Alive

Friday, January 13, 2023

In my first book I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit.  During the forty days after he suffered and died, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive.  And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.  Acts 1:1-3

In a world full of superstition and baser people who were strong enough, and always willing to take advantage of the naïve, Jesus took care to assure the disciples that he was actually alive.  They were not very accustomed to formerly-dead persons walking, talking, and “being” with them.  In this context, with their fears and amazement sidelined, Jesus then talked to them about the coming Kingdom of God.  Their understanding of the Kingdom had been clouded by the typical, traditional thought pattern, which pointed to an earthly, political kingdom.  Frankly, Roman oppression had fueled a desire to see the blood of Ceasar’s soldiers gushing throught the streets of Jerusalem.  But Jesus pointed to a higher Kingdom, a Temple not made with hands, but overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, descending from the heavens, an eternal gift from the Father of Lights, where God, Himself would dwell with His people, and wipe away every tear.[1]

Sometimes it takes a moment for new thoughts to emerge from the shadows of dusty, dark places, where your mind has been wasting-away.  For the slower among us (like me) it may take weeks, months, or decades for light to dawn.

After serving in the military, I entered the business world at the ripe old age of 21.  In sales, and subsequently management, the visions of sugarplum-success danced in my head.  I totally bought-into the idea of hard work and nose-to-the-grindstone attention to building a little kingdom…for Russell and family.  About twelve years into this plan, it was going well for the net-worth bottom line, but relationships were suffering, along with internal growing awareness that I was chasing a rainbow that might destroy everything in me that God intended for my good, both now, and for eternity.   Then, like the apostle Paul, I met Jesus.  

Unlike Paul, I didn’t go blind, nor was it a blinding light, or an audible voice…it was more a growing understanding of how much of a god I had made of my wealth-quest, and how little value there was in building a soft financial nest in which to land.  The realization dawned on me that everything (without exception) shrivels and fades if it’s entirely constructed of human means and desires.  Only God, and what He ordains lasts.  And God ordained that our souls would last…for eternity. 

I was chasing the wrong “brass ring” of wealth, while God was trying to show me the beauty of His presence, and the gifts he was just eagerly waiting to bestow on my inner being.  He wanted to bless me with the knowledge of what its like to be REALLY ALIVE!

For You Today  

While a preacher can talk to you about these things (and we do love to do that…you give me a chance to have that discussion and you’ll make my day!); but no human being can lead you into that reality.  Like choosing favorite colors, flavors, or anything else that will be the endearing pattern and trademark of your life, it must be YOUR choosing.  So, the last words for all of this:  Choose ALIVE!

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: 

The Kingdom of God  and  The Interview

Images:  Title Pixabay.com   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Read Revelation 21 – read slowly and savor each image of God’s loving presence Also See James 1:17

The Many Faces of Hope

 

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Some wandered in the wilderness, lost and homeless.  Hungry and thirsty, they nearly died.  “Lord, help!” they cried in their trouble, and he rescued them from their distress.  He led them straight to safety, to a city where they could live.  Psalm 107:4-7

This Psalm celebrates Israel’s history, of course.  But it is also a story told and retold throughout the generations of humanity; it is the story of distress and deliverance, rags to riches, dungeon to throne, love-lost to reunion, blindness to sight, crippled to leaping, and in a thousand other themes.  This is God’s story of the bleak impossible turned real, the ageless, magnificent story of hope and salvation.

Monday of this week the ultimate working-out of this story made its way into my line of sight…again.  We buried a church member.  Linda was not pretentious or mean-spirited.  She wasn’t over-demanding or unduly-proud (other than her love of Alabama’s Crimson Tide football team!).  She was just Linda, mother, grand & great grandmother.  She loved her family and football!

It is humbling to stand before any congregation with the awesome charge to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ…but particularly so when the charge for the preacher is to say a word of comfort to a grieving family.  The words are in the church’s worship book, about why we gather, that in pain we may find comfort, in sorrow hope, in death resurrection.  Sometimes that comfort, hope, and resurrection come in just gathering, or the preacher’s words, or a child’s reciting a memory verse.  Monday, for me, it came in the son-in-law’s song.  With a resounding baritone, Rick sang Celebrate Me Home.  The words are particularly filled with faith in God which overcome pain and sorrow.  It was almost impossible to get off my chair and continue.  Here are the words he sang:

