-member; it is where the broken members of our spiritual being are knit back together, so we are once more whole and fitted parts of our Creator’s body.

This then is the target we revere and to which honor affixes expending the price – peace in a world gone mad with the lust of anger, lust and killing.

Truly, let us remember our loss, and justly, let us push for the restoration of what is holy and right.

For You Today

It is well-said that freedom isn’t free; neither is the cost of remembering. 

And the highest cost is certainly that of forgetting!

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

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Repent and Be Baptized

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Friday, July 28, 2017

This text is the end of Peter’s Pentecost Sermon.  Jesus has been crucified, buried, resurrected on the third day, and ascended to the Father in Heaven.  Peter has just told the crowd that Jesus, Messiah, had come to love us and we crucified him:

Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?”  Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.  Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Acts 2:37-38^(NLT)

Why repentance and baptism?  How does that speak to the unspeakable misery of humankind around the world?  The group listening to Peter got the point, even if we in the 21^st century have largely missed it.  Repentance and baptism is how you get right with God.

About three thousand folks responded to the promise of Joel ^(2:28) by calling on the Lord, repenting of their sin; they were saved, and then baptized. 

How would you describe the events of September 11, 2001?  Was it Satanic or evil attack, Jihad, Islamic holy war, or just plain schizophrenic madness of a cult?  Any of those can be debated; what cannot be debated is that God speaks to us in that misery and carnage; He calls out to us to call upon His name to be saved.

    God calls to us saying, See, I have better things in mind for you.

    God calls to us saying, Men may lie in wait to destroy, I will love you.

    God calls to us saying, Without My forgiveness you will hate just as much as the ones who attacked you.

Leslie Williamson lives in Nevada.  Her 7 year old son was baptized in Lake Tahoe.  She watched with tears as he came up out of the water. 

Do you feel any different she asked. 

Yeah, Mom, I do, he replied.  Now I have water up my nose![ii]

Repenting and calling upon the name of the Lord, and then following Him in believer’s baptism isn’t about whether you feel different, better, wiser, or even saved.  It is all about obedience to God whether you feel like it or not – whether you question God or not.

For You Today

Obedience brings joy. 

And when you make up your mind to obey God, you will find He has a wonderful plan for encouraging you along the way. 

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

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NOTES

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[i] Title Image: By U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Scott B. Boyle [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] Leslie A. Williamson, Gardnerville, NV. Today's Christian Woman, "Heart to Heart.”

Faith or Terror?

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                                                                                                 Tuesday, October 4, 2016

“You have invited terrors from all around, as though you were calling them to a day of feasting.  In the day of the Lord’s anger, no one has escaped or survived.  The enemy has killed all the children whom I carried and raised.”  Lamentations 2:22^(NLT)

For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith.  And who can win this battle against the world?  Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.  1 John 5:4^(NLT)

Of all the preachers in the world whom Joel Osteen would NOT call to supply for him when he went on vacation, Jeremiah heads the list!  Jeremiah watched the devastation as Israel was plowed-under by her enemies and laments loudly that God has forsaken them in the day of terror; even worse, God was behind it all! 

Not much prosperity theology or feel good in that sermon!

But Jeremiah wasn’t filling-in for a 21^st century entertainer, he was speaking for JHVH.  And the message he was bringing was that God had indeed orchestrated the devastation of Jerusalem by her enemies because of her sinful ways^{(Lamentations 1:5, 8)}. 

They had forsaken their God and this was a nation’s wake-up call!

The two greatest threats to any nation’s soul are riches and terror.  Riches are what lead to ease and self-indulgence; terror is what drives a nation back to pray.  And a nation is really in trouble when the powerfully-rich are leading the prayers.

I’ve been working on a sermon called “Undecided – But Leaning”.  It is an expression of lament for America in its current political cycle.  We are more than divided, America has become so polarized around political personalities that we fail to see our real threat.  The biggest enemy America faces is not a wobbling economy, poor education, or even terrorists from al Qaeda or ISIS; our real enemy, like Israel of old is going to be God.

In Scripture JHVH is described as patient^{(2 Peter 3:9)} but you have to wonder if we are at the end of that string.  In His kindness and forbearing ways, the loving, heavenly Father will allow His children to step just so far away from His purposes before he snaps us back to reality.

When terror struck on September 11, 2001, the following week churches were filled with praying people.  Fifteen years later we still shudder over the terror attacks, but now churches are emptying faster than rats exit a sinking ship.

In our political games-playing we have a candidate who wants to make America great again, and one who wants to save us from the candidate who wants to make America great again.  The insults are flung back and forth across the aisle and the news networks are raking in big bucks covering the entertainment.

My question is:  Are there any left in Zion who will bend the knee?  Or are we bound for the land of Babylon’s captivity?

For You Today

If this devotion sounded dark to you today, perhaps it is because we are a lot closer to midnight on God’s scale, than the breaking dawn you hear from the politicians.

True victory over any kind of terror is a matter of faith.

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

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NOTES

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[i] Title Images: By Боевик (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons & See page for author, via Wikimedia Commons