When the Road to Peace is Stained with Blood

 

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

I took my troubles to the Lord; I cried out to him, and he answered my prayer.  Rescue me, O Lord, from liars and from all deceitful people.  O deceptive tongue, what will God do to you?  How will he increase your punishment?  You will be pierced with sharp arrows and burned with glowing coals.  How I suffer in far-off Meshech.  It pains me to live in distant Kedar.  I am tired of living among people who hate peace.  I search for peace; but when I speak of peace, they want war!  Psalm 120:1-7

Peace is forever sought and elusive.  The writer of today’s Psalm of Ascents for those travelling to Jerusalem’s temple, understood the anguish of one living far from home.  And the distance was not in miles or travel days, but attitude.  “Home” (as the poet has it) is where the heart is.  The heart of this writer longed for kindness and strength of trusted relationships.  You can almost feel his bones creaking for the absence of peace.  He brings forth his words from a tired heart that aches for the renewing of truth, an honest moment of unguarded rest.

The sentence that stands alone in this Psalm is I searched for peace, but they wanted war!  As the exhaustive climb to the apex of life’s mountain of experiences comes to a close, this aging prophet looks back at life and the vanity of all else but peace; his stand-out takeaway-line is anger.  He craved a soft, refreshing water of calm truth to restore his dusty soul; what he got was a mirage of an amusement park’s diversion…success offered on the backs of the poor and lonely.  So-called peace was bought with bloodstains on every road.

The Psalm begins with assertion that God heard and answered his cry for rescue from the peace-barren, angry foreign place!  So, how is the prayer of the writer’s troubles answered?  This is a good question, and one which the eons of humanity find sparse answer.  That is – there is sparse answer without the leap of faith. 

There is a tendency toward thinking too much in the here and now, as opposed to the eternal.  Peace (in this life…at the address you call “home”) is measured in fleeting moments of satisfaction with circumstances.  The key word is fleeting.  That word is key, because the heart longs deeply for peace that is eternal.  Considering the track record of humankind, from the moment Eve took the first unsatisfactory bite of the fruit that separated her from God’s loving embrace, to the sharing of it with Adam, and then passing it along to Cain, and the rest of every breathing being, staining with curse every part of our existence right down to this present moment, we can have little hope in the maneuverings of human cleverness to somehow produce anything close to peace.  

Much more likely is the scenario of Russia invading Ukraine, and then America retaliating, followed by some sort of “peace-response” of the United Nations, followed by decades of tension-filled negotiations, incidents, and exposed treachery on all sides.  Man longs for peace, but it’s an illusion, because the blood-stained road of war is more “profitable.”

For You Today

It is a short-leap from the history books to despair.  The one antidote for such misery is embracing it the way God did.  He sent his only begotten, beloved son, Jesus to deal with our problem.  In true fashion, we nailed the Prince of Peace to a tree on the town garbage dump.  And that’s when the olive branch of peace appeared…in the wonder of an empty tomb!

So…go on in…look around that empty tomb; see the folded death shroud…feel the empty space death was supposed to inhabit…and know that peace lives forever in the beating, resurrected life of our Savior.  And he wants you to have it.  You only need drink…deeply!

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

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

When the Grass Withers

 

Friday, November 20, 2020

A voice said, “Shout!”  I asked, “What should I shout?”  “Shout that people are like the grass.  Their beauty fades as quickly as the flowers in a field.  The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord.  And so it is with people.  The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.”  O Zion, messenger of good news, shout from the mountaintops!  Shout it louder, O Jerusalem.  Shout, and do not be afraid.  Tell the towns of Judah, “Your God is coming!”  Yes, the Sovereign Lord is coming in power.  He will rule with a powerful arm.  See, he brings his reward with him as he comes.  He will feed his flock like a shepherd.  He will carry the lambs in his arms, holding them close to his heart.  He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young.  Isaiah 40:6-11

One of the reasons I like working in our yard, perhaps the strongest one, is the cycle that manifests itself year after year.  If something is going to bloom, there is going to be a bud.  The bud will open and, even if you’ve seen it a thousand times before, the bloom will have its own surprises.  It may just be a slight variation, a nuance, but every bloom has its own character.  They’re something like children, or fingerprints, they’re the same, but different, unique.

Isaiah said people are like the grass and flowers.  His meaning is tied to our mortality.  We are born for a season, blossom with the unfolding of our personality, develop blossoms of character (some more character than others), and, in due course, we begin to wither.

