Camelot

Friday, August 25, 2023

About that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?”  Jesus called a little child to him and put the child among them.  Then he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven.  So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Matthew 18:1-4

The romantic motion picture Camelot hit the big screens the year Elizabeth and I married (1967).  Recently we watched it again and I gained a new appreciation for its message of hope for the civilization of human beings.  At the beginning of the movie is a scene where King Arthur introduces Lancelot to his wife, Queen Guenevere.  Lancelot has come from France to join Arthur’s vision of a civilized world, where law and courts provide peaceful solutions to disputes, rather than swords and blood. 

At the center of the force of such change is the round table, a place where the knights would wield might for right.  Such knights must be paragons of virtue, character, and honor.  Guenevere asks Lance who he had in mind to be the role-model for such exemplary goodness.  The Frenchman answers with a bow, saying:  with all humility…me!

Over the course of the movie Guenevere and Lance fall madly in love with each other.  The story comes to a crossroads when their love affair comes to the surface, and they are both accused of treason.  Arthur is torn between his own heartbreak and the thought of revenge; he cannot bear either. 

(spoiler alert if you’ve never watched it….the end of the story comes next)

Lancelot leads an attack on Arthur’s castle to rescue Guenevere, and in the process many knights and soldiers are killed.  The raid is successful, and Arthur’s remaining knights demand revenge.  An army is raised to capture the fugitives.  The round table of justice is gone; only blood will do to restore order.

The final scene shows a dejected King Arthur on the eve of the battle, knowing whatever outcome the next morning’s struggle brings, it is death for any hope for civilization.  He has lost Guenevere, the love of his life, and Lancelot, his dearest friend, and they have lost any hope of peace together.  The world is a bleak place, a bog for any spirit.

Enter Tom Warwick, a 10-year-old boy.  Tom had stowed-away in one of the wagons in the chase to capture Lancelot, hoping to fight for the king.  Arthur tries to send him away, but the boy’s devotion to the king is invincible.  Arthur questions Tom, asking why he would give himself to this business.  Tom’s answer is the whole point of the movie; he’s never even seen a knight, but he has heard the stories of how they protect people and make it safe for everyone.  He wants to grow up to become a knight and serve at the round table.  He has known the dream of peace and would have it at any cost.

Arthur’s whole demeanor changes.  He realizes what stands before him in a young boy’s sparkling eyes is the hope of a civilized world; peace and righteousness is a dream that can never be crushed.

For You Today 

While Camelot and King Arthur’s round table are imaginary, the dream of the rule of righteousness and peace are imbedded within the DNA of every human soul.  It is that which draws us to the loveliness of Jesus and his welcome invitation to deny self, pick up the cross like a knight on a quest to serve, and follow. 

It is that Tom Warwick part of us that Jesus speaks to, when He says:  Unless you become as a child, you’ll never have the peace of the Kingdom of Heaven.

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 Image:  Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.  

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©   

The Harvest of Wisdom

Friday, February 3, 2023

If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom.  But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying.  For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom.  Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic.  For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.  But the wisdom from above is first of all pure.  It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others.  It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds.  It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.  And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.  James 3:13-18

The words of Apostle James flow as if a peaceful, cold stream of welcome water, refreshing a thirsty man trudging through the desert.  He presents a word picture of Godly wisdom (from above) that is healing and strength for anyone who would influence his generation for peace.  A true poet, James holds up the fruit of good deeds as an agricultural image of the holy grail of wisdom, resulting in a harvest of righteousness.  It’s a verbal feast of wholesome nourishment for any soul that longs for Godliness.

Quiet, gentle, and humble are words mostly evaporated in 21st century culture.  Sometimes it seems our Gross National Product is only measured in Loud, Irritating, and Bragging. 

