Eney, Meeny, Miny, Moe...

Luke 6:12-49, I Kings 12-13

The nation of Israel is divided.  This once great people of God, His chosen ones, have now torn themselves apart.  It’s the story of mankind, the story of the Sunday school lesson, our own story.  We are often divided, but we can always choose!  There’s an old tradition that is renewing itself across the protestant landscape; it’s the tradition of predestination.  Its foundation is that God’s saving grace is offered to only those He has predestined to accept it.  Its reality is that humans have no choice in their eternal destiny.  However, from Genesis to Revelation man has always been presented with two options, either eat the fruit or don’t eat the fruit or be hot or be cold.  The same holds true in this passage in

I Kings…follow Rehoboam or follow Jeroboam, worship God or worship the two golden calves, leave and don’t eat and drink or stay and eat and drink.  Lastly, according to our Sunday school lesson we can live to benefit others or live to benefit ourselves.  It’s always a choice because God loves us, all of us, and desires that none of us should perish.  That’s the gospel and the good news of Christ.

A Heart to Die With

Luke 6:12-49, I Kings 11

King Solomon dies.  The wisest man who ever lived, songwriter, inventor, scientist, explorer, wealthy beyond measure, the Renaissance man of all Renaissance men, “and Solomon slept with his fathers.”  He passes into history and the last recording of his life in I Kings says, “when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord his God.” 11:4

A better epitaph would have been the title of our Sunday school lesson, “When Solomon was old he still lived to benefit others.”  All this reminded me of what Jesus says to us in Mark 8:36, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?”

Is there anything that is turning my heart away?

Jeff Koon's Heart

Tip Toe Through The Tulips

Luke 6:12-49, I Kings 9-10

Our reading in I Kings is the recording of the greatest human splendor in the history of mankind.  The sheer beauty and opulence of Solomon’s life is as sweet as the human mind can conceive.  It brought to mind the point of the Sunday school lesson, live to benefit others.  The greatest obstacle to living for others is our desire to live for ourselves.  What tempts us toward this life of self-absorption in today’s culture of wealth is the worrying over things we want, but do not need.  This passage in Luke 6:12-49 is also told by St. Matthew in his recording of the Sermon on the Mount.  Listen as Christ addresses this very issue in Matthew 6:28-29.  “And why are you anxious about clothing?  Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these.”

What did Jesus know about Solomon, lilies and splendor?  Seems like we should spend more time “tip-toeing through the tulips” instead of Macy’s.  Don’t you just love Jesus!!!

Tiny Tim

Whew! Saved Again

Luke 6:12-49, I Kings 8

The title of the Sunday school lesson is “Live to Benefit Others”.  That’s a command!  When we ponder it we are immediately stuck by our inadequacies, even worse, we may not even want to live for the benefit of others.  However the passage records Jesus demanding it of us.  What are we to do? 

The corresponding passage in I Kings 8 gives the answer.  In that passage we find the ark being moved into the temple.  Solomon knew this was only a symbol for God moving in.  Listen to verse 27.  “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?  Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain Thee, how much less this house which I have built!”

There is only one thing in the whole universe that can contain God and that’s a human.   Upon acceptance of Christ as our sin sacrifice God literally moves into us.  He lives in us in His Holy Spirit form.  That’s how the writer of the Sunday school lesson can expect us to “Live to Benefit Others.”  We can’t, but God Almighty through Christ Jesus in the Form of the Holy Spirit can!

Whew!!! That’s good.  I knew I couldn’t do that.  Don’t you just love God!  Saved us from ourselves again!!!

A Bird Can Sure Sing Theology

Luke 6:12-49, I Kings 7

I am studying my Sunday school lesson that I will teach Sunday.

“Love your enemy”, “turn the other cheek,”  “give to anyone who asks,” did Jesus really mean this?  These passages are the subject of my Sunday school lesson this week and I read them anew this morning.  After reading it I asked myself, Did Jesus really mean this?  He seemed to think so.  In fact He implies that if I don’t live this way I’m not truly redeemed.  I need to really dwell on this today.  There is something happening this morning that will help me with my thoughts.  I’m studying in the darkness and chilled morning of my porch.  The woods are filled with singing birds.  There’s one bird, very close, who is singing with all his heart.  He’s never stopped.  I wonder if he would sing no matter his lot in life?  Somehow I know, without a shadow of doubt that he would.   

