The Lord Keeps Watch Over You

Monday, September 11, 2023

I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there?  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth!  He will not let you stumble; the one who watches over you will not slumber.  Indeed, he who watches over Israel never slumbers or sleeps.  The Lord himself watches over you!  The Lord stands beside you as your protective shade.  The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon at night.  The Lord keeps you from all harm and watches over your life.  The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever.  

Psalm 121:1-8

For more than two decades today’s date on the calendar brings remembrances of the coordinated attacks on American soil in 2001.  It also recalls other times when the sovereignty of our nation was tested.  By the late 1950’s Baby Boomers were losing sight of what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  Memories fade as generations age-out.  However, as the 2^nd-Century church father, Tertullian, wrote of the church being persecuted by Roman emperors:   We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed. 

This strong belief spawned the ideas of freedom, which produced this nation, birthed in the blood struggle of revolution.  Renewed times of sacrifice are the hallmark of any nation committed to living free.  We enjoy freedom, but the cost is anything but cheap.

The same can be said about the freedom of a human soul.  Such freedom is not from tyrants of flesh-and-blood.  Rather it is the enslavement of human will, chains that restrain us from living as intended by our Creator. 

Genesis records that when God made Adam and Eve, He blessed them.  It was that first blessing which instilled in humankind the desire for freedom.  That remains our heritage and future…freedom in Christ. 

Today’s text views how God intended for that to work.  When we feel small, weak, or threatened, we look for help.  The mountains are symbols of great strength and endurance.  The Psalmist asks:  will help come from what I can see…those mountains which are forever?  The question is rhetorical, and implies the answer with the absurdity of piles of dirt, rocks, and trees providing help.  Those hills are beautiful, but impersonal; they are impassable hinderances to travelers, or beautiful reminders of home and majesty, but help is something that comes from the Lord who watches over us.

So, it is folly to look to mountains for help.  Rather it is Scripture’s intent to remind us to look past the gift of such majestic beauty like mountains, or freedom.  Look past the gift…all the way to the Giver, He who created, and gifted those mountains to the likes of us.  Governments and their programs are gifts to us of order, controlling what might be the mayhem of evil.  Other humans are capable of both good to help, and evil to harm.  Your own strength is a gift, and God expects you to use it for his divine and benevolent purposes.  But ultimately, you can depend on nothing more (or less) than the divine, loving heart of God, filled with compassion and love for you.

For You Today 

It is right for us to honor the lives lost on September 11^th.  And all lives taken too soon by wars and all sorts of evil.  It is a Godly thing to remember, and bless that memory. 

Let us also go further than ceremony; let continued resolve recall the source of our freedom:  He who watches over us without sleeping or skipping a beat.  It was His blood which bought freedom for the soul.

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 Images:  Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain. Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©   

Unplanted Faith

 

Thursday, July 7, 2022

What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions?  Can that kind of faith save anyone?  Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing.  What good does that do?  So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough.  Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.  Now someone may argue, “Some people have faith; others have good deeds.” But I say, “How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds?  I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”  James 2:14-18

Tertullian, a second-century church leader, is credited with the saying that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.  In that analogy it is simple to squeeze out a corollary, consistent with apostle James’ caution:  unplanted seeds of faith will produce almost nothing.  I say “almost” because there is one result, a false sense of security for those looking for an easier, quieter, less-troublesome brand of faith that requires little.  That unplanted faith seed becomes an empty pot of toxic wishes, instead of a harvest of blessing for untold millions of faith-starved people today.

The apostle was concerned with warning his flock that wishes, dreams, hopes, and plans, are only wisps of smoke if there are no good deeds that come forth in the form of blessing others.  Is it good to pray for the homeless without doing something about a mother and kids sleeping in a storm drain? 

Does it make sense to hope for the gun violence to go away, but never support positive measures for gun safety?  Can any good come from a proud, patriotic feeling you get without willingness to stand against the enemies of freedom? 

