... and the crick don't rise

"A man's heart devises his way, but the LORD directs his steps." - Prov. 16:3

"... you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live, and do this or that.'..." - James 4:15

An old tag (end of sentence) goes, "be the good Lord willin' and the crick don't rise." Folks said it after planning to meet again next week or next month, etc. The saying was an acknowledgement that nobody is promised more than the moment they are living in, and that God is sovereign. By sovereign, I mean that He chooses what happens in spite of our plans. Sometimes the things we plan happen, and sometimes they don't. Either way, it is God who decides how things will play out.

I have had constant reminders of this fact the last couple of years, mostly to do with my schooling. A planned practicum in the fall of 2018 led to a failed practicum and me having to put it off until the following fall, looking for a new site. Once I found one that was perfect, things were in place when all of a sudden one of the main participants became very ill, and needed to extricate himself from all non-essential commitments. Thus, again, I had to defer my practicum.

Photo by misterfarmer at Pixabay

And now it is 2020. By God's grace, the arrangement from last year has held, tentatively, since nobody knows what life will look like later this year (with COVID-19 being such a reality in our world). But even before the virus, I determined to hold such things lightly, and to leave the final decision to the Only One who sees the end from the beginning. It's an exercise in faith for sure!

As I've been preparing for "whatever God has" (as my formerly sick mentor put it recently), I've been doing some reading about the call of God to each believer to 'incarnate Christ' (yes, used as a verb!) to those around us who may be in need of His help. That requires that I have a vibrant and vital relationship with Jesus. More and more I am seeing how I have needed this time of waiting in order to step back from all I thought I knew, and to re-learn how I can be an instrument in God's hands. I am called to be the embodiment of Jesus to those who need to see Him and know Him in a more intimate way. I am one of His ambassadors - called to act on His behalf the way He would: with love, acceptance, and compassion.

And thank God, I have the power to do that - as do all believers - because of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Without Him, I would be totally unequal to such a task.  This isn't just words. It's breath ... life ... living. I'm challenged to seek His glory above my own. I'm willing to open myself to Him in intimacy. All those things I have always wanted as a believer can be realities as long as I align myself with His desire for me: a love-bond with Him. Only then can I be a part of the overflow of His presence into others' lives at their point of need.

I truly hope that "the crick don't rise" this time.  And I know that even if it does, He's got this.

He always has.

In Everything

"Be anxious for nothing, but
in everything, by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving, make your requests

known to God." - Philippians 4

The above verse came to my mind today as I reviewed my Facebook news feed. So many people are so freaked out over this coronavirus "COVID-19" even though our little province has had only 27 cases, all travel-related, and all recovered with NO hospitalizations. Be that as it may, I am not one to deny the potential dangers of the virus, nor am I one to pooh-pooh medical directives to wear masks and keep washing my hands and avoid touching my face. 

What I am most concerned with, however, is the tendency of people to say that they trust in God and yet they continue to obsess about what others are doing to endanger their own health (by political decisions to allow snowbirds who have properties here into the province, or to allow more than 5 people at a time to get together, for example).

That's when I think of Philippians 4 - and meditate on what that means for me. I see a number of things that I can apply to this very situation.

First, don't worry.  Worry only robs you of the moment, of enjoying the present. It does nothing to change the situation. Worry is actually bad for folks because it raises hormone levels that cause people to gain weight and to be more depressed and anxious. Besides, the actions of others are out of my control; I can only control what I do, not what others do. So it is fruitless to worry.

Second, pray in everything. Not just about everything, but IN everything - in the midst of the problem, bring it to God. Bring your anxiety, bring the whole situation, and how you feel about it, to God.

Free image by geralt at Pixabay.com

Third, and perhaps most important, pray with asking AND thanksgiving. "Supplication" is just a fancy way to say asking or requesting. But this requesting is not the oh-please-please-please kind, the kind that has very little trust in the goodness of God. It isn't like someone making a petition to their boss or to their premier. Rather, it is the act of a child asking something from a loving father. It trusts in the Father's love, in His character, in His goodness. It's the kind that says, "I ask You for this and I trust You that You will do what is best, so I thank You for whatever You decide to do." It is the prayer that leaves the outcome to God's loving care, and lets go of the desire to influence how things turn out.  It is the prayer of faith, not in the outcome, but in God Himself.

