Weeping While the Harps are Silent

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept as we thought of Jerusalem.  We put away our harps, hanging them on the branches of poplar trees.  For our captors demanded a song from us.  Our tormentors insisted on a joyful hymn:  “Sing us one of those songs of Jerusalem!”  But how can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a pagan land?  Psalm 137:1-4

I kinda know how the Psalmist felt…captured, caught, defeated, deflated of any hope that the future will get better.  There are millions of scenarios you could draw from the history of human experience to match the pathos of a soul caught in weeping, unable to sing, or even manage a faint shadow of a smile.  All tragedy (and even humor) arises out of the difficulties of life. 

It's impossible (for me) to talk about trouble without remembering that Job said we humans were born for it, just as certainly as the sparks fly upward from a fire.[1]  Each week in untold numbers of churches across the world, hands are raised to call a name in prayer.  These requests are the communication of the compassion of Christians for believers and unbelievers alike.  We pray for all sorts of illnesses, surgeries, accidents, and war victims.  We pray for a myriad of life’s mayhem and mourning.  And then, we’ll sing a hymn.  Often a joyful one. 

The point is, nobody likes to stay in the dark too long.  We want to be lifted by brighter thoughts and posssibilities.  And thus it is ever – we pray against the dark, drawing hope against the extant shadows.  But sometimes our darkness sings a joyful song as if it were a funeral dirge.  We know the words, but have sadly lost the joy of the melody.

According to the Psalmist, it was worse than that for the former residents of Jerusalem.  They’d been defeated politically; their homeland decimated by the unstoppable armies of Babylon, and all their young people carried off to the enemy’s homeland, to serve as slaves.  Not much to celebrate there.  It was time to hang the harps on the tree branches – there would be no happy songs with which to sing and dance.  Life was going to be one long, dreary treadmill; the only relief would be the graveyard.  That certainly would not be the advertisement you’re looking for on a travel brochure!

Jeremiah understood the national mood of the captives, and their weeping.  It’s not stretching the truth when I say most Christians understand that profile in our day, even though we still live in a land of relative prosperity and personal freedom, greater than many countries in the world.  We still celebrate remnants of a Christian national heritage.  However, truth be told, we can also see the gathering storm clouds, a darkening horizon of godlessness in this worldly culture.  We have moved past the God is Dead stage of the 1960’s to the next-worse stage; we have entered the age of God is Irrelevant!  And…God help us…if that is an accurate forecast, we are in the Days of Noah, just waiting for the flood of judgment’s hammer to fall.

For You Today

If there is one thing I have learned about dark times, it is that it is proof that God’s promises are true, and always kept.  It matters little what cultural trends want to proclaim…God is never irrelevant…He is patient, but even that will end some day.

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: 

Boiling Point   and   Joy in Troubling Times   

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

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[1] Job 5:7

He Began to Weep

 

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep.  “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace.  But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes.  Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side.  They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you.  Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not recognize it when God visited you.”  Luke 19:41-44

Jesus was close to finishing his journey to the cross.  As he approached Jerusalem, he wept for the sheep he would have shepherded…if they’d only been willing.  From the depths of his sorrow tears flowed, and the Lord of Glory poured out the pain of the coming recompense his family would suffer.  Jerusalem, the shining City of David, would be crushed, its walls and temple razed to ground-zero.  Men and women, along with their children would enter a trial that would leave them devastated and broken.  God had visited them from a manger in Bethlehem…and they put up a shield to ward Him off.  Instead, it would become a prison wall to an eternal sentence of death.  Peace rejected, destruction ensured, the tears flowed like a river from the Christ who would be Savior over the lambs who were blindly bleating their own destructive brand of independence…we don’t need YOU, God!

Frankly, it’s difficult to read those words of prophecy…senseless destruction of men, women, and children, broken, bloodied, crushed into the ground.  That is the awful truth about rebellion towards our Creator.  When we decide to go our own way, rejecting God’s loving hand, we do to ourselves the worst kind of judgment – an unnecessary suffering contrary to what God had planned for us. 

