Odd Reunions

I have a confession to make. I am a Facebook addict. I seriously love the social networking system called Facebook. I have literally found friends that I haven't spoken to or even thought of in over 20 years. Some people seem to be exactly the same. Some people have changed dramatically throughout the course of their lives. I feel like I'm one of those "changers", and every once in a while it gets hammered home to me.

Some of the old friends I have been reconnecting with knew me during my wildest years. Years when I ran as far and as fast from God as I possibly could. When I look back on those years, I have to admit, I had some fun. But I also had a lot of inner turmoil, and a deep sense of emptiness and inadequacy. Even with the fun times, I wouldn't relive those years the same way, if I was given the chance to do it all again. (Boy, is than an understatement.)

And how do you communicate something so profound to a long lost friend via email or instant messaging? I don't know. I wish I did. Not that I feel like I need to give my entire testimony to every old acquaintance that I find online. But with some of them, if we were to meet face-to-face, I would feel compelled to do exactly that.

So, I've been thinking of these verses today.

Phil 3:13,14

"Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."

This internet stuff is changing the world, my friends. In some really big ways, and in some very small and personal ways as well.

Unheavenly Things

Just wanted to check in with you, friendly readers. I'm doing fine, I'm just plain busy. But things should settle down here in the next few days, and I'm eager to get a good post up.

In the meantime, something occured to me this morning. I'm pretty sure that cockroaches will not be in heaven. Now, of course, God can do whatever he wants in heaven, and I'm sure that if He decides to allow cockroaches, then they will be some fantastic cockroaches. And we will enjoy their presence immensely.

But as I was cleaning the bathroom sink this morning, and a big sucker of a roach ran out of the drain, causing me to scream so loud that the dog came running, barking and freaked out; it occured to me that we just shouldn't have those nasty things in heaven. Spiders either. They in fact, are worse than roaches, and I'd take a two inch long flying cockroach over a two inch long spider any day of the year.

Even in the little things, I'm longing for heaven. A heaven free of horrible roaches and spiders. Maybe we should just go ahead and put in a request for no snakes either. Whatcha think? What do you hope to never encounter again once we have passed into glory?

Now excuse me, I think the heebie-jeebies have worn off enough that I can go and clean the toilet.

Against You, You Only, Have I Sinned

I've been in a weird place the last few weeks. You can see that my blog posts have been less than frequent lately. And I can't seem to get anything significant done on the Ruth study I am working on. I had a big breakthrough in that area a few weeks ago, and it was thrilling: I finished the first speaking session and discussion outline. But since then, nothing. I literally feel a deep resistance to working on it any further. I keep writing outlines in my head, and thinking of scripture that would be good to bring into the discussion, but I can't make myself sit down and write anything.

Last night I prayed for some clarity, and I think I got some this morning. I read Psalm 51, David's prayer of repentance after he was confronted by the prophet Nathan over his affair with Bathsheba. I was struck by David's astounding statement in Psalm 51:4,

"Against You, You only, have I sinned,
And done this evil in your sight--"

How is it possible that David can qualify his sin as being only against God? Um, what about poor Uriah? Or Bathsheba for that matter? Or David's many other wives whom he dishonored by committing adultery with Bathsheba? How about the entire nation of Israel? Didn't they get cheated by a king who acted so deceitfully and treacherously?

Yet despite all of that, it is God (only!) who David says he sinned against. Have you ever really thought about that and its implications? We think about sinning against other people all the time; gossiping or lying or cheating or stealing from someone. Or even just treating people disrespectfully or without love. Aren't all of those things sins? Aren't they sins against our neighbor? I've always assumed that they were. But the longer I think about it, the more convinced I am that David's words in Psalm 51:4 are more profound than I originally gave them credit for.

God is the one to whom we owe obedience. Every time we sin against our fellow man, we are ultimately sinning against the commands of a holy and righteous God. Our neighbor may get caught in the crossfire of our sinful actions. But come judgement day, it is not our sinned-against-neighbor who will sit in jugement of our actions. It is God. And all of our sin will be counted as offenses against His holiness and His commands.

