Friday Notes: Disturbances

“Total commitment to whatever God wants. Such a beautiful way to live, because you learn that to accept whatever comes along. You are never disturbed, because you are always expecting to be disturbed. The man who is always disturbed is the man who never expects to be disturbed; he doesn’t really plan disturbances into his life. Thus, he is very disturbed whenever disturbance comes. But the man who is never disturbed is the one who is always expecting disturbances. So when a disturbance comes it doesn’t disturb him, because he is expecting it.”

—Pastor Chuck Smith

Disturbances. Add disappointments. Expect the unexpected. Trials of all sorts.

I wonder how far can this be taken without becoming a pessimist. Yet a Believer has Hope. A pessimist believes that this world is as bad as it could be and that evil will ultimately prevail over good. No hope!

The Believer’s Hope is Jesus. We’ll have trials in this world. But our Peace comes from living in Jesus, obedience to His Word, and “overcoming the world.” It’s a process. It takes time.

More time for some, like me. Still finding myself irritated at some interruptions. Not always. Just sometime. Disturbances I didn’t expect. I feel an irritation. Uncontrolled it shows and grows.

“Pray!” is what “they” say.

Deep breath. At myself and my irritation. And at what “they” say.

And Spirit brings a recollection1 of what Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesian Assembly of Believers in Jesus:

. . .we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God. . .

LORD Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

  1. It’s not always as instantaneous as I make it sound. Too many times I let things bother me, grumble and complain to myself, and display irritation in the way I handle things. Then Spirit of GOD prevails. . . ↩︎

Wednesday Begins with “W” Wander

In a hate-filled slur, the Jewish people have been referred to as “Wandering Jews,” even naming a plant as such. Oh, but you say, no one means anything by it. Maybe. Or maybe not.

I suppose the term comes from a misunderstanding of the forty years Israel spent in the Wilderness after our LORD extricated them from slavery in Egypt.

Moving on. Wednesday is a day to write from a word beginning with “W.” So how about Wander?

Our Jewish ancestors didn’t wander. (Gentiles are adopted into Israel. Remember, one tree, wild and native branches.) Wander means: to move about without a fixed course, aim, or goal; to go idly about, i.e., wandering around the house.

One might infer that to wander means more than having no destination, but also having no guide or guidance.

Recall Abraham. Long before Israel’s enslavement in Egypt there was Abraham, father of Israel as a people, a nation. “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.” —Genesis 12:1—5

I like the word “sojourn,” for some reason. I’ve associated it with moving about, traveling, even wandering. Not necessarily so. Sojourn means a temporary stay. It may involve traveling to a particular place, but certainly not wandering. We see “sojourn” used in connection with Abraham going to Egypt for a time.

“Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.” —Genesis 12:10

Getting back on track. Forty years in the Wilderness. “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it, by the sea.’ ”

The LORD is the guide. His Word to and through Moses is the guidance.

Like they say in those silly commercials, “But that’s not ALL!”

But first, an aside. Even GotQuestions calls the movements of Israel in the Wilderness wandering. “He cursed them with forty years of wilderness wandering until the unbelieving generation died off, never stepping foot in the Promised Land.” —GotQuestions.org

Harrumph!

Anyway. “And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.” —Genesis 13:21

The LORD is the guide. His Glory in the pillar of cloud is the guidance.

No, wandering was not what Israel did in the Wilderness. Israel had a guide and a destination. There is a reason it took forty years. That’s for another time, though.

LORD Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

Monday Memories: First Twenty Years

Some of my favorite photos taken of me and of me with some of my dearest and most loved people during my First Twenty Years. In pictures, from Hemet, California, held in the arms of my folks, Ted and Meg, through to Infantry Basic and Advance Training at Fort Ord, California, 1969.

I remember when Micheal and I dressed like our Dads, though I’ve forgotten the year.

At Northwestern Military and Navel Academy, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in 1963 with best friend Keith and a “blind” date, Jill, at the Fall Military Ball.

In the back of our camper, with Mom and friend Livia.

On a small island in Lake Tahoe with Mom and brothers Mark, Grant, Randy.

With daughter Miki and her Mom, Sharon, on Miki’s first Christmas.

