In my last post I outlined how through Christ we bask in the light of God and become the avenue of redemption for God on this old earth.  Our mission is to let the light of Christ reflect from our lives so that others will follow.  In doing so we are preparing for the day when “the glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it” (Rev 21:26  Our primary purpose is to live and build the glory and honor for God on that day.  This drives our worship, mission, and life.

But we take our Light for granted WAY to often.  It’s tempting to focus on the prize at the expense of our mission to build the glory and honor for God. One of the most convicting songs written and performed by the late Keith Green:

The world is sleeping in the dark,

That the church can’t fight, cause it’s asleep in the light,

How can you be so dead, when you’ve been so well fed,

Jesus rose from the grave, and you, you can’t even get out of bed,

Oh, Jesus rose from the dead, come on, get out of your bed.

What a rallying cry for us.  We are blessed with the comfort of eternal life and guidance from God through the Spirit.  Put it to work.

You lied to me!  Perhaps one of the harshest sentences in any language is that one.  No one wants to be lied to, deceived, tricked or otherwise diminished by another.  The other day Rhoda and I were waiting for my daughter at her house when we noticed a hummingbird poised at my granddaughter’s basketball goal.  The goal is bright red and the little bird thought it had arrived at a great big red flower.  After a moment it was gone – after figuring out it was not a real flower.  It was one of those “ if only I had a camera” times.

Satan grows those great big red flowers for deceiving human hearts.  “…your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour…”. (I Peter 5:8 TNV).  He can also transform himself to make the real bad look real good.  “…for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light”. (2 Cor. 11:14 TNV).  Elizabeth Browning brilliantly depicted Satan’s nefarious ways in her poem, “Aurora Leigh”, when she wrote, “the Devil’s most devilish when respectable”.

How much trouble will Satan take to try to deceive us “hummingbirds”?  Whatever it takes. He only quits trying when we draw close to God.  When we stay close to the cross, he can’t come there. But, we must be ever vigilant.  In the book of Revelation, chapter 2, John says that some folks simply do not know the depths of  Satan. Yes, he is real and yes he wants “hummingbirds” to fall for the fake great big red flower.  He desires all to follow him, not God.

Watch our for the great big red flowers!  Several years ago I wrote a poem and I think it speaks to the issue of not being on guard against the wiles of Satan. In this case it ends tragically as it always will when one becomes a friend of Satan.

DONKEY FLATS

Two men met where two roads cross.

One man was old and one was young.

Where to, young sir?

Where do you go?

To Donkey Flats, sir.

Why there young man?

Men only go there when all is lost.

All is lost sir and I am lost too.

Everything is lost that I held dear.

Cards, drinking and women

Took wife, children and home.

So I’m going to Donkey Flats sir.

And I won’t be coming back.

We often describe our Christian life as a daily walk, which is an enduring example of how we dedicate every moment of every day to Christ. The good news is we walk in the light near to God which gives a guiding light and illuminates a Spiritual path to the comfort of eternal life.  To discover the true depth of this good news we need to focus on things to come. In Revelation the new heaven and the new earth are described by John:

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”….And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.  Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Revelation 21:1, 21:3, 21:23-27 (TNIV)

For believers it’s almost overwhelming to think of the day we can walk in the light of the Lord.  BUT WE ALREADY ARE!

One day long ago, my buddy and I decided to drive his old car across a dry creek bed. A fun idea turned out to be a bad idea.  Half way over, we sunk deep in the gravel.  Everything we tried to get unstuck did not work.  Idea after idea failed.  Our “horse” was stuck, for sure and for certain.  Evening was coming on and our options were walking home or going to someone’s house and calling home.  In those days there were no cell phones.  Both plans were not acceptable to a couple of enterprising fellows like us.  Either option spelled defeat.  Of course, we were, in fact, completely defeated.  By now my mom, who kept close tabs on me, even though I considered that not needful, had dispatched my dad to check on the whereabouts of her number one and only son.  And there he was, in his company car, coming over the hill with the radio antenna whipping in the wind.  My hero, then and now, and always will be.  “What are you boys doing,” he asked. We replied as manly as we could,  “We’ve tried everything and we can’t get unstuck.”  He didn’t laugh or even chastise us for what we had done as I recall.  He had a way of teaching without saying one word.  He simply said, “Take some air out of the tires”.  We did and Ronny drove out easily.  Ronny and I learned a big lesson that day, and it was more than how to get a stuck car out of a creek.

Hummingbirds regularly come to our feeder outside the window to partake of the “goodie juice” we provide.  The feeder can be seen by Rhoda and me from our respective vantage points.  We alert each other as visitors arrive, usually unexpectedly, and they leave almost the same way.  One must be on one’s toes to see them, for hummingbirds don’t stay long.

We have noticed an interesting thing about hummingbirds.  When they approach the feeder and if a wasp is there, they don’t land, or if they do and see a wasp they quickly fly away.  Wasps like hummingbird feeders too and apparently like to sting the hummingbirds, or at least the hummingbirds think they do.  When no wasps are at the feeder, the birds land and drink away.  At this very moment, a hummingbird has come for its morning refreshment and refreshed itself.  Why did it stay?  Because there was no wasp there, it had no fear at the feeder!  The hummingbirds have a rule – wasp at the feeder – fly away – wasp not at the feeder – stay and enjoy the gift of the feeder.

Why can’t people be as wise as the hummingbirds?  Some not only don’t fly , in our case, don’t run from an obvious danger.  They fall for Satan’s overtures and often do not see the spider until they’re caught firmly in the web.  Shakespeare said in his great play, The Merchant of Venice, “There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on its outward parts”.  If you have read my other works you know that I am a poet and like to use my poems to illustrate a point.  I would like to take that opportunity again in this essay and include a poem I wrote some time ago which I think is germane to today’s topic.