Rather than pain, anguish, and eternal death, the LORD holds for us eternal LIFE and joy.  In human understanding, we hardly begin to comprehend that loss.  It is like a little boy playing on the railroad tracks.  He enjoys hopping from one rail to the rocks and skipping-up to the other rail.  His dad calls, but the child is having too good a time, so he ignores the voice.  What a tragedy is coming; but the child cannot see the danger, so His father and mother weep for him.  He’s making the worst possible choice, and refuses to take his eyes off his game for a moment.

Jerusalem, God’s Holy City, is not the focus of this Scripture.  Jerusalem is a metaphor for everything God created.  All the earth, it’s people, animals, cities, rural areas, mountains, wilderness, and dry places, were created for God’s glory.  And all was placed in humankind’s care.  Some of us choose to play on the tracks, ignoring the train’s approaching destruction.  Some turn to the voice of God’s warning to come close for protection.  And, as the story of the Great Shepherd who left the 99 safe sheep[1], to look for the 1 lost sheep still playing on the tracks, the heart of the Father grieves just as Jesus’ weeping displays…because they would not.

For You Today

For some, the idea of getting right with God is not something by which they’re upset, or angered; they’re just buried in the distraction of living daily life.  They just don’t think about it.  Sadly, this was the case in Jerusalem; the king of glory visited, and they were too busy playing on the tracks.

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^©   

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[1] See Luke 15:1-7

When Intelligence Turns Foolish

 

Tuesday of Holy Week, March 30, 2021

The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.  As the Scriptures say, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.”  So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters?  God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish.  Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.  It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven.  And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom.  So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.  But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.  This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.  1 Corinthians 1:18-25

There is a lot of intelligence in the world.  From Albert Einstein, to all the medical, political, and social scientists, added to space engineers, agricultural wizzards of GMO fame, and those who put astronauts in space (particularly those who bring them back safe to earth), the wisdom of humanity has a handle on a quantum truckload of intelligence.

But there is a limit!

The question, answered by Apostle Paul’s message to the Corinthian believers, is when does man’s intelligence turn foolish?  Paul’s answer is that humanity’s intelligence places itself in the trash can when it starts to battle against faith, and, in particular, faith regarding the cross, tomb, and resurrection.

In Paul’s Jewish frame of reference all humanity was categorized as either Jew or Gentile.  And both were guilty of the foolishness of denying the cross. 

To the Jews, who were looking for a Messiah to rule over earth, it was an offense to imagine he would be hung on a cross like a common criminal; it was a curse.  To the Gentiles, particularly the philosophers, thinkers, and debaters, the whole idea of power without human intelligence that can be proven and held in hand, was just pure nonsense.  In other words, faith, genuine faith that trusts God to handle our biggest problem is unnecessary; we can figure it out, thank you very much…no higher power needed.

For humans, endowed with sentient life – an awareness of both sensory and abstract dimensions of existance – dependence on some unseen “Creator” is a nonsequitur – there isn’t anything we can’t do for ourselves, so creating a creator is for the foolish and weak. 

However, for those who care to admit the truth, we don’t have nearly the intelligence with which we credit ourselves.  Chief among the evidence is the most basic question (and, arguably the most important question), that question of what happens when this life is over.  To deny the continuance of sentient existance solely on the basis of flesh decomposing, is to push an argument from silence.  No life seen is only proof that you cannot see with human eyes, or measure with human intelligence, what lies beyond the grave.  There are some things the 0’s and 1’s of aritificial intelligence cannot measure.

For that you need faith.

For You Today

We’re into the sacred season of faith known as Holy Week…the passion is unfolding, and the faithful are seeing the evidence of things not seen.[1] 

All true intelligence is born of, and lives-in faith in God, the author of faith[2].

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

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

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[1] Hebrews 11:1

[2] Hebrews 12:2

According to Design

[1]

Monday, August 5, 2019

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly.  Children, always obey your parents, for this pleases the Lord.  Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged.  Colossians 3:18 – 21

I was going to begin this devotion with this sentence:  If only Paul hadn’t said it that way.  But, ultimately, this isn’t Paul talking!  If this is truly God’s Word, then it is He who speaks; it is also He who designed the family, giving us the way of love as our motivation, pathway, and attitude for how it all works best.