Which brings me back around to the spiritual slump I find myself in. I've tried to think of all the reasons that I find myself in this situation. I could lay the blame on any number of things, and believe me, I've tried. But this morning, as I was reading Psalm 51, I saw something very clearly. If there is anything to blame for this thickness I am struggling to cut through, it is my sin, specifically, my sin against God.

I can't blame it on this, that or the other. I have to look straight inside at my own heart. It is a disheartening prospect (slight pun slightly intended.) I've been on the spiritual high. I've been to the peak. I've been dedicated and motivated and everything you associate with a woman who is "on fire" for God. But I don't think any of us get to stay there forever. We have, and will always have, too much natural sin remaining in us in this present flesh. There is no final escape from it until we leave this life for the better life that comes next.

Not to say that I won't get back to the peak. In fact, I'm determined to push past my natural inclinations and get back up there again. But it's hard. I have to fight myself in the process.

I don't want to stand out as strange. I don't want people to think of me as bizarre. I don't want women to walk the other way when they see me coming, because I might want to talk about something spiritual. I don't want to be constantly vigilant against pride or anger or idols or apathy creeping up on me. I'd rather just float through life, enjoying the luxurious and self-absorbed modern American lifestyle, and worry about eternity, well, right before I get there. Those are the things that I want.

Thank goodness its not all up to me. Thank goodness that God has sent me a Helper, the Holy Spirit, who lives in me and constantly transforms me from glory unto glory.

But the path to the peak has a crucial first step that you can't hop over if you ever want to get up there. Its the all-important step of repentance. And if I want to get past stalled and start moving forward again, I need to get on my face and repent.

Against You, You only, have I sinned, O God. Against you have I withheld my heart, my mind, my soul and my strength. Forgive me.

Psalm 51:1,2,12

"Have mercy upon me, O God,
According to Your lovingkindness;
According to the multitude of your tender mercies,
Blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
And cleanse me from my sin."

"Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,
And uphold me by Your generous Spirit."

The Consolation of Israel

In Luke chapter 2, Jesus is called by what I think is one of His most tender names: the Consolation of Israel.

Luke 2:25

"And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him."

The Messiah that the Jews long expected was often referred to as the The Consolation of Israel, or simply as the Consolation. Which I find fascinating, because it seems that the nature of the consolation they expected to receive was completely off the mark. You see, the Jews were expecting a great military leader, a man like the mighty warrior-king David, to come and avenge them of their enemies and destroy the Roman rulers of their day. What they got instead was Jesus, a man who willingly died a humiliating death on the cross, beaten, betrayed, mocked and scorned, spit upon and crucified.

It doesn't seem to make sense. How was a willing death on the cross supposed to console anyone?

The problem is not that Jesus failed to live up to the Jewish expectations of the Messiah. The problem was that the Jews were expecting the wrong kind of consolation.

Jesus death on the cross and His subsequent resurrection from the grave do indeed provide powerful consolation, to the proper kind of mourning. The kind that I am thinking of, and the kind that Jesus was utterly effective at providing comfort for, is the mourning that we must do over our seperation and alienation from God. And that alienation from God is caused by our sin; our great, inescapable, with-us-from-birth, sinfulness.

I've sort of written about this topic before, but I'm pretty sure it's an old enough post that most of you have never read it. There is an excellent example of the kind of mourning I am referring to in the book of Nehemiah. In Nehemiah's day, the Jews have just recently returned from an exile in Babylon. Because the temple was destroyed when they were taken into captivity, they have not been participating in regular worship services. There is a specific scene in which the people gather together and the Book of the Law of Moses (God's Word) is read out loud to them.

An amazing thing happens. In Nehemiah 8:9, we are told, "all the people wept, when they heard the words of the Law." You see, when they heard God's perfect law read out loud, they were peirced with the reality of their great sin. When they were confronted by what God required of them, they saw their great "missing of the mark." And it affected them so deeply that they wept. They wept so dramatically in fact, that the priests had to tell them, "This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn nor weep." (Nehemiah 8:9) And again in verse 10, "Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord, Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." (emphasis mine)

That is exactly the kind of mourning for which Jesus is the Consolation. Because He died on the cross, bearing our sins in His flesh, we are comforted. Because He rose again from the dead, defeating the sting of death, we are comforted. Because He reconciled us to a holy and perfect God, whose very presence we could not enter without the atoning work which Jesus completed on the cross, we are comforted.

