Time Out

Revelation 12:14 NIV

The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach.

Have You Been Sent To Time Out?

When I first arrived at the college where I would earn my degree, I came by plane, was picked up at the local airport by a college representative and dropped off at the dormitory where my room was on the second floor.  Carrying my two suitcases up the stairs, I was all alone.  I did not meet anyone in the lobby.  No one was in the hallway on the first floor; no one was in the hallway on the second floor.  I came to my room, which was empty except for two beds, two dressers, a sink and a phone on the wall and I tossed my suitcase on the floor and began to unpack it.  My roommate would not be arriving for two days.  I pulled the blanket and sheets out from my suitcase, made the bed and lay down on top of the covers, wondering what it would be like to go to school here.  Outside my window, I heard laughter and male and female voices chattering.  It sounded like there was a party going on below my room and I wasn’t invited.  I cannot say what is more lonesome.  Being alone in a great circle of emptiness or being by yourself when you can hear the crowds having fun without you.    That night, without a single soul to keep me company, two thousand miles away from my family, my church and my friends, I felt like I had been sent to time out.

“Time out” as an expression has shifted in meaning over the years.  It used to mean “taking a break”.  In basketball or football it is the term used for regrouping and talking about what to do next as a team.  It also has been the idiom for going off and having fun; taking in a movie, hanging out with friends, going dancing, eating at a restaurant.  The field of psychology embraced the term as a descriptor for a mild punishment given to a youngster who is disruptive or disobedient.  If a parent sends a child to time out, it means the child is ordered to go sit alone for a certain period of time in a boring place and “learn a lesson” about how to act properly.  Not many kids like being sent to time out and rarely do we adults either.  “Jail time” is the grown-up version of it.  A boring, inconsequential job is too.  Many of us feel like from time to time we have been sent to time out and it generally isn’t something we like.

The Bible is filled with examples of its most famous people stuck in time out.  Imagine what it must have been like for Joseph, the son of Jacob to wind up in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and languish there for twelve years.   What about Sarah, the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac who was left behind in camp at the foot of Mt. Moriah as her husband took her only child off to make a sacrifice to God somewhere out in the mountains.  She had to have noticed the taunt and grim expression on Abraham’s face as he shuffled away and wondered what was about to take place and why she couldn’t go with them.  Thomas, the apostle, suffered a sort of time out when for seven days he lived with the disappointment of being the only one of the Disciples not to see Jesus alive after He had been crucified. How about Moses and his forty years of time out after he had to flee Egypt and live in Midian?  Was it not a time out for Jacob, the father of the Jewish nation when he had to run away from his brother and live in near slavery, serving his uncle Laban as a shepherd?  How about the time out Mary, the mother of Jesus, experienced when she left her home in Nazareth to go stay with her cousin Elizabeth because she was pregnant and not married?  David wandered about in the desert wilderness of Israel almost ten years trying to avoid capture because the crazy king Saul wanted him dead.  Was that not a time out?

We almost always assume that when we are in time out, it is something terrible or at least frustrating.  Our time outs keep us from what we like doing, make us wait for something we want, take us away from exciting activities others get to enjoy.  When God engineers our time out, we don’t know what to make of it.  Is He cruel?  Am I out of favor with Him?  Have I lost my best and most productive years?  Am I wasting my life?  Sometimes and we must be open to seeing this is so, we are absolutely off base when it comes to understanding our circumstances. 

In 1889, a publication called The Literary Digest had this take on the automobile.  “The ordinary ‘horseless carriage’ is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course come into as common use as the bicycle.”  Dr. Alfred Vlepeau, speaking for the medical community in 1839 wrote, “The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera.  It is absurd to go on seeking it today.  Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient.  To this compulsory combination we shall have to adjust ourselves.”  It was only seven years later that anesthesia was introduced into the medical world.  One more example to make this point!  The “Father of Radio”, Lee De Forest, in 1926 insisted, “While theoretically and technically television will be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.”

Even the brightest and most highly educated among us can be and have been thoroughly wrong.  You too are wrong if you think God is wasting your time because you are in time out.  God cemented Mary’s faith in Him and His plan for bringing the Savior into the world while He wasted her time at Elizabeth’s house.  David developed a theology of what a good and faithful king should be when God wasted his time in the desert.  Jacob learned how painful it is to be deceived and the value of integrity when God wasted his time at his uncle’s house.  Moses learned patience and confidence in God when God wasted his time in Midian.  Sarah learned hope and trust in God’s goodness when God wasted her time as she waited for her husband and son to return.  Joseph learned mercy and forgiveness when God wasted his time in the Egyptian prison.

We are mistaken if we think this promise of God’s is just about the future!  It is about now, today.  For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV) Our Lord knows what He is doing with you at this moment, with the time He is wasting now.  You may not have any idea what that plan is and He may not tell you but Christ has thought this through and He has every detail, every moment that seems so wasted plotted out so that you will be exactly the sort of person He wants you to be when He gets this done.  Why did Jesus waste so much time being an infant, and then a child, a teen and a young adult?  Why not just be settled on earth as a man fully grown, get those disciples and in only three years save the world?  It is because God had a plan and for Jesus to save the world, He had to be a human being in every way…and that meant wasting His time being born, growing up and dealing with all the frustrations and pleasures of being an actual human being.

