On my walk this evening.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy
(Psalm 65:12 ESV)
Creation and creatures applaud you, God;
Your holy people bless you.
(Psalm 145:10 The Message)
Pasture
Whole hearted
I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart;
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.
(Psalm 9:1,2)
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Wanderings
You have taken account of my wanderings;
Put my tears in Your bottle.
Are they not in Your book?
Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call;
This I know, that God is for me.
In God, whose word I praise,
In the Lord, whose word I praise,
In God I have put my trust, I shall not be afraid.
What can man do to me?
(Psalm 56:8-11)
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Presumptuous
I hear the people calling, “We want more of you, God!”
I hear God whispering, “I want more of you, people.”
Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults.
Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins;
Let them not rule over me..
(Psalm 119:12,13a)
Presumptuous sin: Calling on God to fulfill our plans instead of our being willing to lay down all we have to fulfill His.
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Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
Some people are so encouraging. Sometimes we don’t even notice how gifted they are until after we walk away feeling more capable and built up by their ability to see what God sees in us. It is then that we feel a bond of love and appreciation toward them.
Here’s a secret for those of you seeking mates. We tend to fall in love with people who help us like ourselves. We long to be around those who respect us and who let us see our own beauty reflected in their eyes. The fun part is that when we learn to bring out the best in people, amazingly, they tend to see the best in us.
When we need to correct our children or our employees or the ones we are privileged to mentor the goal is not to impress them with our competence, but rather to give them an enhanced vision of their own capabilities. This is building people up rather than tearing them down with harsh criticism that comes from a need to prove ourselves.
The reward for winning the game of King of the Hill is possessing the mound alone. The reward for lifting someone else up the hill is that they ask us to join them in their rejoicing on the mountain top. This is the fruit of grace.
Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. (Ephesians 4:11-16)
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Who do you say I am?
Photo: The springs at the base of Mount Hermon, which are the source of one of the three streams that combine to form the Jordan River. In the time of Christ this area was known as Caesarea Philippi.
When Jesus arrived in the villages of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “What are people saying about who the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some think he is John the Baptizer, some say Elijah, some Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
He pressed them, “And how about you? Who do you say I am?”
(Matthew 16:13-16)
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Correction
It’s hard to touch my eye without flinching.
It’s hard to open my suspicious eye
to receive the lens on finger inching
toward the center of the light that my
unyielding lid wants merely to protect.
I know without the help of lens to mend
I can, at best, perceive an imperfect,
blurred version of what You, my clear-eyed Friend,
can see without deform. I steel my nerve
against the fear of rumoured pain which all
my disappointment says that I deserve.
I want to shed the doubt that makes me stall.
Forgive me when I shut You out. I think,
in time, that when You touch me, I won’t blink.
“My child, do not ignore the instruction that comes from the Lord, or lose heart when He steps in to correct you; For the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He corrects each one He takes as His own. (Hebrews 12:5 The Voice)
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Home again, home again, jiggety jig
I love traveling. Since I have been living out of a suitcase most of the time for the past few months, that’s probably a good thing. Where some people find routine and familiarity most conducive to creativity, I find it stifling. My husband will tell you that I seldom come back the same way I went. I know that good habits free us from the tyranny of having to waste brain-time on detail, and I really am trying to put my keys, shoes and purse in the same place every time, but for me creative ideas first flutter by in my peripheral vision. If I don’t turn my eyes from routine, I could miss them.
Still and all, having said that, there is something about the familiarity of home that is freeing as well. Where else can you sing with full voice in the shower or sit until noon in a ratty bathrobe? There is a certain comfort in being able to step over a newspaper on the floor for three days without worrying about what anybody thinks. Even the job list on the fridge, the one that lists things that never bore a check mark and won’t now because now the season has changed, posts a sort of poetic pleasure.
Clean the fireplace,
Mend grey sweater,
Sand the sidewalk,
Buy new gloves
Tonight, driving home after a picnic with dear folk I haven’t seen in months, the clouds that broke out in sporadic showers all around us finally snagged on the Rockies on their way east. The mountains are beautiful even when they are playing hide-and-seek in the clouds, because I know what they look like. These are my mountains. This is my home.
