Finger Swipe

Tuesday 1/29/2013 5:38 AM

The ease with which information can be accessed in our modern world is mind-boggling.  Whereas in the past one had to go to a library, search a card catalog, access stacks of reference materials and pore over reams of paper, now we simply make a search on a mobile device, touch the screen with a finger and we have nearly instant access to everything.  With a simple swipe of a finger one can run complicated machinery to accomplish almost any task.

Today I read Luke 11:14-28, an account of Jesus driving a demon out of a man who was mute.  Some in the crowd of onlookers suggested he was driving out the demon by Beelzebul, the prince of demons.  Jesus makes the familiar comment about a divided house being unable to stand and then asks by whose power they drive the demons out.  Finally in verse 20 Jesus says, “But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

That image of Jesus driving out demons with the swipe of a finger stuck with me this morning.  Sometimes my life seems beset with insurmountable problems; I face indomitable foes or irresistible temptations.  I huddle in the corner paralyzed by fear and a feeling of inadequacy.  Any idea of God using an impotent soldier like me to further his kingdom is out of the question.  I need to remember that what I view as insurmountable, indomitable and irresistible, God can remove with the swipe of his finger.  I need to live with the confidence that he will do so.

Feces Occurs

Saturday 1/26/2013 7:45 AM

Depression courses through the sapwood of my family tree.  I have observed its debilitating effects upon others but I have not experienced them myself.  According to others, whom I love and know me well, I do have a tendency to look at the dark side of life rather than the sunny side.  However, the events of this past week are not merely the conjuring of my negative imagination; they are real and devastating.

Tuesday night a forty-seven year old colleague of mine in the math department at Cerritos College died, shocking the entire school community and devastating his students.  Thursday a friend told me that a young woman from my church congregation has been diagnosed with liver cancer.  She is married with a son in elementary school.  Thursday evening I also discovered that my mom had been the victim of a scam and, were it not for the quick actions of my brother, would have lost thousands of dollars.  Then yesterday I discovered that another young woman I know found a lump on her breast.  Further testing is needed but the initial results seem to indicate there is a 70-80% chance that it is cancer.

I am healthy and well with the exception of an occasional cold or bout with the flu.  My wife and I have a healthy, loving relationship.  If an unbiased person looked at my life they would think I lead a charmed life and, from my perspective, they would be right.  I am very thankful for my health and for the healthy relationships I have with my wife, my children, their spouses and my grandchildren.  But last night I found myself weeping as I sat in my bathroom, overwhelmed with the events of the week and overcome with emotion as I considered the sadness, pain, disappointment and darkness that are being experienced by those I love.

For my devotions this week I have been reading Psalm 139.  This morning verses 7-12 were meaningful for me.  “Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.  If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”  It is easy to experience God’s presence and blessing when one leads a charmed life but when one enters the depths and the darkness it seems as if God is absent and his blessing nonexistent.  This verse reminds me that God enters the depth and the darkness with me; bringing light and hope.

As I consider my grieving friends and family I want to reach out with encouraging words.  But too often words seem trite and insincere, especially when coming from someone who, from outward appearances, is not in a similar place.  But I do want them to experience the love and presence of God referred to in Psalm 139.  Another part of my assigned reading today is Ephesians 3.  The familiar words of verses 16-19 is my prayer for them today.  “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Mud Bath

Friday 1/18/2013 3:21 AM

For whatever reason last year I did not have my devotions as regularly as I have in the past and I felt somewhat distanced from God, unaware of his working in my life and in the world around me.  This year I am making an effort to be more consistent and I feel as if I am more aware of the world around me and of God’s presence with me.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty writes about this awareness in her book Poustinia–Christian Spirituality of the East for Western Man.  She writes, “You should be more aware of God than anyone else, because you are carrying within you this utterly quiet and silent chamber.  Because you are more aware of God, because you have been called to listen in your inner silence, you can bring God to the street, the party, the meeting, in a very special and powerful way.  The power is God’s but you have contributed yourself.  God has asked you and chosen you to be the carrier of that silent place within yourself.  In a manner of speaking, nothing has changed in your daily schedule.  So you attend all the meetings as before, knowing in deep faith and its accompanying darkness that you are bringing Christ, the Christ who prayed to his Father all night, alone on the mountain.  You bring the Christ who stole away from the crowds to pray.  You are now carrying him back to the crowds.  So you should be ‘with’ the crowds.”

