A Contest on a Mountaintop

Lately, the drought has taken its toll. I'm not talking about lack of rain falling from the sky. I'm talking about spiritual rain. So many days, months, years without the refreshing and nourishing Spirit of God raining down on His people. We've learned to "settle" ... to lower our expectations ... to tighten our belts and to make do. 

And in this atmosphere, sometimes the enemy of our souls brings calamity upon us to try to convince us to give up, to lose faith, to lose confidence in God's love and power. Such a calamity has befallen us lately. A diagnosis of metastatic pancreatic cancer with spread to the liver, stomach, and one of the adrenal glands has sapped my husband of physical strength and wracked his body with daily, persistent pain. 

It is hard to watch, hard to listen to the efforts of people who are dealing with their own anticipatory grief and doing and saying things to make themselves feel better. It's hard to entertain the possibility that this thing will be fatal, with all that entails. Been there, done that. I can't awfulize the future. It's too much.

I've chosen, rather, to believe that God will be glorified through whatever happens, and what happens may just as likely be his healing. I've been speaking healing on his body: death to the cancerous cells, and protection on the healthy cells. 

Yes, he will undergo chemotherapy. Yes, he will fight to stay around as long as he can. And yes, the doctors have given him a timeline. But others have been known to surprise the doctors and go into remission, and I am clinging to the God of wonders, who spoke life into existence. Because God is the only one who knows how this will turn out. And more and more, I am reminded of one particular story from the Old Testament as the diagnoses keep piling on and on.

Elijah - after 3 years of drought - met the prophets of Ba-al (god of fire and darkness) on the top of Mount Carmel. It was a showdown, a contest between their god and his God. Each would prepare a sacrifice, and the god who answered by fire would be the winner.

Most know the story. Ba-al was a shoe-in to win; after all, he was the god of fire!! But Elijah didn't allow them to use any parlor tricks to start fires themselves. And Ba-al didn't answer, even after they cut themselves in their frenzy of begging. Hours they wore themselves ragged from their part in this cosmic contest. Still no fire.

Then it was Elijah's turn. But he didn't pray just yet. He made it harder for his God to answer. He got servants to fetch water from the sea below. Barrels full of water, drenching the sacrifice. It soaked the animal and it soaked the wood. 

Then he spoke just a few words asking God to glorify Himself. 

Free image from Pixabay

And the fire came from the heavens. It consumed the wet animal, even licked up the water on the wood and burned the wood to ash. The answer was impossible to deny. The God of Israel - the same God who extended His grace through Jesus - displayed only a fraction of His power, and the prophets of Ba-al knew their fate was sealed.  They ran. And they didn't get far. 

This is courage written in Scripture for us to realize that the more impossible the barrier, the more glory God gets when He overcomes it. Stories like these give me the courage to stand in the faith of Jesus (see Galatians 2:20, KJV and note the word "OF") and command the sickness to leave in the authority He delegated in Matthew 10:8. I follow the pattern Jesus set: not to pray for healing, but to command the disease to go away. 

Because this horrible disease, this contest between death and life, is impossible with all the knowledge and skill of humans. This disease is stage 4, considered incurable, only treatable - and only to the end of prolonging a very short time-frame. That's the human side of it. But we place our faith in the God of the impossible, the God of the incurable, the God who answered by fire that licked up the water in the wood and the trench they dug around the sacrifice. Yes, THAT God.  

King David's words, given to us early on in this journey, still ring in my head: "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD." (Psalm 118:17) Focusing on that gives me focus and helps me not to succumb to the daily grinding attitude of hopelessness that surrounds this diagnosis. 

I rest in His faith and speak to this cancer - daily - to shrink, to shrivel and to disappear in Jesus' mighty name. I speak to the pain this disease causes in my husband's back and tell it to leave, so that he has dignity and the mental capacity to choose how to live his life. This is life and death here. And life - and the Giver of life - wins.  

Tetelestai = completed

A lot of my blog ideas come from conversations over breakfast with my husband. Today's conversation had to do with how Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing," when He was being crucified. 

Many people think that this was because of the cruel things that were happening to Him. But that wasn't all of it. The more important part was that these people were the instruments through which the sacrifice for our sins were being made. They were sacrificing the Passover Lamb. This was a sacred moment - and they didn't realize the sanctity of what they were doing. In this context, Jesus' "forgive them" makes a lot more sense. 

