Under His Wings

Thursday, September 22, 2022

Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  This I declare about the Lord:  He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I trust him.  For he will rescue you from every trap and protect you from deadly disease.  He will cover you with his feathers.  He will shelter you with his wings.  His faithful promises are your armor and protection.  Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night, nor the arrow that flies in the day.  Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness, nor the disaster that strikes at midday.

The Lord says, “I will rescue those who love me.  I will protect those who trust in my name.  When they call on me, I will answer; I will be with them in trouble.  I will rescue and honor them.  I will reward them with a long life and give them my salvation.”  Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16

It is no wonder that, during difficult times, believers instinctively turn to the Psalms for comfort and assurance.  And, there are always difficult times; often it seems life is one long wrestling match with mountains.  If you’re not in a tough moment, you’ve just come out of one, and if you’ve been trouble-free for a good while, just hang-on, your old enemy will bring you a tempest soon enough!

The pure joy that floods my soul reading Psalm 91 is balm for whatever ails me.  Whether it is physical difficulties that the doctors can’t cure, financial shortfalls, a relationship on the rocks, or some spiritual malaise that has managed to worm its way into my life, and suck the joy right out of my bones, God’s assuring presence and power are just one surrendering-prayer from lifting me out of the depths.  It’s almost inexpressable how His Word cares for me.

The hymnwriters, no strangers when it comes to tough times, pen words and music that heal.  They’ve been, to my soul, master craftsmen of preaching God’s comfort and power through major and minor keys, meter, and rhyme.  One hymn that expresses so well the care God has for his children is Under His Wings.[1]

      Under His wings I am safely abiding;

Though the night deepens and tempests are wild,
Still I can trust Him--I know He will keep me,
He has redeemed me and I am His child.

Refrain:
Under His wings, under His wings,
Who from His love can sever?
Under His wings my soul shall abide,
Safely abide forever.

Under His wings, what a refuge in sorrow!
How the heart yearningly turns to His rest!
Often when earth has no balm for my healing,
There I find comfort, and there I am blessed. (Refrain)

Under His wings, O what precious enjoyment!
There will I hide till life’s trials are o’er;
Sheltered, protected, no evil can harm me,
Resting in Jesus I’m safe evermore. (Refrain)

For You Today

Sheltered, protected, resting safe-evermore…nothing in this world can ever match that…and it’s free and assured in Christ Jesus for the child of 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: 

Under His Wings (2016) and "Mother" Nature

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

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[1] Under His Wings, Text:  William O. Cushing,    Music:  Ira D. Sankey, The Hymnal for Worship & Celebration, (Waco, Texas, Word Music, 1986) #356

Truth's Disappearing Act

Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Help, O Lord, for the godly are fast disappearing!  The faithful have vanished from the earth!  Neighbors lie to each other, speaking with flattering lips and deceitful hearts.  May the Lord cut off their flattering lips and silence their boastful tongues.  They say, “We will lie to our hearts’ content.  Our lips are our own—who can stop us?”  The Lord replies, “I have seen violence done to the helpless, and I have heard the groans of the poor.  Now I will rise up to rescue them, as they have longed for me to do.”  The Lord’s promises are pure, like silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times over.  Therefore, Lord, we know you will protect the oppressed, preserving them forever from this lying generation, even though the wicked strut about, and evil is praised throughout the land.  Psalm 12:1-8

It's impossible to come to a conclusion that truth is hallowed in 21st century culture.  Rather, we would be forced to admit (if honest) that truth is seen as optional, if lying brings you the resuts you’re after.  More than half of school children admit to cheating on tests; the key word being admit.  It doesn’t help that some teachers are actually promoting test dishonesty.  In Florida a cheating on tests scandal was recently uncovered, where teachers were rigging the tests to make sure more of their students pass.  The motivation is that teachers get bonuses ($25-$50 per student) for passing grades.[1]  While this is certainly not the standard, it shades public perception of the integrity of teachers holding their careers to a higher ethical standard.  But it does give one pause to recall James Russell Lowell’s famous quote:  Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.  Evil, as the Psalmist put it, is praised throughout the land.

There are plenty of examples of the prevaricating nature of our culture’s moral turpitude.  Election campaigns are battlegrounds no longer for presenting the genuine character of the candidates; they are all about pandering to the polls, and tickling ears.  It isn’t about presenting clearly an agenda of how the county will benefit from the course of action an aspiring office-holder will enact.  Rather, it’s a matter of hiding the true agenda, and how it will keep the candidate’s party in power, and line the pockets of those who got the candidate elected.  And if it takes a small white lie (or a big whopper) to get there, well, integrity is a little over-rated, and besides, the end will justify how we got there.

