The Wonder of It All

I am reading through the Bible this year, and trying a new approach. Usually I have done the plan that has some Old Testament, a psalm or two, a proverb or two, and some New Testament every day. The end is rough (prophets and Revelation for a few weeks), but the rest of the time it's a good mix. This year I am doing it chronologically, so Old Testament only for months and months, and not even many psalms yet. A benefit I am seeing by hanging out in the Old Testament is that God is helping me to see how radical and strange and amazing Jesus was.

A few weeks ago, in Deuteronomy, I read these verses: 

 You shall have a place outside the camp, and you shall go out to it.  And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement.  Because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you. (Deut. 23:12-14)

Because God was so holy, the people were commanded to cover up all of their bathroom activity so that the Lord would not "see anything indecent among you and turn away from you." Rule after rule after rule in Leviticus and Deuteronomy about how to do everything, and the consequences if you do it wrong, much of it hinging on the holiness of God. People back then, I would assume, were probably a lot less squeamish than we are about personal hygiene and dirt and blood and all that "ick" of human life that was much more front and center thousands of years ago. Yet, down to the bathroom, there were directions about how to act to honor God.

No wonder the Jews accused Jesus of blasphemy. Imagine your whole life's context/story of God being how you should be oh-so-careful to try and be holy for the Lord, and then comes a man telling you He IS God. The God whose eyes were shielded from a latrine is now walking among and living with everyday people. Jesus fully participated in all human activity. He was a baby. A kid. I work with young children. They, also , are not very squeamish about basic bodily functions. He was a teenager. A man. He spoke with, laughed with, touched unclean people all the time.

Reading the story from the modern vantage point, we don't get it--at least I don't. I have intellectually seen the divide, but am just now getting a teeny glimpse of how revolutionary Jesus was. He was a game-changer. He broke all of those "don't touch, don't look, don't listen" rules. The Pharisees and other religious leaders weren't just mad because Jesus threatened their power. They couldn't even comprehend Who He was, or that God would act in such a way.

I will never be able to fully grasp how radical and amazing the coming of Jesus was. What I desire is to understand more in my heart why God acted in such a crazy, upside-down way. The God whose prophets told people to hide the latrine left His throne to be one of us. Never will any of us comprehend how Jesus, "who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." (Philippians 2:6-7) bound up His deity into flesh.  The God of the universe, who spoke it into existence and sustains the earth and all that is in it voluntarily came to earth as a man. 

Why? The most simple and most profound answer lies in that God loves us. We hear that so much, but understand it so little. He wanted to be with us. He wanted us to be able to be with Him forever. He became Emmanuel, God with us, so that we could be with Him. Even the disciples who knew Him best didn't really get it, not until after the resurrection. My prayer is that I, and you, and, really, everyone everywhere, will get, really, really GET that Jesus walking among us and dying on the cross for us all boils down to God's love for us and desire to be with us.

Missing Jesus

Pretty humbling to have a blog centered on hearing from the Lord and then have no posts for over a month.  Yikes.  Sometimes it's like that, though, at least for me. I'm still reading my Bible and still praying (though I've been missing more days than I like to), but I'm not hearing as clearly as I sometimes do.  When that happens, I try to acknowledge it, bring that concern to God, and just keep walking in obedience the best that I can. 

Last Sunday my pastor at LifeSpring Community Church was talking about Jesus appearing to people after the resurrection.  He was sharing from John 21.  Verse one says that "After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he revealed himself in this way."  Then, in verse four, we find out that " Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus."

Jesus had already appeared to the disciples about a week earlier, in the upper room (John 20).  He had stood among them, talked to them, shown them the nail holes in His hands and the wound in His side.  Yet, seven days later, the disciples don't recognize Jesus even as they see Him and He speaks to them.  Not until Jesus re-creates a moment from their past (a miraculous catch of fish) does John realize that the man on the shore is Jesus.

