Anatomy of a Journey

Friday, August 11, 2023

All this happened so they would follow his decrees and obey his instructions.  Praise the Lord!  Psalm 105:45

The Psalmist traces the steps of Joseph, beloved son of the patriarch, Jacob.  His brothers sold Jacob like a piece of cloth to a band of nomadic traders headed for Egypt.^[1]  There are enough plot twists and sub-themes in this rags-to-riches success story, to make any Hollywood screen writer drool!  However, the message isn’t just about Joseph’s perseverance through hard times, and prevailing through the unjustness of power structures.  The story of Joseph is a version in miniature of how God does what humans do not understand (particularly those who don’t know God).  It’s a microcosm of spiritual warfare, in which God’s power, often working behind the scenes, is worked-out despite whatever the forces of evil can manage against it.  And it all happens to the glory of God.

Have you ever dreamed of something that is (in your limited understanding) incredibly unreachable?  A dream job?  A home with a thousand acres?  A body that doesn’t sag here and there?  Deep breath without pain?  World peace?  Your version of that story has you in the middle of it; and that is what is so wrong with most versions of Eden…the perfect place, with everything just right.  That dream hardly starts with a group of Ishmaelite traders taking a load of gum, balm, and aromatic resin from Gilead down to Egypt.^[2]  Most dreams like that have the end result as starting point.  We picture ourselves in the lap of luxury, white sandy beach, palm trees, gentle breezes, and a coconut pina colada in a hammock. 

In truth, life may start out gently, a calm, favored child status; Andy and Opie in Mayberry.  But life is hardly tame.  Life’s journey has its twists and mountains, times of up, down, and blindly-sideways.  Some stuff is mundane and predictable, like what to eat for breakfast, or getting that bill in the mail or inbox.  But the kind of day that starts off with:

·       …there was a mistake on your account…or

·       …the test result may have been incorrect…or

·       …I wanted to help you, but…and the all-inclusive promise of doom: 

·       …I’ve decided you aren’t….

These are the excruciating days…resume’ of Joseph kind of stuff.  You get set-up by kin or friend, let-down in a pit, sold-out to the highest bidder, and assassinated by behind-the-back gossip.  It’s easy to draw the cynical conclusion that Mayberry was a conspiracy-theory in reverse; it was Alice in Wonderland’s dream, and you are the Mad Hatter…off to a very important date with your own demise.

It must have seemed that to the disciples when the Healer of Galilee was condemned to die.  He’d preached the Good News of God’s blessing, land of milk and honey, and all the tears wiped-away.  He had told them of life-eternal, and all your dreams come true.  Then he was betrayed, belittled, beaten, and nailed-naked to crossbeams on the town garbage dump.  There wasn’t even enough left in the purse Judas had emptied to buy him a grave…it was a borrowed tomb.

Now, this kind of post-mortem is hardly an advertisement for that thing you get told as a kid:  You are beautiful, you can do anything, or it will all work out in the end.  By the world’s standards, your beauty will fade, you’ll find out some things are way beyond your skills, and how it all works out is way beyond your pay grade.

For You Today 

If you’re tracking with me, and I haven’t lost you yet in gloom, despair and agony-on-me, go just one step further than Friday’s darkness-laden cross and tomb; go all the way to Sunday’s bright revelation; He is risen!

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 Devotions library. 

Title Image:   Pixabay.com

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

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[1] Joseph’s complete story is found in Genesis 37-50. 

[2] Genesis 37:25

Moving Shadows

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Wednesday, October 17, 2018

“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.  Remind me that my days are numbered—how fleeting my life is.  You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand.  My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.” Interlude

We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing.  We heap up wealth, not knowing who will spend it.  And so, Lord, where do I put my hope?  My only hope is in you.  Rescue me from my rebellion.  Do not let fools mock me.          I am silent before you; I won’t say a word, for my punishment is from you.  But please stop striking me!  I am exhausted by the blows from your hand.  When you discipline us for our sins, you consume like a moth what is precious to us.  Each of us is but a breath. Interlude

Hear my prayer, O Lord!  Listen to my cries for help!  Don’t ignore my tears.  For I am your guest—a traveler passing through, as my ancestors were before me.  Leave me alone so I can smile again before I am gone and exist no more.  Psalm 39:4-13(NLT)

The lectionary list of Scriptures for each day provides an Old Testament, Psalm, and New Testament reading.  Today the selections are Job 32, which is steeped in the middle of Job’s misery.  Then Psalm 39, David’s overwhelming grief in the middle of consequences following his adulterous affair with Bathsheba, and his murderous attempt to cover up his sin.  And, finally, Luke 16, the rich man who ignored the poor man and wound up in Hell.  To quote old Homer Rothrock:  There ain’t much romance in any of it!

At the end of David’s prayer he asks God for a little break in this tsunami of guilt washing over his life.  Just give me a little down-time away from reality; let me play a little video game, or shoot a few hoops, practice shoot at the range, find a new girlfriend or some kind of diversion so I can forget my woes, smile a little, have a nice meal and go to bed.  Lord, just one happy day before you take my shadow off this planet!