No sooner does Isaiah’s grass and flower metaphor for God’s people end, that a voice tells him to shout over the withering that God is coming for his lambs.  The metaphor changes from flowers and grass to sheep who long for a shepherd. 

Sheep are certainly as vulnerable as the flowers of the field, needing a protective hand against predators and the harsh forces of the elements.  At the beginning of this chapter Isaiah is told to comfort God’s people with the assurance that the Word of God, which never wilts and withers, is that promise which is the cycle of buds and blossoms.  In all the withering of we grasses and flowers, there is the promise of rebirth in a new season.

In this promise there are two certainties:

1.     It happens constantly in what God has already created in the earth and heavens…all things cycle; it is the way of all creation in God’s will. 

2.     We find in our withering years the promise is our only choice if there is to be hope against insanity.

The plain way of saying this is, we are created by God, and for fellowship with God, and we are His.  When people reject that they also reject eternity and are alone.  And, in the final analysis, to be alone, when you are created for fellowship, is to exist without hope; all that exists for the unbeliever is this fleeting season of threescore and ten years.  We find ourselves summer flowers and grass, with no understanding or knowledge of another season to come.  We are sheep without a shepherd, so we grieve without hope; we die in madness.

The apostle Paul showed us the hope that secures our sanity in this life

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.   1 Corinthians 15:19
And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope.  For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.  1 Thessalonians 4:13-14

For You Today

Isaiah comforted the people of his day with the knowledge that the Shepherd of Life was coming for them, and that the pastures He has in mind are way beyond withering and fading!

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

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Title image, Pixabay.com and    W   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

For other posts on Isaiah 40 see:  Finding Truth  and  When Mercy Outweighs Justice

 

Shield, Savior, Safety

[1]   

Thursday, April 16, 2015

The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection.  He is my shield, the power that saves me, and my place of safety.  Psalm 18:2 (NLT)

The Psalmist uses three images to describe how protected and secure he is in God’s hands. 

My Rock is the immovable, omnipotent power of God to overcome any obstacle the child of God encounters.

My Fortress is the place of retreat.  Even the strongest army must rest and regroup in a safe place, and the safest place around is behind the shield of God’s protection. 

My Savior is the arms of safety, where, even when I mess up and wander, the Shepherd will find me and bring me back home.

King David often found himself engaged in bloody warfare; the culture back then was as out of its mind over conquest and power as ours is today.  The Bible’s account of rampant lawlessness and bloodshed throughout Israel’s struggle to become God’s messenger is frighteningly similar to the culture in which we now live. 

But, for followers of Jesus Christ there is another dimension to the wars we face; we must always remember that our lives are framed by the reality of spiritual warfare. 

Paul has this chilling reminder:

For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.  Ephesians 6:12 (NLT)

In 35 years of ministry I have both experienced this battle with the unseen, and known plenty of believers going through the fires of spiritual warfare. 

What does this spiritual oppression by the enemy, and the battle lines look like?  You might be surprised, but it often looks like just normal stuff – financial burdens, a doctor’s report, court ruling, daily newspaper crime report.  It may be the breakup of a marriage, or the teenager who falls in with the wrong crowd; it may be news of your employer starting to cut back on the workforce.

These are like the spots that tell you a person has leprosy; the spots aren’t the disease, they are merely indicators that you have something wrong on the inside.

And that’s the way sin works!

Spiritual warfare may be the most neglected form of Christian living these days.  We spend so much time praying for the healing of our hangnails and other minor hurts, and beseeching God for an easier life, that we fail to engage in the real game – the war to which we’ve all been called – praying-up a hedge of protection for the next generation.

In a very engaging inaugural address, which everyone my age remembers, President John F. Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what YOU can do for your country.  That 17-word call to unity and unselfishness drew the citizens of this country into the kind of national pride and enthusiasm which spawned decades of involvement and unselfish investment of their lives for the preservation of the world and its resources.  And that by a generation of so-called “hippies” as a response to the call of Camelot! 

How I wish we could see that kind of passion to serve Christ in the citizens of our churches. 

Somehow, we have lost the focus on the battle which rages before us.  As a nation, and in churches (as the Body of `Christ), we don’t pray, seek the face of God, humble ourselves and turn from our wicked ways, as 2 Chronicles 7:14 lays-out for the kind of revival we should be seeking.

May God forgive us and draw us back to Him.

For You Today

Two simple questions: 

1.  Will you pray today?

2.  If you do pray, will it be for your benefit…or the sake of His Kingdom?

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[1] Title Image: By Rod Waddington from Kergunyah, Australia, via Wikimedia Commons