Which brings me to Jesus' last STATEMENT from the cross. Keep in mind that every time He wanted to say something, He had to take a breath. To take a breath, He had to push down all of His weight on the spike driven through both of His ankles - an excrutiating prospect. And yet what He said was not so much a cry of relief but of accomplishment, of triumph. 

You see, the Greek word that is translated "It is finished" in some translations was a Greek business term, meaning "Completed!"  It referred to a transaction where someone paid in full for something they were purchasing.  The transaction was completed, accomplished, finished: there was nothing more that needed to be done because everything was finished. 

Put into spiritual terms, every sin: past, present, and future, once and for all, was paid for, in one huge transaction - at Calvary. As soon as it was completed, Jesus cried out that it was finished, and then committed His spirit to the Father's hands. And then He died. 

And to show that His transaction was accepted, God raised Him from the dead on the third day. 

Free Illustration by TheDigitalArtist at Pixabay

Nothing better than having your parking validated after you've spent all your resources!! :D

Tetelestai. The price is paid.
Tetelestai. The way has been made.
Tetelestai. Nothing more to do.
Tetelestai. For me, and for you.  
-- (c) Judy Gillis, 2020-03-19

Salvation is not something that we own. Jesus bought and paid for it; it is HIS. So He has the right to give it to whoever believes in what He accomplished. It's as simple as all that. Nothing we can do could ever pay that debt. But He could. And He did.

It is finished. Tetelestai. It is completed. Praise to God on High!!  
-- (Judy Gillis, 2020)

WAY COOL.

Waking Up

Winter's long sleep is reaching the twilight hour before the dawn, when we're not even sure if there is a change happening, except ... except ... the geese have returned.  The trees - still leafless and silent - are budding.  Female mourning doves are returning, and the males waiting for them have taken to billing and trying to chase them down one at a time. The daylight lingers just a little bit longer. Rain melts away snowbanks - imperceptibly at first, then more noticeably as the earth awakens.  The grass - if it shows at all - is still brown and wilted, but as if by magic, gradually appears green moss and the first stirrings of the lichen that will eventually bear the muted purple tones of heather.  

Photo "Blooming Snowdrops In The Spring"
courtesy of radnatt at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Those who know me best know that I hate winter: the cold, the piercing damp wind, the lack of light, the ice and slippery footing, the bulky clothing, and how it feels like it never seems to end. Every year, though my head knows it will, my heart wonders if it will EVER end. 

This morning, a snowbank, which had stubbornly persisted the last two months outside our picture window, was suddenly gone after a soaking drizzle kept at it all night.  Beneath it, I was surprised to see tiny one-inch sprigs of green: thin sword-like leaves bearing, in a place or two, another layer of foliage that had a tinge of purple to it, a promise of a bud soon to form. "Crocus," I breathed, noting my own sudden, internal sprig of ... what was it? happiness?  Hope? I couldn't quite tell which it was... 

A few feet away, like tiny rolled up cones of forest green paper, tulip plants were sprouting from beneath the mixture of soil and wet maple leaves from last fall, half-decomposed maple leaves I had forgotten were there until the snowbank was gone. They were about three inches above the soil, so I realized that they had been slowly growing beneath the snowbank - and with the rain, the snowbank slowly rolled back like a heavy velvet curtain at a live theater performance.  

I stayed at my position in the window, kneeling on an armchair with my nose pressed up against the glass, for a few minutes.  I drank in the sight, reveling in the tiny slivers of color, until my knees told the rest of me that it was time to get back on my feet.  Yet, a few times throughout the day, I have returned to my perch to check and see whether the buds have shown any sign of maturing.  My soul needs this gentle, delicate whisper of promise, a distant echo of God's own rich voice.  Too long my soul has just been "hanging on" waiting for better times, for more daylight moments in which to soak in nourishment as the leaves soak in the sun's rays. It is as if my soul has joined the Earth in its trip around the sun; it is now in a better position to benefit from the warmth that was always there all along. 

I, like the Earth, the plants, the birds, the trees, and the grass, am waking up. Winter is finally giving way - even if only a little - to the persistent hopefulness of spring.  The longer, darker nights are shortening.  I am more aware of the Light. It is good; He is good.