God has your life thought through in His mind and He has you right where you need to be so everything He wants to make of you can and will be accomplished. The Mona Lisa took time.  The Sistine Chapel took time.  The Golden Gate Bridge took time.  And you also take time to finish or to put it more precisely, to perfect.

The Breakthrough

Micah 2:13 NIV

One who breaks open the way will go up before them;

they will break through the gate and go out.

Their king will pass through before them,

the Lord at their head."

  

Are You Stuck In A Rut?

Years ago, not long after we moved to California, Mary Jo and I decided to take a trip back to see her family in New Orleans.   The road trip is forty hours of driving plus whatever stops you might take along the way.  We had two foster children with us and it felt like a great adventure for us all.  Our car was an old Chevy Malibu that the kids in the church called a “hooptie”.  The cloth lining to the roof was hanging down because the oldest boy had poked at it and stabbed it with a pencil.  Carved on the outside of the door he had put his name.  The Malibu had a rebuilt engine and new tires but the air conditioner was shot and it had nearly two hundred thousand miles on it.  We thought our hooptie could make it all the way and back but we weren’t sure and so with a bit of trepidation we took off down the highway.  I always drove whenever we went anywhere together; I guess I had learned that from my dad who never let my mom drive when the two of them went places together.  Our plan was to drive all night after the first day of driving and it had worked until it started raining buckets and we could barely see the road in front of us.  Not only that I got the flu and a fever began to rage through my body.  A few hours later my back went out and I could not stand when we stopped to get gas.  Mary Jo tried to take over the driving but it was clear she was too tired to go any further and so we gave up the fight and checked into a hotel.

There are times when life gets too big for us to handle.  We try our best to keep going but we have nothing left in the tank.  Maybe you have never hit that low spot when things seemed hopeless; when it felt like if you did not get some help you might fall apart.  The world is filled with people who have, who face trials and difficulties that are too big for them, too painful and too long lasting to manage on their own.  You certainly aren’t alone if what is before you is daunting, maybe even frightening.  Some have cancer and haven’t told anyone.  Others have a son who won’t try to find a job or who drinks too much.  You might know someone who has a mother with Alzheimer’s or a daughter battling depression a grandchild who is autistic or a husband who no longer can work.  The bright sunshine of the morning may cheer the hearts of many as they climb out of bed but not all of us.  You might be one who just wishes you could pull the covers over your face and stay in bed for the day…or the week…or the month.

The Bible has a number of case studies of those who came to the end of the rope.  One in particular brought most of his difficulties on himself.  Those of course are the worst kind, the ones that have years of guilt and regret attached to them.  Famous for his other name, Israel, Jacob might be described as a momma’s boy by some.  He had somehow got his twin brother Esau to trade his family right as the firstborn for a bowl of his brother’s lentil soup.  It must have been pretty good or Esau was unfathomably hungry to let go of such an important privilege but he did.  The problem with a birthright is that it doesn’t do much for you until your parents die.  It might mean you don’t have to do the dishes as often or clean out the latrine but it is a pretty inconsequential honor for the majority of your life.  Jacob had it but what was he to do with it?

His mother had an idea.  When her husband Isaac announced that he was going to bestow a special blessing on Esau which would be binding and supernaturally inspired.  Jacob tricked his blind father into thinking he was Esau and dad unwittingly gave the blessing to Jacob instead of his favorite son Esau.  Imagine what sort of fireworks this generated.  Isaac’s wife Rebekah had put Jacob up to the plan.  Isaac could not have been very pleased by that.  Esau became enraged and promised to kill his brother Jacob after his father died.  One can only guess how Isaac felt about Jacob.  The family became a boiling cauldron of fury, disgust, jealousy, distrust and fear.  Out of it jumped Jacob when he realized he had no future there.  His mom told him he needed to leave; he needed to get as far away from his brother and his steaming hatred as he could.  “Move north and move in with your uncle and see if there is someone in the family you can marry”, he was told.  He was after all forty years old.  It was time to stop being a momma’s boy and make a life for himself. 

Not all changes of course are depressing.  Some are exhilarating.  This one could not have been.  It was for Jacob the end of his world.  He had to hike over four hundred miles with the fear of his brother’s wrath nipping at his heels.  The safety of his home, the help of his servants, the doting of his mom…not to mention the wealth his family enjoyed now in his rear view mirror as he trudged along.  What a forlorn sight he must have been.  Perhaps there were tears trickling down his cheeks as he thought gloomily of the mistakes he had made, the fool he had become.  He had hiked somewhere around fifty miles when Jacob came to the outskirts of a village closed for the night.  It was out beneath the open sky housing the stars of the universe that Jacob’s life took a new turn.