Apostle James is lost on a culture preferring an elephant stampede over a quiet contemplation next to a peaceful stream in the valley.  For all the shrewd intellect creating mind-bending technological toys, released each year with much fanfare by Apple and its imitators, we have unhinged the consequence of our progress from the process.  We dabble with artificial intelligence, not intentionally planting seeds of righteousness in human children, to point the machines in peaceful directions.  We have six-year-olds, enamored by heroes of violence on their screens, bringing a gun to school to shoot their teachers.  They don’t have a clue that momentary act of selfish impulse will extinguish any peace their future could possibly hold.  In foolishness, like Esau, we forfeit the legacy of birthright to satisfy the craving for a pottage of the next half-second’s thrill of power. 

So, what’s to be done?  Is there a possibility of ever reclaiming something of a harvest of righteousness in the present caustic soil of selfishness and anger?  Are we doomed to starve for the lack of goodness?  Is there no peace whatsoever in our future?  I believe the answer to each of those questions is an unqualified YES, unless we are willing to return to planting wise seeds of purity, gentleness, kindness, mercy, hope, and worship of God in Christ Jesus.  If there will ever be a crop of righteousness, preparing the soil comes first.

For You Today  

The best grapes come from cultivated vines.  Those vines were planted long ago, and cared-for.  As the lineage of God’s people, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph recalled the mistakes of their forbears, and culled the weeds from their lives, all the while making new mistakes for the following generations to unravel, we must choose each day to plant new vines for a righteous harvest.  What seed do you hold in your hand right now?

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

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: 

The Marriage of Belief and Behavior  and  Humility 

This is an updated version of “So Much Anger” published on Rocky Road Devotions January 16, 2014

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^©   

A Refreshing Spring Rain

Thursday, December 1, 2022

Give your love of justice to the king, O God, and righteousness to the king’s son.  Help him judge your people in the right way; let the poor always be treated fairly.  May the mountains yield prosperity for all, and may the hills be fruitful.  Help him to defend the poor, to rescue the children of the needy, and to crush their oppressors.  May they fear you as long as the sun shines, as long as the moon remains in the sky.  Yes, forever!  May the king’s rule be refreshing like spring rain on freshly cut grass, like the showers that water the earth.  May all the godly flourish during his reign.  May there be abundant prosperity until the moon is no more.  Psalm 72:1-7

In this Psalm there is a very thin and necessary line any leader must walk, if that leader will measure-up to what David prayed for his son, Solomon, who was about to take over for the dying king.  It’s the precarious line of tension between the heart and head.  On the one hand rulers must govern with rulership, applying with wisdom (of the mind) all the laws of the land equally to all the citizens.  On balance, compassion (of the heart) must make certain the law’s rigid nature tramples no citizen.  To achieve that balance is like a refreshing spring rain on a parched soil.  David’s prayer for his son contains superlatives…enemies eternally fearing Solomon, oppressors broken and crushed, fairness in the courts…always!  And let us not forget prosperity until the moon is no more.  We are talking about King Arthur’s Camelot, an everlasting paradise of blessing showered on everyone.  Can’t you just hear the pledge of allegiance?  One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all!

If you apply those standards to ANY ruler of current day, or of any time in history, that flesh-and-blood human will fall short.  Even the one who prayed it in the 72^nd Psalm for his young ruler-to-be couldn’t live up to that standard.  Indeed, it is an impossible target.  A rule of forever is not consistent with the term-limits of human life spans.  Exact justice is not found anywhere on the planet, except in the minds of the naïve or evil.  So how could David, a wise and (relatively) good king, pray for something no human can hope to attain?  Was he just setting-up his son, Solomon for failure?  Or is there something else in that prayer we’re not seeing?  Perhaps both. 

The spring rain on a field of grass is prosperity for a season; dry spells will return, as assuredly they did in Israel, not long after Solomon’s reign ended.  There were plenty of evil rulers to follow.  David knew this, but still prayed for the son’s wisdom, power, and success.  But, behind the king’s wishes for his earthly son of the next generation, David was pointing to the Son of Advent, of his lineage, nearly a thousand years later, born in a manger. 

