Anoint & Appoint

Several weeks ago, while reading 1 Samual, I began to thing about anoint and how it differs from appoint.

Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.

1Samuel 16:13

Anoint is defined as:
a•noint (əˈnɔɪnt)
1. to apply an ointment or oily liquid to by rubbing or sprinkling.
2. to smear with any liquid.
3. to consecrate or make sacred in a ceremony that includes the token applying of oil.
4. to choose formally: anointed a successor.

And appoint is defined as:
appoint [əˈpɔɪnt]
1. to assign officially, as for a position, responsibility, etc. he was appointed manager
2. to establish by agreement or decree; fix a time was appointed for the duel
3. to prescribe or ordain laws appointed by tribunal
4. (Law) Property law to nominate (a person), under a power granted in a deed or will, to take an interest in property
5. to equip with necessary or usual features; furnish a well-appointed hotel

The Lord had Samuel anoint David, at an early age, as king over all Israel. It wasn’t until much later in his life that David took over the position of king, after King Saul’s death. The Lord then used Israel to appoint David king.

From this idea of anointing and appointing, I thought about baby baptism and dedication. Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions call for infant baptism, while most protestant, evangelical, and pentecostal churches tend toward infant dedication. I actually don’t see a lot of difference in the two practices. In both, an infant is anointed by somebody who is suppose to be standing in for the Lord G-d, Father, Creator. Being anointed to become. . . An infant isn’t a Christian until he or she is able to choose and is then appointed by G-d to that holy office.

From here my thoughts go toward the anointing that is done in various healing ceremonies in our churches. In the Roman Catholic and Anglican tradition, an anointing for healing is much more formal that in other churches. While the prayers differ, the intent, the desire, is that the Lord appoint healing to the recipient. So I think: it took years for G-d to put a crown on Kind David’s head after He caused the anointing. Perhaps it’s no wonder we see so few instantaneous healing in our churches.

And I think perhaps that we all have some anointing that occurs in our lives, perhaps a calling to a particular ministry at a particular time. And we don’t exactly hop right into that calling, but we begin to prepare for it. Perhaps. But maybe we don’t. Maybe because the appointing is delayed, we doubt. And when we doubt we think, “Nothing is happening. I thought I was suppose to (fill in the blank).”

And further, I think of David who wanted to be anointed and appointed to build a temple for the Most Holy Lord G-d. He was denied. That didn’t stop David from preparing for the temple. He gathered all the stuff and probably dreamed of how it would look, though the privilege of seeing to the construction, and seeing dedicating the temple went to his son, Solomon.

From this I take some lessons:
G-d anoints and allows the appointing to follow in His time, not necessarily ours. An anointing may be the Lord’s Spirit enabling us to have the potential, the aptitude, to do a certain thing. We don’t know how to do it at that moment, but we have the means available now to learn.

When we feel called, perhaps this is the anointing, and we need to walk in that anointing until we are appointed officially to the position in which we feel called. And that may take time. Also, we may feel called but not see anything happen. Don’t let it stop us from preparing, for perhaps we hand it off to someone else. Oh, sure, that is going to be a bit of a humbling experience. But perhaps that’s exactly what we need.

Lord Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

It’s Friday. . .

. . . and that means we’re off to a state university to watch a couple state championship semi-final high school basketball games. My daughter’s team will play, as will the school’s boy’s team. Last year the girl’s team got into the top eight, this year into the semi’s. Not too shabby for. . . I was going to say, a small school. But the there is a somewhat level playing field, so to speak, in that the schools compete within divisions based upon school size. The kids’ high school is in the lowest division, having a student population of around two hundred.

It’s been a good year for sports. I mentioned that my son made it to the regional wrestling championship. That was a great accomplishment: he wrestled only half season last year and only half season this year. When he switched schools after first semester last year, he was, by Georgia’s Athletic Association rules, unable to compete for one complete calendar year.

