Tough day. My husband’s younger brother succumbed to lung disease yesterday. The news was so hopeful a little while ago, but he suddenly went downhill. The doctors said they found previously undetected small cell lung cancer that left him too weak to fight an acute illness. His family and friends surrounded him and wept as his heartbeat faded.
I am thankful for our 11-year old grandson who reminded us that even in this there is hope.
Today we try to work on funeral plans with his wife. We can’t speak Spanish and she can’t speak English. Bob was always the translator.
Today we try to comfort his mother, who seems even more frail with the shock and we live in a conversation on replay.
Today we try to gather up legal loose ends and financial unknowns. We step on each others toes in our efforts to step in to the empty spaces.
Today we wince as individual ways of handling grief clang against each other.
Today we can still be glad, as our grandson pointed out, that we have a close family that cares. They immediately gathered from across the country when they heard the news.
Today we can be glad, as our grandson pointed out, that we know Jesus, and that Uncle Bob knew about his grace.
“You know, when you think about it, this is really a happy day for Uncle Bob,” our grandson said in the ICU waiting room. “Today is the day when he will see how wonderful heaven is and get to be with Jesus.”
There is hope.
And then one day, I’ll cross that river.
I’ll fight life’s final war with pain.
And then as death gives way to victory,
I’ll see the lights of glory and I’ll know He lives.
(from Because He Lives by Bill and Gloria Gaither)
I could hear the hollering from out on the deck where I was watering flowers. I didn’t need to run to see if there had been an accidental amputation. The door flung open and our little grandson howled, “She called me a poopyface!”
She — the accuser of the brother and temporary devil’s advocate in disguise — was his pretty little sister and now she was sitting on the couch, happily in possession of the iPad abandoned by her brother in his frantic search for justice.
“And are you?” I asked.
“Are I what?” he said, wiping tears with the back of his hand.
“A poopyface.”
“No! I am not!”
“Let me check.”
I examined that handsome little face he held up to me and sniffed it dramatically.
“No, indeed you are not. If you were I would tell you and we would clean it up right away, but you are as good-looking and good-smelling as ever. You are not a poopyface, so what she said means nothing. She just wants to upset you. Don’t give her the satisfaction. Ignore her and she will leave you alone.”
He went back in the living room and announced, “I am not a poopyface and hey! You can’t have the iPad. I was using it.” Amazingly she gave it back without a fight.
Earlier all three of us had been playing dinosaurs in the garden. T-Rex was always lurking, ready to harass a hapless parasaurolophus just minding his own business. But our parasaurolophus and triceratops knew how to flee such threats, jumping geraniums and running through the giant lobelia forests to get away.
One of the ways our peace can be stolen is when the accuser of the brethren ambushes us and distracts us from our true identity – essentially calling us “poopyface.” Look at that disgusting stuff in your life. Everyone can see it and smell it a mile away! Did God really forgive you, because you look like a poopyface to me!
When we go running to the Lord he says, “You are clean and beautiful.” More than that he tells us who we are in his eyes. In the first couple of chapters in Ephesians alone we find his reassurances. This who you are now:
You are blessed
You are chosen
You are holy
You are blameless
You have a destiny
I have adopted you (in that culture adoption meant being made a partner in the family business with full signing authority, as one who represented the father)
You are lavished with grace
You are wise
You have understanding
You are for My praise and glory (I’m proud of you)
You are sealed in Christ
You are saved
You have a guaranteed inheritance
You can have a spirit of wisdom and revelation, enlightened eyes, knowing hope
You are raised from the dead
You are seated with Christ in heavenly places
You are greatly loved by Jesus
You are made alive in Christ
You are being prepared to receive My incomparable riches
You are My masterpiece (my poema – poem)
You are part of one new man, eligible for all the promises given to the chosen people
You are under My peace
You are called for a purpose
And according to his words in the book of Peter you are a royal prince or princess and a fully qualified priest granted permission to come into the holy presence of God – because the Creator of the universe absolutely adores you.
Have you been accused of being less than who Jesus says you are? Wipe your tears and go get your stuff back. Don’t let anyone steal your identity. You are no longer a miserable orphan sinner who has to try to live by your wits and create a purpose for yourself. Know the truth and let it set you free.
Eternal One: Don’t revel only in the past, or spend all your time recounting the victories of days gone by.
Watch closely: I am preparing something new; it’s happening now, even as I speak, and you’re about to see it.
I am preparing a way through the desert; Waters will flow where there had been none. Wild animals in the fields will honor Me; the wild dogs and surly birds will join in.
There will be water enough for My chosen people, trickling springs and clear streams running through the desert.
(Isaiah 43:18-20 The Voice)
God makes a way –through the desert, through the valley, through the floods, through the fire, through depression.
It is in vain for man to endeavor to instruct man in those things which the Holy Spirit alone can teach.
