24/7—The Life of Continual Christianity

I Thessalonians 5:16-18

There is a movie called “The Glass Slipper” starring Leslie Caron, co-starring Amanda Blake (“Kitty” of television’s “Gunsmoke”) as one of the mean step-sisters, and Estelle Winwood as the scene-stealing fairy godmother.  Yes, it is a version of the Cinderella story that I saw recently.  Winwood always seemed to somehow make sense with her often clever and witty but understated observations, eventually guiding “Cinder” Ella to make the right choices.  Other times the old godmother seemed to say the craziest random things, such as—

“Cinderella, that’s a nice word.  I like it.  I also like windowsill, elbow—elll-booow, apple dumpling—that’s a comical one—ap-ple dum-pling, and pickle relish.  That has a nice snap to it:  picklerelish!”

I, too, like words, learning (and trying to remember) new ones and discovering the differences between similar words, such as “continuously” and “continually,” which I used to use interchangeably until I knew the difference and found a trick for remembering it.  (Continuously means steadily ongoing while continually means repeating over and over, like the repeating Ls in the word.)  In any case, both share the same root, to continue, and that consistency is one of the main spokes of being in God’s wheel, errr, will.

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”  Most of the time, one will focus on the verbs—rejoice, pray, and thank—as one certainly should.  Let us not overlook the frequency, duration, and universality regarding these activities—always, ceaselessly, and everything.  Each of these three actions is an outward expression of an internal response to an external condition. 

We rejoice in the manifested goodness of God in our lives, though we don’t always recognize Him as the source.  The greater our appreciation of all He does for us, whether it is big or seemingly small, the greater our inner joy is and our outward expression (rejoicing) should be about all God gives us and does for us.  Thus we shortchange Him of His due glory and ourselves of joy when we fail to rejoice in His blessings.

We pray for many things, from healing of the sick to a good deal on a new car, from the salvation of lost loved ones to good weather for an upcoming family outing.  Prayer reminds us that we are essentially powerless to control most of the things around us.  This humility, this powerlessness, must compel us to pray without ceasing—what other recourse do we have other than to try to muddle along feebly in our own strength.  Whatever the case, God is pleased when bring all of our needs and cares to Him.

We thank God for everything He introduces into our lives.  This is not the same as rejoicing, which might be considered more observable by others.  Rather, gratitude is more God-directed, I think.  It is not the flippant TGIF mentality but a genuine and personal expression of thanks to God for each thing He chooses bless, challenge, or otherwise use to bring us closer to Him.

None of us is to the point of being perfectly continuous in our Christian living as we might wish we were, but a 24/7 recognition of God’s grace and goodness should help us to become more diligent in our practice of continual rejoicing, prayer, and thanksgiving.

Choosing Blindfolds and Earplugs, Jeremiah 5:20-31

How great could life be? 

Have you ever played “If Only”?  It is a game of regrets, such as, “If only I had studied more…” or “If only I hadn’t wasted so much time…” or “If only I had said…” or maybe an “If only I hadn’t…” or three might make our list as well.  Each of us has our own If Only list.  What’s on yours?

God’s people in the Old Testament must have written themselves quite a list!  In our text, God says (abridged for space), “Hear this now, O foolish people…who have eyes and see not and who have ears and hear not…this people has a defiant and rebellious heart…they do not say in their heart, ‘Let us now fear the Lord our God…’ your sins have withheld good things from you.”

How great could their lives have been had they not chosen blindfolds and earplugs?  They departed from God by covering their eyes and not seeing the many rich though sometimes routine daily blessings of God in their lives and demonstrated in Creation.  They stopped up their ears to shut out His words of guidance, instruction, love, and warning, shutting out his the effects of His Word in their lives...or so they must have thought.

See, just as obedience begets God’s blessings, disobedience engenders its own consequences.  It doesn’t really matter whether we believe it or not.  In their case, they would not get to enjoy some of the good things that God had in store for them (v. 25).   Not only didn’t they get them but they didn’t even know what they were missing, how greatly their lives could have been further enriched.  Ignorance, alas, is not always bliss.

Not content to suffer the consequences of their own sin, but they exulted in the sin of others.  At the end of the chapter, God says, “The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule by their own power; and My people love to have it so.”   

