The Gift of Morning Dew

Friday, August 18, 2023

How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!  For harmony is as precious as the anointing oil that was poured over Aaron’s head, that ran down his beard and onto the border of his robe.  Harmony is as refreshing as the dew from Mount Hermon that falls on the mountains of Zion.  And there the Lord has pronounced his blessing, even life everlasting. Psalm 133:1-3

Harmony produces synergy.  That’s when everything works together to have a result which is greater than the sum of its’ individual parts.  The Psalmist tells us it’s a wonderfully-pleasant reality.  Most people misunderstand its source, it’s a gift from God.  The Psalmist compares Mt. Hermon’s misty-morning dew, flowing-down as a gift over the blistering summer heat that parches the entire region.[1]  Without that refreshing dew falling on the lower region of Zion’s hills, the scorched earth would produce famine and death.  And, since humankind is not in charge of the earth’s atmosphere or weather, it is the hand of the Creator (Jehovah-Jireh) which provides that misty life-saver. 

It is so with harmony.  One individual human being’s decision to work-together is simply that – one unselfish decision.  To have even the slightest chance of germinating into harmony requires the cooperating touch of another.  But even a crowd of cooperators, working like carpenter ants, cannot produce genuine harmony without the dew of God’s gift. 

Much like Colonel Sanders’ fried-chicken venture, the chicken, flour, spices, frying pan, and cornflakes were already there; but it wouldn’t have synergized into that wonderful original and crispy, unless the white-bearded man put them together.

In a greater way, God designed human life to be saturated with this gift of harmony, soaked with kindness, forbearance, generosity, patience, joy, peace, gentleness, and love.  The opposite is selfishness, impatience, greed, petulance, anger, violence, crudeness, and isolation; these are known by their common name, sin. 

For You Today 

Living together in harmony is something of a delicate art, as tenuous as thinking two cats with their tails tied-together will be able to keep their cool more than 3 seconds. 

But God made it possible for us to dwell together in peace as families, neighborhoods, countries, races, and any other diverse complication in the universe, with another kind of “dew” that drips down from Golgotha, the precious blood of Jesus Christ.  This is the gift of ultimate synergy for the soul, and it is the only solution that will bring peace in this lifetime or eternity!

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 library. 

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

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©  

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[1] The Biblical Illustrator, Electronic Database© 2011 by Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission. BibleSoft.com

That Perfect Moment

 

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!  

Psalm 133:1

A Perfect Moment is, by definition, only 60 seconds, or shorter, or, at least, not much longer.  In many places Scripture is fluid as to time’s length, a day can be as a thousand years, or the other way around. 

As much as time may be relative, and seem longer or shorter than you, or others see it, one consistent fact about a moment is that it has both a beginning and ending.   A hug begins at some point, and is momentary…it ends when the embrace does.  The same can be said of human harmony.  There are times when all seems right…until it isn’t.  And, when that realization happens, it may become the twelve-second lead on the nightly news.  There is a reason police consider the call to a domestic dispute as potentially one of the most dangerous events of any day.  When the harmonious hug ends, the belligerent battle may kick-in. 

And woe to the bystanders!  Bystanders in the wake of disappearing harmony are described in many ways:  victim, refugee, casualty, collateral damage, just to name a few.  Everyone knows some of these; many (maybe you) have been these.  It is a story as old as Genesis, when Adam’s family brotherhood was broken with Cain’s using a rock on the back of Abel’s head to make his point.

If you have experienced harmony at some point in life, you’re aware of its sweetness.  But you are also likely to give testimony of it’s brevity. 

Most generations long for that harmonious culture of everyone getting along.  The founders of the American dream of equality and opportunity wanted a nation to undergird the rights of all to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.  But, as one critic observed, we’re guaranteed the right to it, but pursuing it is up to you. The builder generation (which gave the world my parents) lived through a depression and two world wars.  They imagined harmony would be achieved with the establishment of the “United Nations” – an end to future wars, and happiness with peace for all.  How’s that working for us?  The boomer generation, offspring of the builders [my hand raised here] chased harmony via the sexual revolution.  It’s a little naïve to suppose peace and serenity can be achieved in the most intensely-passionate of human relations.  And the current generation is as certain as all their predecessors the key to harmony will be found in shaming others for their lack of harmony.  Or pinning another peace and love slogan on their forearm or neck.  At the risk of joining the fun in all that shaming, that’s as effective as putting a bandaid on cancer.