If you use Psalm 72 as a template, placing it over the completeness of Scripture’s prophecies concerning the rule of Christ, you will see no inconsistency.  The line between justice and mercy is held high.  Judgment is righteous and fair.  Rule is with godliness.  And the godly flourish.  David’s prayer, written under the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, was hopefulness for Solomon’s reign as king for a season, but it was prophetic for the certainty of Christ’s reign truly forever.

For You Today  

There’s a reason we place our faith in God and not in earthly rulers, or institutions.  Earthly kings and presidents are subject to the transitory and imperfect results of being human, with all the character cracks of our nature; God, in Christ, is eternal and without failure.  That’s a permanent refreshing rain!

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

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: 

       One Nation UNDER God   and   Praying for a President

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^©   

The Days of Noah

Friday, November 25, 2022

Then the people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them.  The sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives.  Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh.  In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.”  In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times.  The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil.  So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth.  It broke his heart.  And the Lord said, “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth.  Yes, and I will destroy every living thing—all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky.  I am sorry I ever made them.” ⁸ But Noah found favor with the Lord.  This is the account of Noah and his family.  Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.   Genesis 6:1-9

I can’t remember when, or who said it, but it was the description of a platypus being …the result of a beaver-duck-osaurous being the assembled result of the committee from Hell.  As memory serves, it may have been at a committee meeting from a church (long-ago) that shall remain anonymous!

The days in which Noah lived, where everyone did what they wanted, not regarding the lives of others, with the result being chaos of the darkest nature, are pictured in Scripture as that which broke God’s heart; it was anything but what the Lord had designed.  If you compare it to the peaceful, gentle, and beautiful setting described as Eden (before sin entered the picture), you can understand why God was so upset! 

Many years ago, when our children were still in diapers, one of them climbed out of the crib during the night and found the full container of baby powder.  In the morning when we went into the nursery the container was no longer full.  But every crack, crevice, nook, and cranny of everything else in the room had baby powder to spare! 

I compare my feeling on that morning to the events of Noah’s days, and how God must’ve felt about his children messing up the environment.  In my mind’s imaginative eye, I can see God turning on his TV to the Jerry Springer Show, or some modern reality series where the woman finds out her man’s been cheating on her with her best friend’s husband, and they were planning to divorce, elope, and adopt a platypus.  No church committee can match that, except, perhaps the committee in charge of planning an orderly and dignified gay pride parade! 

If, in light of the previous descriptions, there is any wonder left in your mind about why God decided to start-over, give me a call…I’ll paint you a picture.

For You Today  

The world news program you watch today (maybe even your local news) will be filled with 95% of the anger, hatred, killing, disaster, and whatever other horrible happenings form the core of 21^st century culture.  We are living in the days of Noah.  Our prayer should always start (and end) with:  Come, Lord Jesus!

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

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: 

       When It Hurts So Much   and   The Thin Line Between Black Friday and Good Friday

This devotional memoir first appeared on Rocky Road Devotions entitled Thanks Dad! August 11, 2016 (updated this date)

Images:  Title Pixabay.com and WikiCommons without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Stan...

Friday, November 4, 2022

No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you:  to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.  Micah 6:8

On Wednesday we said goodbye to Stan Bingham, a friend and church member.  Only time and the unfolding of life’s mystery and purposes of God will tell the total of Stan’s doing right, loving mercy, and walking humbly with his God.  However, I strongly suspect the talley of all that will not do his memory any harm in his new home, a place not made with hands, where he sees clearly what he has meant to the countless people his life and kindness touched, as well as the love with which his Savior, Jesus Christ, embraced him.

I’m writing this on Thursday (the day before you read it, and the day after the gathering of saints and sinners to say that goodbye…and I am as exhausted as I’ve ever been – maybe more).  Being in a sizeable crowd, and responsible to lead a service for someone who is a legend in North Carolina’s legislative chronicles, well…my supply of energy isn’t grand to begin-with…yesterday ran the tank dry.    I feel a little like one of Stan’s dogs from a story posted in Lexington’s Dispatch, about the VW Stan had converted to run on used cooking oil.  