New York Yankee great Mickey Mantle won a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  He was recognized early as a player whose potential was essentially limitless though his career was hindered by bad knees.  NY manager Casey Stengel said, “I never saw a player who had greater promise.”    In a pre-steroid era, the 5’11” 195-pound outfielder hammered 536 home runs over his 18-year career, some over 500 feet.  However, his penchant for alcohol would help to shorten his brilliant career and his life. (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/memories/1995/95pass6.htm)

Near the end of his life, Mantle, whose father, uncles, and a son died at earlier ages than he, said, “If I’d known I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.”  If only.  The popular baseball idol, upon assessing his life choices, advised his admirers, “Don’t be like me.”  For his funeral, Mantle requested that Roy Clark sing his poignant 1969 hit, “Yesterday, When I Was Young.”  With lyrics packed full of regrets, this song is certainly the national anthem for the game of If Only. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEY4LxORCeo)

While it is a game that can certainly dominate a person, the way to win at If Only is to reach the end of life having collected as few regrets as possible.  Fear God and eschew evil.  Influence others to do the same.  Strip yourself of blindfolds and bask in the goodness of God, praising Him for each blessing great and small.  Put away the earplugs that block His voice from teaching you.

Only then will you know how great your life can truly be!

2 x 2 = 1, Jeremiah 3:25

As my friend and former coworker Stacie used to remind me from time to time, “I wasn’t exactly president of the math club.” Frankly, neither was I. The good news about relationships is this—you don’t have to be. You only have to remember one equation to restore and maintain them: 2x2=1.

I never cease to marvel at the Israelites. They walk with God and prosper, then they go off to do their own thing and suffer. They lose wars, they suffer famine, they are taken captive, and after a period of time—I don’t mean hours or days, I mean years and decades—they finally figure it out and get their hearts right with God and abandon the idolatry and other sins and reestablish God to His rightful place in their individual and collective lives…but that is not the end.

The pattern recurs throughout the historical narrative of the Old Testament of the Bible. They walk with God and prosper; they turn away from Him and suffer. Second verse, same as the first. Walk with God and enjoy His blessings; abandon Him in exchange for the false gods of the cultures surrounding them. Instead of addressing the cultures and introducing them to Jehovah God, they often adapted to those cultures and collected their ungodly habits and practices.

But that is not the point of this piece. Perhaps another time. In fact, I am pretty sure of it.

The pendulumic swings of the Israelites in relationship to God are not altogether foreign to us. We often experience the same kind of near-and-far in our relationship with Him. After all, we’re only human.

Whenever the Jews did return and right their spiritual ship, there were two elements that were necessary to ignite the process of relationship restoration. Jeremiah 3:25 says,

“We lie down in our shame, and our reproach covers us. For we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers. From our youth even to this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.”

Here we read of their humility (personal recognition of their offenses and their wrongness) and confession (specifically identifying their shortcoming to the one offended). These two elements are necessary to make forgiveness and restoration possible.

God being God, He is in any relationship the Constant that never changes, never errs. When two imperfect people are in conflict, restoration requires these same two elements on the part of both parties every time the relationship is broken.

Few are the conflicts I have ever witnessed in which one party was completely at fault and the other was wholly holy. It almost never happens. Even if it begins that way, often it can be that the initially innocent party reacts wrongly and that sends the relationship spiraling further downward. Mr. I-Didn’t-Do-Anything-Wrong and Mr. I-Won’t-Forgive are doomed to defeat.

However, if two parties in a conflict implement these two actions—understanding that their behavior or attitude was wrong and confessing their specific offenses to one another, enabling mutual forgiveness to take place—they will find that their relationship can again experience unity. Two times two will equal one.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Jeremiah 5:1-3, 12-19

Perhaps you have heard that expression—“Be careful what you wish for--you just might get it!” It is spoken of one or to one who longs for something desirable but that might actually be unknowingly harmful to him. He sees only the short-term benefit (if there is one) and not the long-term consequences.

Sin is most often that way—showing us the glamor but not the not the gutter, teasing us with the fame but not the fallout, pushing the pride but neglecting to mention the subsequent fall. Satan is the master of the bait-and-switch tactic, advertising pleasure but selling pain.

In Jeremiah, Judah is so wicked that even one righteous man cannot be found. (Does that sound familiar? Yes, it does. It sounds a Lot familiar. It was Lot who was challenged to find a few good men in order to spare Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction and he couldn’t even find one. (The rest is history.)

See what God says of Judah in the intervening verses, 4-11: “their transgressions are many; their backslidings have increased”…”Your children have forsaken Me”…”they committed adultery…in harlots’ houses.” That’s quite a blotter full of offenses.

