Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Flapping or Flopping?

Wednesday 5/28/2014 6:27 AM
Harvey and Lois Seifert make an interesting analogy in their book Liberation of Life.  “An ancient saying suggested that there are two wings by which we rise, one being personal piety and the other community charity.  No one can fly by flapping only one wing.  It is impossible to be sincere in our worship of God without expecting to do the will of God.  It is equally impossible to do the full will of God without the guidance and empowerment of a vital personal relationship with God.  As Allan Hunter has said, ‘Those who picket should also pray, and those who pray should also picket.’”
A bird flapping only one wing will go in circles and never get off the ground.  Ironically, I have recently been bemoaning the fact that my devotional life seems stale, as if I’m going around in circles with no clear direction as to what God wants for me.  The Seiferts might argue that I am only flapping one wing, trying to worship without doing or trying to do without worship.

From my perspective, I wonder if I am even flapping one wing, I’m simply flopping around in one spot on the ground.  I am attempting to hear God tell me what to do but he seems silent.  I am attempting to worship but it seems hollow, without substance.  Maybe God is simply letting me sit in one place until I acknowledge that without him I can do nothing.  It seems like I need to wait.  I hate that.

Monday, May 26, 2014

Memorial Day

Monday 5/26/2014 6:05 AM
Today is Memorial Day.  I have always had mixed emotions about this holiday.  I do not have a problem honoring those like my uncle, Bert Hugen, who was killed during World War II, but somehow I always feel like the military is glorified as those who bring our freedoms.
I began a new week in my devotional material this morning and the theme is Life Together.  Psalm 133 is the psalm for the week and it begins with these words, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!”  Ephesians 4:2-3 is also included in my reading, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.  Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”  If everyone heeded the call to be humble, gentle, patient, and if everyone bore with one another in love, it would be easy to live in unity.  There would be no need for fighting and killing.
Unfortunately there is very little humility, gentleness, patience and love in the world, especially among nations and corporations.  Most people, and it would seem all nations and corporations, are consumed with fulfilling personal ambitions and protecting national and corporate interests, the rest of the world be damned.  Rather than looking to the needs of others we are consumed with our personal interests and needs, and we will go to any lengths necessary to protect them.  The only way that will change is when there is a change of heart.  In Ezekiel 36:25-27 God says, “I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

If those who have been changed by God began living the way God intends maybe the rest of those in the world would see and be moved to change.  Then we could celebrate God, the one who brings true freedom, on Memorial Day.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Dreamt

Sunday 5/25/2014 5:47 AM
The opening verse of Psalm 126, my psalm for the week, is, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed.  Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.”  Those verses bring an image of someone describing something wonderful, only to be brought back down to earth by someone else saying, “Only in your dreams.”
Today I read an excerpt from The Reasons of the Heart, by John S. Dunne.  He writes, “‘There is a dream dreaming us,’ a Bushman once told Laurens Van der Post.  We are part of a dream, according to this, part of a vision.  What is more, we can become aware of it.  Although we are far removed from the Bushmen and their vision, it seems we can indeed come to a sense of being dreamed, being seen, being known.  Our mind’s desire is to know, to understand; but our heart’s desire is intimacy, to be known, to be understood.  To see God with our mind would be to know God, to understand God; but to see God with our heart would be to have a sense of being known by God, of being understood by God.”

When I was a child my parents attended a church of the Christian Reformed denomination.  We attended worship services twice on Sunday with Sunday School sandwiched in between.  Sunday School was mostly learning the stories of the Bible during my younger years.  As I grew older I went to catechism classes, where we were taught the doctrines of the church.  I would say that I knew God with my mind.  I knew about God but my life and faith seemed robotic, as if I were acting out some prewritten script on the stage of life.  I wanted more than that.  I think I desired the intimacy about which Dunne wrote.  Thank God that when I was thirty-eight the Spirit of God prompted me to begin regularly reading the Bible.  Before I would begin reading each day I prayed that God would reveal himself to me and suddenly I began to see God with my heart.  For the first time in my life I felt as if God was a real person walking with me each day, someone with whom I was sharing my life.  That intimate heart-knowledge for which I longed was suddenly real.  The Bushmen would say that I have become aware of being dreamt, of being seen, of being known.  It is good.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Bread of Heaven