There are two things that stick out to me as I read her writing this morning.  The first is that the power at work in the world is God’s power but I contribute myself.  God is working in the world to reconcile it to himself.  I can choose to participate in this work if I align my heart with his heart, my vision with his vision and my will with his will.  The best way to become aligned with the purposes and the work of God is to spend time with him so that I know his thoughts and so that I can anticipate his actions.  The second thing I noticed is that in order to be effective in this work of God I need to be with the crowds.  There is a tendency for me, and others in the Christian community, to live in isolation, wallowing in the soothing mud of intimacy with God as if I were enjoying a day at the spa.  God reconciled with Jacob by wrestling with him throughout the night.  Today he still chooses to wrestle with people who are sullied by sin.  If I am to be a part of his work I will roll in the mud with him as he wrestles with humanity.  The choice I get to make every day is whether to stay in the soothing mud of the spa for my own benefit or to roll in the mud of a broken world, joining God in his reconciling work.

Beams of Love

Monday 1/14/2013 4:10 AM

Today is the first day of the spring semester and mine begins with a class at 7:00 AM.  I turned to the new week of my devotional book and the theme for the week is service.  The opening benediction is especially fitting today.  “Heavenly Father, as the day dawns and calls me to my labors I ask you to enable me to gladly do the work to which you beckon me.  May I do it as a servant of Christ doing the will of God from my heart.”  That is indeed my prayer today and every day.

My assigned reading includes Luke 10, which begins with these words, “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.”  If they were welcomed into a town they had very simple instructions, “Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near you.’”  I’m not exactly sure what healing the sick looks like when I am teaching math to college students but many of them need a loving touch after experiencing the pain and injustice that they experience regularly in the course of their daily lives.  I pray that I can provide that loving touch.

My devotional reading today includes a quote from William Blake, “We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.”  The context of his quote implies that the beams of God’s love are irradiating us and he suggests that many people try to protect themselves from such.  When I read the quote I did not first think of a beam of energy but a beam that supports some sort of structure.  When I look at the world with the eyes of God’s love I often have experiences similar to one described by Dorothy Day.  “Suddenly I remembered coming home from a meeting in Brooklyn many years ago, sitting in an uncomfortable bus seat facing a few poor people.  One of them, a downcast, ragged man, suddenly epitomized for me the desolation, the hopelessness of the destitute, and I began to weep.  I had been struck by one of those ‘beams of love,’ wounded by it in a most particular way.”  Her description suggests she was irradiated by the love of God.  When I am in those kinds of situations I sense a burden to show the love of God to the desolate and the hopelessly destitute, giving them companionship in their desolation and hope in their hopelessness.  In that way of thinking I am yoked to Christ and I share in bearing the load of his love for the world.

My devotional book suggests a good attitude with which to approach my new semester.  “Ask God to help you this week to see the tasks of your life not as opportunities for advancement or as stepping-stones to some future work.  Rather may you see them as places where you have been called to serve and may you do them gladly.”  I pray that I will be irradiated by the love of God and motivated to bear the load of his love willingly and joyfully.

God With Us

Wednesday 1/9/2013 6:24 AM

My psalm for the week is Psalm 24 and each time I read the first verse I think back to a visit I had to Rod and Kathy’s in Tucson.  I was running cross-country and I went to the top of a hill overlooking Tucson.  As I neared the summit the Spirit of God instructed me to shout Psalm 24:1 at the top of my lungs, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”  I did so and, when I looked over the city to the horizon, the images of the run down part of the city through which I had driven the previous day and the scarred earth caused by strip mining met my eyes.  I began to weep, wondering what God must think when he looks down upon his world and its inhabitants.

This morning I read Isaiah 6 in which Isaiah has a vision of the Lord with the train of his robe filling the temple.  After crying out because of his own sin and the sin of his people, an angel touches his mouth with a live coal, which atones for his sin.  Isaiah then hears the Lord asking who could be sent to the people on his behalf and Isaiah volunteers.  God tells him the message he is to bring and Isaiah asks how long he must bring the message.  God responds with the words of verses 11-12, “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken.”  I wonder if Isaiah would have volunteered if he knew that the message he would bring to the people would go unheeded and he had to keep bringing the message until the bitter end, when all was lost or destroyed.

Of course, God doesn’t leave Isaiah in that kind of hopeless situation.  In the next chapter there is the promise of Immanuel, God with us.  When I wept over the city of Tucson God was standing next to me, weeping with me.  When my heart breaks because of the brokenness in my students’ lives, God’s heart is breaking too.  God calls me to proclaim the good news that God is reconciling a broken world and broken individuals to himself.  He is not aloof and unconcerned; he is with us, in the form of me and the rest of his people.  I pray that we, the people of God, will live in such a way.