No other kind of prayer will calm the spirit. I know, because I have seen the kind of prayer that doesn't thank God for His decision. I remember as a child seeing my mom praying on her knees, crying and worrying on her knees, for a loved one. And when she got up from her knees she would still worry and fret, and be torn up, about the situation or the person she just prayed for. It did her no good and it did that person no good either. I know that, because the person she was praying for was me. All her prayers did was make me feel shame. I saw no faith there. I only saw a pitiful person worrying on her knees. It disgusted me. It made me not want to have anything to do with a God who couldn't be trusted to look after her OR me. (Of course, later, I came to understand that this wasn't what God was like. But it wasn't my mom who taught me that.)

Prayer IN everything WITH thanksgiving liberates the person who prays. It removes the responsibility for the outcome from that person's shoulders and places it on God's, where it belongs in the first place. It is an act of trust, not of fear. It honours God. It does not insult His grace and goodness. And it results in peace, not more anxiety.

That's the kind of peace I want. That's the kind of God I serve. I am overwhelmed by His loving care for me and for all of those who reach out to Him in faith, trusting His goodness and His grace. So when I pray - which I doubt if I'm ever NOT praying as it's a conversation with God - I listen for His heart, let go of what I can't change myself, and trust Him to either change those other things or help me to accept what is. And He does, simple as that. He does.

It's so freeing.

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.

Manasseh's Mess

I was just reading yesterday in 2 Chronicles about dear old King Hezekiah, a godly king who served the Lord. After he died, his son Manasseh came to power. And he did pretty much the opposite of what his dad had done.

Okay, I get that he probably resented his dad for not kicking off 15 years earlier when he was sick. But God heard Hezekiah and healed him - so there you go. But this dude, Hezekiah's kid Manasseh, had the ultimate preacher's kid syndrome. He HATED everything his dad stood for. So he started worshiping idols, passing his baby sons through the fire (yeah that meant killing them by flame, folks) and building shrines to other gods. And this started the moment he was crowned king.

Photo by Ulricke Leone at Pixabay.

More and more he made a huge mess of the kingdom his dad had expanded. And God put up with this rebellious behavior for a few years. And then, (surprise surprise) He stepped in and allowed a foreign king to come in and defeat Judah, and his troops captured Manasseh, pierced his nose with a brass ring like an ox, and literally led him by the nose back to Assyria. 

Now let's think about that picture for a minute. That was a couple of weeks of a king who used to wear royal robes and get anything he wanted, walking behind some camel's butt with a rope attached to a ring in his nose, and tromping through camel dung. He had a lot of serious time to reflect on his choices.

And guess what! When he was in captivity in Assyria, at some point, he honestly and truly repented. He did. And God miraculously worked out a way for him to return to his throne in Jerusalem. And once he was there, he made good on his change of heart: he tore down the idols, removed the idols from the temple, re-instituted temple sacrifices, and encouraged the people to return to the God of their ancestors. 

And God blessed him. That was a big deal. This was before the cross, folks. And even though Manasseh didn't take down the shrines to Asherah (the Assyrian god), and still allowed the people to use these pagan places to pray to the God of Israel, God still blessed him ... because his heart had changed. 

I find this so cool. Most people, when they read the Old Testament, see a vindictive, mean-spirited God. Yet Manasseh learned from experience that God is both holy and loving, powerful and gentle, and he learned that he could not stand against Him. It was far better to live FOR Him. And when Manasseh repented God not only forgave him, but He blessed him, and gave him a long reign. 

Yes, Manasseh had to clean up the mess he'd made. But he did - thus proving that his repentance in Assyria wasn't just words. He meant it. He was living in a relationship with God. And over and over again in the Old Testament, God shows that He desires a relationship with His people, not just collectively, but as individuals. 









And Manasseh's story also tells me something else. It doesn't matter how many mistakes a person makes. It doesn't matter how much of a mess a person makes of things. 

What matters is now. 
What matters is the heart. 
And it is never too late to start a new life.

Christmas Spirit

I assume that you all know that Jesus was not born on December 25th. Constantine chose that day to commemorate the birth of Jesus because it was the date of Saturnalia, celebrated four days after the winter solstice (December 21, so four days makes it December 25) to celebrate the hope of spring eventually returning after the longest night of the year. He did that with Christmas and with Easter (used by followers of Demeter, the goddess of fertility, to celebrate new life). 

Jesus was more likely born in the spring. You see, the shepherds outside Bethlehem would be watching their flocks by night only when the lambs were new - and they usually are born in February or March. The reason they had to watch the flocks was that the Bethlehem lambs were in hot demand for temple sacrifices at Passover time, which would happen in just a few weeks. It is likely that the Messiah, the Lamb of God, would be born around Passover time, which was in the spring of the year (March or April). 