Harmony has no easy answers, no GPS to lead you to that perfect moment of brotherhood.  And, even in the most picturesque selfie of the happy hug moment there is the grotesque reality looming that it will be just that…a moment.  The illusion of having arrived at lasting peace is also just that, a vapor, a cloud that can be blown away by even a gentle breeze, let alone the storms of our day.

For You Today

There is a way to harmony.  It is to be found in putting aside all notions that we can achieve such by human effort or ideology alone.  That’s disillusioned arrogance at best.  Rather, the only hope for lasting harmony is what Jesus preached to the crowd that day, recorded in Matthew 5-7.  This Sermon on the Mount was no litany of rules and regulations for religious zealots, it was the attitude and actions that describe Who the Prince of Peace is, and what His followers would look like, the peacemakers, the ones who hunger and thirst after righteousness with everything they think, say, and do.  And they start with anyone who crosses their pathway.

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

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

Thankful for Stress and its Ministry in My Life

 

Monday, May 24, 2021

God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.  Psalm 73: 26

From Our Daily Bread[1]:

In 1812, the genteel New Englander Ann Judson embarked with her husband Adoniram on a long ministry of danger and hardship. The Judsons were sailing to far-off Burma as pioneer missionaries.

Ann recorded in her diary how they survived in next-to-intolerable conditions. "Have been distressed for some days on account of the gloomy prospect before us," she wrote. "Everything respecting our little mission is involved in uncertainty. I find it hard to live by faith, and confide entirely in God when the way is dark before me."

Yet Ann added, "If the way were plain and easy, where would be the room for confidence in God. Instead, then, of murmuring and complaining, let me rejoice and be thankful that my heavenly Father compels me to trust in Him by removing those things on which we are naturally inclined to lean."

What is our attitude when the props we have depended on are suddenly gone? Are we grateful for the trials that can strengthen our faith? For the child of God, great stress can develop great faith--and reveal God's great grace. --VCG

When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the veil. --Mote

Adoniram and Anne Judson were missionaries in a difficult spot.  I’ve ministered for about as long as they, but I was not challenged by nearly the severity they experienced.  In forty years in the ministry I’ve not missed meals, or been forced to claim bankruptcy.  The houses I’ve lived in, both parsonages and my own homes have been heated and air-conditioned.  We have been cared-for by God’s grace in so many ways. 

All that said, I can look back on some times, like Anne recorded in her diary, where I wondered if I’d missed God’s will, or if someone causing some problems had missed God’s voice.  In all the times of doubt, trouble, despair I’ve been driven to prayer and depending on God’s promises.  In all the times of plenty, joy, and blessing (which account for much more than the difficult times) I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, to not get too full of myself, because the blessings were always at God’s hand, not because I deserved them.  And in both the difficult and delightful times there has been stress.  Bad stress is like a violin string pulled too tight, or sagging too loose; the notes are like molasses pits or screeching like you’ve dragged your fingernails across the chalkboard.  Good stress is when the string is tuned just right, cooperates with the other instruments, and produces sounds that lift one to plains of delight!

I’m thankful for the bad stress and good…one teaches me what joy and Divine connection is like – the other teaches me that I’m off course, and need to pay attention to God’s Word more.

For You Today

Are you thankful for the ministry of stress?

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

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

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[1] December 17, 1998 “Grateful for Stress”

Living in Harmony

 

Thursday, August 13, 2020

How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!  For harmony is as precious as the anointing oil that was poured over Aaron’s head, that ran down his beard and onto the border of his robe.  Harmony is as refreshing as the dew from Mount Hermon that falls on the mountains of Zion.  And there the Lord has pronounced his blessing, even life everlasting.  Psalm 133:1-3

Harmony is…the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole.[1]

Almost 40 years ago music icons Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s music video lit up the charts in a plea for humanity to find a way to exist in harmony:

Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony

Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord, why don't we?[2]

Both of those artists helped define the distinctives of the Baby Boomer generation, those who came along after World War II.  In typical arrogance, fueled by youthful naiveté, the Boomers imagined we were the first to really get it right about how to have a perfect world.  The concept of harmony, just getting along with each other, learning to love each other, worked well in theory; in practice we didn’t do so well.