Unlike so many American families that really get into sports, neither my wife nor I are particularly interested, at least not until the kids’ interest developed beyond the years of playing soccer (which is really football throughout the rest of the world). This year we even hosted a Super Bowl party in which my son had two male friends and three female friends over to the house.

Now I competed in various sports as a kid. I was on the swim team, competing back stroke and freestyle. I played football as a line man. I was also on the rifle team. But I didn’t get into watching sports or attending games. . . as I said, until now.

One thing I’ve noticed at both the wrestling matches and basketball games is the audience/spectator involvement. There’s an energy that seems to build until even I begin to shout “Yeah!” when one of the girls on my daughter’s team makes a long hoop shot for three points. And when their team leads by sixty points, we all cheer when a girl on the opposing team scores on a tough shot, and sometimes on any shot. At a game last weekend, a girl was hurt, twisting her knee badly. Immediately the gym began to quiet down, and when both team trainers and the athletic director headed to join the coaches attending the girl, you could hear a pin drop.

My take on all the energy flow, and reaction to injuries, is that spectators become engaged in the activity such that it becomes personal. Each player becomes a daughter or a son or a sister or brother. There’s a corporate flow of brain waves that seem to draw even the most reluctant person into the moment, engaging some primordial place within each of us. Some how we all become one family–at least for a few moments.

That’s a totally secular spirituality, in a sense. It’s what it was like when the Believers gathered together. They were all in one accord. [ ASIDE. That reminds me of a joke: The Bible says the Apostles drove a Honda; it says the Apostles were in one accord. The Bible also says Joshua rode a motorcycle; his triumph was heard throughout the land. ]

And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart. . .

Acts 2:46

Today is also St. David’s Day. Don’t know what that is, it’s a day for the Welsh patron saint, something like the Irish St. Patrick’s Day. I can only guess why all America seems to celebrate the Irish day and not the Welsh. Perhaps it has something to do with the invisibility of the Welsh in America. Here, yes, and throughout the last two hundred years, but reserved and just invisible. Anyway, Happy Saint David’s Day.

Lord Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

Retreating

Atlanta Urban landscape (Photo credit: glen edelson)

Last night I went to see my daughter’s basketball team play. I didn’t leave early enough, catching the “rush hour” traffic jam, and arrived at half time, I missed seeing her play; she’d played the first two quarters. The game was 33.5 miles from my home. It took one-and-one-half hours to get there. We left after the game, and were home in three-quarters of an hour. The whole thing reminded me of why I dislike cities.

I live where it was once rural. The city swelled, spilling out over a vast area that takes hours to cross, even when there is little traffic to impede the flow. Each day my wife heads down into that city–into Atlanta–to her office. She leaves early in the morning before the worst of the traffic begins to clog the roads. She tries to return home in a similar manner, avoiding the evening stagnation. Leaving early isn’t always an option. More time than she’d like, than I’d like, some city dweller thinks nothing of scheduling an important meeting for five o’clock. One day the traffic snarled after a traffic accident, and she was nearly two hours getting home. And we are 28 miles from her office, which isn’t even in the Atlanta downtown district.

The thing is, Atlanta, including its surrounding metro area, contains five million people. Not twenty, like New York, not fifteen, like LA. The population of Atlanta city proper is less than a million and the area is fairly large. But during the day, the city swells like a balloon and tries to empty all at once.

Colorado Meadows (Photo credit: QualityFrog)

So today I’m mentally retreating. I’m closing my eyes and remembering Eagle Lake, up in northern California. I stood near the lake one winter night with a lady friend. We were trying to see a comet. We’d driven up to the lake from a small town in which we both lived. There were no lights in the distance. The stars filled the heavens all the way to the horizon. The air. . . clean, crisp, pure. And the quiet. Peaceful.

When I lived in the coastal town of Arcata, some years ago, I walked out of my house, and within a few hundred feet dropped into the very empty low lands that led to the beach a mile of so away. I was a ‘runner’ then, as well as a long-distance bicyclist. On the weekends, if I wanted a hilly run, I’d go the opposite direction from the beach, passing through the heart of the town in only a moment or two–as the saying goes, don’t blink you’ll miss it–and follow trails into the redwood forest. I remember one day just running and running and running, up hill, down hill, nearly lost among the giant trees.