At the beginning of this selection David asks for a reminder of the brevity of life; by the end of the passage he just wants to be left alone to forget all about it.  We humans, created by the hand of God, are truly complex and not at all consistent in the middle of grief.  But we do follow in our forbearer’s footsteps.  Later David’s son, Solomon would write the one word that describes his father’s deep sorrow – vanity[2].  And for good measure he would emphasize its impact on humanity:  all is vanity.

So, what good comes out of this happy little reflection?  Plenty…if we will hear it…unlike King David, who just wanted a little nappy.  The good news here is the answer for which David longed, a reminder of how brief and empty life will be when all we chase is the wind, with all its’ frantic and frivolous activity of self-absorption towards which we humans are bent.  God interrupts our video game with a power outage, or breaks our basketball hoop just before we make that incredible shot, or He dashes the next disastrous relationship before it gets going, just to keep us grounded.

Why is pain so necessary?  Why did God design life with shadows?  Why does everything seem so empty at times, when God speaks so powerfully about how wonderful it is to serve Him?  Why does He do that?  And the reality comes echoing back even before we finish getting those words out:  God didn’t do that; we did!

And then, like David, like Job, like Dives in Hell, we just want a break from thinking about it; just bring me a little drop of cool water to drip on my parched tongue, a nap, a little diversion from the truth.  That’s what we want; God rarely cooperates!

The Pastor Relations Committee from the two churches I currently serve met with me before the first Sunday we had together in 2012.  The agenda for the meeting included their sharing with me what they hoped to experience in worship, part of which was to not have sugar-coated preaching.  The gist of that hope is:  you cannot understand or rightfully-appreciate the Good News, until you rightly understand the Bad News.

I have so appreciated that thought; it frees the preacher to proclaim the height, depth, and breadth of sin, with all its’ consequences … and then announce the good news, that the love, joy, and salvation of God are bigger than anything sin offers.  David, Job, and Dives, the rich man who wound up in Hell all found out in the hardest of ways that we need to be rescued from our rebellion.  There is a better way than just choosing our own way; our only hope is in Christ Jesus.

For You Today

The next time your life seems like just a moving shadow, remember that when light hits the room shadows have to hide.  Better to live in the light, than to be a moving shadow!

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

[2] Read Ecclesiastes

The Good News About Scary Stuff

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Friday, September 29, 2017

O my people, listen to my instructions.  Open your ears to what I am saying, for I will speak to you in a parable.  I will teach you hidden lessons from our past—stories we have heard and known, stories our ancestors handed down to us.  We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about his power and his mighty wonders….the miracles he did for their ancestors on the plain of Zoan in the land of Egypt.  For he divided the sea and led them through, making the water stand up like walls!  Psalm 78:1-4, 12-13^(NLT)

I can remember as a child in Sunday School first hearing about the Israelites escaping the pursuit of Pharaoh’s armies through the Red Sea.  God made the waters stand up as a wall of water.  Our teacher, Uncle Sid, could get dramatic with this, describing at agonizing length the looming height of the water-walls and how scary it must have been to wonder if the water would come back down on them.  For a 7 year old, that was some scary stuff!

Now it’s quite clear that water standing up, held back in its place by nothing visible, forming an escape route for a million or more people, and only crashing back down when the last one stepped on the other shore, and the Egyptian chariots were right where a tsunami could swallow them up, like an avalanche…well, THAT kind of suspending the natural order of the physical world is what we call a miracle!

And a miracle is what makes any scary stuff into good news!

Scary stuff comes in all sorts of packages:

·       Hurricanes

·       Medical reports

·       A phone call from the state trooper late at night

·       A drunk driver swerves into a head-on collision course with your vehicle

·       Your credit card statement has a $22,000 charge for a weekend in Maui (and you haven’t been out of town since Nixon was president).

But sometimes those scary things are just the invitation to a larger miracle blessing: 

·       A hurricane releases terrible power, but it also is the harbinger of starting anew and building stronger

·       A medical report is an opinion; it has come just in time to save your life

·       A state trooper has arrested your child for driving under the influence; that might just save your child’s life and put him on a better pathway

…and on and on…the scary tsunami water walls are sometimes God’s way of rescuing you from the evil that’s after you.  The issue with any issue going on in our lives at any one moment is hardly ever the issue God is working on. 

·       Have you ever looked back on a bad time in your life and suddenly realized that, as rough as it was to get through that time, the lessons you learned became a valued source of strength?

·       Has a friend ever disappointed you, hurt you?  And yet, in time, the pain caused you to see that friend in a new way – you now have a more compassionate love for that friend that you never knew was on your tool belt?

·       Has an embarrassing moment or fallout from a bad choice ever made you want to crawl in a hole and pull the ground over you…only to turn into the very wakeup call which caused you to change the direction of your life?

This stuff is known as living…and it is the one certain reality for anyone who wants to pick up a cross daily and follow Jesus.

For You Today

Staring at a wall of water these days?  Don’t blink…keep trusting; you’re not home yet!  And if God promised He wouldn’t destroy the earth with a flood, he certainly won’t destroy His children that way.  Whatever happens will turn out for your good.

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

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy:  Pixabay.com