Kicking the Hornet's Nest

 

Monday, June 8, 2020

Psalm 29:1-11

Honor the Lord, you heavenly beings; honor the Lord for his glory and strength.  Honor the Lord for the glory of his name.  Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.  The voice of the Lord echoes above the sea.  The God of glory thunders.  The Lord thunders over the mighty sea.  The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic.  The voice of the Lord splits the mighty cedars; the Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon.  He makes Lebanon’s mountains skip like a calf; he makes Mount Hermon leap like a young wild ox.  The voice of the Lord strikes with bolts of lightning.  The voice of the Lord makes the barren wilderness quake; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.  The voice of the Lord twists mighty oaks and strips the forests bare.  In his Temple everyone shouts, “Glory!”  The Lord rules over the floodwaters.  The Lord reigns as king forever.  The Lord gives his people strength.  The Lord blesses them with peace.

The last thing in the world I would ever do is intentionally kick a hornet’s nest.  The key word is intentionally.  I did that once with yellow jackets nesting in a dead, hollow branch of an oak tree.  I was a teenager, helping my Dad in the yard.  The dead limb was huge and hanging over where my brother parked his car.  The little black and yellow dive demons objected to my sawing off the limb that contained their living quarters.  They were VERY unhappy; I spent 2 days in the hospital.

The whole point here is that you do not poke what can poke back much harder than you can take.  If you read David’s psalm objectively, the characterizations of God’s power are bigger than any poke you can handle.  Consider:

·       God’s glory thunders over the sea (which is pretty thunderous itself)

·       God’s answers split the gigantic cedars like twigs

·       God’s power makes the mountains shudder and jump like young oxen

In short, who would want to mess with a God like that?

Yet, it is common in our day to see the cavalier arrogance many people have about God.  That kind of thinking survives only so long as God’s patience.  If you have ever watched a petulant child get angry at his parent, you get this idea.  The child isn’t getting what he wants, so he threatens to run away, or tries to hit the parent.  The parent responds with a smile, or a shrug, or a calm rebuke.  The child ramps up his onslaught, louder, angrier, promising the parent will be sorry.  He’s pushing the envelope, and doesn’t understand that with which he’s trifling.  His parent’s patience is about to result in something akin to what I experienced in that oak tree…more than you ever bargained-for. 

This is a picture of God, our Creator, and the petulance of humans who refuse to even acknowledge the Sovereign of the universe.  God’s patience is incredible (more so than mine).  But God’s patience is not limitless.  He allows us much freedom to find our way, but, we are ultimately responsible to come to Him on bended knee:

Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  Philippians 2:9-11

Let’s Pray Together:

Father, your Word is clear; our responsibility is to choose to love you with all our hearts, minds, soul, and strength.  And when we do that, our hearts find peace.  Help us today to choose well.

For You Today

You can probably recall much of the same experience I had as a child; I knew if Mom or Dad used all 3 of my names, calling out Russell Jay Brownworth…the patience zone had appeared in the rearview mirror!  The hammer was about to fall!  God also has a place like that.  Best not to kick that hornet’s nest!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  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 Psalm 29 see The Voice of the Lord and Joy and Judgment

Wake Up Calls

[1]

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”  Instantly, the man was healed!  He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking!  But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, so the Jewish leaders objected.  They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath!  The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!”  But he replied, “The man who healed me told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”  “Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded.  The man didn’t know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd.  But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.”  Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.  John 5:8-15^(NLT)

I’ve had quite a few wake-up calls in my 71 years.  Some of the things that happen to us are God’s way of getting our attention.  Here are a few of mine:

The Knees – when I was a freshman in high school the doctor looked at the lumps in my knees and called it something I couldn’t pronounce – osteochondrosis.  Even today I have to recheck the spelling on that one.  Here’s a brief definition:

Osteochondrosis is a family of orthopedic diseases of the joint that occur in children, adolescents and other rapidly growing animals, particularly pigs, horses, dogs, and broiler chickens.[2]

So, fine…my first wake-up call put me in the barnyard!  I spent a whole summer as a 14-year-old not playing baseball or getting off the couch!  But I did get to think a lot about why bad stuff happens to really good people (in my case…just why bad stuff happens).

The Bees – put me in the hospital.  I was helping Dad trim some dead branches out of the oak tree that threatened the back of our house.  I picked on the wrong branch; the one with a yellow jacket nest.  Dad was holding the ladder; he looked up when I started hollering.  (Later he told me he couldn’t see my face, it was covered in yellow and black creatures).  Anaphylactic shock from bee venom closes off your airway.  Dad raced his second-born to Doc Bleeden’s house only half-conscious.  Two days in the hospital was something of a vacation compared to jumping out of an oak tree to get away from the bees.

The Knee – this time wasn’t mine, but Harry’s when I was 16.  Harry and I played high school football together.  We were supposed to be on the same team, but this was practice, and Harry’s knee met Russell’s left side.  The spleen split, and I woke up three days later with tubes everywhere.  Once again…lots of time to think about it.

The VC’s (Vietcong) – As a nineteen-year-old, Uncle Sam thought I’d be useful in southeast Asia.  I would have preferred spending my two-year Army career in Colorado, or maybe Honolulu, but Vietnam was the order, and this time I had 11 months and 28 days to deal with heat and people who wanted me dead.  I did get to visit Honolulu, by the way; Elizabeth and I met there for R&R half-way through my Vietnam tour. 

The wake-up calls of my teens must have provided enough angst for my parent’s hair to turn white a few hundred times over. 

I’m familiar enough with these wake-up calls to know how it drives you to think about your mortality – that your days are numbered, and God has that number.  I’m also familiar enough with them to understand that, one of those wake-up calls may not do it; sometimes God needs to use a two-by-four to get our attention.  I’ll save that experience for another day!

For the man Jesus healed – a paralyzed beggar who had been that way for 38 years, sitting, begging – sitting, begging, every day for 38 years…one call just didn’t do it.  He met the King of the universe, who brought strength to useless legs, and gave him a new life…and all the man could do is report him to the human authorities, so he wouldn’t get a ticket for carrying his mat on the Sabbath!

Russell finds it hard to condemn this man…I’ve had more wake-up calls than that, and still didn’t get the message.  I’m a lot older now, and a little bit wiser; I’m learning.

For You Today

Everyone has bad stuff that comes our way.  For me it was bees, knees (several times), and VC’s.  For you…well, you know those, don’t you? 

Have you learned, like I’m beginning to learn…that God wants your attention…one way, or another?  It’s true…wake-up calls are a gift; don’t waste them.

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] Wikipedia