To wit:  2020.  If the dictionary is right about harmony being a pleasing, consistent whole (of divergent, cacophonous parts), we’re about as much in tune with each other in 2020 as sounds of a catfight in the middle of the night.

It’s hard for me to point a finger at the current generation for the way they’re proclaiming how to get it right in racial harmony, especially when my generation tried the same, worn-out garment of protest, public blaming, exclusion, infighting, and general unrest.  Fighting fire with fire makes for a catchy soundbite, but it’s a horrible methodology for bringing people to a point of respect, and even love, much less the promised land of harmony.

In the same way that light and the absence of light cannot exist in the same space, so harmony will never occupy the same space with anger.  Several weeks ago I preached a sermon on the text of Genesis 33[3] where estranged brothers Jacob and Esau reconciled after a 20-year feud.  The reconciliation only happened because they both decided that the anger that fueled the rift was just not working.  

In fact, putting aside the anger was the only way dust could have enough chance to settle so the importance of their relationship would be seen.

As a visual representation of the choices, I put together two doors, one marked “anger” and the other “reconciliation”.  The tagline for the sermon was:

If you choose reconciliation you must LEAVE the anger behind.  If you choose to remain angry you will NEVER reconcile with anyone.  You just can’t walk through two doors at the same time!

For You Today

Let’s go back to before this day’s generation, or my generation…back before Black Lives Matter, or Ku Klux Klan, or anything in recent memory…let’s let wisdom from Solomon be our last word.

A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare.  Proverbs 15:1

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 133 see Dew on the Beard and alt-Center

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[1] Oxford Dictionary

[2] Ebony and Ivory, written by Paul McCartney, 1981

[3] Read the Sermon Two Doors or watch it on Youtube

 

Of Harmony and Upward Mobility

[i]

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words:  Be joyful.  Grow to maturity.  Encourage each other.  Live in harmony and peace.  Then the God of love and peace will be with you.  2 Corinthians 13:11^(NLT)

Continuing with our journal from a short-term mission trip to South Africa:

Zimbabwe Journal, 

Sunday afternoon, October 7, 2007

Game Drive – Hwange National Park/Preserve

“Wild animals cannot be scheduled – however, our guide, Livingston, is a native Zimbabwean who grew up walking daily in this African bush.  Over the years reading and observing the wildlife have made him a storehouse of information and wisdom concerning life in the bush.

He knows, for instance, that the red-billed weavers that build their nests like plumes at the end of tree branches do so to avoid having the heavier eagles land near their nests, endangering their young.  The mother will nearly close off the entrance to prevent snakes from entering, and the male will bring food to feed the group through the tiny opening.  They also build an exit as well as entry hole to vary their comings and goings; these are wise and faithful parents, protecting their young against the dangers.

During the dry season (which is every month except Oct/Nov) water determines almost every aspect of life here.  The elephants move in herds to find water. 

Today the watering hole was spectacular – as many as 30-35 elephants, a half-dozen giraffes, dozens of baboons, kudu (antelope) and at least one sullen and cranky croc.  When one giraffe was startled by a huge catfish jumping out of the water, probably scared by the croc, the whole group of antelope and giraffes dashed back from the water.  The kudu were barking and the elephants playing nervous trumpet!

This land is spectacular and ugly.  The brutality of beasts hunting and being hunted is echoed by the Spartan lifestyle of African people scratching-out an existence. 

This bull elephant decided to challenge our presence near the water hole.  We drove off, and his pride was protected.  (Not that we were much of a threat; He was less than 30 feet away, and I distinctly remember when he looked at us with that menacing stare that I wanted my mother!)

For all the violence of African bush life, there is beauty and order.  When considered against my Western worldview, there is a sense of futility in this lack of abundance and opportunity; “upward mobility” would be a strange phrase in Africa!  Yet things have stayed the same here for millennia.

Opportunity is also a word that can be applied to our Western culture’s lifestyles of self-destruction.  When you compare the human isolation of Western (so-called) civilization to the simplicity of Zimbabwean survival by cooperation and perseverance, it makes one wonder who, indeed, is the savage.

For You Today

Have you done some thinking lately about what’s really important?

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

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NOTES

[i] Title Images: Russell Brownworth (own work)