Whenever the Senator would arrive home from an event where he drove the Bug, the hounds would come running to the scent of french fries.  Stan said he feared he’d not get to them in time to keep them from killing themselves on fry-fumes.

From saving his old dogs from themselves, to more than 170 bills passed in the legislature over 16 years, Stan was always shooting for doing right, loving mercy, and being humble enough to not care who gets the credit.

One of the speakers at the service[1], Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, shared that story in his eulogy, and it helped continue the theme of a joy-fillled homegoing for a much-loved, larger-than-life, prank-loving legislator, who was taken home so suddenly.  It was a grand send-off.

As a personal note of observation, tempered by 75 years of watching people, more than 40 of those years being a people-watching pastor, I can say I was most impressed by a mother and her four daughters, Stan’s closest family, long used to the press, and the fishbowl of public life, but less-mindful of the presence of all the trappings of that life, rather focused on celebrating the joy of a man who loved, and lived his life working for justice and mercy, all the while walking humbly with his God.

For You Today ,

You might be a good-sized cog in the wheel of life, or, like me, a rather smallish cog, who gets worn-down easily amongst the bigger cogs; either way, remember this:  you’re a cog that God loves, and has you in the right place on His wheel. 

So take that as seriously as my friend, Stan, by loving God with your whole heart, poured-into doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with He who gave you that first, and every breath you take on this planet.

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions libraryI.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

       Do What?   and   Resetting the Compass

[1] Images: Title image courtesy of The Denton Orator, Used with permission by Bingham family   

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] You can watch the entire homegoing service for Stan Bingham on YouTube HERE

Of Righteousness and Ritual

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Yes, the day of the Lord will be dark and hopeless, without a ray of joy or hope.  “I hate all your show and pretense—the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.  I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings.  I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings.  Away with your noisy hymns of praise!  I will not listen to the music of your harps.  Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living.  Amos 5:20-24

Those really “old” and trite sayings that used to fall from your grandma’s lips (you remember those, don’t you?), a stitch in time saves nine, waste not, want not, and so-on…these survived because they’re true; even the funny ones.  I may have split my side laughing the first time I someone who was trying to help me understand, dressing-up a failed project to look like a winner won’t amount to more than a caricature of what was reality. 

The image he used to illustrate was about lifting a pig from the muck of the pen, and dressing it to the nines.  In the end it was still a pig, bound to return to the muck.  That old expression, you can put lipstick on a pig, but you still ain’t gonna kiss him, makes hilarious sense! 

Now, as funny as that may be, even about the cutest of pigs, when the speaker’s voice is coming from the throne in Heaven, the imagery fades, and we are the ones who must put on the lipstick and quietly, solemnly look in the mirror.

The prophet, Amos, was a farm boy from Israel’s sticks.  Visiting the temple in Jerusalem must have been an eye-opening, jaw-dropping experience.  The ritual of sacrifice was impressive, bloody, and totally without concern for the kind of life God wanted for His people.  Talk about old sayings and truth, Amos must have been thinking:  Man, you can dot all the i’s, and cross all the t’s, and still misspell the word…don’t these people get it?

It is told about Martin Luther, the great reformer of the 16^th-century, when he was still a Roman Catholic priest, he would go to confession…often…sometimes multiple times in a day, re-confessing the same old sins.  His confessor, an older priest, would patiently hear the young priest, give him pennance to do, and ritually assure the guilt-driven Martin Luther his sin was absolved.  The forgiveness after breakfast might last till lunch, and then it was back to the confessional.  When the elder priest decided this routine had gone-on long enough, he stopped Luther mid-way through his litany of the forgiven, unforgiven, and reforgiven sins,  once-again being confessed, and said:  Martin, you either need to accept forgiveness for these same old sins, or get some new ones.  It seems the futility of the same old ritual had been swamped by Martin’s trust in the nursery of his priest’s protective absolution, instead of Luther’s call to the wild field of God’s vineyard.  It’s safer to slip into easy forgiveness, and forget the purpose of what we do…spreading the word, and ministering healing to the lost and marginalized of our brethren.