To be sure, there are many other ways in which Jesus is the consolation of us, His people, in our day to day lives. But it is the work that Jesus did on the cross, the work which reconciles us, who are desperate sinners, to a God who is holy beyond our wildest imaginations, which is the greatest consolation of all. Jesus is The Consolation of Isreal, the comforter of those who mourn.

Isaiah 40:1-2

"'Comfort, yes, comfort My people!'
Says your God.
'Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her,
That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;'"

The Potter and the Clay

This is the third of a three part series. I recommend that you read Apocalypto and The Babes of Nineveh before reading this post.


Thank you brave readers, to those of you who left a response to my last post. I'm pretty impressed with how easily you hit the nail on the head. The answer to the question that I posed in The Babes of Nineveh does indeed boil down to God's sovereignty.


Of course, to say that God is sovereign covers a lot of things with one overriding general statement. But there is a specific aspect of God's revealed, sovereign character that I think we have to grasp; in order to understand the dilemma that naturally occurs when we compare the outcome of God's dealings with the Ninevite babies and the Amalekite babies.


It is this: Yahweh is a choosing God.


Now, even if you are a Christian who rejects the idea of predestination, etc, hear me out here. I'm not trying to win a theological argument. I'm just pointing out what is obvious from the Bible. God's choosing nature is so woven into the fabric of Scripture that it is hard to think of Him as a God who doesn't choose. From the very beginning, we see that God chose Abram, later to be renamed as Abraham, as the father of His people. God chose Isaac over Ishmael. God chose Jacob over Esau. God chose the nation of Israel, not the other way around.

In all of the history of God's dealings with humanity, it is God who chooses whom He will reveal Himself to, or speak through, or use as a tool to accomplish His plan. It is God who chooses. There are plenty of verses that immediately spring to mind, like Isaiah 43:10,

"You are my witnesses,' says the LORD,
and my servant whom I have chosen,'"


So when you try to decipher how it is that God could bring wrath on the babies in Amalek, and spare the babies in Nineveh, you simply accept this fact: God chose to bring down wrath on one and show mercy to the other.


"But, duh!" you are thinking, "we already knew that! What we want to know, what we need to know, the question that keeps us up at night is: WHY????"


It is tempting to demand an answer to that question. Fortunately, God, through the apostle Paul, addresses this specific issue. Let's take a look at Romans 9. I'm going to go ahead and copy a pretty long section of Scripture, because all of it is so on topic. Usually I just give you a verse or two, but I feel like I would be cheating you if I did that here.

(The first verse where we pick up reading is referring to Rebecca, when she was pregnant with the twins Jacob and Esau.)

Rom 9:11 (for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls),

Rom 9:12 it was said to her, "THE OLDER SHALL SERVE THE YOUNGER."

Rom 9:13 As it is written, "JACOB I HAVE LOVED, BUT ESAU I HAVE HATED."

Rom 9:14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not!

Rom 9:15 For He says to Moses, "I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOMEVER I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOMEVER I WILL HAVE COMPASSION."

Rom 9:16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.

Rom 9:17 For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I HAVE RAISED YOU UP, THAT I MAY SHOW MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MAY BE DECLARED IN ALL THE EARTH."

Rom 9:18 Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.

Rom 9:19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?"

Rom 9:20 But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?"

Rom 9:21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?


What I want you to focus on is found in verses 20 and 21. The gist of which is this--who do you think you are to question God? Doesn't God have the power to do whatever He wants to with His own creation?


It may be that we have a hard time letting God be God and letting us be...well, the creature. We want to demand that God satisfy OUR sense of justice and OUR sense of mercy. But according to the Bible, even our sense of what is fair is wrong.


Ezekiel 18:29


"Yet the house of Israel says, 'The way of the Lord is not fair.' O house of Israel, is it not My ways which are fair, and your ways which are not fair?"