Waiting for the rocks

One of my two favorite stories in the Gospels is the story of the woman caught in adultery.

We were discussing that story over breakfast. (A lot of times, posts on my blogs come from discussions I've had with people.) We'd been talking about how people form a relationship with Jesus. 

As many do, I suspect that this woman was a known adulteress, and that several of the Pharisees had availed themselves of her "services" before. They saw her as an object, a great way to relieve some tension before going home to critical, demanding wives (don't get me started). But in her they began to see a great way to set a trap for Jesus - and their "valuing" of her turned to betrayal. (How do I know this? because the Law said that both the woman and the man should be stoned; where was the guy???) 

They dragged her, naked, through the streets. They thrust her down in front of Jesus. "Rabbi! [don't you love how they toss that term around when they mean anything but that?] This woman was caught in the very act of adultery. The law of Moses says that such as these should be stoned. What do YOU say?"  (Read the story in John 8.)

The question was asked; the trap was set. 

And Jesus said nothing. 

The woman was crouched in the fetal position, sobbing, trying to escape as much public humiliation as possible. She fully expected the stones (big, heavy projectiles, not little pebbles!) to start flying any minute; she'd seen stonings before. Everyone had. 

He squatted on the ground beside her; He wrote things in the dust. What He wrote, we are not told. When pressed for an answer to their cleverly-designed question, He said simply (and this is how it appears in the Greek) "Whoever among you is without this sin, let him be the first to throw a stone." 

The Bible tells us that they dropped their rocks and split. Okay, it says that they left one at a time, beginning with the older ones, until all of them were gone.

Let's use our sanctified imaginations at this juncture. Here is the scene: A ring of robed men with big rocks in their hands, Jesus and the woman in the middle. Jesus is squatting and writing on the ground. The woman is sobbing in the fetal position with her head in her hands (as I've described) fully expecting the arrival of the first rock. 

She hears a rock hit the ground. She thinks it missed her. Her breath catches. 

One by one, the rocks fall to the ground as the Sanhedrin members realize their trap wasn't quite so clever after all, and they leave, convicted by their own consciences (possibly helped along by what Jesus was writing on the ground?)  And the crowd that gathered around them hushes. 

Jesus turns to the woman. "Where are your accusers? doesn't ANYONE condemn you?" 

And she looks around in wonder at the circle of rocks where the robed ones once stood. "No-one, Sir." 

The love in His voice was unmistakable. "Neither do I." 

Freeze frame right there. Before He says, "Go and sin no more," stop and think about what "I don't condemn you," means. 

Had she sinned? Oh yes.  Did she deserve death? According to the law of Moses, yes. Her lifestyle was totally exposed for all to see who were there. 

But He didn't condemn her. 

Photo "Stone And Sand Background" courtesy of
gubgib at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

She was waiting for the rocks to hit her. She'd been hit by hundreds of rocks before - all the dirty looks people gave her every day on the street felt like rocks hitting her soul. The way mothers shielded their children's eyes as they walked by the street-corner, the way men would leer at her, the contempt she saw when she passed by the scribes and priests in the outer court of the temple, all felt like sharp projectiles striking her, judging her, wounding her. 

I've felt those sharp rocks, those disapproving looks, those judgments from other people. I've felt the hot sting of shame for things over which I felt I had no control: my family, my socio-economic class, my (former and current) lifestyle, my parenting choices, and the list goes on. Each is an emotional stone - and does damage to the one it hits. The emotional rocks make the inner prison walls stronger, the sense of helplessness and hopelessness more intense. There is no escape.

Each of those sharp emotional rocks had made their mark on her ... every bit as real as the "real" rocks ... and now there was this day. This day she was sure she was going to feel the physical rocks hit her body. This is the day her life would end. She knew it.

And yet ... there they all are. The rocks are on the ground. She looks around and tries to grasp the idea that the Man before her actually saved her life - and restored her dignity. She looks up and sees the love and compassion in His eyes. For her. 

It rescues her. It sets her free. 

"I don't condemn you." Those words of forgiveness make her into a new person, one who doesn't want to live that lifestyle of shame anymore. He took her shame away, and gave her a clean slate.

Now. NOW, doesn't "Go, and sin no more" sound more like, "Here, let Me take off those chains. You're FREE!" than it does "Go study the rulebook and get your life straightened up"??

It sure does to me.