A Solid Diamond, Diamond Ring

I Kings 4-6

“Now here is what I (Solomon) want to do: Build a temple in honor of God…)

Oh how these chapters sing with the joy of being creative in the image of God.  Can you image the joy of the thought; I am going to make a home for God.   Wouldn’t we relish the idea of making God anything?  What a creative challenge and an opportunity to bring our best selves to bear.  I love it when the scripture says, “and he (Solomon) overlaid the whole house with gold…” 6:22a.  Only through meditation can we know the truth of this verse.  These chapters record that Solomon was the wisest person who ever lived therefore he had to know the impossibility of his task.  So with that in mind but with a heart filled with desire, he made the home with the most valuable thing he had, pure gold.  The truth of this is staggering!!!  When was the last time we made anything just for God?  There’s not enough gold in the whole universe. 

I wrote this this morning but this afternoon I am struck with these two thoughts.   How would one go about creating a home for God and how can you write about it?  I saw a diamond ring this week made of a single diamond.  I guess that is as close to an object made for the love of God as I can imagine.  

You Can Have Louis XIV's Crown

I Kings 1-3

King David dies and King Solomon reigns.  After reading these three chapters we can understand why God didn’t want Israel to have a king – a monarchy is a bad form of government.  It consolidates power in one person creating jealousies, fears, paranoia and corruption.  God had chosen David and Solomon to be kings, but only because the people demanded it.  It was not His perfect will. 

Man took this form of government and used it to fulfill our lust for power.  It reached its sorrowful zenith in the western world during the period known as Absolutism, 17c, with its corresponding art period known as the Rococo (my least favorite period).  This period is most clearly played out in France during the reign of King Louis XIV.  The results are seen in the French revolution and told best by Dickens in the book, A Tale of Two Cities whose opening line, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times” fits well with today’s reading.  King Solomon will take care of the best times, but the worst times are soon to follow. 

We humans, especially western humans, are born believing we each wear a crown.  It’s only when we humble ourselves in wisdom that we allow God, the only True King, to remove our crown, hand it to us, and allow us to toss it at His feet. 

“Long live The King!!!”

"Poems, Prayers and Promises" Would Make a Good David Psalm

II Samuel 22-24

A poem, David’s last words, the mighty men, a final sin and an altar build wrap up II Samuel.

There is great comfort in the fact that at the end of David’s life he builds an altar.   David is dragging himself into eternity scarred, weary and heart strapped.  He has lost sons, wives, kingdoms, brothers, he’s murdered, slept around killed with his bare hands and the Godliness of his youth is all but a memory.  But one thing David knows and clings to with all his life, God hasn’t forgotten or abandoned him.  Many of us are now beginning our own turn toward eternity; we’ve lived on this earth longer than we’re going to live on it.  I’m sitting in a rocking chair over looking the Great Smoky Mountains.  Morning is dark and heavy laden with rain.   The mountains are filled with ancient time assuring me that they have been here since Eden and reminding me that God will never forget or abandon us either.  I am smiling.  It’s a good day to build an altar.

Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out

II Samuel 19-21

Dear God, will the blood letting ever end?  David’s life, before and after Bathsheba, is divided by rivers of blood, heartache, beheadings, and bones picked clean by birds.  We read in an almost constant state of “CRINGE!!”

No one fully understands God or His Ways, His Word, Prayer, Sin or Righteousness but there are truths that never fail.  As much as I would like to write an antidote on a good principle that we can always count on, The Word and my heart denies it from my pen.  Here’s the truth that my mom repeated to me many times during my youth and one that always holds true, “Be sure, your sins will find you out!”  I wonder how many times David looked up at the same stars he gazed at as a youth and muttered that phrase to his own old heart?

I’m No G. I. Joe

II Samuel 16-18

This is the end of one of the most tragic stories in the Bible.  Absalom’s revolt against David, his father, ends in his violent death hanging from an oak tree.  As we recall Absalom’s sister had been raped by another of David’s sons while David stood by and ignored it.  There was Hades to pay from then on. 

Sons always look to fathers to be the Knight in Shining Armor, the G. I. Joe, and the Spiderman of their lives.  Invariably the image cannot be maintained by any human father so what are we fathers to do?  There is only one solution.  Fathers must build their legacies on the foundation of God the Father.  When the armor gets tarnished, the soldier gets wounded or the mask gets ripped off, the son is still left with Abba Father, God Almighty.  All our efforts as fathers should be to never leave our sons Fatherless.