When the time comes and I am standing at the river

That separates the two worlds that I love

Torn between my precious friends and my family

And the place of peace that's waiting up above

Hold my hand and stay there by my side, And when I finally step into the tide

Celebrate me home!  Celebrate me there

Celebrate me in that land of wonder where nothing can compare

Celebrate me in that place Celebrate me saved by grace

Don't just sit and weep because I'm gone…Celebrate me Home

I have spent most of my life on earth preparing

To take the trip from here to Heaven's throne

With the Shield and Word of God to guide me 

Its a comfort knowing I am not alone

So when I take my final fleeting breath  And fade into the gentle sleep of death

Celebrate me home!  Celebrate me there

Celebrate me in that land of wonder where nothing can compare

Celebrate me in that place  Celebrate me saved by grace

Don't just sit and weep because I'm gone  Celebrate me Home

No more broken dreams  No more tears to cry  Into my Father's arms I'll fly  Celebrate me home!  Celebrate me there

Celebrate me in that land of wonder where nothing can compare

Celebrate me in that place  Celebrate me saved by grace

Don't just sit and weep because I'm gone  Celebrate me Home![1]

This is more than just a tear-jerker, designed to create a momentary flood of emotion.  This is a Christ-centered statement of faith, and the fondest prayer I know for the ones I love.  It bridges the divide between longing for Heaven, and the connection of here.

For You Today

If you’ve lost someone, and you’ve run out of ways to stop hurting, take a few minutes to re-read the words of this song.  Listen to it sung.[2]  Discuss these words with another friend, or your pastor.  This is why God gave us The Church…so we can move beyond grieving as those who have no hope.  ^{1 Thessalonians 4:13} 

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

[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com    Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

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[1] Celebrate Me Home, Joel Lindsey, Wayne Haun, performed by The Perrys, 2012, (Songlyrics.com)

[2] Go here to listen to The Perrys’ version on YouTube.com

Passover's New Day

Thursday of Holy Week, April 9, 2020

While the Israelites were still in the land of Egypt, the Lord gave the following instructions to Moses and Aaron: 2 “From now on, this month will be the first month of the year for you. 3 Announce to the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each family must choose a lamb or a young goat for a sacrifice, one animal for each household. 4 If a family is too small to eat a whole animal, let them share with another family in the neighborhood. Divide the animal according to the size of each family and how much they can eat.  Exodus 12:1-4

11 “These are your instructions for eating this meal: Be fully dressed,[a] wear your sandals, and carry your walking stick in your hand. Eat the meal with urgency, for this is the Lord’s Passover. 12 On that night I will pass through the land of Egypt and strike down every firstborn son and firstborn male animal in the land of Egypt. I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt, for I am the Lord! 13 But the blood on your doorposts will serve as a sign, marking the houses where you are staying. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. This plague of death will not touch you when I strike the land of Egypt.  14 “This is a day to remember. Each year, from generation to generation, you must celebrate it as a special festival to the Lord. This is a law for all time.  Exodus 12:11-14

Passover, the marking of the first day of freedom for the Israelites leaving Egypt, began last night, and ends with sundown this evening.  Jewish families will gather at the table and recite Scripture, explain their epic history of being God’s chosen people, joyful, worshipping people, disobedient, sinful people, and, like us, forgiven people; they will eat the meal of haste and remember.

As part of the remembering process they will think on the new order of things as God instructed them to consider this date as their New Year.  After 400 years of slavery they were getting a do-over, released from bondage to liberty.  This was their Fourth of July…a new, released-and-back-on-mission family of God.

I can’t help connecting this New Day feel to what we’re experiencing right now.  Of course our “bondage” to Coronavirus is only a few months old; hardly a four-century saga of suffering.  But I cannot help shaking the thought that we are on the cusp of a new normal that is game-changing.  And, if you’re asking exactly what that means, I have to demur speculation in favor of fuzzy.  I only have an impression something looms large for the human race. 

I will tell you what I hope, and that for which I pray: 

He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!”  Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!  Revelation 22:20

But, absent of that final prayer and promise of Scripture, the other possibility in my mind and heart is a regeneration of respect. 

·      Respect for our tongues and ears – where there is a kinder, gentler, more positive tone in daily speak in conversations, media, and any interaction between humans.

·      Respect for our stewardship of God’s resources

·      Respect for being what God created, not what our darkness imagined

·      Respect for God, Himself…a regeneration of refreshing revival

Our world has had enough of terrorism, plagues, and living in fear.  It’s time to get along and live the love of Passover’s New Day.