When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.  He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  There above it stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.  I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south.  All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." (Genesis 28:11-15 NIV)

If you come to grips with the fact that God is behind every event of your life and that nothing happens to you that He is not turning into your benefit, you can take great comfort in what happened to Jacob.  God let his life explode so that something completely new could be made out of him.  It is clear that was what He was doing with Jacob…blowing up everything that made Jacob who he was and remaking him.  There is such mercy and generosity in God’s words here.  “I am with you”.  “I will watch over you.”  “I will give you…”  “Your descendants will be…”  “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.”  God doesn’t blow up your life to wreck you.  He does it so that something lovely and good can come out of it that wasn’t possible before He did so.  When you are content and pleased with yourself and comfortable it is hard to do anything with you.  You become disengaged from God, you lose your urgency to hear from Him, lack motivation to give Him room to work His way through you and often are resistant to do what He commands.  That is what it is like to have the nature of Adam.  We all are like that.  You aren’t alone in this.

Would Jacob have been able to believe it was really God coming to him in his dream if he was living comfortably at home, pleased with himself in his successful plundering of his brother’s fortune and standing?  It is hard to say but we do know that he was this night, destitute, on the run, shattered.  He was eager to have God come to him and comfort him.  Finally, Jacob was ready for the Lord to truly be a part of His li…the most important part.  It is interesting, the choice of words used to describe how Jacob was the next day.  Certain that God was with him and that the Lord “had his back”, Jacob started off with a new way of seeing this adventure he was entering.  Then Jacob continued on his journey and came to the land of the eastern peoples. (Genesis 29:1 NIV)  Literally the Hebrew of the verse reads, “Then Jacob lifted up his feet…”  There is a joyfulness in this description.  We would use the expression, “He had a bounce to his step.”  For the first time in days, maybe even weeks or months or even years, Jacob was ready to trust God with his life and not make a mess of things.

God almost always blows up things for us before He takes hold of us and makes us new.  It was not going to be easy for Jacob.  He would work like a slave for fourteen years just to get his wife.  He would be cheated and humiliated by his father-in-law and have to bear the blazing sun and the miserable nights sleeping on the ground out in pasture lands just to keep his sheep safe but in it all, he became a man of God with great strength and faith.  It is so frequent that it is almost an axiom of life that before God can build His life in you and give you peace and joy and freedom from lust and worry, He must break you apart and take away every crutch you have propping up your life.   But then, slowly yet surely you will become the sort of person you hoped you would be when you realized you needed Christ to fulfill you.

The Bible is filled with case studies of those who first had to be wrecked before they could be bright stars in God’s universe:  Daniel, Moses, Job, Peter, James, Paul.  Jesus might not come to you in a dream or with a bright light or a great voice but He will come to you.  You will have to decide if you trust Him to remake you, to start over with you and take all the damage to your personality brought on by sin out of you and make you free to be loving and full of hope and peace.  It takes faith to believe that every experience you face has God in it and that each person who aggravates you is used by the Lord to make you good and holy but through Christ you can have that faith and be ready to be transformed by your Savior in every part of your day.  Take a deep breath and thank God He cares enough for you to save you from you sin and make you completely new.

What Is This?

"Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears.”

Ezekiel 24:16 NIV

Is Your Life Going Smoothly?

Perhaps you have had a day like this.  I got mad at my kids.  I was late to work.  I argued with my wife.  I had a headache.  I got grease on my dress shirt and it was too late to change it.  Someone cut in front of me on the freeway.  I was frustrated by my job performance.  Did I mention that I had a headache?  For someone without food or water living in war ravaged Somalia this probably would have been considered a great day.  I did not see it that way though and I admit that I complained to God about my circumstances.   I read recently about the acorn woodpecker which beats a hole with its beak into wood posts and then carefully stuffs an acorn in it.  Later, the woodpecker returns for a tasty snack.  However, sometimes squirrels climb up the posts and snatch the acorns and feast on them before the woodpecker gets back to it for a winter snack.  That is a bad day for the woodpecker when it discovers the thievery and no acorn to quiet the rumbling in its belly.  I could imagine it squawking up to the heavens in frustration.

What do you consider a bad day?  We all have them…or at least we think we do.  No one else decides for you if your day is going well or poorly.  You are the judge of that.  Sometimes you may wonder why so much trouble comes your way.  What did you do to “deserve” what you have faced?  Is it karma, bad luck or some punishment from God?   What sort of God lets such trouble afflict good people like you?

One of the most enigmatic moments described in Scripture is the time God told his beloved spokesman Ezekiel that he was going to lose his wife.  The word of the Lord came to me: "Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears.  (Ezekiel 24:15-16 NIV)  Try to explain this demand of God’s and the action He took and you most likely will be stumped.  Justify this to your nonreligious friends and you won’t have a receptive audience.  We know of course that this stoic response to his wife’s death was to be a sign to the Israelites living in Babylon that they were not to weep or complain when God let the Babylonian army destroy Jerusalem.  It was divine judgment upon a wicked and arrogant people who were murderous and corrupt.  Yet, does that make it any easier for Ezekiel who lost the “delight” of his eyes?  It was not like Ezekiel was tired of marriage and coldly indifferent to the fate of his wife.  She was his beloved, someone he adored.