— Madame Guyon
I had a dream a few years ago in which an angel came to visit me. I wasn’t frightened, just terribly curious because I couldn’t discern its gender. I kept looking surreptitiously for lumps or bumps under his/her/it’s loose garment that would give something away. It’s quite an unusual occasion, to say the least, to dream of seeing an angel and I wasn’t sure why he/she/it was there or what I was supposed to do. Finally it dawned on me that I should do something hospitable and I offered to make tea. I grabbed an old-style kettle with a long narrow spout and tried to fill it at the sink. The water from the faucet came out with greater water pressure than we had ever had before in that house. The hole in the spout was partially closed and I was having a difficult time filling the kettle through the tiny opening. Water was spraying all over the place.
My guest sighed.
“That,” he/she/it said. “That is the problem!”
“What is?”
“You are asking questions but trying to explain the answers to you is like filling a big kettle through a tiny hole. Take the lid off!”
Why didn’t I think of that?
“You have much to learn but answering your questions is like trying to explain the internet to someone who has never heard a radio, or a seen a light bulb. You need another way to take in information than the way you have been doing it.”
Then I woke up, confused of course, and feeling a little reprimanded – and questioning my sanity because I didn’t know how seriously to take a dream. But I had a sense this was a God-dream. What was I doing now and how was I supposed to do things differently to “take the lid off?” I could study harder, and sign up for another Bible study course! Then I realized that would increase the pressure, and my brain was not receiving it all anyway. I was still stuck in old thinking patterns.
I tried to imagine myself explaining my day to a great great grandmother who knew nothing of electricity or motorized vehicles. I started with the radio alarm going off in the morning and listening to a man hundreds of miles away read the weather forecast for the day and talk about the price of oil in Azerbaijan. Then I took some cooked quinoa from South America I had stored in the refrigerator and warmed it up with raisins from California and cinnamon from Sri Lanka (the old Ceylon, Grandma) in the microwave for breakfast. While the coffee from Columbia was dripping into the carafe in the coffee maker I threw a load of laundry in the washing machine and tossed the wet clothes that had been there into the dryer… It didn’t take long to realize that great great Grandma would have a lot of catching up to do. She would be amazed; she would be overwhelmed. I couldn’t explain it to her. She would have to spend time with me and learn about television remote controls and ignition keys and Google. I’m sure it would be disorienting, so maybe we would start with a light switch.
I have a lot of catching up to do. Sometimes my need for “prudent wisdom” is actually just the fear that the power of the deceiver is greater than the power of the One who gives the gift of wisdom. The result is narrow-mindedness.
Going higher means adopting a wider way of receiving than the physical senses can provide. It means opening up to the Holy Spirit in a way that does not require everything to pass through the tiny opening of mere scientific method and logic. It means knowing that some things can only be ascertained through spiritual senses (taking the lid off) and that requires spending a lot of time with Holy Spirit to learn his ways. If you don’t believe he exists, you won’t hear what he has to say or experience his input in understanding the scriptures or anything else. His ways will continue to seem strange — like explaining to a nineteenth-century person that using a “mouse” to move an arrow on a screen to click a publish button will allow people around the world read your words the same day.
We have not yet even begun to fully understand the basics, let alone imagine all that the Lord has for us.
But a person who denies spiritual realities will not accept the things that come through the Spirit of God; they all sound like foolishness to him. He is incapable of grasping them because they are disseminated, discerned, and valued by the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:4 The Voice)
Regarding the angels, God says, “He sends his angels like the winds, his servants like flames of fire.” (from Hebrews 1)
Other thirteen-year olds asked for the new Beatles album for their coming of age birthday gift. I asked for a recording of opera singer Joan Sutherland’s greatest hits. I’m sure it caused a few eye rolls in my country and gospel music loving family, but Grandma bought it for me anyway. I thought the singer’s voice was “angelic” although I’d never actually heard an angel sing. I could only play the record when no one else was around but I still managed to almost wear it out. Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim became one of my favourites.
Let the bright seraphim in burning row, their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow. Let the cherubic host in tuneful choirs touch their immortals harps with golden wires.
I could imagine myriads upon myriads of fiery angels singing and blowing brilliant trumpets that sent their sound spinning through the galaxies.
I am on a quest to understand worship. I don’t think I understand it yet. Okay, I know I don’t understand exactly what it is or the nature of its expression yet. It is going on non-stop in heaven as the angels and the elders and the creatures, overwhelmed with God’s majesty spontaneously bow before the Great Throne. What must it be like?
Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels,
numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice,
“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”
(From Revelation 5)
One of the jobs of angels is to help us to worship. Somehow our worship is connected to theirs even though we can’t hear it all yet. It starts in the throne room in heaven.
I remember the chorus of a song my mother sang:
Holy, holy, is what the angels sing,
And I expect to help them make the courts of Heaven ring;
But when I sing redemption’s story, they will fold their wings,
For angels never felt the joys that our salvation brings.
I hit a milestone today. My 1001st blog post. I could thank my readers and post links to most popular past blogs, or discuss the experience of blog writing, but as I sit here at the end of a beautiful summer’s day preparing a post for the morning I find I have nothing profound to say. All I want to do is thank God for his goodness and for the hope that does not disappoint. I thank him for a blog on which to express praise that can be flung into cyberspace, if not the galaxies. Today I all I want to do is sing redemption’s story.