I am often comforted by the disciples, because I, too, have seen Jesus at work on one day, and then missed Him just a short time later.  This blog absence when it seems that I am not hearing from the Lord is one such instance.  I know that He is speaking, but somehow I am not hearing His voice.  There are many reasons why I may be hard of hearing. . . sin, impatience, lack of time with God, or an incorrect perspective, just to name a few.  A recent example of the last:  In the past few years I have been braving the dangerous and unsure waters of online dating.  Goal:  a godly husband.  Two years into it:  No husband, thereby causing me to view this venture as unsuccessful and lacking God's blessing.  Revelation upon waking up Saturday morning:  God has blessed this journey mightily, though not in the way that I envisioned.   No, I'm not married yet, but I have met some good men, learned a ton about myself, and had my faith strengthened hugely by having to trust the Lord even more directly in this arena. 

Even as I peer uncertainly from my boat, wondering who that man is on the shore and what he is doing, Jesus is busy directing my net and providing me with exactly the food that I need.  My prayer is that I recognize His hand and hear His voice faster and more clearly every day.

Just Follow the Directions

Yesterday was Easter. You'd think this would be a resurrection post. You would be wrong! Always out of step with the mainstream, I have been thinking about the days in between Good Friday and Easter Morning. In Luke 23, the end of verse 56 tells what the disciples and the women did after the crucifixion:

On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

Luke's account is the only one which directly states this (I looked). It's a little snippet of a verse, but with big implications.

Jesus' followers had just witnessed his agonizing death. Some had run away, some had betrayed him, all had forgotten His warning to them that this very thing would happen. They were probably some combination of dazed, hurt, despairing, numb, angry, frightened, and lost. What should they do? What could they do? What was even going on?

Many of us know those feelings. While I have never had a day as bad as that, I have had days of numbness, despair, sadness, helplessness. I have had days of not knowing what to do, or where to turn, or how to fix anything. My nature is to want to solve my problem--what steps are there to take, what verses are there to memorize, what counsel is there to seek? And there are times when all of those solutions are valid. However, there are also times when we can do nothing.

"On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment." Good Jews, the disciples and Jesus' other followers had little choice about what to do. The Sabbath was designed for rest. They couldn't go to the tomb and finish preparing the body. They couldn't run around and make a plan. They could only obey the commandment that they knew, to keep the Sabbath.

There are times when I need to just take a breath, stop trying to solve my problems, and obey the commands I am sure of: Love the Lord your God with all your mind and strength and heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. Seek God. Help the poor. Listen for the Lord's voice. That's all. There will be time enough the next day to go to the tomb. Observing the Sabbath forced Jesus' followers to wait (yes, the dreaded "w" word) until the next day to make a battle plan, to enact a strategy, to pick up the pieces. The Lord was using that day to complete His awesome work of resurrection and salvation. Once the women were released to the tomb on Easter morning, God's glory was ready to be revealed. Everything had changed!

God uses those days in between crucifixion (of desires, of hopes, of dreams) and resurrection to ready us to see His glory and resurrection power. We need only walk in faith and follow the Lord's commands.

Idle Words

I'm still here! I continue to read the Bible every day, and pray, but I don't feel very connected to the Lord. Today I read in Luke 24 about the time in between the crucifixion and the resurrection, when the disciples were in despair. The women go to the tomb to anoint the body, but instead of a corpse, find angels (Luke 24:5-7):

And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise."

So the women run back and share this good news with the other disciples, and this was their reaction (Luke 24:10-12):

Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.

The women burst into the upper room to impart the words of hope from the angels, but the message seemed to the men an "idle tale", and they didn't believe. The words "idle tale" jumped out at me this morning, because that is how scripture has seemed to me lately--idle words. The opposite of idle is "at work", or, even "powerful". The words in the Bible that I have been reading have seemed devoid of power. I know that they are true intellectually, but the heart connection hasn't been there. Apparently the disciples knew that feeling.

What did Peter do with this "idle tale", however? He ran to the tomb, the last place where he thought Jesus might be, and looked for Him. Interestingly, Peter did not at that moment see the risen Lord. He saw the abandoned grave clothes, and "marveled" at seeing them, and then went home. Extrapolating to myself, I need to keep looking for Jesus and to go back to the last place that I heard Him speak, and see what He wants to show me there. It may not be an epiphany just yet, but maybe a glimmer of hope that God's Word is not, in fact, idle.