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A Hope That Does Not Disappoint
A chapel and garden still standing from the time of the Crusaders marks the traditional place in Emmaus where two of Jesus’ followers experienced one of the greatest eye-openings in history. We were welcomed by a kind smiling Benedictine monk with a warm honey-smooth tenor voice. As he sang and invited us to join him the vaults filled with praise.
Anyone who has had to adapt to new eyeglasses will understand what I am saying, particularly if the change is a big one, like the switch from regular glasses for myopia to bifocals or progressive lenses. New glasses may give you improved vision, but first they will give you a three-week headache.
Anyone who has had their world shaken by the unexpected, especially unexpected tragedy, knows the ambivalent feelings of not wanting to hear the story of the event again and yet feeling the need to compulsively give an account of everything that happened to anyone who shows the least bit of interest. If there is more than one witness everyone will need to say where they were and how they experienced the accident, the surprise verdict, the sudden destruction, the unexpected death. There seems to be a drive in folks to make sense of things. All sorts of floated theories birth platitudes.
I imagine this is what the two disciples leaving Jerusalem for the village of Emmaus were doing, after the news of Jesus’ crucifixion and rumours of his missing body circulated. When the stranger traveling the same direction joined them and asked what was up they immediately launched into their versions of what happened to this Jesus, this miracle-working man from the north who they hoped would free them from political oppression, and their profound disappointment in the way things turned out. No doubt the short-sightedness of the government and religious establishments received some scathing criticism -but quietly. No doubt they were also frightened about the implications for his followers. Perhaps that is why they were in a hurry to leave the city.
The stranger first asked some leading questions, then reminded them of things the prophets had written, which they had probably set aside as for another time in the future.
As I stood under the vaulted ceiling of the chapel I thought about the roller-coaster of emotion they have felt when Jesus opened their eyes and they realized who he was, I mean Who He actually was! That must have been the grandest paradigm-shifting moment of all time! They got it! God’s plan for the ages was much greater than their own hopes.
“Were not our hearts burning within us as he spoke?” they asked each other as incredulousness turned to praise. On a deep level, in their spirits, before they knew, they somehow knew.
I had a moment like that this week. I was telling someone that the Sea of Galilee or Lake Kinneret, as it is called now, reminds me so much the Okanagan in central B.C., except that it’s wider. It is also surrounded by orchards and hills. (Although I’ve never seen date or mango groves in Canada.) We talked about how most of Jesus’ outdoor classroom for his followers was within a thirteen mile stretch on the lake.
I went away thinking about Jesus calming the storm on the lake.
We had just come out of a sudden unexpected crisis when it looked like someone very dear to us was going to die, and of course we rehashed events and told everyone who would listen the story. Honestly, I’ve often thought it would be easier to be in the hospital bed myself than to see my children or grandchildren suffer. My children and their spouses and my grandchildren are the loves that I hold closest to my heart. Many times I have come to the point of handing them back to God, because even though family is such a high priority I want God to be the highest priority. Then I take them back; it’s a struggle sometimes. This time God took me up on my offer.
The Lord heard our cries and calmed the storm, but it wasn’t until this week I realized in both the disciples’ situation and ours, the real miracle wasn’t that Jesus restored peace to the waves that threatened to swamp us, (although that was absolutely marvelous!!!!) it was that God himself was in the boat with us. He so desired to communicate His love that He laid down everything and came as a human being to go through everything we do -with us. He never left us to work it out on our own.
I began to think about the place of suffering. Our son-in-love helped me understand when he spoke about his perception of his experience. Mostly he just tears up and talks about how much deeper the love of Jesus is than he ever imagined. I so admire this man who has been through hell physically, yet has absolutely no bitterness.
Then the Lord spun my head around by reminding me of the verse I have quoted so often: Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. ( Philippians 3:8-11)
that I may know him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings
He was willing to enter our suffering, and to relieve it, that we might have a glimpse of what the Father is like by calming the storm and healing our diseases. But when we are willing to lay down everything and enter into his suffering in order to know him, he pours out a level of love and grace and reveals himself in a way that is like suddenly realizing the Creator of the Universe is actually the One breaking bread at our own kitchen table.
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. (Romans 5: 1-5)
Hope does not disappoint. God is good. God is love.
Charis: Subject to Change 