For You Today ,

The church services, with its rituals and routines serve God’s purpose, of keeping our eyes on His holiness, and developing a doctrinal understanding of our responsibility to serve others.  But if the ritual and routine, and our comfort zone of being forgiven is all we seek, we have done worse than putting lipstick on the old pig…we’ve begun to enjoy kissing him.

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions libraryI.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

       The Elephant in the Room Has Sharp Teeth   and   When It's God's Move

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

The Triumph of Evil

Friday, October 28, 2022

This is the message that the prophet Habakkuk received in a vision.  How long, O Lord, must I call for help?  But you do not listen!  “Violence is everywhere!” I cry, but you do not come to save.  Must I forever see these evil deeds?  Why must I watch all this misery?  Wherever I look, I see destruction and violence.  I am surrounded by people who love to argue and fight.  The law has become paralyzed, and there is no justice in the courts.  The wicked far outnumber the righteous, so that justice has become perverted.  

The Lord replied, “Look around at the nations; look and be amazed!  For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it.  I am raising up the Babylonians, a cruel and violent people.  They will march across the world and conquer other lands.  They are notorious for their cruelty and do whatever they like.  Their horses are swifter than cheetahs and fiercer than wolves at dusk.  Their charioteers charge from far away.  Like eagles, they swoop down to devour their prey.  “On they come, all bent on violence.  Their hordes advance like a desert wind, sweeping captives ahead of them like sand.  They scoff at kings and princes and scorn all their fortresses.  They simply pile ramps of earth against their walls and capture them!  They sweep past like the wind and are gone.  But they are deeply guilty, for their own strength is their god.”  

O Lord my God, my Holy One, you who are eternal—surely you do not plan to wipe us out?  O Lord, our Rock, you have sent these Babylonians to correct us, to punish us for our many sins.  But you are pure and cannot stand the sight of evil.  Will you wink at their treachery?  Should you be silent while the wicked swallow up people more righteous than they?  

Habakkuk 1:1-13

Habakkuk’s conversation with the Lord was Israel’s version of Why do bad things happen to good people?  Although the prophet had eyes, and could see the myriad of ways God’s people had forfeited any right to being called God’s people, he still had trouble getting his mind around why God would use such a vile nation as Babylon to carry out His punishment. 

In the daylight of hindsight, I’m certain Jewish scholars have been able to gain perspective, that God allows us to choose our “fate” because of free will.  My mother was an easy-going sort, hesitant to mete out harshness of any kind.  One of her strong suits was patience.  Her youngest child, Russell, did not get that gene.  Often, when my youthful audaciousness devised plans that were well beyond caution, Mom would simply say:  No…I don’t think so.  To be fair, Mom would always give me the rundown on how dangerous the consequences might prove, but Russell would whine and try to reason with her, until even that sweet-natured patience wore thin.  Eventually she would say:  Do what you want.

In my own perspective, informed by decades of hindsight and well-earned heartaches, the wisdom of Mom’s objections to my flawed and selfish plans, strikes me as mostly Godly wisdom and righteousness.  She marched to a higher bar of behavior than her self-centered son.  The much published saying of Edmund Burke:  The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, is largely true, but not exclusively-so.  Evil can triumph when so-called good people fail to see the handwriting on the wall about our responsibility to live-up to the name we claim.  God will not be mocked. 

People may assume God is not monitoring human behavior; that does not make it so.  There is accountability for every moment we exist.

For You Today

The “fate” of America is still in the balance; our national behavior will decide if evil will triumph, or if we will be one nation under God.

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

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: 

       What Flash Saw   and   Nervous Kings

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