Under His Thumb

"Hold still!" Mom would command, but I'd struggle and writhe like a fish on a hook. She was after me with that thumb again. You know the one. The one that threatened every time you were about to go out the door. The one loaded with spit and ready to remove all sorts of dirt from little faces. A comedian once said mom-spit had the chemical composition of Formula 409. Another said Leonardo da Vinci's mother used it to remove the frown that once rested on the face of Mona Lisa, telling da Vinci to try again. I vowed never to subject my children to such humiliation: I forced them to spit on my thumb and used it instead. (My less than scientific research determined, their spit did not have the same efficacy, and I sometimes wore their efforts in places other than my thumb. Food for thought.)

In James 4:8, we are commanded: Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. I recently heard someone speak on cleansing; that's when this verse and the mom-spit thing came back to me.

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Doesn't God call us to begin with? John 6:44a says, No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him. So, yes, initially we are called to the Lord. But in those times of --I'm just gonna use the term "extreme emotion"-- joy and celebration, fear, confusion, pain, repentance, doubt-- those times when we are not at our "norm," we can draw near to God in quiet, tears, song, prayer. We can take those moments of extreme emotion, seek God differently or more earnestly than usual, and He will draw close to us. Quick illustration: Luke 15, The Parable of the Good Father. In verse 20, we are told the younger son went to his father; "but when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him." His father didn't stand there, feet firmly planted, declaring, "I didn't do anything wrong! If he wants forgiveness, he's going to have to come to me." No, he saw the son making his way back home, perhaps struggling with every step, and the father went to him. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. This is the part where I used to wince. I mean, James, what happened? We started off so sweet, so nice. Images of me, coddled and comforted in the arms of a loving Father. Then, suddenly you turn on me with the name-calling and the self-cleansing? What gives? Well, first of all, despite my promise to follow Jesus, I don't always do it. I mess up. And when I do, I'm no better (on the outside) than I was before I met Jesus: I'm acting like a sinner and I am being duplicitous, double-minded; I have moved away from Him. Because of Christ and His blood and my promise to follow Him, I can return, draw near again, receive forgiveness and restored relationship. That's the second thing: in drawing near, He can cleanse me, He can purify my heart. This is where the mom-spit comes in: when I fought, when I wriggled, when I darted underneath Mom's arm and refused to submit to her thumb, I resisted cleansing. In effect, I was saying, "I'm good. The purification you're offering is not for me; it's not worth what I'm going to have to undergo. I choose to walk out this door with my dirt." But in moving toward the one who was able to see my dirt and remove it, I was cleaning, bathing, freeing myself of dirt. (Like standing before a sink and a mirror which, thankfully, is what I do now. I can't get clean if the sink is running and I'm ten feet away.)

So, draw near to God, get under His thumb, so to speak; be cleansed, be made pure of heart. And leave the mom-spit to touch-ups on your way out the door.

Never Too Dark

It's four in the morning, I've just let the dog out. One of those sleepless nights for me, a golden opportunity for her. She'll sniff and explore-- but not too far, it's pretty dark out there. She's got the heart of a lion-- she really does, but something in her brain tells her there are things out there to be feared, and that something overrides her lionheart and she fears. I peer into the darkness as hard I can, as if squinting and leaning forward an inch will give me some advantage over the absence of the sun overhead. She's gone beyond any light coming from our kitchen and I can no longer see her. It is dark out there.

It's four in the morning. My brain is running amok. Will there be enough money to pay the bills this month? Will Mom be okay while I'm gone this weekend? Did I get Scott those snacks he likes? How will my doctor's appointment go? What is going on with that "check engine" light?  Life can be pretty scary-- even with the lights on.

In Psalm 139 (TPT), the writer asks the questions: Where could I go from Your Spirit? Where could I run and hide from Your face? The answer is, nowhere! If I go up to heaven, You’re there! If I go down to the realm of the dead, You’re there too! If I fly with wings into the shining dawn, You’re there! If I fly into the radiant sunset, You’re there waiting! There is nowhere we can choose to go, or wander and get lost, or even, be taken that God cannot see us. There is no such thing as darkness with You, the psalmist goes on to sing. The night, to You, is as bright as the day; there’s no difference between the two.

When the door opens, and we stick our noses out into the frosty darkness, and we give the air a sniff, and God whispers, Go ahead, get out there and check out the place I've created for you, do our brains start tabulating all the things there are to be feared? Sitting safely behind the door at the Master's feet we have hearts of lions, but as we begin to wander a little further from the kitchen light...

I've got you, God says. I'm not squinting or leaning or wondering where you are. I see you. I formed you in the darkness of your mother's womb. That freckle that you have-- the one right there beneath your right ear --I placed that there in the pitch black warmth of your mother's body. And that branch of the pear tree that always casts that scary shadow on the gate? I formed that, too. And your doctor's appointment that's got you tossing and turning at 4am? I already know the answers and I'm waiting to walk you through them. There is no such thing as darkness with Me. The light, the night-- they're both the same to Me, obedient. 

Now get your dog and go to sleep.

Photo courtesy Brandon Dewade