What About You?

II Samuel 13-15

Rape, incest, murder, treason, and a military coup, all in just two chapters of the Bible.  They need God!  What about our world?  Sex trafficking, KONY, global warming, Syria, and Somalia.  They need God!  What about America?  Date rape drug, neighborhood guard shooting unarmed black youth, Madoff, and Caylee Anthony.  They need God!  What about Tennessee?  Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, violent Antioch robbery, gangs in Memphis.  They need God!  What about Jackson?  Racism, white flight, armed teen arrested for selling drugs in school, poverty, and homelessness.  They need God?  What about me?   __________, ____________,  ____________,__________________.   I know I need God!!!

Can Monet Help Us Trust God?

II Samuel 8-12

The morning is being born before my eyes in the dim light of dawn.  Dogwoods, redbuds and azaleas swirl in bloom under a forest canopy ripe with the pale green of spring.  Red birds flitter here and there as, “morning is broken like the first morning.”  The backdrop to my eyes is my heart filled with the story of Uriah the Hittite and the longing I always have to make his life right.  We are privy to the tragic back-story that he’s innocently ignorant of. 

Here’s Uriah’s epitaph, unknowingly spoken by him but tragically understood by us.  “And Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in temporary shelters, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field.  Shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife?  By your life and the life of your soul, I will not do this thing” 11:11.  This is so much like our Jesus story.  Through no fault of his own Uriah dies for the sins of another.  One of the deepest, darkest underlinings of the verse, “But God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were yet 

sinners, Christ died for us.”  Romans 5:8

Monet

This is why my back yard looks as if Monet painted it.  It reminds me that I can trust God to take care of Uriah and spring!!!  And this morning I need that trust.

Family Blanket

II Samuel 5-7

The Bible always has a wonderful way of making clear the ways of the universe.  One way of the universe is that the family is the central human grouping.  It’s the tie that binds, the unbroken circle but unfortunately ties do come untied and circles do get broken and sometimes families come unraveled.   There is one way, come what may, the warp and weft of the family weave can remain forever strong.   “And now, O Lord God, Thou art God, and Thy words are truth and Thou hast promised this good to Thy servant.  “Now therefore may it please Thee to bless the house of Thy servant, that it may continue forever before Thee, for Thou O Lord God, hast spoken; and with Thy blessing may the house of Thy servant be blessed forever.”  7:29

Don’t you love it when God uses the word “Forever!”

Golden Blood, The Universal Donor

II Samuel 2-4

The kingdom of Saul is waning and the kingdom of David is rising.  Have you heard of the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s?  Two families from Virginia and Kentucky whose feud left many family members dead and a legacy of bitterness and mistrust in its wake.  That’s what’s happening in today’s reading.  Two great families are waging a terrible feud against each other and the cost in human life is tragic.   God never hides us from ourselves.  We are messed up from the ancient hills of Israel to the hillbilly hollers of Kentucky.  Human hands spill human blood.  But there is “gold in them thar hills.”  The golden blood of Jesus will flow through the family of David to the hills called Calvary and eventually over each heart that yearns to call Him Savior.  He ends the family feud forever.

Post Script:  I heard this tonight, “You got the golden blood, O-, the universal donor.”  That’s what I am talking about, “THE Universal Donor.

Suicide

I Samuel 29-II Samuel 1

We read today of the death of two great men, David’s heart felt poem written over them and the end of Saul’s kingdom.  We also have recorded the second Biblical suicide.  Suicide is one of the greatest tragedies for the living, so many “If onlies.”  I think everyone, at some point or another, has despaired of life, faced circumstances that has left us drained of all hope and unable to see tomorrow for the desperation of today.  “If only, oh Dear God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.  If only…”

One verse saves us this morning from our own “if onlies.”  “But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.”  30:6b. When the day comes and there’s no more life in you to live, remember this verse:  Never let it be said of you, “If only he had strengthened himself in the Lord his God.”

I Kiss Therefore I Am

I Samuel 24-28

There is much in scripture I don’t understand and today’s readings prove it.  A man is turned to stone, his wife marries an outlaw, elite guards sleep on watch and the dead come back in spirit form.  How is our 21^st century brain to deal with all this?

What if for a moment we considered all that is unbelievable but that we believe is true.  Like these;

I think I am alive.   I’m very often moved to amazement that I’m alive and even more amazed that a piece of meat, my brain, is conscious and gives me, my body, an awareness that I am.  Conscious meat???