I know; I know…this goes against the grain of modern culture’s understanding of human freedom – we are to be independent, self-sufficient, inviolable, and so completely in charge of our lives, consummate masters of our fate, captains of our souls, and lost as a goose in a snowstorm!

So, is that it, Russell?  Is the world upside down…and you’re the one who’s got it all together?  I hardly have to answer that; I’ve lived long enough, and sinned big enough to know better.  I’m not the one who has it all right, but, like one beggar sharing the news with another beggar about where he’s found bread, if you’re asking about design – how God intended for us to be, and live, and act…well, I can point heaven-ward towards the Designer.  In so doing, if we’ll be honest, we see the difference between Heaven’s perfection and what’s going on down here.

For my two-cents, upside-down is a mild way of assessing where we are as a human family, let alone husbands, wives, children, and cousins by the dozens.  The family, as a nurturing, loving, safe unit is an endangered species.

One salient point for our thoughts today.  God’s word is not male-dominant and oppressive; it’s just the opposite…it is all love.  The problem is, we humans have corrupted the meaning of that word, until it is no more recognizable than a fox in a chicken suit given the keys to the hen house.

God’s love is agape, the word meaning doing the best for the other person’s sake.  That’s what God did as Jesus on the cross.  It wasn’t that God preferred to suffer a cruel, humiliating death on a cross, taking our punishment for sin…it was what was required for our redemption.  And nobody but the Son of God could accomplish that; love compelled Jesus to choose the cross.

Love is always a choice…it hardly has anything to do with romance.  When a woman becomes a wife, the act of her submitting to her husband is a choice.  It’s the same choice when I get on the Interstate.  I can choose to drive the way the designer of the road set-up as the safest, most enjoyable, most socially-beneficial way to arrive at my destination – or I can drive like Beelzebub, half in this lane, weaving into that one, 150 miles-per-hour, refusing to brake when the traffic slows.  I may have my fun (for a few moments), but road rage would be nothing compared to what will inevitably happen when reality shows up.  Same thing for the family design God gave us.  Submitting in love, doing the best for those with whom we choose, and God paces in our path, is the design.  Like it or not, that is how we’re hard wired for better or worse!

For You Today

In marriage, parenting, or anything else to do with family, career, and all interpersonal relationships, submission isn’t a cuss word; it’s the key to design, Intelligent Design, of how we’re made, and how we function best.

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

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

Freedom's Ring

[1]

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out to you by day.  I come to you at night.  Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry.  For my life is full of troubles, and death draws near.  I am as good as dead, like a strong man with no strength left.  They have left me among the dead, and I lie like a corpse in a grave. 

I am forgotten, cut off from your care.  You have thrown me into the lowest pit, into the darkest depths.  Your anger weighs me down; with wave after wave you have engulfed me.

Interlude

You have driven my friends away by making me repulsive to them.  I am in a trap with no way of escape.  My eyes are blinded by my tears.  Each day I beg for your help, O Lord; I lift my hands to you for mercy.  Are your wonderful deeds of any use to the dead?  Do the dead rise up and praise you?

Interlude

Can those in the grave declare your unfailing love?  Can they proclaim your faithfulness in the place of destruction? 

Can the darkness speak of your wonderful deeds?  Can anyone in the land of forgetfulness talk about your righteousness?  O Lord, I cry out to you.  I will keep on pleading day by day. 

O Lord, why do you reject me?  Why do you turn your face from me?  I have been sick and close to death since my youth.  I stand helpless and desperate before your terrors.  Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me. 

Your terrors have paralyzed me.  They swirl around me like floodwaters all day long.  They have engulfed me completely.  You have taken away my companions and loved ones.  Darkness is my closest friend.  Psalm 88:1-18^(NLT)

The psalmist sounds like a deeply depressed person.  He has been left alone, deserted and despised by everyone human (and he also thinks it’s that way with God too!)  He is physically ill, besides the emotional distress.  And to go along with all that he is being hounded by troublemakers and senses he is near death.  This man is helpless and desperate, terrified to live; he is unable to come up with a reason to go on!