This exact same sentiment is repeated in the book of Ezekiel 4 times! God is the one who is fair. It is we who have the wrong idea of fair and unfair. Even when it comes to those babies. Whatever God chose to do with them was perfectly fair, in God's perfectly fair judgment, and His perfectly fair sovereignty. If it seems unfair to us, then we are the ones with the problem, not God.


Exodus 34: 6-7


"And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation."

I'm having some weird spacing issues with Blogger today. My apologies if this post looks odd.

The Babes of Nineveh

If you haven't read yesterday's post, Apocalypto, you might want read it before you read this post.

Of all the events in the Old Testament, I think the hardest to comprehend is when God either kills a child (as in David and Bathsheba's child through adultery) or orders that children be killed, as He did during the conquest of Canaan, and in the early years of the Jewish monarchy.

I brought the topic up yesterday, but I have some more thoughts, and a different Biblical example, to share. It has to do with Jonah, and the task he was given to preach repentance to the Assyrian city of Nineveh. Most of you are probably familiar with the part of Jonah's story that involves the belly of the great fish. But today, I want to talk about what happened after that unhappy-for-Jonah encounter.

The whole reason that Jonah ended up as almost-fish-food is because he didn't want to do what God expressly ordered him to do: Go and tell the city of Nineveh that God intended to destroy them for their great evil. You can hardly blame poor Jonah. The Ninevites, who were Assyrians, were legendary for their gross cruelty. They did things like skin prisoners alive, put out eyes, pull out tongues, disembowel children, and cut open pregnant women. (Excuse me while I gag in horror.) Oh, another favorite tactic was impaling people on sharp sticks through their, ehem, back parts, and letting them die slowly. All in all, a very gentle and pleasant ancient culture.

Despite Jonah's attempts to flee, he eventually does comply. He goes to the city, walks through it and cries out, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" (Jonah 3:4)

So do the Ninevites get ticked, lay hands on him and commit one of their famous atrocities? No, instead, and totally unexpectedly to Jonah, they actually repent. Even the king puts on sackcloth, sits in ashes and decrees a fast, in order that God might repent of destroying them.

And God does relent. He decides not to destroy Nineveh after all. Jonah, however, does not relent. He is furious. So furious, in fact, that he tells God to go ahead and kill him!

But I'm getting sidetracked here. The real point of this post is to be found in the very last verse of the book of Jonah.

(God responds to Jonah's anger)

Jonah 4:11

"And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left--and much livestock?'

Now that is interesting. Totally apart from their repentance, because, after all, how can an infant or very young child repent, particularly when they have not actively committed the atrocities their forefathers are famous for; God gives the great number of babies and children living in Nineveh as part of the reason He will have mercy instead of bring down destruction.

So what is the difference between those babes in Nineveh and those babes in Amalek? Thought provoking isn't it?

Both were born to wicked and cruel parents. Both were born to the enemies of Israel. Both came from cultures that worshiped pagan gods. Why spare one set of babes, and bring down wrath on another?

I have a neat little answer in my head, and it doesn't have anything to do with the repentance of the Ninevite parents by the way. But, really, I'm more curious to hear what your answers might be. Tell me what you think. I promise I won't bite. Or skin you alive.

Apocalypto

Several weeks ago, I did something that I normally avoid. I sat and watched about 20 minutes of a very gory, violent movie. I have never particularly enjoyed violent movies of any kind. But the older I have gotten, the more averse I have become to them. So when I walked through the living room and realized that my husband was watching the Mel Gibson movie, Apocalypto, I have no explanation for why I sat down to watch with him.

Warning: this post is about to get somewhat graphic. If you dislike violent descriptions, you should skip this post.

As far as violent movies go, this one ranks pretty high. The scenes that I watched mostly involved human sacrifice. Men were slit open, had their hearts (still beating) cut out of their chests, decapitated, and then had their lifeless heads and bodies thrown down the temple steps. There were people at the bottom of the step dancing and waving big baskets around to catch the corpses and heads. Thick blood slicked over the steps. A sizable pile of dead bodies was heaped up near the bottom of the temple. All of the onlookers were cheering and dancing while the slaughter took place.