Love!!!  To broad.  Kissing and making love to a cherished spouse.  Who ever thought that up is most assuredly Devine. 

Boulders.  I have been next to boulders on mountaintops, jungles and above the Arctic Circle.  Every time they have a profound affect on me.  How can stone do that to meat?

Lastly is art.  Every day I feel as if Someone loves me and is always providing for my good.  Making art is the only thing I’ve ever done that comes close to allowing me to say “thank you” in the way I fell I need to say it.

"The Kiss"
Auguste Rodin

Transformers

I Samuel 21-24

Again we find David being relentlessly pursued by King Saul and always managing to stay one step ahead.   I thought about David’s situation and even stopped to consider if I had ever been pursued.  At first I thought not, but after some reflection I realized that I am and it’s just as relentless.  My pursuer?  Me!!!  I am always chasing after myself, tempting myself, leading myself astray, seeking to compromise, to be selfish, self-righteous or self serving.  At times I even catch myself and convince myself that self-interest is the best interest.  

What’s the only cure that I’ve found for this relentless pursuit of self?  Pursuit of God.  When I am faithful in that pursuit, my self-pursuit transforms into service to others…quite a transformation.  

Murder and Conspiracy While the Birds Sing

I Samuel 18-20

I am sitting on our back porch in the darkness of early dawn.  The forest that surrounds me is dark and deep and filled with singing birds.   Why do birds sing in the dark?  It reminds me of this morning’s reading.  Saul is bent on killing David.  All three chapters record his murderous attempts as jealousy terminally infects him.  I am sure David has more than once asked God why?  I would!  David was a perfectly content young boy happily tending his flock in the peace and tranquility of the pasture, his faith being undergirded by the starry nights and still waters. Then the great day of his anointing by the Lord came and ever since his life has been filled with war, giants and murderous intrigue.  Doesn’t seem like God’s call was all it was stacked up to be!

Perish that thought!  God’s call is always that…God’s Call.  The call is issued to every human.  It is not a call to personal peace and affluence.  Think of it this way.  If President Obama called you to the Oval Office and asked you to perform a personal mission for the country, would you?  What if he said the mission was fraught with danger and disappointment, but he guaranteed your ultimate success and safety.  Wouldn’t you stand in that great Oval Office and agree to do it?  And more than that, you would do it with a personal sense of purpose and determination of cause.   That’s how we should each act in regard to God’s call on our life.  It’s how David did and it’s what makes birds sing in the deep dark woods of early dawn.  God called them to it!

Don’t you just love God!!!

“All You Need is Love”

I Samuel 15-17

Saul is rejected; David is anointed and two of the great truths in scripture explain it.  The first truth is found in chapter 15:22, “Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?  Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.”  What is the preeminent command of the Lord?  Love God with all we are and love our neighbors as ourselves, Matthew 22: 36-40. Our life of obedience which trumps all our religious exercises is to live a life of love. 

The second truth is found in chapter 16:7, “…for God sees not as a man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

And there’s the reality.  To love out of religious duty or any other duty, is just so much “burnt offerings and sacrifice.”  Love must be who we are not what we do.  Man is incapable of producing that divine love in his heart.  God, through His Son Jesus the Christ, is the only Author of that love. 

Here is perhaps the greatest “blog” ever penned.

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophesy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.  When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then fact to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.  But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I Corinthians 13

Weeds and Satan

I Samuel 11-14

A very meaningful passage of coronations and power grabs as Israel stumbles toward nationhood under their new government.  One passage is very telling.  In chapter 13:19-22 we learn there are only two weapons in all of Israel, two swords in the whole nation.  How can you build a nation with only two weapons.  I mean America has H Bombs, Nuke Subs and Preditor Drones.  That caught my attention and made me wonder if our Pilgrims had any weapons when they came to America.  Maybe all they had were hoes and Bibles.  Depending on how you look at it, those could be the mightiest weapons on earth.

Funny thing about weapons, they’re designed based on who you think your enemy is!

I Pledge Allegiance…

I Samuel 7-10

These chapters record the greatest power shift in history.  Man has demanded that their allegiance be transferred from God to man.  They would rather be ruled by men than God and man has never looked back.  What a travesty.  

I Samuel 8:10-22 should be required reading for all Americans.  It is an eerie foretelling of our own history.  We are willingly transfering our allegiance to the government and expecting it to be as God to us. 

