Overcast, or "solar hours"

"...for our good, and your glory, Lord."  -Pastor Hunter Harmon

A gray overcast day really dampens the mood of some folks; however there are others that sometimes look forward to the reflective, quiet mood of a cloudy day.

Truly, the Lord gives sunshine, but this alone does not make the flowers beautiful: they need rain.  And often, own a gray day, the plants look more luminous in the downcast surroundings, making the flowers seem brighter, or the grass greener, as if given a fresh coat of rain.

In fact, in many parts of the world, to many "sun days" or solar hours can actually harm plants.  You know this well if you've seen the heat of the Southeastern August or September slowly drain the life from plants; in the highest heat of the day, the sun wilts many plants in the Southeast United States.  Some of the gardeners would attest that once the temperatures go into triple digits, the tomato plants are basically useless.

We all need that reflective period offered by the now and then cloudy day.

In fact, for a bookworm like this author, the grayest days offer a chance to flip on a light in the den and read a good book in quiet.

As Solomon said, "it rains on the just and the unjust."

Psalm 46 speaks of turbulence and desolation, and the classic Christian obstinance.

"we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the welling thereof."  -Ps 46:2,3 KJV

"With God on our side, how irrational would fear be! Where he is all power is, and all love, why therefore should we quail?  Though the earth be removed, though the basis of all visible things should be so convulsed as to be entirely changed."  -CH Spurgeon

"When, however, the sacred poet says, Will not fear, he is not to be understood as meaning that the minds of the godly are exempt from all solicitude or fear, as if they were destitute of feeling, for there is a great difference between insensibility and the confidence of faith."  -John Calvin

"'Though the earth be moved, and the mountains fall into the midst of the sea', are hyperbolic modes of expression, but they nevertheless denote a revolution, and turning upside down of the whole world."  -John Calvin

"Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth.

He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder, he burneth the chariot in the fire.

Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth."  -Ps 46:8-10 KJV

Meme: Psalm 46

 

Give peace to those that hope so much for it.(Isaiah 58 KJV)

"Wherefore have thou fasted, say they, and thou seest not?  wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?  Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours.

Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high.

Is it such a fast that I have chosen?  a day for a man to afflict his soul?  is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?  wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?"

God is perfect peace.

All else is hope for gain or dissipation of the spirit.

"your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sin have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.  For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness."

with a servant's heart

He said a few words to the reclining priest, kissed his feet, and left a tract in his weakened hand, a good word to be looked at later.

Help us all, Lord, to become mere humble servants in this land of celebrity and power struggles.  Just as Jesus washed the Apostles' feet in a show of respect, friendship, and servitude, let us too hold true.

Although though we judge the reluctant prophet....

"We may judge Jonah for running from God, but we often do the same thing.  We flee from what the Father commands because we want to be in control of our lives and we want our lives to be comfortable.  We may outright disobey, or we may take a more subtle route--avoiding Him and claiming ignorance of what He wants.  But understand, neither strategy releases us from the responsibility of obeying Him, which is why He sends contrary circumstances to get us back on the right path."

-Charles Stanley

The Wilderness......

Two examples give us cause to consider God's creation as a revelation of the divine.

*The Burning Bush/The Stone that spewed water.

This was one of the manifestations that was clear to Moses as he led the Israelites through the Wilderness.

*The appearance of the serpent in the Garden.

We must remember that Christ, too, was tempted in the Wilderness, promised all the kingdoms of Earth if he would just change his allegiance.

"He who made kittens, put snakes in the grass."

"It rains on the just and the unjust."

We are helpless but to accept his plan and heed redeeming grace when we come upon it.  In our daily walks, there are a thousand opportunities to do or say something encouraging, to do something that goes against blatant self-interest.

Even the pagans of Rome believed that humanity fit together like a puzzle, and that man had that social element inborn.

We were meant to encourage our fellow, in some way shape or form, hopefully for the mutual good of all.

 

A little moment of stillness.

It was always going to some time or place, and never an empty moment for herself: always something for others.  Be it a new relationship, or one of the toxic old relationships, she never had that little moment of stillness.

Never the time.  Never the right time for a moment to oneself, maybe.

Many say God is a "little voice" that speaks to us in those empty, still moments; while yet there are others that believe God speaks to us in the world around us.

We could make time for that little voice to guide us.

Nevertheless, in her life, she had gnashed her teeth and went about doings, but always God was there.  Would she listen?  Would she care?

Being a believer enters the new believer into a relationship.

Love gives and forgives, and a relationship, sometimes love licenses us to demand too much of our partners.  In other words, love is a battlefield, or love is sacrificial.

Pick your saying.

They say the Christian walk is a relationship.

However, long before any of us were born, God gave us so much, already.  And then of course, he gave us the most precious coin of all in the form of His son.

Human love, however, is more transactional, sometimes, it seems, as we try to balance things like a checking account balance, it terms of who earned what good deed or favor, and who did not earn the same.

"I wouldn't do that if she wouldn't do it for me, in return."

The relationship with God goes far beyond that transactional model of relationships.

*He always cares.

*God is always there.

*You can never do more for God than what he has already done for you.

Her void grew.

For most of her life she had been disappointed by the people around her.  Parents.  Lovers.  Friends.

She shut them out one by one, and became jaded to human companionship.  She thought she would be happier by not having to deal with those failures and disappointments.

Indeed, if there were no one around, then logic dictates, no one could fail or disappoint her.

But all that bitterness inside her grew and fed itself, as if it were a living thing, itself.

She had lost all her sources of joy.

We are called into companionship, into fellowship, not only with the Lord, but his creation: Man.