POKER MAN

Why do you condemn this, that’s in?

Why do you maintain it’s a sin?

Why do you stand so hard

Against a little game of cards?

You can’t prove it’s wrong to me

For I’ve closed my eyes and cannot see

That something is amiss

And I can’t hear the serpent’s hiss.

Truth is, humans have a heart of darkness.  Left to our own devices, or trusting in anything (idols) other than love from God will trap us there.   Jesus referred to this one time while he was in Jerusalem:

…from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.  All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean. Mark 7:21-23 (NIV)

Too many times we read these words and begin to pass judgment on a host of people who we just KNOW are living in darkness because they are not like us.  We are too good to live in darkness – and we must have missed it when Jesus chastised the Pharisees and teachers of the law just moments earlier.

…Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
“These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.”
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.  Mark 7:6-8 (NIV)

The Pharisees Jesus was talking to were considered the conservatives of Judaism. They held strictly to the Torah and the Talmud and were very outwardly moral. But because they trusted in the traditions of men (meaning adding to the law) they were far from him, they had hearts of darkness.

The little English sparrow is a great success story.  The insignificant little bird is actually not a sparrow, but a member of the weaver family of birds.  Brought to America, probably as a stowaway on early ships, it took hold in the New World and became one of the most dominant birds we see. Jesus also spoke of sparrows, the sparrows of Jerusalem.  He remarked in Matthew 10 that two of them sold for just a penny.  Then He makes the astounding observation that not one of them falls to the ground apart from the Father.  The implication is that not only does He know when the tiniest of His creation dies, He is there.  Jesus is making the obvious thing obvious.  If God loves His little sparrows like that, then how much more does He love His children? When we are in trouble, God comes to our rescue.  The psalmist in Psalms 102 considers himself as a sparrow alone upon a housetop facing great danger.  That’s a pretty good picture of a helpless and hapless individual. But in verse 17 he says the Almighty would regard the prayer of the destitute. No one is ever alone who has his Father.

Bottom line up front: Darkness doesn’t mean the same thing today as it did 2000 years ago.  In the first century people understood and feared real darkness so they got it when Jesus told them, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” John8:12 (NIV).  If you’re not a Christian you’re walking in darkness, put your trust in Christ who is the light.

Darkness has lost its meaning to us.  Since the discovery of electricity and invention of the light bulb the world has been on a campaign to banish darkness.  Just look around you some night:  guard lights flood every house, street lights bathe our roads, office buildings shine through the night, spot lights sweep through the air, the rooms in our houses have lights on even if we are not in them, and our retinas burn as we stare for hours into the glare of our televisions.  If you don’t believe it, you will the first time the electricity fails and the night as you know it stops…dark, dark, dark and silent…very silent.

Have you wondered about the guy wandering the highways with the  backpack and run down shoes?  Where’s he going? Where’s he from? Where’s he spending the night,? Is it in a pasture under a  tree?  And how does he  keep warm in the winter? What does he eat and where does he get his water? Who would chose a life with such self imposed deprivation? Who would chose to be homeless?

But people who would never chose to live their physical lives like that make choices  putting them in the same situation spiritually. Jude, verse 13, refers to ungodly individuals who are described as “wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever”. The most tragic thing that can  happen to a human being is to disconnect from God, in computer terminology, “disconnected from the network”.

Several years ago I observed men traveling down the Interstate Highway that cuts through our little town and  wrote a poem about a fictitious man I called “Johnee”.  I hope you enjoy it and see how it describes  an absolute disconnect.

Johnee

by David Allen

They found him last night,
wrapped in his sleeping
blanket. Out on the Interstate,
dead as a hammer, stiff as
a  board.  Died sometime
in the night, all alone, all
by himself.

No I.D., only, “ My name
is Johnee”,  tattooed on his
chest.

Where was he from? Where
was he going?

Well, he’s not going anywhere,
anymore. And somewhere, long
ago, someone bounced him on
their knee
and said,
“ Oh, Johnee, you’ll
go far in this world”.

But, this, this was too far,
Way too far.

Johnee lost his way. The way home grew so dim he could no longer see it. The darkness overcame him and he died. Johnee disconnected. Are you connected?

Listen to an audio presentation on this topic here

On May 29^th, my darling little granddaughter, Sierra died. She fought a most heinous form of cancer for eighteen months. She died bravely, the way I want to when it’s my turn. I was with her at one o’clock in the morning when she breathed her last. Those eighteen months would take a volume to chronicle which I will never do. But, through all the hours of weeping and happiness, yes, happiness, there is something that I learned that is on my heart to share. Maybe it will help you, I hope so.

People usually deal with dying and death, particularly a tragic one, in pretty much the same way. They believe that no matter the severity of the illness, prayer will more than likely change the outcome. Their core belief is that God will interdict on behalf of the sick person and heal them. Modern medicine does what was impossible only a short time ago, people live who would have died then. These medical marvels are a gift from God.

But what about those who are not healed?  And no matter how many, how long or how fervent the prayers, they die.  When this happens some will blame God for “taking” their loved one. How could an all knowing, all powerful God let theirs die and let another live? It’s a puzzle that begins to eat at the very center of the believer’s heart. Well meaning friends might say, “If we had only had more faith”, or some other horrific statement, the sick one would have been made well. This is a satanic phrase and even though well intended strikes terror deep into the soul. How guilty would you be if your loved one died because you “didn’t have enough faith?”  Yes, we should have faith, enough to move a mountain, as Jesus said, but this faith is not for physical mountains, but spiritual ones.