Life Patterns

 

Friday, June 2, 2023

Hold on to the pattern of wholesome teaching you learned from me—a pattern shaped by the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you. 2 Timothy 1:13-14

Patterns are useful.  They are used to identify species of animals, birds, fish, and plant-life.  Patterns help us understand the ways our universe does things, like environmental change; we can only predict what the weather will be like because patterns repeat according to needed reordering of previous conditions.  Hot and dry needs a cooling-off and watering.  Patterns drive ideas, such as how to hold things together more securely.  Wood pieces that have screws to hold the frame tightly last longer.  But the process of building the frame is useless without the screwdriver to make it work.

Since the dawn of time humans have wondered about the meaning of life – the purpose of our existence.  Genetics, only recently uncovered, reveals untold billions of possibilities in patterns, of hair that may be curly or straight, green eyes or brown, tall or short, strength, size and workings of the brain; the list is endless.

The discovery of patterns that exist is obviously hugely-interesting.  However, curiosity satisfaction about patterns is only a doorstep into the skyscraper of the building of why patterns exist at all.  The WHY is God’s gift.  Unlocking the patterns of our universe gave us atomic energy, art, scientific advances in medicine, conservation, evaluation of the mind, and (again) the list is endless.

Paul’s advice to his young pastoral protégé, Timothy, was to hold on to the pattern of wholesome teaching, shaped by the faith and love which Timothy had found in Jesus Christ. 

As with screws that hold wood together, and number patterns that build computer programming, the love and faith to which Paul pointed can be one of two things:  useful, or stockpiled.  To illustrate, let’s use the difference between a collector and a craftsman.  A collector collects whatever seems interesting to possess.  A craftsman puts to use what is available to produce something worth having.  In the metaphysical world of thoughts, philosophy, and theory, to be a collector is useful if you merely want to have a dusty library.  A craftsman goes farther than the collector, putting the screws he picks from the supply to join the wood pieces into a useful chair.

This, then is the back-story to Paul’s advice to Timothy…to be God’s craftsman.  In a follow-up letter, he told the young pastor to take God’s word off the shelf of the collectors, and build it into the lives of people.

Work hard so you can present yourself to God and receive his approval.  Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth.  2 Timothy 2:15

For You Today 

God gave us His word and marching orders…so…be a craftsman, not a collector; go build some people up today!

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   Wondering About the Big Stuff Series:  Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  and We Mortals

Title Image:  via Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.

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

I AM; You ARE

[1] 

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

“I, yes I, am the one who comforts you.  So why are you afraid of mere humans, who wither like the grass and disappear?  Yet you have forgotten the Lord, your Creator, the one who stretched out the sky like a canopy and laid the foundations of the earth.  Will you remain in constant dread of human oppressors?  Will you continue to fear the anger of your enemies?  Where is their fury and anger now?  It is gone!  Soon all you captives will be released!  Imprisonment, starvation, and death will not be your fate!  For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea, causing its waves to roar.  My name is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.  And I have put my words in your mouth and hidden you safely in my hand.  I stretched out the sky like a canopy and laid the foundations of the earth.  I am the one who says to Israel, ‘You are my people!’”  Isaiah 51:12-16

When God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush[2] it was in answer to Moses’ question as to the Lord’s name; God answered, I AM.  A name presupposes and proclaims existential character.  If I say I am carpenter, you already know I build things, and probably have leathery hands from doing battle with wood.  You know my eye will run to the plumb and level of things and I’ll take the time to measure twice and cut once.  In the same way, when you hear I AM, the existential nature of God revealing God sets up a battle of faith.  God’s name declares eternality.  He was before anything (in any sense of linear thought).  He is above all in any sense of moral or ethical consideration.  His sovereignty over the universe and all it holds is not bought, grabbed, or coronated by grant or permission; He simply IS!  And with that simple declaration, the struggle for faith is on; you either believe…or you don’t!

Enter Isaiah, a prophet to a disobedient Jewish nation.  They were a people who declared faith in that I AM God as their God, yet, they kept wandering away from Jehovah.  Their faith was (as Vance Havner used to say) fickle at first and fizzling at the finish.