I wonder, on occasions like this, “why did I ever leave?” Perhaps I can only appreciate what was, rather than what is.

I’ve also thought that I’m not really of this modern age. Some years ago I got into studying America’s Fur Trapper Era. I was living in the mountains of Arizona, and I’d read about people going to a rendezvous in Colorado that celebrated in costume and custom the famous trapper-trader get-togethers of the 1820-40s. I built from a kit a muzzle loading rifle, and gathered or made gear that went with it–everything from powder horn to possibles bag. I researched costumes. While I never did go the a rendezvous, that Era some how just felt right for me.

It is wrong to say I was born in the wrong time, for G-d knew me before I was conceived. I just have a hard time living without “elbow room.”

Lord Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

Fall Thoughts Continue

The temperature outside today reached into the low seventies. The chilly evenings we’ve had hit the bugs hard, and not one was around to bite me while I dug some holes. It’s fall so it’s time to plant some bushes. There’s an area in front of my house that grass has trouble growing. Over this area looms a large river birch. My wife and I cleared what grass remained and dumped in about three yards of top soil, building several mounds, and just raising the area to be even with the base of the birch tree. The bushes we plant out front are mostly inedible, unlike the variety in the garden that takes up most of the area behind the house.

As the day progressed, the wind picked up and more leaves fell from the trees. I hauled some rock and clay, removed from the holes I dug, around back and stood amazed at the contrast of a large Russian sage bush with red heads and bright green shoots against the brown leaves that collected all over it. And there are still many wild roses with bloom remaining. Thought the mint is thinned now, some is still available for harvest, as are a few cone flowers.

I thought with thanksgiving about the way our G-d provides such beauty amid the practicality of our natural surroundings. Thanks to the Spirit of G-d Who drew me to the Lord Y’shuaJesus, I can look at Creation with wonder and awe. Things didn’t just happen. I didn’t just happen. Like creation, I was created. I belong. I can hear the song from long ago flowing through my mind, “I am my Father’s and my Father is mine.” I am not an orphan. I am a son.

You are a son, a daughter, too.

And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Genesis 1:29-31

Lord Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

Human Kindness

This morning I was thinking about kindness. Actually, I was thinking more on the lack of it. It’s not just in other people with whom I come in contact, but it is with me, too. I just don’t feel truly kind anymore, like the irritability I often feel saps it from me. Maybe it’s a sign of these Times, like love waning, becoming cold. Maybe it’s just me getting old and grumpy.

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

Hosea 6:6

A quick web search on Biblical Kindness, the kindness of the Lord Y’shuaJesus, came up with an interesting article at Bible Study Tools. The article points out that the word kindness is but one of many terms that overlap in meaning. Like the word mercy as used in Hosea.

“Human Kindness The Scriptures also teach that divine kindness is to be reflected in the human experience. Indeed, expressing kindness to other human beings is more important than performing ritual sacrifice to God ( Hosea 6:6 ; Matt 9:13 ; 12:7 ). Thus, we are to love kindness ( Mic6:8 ) and to be children of the Most High, exhibiting his kindness and mercy ( Luke 6:35-36 ). Even more direct is the simple injunction to be kind ( Eph 4:32 ). Kindness often finds a place in the lists of Christian virtues ( 1 Col 13:4 ; Col 3:12 ). Paul can take the injunction a step further and claim to exemplify kindness in his own life to a degree that commends his ministry as authentic ( 2 Cor 6:6 ).

“Yet human imitation of God’s kindness does not come naturally. In fact, ultimately no one is kind ( Psalm14:3 ; Rom 3:12 ). It is only as the fruit of God’s Spirit that kindness can be a consistent part of the believer’s experience ( Gal 5:22 ).” (from Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology.)