No one is immune to devastating losses and tremendous hardships.  As Jesus Himself noted, “He (the Father) causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.“ (Matthew 5:45 NIV)  We are told in Scripture that every person who has been born again is going through a transformation process on this side of heaven.  Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (2 Corinthians 4:16-17 NIV)  What you and I call the trials of life or maybe even more correctly, the unfair hardships of life, God calls the normal transformation process all Christians experience as He reworks them.  Consider it the universal maturation experience worked out in us by the Father.   It is spiritual aging as it were, normal and to be expected.  We look at these problems and hardships as terrible or dreadful; God sees them as the means by which He peels away layers of sin wrecked and contaminated parts of our personality.  Like an onion, our Lord uses troubles and even pain to strip away from you the scales that are no longer useful or helpful to living in Christ forever.

The last part of the book of Acts gives the account of the terrifying storm the Apostle Paul endured while being transported by sailing ship to Rome to face trial in front of Caesar.  Not only was he being unjustly imprisoned for crimes he did not commit, he also had to suffer near starvation conditions and drenching rain for two weeks as a raging tempest pounded the vessel.  It was not fair and certainly unwanted but Paul had to go through it anyway.  In 2 Corinthians Paul listed the experience as one of the many horrific miseries of his life after he became a Christian.  The truth is that being in the terrifying storm and then shipwrecked was perhaps one of the less painful distresses he faced.  Yet this is what Paul thought of all the troubles he had.  That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:10 NIV)

Who would consider it natural or normal to think of suffering as something good and beneficial?  We do our best to avoid it and certainly don’t look forward to it.  The Bible never encourages Christians to look for opportunities to suffer.  There is no masochistic theology within Scripture; only a realistic understanding of what suffering accomplishes.  I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.  The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.  (Romans 8:18-21 NIV)

It is not just you that is frustrated by your suffering; all of creation is frustrated.  Perhaps you have not thought of eagles or redwood trees or mountain ranges as frustrated with what they face but there is in the universe a ubiquitous groaning as it were, a straining in trial that is comparable to childbirth.  What mother looks forward to the searing pain as her baby prepares to leave her body?  Have you known any smiling as they go through the final moments of birthing a child?  Yet each and every contraction is a movement toward joy.  Would a woman consider her newborn a punishment?  Perhaps some in the most trying and horrific of circumstances might but in a normal delivery, the strain of the mother is cause for hope and coming happiness.  What is God doing in you when you go through the normal suffering and troubles of life?  He is birthing a new you.

At this point we shall speak of something that is much too profound and mystical to have any sort of depth in discussing.  Let us admit that we are entering at a point in Scripture that is beyond our knowledge base but must be given great thought.  In Hebrews comes this magnificent declaration.  During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.  Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 5:7-9 NIV)

Suffering made Jesus a better man.  It completed Him as God’s perfect sacrifice for Sin.  Something was missing in Him that only suffering could produce.  If Jesus needed suffering to put in Him some part of His personality that would make Him “perfect”, how much more so is suffering a requirement for us to be complete as God’s children.  Try and think of the best people in Scripture who we have an abundance of data to study that did not suffer.  James and Peter and the mother of Jesus and before them to Joseph, Jacob, Abraham, Ruth and Sarah all suffered great sorrow and hardship.  Suffering is the transformative catalyst God uses to put in perfect order the Christian personality.  It is like sunlight for a plant or yeast in bread.   It is how God instills holiness and goodness in His people.  You must suffer for the strength of God to be built in you.

Consider any of the great leaders of American history and you will find they all suffered horrific pain or sorrow.  Whether you look into the life of George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, suffering built the character of each of them.  Just think of Moses who many call the “Savior of the Jewish people.”  He failed miserably at his first attempt to lead his people out of slavery.  He was mocked and despised by them and then spent forty years in the blazing sun of the Middle Eastern desert before God was ready to make him his leader of Israel.  How many years did Moses question the goodness of God and wonder why his life was so wrecked?  Yet in it all, in those thousands of hours baking in the wasteland the Lord was watching over him and putting in Moses the humility and patience he would need to be the perfect servant God wanted to carry out His work.

What about you?  What sort of trouble and pain are you going through now?  What kind of desert are you in at this moment?  It is not wasted, this time of waiting and enduring.  God is perfecting you. Making you the kind of person He can use for the most important matters on His agenda.  Bread must be broken before it can be eaten and grapes must be crushed before they produce juice.  Your life is broken bread for others to consume.  The patience you acquire and the humility that is built in you are critical for some who God will and is putting in your life.  Remember this.  You are not and never have been your own.  You belong to God and He must make you in such a way that your life will feed others and provide them with nourishment to be perfect.  Someone is watching you and needs the strength your suffering and sorrow has generated.  It is up to you what you will make of the trouble you have faced and how you will respond to God’s work in you through them.  Will you be bitter vinegar that must be spit away or sweet juice that brings joy to those who drink from it?

Change

2 Kings 2:1 NIV

When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.

How Do You Feel About Change?