And yet, God wasn’t done with them.  As the nation languished in the shame and pain of a national thrashing at the hands of enemies who would brutally massacre many thousands and enslave the rest in cruel bondage, God speaks through the prophet words of comfort; The I AM says to them, You ARE.  To a disobedient, sinful people God speaks existential reality of unbroken relationship.  They may have been facing an extinction event politically, but their God would hold true to His promises, that they would never be exterminated; punished, yes…but always held fast in the grip of I AM’s love.

For You Today

Sometimes you might feel like Israel, abandoned to the predators of life.  And, truth be told, you sometimes might BE Israel, having had a crisis of faith, punctuated by wandering in the far country.  But you always ARE; you are His creation and the object of His unfailing love.  The I AM says so!

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

Go to VIDEO

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

[2] Exodus 3

TIME

[1]

Friday, January 1, 2016

^{Devotion VIDEO here}

For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.  A time to be born and a time to die.  A time to plant and a time to harvest.  A time to kill and a time to heal.  A time to tear down and a time to build up.  A time to cry and a time to laugh.  A time to grieve and a time to dance.  A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.  A time to embrace and a time to turn away.  A time to search and a time to quit searching.  A time to keep and a time to throw away.  A time to tear and a time to mend.  A time to be quiet and a time to speak.  A time to love and a time to hate.   A time for war and a time for peace.  What do people really get for all their hard work?   I have seen the burden God has placed on us all.  Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time.  He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.  So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can.  And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.     

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13^(NLT)

A person would have had to be living on the moon to have not heard the expression, there’s a time for everything.  One writer characterized the “seven seasons” of life this way:

1.     Spills of Infancy – Everything goes to the floor as you play the game of “I drop; you pick up”.

2.     Drills of childhood – Spelling drills, multiplication drills, bible drills - The lessons drilled into your head by your parents and teachers.

3.     Thrills of the Teen Years - The feeling of immortality, roller coaster rides, dating, and acne.

4.     Bills of Adult living – Work, bills, Marriage, bills, buying a house bills; car, bills, raising children bills, bills and lots of bills.  I asked a friend who had just become a father for the third time how it feels to be a father of three; he replied, EXPENSIVE!

5.     Ills of the Hills - When the excitement of the midlife crisis lands you in the hospital.

6.     The Pills of Over the Hill - One for arthritis; one for high blood pressure; one for this and two for that.

7.     Wills of Old Age – I will get up, I will get up, No, I will not get up. Uhmm, can I get some help?  I need to get up!^[2]

Everyone can identify with those ills, pills and wills.  We laugh, but only because they are our common experience.  There is as much frustration with being in one stage, knowing that the next is coming.  In fact, we know that is the case, as verse 11 tells us [God]…has planted eternity in the human heart.… 

We are different from the plants, insects and animals in that we sense the existence of time and eternity, and the abstractness of God.  Animals and plant life simply respond to the moment and its environs.  If there is food they eat it and enjoy it; if there are competitors for the food, they fight for it.  They exist and reproduce without regard to antiquity or posterity.  They are the true existentialists, living in the moment.

Humans are different; we ask the question, why?  A three year old can ask that question five million times from the back seat of the car!  Humans can focus on eternity and we want to know the meaning of life; we want to know why we are here.  We search for that meaning, and when we cannot know it, unfortunately we manufacture it. 

Our American slogan:  “In God We Trust” is just that – a slogan.  Sounds good, but if we only say it, our real trust is fully leaning on our ingenuity, imagination and technology.  It’s never what we say, but rather it’s what we do which determines where the real stuff of our living takes place. 

For You Today

If God wills, you’ve got 366 days this year…that’s a little over half-a-million minutes. 

It would be good to trust God in all of them.

You chew on that out on that Rocky Road today…and have a joy-filled and blessed day!

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[1] Title image:  Salvador Dalí [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

[2] Sheila Crowe in "Changing Seasons", Ecclesiastes 3:1-11, SermonCentral.com