The Psalmist clearly states God’s agenda for that kind of forked-tongue, snakiness: 

The Lord replies, “I have seen violence done to the helpless, and I have heard the groans of the poor.  Now I will rise up to rescue them, as they have longed for me to do.”  

For You Today

It isn’t going far out on a limb to say that the only way our nation’s young will get it, that truth is important, is if they see it in the generation that’s raising them, even when it hurts.  No, make that, especially when it hurts!  That’s the time the truth will really set you free.[2]

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: 

Walk with Integrity and Truth, Whole Truth, Nothing BUT the Truth

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

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[1] Teachers Caught in Test Cheating Scandal

[2] John 8:32

Hearing, Learning, & Loving

Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Even though I am a free man with no master, I have become a slave to all people to bring many to Christ.  When I was with the Jews, I lived like a Jew to bring the Jews to Christ.  When I was with those who follow the Jewish law, I too lived under that law.  Even though I am not subject to the law, I did this so I could bring to Christ those who are under the law.  When I am with the Gentiles who do not follow the Jewish law, I too live apart from that law so I can bring them to Christ.  But I do not ignore the law of God; I obey the law of Christ.  When I am with those who are weak, I share their weakness, for I want to bring the weak to Christ.  Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some.  I do everything to spread the Good News and share in its blessings.                                      1 Corinthians 9:19-23

The WHY of apostle Paul’s living a somewhat chameleon-like life, blending-in with every sort of different person, nationality, or social status, was his learned ability to love.  It was so important to Paul to treat others with an open, loving heart, he virtually gave himself to others, so that he would have the opportunity to introduce them to Christ. 

Paul changed; he was no longer a fire-breathing zealot on a crusade to destroy everything related to Jesus Christ.[1]  In place of the old Saul, there was now the new, loving Paul who would literally give his life to bring others to Christ.[2]  Why the shift?  Jesus confronted Paul in the middle of his holacaust work of destroying the church, and taught him to love, because he was loved.  In the process, Paul couldn’t get enough of loving others.  Real Christianity is contagious!

Finding common ground with others is how you learn to love the unlovable.  You cannot do that when you’re unwilling to hear others with the receptive ear that helps you learn who they are, underneath, in their being, and understanding what wakes them up in the middle of the night with the cold sweats.  If you’re serious about sharing the love of Christ, that someone else might know Christ, and find eternal life, you cannot engage in screaming matches, or massive campaigns to exclude people from your life.  In short, you just can’t be afraid of others who are different…you must hear them, and understand them, so you can love them.

There’s an old idea that just doesn’t ring true for me, that dogs will chase cats because dogs hate cats.  Well, my daughter’s pets didn’t get that memo.  Boomer, the huge Mastiff, has gotten quite used to Carrie’s feline borders, Smith & Wesson.  In the picture you see just how close a 100-pound Mastiff can relate to a 7-pound kitty he could have for lunch.  It wasn’t always that way.  Whenever Boomer came into a room, Wesson used to run for the nearest place the hound couldn’t reach.  Little by little that changed.  Now they even play together.  Somewhere along the line, they began hearing each other out…listening, and learning…and now loving.   

Boomer is still a dog…a big, drooling mess of a mush, incapable of not being loved.  Wesson is still a mischievous feline, climbing-on anything high, jumping-off anything dangerously placed, and squeezing-in any tight spot (especially if there’s a slight trace of food to be had).  Neither of them have changed species; but now they play together…and they’re both the better for it.

For You Today

Learn Paul, Boomer, and Wesson’s lessons…listen, learn, love – and play nice!