A popular song when I was in high school about one girl’s advice to all others about “wishing and hoping” they could get that special guy, echos, somewhat, that which James wrote to his flock about planting genuine faith seeds:

Wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin'
Plannin' and dreamin' each night of his charms
That won't get you into his arms
Just wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin'
Plannin' and dreamin' his kisses will start
That won't get you into his heart
So if you're lookin' to find love you can share
All you gotta do is
Hold him and kiss him and love him
And show him that you care^©

Care is the fuel James said to pour on the sparks of revival and transformation.  Every generation since the Garden of Eden has craved being cared-for, knowing that they matter, that someone really notices, and is willing to listen.

For You Today

Have you encountered someone that’s a little rough around the edges?  If you’ve prayed for that person – good.  If you’ve asked God to use you to strengthen that person’s relationship with the Lord – great!  You have prepared the ground, and are holding the seed of care in your hand.  You stand on the threshold of actually planting that seed.  Let your faith be alive and growing.

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 on Rocky Road Devotions. 

To dig deeper into this topic or Scripture text:  Faith and Works and Picking Up the Trowel

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

Seed of the Church

[1]

Thursday, November 22, 2018

Saul was one of the witnesses, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen.  A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem; and all the believers except the apostles were scattered through the regions of Judea and Samaria.  Acts 8:1(NLT)

When you’re in eleventh grade and your life revolves around football practice, games, math tests, and wondering if you’ll get into college, it would hardly dawn on you that something history-shaping is happening 1600 miles away in Dallas.  

Today is the 55^th anniversary of the assassination of President Jack Kennedy.  There have been volumes written by the press, investigators and conspiracy-theorists, about this event.  But that day, I just thought it was strange that football practice had been cancelled.  In the upcoming days I watched the funeral and unfolding drama of the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby, live, on-camera.  All of it was bewildering and incomprehensible to a 16-year-old whose depth of thought didn’t reach past watching Andy and Opie make sense of Aunt Bea and Barney every Monday evening. 

Digress about 1800 years and you have Tertullian, 2^nd century Christian author who wrote of the overwhelming persecution of believers that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.[2]  Trying to make sense of the stoning of Stephen a century after the fact, Tertullian had the hindsight perspective of the wave of persecution that swept over Jesus’ disciples, and how that blood-bath scattered believers everywhere.  And in the flight to avoid torture and death, the Gospel was carried around the world.

And this is a scenario that has been played-out over and again in history.  Every time there is a move to stamp-out the church it is like pouring water on a grease fire; the Kingdom of Christ spreads with ferocious faith, despite the threats.

It’s strange to think how such events as the stoning of Stephen, as well as the modern-day assassination of a president can inspire movements.  Kingdoms topple, paradigms shift, hearts are rearranged – all because evil wants to strut, but God shouts back with calm resistance.

In the case of Stephen and the early church, Saul was part of the mob; he was given the coats of the execution mob to hold.  But he probably yelled encouragement to inflict death on Christ’s witness, Stephen.  Sometime later it was Saul who would have his heart and life rearranged after a meeting with Jesus on the Damascus Road.  Jesus gave him a new name, Paul, and we have that name affixed as author to roughly one-third of the New Testament scriptures as evidence of just how drastically a life can change when the blood of a martyr becomes a seed in your history.                                                

Jack Kennedy was not a martyr for the cause of Christ; he was hardly what you’d call “a saint”.  He was a politician…beloved and despised by political types, but a fallible human being with a reputation of infidelity.  We don’t know much about Stephen, other than he was a well-respected leader in the early church, who didn’t keep his mouth closed when he had the opportunity to be a witness for Christ; neither did he keep silence when they threw the stones to knock the life out of his body.  Stephen died begging God to forgive his killers.

For You Today

A question that comes to mind for us all is to what star would you hitch YOUR wagon?  Would you leap into a movement for a president, gunned-down, heroically-promoting his political agenda?  Or would it be to join Stephen, a nobody, erased by an angry mob, simply proclaiming the agenda of a Heavenly Kingdom?

Which seed would you plant?

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

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Rembrandt (Public Domain)

[2] Apologeticus, Chapter 50