The quaint little stable crêches that we see, with Jesus set into a wooden manger in a wooden barn with a thatched or shingled roof. But stables in those days were caves, not constructed buildings. And mangers were made out of large rocks with openings in them, sort of like dugout canoes ... but made of rock instead of wood. When Jesus was wrapped in swaddling bands (strips of cloth intended to allow the baby's legs to straighten out when the cloth was wrapped tightly around the infant's body) and laid in the manger, He looked like a mummy laid out in a tomb, with only the face uncovered. The symbolism is hard to miss here. 

And then there are the trappings of our traditional Christmas. The decorated evergreen tree comes from the Druid religion, some say. In the Dark Ages, these ancient Celts practiced animal and human sacrifices. 

Mistletoe, garlands, lights on trees, wreaths, and so much more come from either Celtic or Norse mythology. There is nothing specifically "Christian" about them. (Don't even get me started on Santa Claus!) Yet we decorate our trees, adorn our lawns and homes with lights, hang mistletoe, set a wreath on our door, all without thinking about where the original ideas came from.  

But regardless of their origin, or of the correct date (which would change every year because the Hebrew calendar is based on a 360-day year with a bonus year approximately every 50 years), we celebrate the FACT of Jesus' birth, and we believe that in that birth, God the Son was made flesh and became a human through a spiritual union with the seed of the woman. This "seed of the woman" is a reference to Genesis chapter 3, where Adam chose to eat of the forbidden fruit knowingly, and Eve, who gave it to him, was deceived (by the serpent) instead of rebellious. 

Therefore that holy child was conceived without sin one summer around 7 BC, and the shepherds bore witness to His arrival less than a year later. 

Portrait of a Baby Sheep in the Farm
by ponsulak at www.freedigitalphotos.net

Why am I going on about this right now? Because I celebrate Christmas on December 25, regardless of when His real birth day was. Yet I and my family don't celebrate with a big display or with huge gifts or going into debt or getting trapped into this whole "outdoing one another" thing that people do in so many places during the holidays. In fact, for a few years now, we've been going without the evergreen tree with real or artificial needles - as our youngest cat is allergic and has seizures when she eats the needles in the night. And frankly, we are seriously considering replacing our (now) pre-lit birch tree with a nice nativity scene, very simple with only the main players present: Jesus, Joseph, Mary, and three or four shepherds with a couple of lambs, maybe a donkey and a goat. 
_
No sages (they came over a year later); no fancy clothing. Just a simple carpenter with his young wife and a mystery baby squirming in what looked like mummy's wrappings, twisting gently like some developing butterfly... and shepherds speaking in hushed tones, wide-eyed with wonder, whispering about how the messengers they'd seen could be so accurate. All of them were huddled in the most unlikely of places: a cave used to house livestock and protect them from the rain and from wild animals. 

No fanfare. No twinkling lights. No red carpet. 

Just Jesus.

The heart of the matter

There's no getting around it. Life isn't easy. Sometimes stuff happens that is really difficult. Sometimes even survival itself seems impossible. Sometimes we wonder if things will ever be normal, if we'll ever experience any joy or peace. Sometimes the power of the old life we used to lead bears consequences that have repercussions on our current life, trying to kill us inside, trying to rob us of our joy, trying to destroy what we've worked so hard for. Sometimes those people from that old life try to drag us back down into the muck with them. 

It happens. It doesn't seem fair but it does happen. We wonder sometimes whether the fact that we belong to Jesus gives us any kind of 'edge' at all, or whether it just makes us more of a target. We may even wonder where God is in all of what is happening to us. 

Here's some truth that may bring a bit more clarity to whatever situation we are facing.  If we belong to Jesus, if we believe in His deity and have confessed that God the Father raised Him bodily from the dead, He has freed us, and taken up residence inside of us. In reality, He lives inside of our hearts.

Free photo by jclk8888 at Pixabay

What difference does that make? Well, to answer that, I need to talk about what the heart is. It isn't the physical organ that pumps blood. The heart, in Scripture, is that deep-down part of us that makes us who we are; it is the core of our being. God, who cannot allow sin to enter His presence, lives inside of us and has made us new creations, holy and acceptable in His sight, for the sole purpose of being our Friend for all time and eternity. Isn't that wild?