Governments can only rule over us by force of law.  They do not possess a conscious nor can they consciously act morally.  Governments will always act on their own best interest and will continually seek power to enforce and protect those interests. 

The only restraints to government are citizens who have found a way to act with moral consciousness.  These citizens then rule over and manage civic duties.  There is no way by which to make men act morally except through a willing acceptance of a universal moral authority.  That authority must be absolute and autonomous and always act on the basis of love to seek the betterment of others over Itself. 

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son...” John 3:16

There’s an Authority that meets all man’s requirements.

“Daydream Believer”

I Samuel 3-6

The Lord has left the hearts of the people of Israel.  Some people make the grave mistake of believing: “If I stop believing in God, He ceases to exist.”  How foolish.  As if God depended upon us to make Him up.  (Remember what Nietzsche’s despair led him to?)  They’re like the old Monkeys’ hit “Daydream Believers”, acting as if they dreamed up God.   A good exercise that will convince you of the silliness of that thought is to try and do it.  Dream up an idea that is equal to God.  Not something based on God, “an all-powerful, space alien…” but a brand new thought that encompasses all of who God has revealed Himself to be.  A new, “you thought up”, idea that big.  It can’t be done.  God, the very idea, is too abstract for us to conceive.  So how did we conceive of Him?

Maybe He “daydreamed” us up… made each and every one of us and then revealed Himself to us! 

Perish the thought if He ever stops “daydreaming”!!!

Art's a Good Thank You Note

Ruth 4 – 1 Samuel 2

A marriage struck in heaven is destined to produce The King.   God gives a son; the happy mother writes a poem and young punk delinquents are cursed forever.  All these combine to make up our reading this morning.  We can’t cover it all so let’s stick to art.

A woman, long barren, cries out to God for a son.  God gives her a son.  The woman’s response is to write God a poem.  Art is often the best way to say anything to God and especially good when saying “Thank You."  Singing, dancing, painting, sculpture, poems and verse all give us a means to say, “Thank You!”  It’s a wonderful gift because “thank you's” are, more often than not, beyond mere words.  A poem is one of the best ways a sincere and grateful heart can write a thank you note to God.

The porch is a universe

And what does it hold?

Night begins to confess dawn

And rain presents it clean.

Squirrels trace bouncing lines

From one tree top to another

And birds fill the woods

With songs long remembered

Let him who has ears to hear

HEAR

For the song this a.m. is

God Loves You.

From Blood to Perfumed Pages of Love

Judges 21-Ruth 3

Romance’s sweet scent lies gently on the pages this morning.  It’s the earth’s scent, rich and aromatic and as ancient as Eden, born in the deepest of places and secured in the loves that Bibles are written of.

Care and compassion steep in the warm brew; “for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.  Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.” 1:16

Honor and chivalry born in this aging heart, long single, deeply desiring the warmth of a women to stave off the cold years that lie ahead; “may the Lord reward your work, and your wages be full from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge.” 2:12

Love is kindled with sandalwood, soaked tender; “wash yourself therefore, and anoint yourself and put on your best clothes” 3:3

Hearts are willingly laid bare in hope that love will be planted; “I am Ruth your maid.  So spread your covering over your maid, for you are a close relative.” 3:9

Our Bloody Gory Mess

Judges 18-20

What a bloody gory mess, a slow degrading of the Children of God into a people of unbelievable carnage.  One thing is true; God never hides us from ourselves.  He allows us to see ourselves as we all too often are.  There are so many unanswered questions here that it is hard to know what to address.  Let’s stick to the elephant in the room…violent bloody atrocities of humans against humans committed by those we have been introduced to as “The Children of God.”  How can this be?  Their title stands in abject opposition to the context.

Let’s look down another road.  Remember the Bloody Pond and Gettysburg, Emmitt Till, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and The Trail of Tears, Lee Harvey Oswald, O J Simpson and collateral damage, southern lynchings, the My Lai Massacre, Jim Jones and Waco; Kent State, Columbine, Watts riots, Jeffery Daumier, Dr. Kevorkian, James Byrd Jr. and Wounded Knee, Matthew Shepard, Chardon High School, the Unabomber, the Salem Witch trials and let’s not hide from 42 million abortions….

all this in a country we introduce as “one nation under God.”