We all have benchmarks when monumental changes have altered our lives.  My wedding day was one for me.  At the hospital discovering for the first time that Mary Jo and I would have a child was one.  The first time I taught in Russia was one.  Some were not so pleasant such as the evening when I was fired from the first church where I was pastor and the day I got a phone call from my dad that my mom had passed away.  The morning I snapped my leg in half skiing was another benchmark.  We try our best to figure out why certain events happen.  We sometimes wish God would tell us why certain things happen to us.. 

Perhaps you have been like me.  You have wondered why you had to go through something painful or traumatic.  Maybe it was the death of a loved one close to you or the loss of a job or even a career.  It could be that you aren’t sure why you had an injury or health issue.  You might be struggling with why someone doesn’t show you love or how come a person you deeply care about is facing so many trials.  Life is sometimes like a roaring lion and it is not always reasonable or even rational.  What are you to make of the changes you have in your life?  How should you respond to them and where is God in it all?

In the middle of the Gospel of John is an interesting story that illustrates the struggle many have with the wreckage in life.  As Jesus and His disciples were walking through Jerusalem, they came upon a man who had been blind from birth.  The disciples posed Jesus with the question, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9: 2 NIV)  The assumption was that being born blind was bad and that someone was to blame for it.  God would not just let such a terrible thing happen if no one was to blame, they reasoned.  Jesus saw matters differently.  “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, “said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.  As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me.  Night is coming, when no one can work.  While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”  (John 9: 3-5 NIV) 

Many times people get mad at God for what happens to them.  Others turn their back on God when things get rough because they don’t think He has treated them fairly.  The disciples wanted to know who to blame for the blindness of the beggar they came across.  Jesus did not put blame on anyone, not God, not Satan, not the man or his parents or even on luck or fate.  He did admit that God was at work and all was not lost for the blind man; in fact Christ seemed to indicate that this blindness made it possible for God to do something in particular for the man that could not be done any other way.  We all have experienced something like this if we have lived long enough.  A restaurant was closed but you stumbled upon a café you now love.  A boyfriend or girlfriend broke up with you but then you met the person you eventually married.  A bout with depression gave you insight into deep psychological wounds that you had ignored.  Unemployment led to a new career that fits you better.  Jesus insisted that the blindness was not a curse laid upon the beggar but an opportunity for God to do something for him that would not have been possible if he had always been able to see.

The question before you is simple.  Do you really know what to make of your circumstances?  Are you certain of what your next steps in life should be?  Jesus said that He is the light of the world.  What does that mean?  Although there is much that is dark and confusing now, Jesus can help us make sense of it.  Death is irrational and cruel and sin has broken what once was a perfect universe.   In this darkness there is a light that shines and cannot be extinguished.  Where pain and sorrow seem to rule the day, it is not so.  With Christ we find that love rules the universe and that evil and death will be conquered by our Lord who died to save the world from its sin.  Yes it is hard now.  Yes we suffer many hardships and heartaches.  But there is a light that shines in the darkness and Christ will see you through whatever you face and show you the way.

The famous account of Elijah and his departure from this world in God’s chariot of fire ran on two levels…that of Elijah and that of Elisha.  For Elisha it was not quite as exotic as for Elijah.  Elijah rode God’s flaming chariot to heaven.  How exciting!  Elisha was left to sort out things on earth…life and death, loss and hardship, loneliness and trouble.  The account of the journey Elisha took with Elijah to the spot where God’s chariot would take Elijah away is fascinating from a psychological perspective.   Try to put yourself in Elisha’s shoes as he walked with his friend and mentor; knowing they did not have much time left to be together.  When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.  Elijah said to Elisha, "Stay here; the Lord has sent me to Bethel."  But Elisha said, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So they went down to Bethel.  The company of the prophets at Bethel came out to Elisha and asked, "Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?"  "Yes, I know," Elisha replied, "but do not speak of it."  Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here, Elisha; the Lord has sent me to Jericho."  And he replied, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So they went to Jericho.  The company of the prophets at Jericho went up to Elisha and asked him, "Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?"  "Yes, I know," he replied, "but do not speak of it."  Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here; the Lord has sent me to the Jordan."  And he replied, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So the two of them walked on.  (2 Kings 2:1-6 NIV)

Elisha had many hours, maybe even weeks to process what was about to happen.  You have to wonder if he was really prepared to lose Elijah his friend.  Maybe he hoped that something would change things, that Elijah could stay a week longer, or a month or a year more.  If he just kept going with Elijah they might not be parted.  Elisha had the head knowledge of Elijah leaving but did he have the heart knowledge?  Was he ready for Elijah to go?  His response to the prophets who warned him of what was to come is telling.  ”Don’t talk to me about this!”  Have you ever known something was going to happen but you were not emotionally willing to talk about it…did not want to face it?  Elisha craved every last second he had with Elijah…cherished each last moment with him. Most assuredly he was not ready to face the fact that this part of his life was about to end; that he wouldn’t have Elijah with him any longer.