Monday Memories: Milk Tea Cups

Some years ago, in Calcutta, India, an old woman sold milk tea on a sidewalk, along a busy street. Her stand was a block or so from the Salvation Army Youth Hostel, and on the way to Mother Theresa’s home for the dying. Many of the young folks staying at the hostel would also visit the home, to offer help or just to see it. On their way, these visitor often stopped for milk tea.

The old woman poured the tea into cups that looked a bit like small bowls. These cups were made from clay. They had no glaze on them, rather just a the rough, porous surface.

An old man sitting near the woman made the clay cups. He’d gather a handful of wet clay, crudely form them into the tiny bowls, and put them next to a fire, which hardened the clay. Once hard, they were ready for use.

Once a customer was finished drinking the tea, the cup was thrown next to the old man’s pile of clay. Every so often, as needed, the old man would crush the used clay cups, add some water to it, and put it in his pile of clay. It was the ultimate recycling program.

It’s hard not to think about Bible verses comparing us to vessels made of clay, and our Heavenly Father as the Master Potter. Yet there is a crucial difference between the old man and woman selling mild tea and our Creator.

The milk tea sellers illustrate the way the world so often sees human beings—GOD’s creation: Unfinished and useless, discarded and reformed into more useless creatures.

We who are Believers in Jesus know that in our life as sojourners on Earth we often feel like those milk tea cups. We feel rough, crudely formed. We feel like we’ve been set in into flames and hardened. We feel used, discarded, broken. In Jesus we are never simply discarded, thrown into a pile with broken pieces. Once our time is complete on Earth we are transformed into a finished product, glazed and beautiful—we will be like The Master Potter.

We will be in our true and permanent home, then. We will be in a settled place with King Jesus in His Kingdom.

Jeremiah 18 This is the message that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Jeremiah, go down to the potter’s house. I will give you my message there.”

3 So I went down to the potter’s house and saw him working with clay at the wheel. 4 He was making a pot from clay. But there was something wrong with the pot. So the potter used that clay to make another pot. With his hands he shaped the pot the way he wanted it to be.

5 Then this message from the Lord came to me: 6 “Family of Israel, you know that I can do the same thing with you. You are like the clay in the potter’s hands, and I am the potter.” This message is from the Lord. 7 “There may come a time when I will speak about a nation or a kingdom that I will pull up by its roots or tear down and destroy it. 8 But if the people of that nation change their hearts and lives and stop doing evil things, I will change my mind and not bring on them the disaster I planned. 9 There may come another time when I speak about a nation that I will build up or plant. 10 But if I see that nation doing evil things and not obeying me, I will think again about the good I had planned to do for them.

11 “So, Jeremiah, say to the people of Judah and those who live in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am the potter preparing troubles for you and making plans against you. So stop doing the evil things you are doing. Each person must change and start doing good.’ 12 But the people of Judah will answer, ‘We don’t care what you say. We will continue to do what we want. We will do the evil our stubborn hearts want.’”

LORD Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

Friday Notes: Building Blocks, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets

Like children playing with wooden blocks, we stack them according to our own imagination; we build a world around us, at our whim and fancy.

As a kid there were also Lincoln Logs. I remember building houses and wooden castles. There were also Erector Sets. With lots of metal pieces assembled with nuts and screws, I build windmills and strange-looking things that looked ahead to the robots we build today.

Yet with His Hand, our Creator sweeps away our contraptions, our fanciful towers. He says He has a place for us, and it isn’t of our making. It’s not even of Earth.

We are called to sojourn here for time, always looking beyond to the Eternal City of GOD.

LORD Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

Monday Memories: San Jose

San José. Being young. Lisa. Love. Living in my trailer behind a fruit stand in a field. Being a Psych EMT at San José Ambulance. A preacher’s suit. Bostonian dress shoes, now forty years old still occasionally worn. Church at Calvary Community. The pier at Santa Cruz. A Preacher’s Conference. Praise songs and camp fires. Good people. Denny’s Restaurant at 2 am.
That Was Then!

Timber Creek. Feeling older. Sitting in the keeping room on a leather chair. View of the garden, with the woods and creek beyond. Early morning fruit. Then prunes Ten prunes, brought almost to a boil. Taylor’s English Breakfast tea, with raw sugar and milk. Reminds me of being Welsh. Granola and yoghurt with turmeric. Inflammation fighter. Green tea with honey. Noisy joints complainin’. Prayer at 2 am.
That Is Now!