Viktor Frankl was a man in the psalmist’s shoes.  He was a prisoner in Hitler’s concentration camps, losing his family to the gas chambers, and seeing firsthand the ungluing of humanity in the absence of hope.  Frankl survived the ordeal of his captivity and would go on to write about the essence of meaning in life.  An image that sticks in my mind about his vivid descriptions of people without hope is how, when a fellow Jew would finally decide that hope was futile, he would give up altogether.  It was always the same; with hollowed eyes, devoid of the spark of life, the corpse with a pulse would give his cigarettes and other belongings to others, climb on his wooden palette of a bed, turn to the wall, and be quiet.  That night the grim reaper would claim its’ victim.

You can live without many things; hope is not one of them.

Two of my favorite quotes from this wise man:

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”[2]

Today, Independence Day, we celebrate with families, neighbors and friends that heritage we call freedom.  Let us try to remember that the struggles and blood, shed for this precious hope-filled ideal of equally-made, and equally-free humans, equally-loved by our Creator, were not wars of conquest and battlefield glory.  These were struggles to preserve hope – that in which lies our only lifeline to the WHY Dr. Frankl held up as imperative to the human soul.

For You Today

Taking hope to the limits for the preservation of the human soul is what Jesus accomplished on the cross for all who will take a knee at Calvary; this is all our hope and plea, Jesus Christ in us, the hope of glory[3]!

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] 13 Life-altering Quotes by Holocaust Survivor Viktor Frankl

[3] Colossians 1:27

Thou Shalt Not...

[i]

Thursday, January 12, 2017

“Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God.  On that day no one in your household may do any work.  This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you.  For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested.  That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.  Exodus 20:8-11^(NLT)

As a child, my first impression of the Ten Commandments (probably along with the rest of humanity) is that this set of rules was going to make life harder.  I never suspected these ten gifts were principles to a fuller and happier life.

The reality of joy that is contained in God’s 10 Words took a long time to get through my skull, this intellectual veneer of independence, which, by-the-way, all of Adam’s children use (including you) to protect that connection we have with the pride of life.  We want what we want, and we despise anything that tinkers with our plans. 

My mother learned just how stubborn that independent streak is in me when I was just a pre-schooler.  I was trying to get my winter coat on so I could go out and play, and was having trouble closing the zipper.  She moved closer to help me zip it up, and I batted her hand away:  NO; I’ll do it!  That was about 65 years ago, but I still remember the look in her eyes; it was recognition that it was going to be a long road raising this one!

Gradually, and mostly because of trial and error, the truth of the goodness of God’s commands dawned on me.  Reading Lloyd Ogilvie’s book helped; in one chapter on dealing with stress I read:

In mechanics the word stress is used for the internal strength of a metal to withstand extreme weight or pressure.  It is interesting to note that stress on metals is measured by what is called the yield point and the failure point.  The yield point is when the stress on the material actually makes it stronger, but the failure point is when the strain breaks the load-bearing capacity of the metal.[ii]

If you think of God’s Ten Commandments more like the keys to finding the yield points where we learn to surrender our will, they always help us stop short of the failure point. 

When we yield to God’s ways (like remembering Sabbath) we are made stronger by the appropriate stress which pushes us in the direction of recharged batteries, moments for reflection and regaining our internal compass.  It’s a matter of yield and be made stronger!  And this is so different from the failure point of burnout and bad choices.

In this way God’s “rules” don’t put us in-prison, they help us avoid the death penalty!

For You Today

If you were to review the Ten Commands we find in Exodus 20, would you come across any in which you’ve avoided the joy awaiting you by yielding instead of resisting?

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

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NOTES

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[i] Title image: By Michael Coghlan from Adelaide, Australia (Prison Bars), via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] Lloyd Ogilvie, Ask Him Anything: God Can Handle Your Hardest Questions, 1983 (emphasis mine)