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^©   

Wait...What?

 

 

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

But very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.  They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance.  So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus.  As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes.  The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground.  Then the men asked, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive?  He isn’t here!  He is risen from the dead!  Remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.”  Then they remembered that he had said this.  So they rushed back from the tomb to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened.  It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened.   But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn’t believe it.  However, Peter jumped up and ran to the tomb to look.  Stooping, he peered in and saw the empty linen wrappings; then he went home again, wondering what had happened.  

Luke 24:1-12

Peter had a front row seat to seeing five thousand fed with a boy’s lunch, healings by the truckload, a meeting with long dead prophets Moses and Elijah, and being witness to Lazarus (still wrapped in a death shroud) walking out of a tomb that’d been sealed for four days.  And with all that evidence, the forewarning from Jesus, and the announcement of angels of resurrection, he still went home from the tomb scratching his head in disbelief!  Peter…you gotta love him!

Peter had the Wait….What? syndrome.  It’s what happens when your brain is on vacation and something wonderful happens…and you’ve brain-slept through it all.  Suddenly there is a grand, beautiful, life-changing reality filling your eyes, heart, and soul, and you just can’t get your mind around it…and you go home wondering what in the world just happened.  That was Peter, energetic, enthusiastic, ready to leap over tall buildings or fight an army of soldiers singlehandedly, and often devoid of the ability to connect the dots. 

The dots, in this unique event in human history, were the virgin birth, sinless life, miracles-abounding, prophecy-fulfilling, laughing, loving, dead-man-raising joy of Jesus, the Christ.  But for Peter, Friday afternoon through Sunday morning were nothing but grief, despair, and agony on me.  Peter, the one who could blurt-out the truth, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God ^{(Matthew 16:16)} heard the women spout (what he thought was) “nonsense” – but went to the grave anyway, saw nothing, left the unoccupied tomb and discarded graveclothes, to go home wondering…Wait….WHAT?

Fast-forward to your life.  And mine.  Can we possibly be as obtuse and brain-detached as Peter?  I can, and have been…often. (Just ask anyone who knows me well).  Has someone ever dropped a big gift in your hand…and you wonder instead of hugging that neck?  Did you ever find something long-lost and begin to take credit for your good sense to look there?  Have you ever seen a sunrise and not thought of those words…and God said, let there be light?

For You Today

The plastic Easter eggs are packed away.  The idea of hitting the beach for one of those memorable sunrise services won’t begin to surface until snow melts again.  Facebook images of empty tombs and other seasonal wonderments will fade until after Santa’s next sleigh ride.

Connecting the dots, as Peter failed to do (again), would mean instead of going back home wondering, that we celebrate and live in the wonder of the Savior’s love.  What will that look like in your life?

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

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

Walking on Troubled Water

[1]

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Immediately after this, Jesus insisted that his disciples get back into the boat and head across the lake to Bethsaida, while he sent the people home.  After telling everyone good-bye, he went up into the hills by himself to pray.  Late that night, the disciples were in their boat in the middle of the lake, and Jesus was alone on land.  He saw that they were in serious trouble, rowing hard and struggling against the wind and waves.  About three o’clock in the morning Jesus came toward them, walking on the water.  He intended to go past them, but when they saw him walking on the water, they cried out in terror, thinking he was a ghost.  They were all terrified when they saw him.  But Jesus spoke to them at once.  “Don’t be afraid,” he said.  “Take courage!  I am here!”  Then he climbed into the boat, and the wind stopped.  They were totally amazed, for they still didn’t understand the significance of the miracle of the loaves.  Their hearts were too hard to take it in.  Mark 6:45-52^(NLT)

When I put myself in the boat with the disciples, and it’s 3:00 AM, and the storm is about to swamp our little boat, AND with all our scurrying around to keep the boat from sinking, suddenly there’s a guy strolling around ON the water as calm as your neighbor out walking the dog…well, it’s just a little weird, thank you!

But if that first sighting was weird, what came next had to have made every disciple wonder if maybe they need to see a psychiatrist.  It turned out to be Jesus, and their master simply says, chill out, I’m here.  And then he climbs in the boat and the wind stops; they’re safe, all is well, and they hardly notice it because their minds are reeling from having seen a man walking across the water.  (Mind you, this is well before hover boards!).

Mark reminds us that the reason the disciples were so confused is because their minds were still reeling from the previous day when Jesus fed a crowd of many thousands with just a boy’s lunch. 

The explanation Mark tacks-on about why the disciples had such a hard time getting their minds around what just happened was a severe case of weak faith, due to hardened hearts.  Mark was in a position to judge this; it’s difficult to admit hard-heart syndrome, but this apostle’s truthful assessment of his own heart, and that of his brothers in the boat, makes sense, because it happens to all of us.  Let’s face it, when troubled waters threaten, we all do the same things:

1.      We worry – the disciples couldn’t help remembering all those other times those familiar, unfriendly waters had threatened life and limb.  We all have our troubled waters.  We worry, and…

2.      We waffle – the men in the boat were doing what they knew to do, struggling against the waves.  Just the day before they had witnessed the miracle of Jesus caring for the crowd, multiplying fish and loaves to feed them.  And now, it was back to life as usual.  And that’s the issue with waffling; the miracle was to teach all of us that Jesus wants us to look to Him much more than struggle with waves!  We worry, waffle, and…

3.      We wonder – the disciples didn’t know what to think because they were wondering HOW Jesus could do that…calm the waves of an angry sea just by showing up.  They had their eyes on the miracle instead of the Master.

Our hearts can be either hard, or receptive.  The key ingredient is a mind trained to look past the circumstances to the heart of the One behind the circumstances.  It’s not so much WHAT is happening to you; it’s more a matter of WHO is driving what’s happening to you. 

The mere fact that Mark opens his own life for our inspection, that we might see a heart that had not yet fully-trusted Christ, should speak loudly to what must be done.  If you’re going to follow Jesus, there must be a surrender of the heart…fully.  Just this week I heard it (again) in a sermon that the Lord requires our commitment to Him if we would be His disciples.  And the only kind of commitment that is genuine is 100%.[2]  Lacking that, we will always wind up worrying, waffling, and wondering what happened.

For You Today

As you walk through this day, if the water gets more than a little troubled, remember Jesus will walk on it – or anything else He needs to – to come to you.  So, don’t worry, waffle, or wonder; it’s not the waves He’s watching, it’s you!  Return the look; keep your eyes on Him.

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

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] Paul Leland, Bishop, Western NC, United Methodist Church, Annual Conference sermon, 6/24/18 (my paraphrase of the Bishop’s remarks)