So I can see that in truth, it’s not that I’m becoming unkind through my irritability, it’s that I’m unkind in my inhuman nature. It’s probably “normal” to be irritable and unkind. To be truly kind, my ministry must be authentic, my works pure, and the fruit of the Spirit will create in me the kindness I lack.

Lord, create in me a clean heart, bringing me to an authentic life in You, that I might display Your kindness to all with whom You allow me contact. AMEN.

And to y’all. . . Lord Bless, Keep, Shine. . . creating in you, too, a clean heart to be filled with the Peace of the Lord Y’shuaJesus. AMEN.

Remodeling Flaws Add Character

Ants in the Pantry (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thinking more about the various flaws in my work in the pantry, I have to confess that even while I wrote that “It’s only a pantry,” it worried me that I wasn’t doing it well enough. I really did try to get it to look right. In fact, when doing some closets, replacing old metal shelving with wooden units, I worked very hard to get the wall smooth and the paint lines clean. Despite this, there remained areas that were less than perfect. I admit that in the pantry I was in a hurry and didn’t want to get sanding dust all over the kitchen. I used a coarse sponge only dampened to smooth out the final coat of drywall mud. I used only one coat of primer, and one coat of paint, too.

Yesterday, with the paint having sat a day, I walked into the pantry and the walls look pretty good. I’m ready to start the shelves. Even the small, noticeable spots that aren’t perfectly smooth look good. They add character. Really, they do.

In relation to flaws, I wrote about David asking G-d to examine him, and how hard it is to do the same for myself. I talked of G-d cleaning up some of our flaws that might cause bigger problems if left unattended. But what about the other flaws? As I thought more about them, I wondered if some flaws don’t add character, too. Additionally, there may also be some benefits to some flaws left un-repaired. Think about Paul, and what he wrote to the church at Corinth.

And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.

2 Corinthians 12:7

Some say Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was problems with his eyes. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Paul came to understand that the “thorn” was beneficial to his walk with the Lord. Perhaps Paul’s “thorn” could be said to give him his unique character.

Lord Bless, Keep, Shine . . .

Identity

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. John 8:36

Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Romans 6:4

For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:13

The identity of a True-Born Believer in Y’shuaJesus as Lord, Messiah, is deeper than the external appearance—it is the driving force of our lives in concert with one another. Whether we are dark or light skinned, live on one continent or another, work in fields, or offices, or drive truck, we are all born of the Blood and Flesh of Messiah. We are one in Him. We “have been all made to drink into one Spirit” as Paul heard it from G-d.

Unbelievers have a conscience, an internal mechanism, that provides some guidance in their lives—if the conscience isn’t seared, that is. This conscience is placed there by G-d that the whole of humanity doesn’t simply go bonkers before giving a chance to build a complete people for G-d’s Name upon Earth. This explains why non-believers do things that are considered good, even righteous, while worshiping false gods, or not god at all.

Unlike the conscience of an unbeliever, True-Born Believers have the Spirit of G-d, the Mind of Messiah. We are sealed. Our names are written in the Book of Life with permanent ink. Conscience can be seared, deformed, destroyed. The sealing of G-d is once forever. Like the Blood of the Lamb upon the doorposts of Jews in Egypt protected from the Death Angel, we are protected from eternal death, even from the Wrath of G-d when finally the last of those who are to be saved are brought into the Body of Messiah.

Back in my days with Calvary Chapel, we sang a song that included the lines from a Psalm, How good and pleasant it is when brothers (and sisters) dwell together in unity. We need to shed our fleshly concerns, our worldly ways, and see one another as One in Messiah. Then we can, together, in the unity of the Spirit of G-d, with one voice, give praise to our Lord and seek His way on Earth, drawing all that are willing, able, into fellowship with Him.

This is our true identity on Earth.

I was Christian, I was Buddhist, I was Hindu, I was Jew
Now I am only one in You, awaiting my ultimate fate
Doubting not what You have told me to be true
I am one people, I belong to You—I knell at Your gate.

From “I Wait” by Wil Robinson ©1989

Lord Bless, Keep, Shine. . .