In becoming more like Christ, in trying to follow his example in our daily walk, we can't forget his words of forgiveness.  He forgave us.

He forgave us ALL.  Therefore, we, in being more like Christ, should forgive to some extent in our own walks, even while protecting our feelings and preserving our judgement.

God thoughts and our thoughts.

 

Sin-debt and the camouflaged butterfly: the story of one dishonered soldier.

He had suffered a moment of cowardice during the Iraq Conflict, subsequently went AWOL.  He was, inside himself, embarrassed, despite the fact that his commanders took a rosier view of the matter, and granted him an Honorable Discharge.

He had, due to logistics, missed out on the usual starting of a family, but in time, he took up with a fatherless family and loved them as his own.  He had found a group of people near his same point in the path of life, but a group that needed a father and husband, when he so much felt the need to be a father and a husband.

The sin-debt of cowardice bore down on him like the massive pressure on a giant dam, as of thousands of pounds, or pounds uncounted, constantly pushing against the earthen wall.

But something unexpected happened.

Through regular old toil and the odd moments with his loved ones, in a thousand little ways, he worked his penance, as if were a Catholic instead of a Southern Baptist.

The sin-debt weighed on him all his life, such that he didn't notice that one day, his spirit had went from caterpillar to butterfly.  The sin-debt was gone, but maybe it was his own consciousness of the prior sin-debt, just a bad memory, that kept him pushing forward in his life.

The man that heeded the birdsong.

 

A man was concentrating hard, prayerfully concerned about his family. There were five of them, he and his family, all at various stages of life. Like anyone else, the family was not so different from others in the sense that they each had struggles of their own.

He was reaching out to God with his heart and mind, hoping for solace, for not only himself, in his concerns, but for the his family: the object of his concerns.

In hopes of relief from his weary mind, he went into his yard and walked around in the morning light.

The Bible tells us that there is nothing better than to lay down one’s life for his friends, but here he has invested, not his life, but his emotional well-being, leading him to a perplexed countenance. But here, too, he was prayerful and carried his cares to the Lord.

Suddenly there came a bird to nearby tree branch in the man’s yard, and the bird sang briefly.

“There you are Lord”, said the man.

Lost in culture and centuries of enforced church doctrine, is the concept of different levels of heaven. Peter and Paul each had writings about varying levels of heaven, and again, today, the concept is lost, exorcised from the consciousness of the church.

In Paul’s writing he noted a man caught up in the “third heaven”, who wasn’t sure at the time if he were alive or dead. He was having an experience, likely in the province of the mind or soul. Paul notes this as an experience of the Gospel and the Living God. Consider, as a side note, that this was before clearly established church doctrine, during a time when varying ideas circulated, even before some of the infamous heretics of the early church era.

Calling it being “caught up in the third heaven”, the text indicates an experience of God, a mystical experience that befuddled the mind, but encompassed and utilized the spirit—the person seeming out of body, and possibly even unaware of time and space. This is just as Thomas Merton defines Christian Mysticism as trying to reach to God with the spirit, instead of the mind.

Just as the world gets in the way of some good deeds and good intentions, for whatever reason, established doctrine, centuries ago, stamped-out some of those stray concepts. Here we are told so much in the so-called “secular world”, via capitalism and cultural items shared with various religions and forms of governments, that a thoughtful person can scarcely catch a moment of reverence of God, beyond an hour or two in a church service.

Doctrine is, at best, a pathway to God, but at worst it can seem like a locked doorway that blocks us from egress towards God, locking us into ritual and rote, “vain repetitions” more than the experiential Joy and Peace that can be accessed by earnest religion. We could become quite lost in all the rules and minutia that, while living a good life, we do not live our best life, in the full light of realizing the Lord’s grace.

And even that much can become empty, or even an object or dread, perhaps even boring as the believer goes through repetitive motions of corporate worship without any inner-prayer life, without the spirit or the consciousness taking time for reverence or communion with God.

Think on, pray on, lest we become like Paul, sinking below the waves.

Like that concerned man in the lines above, we look to creation, sometimes, natural formations for a revelation of God.

We know God to be the chief architect, the grand designer and the physical builder of everything that is. As science marches on, men observe and research ever-increasing layers of complexity, and even the most learned of them marvel at God’s handiwork.

a prince of slaves

Facing a royally decreed execution, even as an infant, because, after all, sometimes even a scrap of an idea can be dangerous, and the world can be lifted with a mere lever and fulcrum.

He was deposited in a basket and sent forth in the river.  Thrown aside, not thoughtlessly, but knowing full well, his mother knowing, that if he stayed there at her loving bosom, he was done for.

As if in the hand of God himself, that basket, sent forth down the river, as if the river were time itself.

That idea would grow and become dangerous, the mustard seed of faith, later becoming enslaved, and then ultimately delivering his people out of captivity into wealth and plenty, the Promised Land.

An imperfect vessel tasked to deliver to the Chosen the words of God himself, though Moses was awkward in speech.

At many times in life, are we not also imperfect vessels, and do we not also have the believer's ordination from God Himself?  Moses was a commoner, then the supposed son of a princess, then a slave, and then a fugitive, and finally a conqueror and a messenger of Yahweh.

At many times in life, do we not congratulate ourselves, and lose that servant mentality?  Moses himself hanged tough through the wilderness for decades seemingly endless until the dream of a homeland was realized by the Chosen.

At many times in life, do we not lose touch with that heart/mind/spirit compass that is supposed to be guiding us?

His entire life was so improbable, and yet, look to all the good that was accomplished, and centuries later, still an example, still pointing towards the love of God, shining a beam of light on Freedom Theology.