It is intriguing that we have no record of how Elisha knew of what was going to happen or any explanation of why God chose to take Elijah away just then.  There is no doubt though that it was God who was behind Elijah leaving.  As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. (2 Kings 2:11 NIV)  Somehow the Lord let Elisha know what He was about to do with his friend and mentor but we aren’t told how He did so.  Yet there were no silly explanations like so many create for why people die.  No “God needed him in heaven” or “Elisha was too dependent on Elijah to keep them together” or not even “God is making Elijah into an angel to watch over Elisha”.  No nonsense like that as a justification for what God did.  It was just the raw material of God and Elisha building a new life together without Elijah there.  Our Lord does not expect you to make sense of why certain painful and difficult times strike you.  You cannot draw straight lines between the tragedies and sorrows you meet and why you face them because our Lord is not ready to show you everything yet.  We live in a world broken by sin where death and suffering continue.  He does have something in mind for you now though just as He did for Elisha.  Elijah was gone and Elisha couldn’t do anything to change that.  For whatever reason, the Lord took Elijah away.  For whatever reason, you experience difficult and sometimes terrifying times.  God does not give you an explanation though.  It is there…and God is there.

A time comes…and it may be right now for you when you must give up making sense of what you face and begin to make sense of God.  Let me illustrate.  After I broke my leg and I was confined to a wheel chair I still was left with the responsibilities I had before my leg was snapped in half.  One of them was to go around the school where we lived just before bedtime and check the doors to make sure they were locked as well as see if anyone was on the school grounds causing or potentially causing trouble.  My three children wanted to go with me and my older son pushed my wheel chair.  While walking, we came across a large gang of young adults talking loudly in the field.  As we approached them, I was very concerned about what they were doing at the school and felt like I needed to investigate but I was also afraid for my kids.  I told them to leave me and go home which the two younger ones did but my oldest son insisted that he stay with me and push my wheelchair.  When we got to the group there were four young men and four or five teenage girls.  The conversation they were having was filled with cursing and I could smell marijuana too.  They all turned around to face me as I got close and the entire group surrounded me when I told them they had to leave.  The young man who seemed to be the leader of the group cursed at me and started making threats.  The other guys also drew closer and grew increasingly belligerent.  As I sat in my wheelchair encircled by this gang, I had three thoughts.  The first was just crazy.  I was certain I could take out the leader of the group even with a cast on my leg.  I had no idea though how to defend myself against the others.  Immediately I began to wonder about my son.  What could I do to protect him?  I knew he would not leave me.  My third consideration was that God with me and so within I began to feverishly pray for His help.  My mind grew so fixed on Christ that I barely heard what the gang members were saying to me or to each other but all of a sudden one of the girls said to them all, “Let’s just leave” and that is what they did. No further confrontation.  No more threats of violence.  They just left.

Was this a miracle?  Did God change the course of events for me and my son?  I leave that up to you to decide.  All I know is that in desperation, I turned to Christ for help and I was helped.  You may be at that point too.  Something has changed for you and you could use God’s help.  Maybe it is time to find out who God really is and if He can be your Savior.  Your mind, because of what is happening, is undistracted by the Kardashians, by President Trump’s tweets or what is going on in sports, it is laser focused on God right now.  The Bible insists that because of Christ, God can live in you if you invite Him to join you.  He is there and you are there.  What sort of God is He?  Does He have any love or mercy to offer you?  Is there a hope He can give you?  Is He big enough to see you through this?  Who is this Jesus?  It is time for you to find out.  In a world broken by Sin and wrecked by death and suffering, you have a Savior who also suffered and died too.  But now He is alive and He loves you and wants to go through whatever you face with you.  You may not have your Elijah to go with you but you have Jesus.  Find out for yourself who He is.  Let Christ be a part of your life.  Take a moment to invite Jesus to go with you, to make His home in you.  Since He died on a cross to take your sin from you and give you eternal life, He might just be the friend you need right now.

Unperturbed

What seems to frustrate us most, at least for those who live actually, acknowledging  tragedy and wreckage are  the normal parts of life, is that we can't ever swing free of our troubles.  We may hide from them for a while or even make light of them as if we are indifferent to their bite but in the end troubles square us up and make full contact.  The soldier on the battlefield as well as the mother nursing her sickly child is matched up with troubles and they make a mockery of the misty dream-state concocted by teachers of Biblical positivism.  You would think, if you believed some, that the disciples never died, Mary Magdalene never got sick and John found Patmos a paradise.  It is there before us though.  We do get tired of our husband's mood swings, limp with arthritis and wake up to unemployment.  The bank does foreclose on our house and our daughter slams the door on us.  This stuff of life is here and we must recognize the root of it as it is.  We are a fool if we think Jesus never stubbed His toe, woke up with a migraine or failed to sway the crowd.  He, whose own brothers and sisters thought Him a fool and whose mother convinced herself He had lost His mind, lived out fully the farthest reach of sin and taking it within Himself buried that sin in the Cross.  Our sin has been crucified with Christ but its stench remains at every crack and mound.  Its damage remains like scars that seem to get worse with age.  What Jesus Christ has done for us though in taking our sin from us is make it possible for His life to live within ours, for Him to actually transform us that He and us become one new being.  This means that the same strength Christ had as He worked His way to Jerusalem is ours and the faith He had that made Him fearless as the storm threatened to swamp the boat where He slept is the faith we hold too.  We have no monstrosity to fear, no rejection to dread.  With Christ working His way through each part of us, we can be happy as sorrow strikes but not with the happiness of a lunatic but with the joy of the redeemed,  the joy flowing out of the One who has been baptized by death and come up again alive to the brim.  You can, in Christ, face your day not in some drunken stupor brought on by the old wine  you drank before but in the life you have now with the Lord Himself welling up as a fountain of Living water within you.  Drink deeply from that spring and face what comes to you with the strength God provides.  Nothing is too terrible to bear if Christ's very own blood flows through your veins.  It is not God who incites you to worry, not Christ who pushes dread upon you.  The word of God is always "fear not" just as surely as you breathe.  Don't dread the coming storm...be glad God has given you the opportunity to find out just how strong you now are and how unperturbed you can be.

"Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."   John 7:38 NIV

Nothing settles the Lordship question more firmly than hardship.  It is there that you see the thing most clearly: follow Christ or abandon Him.  Once you know where you stand, everything else falls into place.  Forgive or not.  Complain or not.  Believe or not.  Take the forbidden object or not.  As long as we waver between one or the other, hardship will work its way back into our soul and make the object clear again.  The heart of every situation that startles our sensibilities is the great decision.  Follow Christ or abandon Him.  We rarely settle this absolutely; more often we do so time and again.

Undisturbed or Undetermined

Have we got anything to look forward to today?  Are we satisfied with the way things are going to such a degree that it would be perturbing if God said “do this” or “do that” all of a sudden?  Could we bounce out of our plans or are we too settled for God to blow them apart and not come unglued ourselves?  What would we give to have things go smoothly right now?  Is there something we can’t see torn asunder?  Have we a freedom of the Spirit that leaves us empty of self-will and determination?  God is not interested in us becoming the best we can be or making our days uncomplicated and settled.  He is righting the ship that has been broken completely by the storms of sin we have leveled against it.  We are undone and don’t realize it because we are too far invested in ourselves and how we want things to go.  God’s will for us is to kill off our will so that we can be one with Him and free of the tangled weeds of sin choking our life.  He must break up our day and shatter our plans for us to give in to Him and let Him become our all in all.  The sacredness of the day is not found in what we accomplish or set out to accomplish but rather in our complete trust in Christ to make of it as He will.  That does not mean passively sitting back in a mess of meaningless activities but rather drawing near to the Holy Spirit in each and every part of the day.   It is not Christian to realize your dreams.  It is Christian to die to the will to sin and become so in love with Jesus that nothing He makes of our moment is cursed and everything we want is undisturbed by a love of the world.  Find a moment to love Christ without conditions.  Let this day be His.

Gratitude

I have started each day writing down a line of blessings. It has just been a three day discipline but already it feels like stretching out a bad back or flossing infected gums. I am not very good at it and it shows. My first day I could only write down two blessings; the second day I really improved and came up with three. One was pretty pitiful. I wrote that I was thankful that my car was repaired. Of course the repairs cost me one hundred dollars more than I expected and in the end, the mechanic listed two major problems my car has that because of its age and mileage are too expensive to fix. So, my repair gratitude was grudgingly added to make me sound thankful…or pretend I was thankful.

It cannot be simply a natural tendency to pessimism that makes gratitude such a strain. I just do not have the inherent talent to be thankful when I have a headache, the living room is full of clothes and toys and half the congregation is gone on Sunday. My gratitude list is far too short for someone living with Jesus and much too shallow for all I have been given. When I was in graduate school, my supervisor was providing an in-service on parent training. She talked about how difficult it is sometimes to compliment your children. She told of one parent, determined to say something good about her child blurting out, “I really like how your nose sits right in the middle of your face.” My prayers often have that same feel. “Thank you Lord for the air I breathe.” “Thank you Lord for the flu only lasting three days.” Thank you Lord that my car broke just forty-five minutes from the nearest mechanic.”

It is a stretch to be thankful but it is a stretch to cook dinner sometimes, a stretch to get up before dawn and a stretch to smile when your back aches but we do all these things anyway. The other day I was asked by one of the teens in our youth group whose idea it was to organize a hike up mission peak. Because I wasn’t sure if he was glad he went or angry he had to go, I hesitated before I answered. He did get to stand at the end on top of the world looking down on a billion city lights, look up at trillions of stars and breathe the fresh air of a cool breeze floating over the peak. I think I like life better when I think a bit more about the twinkling city lights than the sweat dripping off my brow. That alone may make gratitude worth the effort. I read recently of a beautiful young professional golfer who committed suicide. I do not know why she took her life but perhaps she missed the sparkling stars one too many times as she climbed the peak she was given. The Apostle Paul warned that in the last days there “will be terrible times…” He also said in the same letter, “I thank God…” The two can co-exist in one heart at the same time. Gratitude may be the most viable and definitive mode of expression limiting the progression of bitterness, pride and despair all in one fell swoop. Just one thankful comment can turn around a gloomy day…a cheap remedy that no elixir can match.

