Pondering a Hard Truth

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other children because Joseph had been born to him in his old age.  So one day Jacob had a special gift made for Joseph—a beautiful robe.  But his brothers hated Joseph because their father loved him more than the rest of them.  They couldn’t say a kind word to him.  One night Joseph had a dream, and when he told his brothers about it, they hated him more than ever.  “Listen to this dream,” he said.  “We were out in the field, tying up bundles of grain.  Suddenly my bundle stood up, and your bundles all gathered around and bowed low before mine!”  His brothers responded, “So you think you will be our king, do you?  Do you actually think you will reign over us?”  And they hated him all the more because of his dreams and the way he talked about them.  Soon Joseph had another dream, and again he told his brothers about it.  “Listen, I have had another dream,” he said.  “The sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed low before me!”  This time he told the dream to his father as well as to his brothers, but his father scolded him.  “What kind of dream is that?” he asked.  “Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow to the ground before you?”  But while his brothers were jealous of Joseph, his father wondered what the dreams meant.  

Genesis 37:3-11

Truth is impartial to what we think of it; truth is simply (and most profoundly) its own reality.  One, plus one more, does not care if you think the answer is seven; it will always be as reality demands…two.  The difference between Jacob and his older sons was that Jacob entertained the possibility of truth told him by his youngest son, a truth which Joseph’s elder brothers refused to acknowledge.  This truth was what Joseph was given in a dream, concerning the future, when his older brother’s hatred of their youngest sibling would come full cycle.  Eventually the brothers, and even their father, would be dependent on Joseph’s forgiveness.

The story of Joseph’s jealous brothers selling their young sibling into slavery, and his subsequent rise to power in Egypt, followed by a famine, and his brothers being sent to find food, is a harbinger of God’s advent.  The birth of Christ, and the dream (even of Jesus’ disciples) of a political Messiah, sold for thirty pieces of silver to the cross, is the fulfillment of Joseph’s hard life with its ultimate victory, punctuated at last by his magnanimous forgiveness of the ones who persecuted him.  It is a resurrection truth, hard to entertain, but sweet to the reins when digested fully.

The truth of Joseph’s, and Jesus’ lives is hard to entertain.  Our world is always looking for easier shortcuts…computers that do better math than counting on our fingers…machines to do the heavy lifting…gene-splitting to make better human bodies, prettier, stronger, more able to cope with the harshness of life and our darker realities.  Somehow our notion of “truth” carries the lie that we are bound to create our own reality, sans God.  In some self-aggrandizing common consent, humanity has made God obsolete.  And that is the shroud they put on the face of a dead savior Friday afternoon.  It didn’t ring true Sunday morning.

For You Today  

Jacob wasn’t thrilled about Joseph’s second dream, because it meant a reversal of the order…the father bowing-down to the son.  But he left a little flap of wonder hanging for the wind of revelation to let in some light.

That is what Advent brings…revelation.  Let the wind blow today.

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

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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: 

   Seven Deadly Sins - Part 3 - Envy   and   When Envy Grabs a Heart

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^©   

Bones & Breath; It's an Inside Job

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Tuesday, May 22, 2018

The Lord took hold of me, and I was carried away by the Spirit of the Lord to a valley filled with bones.  He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley floor.  They were scattered everywhere across the ground and were completely dried out.  Then he asked me, “Son of man, can these bones become living people again?”  “O Sovereign Lord,” I replied, “you alone know the answer to that.”  Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to these bones and say, ‘Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord!  This is what the Sovereign Lord says:  Look! I am going to put breath into you and make you live again!  I will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin.  I will put breath into you, and you will come to life.  Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”  So I spoke this message, just as he told me.  Suddenly as I spoke, there was a rattling noise all across the valley.  The bones of each body came together and attached themselves as complete skeletons.  Then as I watched, muscles and flesh formed over the bones.  Then skin formed to cover their bodies, but they still had no breath in them.  Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to the winds, son of man.  Speak a prophetic message and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says:  Come, O breath, from the four winds!  Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again.’”  So I spoke the message as he commanded me, and breath came into their bodies.  They all came to life and stood up on their feet—a great army.  Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel.  They are saying, ‘We have become old, dry bones—all hope is gone.  Our nation is finished.’  Therefore, prophesy to them and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says:  O my people, I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again. Then I will bring you back to the land of Israel.  When this happens, O my people, you will know that I am the Lord.  I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live again and return home to your own land.  Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done what I said.  Yes, the Lord has spoken!’”  Ezekiel 37: 1-14^(NLT)

That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders.  Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said.  As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side.  They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord!  Again he said, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”  Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven.  If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” 

John 20:19-23^(NLT)

These two texts, Ezekiel’s vision and the appearance of Jesus to His disciples after the resurrection, are not at all about bones or ghosts…they’re all about the breath of God!  Genesis tells us that when God created humankind they were nothing until God breathed the breath of life into them.  That is a simple fact; our Creator is the author, giver, and sustainer of all life.  If He decides the next breath will not be available to you or me…that’s it…game over! 

