September 23, 2011 Just how big?

September 23, 2011 Just how big?


Ephesians 3:17-19 May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully experience it.

Every time I read this passage I see a cube - a mile high, a mile wide, and a mile deep, and I picture an ant nearby. That ant cannot even crook his neck enough to see how tall that cube is much less imagine how really big it is. Then I think of me, as a mere human being in the middle of the floor of such a cube, only I don't know its dimensions - how high, and deep and wide it is because I cannot see the ends of any of the lines delimiting it. All if can do is feel the warm and safe love of God.

When I think of the word long in the verse, I think of how long the love of God endures. It is endless. God's love has no beginning and no ending because He is eternal. He loves me. Wow!! God loves me, and He loves you.

Think now about being in the middle of that cube: Then think about putting down roots; they just go further and further down into His love, love which flows back up though those roots into you - comforting and strengthening you, empowering you to not only resist the evil one, but to live a victorious and holy life.




I love this image - the golden cube. Can you see the lighter area? The triangle? Makes me think of the Trinity - God my Father, Jesus Christ, my Savior, and Holy Spirit, my Comforter, all in the measureless cube of my God. and His love.

September 21, 2011 HOw deep does my taproot go?

Gal. 5:22-23 When the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. New Living Translation

22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. NASB

The Spirit however, produces in human life fruits such as these: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, fidelity, tolerance and self-control—and no law exists against any of them. Phillips

In Africa, where we lived, we had a mango tree in our yard. It bore wonderfully juicy mangoes near the end of dry season, after we had gone six to seven months without rain. The tree was able to do that because it had a tap root that went up to 1/4 of a mile deep into the earth to a water source. Rooted in that water source, the tree bore a thick foliage of brilliant green leaves and heavy peach colored fruit when all the trees around it were either barren or hung with dried out palm fronds.

The mango tree is a good picture of what it looks like to be rooted in the Holy Spirit or controlled by the Holy Spirit. It is true that you don't eat the fruit we bear, but life would not be fruitful or pleasing or satisfactory without this fruit - love, joy, peace, patience...and well, you can read the rest.

The mango tree cannot remove its roots from the water source, but if it could, it certainly would neither bear fruit nor even survive. I don't think, we as believers, are much different. When we pull back from giving the Holy Spirit control of our lives, when we refuse to allow the Spirit to nourish our lives, we are no more useful nor pleasant to be around than those leafless and fruitless trees in Africa or anywhere else.

As I reflected on the fruit available to us, I wondered how the deeper we go with the Holy Spirit, the more yielded we are to Him, impacts us. I wondered if self-control or temperance is such a battle for most of us because we pull our roots out of the water, out of the Spirit's control. And I wondered what it would take for me to get those roots completely immersed in the Holy Spirit.

September 20, 2011 Is it out of style: to be quiet?

Isaiah 30: 15 For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength, and ye would not.

I Thess. 4:11 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business and to work with your own hands as we commanded you.

I Tim. 2:1-2 I exhort therefore that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men; for kings and for all that are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

A couple of things come to mind today, both having to do with quiet.

Did you ever notice how hard it is to find quiet? Every store, even the elevators have piped in noise. Runners, walkers, drivers all live dangerously, shutting out the warning noises of nearby traffic, for the sake of noise piped straight in to their brain via ear buds. Homes and offices hum with the buzz and burr of a dozen pieces of technology, and it grows harder and harder to even find a place of piece outside.

But God calls us to be quiet. He meets us in the quiet; we can hear Him in the quiet. We can hear ourselves and the Spirit within in the quiet, so it should be no surprise that the evil one makes noise ubiquitous, uses even "good" music to keep us from the best - the voice of God.

Quiet seems to make people so uncomfortable that they immediately find some way to fill up the space, rather than listen...for anything. But it is in the quiet that the Holy Spirit works, that He can bring back to us truths that undergird our faith, that strengthen us for the challenges of the day, that bring joy in the place the evil one would fill with stress and anxiety and pain.

The second thing I notice as I look at this theme of quiet is its relationship to prayer - for all men. God, through Paul, calls us to prayer - to engage in conversation with God in behalf of others, for ALL men and in particular leaders, those in authority over us. The outcome of that ministry in prayer is personal peace and quiet and godliness. Instead, we fill up the space with noise and whine and complain and undermine our leadership.

Scarcely a day goes by that I do not hear Christians say hurtful or hateful things about our president....and I think that if it grieves me, how much more it must grieve our Lord.

So He tells us the importance of quiet, the value of quiet and how to obtain a quiet and peaceable life, and we ignore His counsel.

September 16, 2011 A Day of Distress

Psalm 59:16 As for me, I will sing about your power. I will shout with joy each morning because of your unfailing love. For you have been my refuge, a place of safety in the day of distress.