As the doomed captives were led to the sacrificial altar, wide-eyed and terrified, the priests, royal family and young princes looked on mercilessly. A fat young prince (I assume he was a prince) even smirked at the helpless victims.

The whole thing was beyond disgusting. I hated it.

But it did bring something into sharp focus for me.

There are parts of the Old Testament that are kind of hard to swallow. In particular, when the Israelites are in the process of conquering Canaan and the surrounding territories, they were often commanded by God to utterly destroy the native populations. This destruction even included women and children. In at least one case, even the animals were to be wiped out.

1Samuel 15:3

"Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."

Even though I have some understanding of why this slaughter was necessary, I still have a hard time accepting it. I mean, we New Testament believers understand God as LOVE. We don't really like to think of our loving God commanding that people be killed, babies especially. But it is in the Bible, and because it is, we have to deal with it.

I think part of the reason we struggle to understand why God commanded the Israelites to destroy the Amelkites, and other populations, is because we tend to think of those peoples as if they were just like us. And to be sure, in many basic ways they were. But by contrast, we live in a culture that has been affected by two thousand plus years of Christian morality. Obviously, you can't include every culture in the world in that generalization, but I am thinking of America and most of Europe specifically.

Back in the days of Apocalypto, and Amelek, no such Christian influence existed. Human sacrifice, and even child sacrifice, was common practice. It was so widespread that God specifically command the Israelites NOT to practice human and child sacrifice. (Deut 12:29-31)

And even with those prohibitions, the Israelites still on occassion did sacrifice their children to pagan gods.

2Ki 17:17

"And they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and soothsaying, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger."

The thought of human sacrifice is utterly repulsive to me. But realizing that it was common practice, and actually visualizing what it may have looked like, by watching Apocalypto, has helped me to understand just how evil the native populations of Canaan probably were. They were not gentle farmers going about their business when the Israelites swooped in for the attack. They were some bad dudes. And dudettes. And they indulged in some terribly evil and revolting practices.

I still don't quite know how to reconcile the destruction of the babies and animals with God's lovingkindness. Well, that is not entirely true. I think that God's holiness has something to do with it. But that topic deserves a post all its own. In the meantime, I accept that God is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. Even when He commanded the Israelites to kill those babies. I may not be able to explain it in a way that you (or I) find completely satisfying. But it is true nonetheless.

Job 40:2

"Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it."

Distracted and (Not) Glamorous

I've been totally neglecting this blog for the past week. I've just been, well...distracted. By all sorts of regular life things, nothing particularly glamorous. I did go to the beach for a few days with some family, and that was nice, but still nothing out of the ordinary for most people.

I've also been spending a great deal of time researching, writing, deleting, and re-writing portions of a real-life Bible study I am working on. So most of my inspiration is being stored up for pouring out at some future date. My poor little blog has been getting scraps lately.

And, I don't have any scripture for this half-post. But I want to tell all of you something. There are no glamorous Christians. (And if there were, I want those of you who know me to understand beyond any shadow of anything that even resembles a doubt, I would not be one of them.) You might think there are. There are certainly some who seem to be. Some Christians have written meaningful books, or pack out stadiums when they speak in public. Some have been through traumatic experiences, and seem to have some kind of super-special connection to God as a result.

Well, you know what? God doesn't play favorites. We are all equal before God. And we all have equal access to God, and equal access to Scripture. There are not levels of glamour and glory in this walk with Christ through these little lives that we live here on Earth. We are all just people, alike in our need for a Redeemer, alike in our tendancy to sin, and alike in our inclination to glorify ourselves or other people instead of glorifying God Almighty.

So just don't do it. Don't glorify your fellow Christian. No matter how glamorous they may appear to be. Glorify God. He is the only one who deserves it anyway.

(OK, I changed my mind about not having a Scripture verse for this post.)

Romans 2:11

"For there is no partiality with God."

I hope to have something a little bit meatier to share in the next day or so, so check back. In the mean time, as always.....