Don't Miss It! It's a Great Place to Live!

New houses are being constructed in our neighborhood. My husband and I were pretty hopeful this would be a good thing for our community. We had visions of higher property values, more security, cleaner streets, and better government dancing in our heads. What a great place to live! We were having dinner with some friends when someone delivered some bad news about rezoning. It was not going to be the community we had expected. 

In Matthew 16:1-3, the Pharisees who knew Jesus weren't convinced He was their awaited Messiah, the Ruler of God's Kingdom; they were looking for "something more." Jesus didn't have a royal pedigree, He hadn't done anything they were "sure" the Messiah was going to do; He came from some podunk town, eating with unwashed hands, associating with the riff-raff, and talking about the fulfillment of the Law. Not what they had expected. They demanded a sign, a supernatural sign, a sign straight from Heaven, that Jesus was the real deal. Jesus' response?

“When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’; and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times." 

Although these men were scholars, students of the very words God told His prophets to write about the Messiah, their expectations, their opinions prevented them from seeing their Messiah when He stood right before them. 

God doesn't always work the way we'd like or, even, the way we'd predict. (And that's a good thing! I don't want a god who plans like me, I'd forget hay on a hayride!) Sometimes we have these qualifications of how things should take place, we think they will look like this or sound like that; we think they will take place on this day or in that way, but God doesn't. Isaiah 55:9 says, For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts. He doesn't think like us; He thinks like God! The God who created each one of us, who created the perfect world with its perfect atmosphere for us to live in, even before He created us. And He doesn't answer to us. God doesn't even answer to time, and we live and die by the clock. Like those Pharisees who demanded a sign from Jesus, we think we know how things should go. It is far more important that we know the God who rules over circumstances, far more important that we know His character and His faithfulness toward those who love Him. If the Pharisees had really sought to have a relationship with God rather than simply fill their heads with information, they would not have demanded Jesus prove Himself, but would have humbly welcomed Him as the promised Messiah. 1 Corinthians 8:1b says, Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. Knowledge may make us the smartest kid on the block, but it is love that gives us our worth. Love is the lens through which the God of the Universe sees us; love was and is the impetus for God's saving grace and Christ's obedience; love is the fulfillment of the Law and the prophets, to love God with everything we have and love others as ourselves. Knowledge caused the Pharisees to expect only what they could see; love would have opened their eyes to the eternal Kingdom God has in store for everyone of His children. What a great place to live!

Let It Go!

Wherever you are right now, look at the things around you that you consider yours. Your glasses, your cell phone, your car, your hands. These things "belong" to you, and not just the items themselves, but the benefits that come with ownership: glasses give you vision, your phone allows you to communicate with others, your car provides freedom, and the ability to use your hands for a task as simple as making a sandwich enables you to feed yourself and remain independent. What about intangibles, your schedule, your goals, tomorrow? Are they yours as well? We believe time is our own and, therefore, we possess opportunity and control over our own plans, agendas and itineraries-- our own destiny, if you will. In reality, however, nothing is promised: schedules get interrupted, goals go unmet, and tomorrow? Well, the number of our days was planned out long before we were even born. None of what we own, or think we own, is truly ours. When God decides to wrest those things from our grip, our reaction proves just how deluded we are into thinking we own them, and how important those things have become to our identity.

Allow me to introduce you to a guy named Jonah. Jonah was pretty sure his life was his own. As a result, his plans belonged to him, his will belonged to him, and so did his cash. Or so he thought. When he heard God speak, Jonah considered it to be more of an option than an order; he wasn't on board, as they say, so he took his cash, paid his fare, and hopped a boat in the other direction. One dangerous storm and a big fish later, Jonah was beginning to rethink his autonomy. He cried out to God, who gave him a do-over. Though Jonah obeyed, his heart hadn't much changed. The evil people Jonah had been sent to warn repented, and God refused to punish them. Isn't this exactly what I said was going to happen? Jonah whined. This is an evil nation that deserves punishment. They turn from evil and You take pity on them. Remember Jonah's do-over? Yeah, but somehow he was upset God had done it for the Ninevites. God is sovereign, choosing to have pity on whom He chooses, giving orders and opportunities as He sees fit. None of the things Jonah thought belonged to him were truly his. He wasn't free to do what he pleased with the things he'd been given, nor was he entitled to condemn or spare a nation-- no matter how wicked. He was a servant and God was His Master.

And then, there was Job. Job had it all, in abundance! But Job's most cherished possession was his relationship with the Lord. Satan asked permission of God to strip Job of everything short of his life, just to prove Job's heart was set elsewhere. The enemy did what he could, but so long as Job's "greatest possession" remained, Job held on in faith. Job had no illusions about the things of the world: money, land, livestock, even his children; none of it was promised to him, and he knew it. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, Job declared. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Things, Job knew, were not the endgame; things were just things; they didn't give him identity or complete him, God did. 

Wherever you are right now, look at those things again. Are you a Jonah or a Job? Well, we all tend to be a little of both at times. The good news is, it's not about us. It's about the God of Jonah, who shows mercy and gives second chances (and more) to those He has chosen. It's about the God of Job, who is sovereign even when it doesn't appear that way, and He doesn't turn His back on His people, even when our other friends do. It's about the God who reigns over all today, the God of the Bible, who doesn't change, who has sent us a Savior and given us His righteousness even when we have trouble letting go of things; He teaches and trains us until our hands are empty and our hearts are full of Him alone.