For the last two weeks or so, I have been in many days of distress, not because I personally have lost much or been hurt, but because destruction surrounds me, visible smelly destruction and pain. Yesterday I had an opportunity to be part of a 400 person contingent from BBC (all classes canceled and offices closed) going to Wyoming County to help with relief efforts, finally, a way to do something about all the distress I was feeling.

Our group, or the smaller groups within the larger one, shoveled mud out of homes, tore out sheetrock and carpets and cupboards, threw out sofas and mattresses and dishes and clothes, cleaned out grocery stores and hardware stores and barber shops and all kinds of businesses. Well, you get the picture! We all participated in a massive effort to erase the massive damage of a hurricane and devastating flood.

And God is a God of unfailing love! How do we make sense of this? I wanted the students who worked with us yesterday to have an opportunity to debrief last night, but I think I need that same opportunity...and more than the time or place to rehearse what we saw and did. I need to come to an understanding of how my God who is my refuge and safe place in distress could allow or cause all the pain we saw.

OK, God cannot be tempted nor does he tempt any one to sin. Got that! God is sovereign; the Lord Almighty. But how do we put it together - devastation and unfailing love?

Love hopeth all things. I guess I start there for me. I have a future expectation that I will understand. Today God asks me to live by faith, and that means not having all the answers. "All things happen for good to those who love God and are the called according to His purpose." I must have faith that this is more than a cliche, that God is at work in all this for the good of those who love him. Is the good what we saw yesterday as we were an encouragement? Perhaps we were the answer to an unspoken or unuttered prayer. Perhaps we were able to be Christ's ambassadors to people who would never have listened or cared two weeks ago. Maybe our students, maybe we adults were challenged to look again at our life in a different perspective - to think through what really matters.

September 12, 2011 How final is it?

John 11:11-13 ...Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus spake of his death; but they thought he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep.

Funny the words we use to describe what happens when someone dies because we work hard at not saying that anyone is dead. . Someone recently wrote that my nephew John, only 13, passed away. I couldn't help thinking that there was something wrong with that expression. Pass away seems so final, like dust we sweep up and discard. But when Christians leave this life, it's so much more than a passing away. It is truly only part of a natural journey...for some, we think the parting is too soon...but that's from our earthly perspective.

When I think of John, I think what he did was pass on, pass on ahead of us, like in a line for lunch. We will see him again out at the lunch tables. And I have only to close my eyes right now, and I can see him walking around with that shy smile, sometimes a knowing smile, kind of in-on-the-joke smile. John is real to me...not the body that lies in the ground, but the living John who has eternal life. He left his shell behind, but that's all.

And more than a memory, I know I will see him again. He has gone ahead of me to meet Jesus.

September 9 I am not surprised!!

II Corinthians 11:14 I am not surprised! Even Satan can disguise himself as angel of light.

Funny how we think we cannot be surprised at what life tosses us, but I'm here to tell you, it still happens. I guess I wasn't surprised that we would have flooding this last week; what did surprise me was how deeply I was moved by it. I'm not sure if it is my age, that I have a sense of what it means to be displaced from your home ( we were flooded out years ago), or that I have family affected by it, or that it is so close - my home town, my husband's home town, the town I shop in, are all under water, but the choking pain of it all will not leave me.

And maybe that is the way it should be. Many years ago, I remember sitting in church in Africa, and reading the passage in Matthew 9:36 where the writer talks about Jesus, about how he saw the multitudes and was moved with compassion because of their pain and discouragement, like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus set the model for us; he hurt for them, and we are to feel with the hurting.

The second commandment in the New Testament is to love one another, and it seems to me that you cannot love someone without hurting when they hurt. So, I was surprised by the pain that filled my heart this week. It made me think about the day I noticed I must have grown up - it was Christmas and I was making a list of the gifts I wanted to buy for other people, not one of suggestions of things they could buy me. Is this pain now evidence of the work of the Spirit in my life, love the way it should be - the kind of love that pushes you to do more than say you care about others, but to actually do for others?

I don't know what God is doing in my life, but I want to be a handy and useful tool.

Sept 7 Cleaning up after the storm

Psalm 51: 1-2 Be gracious to me O God, according to thy loving-kindness; according to the greatness of thy compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

Psalm 51:12-13 Restore to me the joy of my salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors thy ways and sinners will be converted to thee.

This has been some storm season, and winter has not yet dropped her first snow flake. Still, branches and leaves and all manner of debris cover roads and sidewalks, and my deck, and fill rain gutters and ditches. And the storm is not over until it is cleaned up, rather like life.

David asks for God's help in restoration after the storm of his failure, for God's cleansing (forgiveness) and for a restoration of his first passion, the joy of his salvation.

This made me think of the day I came to Christ. I was so excited and happy, I practically jumped out of my skin - the joy of my salvation...and I tell you, I wanted to tell everyone about Christ - teaching transgressors about the hope they could have.

I wonder if we need some anniversary celebrations - celebrating the end of our personal storm and remembering the joy of our salvation!!