Down where we live it doesn’t snow much. When it does, we love it, well, most of us. The kids hope with the snow comes a snow day away from school. Most folks never lose their wonder at snow’s beauty and its nature of covering the most unsightly sights. Even a junkyard takes on a beauty not its own when snow falls and covers the old cars. Snow! Snow is a transformer of the ugly to the beautiful.
Lewis Carroll had Alice in “Through the Looking Glass” describe snow to her kitty this way.
“Do you hear the snow against the windowpanes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if someone was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, and that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ’Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’ And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about – whenever the wind blows – oh, that’s very pretty!” cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands. “And I do so wish it was true! I’m sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.”
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.
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.
Listen to an audio presentation on this topic here
On May 29th, 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.
Two lessons for Christians today:
1. Jesus DID exactly what he said he would do
2. Jesus WILL DO exactly what he said he will do
…but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
“Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” John 20:11-17 (NIV)
Mary should have known. Jesus had driven out her demons and she was with him to the end and heard what he had said. She was the first one at the tomb the morning Jesus arose and she didn’t even remember His words when the body wasn’t there, thinking instead someone must have moved his body.
