Monday, March 31, 2014

Sweet and Sour

Monday 3/31/2014 5:06 AM
A phrase of my opening prayer caught my attention this morning.  “Give us such love to thee as may sweeten our obedience.”  Sweet seems like a strange adjective to describe obedience and, as I am prone to do, I tried to contrast it with sour obedience.  When I did so my mind went immediately back to when my children were small and I asked them to pick up their toys.  Sometimes they would do so cheerfully, especially if there was something special that was going to happen afterwards like going away somewhere or perhaps eating ice cream.  At other times obedience was accompanied by an attitude of resentment and done begrudgingly.
Pleasant tasks that need to be done can probably always be characterized by sweet obedience.  It is easy to maintain a positive attitude when the job I am doing is something I enjoy but when the task is unpleasant there are only a couple of things that can change my attitude from sour to sweet.  Unpleasant tasks can be made sweeter when you are working alongside other people.  Our church does service projects in a local neighborhood four times per year.  The job we do is usually painting and cleaning up yards by trimming bushes, weeding flowerbeds or disposing of piles of junk.  Jobs like that can be overwhelming when done alone but somehow working with thirty or forty other people not only make the job go more quickly but the job even seems more pleasant.  Unpleasant tasks can also be made sweeter if you love the person for whom you are doing the job.  I do not enjoy changing dirty diapers but when my grandchildren have a dirty diaper I gladly change it because I do not want them to be uncomfortable or get diaper rash.  My love for them changes my attitude about the job.
My opening prayer suggests that if my love for God increases then my attitude towards being obedient to God will be better.  The closing prayer of my devotional material this week says, “Be bound to Christ for this day and always.”  If I am bound to Christ then I will always be working beside him and any unpleasant task will be made sweeter.  Lord, increase my capacity for love and give me an awareness of your presence in my life to sweeten my obedience.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Love, Honor and Obey

Sunday 3/30/2014 7:05 AM
When Jaci and I were married we memorized our vows and recited them to each other.  My vows were, “I, Mark, take you, Jaci, to be my wife.  And I promise before God, and all who are present here, to be your faithful husband.  I will love, honor and maintain you as long as our lives will last.  I will serve you with tenderness and respect and encourage you to develop God’s gifts in you.”  Hers were the same, with our names and the words husband and wife interchanged, except she promised to “love, honor and obey” where I promised to “love, honor and maintain.”  In 1978, the year we were married, the women’s liberation movement was in full swing and many of her friends gave her a hard time for not standing up to me and refusing to say the word obey.  Little did they know that I didn’t insist upon it; she wanted to do it.  To be honest, I was more worried about fulfilling my vow to maintain since I was uncertain about my ability to adequately provide for all of her needs.  I figured that if I did an adequate job of loving, honoring, encouraging and serving her with tenderness and respect she would have little difficulty in obeying.
This morning I read Psalm 143:8, “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.  Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.”  It seems that David has similar feelings about God.  He figures that if he hears about and experiences the unfailing love of God daily then obeying God and walking in the way he directs is no problem at all.
I want to live my life with that same level of trust but in order to do so I need to constantly be reminded of God’s unfailing love to me.  If I am convinced of God’s love for me it should be easy for me to obey God.  The real question is do I have the same amount of trust in God that Jaci had in me?  Am I willing to say to God, “I will love, honor and obey you as long as my life will last?”

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Earthquake!

Saturday 3/29/2014 5:14 AM
Last night I experienced a 5.1 earthquake whose epicenter was in La Habra, just a few miles east of my house.  The house shook for what seemed like a minute, rattling windows, causing the chandelier to sway and a knocking a large picture off the wall in our bedroom, shattering the glass of the frame.  There was a small foreshock earlier in the evening that was nothing but a short jolt, however, when the larger quake struck it began with a little shaking but then increased in intensity.  One of the unsettling characteristics of an earthquake is the uncertainty of whether it is going to get worse and cause major damage and possible injury or if it will slowly dissipate causing nothing more than frayed nerves.
The circumstances and events of my life often have the same unsettling effect upon me.  Will the careless words I uttered without thinking ruin my relationship with my friend or will I be able to repair the damage and restore the friendship?  Is the nagging cough I have had for the last couple of months a simple cold that is hanging on longer than normal or is it a sign of lung cancer or COPD?  Will my aging mother recover from the broken hip she suffered a few weeks ago or will this be the first step in a downward spiral that leads to her death?
Today I read this prayer by William Barclay.  “O God, our Father, we know that the issues of life and death are in your hands, and we know that you are loving us with an everlasting love.  If it is your will, grant to us to live in happiness and in peace. … And if misfortune does come to us, grant that any trial may only bring us closer to one another and closer to you …”  I am not so sure that God wants me to always live in happiness but I do believe he wants me to live in peace, regardless of the circumstances of my life.  In my opinion, that kind of peace can only be achieved if I can live with the assurance that God is my loving Father.  I pray that it will be so in my life.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Crucial Choices


Monday 3/24/2014 4:59 AM
The theme of my devotions this week is crucial choices.  For Lent I gave up social media and I am finding that I have much more time in my schedule.  My early morning running has increased from seven runs totaling twenty-two miles in February to thirteen runs totaling forty-eight miles so far in March.  My journal writing in the morning went from eight times in February to fourteen times so far in March.  The hours in the day have not increased; it is simply the choices that I am making as those hours pass.
Today I read a statement made by Henri Nouwen from an article in Leadership entitled “Time Enough to Minister.”  He writes, “Often we’re not as pressed for time as much as we feel we’re pressed for time.”  I have discovered the truth of that statement over the past few weeks.  Nouwen then goes on to describe a time when he was on a sabbatical and some high school students asked him to lead a retreat.  He felt like he had to prepare a lot of material but the abbot of the monastery where he was staying told him not to prepare anything but to simply allow the students to have a glimpse of his life with God.  Nouwen writes, “The question, you see, is not to prepare but to live in a state of ongoing preparedness so that, when someone who is drowning in the world comes into your world, you are ready to reach out and help. … let them be a part of your life in God – that’s ministering.” I pray that I will have the wisdom and the discipline to continue to make choices that honor God and free me up for ministry.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Drinking or Drudgery?


Wednesday 3/19/2014 6:12 AM
My reading today includes John 6:37, “On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’”  The passage then goes on to describe the people arguing about who Jesus was, a prophet or the Messiah, and whether the Messiah could come from Galilee or from Bethlehem.
God desires to have a relationship with people, to fulfill their deepest longings and desires.  Too often, instead of reveling in the love and joy of God, Christians get caught up in trying to “keep the rules” or we argue amongst ourselves about what the rules are.  In his book Prayer, Simon Tugwell writes, “God himself, like a shrewd taverner, has come to us first, to seduce us away from the narrow path of worldly duty, to know the sweetness of his love.  Are we ready to be the prodigal come home, welcomed with a party?  Or are we going to insist on being the good boy, the elder brother, prepared to do only his duty, but not to celebrate the feast of love?”
As a Christian it is too easy to get caught up in the rule-following; having a time of prayer before meals, attending Sunday worship, tithing my income, etc., but miss out on the joy of reveling in the love of God, of sitting on the patio with God, enjoying a cold beer with the Taverner.  I want my relationship with God to be less of the rule-following, head knowledge, and more of the revelry of experiencing his love.