It does us good to allow God, on occasion, to walk us down our own bloody, gory, mess.  “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”  Romans 7:24-25a

Ice Cream and Sex

Judges 14-17

These chapters tell the familiar ancient story of Samson, strong man, womanizer and Israeli judge for 20 years. This is a tragic story of a great man belittled by his appetites.  Have you ever been belittled by your appetites, the desires of your flesh gaining control of your body?  Having a bite of ice cream and ending up with an empty carton in your hand and a half-gallon around your waist?  I guess that’s not belittled but “bebigged!!!”

One of the surest signs of maturity is being able to manage and rule over our appetites, to subjugate them to the dictates of God’s will, whether in ice cream or sex, our desires will always seek to rule over us.  Learn to put the spoon down and your britches up.

We The Jury Find You _____________

Judges 10-13

I’m not one who tolerates having a judge over me.  But it’s really not the judge so much as it is to live under their verdict.  Have you ever lived under a verdict…you’re not fast, you’re not pretty, you’re not rich, you’re not like us!

That’s why I love God so much.  Even though I always stand guilty under His standard, perfection, I do not have to live under His verdict.  The last thing I need in a trial of my life vs. perfection is a verdict.  What I need is a pardon. 

And that’s the number one reason I love God.  He offered it to me, His Pardon, Jesus the Christ.  

Guilty, but pardoned -- the only verdict we can “live” under.

A Great Truth

Judges 7-9

In every culture there are always two great seats of power that contend for the hearts of its citizenry, the Church and the Government.  Neither have a history of worthiness to the task.  Both have held sway throughout history, as the great pendulum swings first to one and then to the other.  Even today we see our own government seeking to take greater and greater control over us, its citizens. 

The great truth of all humans is that we are at our best when we take command of our own lives.   When we reject the power of both the Church and Government to rule over us.  When we declare that we are the church and the government and can no more be ruled by them than the windmill can rule the wind. 

But alas man, so evident in history and clearly in these three chapters, cannot even rule himself.  For one of the greatest truths in all human history is this:  The man who surrenders himself, his life and his will to God, Yahweh, is the man by which all great cultures are made. 

“…the Lord shall rule over you.”  8:23b

Truth is truth and forever remains independent of man’s belief.

Did I Make the Right Decision?

Judges 4-6

In these chapters we find the story of Gideon and the “laying out of the fleece” to discern God’s will.  We are often presented with problems and decisions with no clear, right, choice.  What should we do?

1.     Insure that none of the choices conflict with the Word of God.

2.     Ask, BELIEVING, God to direct your choice.

3.     Choose

4.     Don’t look back! (doubt)

I will admit that my wife and I, on rare occasions, have "laid out the fleece," but only on occasions when the choice had long lasting, irreversible, consequences for our whole family.  Read chapter 6 again.

In decision-making we cling to James 1:5-6.  We pray, believing, and then make a decision confidently believing that our choice is God’s will.  We don’t need a fleece, fax or email, just a believing heart and a determined will to act and not look back.  God will not let you down!!!

The Smell of Vanilla

Judges 1-3

Joshua dies, Israel fights their enemies and they all “forget the Lord.” 3:7.  That was quick!  As I mentioned yesterday, it only takes one generation to forget God and each turn to his own way.  Artists are normally not prone to forget God.  That’s our realm.  We find great meaning in the sunset, the line where the sky meets the ocean, the taste of honeysuckle and the smell of vanilla.  We marvel and cherish love, revel in the cosmic feel of touching; the color of moss makes us smile and kissing is a gift from the Highest Heaven.  Squirrels and butterflies catch our fancy; trail bends always hold great mysteries and we can’t help touching fur coats.  The fact that there are artists aruges against the theory of evolution.  While our ancestors were out hunting, we were rubbing smooth river stones and wishing on the first star we saw at night.  Artists would have been bred out eons ago in a “physical survival of the fittest struggle.”  Forget God?  How can we, when His proof is as close as the nearest rose or gentle curve of our wife’s neck.  Forget God? That’s laughable!!! 

Sacred Home

Joshua 22-24

In these chapters is found one of the greatest declarative statements of all time: “as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.”  All things are established in the home around our tables, our hearths our sick beds and back porches.   The home is the most sacred space on earth and all nations and cultures are established and kept by the homes they nurture. 

As assuredly as all things are established by the home, so can all things be lost there.   All things are one generation away from being abandoned and forgotten.  Remember our home is the most sacred space we have.  As we bathe and cook, watch TV and rock the babies, tuck children in and kiss rosy cheeks, each moment is an opportunity to declare, “as for me and my house we will serve________________.”