The kicker comes in verse 19, which would be kind of funny if it wasn’t so tragic: “And it will be when you say, ‘Why does the Lord our God do all these things to us?’ then you shall answer them, ‘Just as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve aliens in a land that is not yours.’”

In essence, God says, “You want to worship the false gods of other nations? Hey, that’s great. Have I got a surprise for you! You’re taking a trip. You will get to visit the lands of the people whose gods you worship! ‘Visit’ is maybe not the right word for captivity but you get the idea. You just keep doing what you do--I’ll make all the arrangements.”

God was not being cantankerous or capricious in dispatching Judah; it was a classic example of cause-and-effect. When Judah repeatedly chose to reject God, He merely gave them enough leash to continue following their own path, which led them into captivity.

Likewise, when we embrace our ways instead of God’s, unpleasant consequences are likely to follow eventually. I say “eventually” because they are not always immediate, which provides a bit of false security itself. In our drive-by need-it-yesterday mentality, we expect God’s crushing blow to occur right away and when it doesn’t, we wrongly assume that we have “gotten over” on Him.

God’s patience should not be misinterpreted as neglect. Looking back, we can likely see many instances when we might have taken one of the many exit ramps from Our Will to His Will but sped ahead recklessly toward our own preferred destination.

The challenge is to realize that we’ve missed a turn and be looking ahead for an exit to get back on His road as soon as possible before our disobedience leads to a fiery wreck in which we may not be the only ones to get burned.

A Distasteful Mirepoix, Psalm 123:1-4

Any cook—or aficionado of the Food Network—knows
a mirepoix (meer’ pwah) when he sees one. Onions, celery, and carrots are the vegetables that comprise the most common mirepoix and these diced vegetables provide the flavor base for many different soups. There are regional variations in different styles of cooking, such as the “holy trinity” of Creole cuisine, which substitutes bell peppers for carrots.

Not so tasty is the trio of sinful morsels we find in this short chapter. This mirepoix is one of scorn, laziness, and pride. They don’t exactly rate up there with murder, theft, rape, adultery, deceit, blasphemy, or any of the other “big” sins about which we often think. They are more attitudinal, even somewhat respectable by comparison. Yet, they are bad enough, so bad that the psalmist pleads for mercy from God because

“…we are exceedingly filled with contempt. Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorn of those who are at ease, With the contempt of the proud.” (v. 3, 4)

Contempt/scorn is the attitude that treats others as inferior or worthless,
kind of the flip side of pride or conceit, the attitude that causes a man to
believe and act as if he is superior to others. I have also witnessed those who are lazy or “at ease” express scorn for those who actually get up, go to work, and try to achieve in life.

While this mirepoix of attitudes may be viewed by some as harmless or “victimless,” there is really no such thing as the so-called “victimless” crime or sin. The attitudes we chose send messages to others about our view of them and can be very hurtful indeed.

May we not neglect to seek God’s mercy and forgiveness for even the little, respectable sins we have allowed to become habits in our lives, for this mirepoix of contempt, laziness, and pride are certain to leave a bad taste in the mouths of others in our life, hindering our effectiveness to minister to them as we ought.

The Return to the Tower

Holy Hannah! It has been since 2008 since I posted anything on my blog!? Where does the time go?!?

I am alive and mostly well, and have probably three years of bloggable thoughts saved up. I mean, three years of Quiet Time stuff, the Daughter's entire high school years, WOW Bike Trips, various rants and tirades of my very own, and who-knows-what else.

Recently, I have felt challenged to resume here at The Observation Tower. I don't know how often, hopefully at least once a week. My life is not so exciting that it probably would bear anything more often than that. I guess one of the reasons for my prolonged absence has been the sense of not having anything to write that would be of interest to anyone else. Another may be that I might write something by which someone would choose to take too personally.

However, as I said, I have felt led to resume blogging and so I will take another turn at it. You may read and agree, disagree, or just simply begin to think about something differently than before. Feel free to comment, but absolutely no pottymouthing please (or whatever the written equivalent of -mouthing would be).

Warm, loving comments are wonderful. Disagreeing but civil comments are welcome, but realize that I will probably choose not to engage in any kind of argumentation with you if you disagree. I hardly have enough time to get the original post up.

Whatever winds up here, your choice to take it personally is a mistake. Besides, it's just an observation.