In the Market for a Little Lesson

I was emptying my grocery cart, placing my items on the belt, when the cashier barked something at the customer ahead of me. It was something that made no sense to me; it didn't seem he'd done anything wrong. But then I saw it: the employee this cashier had bagging for her was waaaay behind. And he was chatting. I could see the line getting longer behind me; the cashier was a flurry of motion, but the bagger was oblivious. He chatted to the customer about the store's rewards program and the local baseball team's latest choke. It is Philadelphia, after all. As the cashier began to ring my order, the bagger examined each item. Oh, wow! These cookies look delicious! Can you believe the price of eggs these days? Danishes! Looks like someone in your house has a sweet tooth! The cashier seethed, and then I knew: I'd just seem a glimpse of who I used to be.

Full disclosure, the employee bagging was learning disabled. Years ago, when I worked at this market, I worked next to someone who was disabled. I was in my twenties, physically and mentally healthy, and quite capable of handling the position I was given. My coworker struggled. He wanted nothing more than to do a great job and get along with everyone, but his disability prevented him from discerning things like when to be chatty and when to kick it into high gear. His problem solving skills were much different from those of us with a get-it-done-yesterday and a me-first mindset. Needless to say, my delusion that I was somehow a better employee or even, a better human being than he was, led me to hate working with him. I'd spend the shift frustrated, venting to other employees behind my coworker's back-- even going so far as to get a little loud with my comments from time to time just to make his night as miserable as I was allowing mine to be. He'd hang his head and fall into silence or, worse, he'd continue to be kind to me.

As I drove home from the market, I prayed. My God, who redeems even the ugliest of moments, had shown me something. I knew what this woman was going through. Like I had, so many years ago, she was resisting the presence of this young man with all she had. He slowed her down. He made the lines long and caused customers to complain. He wasn't responsible like she was; no matter how backed up things got, he would do nothing to alleviate the problem. It all fell on her. And I prayed the Holy Spirit would open her eyes to just how wrong she was. I prayed she would allow God to do what He was doing: for the customers who were blessed by this man's friendly chatter (in a world where, more often than not, we're required to do our own cashiering before an insentient screen), for this young man and his most basic sense of purpose and responsibility-- holding down a job, for the company which receives an incentive for employing the disabled, and for her. 

Spending time with others is a privilege-- the ones who irritate us, even more so. Learning to thrive in difficult situations or appreciate those different from us develops character. If we trust God is doing something to change us or change our circumstances, we can develop in new ways. Years ago, I was too self-centered, too arrogant to appreciate what God was doing by sending someone different into my life. My fixation on my own pain left no room for compassion for others. My quest to prove to everyone just how good I was, left me unable to appreciate the value of simply being friendly. But pressure makes the difference between the common and the priceless, the forgotten and the champion. If God didn't love us, He'd leave us exactly the way we are: selfish, hurried, intolerant, uneducated, alone, unsympathetic; He'd keep things comfortable, burdenless. If He didn't love us, He wouldn't use even our bad behavior to teach us something, or lead us to pray for someone we see resisting change. There is no better way for a Father to show His love than to help us be better than we are. There is no greater privilege than to have the God of the Universe want to change you, removing the old and unsuitable, replacing it with the new and beautiful. I hope He's making you uncomfortable today.

First Things First

"Head on downstairs and grab some time to yourself," my husband offered. I had an hour, at best, before the ravaging hoards would be looking for dinner. I raced to my office and began searching through my "Draft" folder to see what articles I could quickly complete.

So, you're not even going to spend some time in Scripture, first?

"I've got an hour," I protested. "I haven't got time for that right now."

I mean, not even a prayer?

"Ok, Jesus. Um, thank You for this time. May my words be Your words. Amen." And I dug in. Two hours later, dinner wasn't on the table, I think I'd deleted twice as much as I'd typed, and I stomped up the stairs annoyed. "Why can't these people make their own dinner," I thought. "There has to be a better way; I hardly have any time to work on the things I need to do. I get so tired of serving everyone else around here. Who serves me?" blah blah blah, murmur murmur

It was Martin Luther who said:

"I have so much to do today that I'm going to need to spend three hours in prayer in order to be able to get it all done."

I'm not sure whether everything on his list got checked off that day, but if it didn't, I know he was better for it.

Throughout Scripture, God requires of His people the "first fruits" of their labors. First fruits. Whatever we've got, His comes right off the top; whether it's our paychecks or "time to ourselves." He knows we are naturally self-centered. If we wait to give God His due, we get careless, distracted, forgetful at best. I think, more accurately, we figure nothing bad has happened yet; He won't miss it. And we go on about life as if we have control. 

You see, I know I get more done when I pray. I know the thoughts and words pour out of me almost too quickly to type them, when I come to God first, giving Him all my attention and seeking His plan for that time. Whether it be an hour or only a minute or two, a heart poured out in earnest first, is what God requires and what works best if I am to hear His voice (even if it doesn't make print). I know this. But there are times I am too stubborn, too self-seeking, too rebellious to listen to even my own good sense telling me what is best. Those are the times that end up most often, in frustration. I can't seem to find the words. My ideas go completely off the rails. And my family becomes more of a burden to me than a blessing. Not really, but that's how badly my entire perspective is affected in my rebellion.

I have so much to do today, I must first spend as much time with God as He directs. May that be the standard for all our endeavors.