Uz Too! Part 2

When Job settles into the horror of his situation, he does what all of us try to do given rough circumstances. He tried to make some sense of it. The question is out there for him. “What is happening?” But like so many of us, Job doesn’t really think he will ever get a chance to ask it. I know for many the turning point in Job is God’s response to him out of the whirlwind. But I don’t think it is. The fulcrum of Job is his call for a “hearing” with God. Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing. (Job 9:16 NIV) He doesn’t think it will happen but that is what he wants. Not success, not power, not health; all those things he has lost interest in as priorities. What Job wants is answers. “What are you doing God?” “What is happening?”

What is happening of course is that Satan was trying to shake Job free of his devotion to YHWH. But that does not explain God’s part in this. Was God watching with eager anticipation to see if Job would give up his faith in the same sort of way we watch the Olympics to see who wins or was God doing something else with Job that was not quite so small as Him showing off Job’s resilience as one might show off the skills of a prized racehorse? It certainly sounds ridiculous and certainly is ridiculous to think God at any point is waiting with eager anticipation to see how things turn in any part of the Universe and it is just as absurd to think God is vain and must show off His stuff to make Himself feel good.

If it is true that every person would like a hearing with God and is wondering often enough, “What is going on”, then it seems that Job as the ultimate transcript of human despair and God longing should give us something to help us know what we should do with our feelings toward God. Of course the book ends with very little to say about why God let Job suffer so much and it gives us little to hope that any of us should ever expect an explanation in this lifetime for what we go through. Job’s friends thought it was the “what goes around comes around” karma God they had but if there is anything that clearly comes out of the book it is that God does not operate that way in any sense. Karma does not govern any part of the universe and Job’s friends, for positing it as the reason for Job’s suffering were fiercely rebuked by God and made to offer animal sacrifices and beg for Job’s prayers to avoid an undisclosed punishment for their “folly”.

There are three clear conclusions we can make from Job that help us understand God’s dealings with us. First, as mentioned above, life is not a wrap around. What comes around goes around is a ludicrous view of life. If that were the case, then we all would be burned up in a ball of fire by now for our sins stink to heaven. God does not treat us as we deserve. I understand that the Proverbs point out the value of right living and that God does punish sin but as we see in Job, there is not and has never been a one to one correspondence of action by us and reaction by God. Bad people prosper and good people fail and good people prosper and bad people fail and that is the way it is. God never apologizes for this to Job, Job’s friends or anyone else. Karma, instant or otherwise is a myth.

Second, God is not overly concerned about our prosperity. Prosperity has never been the ideal Christian life although we seem to be enamored with it. Just a casual reading of Hebrews 11 makes that quite clear. Oh we love the teaching of verses 32-35. And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Now that sounds like good theology doesn’t it? Joel Osteen must love this passage.

To Be Continued...

A Great Passage For My Quiet Time Today

Well now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don't put it off; don't frustrate God's work by showing up late; throwing a question mark over everything we're doing. Our work as God's servants gets validated--or not--in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly...in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we're beaten up, jailed, and mobbed, working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, steady hand, in gentleness, holiness and honest love; when we're telling the truth, and when God's showing his power; when we're doing our best setting things right, when we're praised, and when we're blamed, slandered, and honored, true to our word, though distrusted, ignored by the world, but recognized by God, terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead, beaten within an inch of our lives but refusing to die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy, living on handouts, yet enriching many, having nothing, having it all...2 Corinthians 6 The Message

The Jumpstart

What makes for a good day? The day we were supposed to leave for home from our vacation, my rear view mirror fell off my windshield. I went to check on the oil and I pulled the handle of the dipstick and it came off, leaving the dipstick beyond reach inside the tube leading to the engine block. After ten hours cleaning the house where we stayed and packing, finally at 5:30 PM, with everything in the car and everyone buckled into their seats, I went to start the car and it was dead. What is it about threes? So I got a jumper cable from one neighbor and the second neighbor offered to jumpstart our van from his truck. Nothing. Then I realized the cables were on the wrong terminals. We switched the terminals, tried again and it started but as soon as I took my foot off the gas, the car died. We tried several times before giving up. So what did I do? I prayed. The neighbor offered to call AAA and an hour later, a towtruck arrived. Benjamin, our two year old was thrilled to see a truck...I was praying the towtruck driver could get the van going. Immediately the van started but again, when I took my foot off the gas, it died. Finally after several tries, my neighbor suggested I just drive back with my foot on the gas the entire way. The only other option was to stay through the weekend, miss our church service and come home on Tuesday. I prayed. The road down from the cabin is treacherous...if you think you can drive the entire way downhill with your foot on the gas. Jump starting the van once again, my neighbor led me on a fifteen minute journey through the neighborhood. The first stop sign I came to was a moment of truth. I took my foot off the gas and stopped. The van did not stall out...and it didn't stall out the rest of the three hour trip home. What makes a good day...perhaps the simplicity of praying your way down the road!