For You Today

The role of the church is not exhausted just because we’ve been locked out of our buildings.  Somehow, it seems, the church is reborn every time the pressure cooker of life starts to blow off steam.  This day is our new chance to get it right.

Go to VIDEO

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

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

For other posts on Exodus 12 and the Passover see Ready to Travel and Seder; Meal of Haste and This Holy Week – Part 4

Hope - Despair

[1]

Monday, July 30, 2018

For we live by believing and not by seeing.   

2 Corinthians 5:7^(NLT)

I’ve still got the dog tags from my stint in the U.S. Army.  Every soldier wears these for identification in case you’re wounded or dead and need to be identified.  There is a line on the tag which is for religious information; mine read no preference.  After all, I was 19, and knew everything.  I was in ignorance…literally.  I identified as an agnostic, one who couldn’t be said to be an atheist, but rather chose to simply say nobody can actually know if there is a god or not.  The word’s etymology says it all.  In ancient Greek gnosis is knowledge; if you put an “a” in front it turns into a negative (a·gnosis), and it simply designates the opposite of knowledge.  An agnostic says you’re against knowing!  How appropriate for a 19-year-old know-it-all!

Scripture declares that our faith (everyone has at least a seed of faith) is what will produce hope (as opposed to despair).  Faith, nurtured and given a chance to grow, naturally moves towards He who IS hope, Jesus Christ, crucified, buried, resurrected on the third day, ascended to the Father in Heaven, and coming again to judge the quick and the dead.

Now, at 19, this slow learner wasn’t ready to understand that, or admit it.  It was “safer” (so I thought in my 19-year-old wisdom) to toddle off to Vietnam with agent orange, bullets and bombs, and anti-personnel mines everywhere you walk, with any faith-belief system placed on-hold. Because, in my chosen ignorance – agnosticism, knowledge that you KNOW you can’t know anyway…well, the reality is, I just didn’t want to think my parents might be right.  The government had issued me a flak jacket, helmet, and M-14 rifle; that seemed a whole lot more protection than a god I couldn’t see.  I had 19-year-old wisdom, after all, and anyone that wise understands, it’s all up to chance, and the strong are the ones who survive and get it done.

Fast forward a half-century.

I’m a lot older now…and just a little wiser than that kid getting on a plane for Vietnam.  What I discovered in the interim is two-fold:

1.      It is only by the grace of the God I put on-hold that I was not killed that year in my agnostic wisdom and woke-up in hell.

2.      Even if a person is struggling with faith in God, choosing to believe what you cannot seem to prove is smarter than just ignoring Him with a fancy-sounding name, like agnostic.

There are, after all, only two possibilities:

1.      There is no god…it’s all as Karl Marx phrased it, that religion is the opiate of the masses, just a pacifier to suck-on to get through life without going mad.

2.      There is God…and, as Creator and Sustainer of all life, He is personal and has a prior claim on our lives, so we’d better get our stuff together and honor Him.

But, even putting aside the agnostic’s chief rationale, that you really can’t know for sure that God exists, there is a firm footing to be gained in choosing to believe anyway.  That footing (believe it or not) is Karl Marx – the opiate, (drug, if you will) of faith does indeed produce hope.  And hope is a whole lot lovelier than despair to walk around with, even if there isn’t a God.

From one who has been on both sides of that equation – I choose hope; I choose faith in God. 

And, incidentally, when I chose to walk by faith, and not by my willful agnosticism, a wonderful thing happened; my faith grew into hope in the faith once-delivered to the saints.  And I understood agnosticism is just as empty-headed as it implies.  You can know He is real, and His love will keep you with assurance that you are His, and loved.

For You Today

By the way, did you know Karl Marx was right at this point:  without acting on our faith, trusting in the God we can’t see – life will not make any sense, and will lead you to despair, and the ultimate choice for the agnostic or atheist – opting out.  There is a long list[2] of well-known people living against-faith who have done that – Ernest Hemmingway, Robyn Williams, and Anthony Bourdain, just to name a few.  In the end their disposition is not much different than one of the most famous – Judas Iscariot.

So, here’s the advice on struggling with faith – do what John Wesley, founder of Methodism, was advised by Peter Boehler[3] a wise Moravian missionary.  Wesley was struggling to have faith; Boehler said:  Preach faith until you have faith. 

So, my friend, walk by faith until your need for sight disappears!

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

Go to VIDEO

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] 23 Lists (celebrities who have committed suicide)

[3] See Boehler on Wikipedia.com