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: 

Living in a Dumpster and When Tolerance Grows Up into Spiritual Maturity

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

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[1] See Acts 9

[2] See Romans 9:3

When God Speaks and Humans Find it Difficult to Listen

Monday, September 19, 2022

This is what the Lord says:  “Don’t let the wise boast in their wisdom, or the powerful boast in their power, or the rich boast in their riches.  But those who wish to boast should boast in this alone:  that they truly know me and understand that I am the Lord who demonstrates unfailing love and who brings justice and righteousness to the earth, and that I delight in these things.  I, the Lord, have spoken!  “A time is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will punish all those who are circumcised in body but not in spirit—the Egyptians, Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites, the people who live in the desert in remote places, and yes, even the people of Judah.  And like all these pagan nations, the people of Israel also have uncircumcised hearts.”  Jeremiah 9:23-26

Our grandson, Christopher, is getting (alarmingly) close to 30.  He serves in the Air Force, stationed nearly 7,000 miles from home.  He’s a big guy (over 6’), with a big heart, and a ready wit.  As with most parents and grandparents, I tend to think of him as a young boy, riding bicycles, full of giggles and goofiness.  

I have this one scene embedded in my brain from his childhood (and replayed almost every time we talk), where he does his best Robert DeNiro imitation, turning to look at me, and intoning a very New York Taxi-driver[1] personna:  You talkin’ to ME?

God gave a message to Jeremiah that would not have placed him on the top-10 favorite people list in Jerusalem, or anywhere in our current culture.  Whenever God begins a sentence with there is a time coming, eyerolls and choruses of not this again fill the room.  I can just see the words rolling off Jeremiah’s lips on the steps of Jerusalem’s crumbling Temple, as he warns all the religious leaders and the crowd assembled for worship.  They’re right with him when he talks of punishment for Egypt, Amonites, and Moabites….Oh, yeah, God, put the hot irons to those heathen barbarians!  

But then Jeremiah quits preaching, and goes to meddling; he faces the crowd, squints a little like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character, and says:  uh….yes, even the people of Judah.  And wide-eyed, furious, the people yell:  You talkin’ to ME?

And Jeremiah (still squinting ominiously) says:  Yep…even you, Jerusalem high-brows, have uncircumcised hearts.  (Circumcision was a ritual with which they were quite familiar, a telltale physical sign they’d been born into the right family.)  Jerusalem’s elite imagined themselves as somewhat grandfathered-in when it came to being spiritually correct, and therefore accepted by God.  Jeremiah warned them a physical mark, and all the rituals in the world, didn’t get you any gold stars from heaven, unless a softened, obedient, generous, gracious heart, made your walk line-up with all your talk!

The problem with an “uncircumcised heart” is spiritual blindness.  And that is a hallmark of 21^st-Century culture.  In todays live-and-let-me-do-my-thing world, I may tolerate your racist, gender-insensitive, non-wokeness, as long as you stay out of my face with it….but when you start talking about how I might be included in your God’s torture parade…You BETTER NOT be talkin’ to ME! 

The residents of Jerusalem disliked what the prophet said, and it eventually landed him in prison.  The downturn of events for Jeremiah was painful for him, but the day IS most certainly coming when God will balance those scales!

For You Today

One question the church never has to ask of God is:  Are YOU talkin’ to US?

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: 

An Empty Lament and Stumbling in Broad Daylight

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

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[1] From the 1976 Movie Taxi Driver starring Robert DeNiro

O God...HELP!

Friday, September 16, 2022

O God, pagan nations have conquered your land, your special possession.  They have defiled your holy Temple and made Jerusalem a heap of ruins.  They have left the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of heaven.  The flesh of your godly ones has become food for the wild animals.  Blood has flowed like water all around Jerusalem; no one is left to bury the dead.  We are mocked by our neighbors, an object of scorn and derision to those around us.  O Lord, how long will you be angry with us?  Forever?  How long will your jealousy burn like fire?  Pour out your wrath on the nations that refuse to acknowledge you—on kingdoms that do not call upon your name.  For they have devoured your people Israel,  making the land a desolate wilderness.  Psalm 79:1-7

This is a prayer ascribed to Asaph (one of the Scribes who could have been tasked with ghost-writing the king’s thoughts to be shared in worship).  There is, in this prayer the beginnings (at least) of that old saying:  Be careful of that for which you pray…you just might get it!

I am referring to that part where Asaph asks God to pour out wrath on the nations that don’t acknowledge God, don’t seek His will.  Only a righteous person or nation could pray that kind of prayer with a straight face.  This was a time of trouble, when the Babylonian Empire had conquered Jerusalem in 586 BC.  With the city and the Temple demonlished, there was a lot of lamenting and praying for God’s help.  But it was little use offering prayers to God to help them get a little payback on Babylon.[1]  That prayer would only bounce-back on their heads.  Israel had sinned just as heinously as Babylon, just in different ways.  In fact, God was the one who engineered Babylon’s conquest.  Jeremiah had prophesied the cauldron[2] of trouble from the North (Iraq) would flood-down on Jerusalem like a pot of boiling water on their heads.  In a kind of poetic justice, when an unrighteous person (or nation) prays that God would destroy the unrighteous, it will receive God’s answer, but it won’t be nearly like the praying person thought.

Following the attack of September 11, 2001, it was common during televised ball games, to sing God Bless America during a break.  Feelings of nationalistic pride would well-up in tears of millions of eyes of those who hardly (if ever) darkened the doorstep of a church, or bowed a knee in prayer.  We pray, or at least sing our national anthem with more gusto, when we’re in trouble.  And that is anything but seeking the face of God…it is praying for the ability to find a plausible alibi when you’ve been caught red-handed with hands in the cookie jar.

A better word would be hypocrisy.  You cannot live every day of your life without so much as a thought of God’s ways, and then expect God’s kindness, just because you deserve it, and He is that big vending machine in the sky.  God does not change his character, and He has told us exactly how he will respond to those who have a pretend relationship with Him.  In the final judgment, there are some who will try to run that game right before the throne; the response of God will be:

But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’  Matthew 7:23

For You Today

Let’s give the Scripture the last word today on a better life’s path:

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.  Proverbs 3:5-6^(KJV)

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: 

An Empty Lament and Stumbling in Broad Daylight

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

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[1] The city of Babylon, capitol of ancient Babylonian Empire is located 55 miles south of Baghdad (in modern Iraq)

[2] See Jeremiah 1:11-16

Not Much Left

Thursday, September 15, 2022

This is what the Lord said to me:  “Go and buy a linen loincloth and put it on, but do not wash it.”  So I bought the loincloth as the Lord directed me, and I put it on.  Then the Lord gave me another message:  “Take the linen loincloth you are wearing, and go to the Euphrates River.  Hide it there in a hole in the rocks.”  So I went and hid it by the Euphrates as the Lord had instructed me.   A long time afterward the Lord said to me, “Go back to the Euphrates and get the loincloth I told you to hide there.”  So I went to the Euphrates and dug it out of the hole where I had hidden it.  But now it was rotting and falling apart. The loincloth was good for nothing.  Then I received this message from the Lord:  “This is what the Lord says:  This shows how I will rot away the pride of Judah and Jerusalem.  These wicked people refuse to listen to me.  They stubbornly follow their own desires and worship other gods.  Therefore, they will become like this loincloth—good for nothing!  As a loincloth clings to a man’s waist, so I created Judah and Israel to cling to me, says the Lord.  They were to be my people, my pride, my glory—an honor to my name.  But they would not listen to me.  Jeremiah 13:1-11

This sermon of Jeremiah’s was a long time cooking.  God had told the prophet to buy some new underwear, put it on for a while, and then go bury it under a rock near the river.  Then, after a long time, God instructed Jeremiah to dig it up.  When the cloth was retrieved, there wasn’t much left.

Why would God orchestrate this strange behavior?  What was the Lord doing?  Well, it’s not too difficult to figure out…a garment that’s meant to be worn doesn’t do well buried in the damp ground…it will rot. 

The meaning in the story’s impact makes Israel God’s undergarment, meant to stay closely-wrapped to the One who saved them, and led them to the land flowing with milk and honey.  The short version is painful…they wouldn’t, and they didn’t.

To sensible people it seems odd that anyone who had been carried like a child by a loving parent would want to stray from that relationship.  But, as seen over and again in Scripture’s account of Israel’s history, God’s people left the calling of JHWH in the dust to serve other gods.  Chalk up a win for stubbornness and pride!

Over the course of human history the willfulness, and very stubborn pride of humans, has preciptated much grief and pain.  People leave the one true God to serve all kinds of other gods, easier gods, gods that will let you indulge your own whims, and applaude your decision.  In the end, when you dig up what is left of their life’s record, it is as rotten as discarded underwear, buried on the riverbank.

For You Today

A Christian is a person who has surrendered all rights to self-determination, committing his or her life to following the one, true, living God’s will and calling.  And that calling, no matter if it is to business, church, government, or a billion other occupations and ways to spend your days on earth…unequivocally means staying close to the God who loves and saves you.  To do anything other makes the human the god.  That didn’t work for Israel, and it will not fare better for any of us.

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: 

Nervous Kings and When Faith is Discarded

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