So no matter what happens, no matter what the present is like or what the future holds, we have this to hold onto: He loves us enough to live inside of us, accept us, create in us a new heart - one that is pure and whole - and protect that heart for time and eternity. That kind of love transforms our little trials here into opportunities to get to know Him better. It gives us the chance to lean hard on Him, to prove Him faithful and trustworthy. His love gives us the courage to face each new day. It inspires us to persevere. It reminds us that we are never alone. It changes us from the inside out. It helps us to accept ourselves. It strengthens us to learn and to grow. It makes us grateful and compassionate toward ourselves. 

This truly is the simplicity of the good news. God loves us. He loves us and lives inside of us through the finished work of Jesus on our behalf. He lives within us. And He will finish what He has started (Philippians 1:6).  He will never abandon us. Never. Not even once. And whatever happens, He will make it turn out for good, even if others mean it for evil (remember the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis?) 

God's got this. He's got you. And you've got Him. That's the heart of the matter.

The Dividing Line

For the last few decades, but especially the last four-plus years, I've watched it with growing alarm. Otherwise wonderful people, committed Christians, good-living, God-fearing individuals, are fighting and losing friendships and even relationships with family members - now even in public fora like social media - about things that (to my way of thinking) should not even be an issue.  Politics.  Doctrine.  Human rights. 

Seriously?  When Jesus said that He came to bring division in Luke 12:51, He wasn't talking about these kinds of obsessions. He was talking about the simplicity of the Good News.  He was talking about Himself, about the Scandalon (the stumbling stone) of the Gospel. He was predicting family members turning each other in (in other words, turning in believing family members), ratting on them to the authorities because of their own lack of belief in Him. 

As for those who are fellow-believers, Jesus prayed in John 17 that they would be united - that they would be as united with each other and with Him as He was with the other members of the Trinity. Not in the sense that we all believe the same way about the same things, but in the sense of loving and accepting each other the way we are, in spite of our differences in thought or method. 

He said nothing of external politics. He said nothing of believers hating and bullying one another over piffling little details that mean nothing. 

Photo "Girls Looking At Each Other" courtesy of Stuart Miles
at www.freedigitalphotos.net

The dividing lines that I've noticed lately have been whether this or that leader is the right one for our respective countries. Or whether women should or should not preach. Or whether someone is white or a person of colour and whether that matters. Or whether certain people should be allowed to fall in love with each other and get married. Or whether people do or do not have the right to identify as male or female, or other. Or whether climate change does or does not exist. Each side -by and large - uses scripture as a weapon against the other.

Again I say, SERIOUSLY??

Ever since the dawn of humanity, there have been differences of opinion. And there will continue to be differences of opinion. Trump, Trudeau, democracy, socialism, feminism, etc., etc. Pick a topic, and someone has at least one opinion about it.  I even know someone who has three opinions on just about everything, and who will argue with herself without even anyone there in the room with her! 

But all these differences of opinion -- especially if we are believers -- are opportunities to show love to each other rather than excuses to fight one another. Otherwise, we poison our own testimony. And the cause of Christ suffers.

The world sees us fighting one another, putting one another down publicly, making fun of each other, and so forth, and what is the first thing they think? "If that's what being a 'Christian' is, I want no part of it."  And they are perfectly justified in saying so. Some believers, wanting no part of what passes for Christianity today, have decided that even though they believe in Jesus, they no longer want to be considered Christian because of the negative image it conjures up.

ENOUGH!! 

I submit another, more deserving, dividing line: a line in the changing sand of the times, so to speak. And I dare each of us to cross it, and to pay attention to the changing times while we do it. That dividing line is LOVE.

Enough with beating each other up over things that won't matter in a hundred years. Enough with trying to look good by making other people look bad. Enough with the martyr mentality (oh look at me, I'm the only one who has it right and you're just making me suffer...). Enough with the siege mentality where it's 'them against us'. Or 'us against them' more accurately....whoever "them" is! Most likely, it's usually the current villain in the crusader-mindset of religious folks: anyone that doesn't look like, act like, or think like we do. 

Come on, admit it - we've all done it in one way or another. We find a way to set ourselves apart from other folks. This kind of practice has earned itself the term of "othering" - treating another group of people as "less than" us because of some sort of difference we feel uncomfortable with. So let's step over that line from "othering" to "ANothering" where we love one ANother, bear one ANother's burdens, meet one ANother's needs. It doesn't mean we have to be doormats, but it does mean that we need to accept one ANother the way each of us is. 

And I think that Jesus would do the same. I know He did with me.