When Jesus breathed on his disciples it was an outward demonstration of the beginning of the indwelling experience of God in mankind.  It’s all about the breath, the life of God in us, and God working out his purposes through us. 

The life of God is an inside job!

And that was the whole point for both Israel and the disciples.  Both thought it was all over…the end…turn out the lights and go home.  Israel thought they were toast as a nation.  Yet God revived that nation just in this past century.  The disciples had seen Jesus beaten, nailed to a tree, and then buried.  Talk about game-over!  But now he breathed on them, and the breath of new life was filling their inner being with the power of God to build the Kingdom.

As Yogi Berra always said:  It ain’t over till it’s over!

For You Today

Is your church a just a mere bag of bones compared to what it used to be? 

Do you look at that person in the mirror and wonder where the time and strength have gone? 

Perhaps you’re looking too much on the outside.  Remember…where God is concerned, it’s always an inside job!

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

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy Pixabay.com (bones) and Pixabay.com (breath)

What Will Make General Conference a Holy Conference?

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Thursday, May 12, 2016

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Then the angel who had been talking with me returned and woke me, as though I had been asleep.  “What do you see now?” he asked.  I answered, “I see a solid gold lampstand with a bowl of oil on top of it.  Around the bowl are seven lamps, each having seven spouts with wicks.  And I see two olive trees, one on each side of the bowl.”  Then I asked the angel, “What are these, my lord?  What do they mean?”  “Don’t you know?” the angel asked.  “No, my lord,” I replied.  Then he said to me, “This is what the Lord says to Zerubbabel:  It is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.  Nothing, not even a mighty mountain, will stand in Zerubbabel’s way; it will become a level plain before him!  And when Zerubbabel sets the final stone of the Temple in place, the people will shout:  ‘May God bless it!  May God bless it!’”    Zechariah 4:1-7^(NLT)

Zerubbabel was to build the temple.  Opposition and infighting over such an endeavor were to be expected.  But God gave Zechariah a vision of a golden bowl, seven lamps and two olive trees as a message of hope.  The bowl, representing God’s temple, was flanked on either side by olive trees.

For me, this morning, those olive trees represent the possibilities of my Methodist brothers and sisters extending branches of peace and holy worship before God, instead of the kind of vitriol and arrogance we’ve seen in recent years.

General Conference is in day #3 (of 10) today.  For my non-Methodist friends, General Conference is the legislative body of the world-wide United Methodist Church.  It is something like the U.S. Congress, as the nearly 800 delegates elected around the world gather to consider how we Wesleyan Christians will connect with each other and the world, for the sake of Christ’s kingdom.   The proposed agenda is 175 pages long!

As other church entities have experienced, so the United Methodist Church will (again) struggle with extremely controversial issues…mostly concerning human sexuality and what the church’s response to this ripple in God’s universe of a teapot might be.

The term “holy conferencing” is sometimes an oxymoron for Methodist gatherings.  It has been so recently, with sit-ins and disruptive, antagonistic behavior. 

My prayer, certainly, is that this quadrennial meeting’s tone might be somewhat better than we have seen on the presidential campaign’s stump trail, but the pre-conference rumblings have about guaranteed that the sharpening of swords and rhetoric are going to produce more media sound bites than holy agreement.

Lord, have mercy!

Perhaps the people of Wesleyan heritage have not learned the lesson Zechariah delivered so long ago, that is not by the power of swords, shouting and invective accusations that we accomplish God’s will; it is not by the might of lobby, focus groups and agenda PAC’s that we create the kingdom – it is by HIS SPIRIT that the church obeys and serves her Lord.

Whether you are a Methodist or go by another label, I invite you to pray for us as we attempt to find God’s way in the morass of cultural shift and prideful attitudes; it seems like we’re in for a long ten days.

For You Today

Help spread the word:  There are olive branches in those olive trees! 

Pray that Methodists – and Christians everywhere – will break one off and hand it across that Golden Bowl to the other side.

Maybe we will find a fresh fire of Pentecost to light our way.

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

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[1] Title Image:  By Fcb981 (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons