Remember when that song came out, our grandparents were certainly young and dancing to that in the 1930s. Now our parents are remembering Glen Miller or perhaps they were younger and remember Bill Hailey and the Comets. At any age, they have precious memories that while they share with us, those memories bring hidden smiles to their hearts. Treating older people the way we do sometimes should be a crime, because they gave us this country. Our founding fathers may have begun the country but without our grandparents and parents how in the world could we have defeated Hitler or Hirohito?
Be sure and thank the older people of this country. And listen when they speak.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Barnabas revisited
VII. ALIVE IN CHRIST
The text is taken from the scripture Galatians 2:20.
What is it to be alive? If you listen very closely to my heart, you’ll hear a click sound that indicates blood is flowing through my heart and through my arteries and veins. It is indicative of function. Does it mean I’m alive, really alive? You can touch me here and now, and I am warm, I move, I show emotions. Is that what is meant to be alive? Or am I alive because the LORD in His infinite wisdom granted all those who believe (and consequently obey) His Son and know that His Son gives life. He has given me and others unconditional love and said, “Now, take the ball and run.”
Would it surprise you if I say that both conditions are necessary for life, real life, the kind that can go on forever? Christ grew in physical strength, in wisdom and in Spirit. God created us in His image, which is Christ. Indeed God is a Spirit (John 4:24), but He came down to earth in physical form. The fact is that one condition doesn’t exist very long without the other. If one tries to exist without the other there is a warping effect. Either there is too much focus on meeting physical needs and being dependant on others because of that, or the neglect of the physical needs leads to a poverty that God does not want for us either.
There are a lot of people out there who haven’t got a clue. I attended a Wellness Seminar once that kept saying “you must gain control”, that every human must take control of their own lives because their stability is dependant on whether or not they can exhibit self-control. The whole point of our Christian lives is that humans are not in control at all, ever. The minute we say, “OK God I can handle it without You, thanks for your help.”, is when God cries. I hate making God cry, but that is exactly what happens. I have just hurt his feelings by telling Him I am the one in control, not Him and I created me, He didn’t create me at all. I am at that point too blinded to see God not only loves me, washes my dirty, tired feet at the end of a grueling day of work, feeds me when I am hungry, comforts me in prisons that I may or may not have created for myself, shelters me from the elements when my body cannot handle stress. In essence God provides me a way out of any situation. At the point I take control from God and place it in my hands is when I have allowed Satan to convince me that God wanted to hide the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil from Adam and Eve because of the power it would give them, and He is trying to hide that same power from me now. And that is a lie. It was a lie in Genesis and it is a lie today. To think that God would create a very structured but free-ranging universe, to think that God would provide a way for us to enjoy this universe forever, to think that the blessings that God gives daily, is so that He can snatch them away to say, “Gotcha!” is exactly what Satan would have us believe. Satan wants us to think that God wants all the power for Himself and wants us to have none of it, like the lie Satan told Adam and Eve that God doesn’t want men to be as powerful as He is. But, you see, God does want to give us the power, He does want to share it all. After all, He calls us His children. What we must realize is that no matter how much or how little we have, how much physical, spiritual, intellectual power we have is nothing and will fall to nothing unless we realize that none of it is actually generated by us. It is, in fact, the Creator’s power, and He is only using us as reflectors of Himself. He is offering us the gift of a lifetime, eternal salvation, eternal sharing in His inheritance as His children. All we have to do is allow Him to be in control.
The text is taken from the scripture Galatians 2:20.
What is it to be alive? If you listen very closely to my heart, you’ll hear a click sound that indicates blood is flowing through my heart and through my arteries and veins. It is indicative of function. Does it mean I’m alive, really alive? You can touch me here and now, and I am warm, I move, I show emotions. Is that what is meant to be alive? Or am I alive because the LORD in His infinite wisdom granted all those who believe (and consequently obey) His Son and know that His Son gives life. He has given me and others unconditional love and said, “Now, take the ball and run.”
Would it surprise you if I say that both conditions are necessary for life, real life, the kind that can go on forever? Christ grew in physical strength, in wisdom and in Spirit. God created us in His image, which is Christ. Indeed God is a Spirit (John 4:24), but He came down to earth in physical form. The fact is that one condition doesn’t exist very long without the other. If one tries to exist without the other there is a warping effect. Either there is too much focus on meeting physical needs and being dependant on others because of that, or the neglect of the physical needs leads to a poverty that God does not want for us either.
There are a lot of people out there who haven’t got a clue. I attended a Wellness Seminar once that kept saying “you must gain control”, that every human must take control of their own lives because their stability is dependant on whether or not they can exhibit self-control. The whole point of our Christian lives is that humans are not in control at all, ever. The minute we say, “OK God I can handle it without You, thanks for your help.”, is when God cries. I hate making God cry, but that is exactly what happens. I have just hurt his feelings by telling Him I am the one in control, not Him and I created me, He didn’t create me at all. I am at that point too blinded to see God not only loves me, washes my dirty, tired feet at the end of a grueling day of work, feeds me when I am hungry, comforts me in prisons that I may or may not have created for myself, shelters me from the elements when my body cannot handle stress. In essence God provides me a way out of any situation. At the point I take control from God and place it in my hands is when I have allowed Satan to convince me that God wanted to hide the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil from Adam and Eve because of the power it would give them, and He is trying to hide that same power from me now. And that is a lie. It was a lie in Genesis and it is a lie today. To think that God would create a very structured but free-ranging universe, to think that God would provide a way for us to enjoy this universe forever, to think that the blessings that God gives daily, is so that He can snatch them away to say, “Gotcha!” is exactly what Satan would have us believe. Satan wants us to think that God wants all the power for Himself and wants us to have none of it, like the lie Satan told Adam and Eve that God doesn’t want men to be as powerful as He is. But, you see, God does want to give us the power, He does want to share it all. After all, He calls us His children. What we must realize is that no matter how much or how little we have, how much physical, spiritual, intellectual power we have is nothing and will fall to nothing unless we realize that none of it is actually generated by us. It is, in fact, the Creator’s power, and He is only using us as reflectors of Himself. He is offering us the gift of a lifetime, eternal salvation, eternal sharing in His inheritance as His children. All we have to do is allow Him to be in control.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Barnabas
Barnabas was an encourager, to bring bright thoughts into otherwise depressed lives. Barnabas was also a wealthy man, who sold all he had and gave the earnings to the church so that the gospel could flourish. What is more encouraging than to see the good news in action, and what is still more encouraging than to watch the seed of hope grow within someone so that they can put the good news into action.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Aging Parents
I live with an aging parent. Mom is up in years and has the energy of a 20 year old. I hope I have that energy when I am her age. It hasn't always been easy being her daughter but it has never been dull. She and I have been through many joys and difficulties together. The most difficult is realizing that she is not immortal, that I may be an orphan some day at least on this physical earth. I cannot say that is a pleasant thought but I can rest in the thought that she has prepared me to deal with anything and has taught me to be steadfast in everything. I can only hope that I have the impact on some young person that she has been on me.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Hi Everyone
Hi everyone
I know this is a little long, but bear with me. I am trying to convert from my web page to my blog sit so I only have one page to worry over per week. Do enjoy and lets have some comments please
Thanks
Lydia
BARNABAS
I. Whose are you?
The text is taken from Job particularly Job 28-42.
What if your best friend is in the hospital, possibly dying and you are told to wait in the waiting room because the doctors are performing surgery on him/her? What if you just ended a very trying relationship, one you wish wouldn't have ended quite the way it did, yet things got out of hand? What if you got fired for something you didn't do, or for something you did that wasn't wrong, it was just unacceptable to the people supervising you at the time and was subject to change anyway? What if someone you loved was addicted to alcohol? Or sex? Or food? Or any of the miriads of things that would get us into the thick of addiction and away from God?
Your first reaction in any of these situations is to cry. The most human response is one of feeling completely helpless, wanting to fix things and yet knowing that there is nothing that you can do. Job lost his wealth and his family and his friends were putting quite some distance between themselves and Job. Job then put sack cloth and ashes and prayed. A little bit more advanced in his thinking perhaps but still did it because he felt helpless. In all of this melee comes one word.
"Why?"
Job said it, not at first, but it surely came from his lips when he'd reached his breaking point. How fast do you reach that point? It's pretty fast for me. "Why?" is almost the first word that comes out of my mouth.
What I forget is what the Lord told Job. "Why indeed! Who made you and the rest of Creation?!" Many people look at trials in their lives as negative experiences that they'd rather forget. Struggles are a bummer when you are pursuing happiness. Ah-ha! Maybe that is it. Maybe trials interfere with everyone's happiness. Maybe we need,and Job had, at least for a while, something else that will always get us through. Contentment. What's the difference between that and happiness? Ask any older Christian person with a smile on his/her face that has really been through struggles in his/her life. Ask that person how he/she coped with financial struggles, especially if he/she was living in the Depression. Ask him/her about the time when he/she lost a younger brother to cancer, or a child to leukemia, or lost a brother or other family member in one of our numerous wars. He/She will tell you that it's all about being able to say, "Not my will but Thine". (Matthew 26:39) Being content is calling God "Abba" (Daddy). (Romans 8:15). And we can only do that if we pray constantly and consistently. Then and only then can you be content, content enough not to really mind being cut off in traffic, or in a telemarketer calling you. Only then can you truly handle anything the world may throw at you. Rejoicing in everything, you can then know the answer to the question, "Who's are you, anyway?"
II. LIFE’S SHORTAGES
This text is taken from Romans 8:28-39
While working on her Master’s degree in counseling, my friend and roommate, Leslie, also had a job as a cashier at one of the busiest restaurants in Charlotte, NC – the Cracker Barrel. It’s a tough job being a cashier but especially at Cracker Barrel. You know the type of restaurant, located within walking distance or at least driving distance from at least four major hotels, right off the highway so that travelers can stop in. On the way to the airport. And a favorite stop of touring and social groups. Cracker Barrel is wonderful because of the home cooked meals and wonderfully enchanting gift shop. Needless to say on a non-busy day, everyone is still busy. And to be a cashier there means having to brush aside distractions from everyone else’s busy buzzing as well as from customers and then there are the typical crowd noises. At the same time a cashier has to keep track of receipts, cash, credit, whatever, so that the money in the register matches the intake of tickets.
Tough job. I know I’d fall miserably on my face if I had to do that for a living. (I do well to add 2 and 2 and come up with 4). It’s no wonder that when my friend got tired, the little everyday distractions affected her more than normal and there may have been a difference of a few cents at the end of her shift. That was indeed a rare occurrence but it did happen. One day, after we had just signed a lease to our apartment in Rock Hill, SC, I was moving things over to the apartment when Leslie came in. For several minutes, she didn’t speak. I continued to move more things into the apartment. She also moved some things in from her car. There was silence for a little bit, but then she spoke, saying, “Would you still love me if I wasn’t at Cracker Barrel?” Her voice trailed off. When I asked her what was wrong, the floodgates opened wide. The best I could make out between the sobs was that there was a rather large discrepancy between what was in her cash drawer and what the cash receipts said she should have had. She finished with, “I’m…just…so…stupid” and then the floodgates opened again. She sat down on the floor, head in hands. I thought a minute. Then I put my arms around her and said, “Listen, do you want to know something? Imagine yourself as a cashier for God. And you come up short. What do you think He does? Fire you? Of course not! Stop loving you? No! Do you know what He does?” I reached in my pocket and pulled out a 5 dollar bill. “He reaches deep in His pockets and pulls up however much you were short and puts it in your cash drawer and says, ‘Now, what was that about being short?’ ”
Tough job, being a cashier. Kind of like being a Christian. When we come up short and fell like we’ve failed, God reaches deep in His pockets and replaces whatever we are short in and says, “Now, what was that about being short?”
Thank you, God, for making us whole…again…and again…
III CHOICES AND CHANCES
I was born with a defective aortic valve in my heart. Instead of the standard issue of three leaflets, I only had two. Late in the year 1992, my cardiologist said in the following three months if I didn’t do something about it, I could die. It was a matter of time.
It was also a matter of choice. I had to make the choice of accepting a doctor’s scientific opinion that I needed open heart surgery, and perhaps a second opinion and deciding which would be best for me. Was I in danger? No doubt, but how much time I had was not clear. And the surgery itself is risky. Not only during the surgery, but after, during recovery. Open heart surgery changes one’s lifestyle, slows one down, then makes one have to decide when one is doing too much. That is called listening to one’s body. And I could have very easily said, “I don’t want to do this” and take the chance the doctor was wrong. And then once having had the operation, I could be so dependant on everyone and everything that I could no longer function on my own.
I had to decide what to do…and I did. I took the chance. I made the choice. With surgery I was assured a better quality of life. And by making a recovery to the point of being able to function without help, my quality of existence would improve.
And I think that’s what God wants us to do and expects of us.
As limited human beings as we are emotionally, physically, and spiritually, God still gives us an out. He gave us a free will. A will to say, “I believe” or “I don’t believe”. Many times you’ll hear someone say, “I cannot help the way I am. That’s me. I have an illness.” And while mental and physical illnesses are real and should never be downplayed, by the same token God has equipped us to do something about our problems. Jesus descended to earth, took on human form, suffered and died taking on the sins of all creation. All the while saying, “God, thy will be done” and “My Father has many mansions, and I go to prepare a place for you with me” and “I must die to go to the Father” and most important, “Father forgive them they haven’t got a clue”. True we are sick individual in one form or another. But it is that will to say to God, “Whatever you want, God” and it is the grace that enables us to say “No” to ungodliness that Paul talks about in Titus 2:14, and to then allow God to work in us to do something about our failings. We may be sick now, but we can overcome it, because Christ overcame death’s sting. As long as we are trying to see where we are going and know that God is there and that He is a loving, true, loyal, magnificent spirit and that He is alive in us, we can conquer anything. Indeed, as Paul says in Romans 8:37, we are more than conquerors, we are His heirs and children. When we tell Him we will become His by obeying Him the way He wants to be obeyed then we too have that hope that because of God’s love we too can share in the eternal joy that comes in Christ. We have to be willing to take advantage of the promise that God made and fulfilled in Jesus, on both sides of the coin as servants and recipients of service. We have to be willing to “pass it on” as the song says. We have to be willing to give without wanting return and as servants we have to be willing to get out of what makes us comfortable and go the extra mile with people for this “Love one another” thing to work.
There are choices we all make. “I don’t do evangelism, I don’t visit the sick, I’m not good at first contacts, I don’t do well unless I know someone well, the church doesn’t give enough to me, they don’t care for me, they don’t need me, they don’t love me like this other group does”, and so forth. We all look for comfort zones, excuses, rationalizations. We all look for something that sounds good to us because we are the focal point, at least for a little bit. At the same time we don’t want to step out of the warmth and nurturing atmosphere of church folk into the coldness and aloneness of maybe confronting a brother when he is wrong or pulling a sister from the fire when she would really rather burn. We don’t want to risk friendships. But you know what? The promise is that God doesn’t give us anything we cannot handle. (1 Corinthians 10:13). At the same time He does expect us to use the talents we have been given, to work, to serve, and to be served. (Philippians 2:12). And sometimes this involves encouraging people, and sometimes it means challenging people. When I consider my Christian life, I’ve needed the challenges as much as the encouragement.
I was physically challenged by my heart and I made the choice to take the risk to improve the quality of my life. Are we spiritually challenged by how we live our lives and will we make the choice to return to doing what God wants us to do? God is counting on it!
IV. SATAN AND THE SHOULD NOTS
The text is taken from James 5:16.
One day satan was pondering what he could do to make my life miserable. I know where I am going, and I know that as long as my obedience is to the fullest extent and that God is always number one in my heart that I am not going to spiritually ever die. I know that in my mind. My mind knows many things that my heart will never realize. Unfortunately. This particular day I learned a valuable lesson about letting my mind at least talk to my heart and try to make it realize that God was closer to me than I ever realized.
And not to listen to satan’s lies.
I was coming home from New Orleans. I’d been there because my father had been critically ill in intensive care and his doctor recommended I come home. For two days, I visited with my father in CCU and then on the third day, in an answer to prayers of many of my brothers and sisters in Christ, he was able to go into a regular hospital room. He had begun a rapid recovery. The doctors had done all they could, and after a few days of pumping him full of whatever they knew to give him and then asking why it wasn’t working, the prayers of righteous men and women were answered. I was ecstatic. I was able to share with my father and speak to him of God and the love He has for him. In fact, I was probably the only glimpse of the Light that my family saw in an otherwise dark and gloomy environment. Please understand that I am not patting myself on the back. It’s just that I have never before been able to share Christ as I did then and to let God shine without feeling afraid, as though this may be the last hour of not just my dad’s life, but all people’s lives, and so I’d best get to the task at hand and show the Hope and Glory that is God. Seeing them in this critical situation was really seeing a people without hope, and my heart went out to them.
And as I was riding back to my home on a jet plane, I heard a small voice say, “You should have kept up with the minister so that he could keep talking to your father”, “You should have talked to your mother more”, “You should have done this better or not done that at all”, “You shouldn’t have gotten mad at your brother, that wasn’t very Christ-like”. There was a stretch of time I began to feel low, as though God’s mission was not accomplished through me. I felt worthless.
And then I remembered Christ being available and consistent for many. He healed the lame, the deaf, the blind, he raised children from the dead not to mention Lazarus. But that was not Christ, and He would readily say that, but it was God working through Him. So whenever any one of Christ’s brethren do good works, those come from God as well. Nothing more needs to be added or taken away. And something else. All the while Jesus was healing and lending His life and works to improve people’s lives, He was simply there. He met their needs, and that let the doctrinal issues come when they would come. There was always a tie-in with doctrine, but the expression may not have come at that particular time and it may have been hidden. It is so easy to tell someone what he/she needs to do to get to heaven. How easy is it for that person to actually act upon that knowledge? Jesus well knew they when He healed the man that was lowered in from a rooftop in Matthew 9:1-10. He knew that it is easy to do the doctrinal things, not so easy to actually get into a person’s life and really help them. It is so easy to focus on doctrine and on being religious. But Jesus was not interested just in following the doctrine, but putting His money where His mouth was. He was interested in helping people and making them realize they were important to God. Loving the unlovable, loving those who it is not easy to love. Loving those who wouldn’t give Him the time of day. Loving those who would do Him harm. Sure He wanted people to go to heaven, and He gave many guidelines how to do this, but something He makes me mindful of is that it is not just about getting people to “follow the rules”, its not just about teaching people what they must do to be saved, it is being kind enough to them to want the best for them, to help them improve their quality of physical and spiritual life, to carry their load when it becomes too hard for them. If all I am worried about is making sure people are following the checklist I will fail miserably and I will get into the mindset of works. But God saved by grace, not my works. Christ died so that I could be set free and have eternal life with God. (John 3:16) All I should be concerned with is sharing this message and letting God speak to people’s hearts. I need to love as He loved us. Once I do that it becomes easy to want anyone to go to heaven, and to teach people that they cannot keep sinning and tripping over their own feet and get to heaven. My goal is to help people learn about God, learn to help themselves, and love all and see what their needs are and get those needs met.
May we walk in His Light always, always loving others enough to want to help them see the Light and encourage those who need mercy and understanding of God’s grace, so that they too can walk with Him in heaven.
V. SHADOWBOXING
Ever been angry? So angry with someone that you couldn’t see two feet in front of you? Ever been so mad you hit the wall, although it would have made you very much happier indeed to hit the person with whom you were angry? Or have you ever met a person you absolutely, without a doubt in anyone’s mind, don’t care for very much, try as you might? Try as you both might to like one another? Someone who you cannot be around for very long without the urge to say, “Take a long walk on a short pier!”, someone who grates on your last nerve?
Maybe it’s a friend of a friend, maybe it’s someone in your neighborhood, maybe it’s an employer who has treated you and others unfairly, maybe it’s an employee who is difficult to deal with, maybe it’s a colleague that back bites you, maybe it’s someone even closer to you, such as in your family, that no matter what you try to tell them still get themselves deeper and deeper in trouble, because they don’t care that what they do today will affect their future.
More heartbreaking, maybe this is your sister or brother in Christ that has decided that the Church isn’t correct, that they need to join another group that professes to speak the truth but doesn’t really by their actions. Or else they have become legalistic in their “religion”. Or else you just don’t see eye to eye with them. You really want to be a good brother/sister to this person or these people and you truly love them, because if you didn’t, you truly couldn’t say you loved God. (I John 2:11) So you try, honestly try, to find out what there is to love about this person or these people and you make a mental list and realize that what you don’t like about this person or these people is in a much larger list that that list with things to like. And you feel guilty because you are supposed to like this person…wait a minute…supposed to? Guilty? Where does the cross fit into this picture? Didn’t Christ wipe away my sins by dying for me and thereby doing away with the guilt? Didn’t he say we are free to be who we are? Free to enjoy our friends and acknowledge there are those we are not going to particularly care for, even if we still love them in Christ? Christians are not exempt from personality conflicts. And truth be told, we are asked to love, not to necessarily like, our fellow Christians and people in general. That means there may be conflict. But that also means we have to work harder to be the peacemaker that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 5:9 and Paul spoke of in Romans 12:18, not necessarily because of the persons involved but because of the expectations in Christ we all have on one another. It is harder to be kinder, harder to have the attitude of a servant, harder to treat each other better without making claims for ourselves, and wanting “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” as the Aretha Franklin song goes. But to get it you have to give it. And sometimes that doesn’t even work. Better said, what you get when you give out and are the servant and do treat others like Christ would is far better than what anyone could give you. You get God’s love. (Romans 15:13)
It is difficult when your brother and sisters in Christ drive you nuts. You love them and they love you, deep down, but you sure wish they were a little more tactful, a little nicer, a little more sensitive, and loved themselves a little bit more so they could love you a little bit more. You want them to think the way you do, act the way you do, and I know that you are probably in denial about that. But think about it. If people did what you did, wouldn’t life be so much easier? And how much more so is that in terms of being a Christian? And if you keep it up, keep wanting people to be like you and do like you, isn’t that like being in traffic where the cars in front stop, start, stop, start, stop, start…or isn’t it like shadowboxing, where you are fighting your own shadow and getting nowhere? I know when I get that wound up about a person, I feel as though I cannot move.
What we, me included, have to remember is that God is there. He has open arms and he is ready to carry us and to protect us and to advise us. I hear his voice saying, “You are mine and they are mine as well. I know people can be irritating. How about the time when you were late and didn’t call to tell anyone where you were? About the time you took a shower and your roommate needed to take the shower and you took all of the hot water? About the time you threw away mail when you were cleaning, mail that maybe wasn’t important to you, but it was to someone else? Unknowingly, but you did it.” I have heard His gentle chiding, and realize how patient He is, and then I drop to my knees and thank God for His constant steadfastness and perseverance with one such as I who loses patience, even when I know that I myself am no different from anyone else. I thank God for His gentle reminder of me and my condition that while I was a sinner His son died for me. (Romans 5:8) And when I slip He continues to cleanse me and make true His great and glorious promise for an eternal life with Him. Thank God for the blessing of a family that, although frustrating at times, are diamonds; without my family my life would be empty. Thank God for His forgiveness, for I am made His and whole by it, my soul is healed by it and I will have eternal peace because of it.
VI. BE NOT OF THIS WORLD
The text is taken from 1 John 2:15-17
I got a phone call about 12:30 AM one Saturday morning, after a particularly rough day at work and some hard sleep following. The voice on the other end said, “Dr. Guillot?” and I answered gruffly out of my sleep, “Yes, this is she.” The voice, which belonged to the plant superintendent at one of the local poultry processing plants, continued to say, “We need you to come in at 7 AM tomorrow because the Labeling Department is working and there is still a 505 out.” (505’s were documents that were used to show that poultry was inspected and shipped under safe conditions and that the poultry was safe. These were documents used in the US, for interstate commerce and required an official USDA signature.) When I asked why no one had called earlier, his response was that they just found out that the department was working and could not get in touch with anyone on first shift but me. So I grumbled and griped to myself and my roommate that Saturday was my day of rest and how dare they infringe upon that, especially since all week had been a trial and I had plans and…and…and…
I went back to bed angry. I woke up angry. I ate my breakfast in a furious mood. I slammed my car door shut at 6 AM and drove off in a rage all the while saying to God, “GOD, IT’S NOT FAIR!!!! IT’S JUST NOT FAIR!!!” I was about half-way to my office (I am really glad I work 60 minutes from my office) when I realized that what I was saying was true. It truly was not fair. I was not the one they should have called. I was just the relief inspector, not the regular inspectors. I was not responsible for this plant, yet the plant called me. They had the absolute gall to do that.
By the time I got to my office, I was asking God, “How did Your Son stand this?” And God said, “Be quick to listen.” (James 1:19)
…And they called him a blasphemer, and tried him at night, when no one really cared or was even around to say, “Wait a minute, you can’t do that!”, and he was beaten by the soldiers, and made to wear a crown of thorns. He was judged by the Sanhedrin, by Herod, and last by Pilate; and although Pilate would probably have let him go under normal circumstances, Pilate chose instead to ask the mob what they wanted him to do. He was not tried by his peers. There is after all no peer for the Son of God, because he had to make Himself our peer. He was unjustly accused, beaten for no reason, and yet did not sin. (Isaiah 53)There was the temptation to say, “It’s not fair” but instead he said, “Not my will but Thine, ABBA!”
No it wasn’t fair, but think of God’s grace and what that power gave Christ. (Romans 1:16, 17) It allowed him to love people when they demanded the universe from him, to agape those who disappointed him, and the little daily distractions and annoyances that humans seem to equip themselves with he handed over to God to deal with because he knew that each day had its own troubles. It allowed him to say, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!”
Father, forgive the world, for they really haven’t a clue. They are lost sheep in serious need of a master. Thank you for being my shepherd and for helping me to see that without you I’d be as lost as they. In fact, there are times, more often than I’d care to admit, that I act as lost as the world does. Thank you for being there to say, “How do you know that I haven’t selected you for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14) as well as saying, “My grace is sufficient for you.” (2 Corinthians 12:9). And thank you for accepting me when I forget that you love everyone, even when they used and took advantage of your son. Even when they use and take advantage of me.
VII. WHEN VALLEYS ARE AMONGST US
The text for this is Matthew 26:9-13.
The latter part of 1993 was an interesting year. First, although this may sound selfish, either mine or my roommates or both of our cars had been in the shop for one week due to mechanical problems and so we’d been reduced to a one-car family. Although that may not seem so bad, schedule conflicts made our having two cars an absolute necessity. Or so it seemed to me and my roommate. (Aren’t different agendas confining?)
Second, my father, already in pretty poor health, caught a cold and was not able to rid himself of it. Actually what had happened was that his lungs started filling with fluid because his heart was not functioning well. I was 2000 miles away, and could do nothing about it. Or so I thought. (Separation from loved ones geographically pretty confining too.)
Finally, and this one probably broke the camel’s back for me, my roommate Leslie had attack of hypoglycemia that rendered her unconscious until her blood sugar could be raised. She had had attacks like this before but this one was a little more severe than in the past, and the doctor told her not to return to work until the attacks could be gotten under control. And what was puzzling was that she was careful about what she ate; careful about doing the things she was supposed to do. But she continued having spells. And there was really nothing I could do for her. Or so I thought. (Being Servant of the Year is also pretty confining.)
Intermixed in all this was doing three persons’ job for the price of one, due to shortages that where I work is prone to have. I think for the first time in my life as it is now, I am realizing that I am human. But back then I was getting upset because I wasn’t superman. I didn’t want to sleep when I got tired, I didn’t want to get tired, I didn’t want to cry when things upset me or when I lost someone valuable to me, and for goodness’ sake, I sure didn’t need encouragement. Realizing that as I do now, I realize that it isn’t an easy conclusion to make. I liked the fact that God blessed me with the ability to survive through anything and to give of myself until I am spent. It’s not easy knowing that I have to sleep and rest to revive and even that God gave us that capacity so we can revive. It’s not easy knowing that I need to cry because God gave us that capacity too in order to realize that we need encouragement and that not everything is going to be rosy. We all need prayers, we all need people who will tend to us. Even super-Christians. Even Jesus.
In the text for this devotional Jesus is being served by a woman who anoints His feet and wipes them with her hair. And at the protestation of the apostles, Jesus answers that there will always be poor but that she was doing the most appropriate service, to tend to Him during a time when He needed encouragement. She was following the command, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. (Matthew 22:37-39). What does this mean? It means that first we must love ourselves and then we will be able to love others the way Jesus does. This means take care of our bodies, eat sufficient to maintain ourselves, learn sufficient to exist and know things about the world around us and about God and what He expects, have joy so that we can radiate to others, sleep to revive. We all need to be love ourselves, mostly because God loves us enough to have sent His son and to want us in a relationship with Him where we call God “Abba”. What a great God we serve! And it’s only when I realize how fragile I am and have to go to God and say, “I cannot make it without You Father”, and lean on his everlasting arms (as the old hymn says) that I can truly serve and help those that need me. Then and only then am I a servant.
VIII. CLAY JARS
The scripture for this is taken from 2 Corinthians 4:7
Ever broken a jar or a piece of pottery? Fragile, one minute it will sit on a table looking beautiful. In the very next minute, it can fall and wind up in a million pieces. Humans are a lot like that, fragile, breakable, one minute in the prime of life, the next, in pieces. It can happen slowly, as aging, or it can happen quickly, as an accident or a premature disease. Amazing that as strong and healthy as Olympic athletes are or appear to be, there is still decay going on in their bodies. Every day, body cells are dying away and being replaced. The old cells in a person who is no longer a youngster are dying faster than they are being replaced, and so we all age. Try as we might to preserve life, there is one process medical science will never be able to correct: dying. Whether or not we want to face it, all things on this earth including us must die. And what is even more sobering is that even the healthiest of us, not necessarily athletes or health nuts, but anyone who has always be “in the pink” can die from a previously undetected heart disease or cancer, or even AIDS.
I cannot handle death. Ask anyone who knows me and they know I am passionate about the subject. I have reasoned that life has already begun and needs to continue. But the older I get I see this is such a lie. I realize this life while may be in part beautiful and lovely will end. But is it truly the end of all things. Actually no. What will happen according to scripture is that God awaits us (Romans 15:13) because He is a God of glory and peace. He doesn’t want us to be alone. And so I can say that it is NOT the end, it is NOT finished. It is NOT over. We don’t have to goodbye forever. Because He promises we won’t be alone. As far back as Deuteronomy 31:6, this has been His promise. He also promised not to leave us in Haggai 1:13 and to be with His people in Matthew 18:20. The list of His promises not to leave is endless.
That His promises are true, I have no doubt. God has gotten me out of more scraps than I could count. But I still have a problem with death. Because there is a small voice in me saying, “I am alone”. When I lost my father, I felt alone. My brother died 3 years after my father. I am alone. I lost any number of friends in the church. I am alone. And there is a hole in my heart that won’t go away, no matter the encouragement. I begin to feel as though I have to carry the burdens of life by myself. With no one to help me. The thought of that weight hurts me all the more. And the one question that keeps looming is “Why?” Why, God? If you were trying to teach me something, couldn’t you have taught me something with me losing people that are important to me?
I’ve lost many dear friends over the course of the years. I lost my dad and brother, as I said, who were what I considered my close friends. I lost an elderly friend who had just become a Christian. She had a heart condition, but it didn’t stop her from working hard for the Church. One day in September 1990, someone broke into her house where her daughter was visiting with her, and murdered her and seriously wounded her daughter. This was someone who never did anyone any harm. Why was she murdered? Why? And what purpose did it serve? Why, God?
Then there was another lady that I had come to know after my heart surgery in 1993. She was a strong lady, had tended to her dying husband, fought back from five strokes to the point of normalcy, was now walking without a walker, who had progressed so far that she could drive herself to the grocery store and that she could add 2 and 2 and still get 4. She was so excited about her life in Christ and couldn’t wait until she could teach again. She suffered another stroke one November day. And while recovering from this she was diagnosed with cancer. And the following January morning she took God’s hand and met those that had gone before her. Why God? Why bring her to the point where she could drive her car only to call her to you? Why make her suffer? And why take someone of whom I had grown so fond? I just was not ready.
Then again another elderly woman, who was in unspeakable pain due to arthritis, but who never ever stopped smiling. She raised 3 boys to be Christian men, all strong and moral and accepting of the LORD. Why did God let her suffer so much before calling her?
Why do things happen? Why? I certainly haven’t the answers, and no one to whom I have spoken has the answers either. What was in the mind of God when He watched as my dad neglected his health and not stick to what the doctor’s advised him to do? What was in the mind of God as He watched my brother lead a loose lifestyle and wind up contracting the AIDS virus? What was in His mind when He watched my friend Louise get murdered, or my friend Georgia suffer through several strokes and cancer, or my other friend live in such agony with arthritis?
What was He thinking?
I don’t have a clue. I only know that He doesn’t want any to perish, as He says in John 3:16. He wants us to come to Him and have eternal life. And I know that He doesn’t want us to be robots but to do His will because we choose to, not because we are forced to follow Him. I think I have come to realize, and am learning this even more so the older I get is that no matter what happens, God is still deeper than anything we can suffer, regardless of whether events occur because of our choice or just because we live in a disease-filled, evil world that still has Satan in it, even though Christ has made Satan powerless to ruin our chances for eternal life. I believe we must, I must, you must, say, “God, I really do want to do your will, not mine.” Because of God, we as His children have the hope of a new life in heaven, a rebirth into eternity with no tears or sorrows. We get to trade the clay jars in for spiritual, infinite bodies. And our cross is replaced with a crown!
IX. BEHOLD THE GOD WHO GRIEVES
In the middle and late 1990’s as I became aware of certain family tumults, such as my father’s illness and subsequent death, and my brother’s serious illness leading to his demise, my own heart condition, my mother’s depression over the desperate state in which my father left her financially as well as her own medical ailments, and indeed my financial woes in which a bad relationship left me, I know what it is like to grieve. There were indeed days that I was so overwhelmed that all I could focus upon was the dark cloud over my head. When I was younger and not facing this melee, I saw someone going through things and thought how sad for someone to be so self-absorbed, to forget that God was there and that He is in control, how sad one’s existence is and how God must be in a quandary over this person who has chose to be so absorbed emotionally.
I was that ignorant, until 1992, when dad fell down a set of stairs and wound up in the hospital and then recovering at home. And my mother threw emotional darts at me because I was away from home and that my friends were worthless. I think I always knew mother was like that, and that she really never liked my choice in friends, with some exceptions. But it didn’t make life any easier. The real kicker was dad, and the final realization that dad was mortal. Oh, sure, I knew about his diabetes, his heart disease, his bad back, and the fact that he never took care of himself, but in the back of my mind I kept saying, “He’s made it this far, he’ll live to a ripe old age and see his grandchildren graduate high school and maybe college”. Amazing how I could put the blinders on, isn’t it? His fall in 1992 led to a blood clot that was inoperable. The medicines and fluids brought him back from that. But he continued fainting, even though it wasn’t from blood clots or any neurological problem. Then there was the time his body just said, “ENOUGH!” and he wound up in the Cardiac Care Unit. And I was called home for what was thought by his doctor’s to be the last time. Which it was not. Not that time. He lasted until July of 1994 when he died at home in his sleep.
I remember it like I was yesterday. And I remember asking God “Why?”.
In February of 1994, I was traveling for business and was called by my brother. He did not lead the purest of lives and had been to the hospital previously for pneumonia. He called because his doctors told him there was nothing that could be done for him and he’d better make preparations. He had contracted the HIV virus and was beginning to show signs of progression into AIDS.
And again I asked God, “Why?”.
When I grieved and prayed I wondered if God was hearing me. Now when I grieve over events I wonder if this is how God feels. I read the entire book of Isaiah for the first time during the hump in the 1990s. And several parts of Isaiah since then. I had read it previously, but never with the glance into God’s heart and soul and understanding His desires for His people. Apart from any book, apart from any writings, Isaiah describes the nature of His heart and His great love by merely describing what He does for us and will do for us. Throughout Isaiah is the theme, “I am the only God, the only one, the One you need to serve. All you have to do is come to Me, just Me, and love just Me. I love you and will gather you to Me if you let Me. But I am the only One. There are no other gods. There’s just Me, and My son and My spirit are all part of Me. I am the great I Am…”
In that book, through the writings of Isaiah, I see God’s pleading and His tears. For He loves us so much He gave up His Son for us and sent His Spirit to us. He is a powerful, pleading God, that has been grieving for us since Adam and Eve sinned, perhaps even before, in knowing what His people would do. Although the first few verses show just how happy almost gleeful God truly was to even create man and to give man a woman for companionship. But at man’s fall, God becomes a grieving God. He actually seems to go through all the stages of grief except for one—denial. I don’t think God ever denies there was a loss when His people chose not to follow Him throughout history or that there is a loss when we choose a life contrary to His will. I think there are times that He longs for there to be no loss because as Jesus so aptly put it in Matthew 23:37, “How I wish I could gather you like a mother hen gathers her chicks, but for your stubborn hearts!” Oh, yes, He knows and feels the loss.
The more I read, the more powerful I see God’s grief truly is. I see Him angry at Sodom and Gomorrah. I see Him angry at the world during the time of Noah. I see Him devastated during the time of Hezekiah, enough to allow Nebuchadnezzar to do his thing. I see an accepting God on all fronts, accepting the good and bad in David, Jacob, Moses, Peter, and Paul. I see a God in control of all things, even when things look out of control. I see God not exercising His control when His people want it, but when He knows it will do the most good. For all of us, pain is not an option. How else do we know we can feel and how else do we realize something is pleasant? How else in truth do we experience life? If death is but a portal, life is a window through which we must look to see what the true existence in God is. A mirror, only giving us a partial reflection of what God wants for us.
Finally, I see a God that has triumphed in Jesus’ resurrection, whose power is realized early on a chilly, breezy Sunday morning when a stone is rolled back and two angels speak with two women about what has transpired. I see Jesus who in one moment tells the women not to fear and in the next allowing Thomas to touch His side to prove to himself that He is alive. I see God joyous again, with such joy as I have never seen before, because there are those who have come to realize his power is not in the law, but in His unending grace which allows Him to say, “You can’t live up to the law. Let me show you a more excellent way.” His love is so great that while we were knee-deep in sin, He provided a way for us to be pulled from the fire and to be cleansed of our sins. (Romans 5:8)
Thank you, God for loving us…thank You God for serving us…thank You God for making us whole and saving our souls…
X. HARSH REALITIES
The scripture for this text is Psalms 46:10.
No matter how often I said to myself, “Dad’s going to die”, no matter how long I prepared, I couldn’t know what I would feel until I actually did go through the situation. I knew Daddy was going die, I’d been preparing myself, bracing myself, because I knew how sick he was and sooner or later he would be gone. But knowing something and living through it is two different things.
When I finally did, when it finally happened, after all the false alarms, and all the tears and pleading for his life back, and when he finally said, “I have had enough; let my God judge me, I have suffered here too long.”, there was a cold slap across my face, like being hit with an ice cold rag. All at once, I felt as though I’d been hoping for something that would never be, and that it indeed was foolish and prideful that I could change the course of what God has set in motion for all humanity, not just a love one who is terminally ill, but all of us, whenever God is ready for us. Even now, although 14 years ago, I hear my sister-in-law’s voice on the other end of the telephone receiver saying, “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your daddy died this morning.” When I first heard this, I crumbled, composed myself, stumbled, fumbled then crumbled again. I started out in my roommate’s room and wound up in my bathroom. Going in spurts. A million thoughts rushing into my head. And every time I hear that voice at the other end of the phone, those range of emotions hit me again. In fact, there are moments even now that I have where I think that this is a dream, that he is indeed alive, and all I have to do is pick up the phone, call my parents’ house in New Orleans…
But he’s not there. In fact, my mom is not there. The home I grew up in has been sold and so it is out of the family. My mom moved up to live with me after my roommate got married, 4 years after dad died, and the same year my brother passed. What I have to realize is that life has moved on. My father won’t be answering the phone, neither will my brother and my mother lives with me. So I must move on because life moves on. But I can deal with it now, because God has put a great healer here, time.
When I was in the midst of dealing with Daddy’s death though, I had the big 3-D hole that is left in my universe when people who are close to me pass away or who leave and with whom I am no longer in contact. When that happens, I am empty, because a part of me leaves with those people. I fall on my knees before God to take away the hole. But it doesn’t fill up fast enough and I continue to play a sort of cat-and-mouse game with myself, now I hurt, now I don’t. And I play a mind game with myself where my buttons are pushed and I am caught by my own devises. I spiral downward until I finally have to ask God, “My God, my God, why have Thou forsaken me?” I do feel like God has turned His back, I do indeed feel forsaken. As I am in the throws of these emotions, I feel the sting of being totally alone, and all I can do is live in the confusion with all the barbs and spinners attached. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, and I have often made the decision to stop talking to God, because I don’t feel Him there and I am angry with Him. But you know something…
For three days He was alone, but it really started long before He went to the grave. He had a three-year ministry. He lost many of his followers (John 6:66), there were people who tried to trap Him into political nonsense (John 8:1-8; John 7:24), His cousin John was beheaded as a gift to a king’s daughter, and everything from demons to Satan himself was thrown at Him during His life. He probably lost His earthly father, Joseph, because there is no mention of Joseph after a certain point in the bible. During His last days on earth, Jesus was scourged, mocked, whipped, spat upon, falsely accused, and finally left to hang on a crucifix. For three days He was most alone while He was carrying my sins, and everyone else’s sins. For three days he was alone, and yet He never denied the power of God. Never caused Him to doubt His Father. Never caused Him to think there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Because God was whispering to Him, “Be still and know I am Your God.” (Psalms 46:10)
And He rose. Above all else is God’s power to resurrect. And so He did. And does. And that is a promise. My soul becomes a part of Him because I am clothed with Christ. (Galatians 3:26-27) My life does go on. My soul belongs to God and there is joy in that, no matter what I face. And God loves me enough to send His Son to die for me.
My hurts are healed and stay healed when I remember that His love makes me whole, over and over and over again. He covers my holes, no matter how many there are. And I will see him face to face.
XI. PUSHING THE STOP BUTTON
The text for this is Genesis 3.
Cassette tapes are becoming obsolete, but for those of us who played them by the hour know that there are tabs in the back of the tape that if you don’t want to lose any of the music or information that is on the tape you remove the tab. You can replace the tab with tape if you decide you want to record over it. But even that won’t work as well as never having removed the tab.
Which means that you might not be able to ever remove some song or people speaking on the tape that you really didn’t want to hear because it evoked memories that were bittersweet or down right unpleasant. You would have to either fast forward or push the stop button and remove the tape.
We have internal tapes. Tapes from which the back tab has sometimes been removed. Internal tapes exist not for any other use but our private use because we are creatures of habit. Tapes are what we put our internal data on, what we’ve listened to since childhood, what we’re being told now. Some of them are positive. Many of them are negative. And depending upon how often we have heard the tapes and how old those tapes are we can erase them or not. How we process what is on the tape is significant to what we think of ourselves. Satan knows we have internal tapes. Satan has figured out that tapes determine how we react and feel about various aspects of life. He has also figured out that the messages recorded on those tapes are not always positive. In fact, some are negative, some needing to be erased or at least not to be played. And he loves it, because he knows that even if we’ve accepted Christ we keep listening to these tapes and won’t push the stop button. He knows we choose not to push the button because old habits are hard to break. Only through really devoting oneself to Christ, only through prayer constantly and consistently, as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, will we be able to look past those tapes and head toward what God wants us to be and do. The strong in Christ know how to either replace the tab or to push the stop button not to listen to the tapes. But even the strong in Christ grow weak. And Satan knows that the strong in Christ forget or choose not to stop the tapes or replace the tab. We would rather be comfortable listening to the tapes and be miserable rather than be challenged by the truth of God and His love for us and be blessed by that enough to stop the tapes.
Does that mean that satan has outwitted God? Certainly not! Although tapes are a part of human nature, God knows tapes are temporary. Why? Well, why do the cassettes when you can have the live concert? God gives us free tickets and says, “Come, see me, talk to me, hear me?” and every seat is the best seat in the house. Every melody is memorable and every conversation uplifting and full of joy. And this replaces any tape we’ve ever made for ourselves. And the concert goes on and on. While we are on earth we’ve got glimpses of the live performances between and in spite of all the trials we have to live through. Just ask any older person who walks with God, “Why do you smile?” They smile because they know while on earth they have been to the concert many, many times, and when they go to meet God, the concert is permanent. We get to sing, clap our hands,
laugh, and praise God always. Personally I can’t wait.
XII. ELOHIM
The text is taken from Job 38,39,40.
I was riding through the mountains of West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky on my way to attend a training session in Louisiville, KY, and couldn’t help witnessing God’s majesty. Man can make skyscrapers, he can build airplanes for intercontinental travel, but I have yet to see the man regardless of his degrees that build a mountain standing majestically against a sky with a gray cloud dancing around it or a bird that can fly gracefully through the air to land on a twig or branch of a tree or on a rock, or even build a creature as terrifying as a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Nothing man can make can surpass that of the Creator.
Think about the following. On my journey, I noticed the difference in terrain and saw that the clay so familiar to North Carolina and Southern Virginia changed to shale and then to stone. Something else man cannot do. How much fun God must have had doing this! I can imagine Him with His hand on His chin deciding which terrain would be perfect for which continent, or where on which continent to put what landscape. And when He placed the animals, I can imagine Him looking at the cattle He had just placed on the mountainside munching lazily on the grass. I can imagine how joyous He was, how He must have smiled to say, “Yes, it is good.” I visited the Falls of the Ohio, which separates Kentucky from Indiana, and was fascinated by the power of what God created. Here the rocks and cascades were enough to prevent river traffic for centuries, only recently being diverted safely for travel. This situation forced men to come together to form settlements such as Louisville. Isn’t God’s wisdom amazing? He stopped man’s progress long enough so that we would talk to each other and build communities rather than be so worried about how much to explore and exploit the land.
And His wisdom is infinite and everlasting. I love any natural history museum because of the wealth of information they supply. While it may not be expressed outright, the wonder of God’s creation is there. God created the numerous species of plants, some of which are now extinct. God created animals and lifeforms that are now mere recordings in fossilized stone. In God’s infinite wisdom, He created man. Why? To enjoy His creation, to enjoy that which He made, and to do what is most pleasing to Him, to God give the praise, and the glory for all He has done. The saddest day for Him was when Eve bit into the apple, and He realized His Son would have to die for such a generation as man; but, you know, it probably was a good day too. Because He realized that if His Son went down to earth and offered man a choice of being forever slaves to themselves and satan or of coming to Him with penitent hearts willing to turn their lives over to Him then man would truly be created in His image. (Galatians 3:27) Man would truly be receptive to His truth.
Get out and enjoy what God has given you, green grass, ocean waters, white beaches, and huge majestic mountains, and any number of animals. It’ll do your heart and your soul wonders.
XIII. IN HIS ARMS
The scripture for this text is Matthew 26 and Romans 8:38,39.
“Daddy, Daddy, I’m so frightened. Help me, Daddy, the monster is after meeeee!!!!”
Ever feel like that sometimes? Like there are things that are pulling at you, evil or not, that are trying to suck the life and love out of you, or that are simply demanding your time? What do children do when monsters are after them? First they scream. Then they call for the most secure being they know. And sometimes its Mommy and sometimes its Daddy. What did Christ do in the garden of Gethsemane? First he cried for help. And then he went to the most secure being he knew. The Heavenly Father. Christ has been through every situation. He’s known pain, sorrow, joy, peace, contentment, anger, frustration, and every temptation that satan can throw at a human being, but through all this, he never has lost his focus. He’s never forgotten the Father’s love for him. The child was, and is, always alive in him and when things hurt him or made him mad while he was on earth, he never forgot the one he could run to and be loved by. Even in joy, he was, and is, joyous because he knew the Heavenly Father was the source of all his joy and peace. That allowed him to say, “No, I will not sin. God holds me in his arms and I will not give that up for the things in this world”. And it allows us to say it, too. (Titus 2:11-13) It’s not always easy to say “No”, because the coating of sin is an immediate, though short-lived, pleasure. To give up pleasure for the sake of doing God’s will is tough, but not impossible with Him. And when we are clothed in Christ, as it speaks of in Galatians 3:26,27,we learn to do God’s will so it becomes easier to resist sin. In true child-like fashion, resisting sin becomes a “Daddy, satan’s bothering me again!!!” approach, and we learn to go to His throne as a child, not as an adult, but in the submission of child to a loving parent that will take care of the child. Like a child, we come to realize that we cannot fix things and to know that life is beyond our capacity but not beyond the Father’s realm. Like a child we will not be afraid to fail because we know we can run to God and say, “I really messed up on this one…can you help me repair myself…what do you want me to do?” God then wraps His ever-stretching arms around us and smiles His broader-than-a-universe smile and says, “Here’s what I’ll do…” And we can rest in His arms, confident that He is indeed in control.
I know this is a little long, but bear with me. I am trying to convert from my web page to my blog sit so I only have one page to worry over per week. Do enjoy and lets have some comments please
Thanks
Lydia
BARNABAS
I. Whose are you?
The text is taken from Job particularly Job 28-42.
What if your best friend is in the hospital, possibly dying and you are told to wait in the waiting room because the doctors are performing surgery on him/her? What if you just ended a very trying relationship, one you wish wouldn't have ended quite the way it did, yet things got out of hand? What if you got fired for something you didn't do, or for something you did that wasn't wrong, it was just unacceptable to the people supervising you at the time and was subject to change anyway? What if someone you loved was addicted to alcohol? Or sex? Or food? Or any of the miriads of things that would get us into the thick of addiction and away from God?
Your first reaction in any of these situations is to cry. The most human response is one of feeling completely helpless, wanting to fix things and yet knowing that there is nothing that you can do. Job lost his wealth and his family and his friends were putting quite some distance between themselves and Job. Job then put sack cloth and ashes and prayed. A little bit more advanced in his thinking perhaps but still did it because he felt helpless. In all of this melee comes one word.
"Why?"
Job said it, not at first, but it surely came from his lips when he'd reached his breaking point. How fast do you reach that point? It's pretty fast for me. "Why?" is almost the first word that comes out of my mouth.
What I forget is what the Lord told Job. "Why indeed! Who made you and the rest of Creation?!" Many people look at trials in their lives as negative experiences that they'd rather forget. Struggles are a bummer when you are pursuing happiness. Ah-ha! Maybe that is it. Maybe trials interfere with everyone's happiness. Maybe we need,and Job had, at least for a while, something else that will always get us through. Contentment. What's the difference between that and happiness? Ask any older Christian person with a smile on his/her face that has really been through struggles in his/her life. Ask that person how he/she coped with financial struggles, especially if he/she was living in the Depression. Ask him/her about the time when he/she lost a younger brother to cancer, or a child to leukemia, or lost a brother or other family member in one of our numerous wars. He/She will tell you that it's all about being able to say, "Not my will but Thine". (Matthew 26:39) Being content is calling God "Abba" (Daddy). (Romans 8:15). And we can only do that if we pray constantly and consistently. Then and only then can you be content, content enough not to really mind being cut off in traffic, or in a telemarketer calling you. Only then can you truly handle anything the world may throw at you. Rejoicing in everything, you can then know the answer to the question, "Who's are you, anyway?"
II. LIFE’S SHORTAGES
This text is taken from Romans 8:28-39
While working on her Master’s degree in counseling, my friend and roommate, Leslie, also had a job as a cashier at one of the busiest restaurants in Charlotte, NC – the Cracker Barrel. It’s a tough job being a cashier but especially at Cracker Barrel. You know the type of restaurant, located within walking distance or at least driving distance from at least four major hotels, right off the highway so that travelers can stop in. On the way to the airport. And a favorite stop of touring and social groups. Cracker Barrel is wonderful because of the home cooked meals and wonderfully enchanting gift shop. Needless to say on a non-busy day, everyone is still busy. And to be a cashier there means having to brush aside distractions from everyone else’s busy buzzing as well as from customers and then there are the typical crowd noises. At the same time a cashier has to keep track of receipts, cash, credit, whatever, so that the money in the register matches the intake of tickets.
Tough job. I know I’d fall miserably on my face if I had to do that for a living. (I do well to add 2 and 2 and come up with 4). It’s no wonder that when my friend got tired, the little everyday distractions affected her more than normal and there may have been a difference of a few cents at the end of her shift. That was indeed a rare occurrence but it did happen. One day, after we had just signed a lease to our apartment in Rock Hill, SC, I was moving things over to the apartment when Leslie came in. For several minutes, she didn’t speak. I continued to move more things into the apartment. She also moved some things in from her car. There was silence for a little bit, but then she spoke, saying, “Would you still love me if I wasn’t at Cracker Barrel?” Her voice trailed off. When I asked her what was wrong, the floodgates opened wide. The best I could make out between the sobs was that there was a rather large discrepancy between what was in her cash drawer and what the cash receipts said she should have had. She finished with, “I’m…just…so…stupid” and then the floodgates opened again. She sat down on the floor, head in hands. I thought a minute. Then I put my arms around her and said, “Listen, do you want to know something? Imagine yourself as a cashier for God. And you come up short. What do you think He does? Fire you? Of course not! Stop loving you? No! Do you know what He does?” I reached in my pocket and pulled out a 5 dollar bill. “He reaches deep in His pockets and pulls up however much you were short and puts it in your cash drawer and says, ‘Now, what was that about being short?’ ”
Tough job, being a cashier. Kind of like being a Christian. When we come up short and fell like we’ve failed, God reaches deep in His pockets and replaces whatever we are short in and says, “Now, what was that about being short?”
Thank you, God, for making us whole…again…and again…
III CHOICES AND CHANCES
I was born with a defective aortic valve in my heart. Instead of the standard issue of three leaflets, I only had two. Late in the year 1992, my cardiologist said in the following three months if I didn’t do something about it, I could die. It was a matter of time.
It was also a matter of choice. I had to make the choice of accepting a doctor’s scientific opinion that I needed open heart surgery, and perhaps a second opinion and deciding which would be best for me. Was I in danger? No doubt, but how much time I had was not clear. And the surgery itself is risky. Not only during the surgery, but after, during recovery. Open heart surgery changes one’s lifestyle, slows one down, then makes one have to decide when one is doing too much. That is called listening to one’s body. And I could have very easily said, “I don’t want to do this” and take the chance the doctor was wrong. And then once having had the operation, I could be so dependant on everyone and everything that I could no longer function on my own.
I had to decide what to do…and I did. I took the chance. I made the choice. With surgery I was assured a better quality of life. And by making a recovery to the point of being able to function without help, my quality of existence would improve.
And I think that’s what God wants us to do and expects of us.
As limited human beings as we are emotionally, physically, and spiritually, God still gives us an out. He gave us a free will. A will to say, “I believe” or “I don’t believe”. Many times you’ll hear someone say, “I cannot help the way I am. That’s me. I have an illness.” And while mental and physical illnesses are real and should never be downplayed, by the same token God has equipped us to do something about our problems. Jesus descended to earth, took on human form, suffered and died taking on the sins of all creation. All the while saying, “God, thy will be done” and “My Father has many mansions, and I go to prepare a place for you with me” and “I must die to go to the Father” and most important, “Father forgive them they haven’t got a clue”. True we are sick individual in one form or another. But it is that will to say to God, “Whatever you want, God” and it is the grace that enables us to say “No” to ungodliness that Paul talks about in Titus 2:14, and to then allow God to work in us to do something about our failings. We may be sick now, but we can overcome it, because Christ overcame death’s sting. As long as we are trying to see where we are going and know that God is there and that He is a loving, true, loyal, magnificent spirit and that He is alive in us, we can conquer anything. Indeed, as Paul says in Romans 8:37, we are more than conquerors, we are His heirs and children. When we tell Him we will become His by obeying Him the way He wants to be obeyed then we too have that hope that because of God’s love we too can share in the eternal joy that comes in Christ. We have to be willing to take advantage of the promise that God made and fulfilled in Jesus, on both sides of the coin as servants and recipients of service. We have to be willing to “pass it on” as the song says. We have to be willing to give without wanting return and as servants we have to be willing to get out of what makes us comfortable and go the extra mile with people for this “Love one another” thing to work.
There are choices we all make. “I don’t do evangelism, I don’t visit the sick, I’m not good at first contacts, I don’t do well unless I know someone well, the church doesn’t give enough to me, they don’t care for me, they don’t need me, they don’t love me like this other group does”, and so forth. We all look for comfort zones, excuses, rationalizations. We all look for something that sounds good to us because we are the focal point, at least for a little bit. At the same time we don’t want to step out of the warmth and nurturing atmosphere of church folk into the coldness and aloneness of maybe confronting a brother when he is wrong or pulling a sister from the fire when she would really rather burn. We don’t want to risk friendships. But you know what? The promise is that God doesn’t give us anything we cannot handle. (1 Corinthians 10:13). At the same time He does expect us to use the talents we have been given, to work, to serve, and to be served. (Philippians 2:12). And sometimes this involves encouraging people, and sometimes it means challenging people. When I consider my Christian life, I’ve needed the challenges as much as the encouragement.
I was physically challenged by my heart and I made the choice to take the risk to improve the quality of my life. Are we spiritually challenged by how we live our lives and will we make the choice to return to doing what God wants us to do? God is counting on it!
IV. SATAN AND THE SHOULD NOTS
The text is taken from James 5:16.
One day satan was pondering what he could do to make my life miserable. I know where I am going, and I know that as long as my obedience is to the fullest extent and that God is always number one in my heart that I am not going to spiritually ever die. I know that in my mind. My mind knows many things that my heart will never realize. Unfortunately. This particular day I learned a valuable lesson about letting my mind at least talk to my heart and try to make it realize that God was closer to me than I ever realized.
And not to listen to satan’s lies.
I was coming home from New Orleans. I’d been there because my father had been critically ill in intensive care and his doctor recommended I come home. For two days, I visited with my father in CCU and then on the third day, in an answer to prayers of many of my brothers and sisters in Christ, he was able to go into a regular hospital room. He had begun a rapid recovery. The doctors had done all they could, and after a few days of pumping him full of whatever they knew to give him and then asking why it wasn’t working, the prayers of righteous men and women were answered. I was ecstatic. I was able to share with my father and speak to him of God and the love He has for him. In fact, I was probably the only glimpse of the Light that my family saw in an otherwise dark and gloomy environment. Please understand that I am not patting myself on the back. It’s just that I have never before been able to share Christ as I did then and to let God shine without feeling afraid, as though this may be the last hour of not just my dad’s life, but all people’s lives, and so I’d best get to the task at hand and show the Hope and Glory that is God. Seeing them in this critical situation was really seeing a people without hope, and my heart went out to them.
And as I was riding back to my home on a jet plane, I heard a small voice say, “You should have kept up with the minister so that he could keep talking to your father”, “You should have talked to your mother more”, “You should have done this better or not done that at all”, “You shouldn’t have gotten mad at your brother, that wasn’t very Christ-like”. There was a stretch of time I began to feel low, as though God’s mission was not accomplished through me. I felt worthless.
And then I remembered Christ being available and consistent for many. He healed the lame, the deaf, the blind, he raised children from the dead not to mention Lazarus. But that was not Christ, and He would readily say that, but it was God working through Him. So whenever any one of Christ’s brethren do good works, those come from God as well. Nothing more needs to be added or taken away. And something else. All the while Jesus was healing and lending His life and works to improve people’s lives, He was simply there. He met their needs, and that let the doctrinal issues come when they would come. There was always a tie-in with doctrine, but the expression may not have come at that particular time and it may have been hidden. It is so easy to tell someone what he/she needs to do to get to heaven. How easy is it for that person to actually act upon that knowledge? Jesus well knew they when He healed the man that was lowered in from a rooftop in Matthew 9:1-10. He knew that it is easy to do the doctrinal things, not so easy to actually get into a person’s life and really help them. It is so easy to focus on doctrine and on being religious. But Jesus was not interested just in following the doctrine, but putting His money where His mouth was. He was interested in helping people and making them realize they were important to God. Loving the unlovable, loving those who it is not easy to love. Loving those who wouldn’t give Him the time of day. Loving those who would do Him harm. Sure He wanted people to go to heaven, and He gave many guidelines how to do this, but something He makes me mindful of is that it is not just about getting people to “follow the rules”, its not just about teaching people what they must do to be saved, it is being kind enough to them to want the best for them, to help them improve their quality of physical and spiritual life, to carry their load when it becomes too hard for them. If all I am worried about is making sure people are following the checklist I will fail miserably and I will get into the mindset of works. But God saved by grace, not my works. Christ died so that I could be set free and have eternal life with God. (John 3:16) All I should be concerned with is sharing this message and letting God speak to people’s hearts. I need to love as He loved us. Once I do that it becomes easy to want anyone to go to heaven, and to teach people that they cannot keep sinning and tripping over their own feet and get to heaven. My goal is to help people learn about God, learn to help themselves, and love all and see what their needs are and get those needs met.
May we walk in His Light always, always loving others enough to want to help them see the Light and encourage those who need mercy and understanding of God’s grace, so that they too can walk with Him in heaven.
V. SHADOWBOXING
Ever been angry? So angry with someone that you couldn’t see two feet in front of you? Ever been so mad you hit the wall, although it would have made you very much happier indeed to hit the person with whom you were angry? Or have you ever met a person you absolutely, without a doubt in anyone’s mind, don’t care for very much, try as you might? Try as you both might to like one another? Someone who you cannot be around for very long without the urge to say, “Take a long walk on a short pier!”, someone who grates on your last nerve?
Maybe it’s a friend of a friend, maybe it’s someone in your neighborhood, maybe it’s an employer who has treated you and others unfairly, maybe it’s an employee who is difficult to deal with, maybe it’s a colleague that back bites you, maybe it’s someone even closer to you, such as in your family, that no matter what you try to tell them still get themselves deeper and deeper in trouble, because they don’t care that what they do today will affect their future.
More heartbreaking, maybe this is your sister or brother in Christ that has decided that the Church isn’t correct, that they need to join another group that professes to speak the truth but doesn’t really by their actions. Or else they have become legalistic in their “religion”. Or else you just don’t see eye to eye with them. You really want to be a good brother/sister to this person or these people and you truly love them, because if you didn’t, you truly couldn’t say you loved God. (I John 2:11) So you try, honestly try, to find out what there is to love about this person or these people and you make a mental list and realize that what you don’t like about this person or these people is in a much larger list that that list with things to like. And you feel guilty because you are supposed to like this person…wait a minute…supposed to? Guilty? Where does the cross fit into this picture? Didn’t Christ wipe away my sins by dying for me and thereby doing away with the guilt? Didn’t he say we are free to be who we are? Free to enjoy our friends and acknowledge there are those we are not going to particularly care for, even if we still love them in Christ? Christians are not exempt from personality conflicts. And truth be told, we are asked to love, not to necessarily like, our fellow Christians and people in general. That means there may be conflict. But that also means we have to work harder to be the peacemaker that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 5:9 and Paul spoke of in Romans 12:18, not necessarily because of the persons involved but because of the expectations in Christ we all have on one another. It is harder to be kinder, harder to have the attitude of a servant, harder to treat each other better without making claims for ourselves, and wanting “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” as the Aretha Franklin song goes. But to get it you have to give it. And sometimes that doesn’t even work. Better said, what you get when you give out and are the servant and do treat others like Christ would is far better than what anyone could give you. You get God’s love. (Romans 15:13)
It is difficult when your brother and sisters in Christ drive you nuts. You love them and they love you, deep down, but you sure wish they were a little more tactful, a little nicer, a little more sensitive, and loved themselves a little bit more so they could love you a little bit more. You want them to think the way you do, act the way you do, and I know that you are probably in denial about that. But think about it. If people did what you did, wouldn’t life be so much easier? And how much more so is that in terms of being a Christian? And if you keep it up, keep wanting people to be like you and do like you, isn’t that like being in traffic where the cars in front stop, start, stop, start, stop, start…or isn’t it like shadowboxing, where you are fighting your own shadow and getting nowhere? I know when I get that wound up about a person, I feel as though I cannot move.
What we, me included, have to remember is that God is there. He has open arms and he is ready to carry us and to protect us and to advise us. I hear his voice saying, “You are mine and they are mine as well. I know people can be irritating. How about the time when you were late and didn’t call to tell anyone where you were? About the time you took a shower and your roommate needed to take the shower and you took all of the hot water? About the time you threw away mail when you were cleaning, mail that maybe wasn’t important to you, but it was to someone else? Unknowingly, but you did it.” I have heard His gentle chiding, and realize how patient He is, and then I drop to my knees and thank God for His constant steadfastness and perseverance with one such as I who loses patience, even when I know that I myself am no different from anyone else. I thank God for His gentle reminder of me and my condition that while I was a sinner His son died for me. (Romans 5:8) And when I slip He continues to cleanse me and make true His great and glorious promise for an eternal life with Him. Thank God for the blessing of a family that, although frustrating at times, are diamonds; without my family my life would be empty. Thank God for His forgiveness, for I am made His and whole by it, my soul is healed by it and I will have eternal peace because of it.
VI. BE NOT OF THIS WORLD
The text is taken from 1 John 2:15-17
I got a phone call about 12:30 AM one Saturday morning, after a particularly rough day at work and some hard sleep following. The voice on the other end said, “Dr. Guillot?” and I answered gruffly out of my sleep, “Yes, this is she.” The voice, which belonged to the plant superintendent at one of the local poultry processing plants, continued to say, “We need you to come in at 7 AM tomorrow because the Labeling Department is working and there is still a 505 out.” (505’s were documents that were used to show that poultry was inspected and shipped under safe conditions and that the poultry was safe. These were documents used in the US, for interstate commerce and required an official USDA signature.) When I asked why no one had called earlier, his response was that they just found out that the department was working and could not get in touch with anyone on first shift but me. So I grumbled and griped to myself and my roommate that Saturday was my day of rest and how dare they infringe upon that, especially since all week had been a trial and I had plans and…and…and…
I went back to bed angry. I woke up angry. I ate my breakfast in a furious mood. I slammed my car door shut at 6 AM and drove off in a rage all the while saying to God, “GOD, IT’S NOT FAIR!!!! IT’S JUST NOT FAIR!!!” I was about half-way to my office (I am really glad I work 60 minutes from my office) when I realized that what I was saying was true. It truly was not fair. I was not the one they should have called. I was just the relief inspector, not the regular inspectors. I was not responsible for this plant, yet the plant called me. They had the absolute gall to do that.
By the time I got to my office, I was asking God, “How did Your Son stand this?” And God said, “Be quick to listen.” (James 1:19)
…And they called him a blasphemer, and tried him at night, when no one really cared or was even around to say, “Wait a minute, you can’t do that!”, and he was beaten by the soldiers, and made to wear a crown of thorns. He was judged by the Sanhedrin, by Herod, and last by Pilate; and although Pilate would probably have let him go under normal circumstances, Pilate chose instead to ask the mob what they wanted him to do. He was not tried by his peers. There is after all no peer for the Son of God, because he had to make Himself our peer. He was unjustly accused, beaten for no reason, and yet did not sin. (Isaiah 53)There was the temptation to say, “It’s not fair” but instead he said, “Not my will but Thine, ABBA!”
No it wasn’t fair, but think of God’s grace and what that power gave Christ. (Romans 1:16, 17) It allowed him to love people when they demanded the universe from him, to agape those who disappointed him, and the little daily distractions and annoyances that humans seem to equip themselves with he handed over to God to deal with because he knew that each day had its own troubles. It allowed him to say, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!”
Father, forgive the world, for they really haven’t a clue. They are lost sheep in serious need of a master. Thank you for being my shepherd and for helping me to see that without you I’d be as lost as they. In fact, there are times, more often than I’d care to admit, that I act as lost as the world does. Thank you for being there to say, “How do you know that I haven’t selected you for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14) as well as saying, “My grace is sufficient for you.” (2 Corinthians 12:9). And thank you for accepting me when I forget that you love everyone, even when they used and took advantage of your son. Even when they use and take advantage of me.
VII. WHEN VALLEYS ARE AMONGST US
The text for this is Matthew 26:9-13.
The latter part of 1993 was an interesting year. First, although this may sound selfish, either mine or my roommates or both of our cars had been in the shop for one week due to mechanical problems and so we’d been reduced to a one-car family. Although that may not seem so bad, schedule conflicts made our having two cars an absolute necessity. Or so it seemed to me and my roommate. (Aren’t different agendas confining?)
Second, my father, already in pretty poor health, caught a cold and was not able to rid himself of it. Actually what had happened was that his lungs started filling with fluid because his heart was not functioning well. I was 2000 miles away, and could do nothing about it. Or so I thought. (Separation from loved ones geographically pretty confining too.)
Finally, and this one probably broke the camel’s back for me, my roommate Leslie had attack of hypoglycemia that rendered her unconscious until her blood sugar could be raised. She had had attacks like this before but this one was a little more severe than in the past, and the doctor told her not to return to work until the attacks could be gotten under control. And what was puzzling was that she was careful about what she ate; careful about doing the things she was supposed to do. But she continued having spells. And there was really nothing I could do for her. Or so I thought. (Being Servant of the Year is also pretty confining.)
Intermixed in all this was doing three persons’ job for the price of one, due to shortages that where I work is prone to have. I think for the first time in my life as it is now, I am realizing that I am human. But back then I was getting upset because I wasn’t superman. I didn’t want to sleep when I got tired, I didn’t want to get tired, I didn’t want to cry when things upset me or when I lost someone valuable to me, and for goodness’ sake, I sure didn’t need encouragement. Realizing that as I do now, I realize that it isn’t an easy conclusion to make. I liked the fact that God blessed me with the ability to survive through anything and to give of myself until I am spent. It’s not easy knowing that I have to sleep and rest to revive and even that God gave us that capacity so we can revive. It’s not easy knowing that I need to cry because God gave us that capacity too in order to realize that we need encouragement and that not everything is going to be rosy. We all need prayers, we all need people who will tend to us. Even super-Christians. Even Jesus.
In the text for this devotional Jesus is being served by a woman who anoints His feet and wipes them with her hair. And at the protestation of the apostles, Jesus answers that there will always be poor but that she was doing the most appropriate service, to tend to Him during a time when He needed encouragement. She was following the command, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. (Matthew 22:37-39). What does this mean? It means that first we must love ourselves and then we will be able to love others the way Jesus does. This means take care of our bodies, eat sufficient to maintain ourselves, learn sufficient to exist and know things about the world around us and about God and what He expects, have joy so that we can radiate to others, sleep to revive. We all need to be love ourselves, mostly because God loves us enough to have sent His son and to want us in a relationship with Him where we call God “Abba”. What a great God we serve! And it’s only when I realize how fragile I am and have to go to God and say, “I cannot make it without You Father”, and lean on his everlasting arms (as the old hymn says) that I can truly serve and help those that need me. Then and only then am I a servant.
VIII. CLAY JARS
The scripture for this is taken from 2 Corinthians 4:7
Ever broken a jar or a piece of pottery? Fragile, one minute it will sit on a table looking beautiful. In the very next minute, it can fall and wind up in a million pieces. Humans are a lot like that, fragile, breakable, one minute in the prime of life, the next, in pieces. It can happen slowly, as aging, or it can happen quickly, as an accident or a premature disease. Amazing that as strong and healthy as Olympic athletes are or appear to be, there is still decay going on in their bodies. Every day, body cells are dying away and being replaced. The old cells in a person who is no longer a youngster are dying faster than they are being replaced, and so we all age. Try as we might to preserve life, there is one process medical science will never be able to correct: dying. Whether or not we want to face it, all things on this earth including us must die. And what is even more sobering is that even the healthiest of us, not necessarily athletes or health nuts, but anyone who has always be “in the pink” can die from a previously undetected heart disease or cancer, or even AIDS.
I cannot handle death. Ask anyone who knows me and they know I am passionate about the subject. I have reasoned that life has already begun and needs to continue. But the older I get I see this is such a lie. I realize this life while may be in part beautiful and lovely will end. But is it truly the end of all things. Actually no. What will happen according to scripture is that God awaits us (Romans 15:13) because He is a God of glory and peace. He doesn’t want us to be alone. And so I can say that it is NOT the end, it is NOT finished. It is NOT over. We don’t have to goodbye forever. Because He promises we won’t be alone. As far back as Deuteronomy 31:6, this has been His promise. He also promised not to leave us in Haggai 1:13 and to be with His people in Matthew 18:20. The list of His promises not to leave is endless.
That His promises are true, I have no doubt. God has gotten me out of more scraps than I could count. But I still have a problem with death. Because there is a small voice in me saying, “I am alone”. When I lost my father, I felt alone. My brother died 3 years after my father. I am alone. I lost any number of friends in the church. I am alone. And there is a hole in my heart that won’t go away, no matter the encouragement. I begin to feel as though I have to carry the burdens of life by myself. With no one to help me. The thought of that weight hurts me all the more. And the one question that keeps looming is “Why?” Why, God? If you were trying to teach me something, couldn’t you have taught me something with me losing people that are important to me?
I’ve lost many dear friends over the course of the years. I lost my dad and brother, as I said, who were what I considered my close friends. I lost an elderly friend who had just become a Christian. She had a heart condition, but it didn’t stop her from working hard for the Church. One day in September 1990, someone broke into her house where her daughter was visiting with her, and murdered her and seriously wounded her daughter. This was someone who never did anyone any harm. Why was she murdered? Why? And what purpose did it serve? Why, God?
Then there was another lady that I had come to know after my heart surgery in 1993. She was a strong lady, had tended to her dying husband, fought back from five strokes to the point of normalcy, was now walking without a walker, who had progressed so far that she could drive herself to the grocery store and that she could add 2 and 2 and still get 4. She was so excited about her life in Christ and couldn’t wait until she could teach again. She suffered another stroke one November day. And while recovering from this she was diagnosed with cancer. And the following January morning she took God’s hand and met those that had gone before her. Why God? Why bring her to the point where she could drive her car only to call her to you? Why make her suffer? And why take someone of whom I had grown so fond? I just was not ready.
Then again another elderly woman, who was in unspeakable pain due to arthritis, but who never ever stopped smiling. She raised 3 boys to be Christian men, all strong and moral and accepting of the LORD. Why did God let her suffer so much before calling her?
Why do things happen? Why? I certainly haven’t the answers, and no one to whom I have spoken has the answers either. What was in the mind of God when He watched as my dad neglected his health and not stick to what the doctor’s advised him to do? What was in the mind of God as He watched my brother lead a loose lifestyle and wind up contracting the AIDS virus? What was in His mind when He watched my friend Louise get murdered, or my friend Georgia suffer through several strokes and cancer, or my other friend live in such agony with arthritis?
What was He thinking?
I don’t have a clue. I only know that He doesn’t want any to perish, as He says in John 3:16. He wants us to come to Him and have eternal life. And I know that He doesn’t want us to be robots but to do His will because we choose to, not because we are forced to follow Him. I think I have come to realize, and am learning this even more so the older I get is that no matter what happens, God is still deeper than anything we can suffer, regardless of whether events occur because of our choice or just because we live in a disease-filled, evil world that still has Satan in it, even though Christ has made Satan powerless to ruin our chances for eternal life. I believe we must, I must, you must, say, “God, I really do want to do your will, not mine.” Because of God, we as His children have the hope of a new life in heaven, a rebirth into eternity with no tears or sorrows. We get to trade the clay jars in for spiritual, infinite bodies. And our cross is replaced with a crown!
IX. BEHOLD THE GOD WHO GRIEVES
In the middle and late 1990’s as I became aware of certain family tumults, such as my father’s illness and subsequent death, and my brother’s serious illness leading to his demise, my own heart condition, my mother’s depression over the desperate state in which my father left her financially as well as her own medical ailments, and indeed my financial woes in which a bad relationship left me, I know what it is like to grieve. There were indeed days that I was so overwhelmed that all I could focus upon was the dark cloud over my head. When I was younger and not facing this melee, I saw someone going through things and thought how sad for someone to be so self-absorbed, to forget that God was there and that He is in control, how sad one’s existence is and how God must be in a quandary over this person who has chose to be so absorbed emotionally.
I was that ignorant, until 1992, when dad fell down a set of stairs and wound up in the hospital and then recovering at home. And my mother threw emotional darts at me because I was away from home and that my friends were worthless. I think I always knew mother was like that, and that she really never liked my choice in friends, with some exceptions. But it didn’t make life any easier. The real kicker was dad, and the final realization that dad was mortal. Oh, sure, I knew about his diabetes, his heart disease, his bad back, and the fact that he never took care of himself, but in the back of my mind I kept saying, “He’s made it this far, he’ll live to a ripe old age and see his grandchildren graduate high school and maybe college”. Amazing how I could put the blinders on, isn’t it? His fall in 1992 led to a blood clot that was inoperable. The medicines and fluids brought him back from that. But he continued fainting, even though it wasn’t from blood clots or any neurological problem. Then there was the time his body just said, “ENOUGH!” and he wound up in the Cardiac Care Unit. And I was called home for what was thought by his doctor’s to be the last time. Which it was not. Not that time. He lasted until July of 1994 when he died at home in his sleep.
I remember it like I was yesterday. And I remember asking God “Why?”.
In February of 1994, I was traveling for business and was called by my brother. He did not lead the purest of lives and had been to the hospital previously for pneumonia. He called because his doctors told him there was nothing that could be done for him and he’d better make preparations. He had contracted the HIV virus and was beginning to show signs of progression into AIDS.
And again I asked God, “Why?”.
When I grieved and prayed I wondered if God was hearing me. Now when I grieve over events I wonder if this is how God feels. I read the entire book of Isaiah for the first time during the hump in the 1990s. And several parts of Isaiah since then. I had read it previously, but never with the glance into God’s heart and soul and understanding His desires for His people. Apart from any book, apart from any writings, Isaiah describes the nature of His heart and His great love by merely describing what He does for us and will do for us. Throughout Isaiah is the theme, “I am the only God, the only one, the One you need to serve. All you have to do is come to Me, just Me, and love just Me. I love you and will gather you to Me if you let Me. But I am the only One. There are no other gods. There’s just Me, and My son and My spirit are all part of Me. I am the great I Am…”
In that book, through the writings of Isaiah, I see God’s pleading and His tears. For He loves us so much He gave up His Son for us and sent His Spirit to us. He is a powerful, pleading God, that has been grieving for us since Adam and Eve sinned, perhaps even before, in knowing what His people would do. Although the first few verses show just how happy almost gleeful God truly was to even create man and to give man a woman for companionship. But at man’s fall, God becomes a grieving God. He actually seems to go through all the stages of grief except for one—denial. I don’t think God ever denies there was a loss when His people chose not to follow Him throughout history or that there is a loss when we choose a life contrary to His will. I think there are times that He longs for there to be no loss because as Jesus so aptly put it in Matthew 23:37, “How I wish I could gather you like a mother hen gathers her chicks, but for your stubborn hearts!” Oh, yes, He knows and feels the loss.
The more I read, the more powerful I see God’s grief truly is. I see Him angry at Sodom and Gomorrah. I see Him angry at the world during the time of Noah. I see Him devastated during the time of Hezekiah, enough to allow Nebuchadnezzar to do his thing. I see an accepting God on all fronts, accepting the good and bad in David, Jacob, Moses, Peter, and Paul. I see a God in control of all things, even when things look out of control. I see God not exercising His control when His people want it, but when He knows it will do the most good. For all of us, pain is not an option. How else do we know we can feel and how else do we realize something is pleasant? How else in truth do we experience life? If death is but a portal, life is a window through which we must look to see what the true existence in God is. A mirror, only giving us a partial reflection of what God wants for us.
Finally, I see a God that has triumphed in Jesus’ resurrection, whose power is realized early on a chilly, breezy Sunday morning when a stone is rolled back and two angels speak with two women about what has transpired. I see Jesus who in one moment tells the women not to fear and in the next allowing Thomas to touch His side to prove to himself that He is alive. I see God joyous again, with such joy as I have never seen before, because there are those who have come to realize his power is not in the law, but in His unending grace which allows Him to say, “You can’t live up to the law. Let me show you a more excellent way.” His love is so great that while we were knee-deep in sin, He provided a way for us to be pulled from the fire and to be cleansed of our sins. (Romans 5:8)
Thank you, God for loving us…thank You God for serving us…thank You God for making us whole and saving our souls…
X. HARSH REALITIES
The scripture for this text is Psalms 46:10.
No matter how often I said to myself, “Dad’s going to die”, no matter how long I prepared, I couldn’t know what I would feel until I actually did go through the situation. I knew Daddy was going die, I’d been preparing myself, bracing myself, because I knew how sick he was and sooner or later he would be gone. But knowing something and living through it is two different things.
When I finally did, when it finally happened, after all the false alarms, and all the tears and pleading for his life back, and when he finally said, “I have had enough; let my God judge me, I have suffered here too long.”, there was a cold slap across my face, like being hit with an ice cold rag. All at once, I felt as though I’d been hoping for something that would never be, and that it indeed was foolish and prideful that I could change the course of what God has set in motion for all humanity, not just a love one who is terminally ill, but all of us, whenever God is ready for us. Even now, although 14 years ago, I hear my sister-in-law’s voice on the other end of the telephone receiver saying, “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your daddy died this morning.” When I first heard this, I crumbled, composed myself, stumbled, fumbled then crumbled again. I started out in my roommate’s room and wound up in my bathroom. Going in spurts. A million thoughts rushing into my head. And every time I hear that voice at the other end of the phone, those range of emotions hit me again. In fact, there are moments even now that I have where I think that this is a dream, that he is indeed alive, and all I have to do is pick up the phone, call my parents’ house in New Orleans…
But he’s not there. In fact, my mom is not there. The home I grew up in has been sold and so it is out of the family. My mom moved up to live with me after my roommate got married, 4 years after dad died, and the same year my brother passed. What I have to realize is that life has moved on. My father won’t be answering the phone, neither will my brother and my mother lives with me. So I must move on because life moves on. But I can deal with it now, because God has put a great healer here, time.
When I was in the midst of dealing with Daddy’s death though, I had the big 3-D hole that is left in my universe when people who are close to me pass away or who leave and with whom I am no longer in contact. When that happens, I am empty, because a part of me leaves with those people. I fall on my knees before God to take away the hole. But it doesn’t fill up fast enough and I continue to play a sort of cat-and-mouse game with myself, now I hurt, now I don’t. And I play a mind game with myself where my buttons are pushed and I am caught by my own devises. I spiral downward until I finally have to ask God, “My God, my God, why have Thou forsaken me?” I do feel like God has turned His back, I do indeed feel forsaken. As I am in the throws of these emotions, I feel the sting of being totally alone, and all I can do is live in the confusion with all the barbs and spinners attached. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, and I have often made the decision to stop talking to God, because I don’t feel Him there and I am angry with Him. But you know something…
For three days He was alone, but it really started long before He went to the grave. He had a three-year ministry. He lost many of his followers (John 6:66), there were people who tried to trap Him into political nonsense (John 8:1-8; John 7:24), His cousin John was beheaded as a gift to a king’s daughter, and everything from demons to Satan himself was thrown at Him during His life. He probably lost His earthly father, Joseph, because there is no mention of Joseph after a certain point in the bible. During His last days on earth, Jesus was scourged, mocked, whipped, spat upon, falsely accused, and finally left to hang on a crucifix. For three days He was most alone while He was carrying my sins, and everyone else’s sins. For three days he was alone, and yet He never denied the power of God. Never caused Him to doubt His Father. Never caused Him to think there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Because God was whispering to Him, “Be still and know I am Your God.” (Psalms 46:10)
And He rose. Above all else is God’s power to resurrect. And so He did. And does. And that is a promise. My soul becomes a part of Him because I am clothed with Christ. (Galatians 3:26-27) My life does go on. My soul belongs to God and there is joy in that, no matter what I face. And God loves me enough to send His Son to die for me.
My hurts are healed and stay healed when I remember that His love makes me whole, over and over and over again. He covers my holes, no matter how many there are. And I will see him face to face.
XI. PUSHING THE STOP BUTTON
The text for this is Genesis 3.
Cassette tapes are becoming obsolete, but for those of us who played them by the hour know that there are tabs in the back of the tape that if you don’t want to lose any of the music or information that is on the tape you remove the tab. You can replace the tab with tape if you decide you want to record over it. But even that won’t work as well as never having removed the tab.
Which means that you might not be able to ever remove some song or people speaking on the tape that you really didn’t want to hear because it evoked memories that were bittersweet or down right unpleasant. You would have to either fast forward or push the stop button and remove the tape.
We have internal tapes. Tapes from which the back tab has sometimes been removed. Internal tapes exist not for any other use but our private use because we are creatures of habit. Tapes are what we put our internal data on, what we’ve listened to since childhood, what we’re being told now. Some of them are positive. Many of them are negative. And depending upon how often we have heard the tapes and how old those tapes are we can erase them or not. How we process what is on the tape is significant to what we think of ourselves. Satan knows we have internal tapes. Satan has figured out that tapes determine how we react and feel about various aspects of life. He has also figured out that the messages recorded on those tapes are not always positive. In fact, some are negative, some needing to be erased or at least not to be played. And he loves it, because he knows that even if we’ve accepted Christ we keep listening to these tapes and won’t push the stop button. He knows we choose not to push the button because old habits are hard to break. Only through really devoting oneself to Christ, only through prayer constantly and consistently, as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, will we be able to look past those tapes and head toward what God wants us to be and do. The strong in Christ know how to either replace the tab or to push the stop button not to listen to the tapes. But even the strong in Christ grow weak. And Satan knows that the strong in Christ forget or choose not to stop the tapes or replace the tab. We would rather be comfortable listening to the tapes and be miserable rather than be challenged by the truth of God and His love for us and be blessed by that enough to stop the tapes.
Does that mean that satan has outwitted God? Certainly not! Although tapes are a part of human nature, God knows tapes are temporary. Why? Well, why do the cassettes when you can have the live concert? God gives us free tickets and says, “Come, see me, talk to me, hear me?” and every seat is the best seat in the house. Every melody is memorable and every conversation uplifting and full of joy. And this replaces any tape we’ve ever made for ourselves. And the concert goes on and on. While we are on earth we’ve got glimpses of the live performances between and in spite of all the trials we have to live through. Just ask any older person who walks with God, “Why do you smile?” They smile because they know while on earth they have been to the concert many, many times, and when they go to meet God, the concert is permanent. We get to sing, clap our hands,
laugh, and praise God always. Personally I can’t wait.
XII. ELOHIM
The text is taken from Job 38,39,40.
I was riding through the mountains of West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky on my way to attend a training session in Louisiville, KY, and couldn’t help witnessing God’s majesty. Man can make skyscrapers, he can build airplanes for intercontinental travel, but I have yet to see the man regardless of his degrees that build a mountain standing majestically against a sky with a gray cloud dancing around it or a bird that can fly gracefully through the air to land on a twig or branch of a tree or on a rock, or even build a creature as terrifying as a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Nothing man can make can surpass that of the Creator.
Think about the following. On my journey, I noticed the difference in terrain and saw that the clay so familiar to North Carolina and Southern Virginia changed to shale and then to stone. Something else man cannot do. How much fun God must have had doing this! I can imagine Him with His hand on His chin deciding which terrain would be perfect for which continent, or where on which continent to put what landscape. And when He placed the animals, I can imagine Him looking at the cattle He had just placed on the mountainside munching lazily on the grass. I can imagine how joyous He was, how He must have smiled to say, “Yes, it is good.” I visited the Falls of the Ohio, which separates Kentucky from Indiana, and was fascinated by the power of what God created. Here the rocks and cascades were enough to prevent river traffic for centuries, only recently being diverted safely for travel. This situation forced men to come together to form settlements such as Louisville. Isn’t God’s wisdom amazing? He stopped man’s progress long enough so that we would talk to each other and build communities rather than be so worried about how much to explore and exploit the land.
And His wisdom is infinite and everlasting. I love any natural history museum because of the wealth of information they supply. While it may not be expressed outright, the wonder of God’s creation is there. God created the numerous species of plants, some of which are now extinct. God created animals and lifeforms that are now mere recordings in fossilized stone. In God’s infinite wisdom, He created man. Why? To enjoy His creation, to enjoy that which He made, and to do what is most pleasing to Him, to God give the praise, and the glory for all He has done. The saddest day for Him was when Eve bit into the apple, and He realized His Son would have to die for such a generation as man; but, you know, it probably was a good day too. Because He realized that if His Son went down to earth and offered man a choice of being forever slaves to themselves and satan or of coming to Him with penitent hearts willing to turn their lives over to Him then man would truly be created in His image. (Galatians 3:27) Man would truly be receptive to His truth.
Get out and enjoy what God has given you, green grass, ocean waters, white beaches, and huge majestic mountains, and any number of animals. It’ll do your heart and your soul wonders.
XIII. IN HIS ARMS
The scripture for this text is Matthew 26 and Romans 8:38,39.
“Daddy, Daddy, I’m so frightened. Help me, Daddy, the monster is after meeeee!!!!”
Ever feel like that sometimes? Like there are things that are pulling at you, evil or not, that are trying to suck the life and love out of you, or that are simply demanding your time? What do children do when monsters are after them? First they scream. Then they call for the most secure being they know. And sometimes its Mommy and sometimes its Daddy. What did Christ do in the garden of Gethsemane? First he cried for help. And then he went to the most secure being he knew. The Heavenly Father. Christ has been through every situation. He’s known pain, sorrow, joy, peace, contentment, anger, frustration, and every temptation that satan can throw at a human being, but through all this, he never has lost his focus. He’s never forgotten the Father’s love for him. The child was, and is, always alive in him and when things hurt him or made him mad while he was on earth, he never forgot the one he could run to and be loved by. Even in joy, he was, and is, joyous because he knew the Heavenly Father was the source of all his joy and peace. That allowed him to say, “No, I will not sin. God holds me in his arms and I will not give that up for the things in this world”. And it allows us to say it, too. (Titus 2:11-13) It’s not always easy to say “No”, because the coating of sin is an immediate, though short-lived, pleasure. To give up pleasure for the sake of doing God’s will is tough, but not impossible with Him. And when we are clothed in Christ, as it speaks of in Galatians 3:26,27,we learn to do God’s will so it becomes easier to resist sin. In true child-like fashion, resisting sin becomes a “Daddy, satan’s bothering me again!!!” approach, and we learn to go to His throne as a child, not as an adult, but in the submission of child to a loving parent that will take care of the child. Like a child, we come to realize that we cannot fix things and to know that life is beyond our capacity but not beyond the Father’s realm. Like a child we will not be afraid to fail because we know we can run to God and say, “I really messed up on this one…can you help me repair myself…what do you want me to do?” God then wraps His ever-stretching arms around us and smiles His broader-than-a-universe smile and says, “Here’s what I’ll do…” And we can rest in His arms, confident that He is indeed in control.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Hello again
Hi there!!!
This amazing, me contacting the blog twice in one week. Hope all have had a great week as we wind down toward the weekend.
The rain was lovely. The sunshine is too. May God bless everyone today.
Lydia
This amazing, me contacting the blog twice in one week. Hope all have had a great week as we wind down toward the weekend.
The rain was lovely. The sunshine is too. May God bless everyone today.
Lydia
Monday, June 4, 2007
Boy have I been out of touch
Hi people:
Well I have been out of touch...but I am going to try to do better. Hope all is well for those that read this site. Remember that in this life the thing that counts the most is not how nice people are to you but how nice you are to people. I have a new book I am working on getting published, a book of poetry.
Please pray for those who are sick, like Ms Ashlyn Hunter a nine-year-old cancer victim and Mr. Andy Hood a stroke victim who is in his 80s. Also pray for those who are struggling in their marriages, that God can heal those wounds and that people listen to God no matter how hurt they are.
Take care.
Well I have been out of touch...but I am going to try to do better. Hope all is well for those that read this site. Remember that in this life the thing that counts the most is not how nice people are to you but how nice you are to people. I have a new book I am working on getting published, a book of poetry.
Please pray for those who are sick, like Ms Ashlyn Hunter a nine-year-old cancer victim and Mr. Andy Hood a stroke victim who is in his 80s. Also pray for those who are struggling in their marriages, that God can heal those wounds and that people listen to God no matter how hurt they are.
Take care.
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