Wednesday 5/21/2014 6:32 AM
When our kids were younger they all took piano lessons for a time.  None of them really took to it very much and we eventually sold the piano.  One memory I have is that of my daughter, Kate, playing a song called Breath of Heaven at a tempo that was much faster than the composer intended.  She knew the song well, and played with abandon, but the tempo precluded anyone singing the words of the song or even humming along.
Over the course of the past months I have bemoaned the fact that it seems as if God has stopped speaking to me during my morning quiet time.  My devotions have been somewhat sporadic because of my schedule and other distractions but, even when I sit down and have them, he seems quiet.
This morning I read an excerpt from Carlo Carretto’s book, The God Who Comes.  He writes, “The God-who-is has always been searching for me.  By his choice, his relationship with me is presence, as a call, as a guide; he is not satisfied with speaking to me, or showing things to me, or asking things of me.  He does much more.  He is Life, and he knows his creature can do nothing without him; he knows his child would die of hunger without bread.  But our bread is God himself, and God gives himself to us as food.  Only eternal life can feed one who is destined for eternal life.  The bread of earth can nourish us only for this finite earth; it can sustain us only as far as the frontier of the Invisible.  If we want to penetrate this frontier, the bread from our fields is not sufficient; if we want to march along the roads of the Invisible, we must feed on bread from heaven.  This bread from heaven is God himself.  He becomes food to us walking in the Invisible.”
I want God to speak to me, to show things to me and to ask me to do things for him.  That way I can listen, observe and then act upon what he says.  I feel as if I am doing something to earn his favor.  But God wants to simply be with me.  He wants to sit quietly and enjoy my company.  He wants such a deep relationship that words are not needed to express love or to give direction.  He wants an intimacy so deep that I think his thoughts with him, anticipate what he wants me to do, and then act accordingly, out of love.  That kind of intimacy can only develop over an extended period of time being in the presence of the one you love.

I want to feed from the Bread of Heaven but, like Kate’s playing, I live my life at a tempo that precludes the intimacy I desire.  I need to keep time with the metronome of the Holy Spirit, be still, and live in the Presence.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

L-O-V-E!

Tuesday 5/20/2014 3:36 AM
I woke this morning with Jaci soothing me by telling me everything was going to be okay.  I had been yelling in my sleep because of a bad dream.  In my dream I was yelling, “You just need to love each other! L-O-V-E!” to two groups of people who had large caliber rifles and were getting ready to shoot at each other because someone had brushed up against a car that was parked on the border line between two pieces of property that were owned by the respective groups.  Earlier in the dream there had been some words exchanged disputing the boundary line but eventually each group had run for their guns and now it seemed they wanted to settle it with violence.  I recognized the parties involved on both sides as personal friends, who were Christians, and I couldn’t believe they would resort to that type of violence over such an insignificant issue.
After waking I was so upset that I couldn’t get back to sleep.  I kept telling myself it was a bad dream but soon realized that it is reality in the world in which I live.  I believe Christians should be shouting, “You just need to love each other!  L-O-V-E!”, to those around us who are fighting and then follow that up with self-sacrificing, loving action.  But too often we are the ones shooting the weapons of prejudice, bigotry, and hatred trying to maintain the status quo rather than seeking justice for those who are oppressed.

Lord, forgive me for failing to love properly.  Forgive me for seeking only my own prosperity and forgetting about others, leaving them to fend for themselves in a world that is often stacked against them.  Forgive me for using weapons that destroy others rather than breaking through the walls that separate us by wielding the weapon of love.  Increase my capacity to love.