God is good. For some reason I will never understand, He loves me — and you. Any other thing I could celebrate pales in comparison.
Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights above.
Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his heavenly hosts.
Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars.
Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies… (From Psalm 148)
I am pleading with the Eternal for this one thing,
my soul’s desire:
To live with Him all of my days—
in the shadow of His temple,
To behold His beauty and ponder His ways
in the company of His people.
His house is my shelter and secret retreat.
It is there I find peace in the midst of storm and turmoil.
Safety sits with me in the hiding place of God.
He will set me on a rock, high above the fray.
God lifts me high above those with thoughts
of death and deceit that call for my life.
I will enter His presence, offering sacrifices and praise.
In His house, I am overcome with joy
As I sing, yes, and play music for the Eternal alone.
“Postmodern people have been rejecting Christianity for years, thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism.”
– Timothy Keller
It made grammatical sense to me. When I was little, I added an “er” to the word bug when referring to my even littler brother, because he was bugging me.
Mom washed my mouth out with soap for my efforts to extend my understanding of linguistic principles. I didn’t know it was a bad word. That event made such an impact on me that I remember it all these years later. I resolved as a three year old that when I was a grownup I would explain the rules to my kids before dishing out consequences for violating them. Unfair! It was a justice issue for me then. It still is.
My husband and I were discussing the question of how to teach the principle of grace to young children in a Christian education setting. We both taught Sunday School for years and became frustrated with pre-packaged lesson plans that required every Bible story to have a moral. Nearly every one of them was a moral about behaviour — shoulds and should-nots. A lot of them were stories from the Old Testament that did not take New Covenant grace into consideration. Be like the good guys. Don’t be like the bad guys, because God is watching. (How do we explain that everyone, except Jesus, was both good and bad without glossing over the embarrassing details the Bible does not gloss over?)
What we truly believe becomes evident when we distill it down to concepts we try to teach to little ones. But how do we teach the concepts of grace and forgiveness to children (or others) who don’t yet know the difference between right and wrong?
Grace is not a laissez faire message that sin has no consequences. Skipping that truth is really unfair. Sin is not okay. Never has been. Never will be. I do think there is a difference between sin (defying God’s principles) and un-wise actions though. Sometimes even though you have been working at a job for 32 years, and know it inside out and backwards, a boss will require you to do something that you know is stupid. It will cost you great inconvenience later to clean up the mess, but the boss is in authority, so you do it. It’s not a sin; it’s just un-wise on the boss’s part. If the boss asks you to eliminate a competitor in the back alley, however, there is no question. That is sin. You refuse to submit, no matter the cost.
Sometimes we choose unwise actions of our own volition. When we come to our senses it involves changing our minds and policies, and probably offering some apologies, but it’s not the same as deliberately choosing to disobey Jesus’ command to love your neighbour, for example.
The Pharisees asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was. Children need to be taught what he said: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Luke 12: 30-31 ESV).
Four times in his final charge to his disciples Jesus said loving him and being his friend meant keeping his commandments. Then this: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John15:12).
Sometimes love means being quiet and leading by example. Sometimes love means letting children learn the discipline of natural consequences. Sometimes love means tackling a kid who is big for his age before he hurts himself or somebody else. How this plays out in your life depends on the wisdom God gives you when you ask Him.
By the time a child can think for himself he knows he has missed the mark. Holy Spirit speaks to them too. Even as a child I knew that labeling my brother according to his on-going temptation to bug me was not loving him — even if I didn’t use the right word.
When I was depressed and in the midst of burn-out from trying to earn God’s approval a counselor asked me, “What does grace feel like?” I gave him the Bible school definition. He said, “No. I asked what grace feels like.”
I had no idea. I was a product of moralism. After a search in which I asked many other people this question – including some joyless Christians I did not admire – I came to an understanding. Grace to me now is climbing up on the lap of the Creator of the universe, (someone who has the power to annihilate me in a flash), resting my head on his chest and knowing I am perfectly safe because he loves me. Grace lets me know I am forgiven and enables me to change because he whispers encouraging words and tells me who I really am in his eyes. He loves me because he loves me because he loves me. The Creator sent his son, who lived as a man, who both accepted and spoke the truth to those caught in sin, chose to die at the hands of those he came to save, and conquered death just to prove it.
How do we teach children (and others) about grace? By demonstrating it. By speaking the truth about the way God sees them -as lovable. By loving them the way we are loved, including setting wise boundaries, teaching them to base their choices on love (and not mere tolerance) and becoming who they are meant to be. We teach by extending a grace that costs everything the way Jesus extended grace to us.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. – Jesus Christ
Where charity and love are, God is there.
Christ’s love has gathered us into one.
Let us rejoice and be pleased in Him.
Let us fear, and let us love the living God.
And may we love each other with a sincere heart.
Where charity and love are, God is there.
As we are gathered into one body,
Beware, lest we be divided in mind.
Let evil impulses stop, let controversy cease,
And may Christ our God be in our midst.
Where charity and love are, God is there.
And may we with the saints also,
See Thy face in glory, O Christ our God:
The joy that is immense and good,
Unto the ages through infinite ages. Amen.
Charis: Subject to Change 