Hard Thoughts

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Thursday, September 29, 2016

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^(NLT)

Perhaps the hardest of thoughts is to have hope in the midst of grief. 

Battling grief is a common experience; if you live long enough grief will be more than once your uninvited companion on this journey through life.  Often a first touch with grief is as a child when grandparents die.  That was my lot as a pre-teen.  It was then I learned Jeremiah was right; you never forget the time of loss.  In seminary a wise professor shared with us would-be preachers that one of the last, arguably best gifts people give to their grandchildren is their own death; it is a valuable and needed preparation for learning to grieve while parents are still around to comfort and guide.

It has been a little more than a year since my Dad became part of the church triumphant in heaven.  From our family’s perspective he was the last of his generation.  With him passed away any first-hand memories of our family history.  And with our family’s sketchy knowledge of our ancestry, there is a haze of unknowing rather than links to the past.  For my remaining brother and cousins, we don’t know where we come from, and that speaks much about the emptiness and finality of loss.

So what about hope in the middle of loss and grief?

Jeremiah said he dared to hope because his track record with the LORD is that there is mercy forthcoming every morning, like the dew on the ground.  And hope, itself, is much like faith; it is (as the writer of Hebrews proclaimed) the evidence of things we long to see.

There is no standard, one-size-fits-all way to move through grief.  There is certainly no way to escape it altogether, at least not in a healthy way.  It must be embraced as necessary to the process of accepting God’s new mercies in a rotten time.  It must be endured as the inescapable price of loving. 

The question isn’t will I grieve; the question is always, how shall I grieve; how do I start?

Let me borrow some military advice from Jean-Luc Picard.  He is the fictional captain of the Starship Enterprise. 

Patrick Stewart played the captain for the 1980’s TV series, and every time the Enterprise was about to begin a new adventure traversing the next galaxy, or getting ready to do battle with the evil enemies of The Federation, Captain Picard would look wistfully out the front windows from the command center and issue the order to the helmsman, Warp speed….ENGAGE!

This is how we begin – without fear, without hesitation, but not without God.

For You Today

If your pathway is remembering with hard thoughts today, engage…God is faithfully in the middle of it with you with all the new mercies you need.

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 Jiri Hodan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Fear Factor - Part 3

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Devotion Video Here

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.  2 Timothy 1:7^(NLT)

So far this week we have looked at “fear” as a debilitating enemy we need to expect, because it is the main tool of our number 1 enemy, Satan, who wishes to destroy the eternal life we receive in Christ.  We begin to deal with fear by exposing it, bringing it out in the light.  And then we…

Engage It

If you’re a Star Trek fan you’ll recognize the strength of the word “engage”.  Jean Luc Picard[2] is the fictional commander of the Starship Enterprise, charged with the task of going boldly into space where no man had gone before! 

Every time they were about to venture forth in a ship the size of a city there would mountains of preparation, charting the course, checking the logs, calculating the whereabouts of an enemy and checking the engines for warp-speed capability.  But nothing would move forward until Captain Picard would turn to the helmsman and with his finger pointed in the direction they must go, he would command:  engage!

How did Nehemiah encourage the people to “engage” their fears? 

Then as I looked over the situation, I called together the leaders and the people and said to them, “Don’t be afraid of the enemy!  Remember the LORD, who is great and glorious, and fight for your friends, your families, and your homes!”   Nehemiah 4.14  (NLT)

One preacher[3] said of this verse, “Remember the Lord was to be their motto, their rallying cry.  As you may remember in the Spanish-American war, our nation’s battle cry was ‘Remember the Maine.’  In World War I it was ‘Remember the Lusitania.’  In World War II it was ‘Remember Pearl Harbor.’  Even as we receive the Lord’s Supper we are reminded, Do this in remembrance of me. 

The problem with most of our fears is that we allow them to become invincible dragons in our minds, rather than engaging them in warfare. 

An old German proverb says:  Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.[4]   Nehemiah put swords in the hands of the builders and brick carriers; he gave them instructions on what to do when the trumpet sounded, and he reminded them they were fighting for their families and their way of life.  That’s how to engage your fears.

     

     When the bills are bigger than your income, engage your fear – meet it with faith that says He is able to supply every need.

        

     When the doctor says there isn’t a cure, remember to engage that monster with faith – because the Great Physician is on the case.

        When rumors fly about your job, your reputation, the economy, or an election outcome, engage fear by being a person of faith. 

You may not have any sense of what the outcome will be or what God is up to – but faith is just that which walks without sight; otherwise it wouldn’t be faith.

As a believer, engaging our fears means putting our faith to work.  Paul reminded Timothy:

For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.  Philippians 4:13^(NLT)

For You Today

Readiness was the theme for dealing with Nehemiah’s enemies. 

Staying at ready eviscerates fear too.  Nehemiah encouraged the people to face their fears, and that is the key in spiritual matters or family, business or any part of life. 

Are you ready…expecting your enemy to use fear?  Have you exposed it for what it really is…naming the fears you face as an enemy attack? 

Well, then…..ENGAGE!

Think about that out on the Rocky Road today…and have a great day!

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[1] Title image:  By Spc. Megan Leuck, via Wikimedia Commons

[2] By Enterprise-D_crew_quarters.jpg: Derek Springer from Los Angeles, CA, , via Wikimedia Commons

[3] J. Vernon McGee, Through the Bible With J. Vernon McGee, Vol 3, (Pasadena, California), p520.

[4] German Proverb, The Bible Illustrator, Parson’s Technology, Hiawatha Ia