Notes to Self: 1

“Dag Hammarskjöld’s posthumously discovered journal was first published in 1963. The original manuscript consists of a collection of brief typewritten statements placed in a loose leaf folder. Hammarskjöld, it appears, from time to time typed out his journal entries and placed them in the folder. Nothing indicates that he considered the journal completed, or that he was not intending to continue it.” –Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

This is a book of personal devotions which compels a deep searching of one’s inner life. Dr. Baillie has written each prayer so that it has that rare quality of seeming to have been written for the reader personally, to fit his own special needs.

Here is an understanding or the aspects of GOD’s relation to man and man’s relation to GOD through prayer. Adoratioin, meditation and intercession are mingled witha strong sense of the social needs of the world as well as the needs of the individual-all done with that perfect taste and feeling for worship for which D. Baillie is so widely recognized. –from the inside cover.

Baron von Hügel said about thoughtful reading: “That daily quarter of an hour, forty years or more, I am sure has been one of the greatest sustenances and sources of calm for my life.”

Dr. Bailie, in this book, has selected 365 reading from the main stream of devotional writing, one for each day of the year. These are chosen for their value in stimulation serious thought and contemplation and are not the trite, familiar sayings that one usually associates with anthologies. Many have the quality that made A Diary of Private Prayer so popular. –from the inside cover.

And then there’s my Notes to Self. In a Bible, on scraps of paper, and somehow lately in a notebook, they track my passage sailing an Abundant Life in YeshuaJesus.

Priestly Blessing
Of Scraps and Remnants

Psalm 24: Welcoming The King

Lift up your heads,
O gates!
And be lifted up,
O ancient doors,
that the King of glory
may come in.

King David may have thought this Psalm might be used in the inauguration of the Temple. The final verses being a welcome for The King of the Universe to enter the city of Jerusalem.

Pastor Barnes’s Notes describes these gates to be like “some of the old ruins of castles in Palestine there are still to be seen deep grooves in the “posts” of the gateway, showing that the door did not open and shut, but that it was drawn up or let down.”

There’s much more in Psalm 24 to be considered. I’ve only scratched the surface, so to speak. My thoughts are simple notes that I can refer to from time to time, and perhaps add to as I delve into a particular verse that catches my attention when I recite this Psalm. Various writers have offered their commentary, from their point of view. Some write a short summary, while others offer more exhaustive analysis. All of their comments help open up the Psalm to me.

LORD Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

Psalm 24: Bearing Away a Blessing

He will receive blessing from the LORD and righteousness from the GOD of his salvation.
Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the GOD of Jacob. Selah

In this next section of Psalm 24, King David speaks of receiving a blessing from GOD. Pastor Albert Barnes states that receiving blessings from the LORD literally is “bear away a blessing.”

King David says of those who are allowed to ascend the Holy Mountain and stand before GOD must have “clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.” They must already be Righteous Ones. I think of Esther’s fear—in the Book of Esther—of approaching the king. If she did so unbidden, the king could either invite her in or have her killed. This same fear prevented the people of Israel from approaching Mount Sinai in the desert after their rescue from Egypt.

To ascend to the Temple, to bear away a blessing from GOD, we must be pure. Again, Apostle Paul plainly states we are not at all, in any way, righteous.

Before the destruction of The Temple, we could offer a sacrifice. Annually the Chief Rabbi offered sacrifices for the people during Yom Kippur. It was all a little like wrapping a leaking pipe with tape. Works for a minute, then fails.

GOD has a plan. He had it before creation. He knows, as the Scriptures state, the heart of humankind. He provided a way. The only way to the Father is through His Son, Jesus. We, through Jesus, are now pure and are entitled to stand before GOD. We take away a blessing.

That blessing, wrote Pastor Barnes, is to “be welcomed and treated as a friend of God. The wicked and the impure could not hope to obtain this; but he who was thus righteous would be treated according to his real character, and would meet with the assurances of the divine favor. It is as true now as it was in the days of the psalmist, that it is only the man who is in fact upright and holy that can obtain the evidences of the divine approval. God will not regard one who is living in wickedness as a righteous man, nor will he admit such a man to His favor here, or to His dwelling-place hereafter.”

Thanks be to GOD our Father, and to His Son, our Savior.

LORD Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

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