The Handicap - Beyond the One-Way Glass

“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Why art Thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?” Psalm 22:1

The line up was now complete. Though I would be standing behind a thick sheet of one-way glass, I still felt like the suspects would be able see me. This would not be your typical police station lineup by any stretch of the imagination, as confirmed by the extensive controls and security. It was told to me that I was being given the opportunity to see if I recognized the culprit or culprits that were suspected of plundering mankind’s dreams. “Remember!”

Something didn't seem right about this situation though. I was being called on to recognize and positively identify someone or something that I wasn't sure I had ever seen. In the process I would be face to face with people and events that supposedly had collided with my life. The collision had carried with it the full intent of bringing misery to my remaining days on the planet. I would be able to (with a single finger) cast the full weight of condemnation onto whomever or whatever I chose. I was ensured that this was an opportunity of a lifetime, but I was starting to feel that this was a ploy to rob me of my future security. “Just take a peek ...what will it hurt?” “Point em' out and they will be gone!” “Dragged away, chained up, cast out, and the key thrown away!” “Remember NOW!”

When I peered through the one-way glass, I was shocked by what I saw... the perpetrator was me; I was standing there in all of my pitiful anti-glory; shaking violently; pointing back at myself and screaming “I told you so!”... “God has it in for you!” … “He is the one who has allowed pain and hindered happiness!” ... “He is has limited your goals, your dreams and your health and caused your misery!” I was Horrified by what I was experiencing. Even worse, I found myself agreeing. I sensed the weight of the chains of shame that were now rattling outside the door of my wounded heart.

Ecclesiastes 12: 1 “Remember now thy Creator ...” Here is a necessary imperative found to urge us to remember “NOW”, in the present, the personal creative handiwork of our God. Though this memory will be constantly threatened, here pleas the challenge to call to mind the personal intimate love entries of our Creator . “In the days of thy youth”... Just as a historian will be searching for the story behind antiquity, we need to be carrying His-Story daily into the events that make up our day. His-Story, openly remembered by us, will activate the discovery of the true eternal value of this moment for us and others. “NOW is the accepted time, TODAY is the day of the Savior's sufficiency … If you hear Jesus' loving voice, harden not your heart.”

Our greatest flaw, our greatest self-inflicted wound is our ability to turn days into years, and then turn the years into an ominous mile marker that disqualifies us from the daily youthful discovery of God's active love for us. Shame on the media mongers who deify “Youth”, and the maintaining of it as the only evidence of the blessed life. We can pump up, plump up, fix up, color up, cover up until the shell could stand and rot from within without anyone knowing. Or we can actively under-gird our eternal souls “daily” with continued love entries from His Word, combined with gratefully taking care of this temporal tent of sojourning. ...“While the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.” Eccl. 12:1.

Oh, may the image of us, behind the one-way glass of our darkest hours, be discovered praising God instead of accusing Him. May we be caught reveling in glorious memories of our God's love, instead of groveling in lonely disappointed bitterness. When all of our physical strength is truly gone, may we be left with a courageous memory, indelibly stamped by His-Story; so that when the evil days come, and the years draw nigh that we shall say then ...“I have my full pleasure in Him!”.

Remember – He bore the ultimate forsaking that we may have the ultimate cherishing.

HLFA,

Jeff

The Nothing

Saturday morning, February 15, 2014 – Nothing! I woke up several times hoping to sense the leading of the Spirit as in every other Friday Midnight to Saturday morning, but nothing. I went to scripture like always to stir up any dormant thoughts or reach out to a few wisps of a God breathed thought of that had wandered into my heart throughout the week. (There was some really good stuff there too). From Midnight to 5:50AM there was nothing.

Earlier in the week, I had a momentary vision of a bunch of people … friends and family members chained to the remains of an antiquated chunk of history. The remains of the top of a massive support column was now secured to a large concrete pad, and though from another time and former glory it was a fixed part of the lives of the individuals in the vision(of whom I was one). We were sightseeing and really couldn't see much because of the restrictive movement caused by the chains. Strange thing though, we seemed oblivious to the chains, and we would stop where the chains would hinder us. We would use the chains' hindrances as a comfortable excuse for the loss of vision for the moment.

 (Okay, maybe this is something but let's not get too distracted ...That was earlier in the week and this is now … I am stuck with nothing!)

Job 26: 7 - “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.”

Do you realize that in the portion of the life of Job that we find in Scripture, that for 37 of the 42 chapters of the snap shot of his life... He had nothing? Oh, I know that there could be theological and intellectual arguments that could be caused by that question but please hear me out and there may be a blessing for us all tied to the end of this writ.

The reality of Job's life was chained to the antiquity of the human predicament. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23.  He had loss of loved ones, loss of wealth, loss of health, loss of trust, loss of reputation, loss of respect, loss of the appearance of goodness, loss of soundness, loss of peace, loss of comfort, the separation and the grief that accompanied the loss … but to to grapple with finding something that could be done about the loss, separation and the grief … He had nothing. Nothing until God stepped in to Job's moment. From chapter 38 and on – God fills the nothing.

We are all chained to some extent to what is left of any former glory. We are all challenged by our circumstances that keep taking us to moments of being stuck with “nothing”. We try our best to shrug off the moments or tell ourselves “this too will pass”... but we do this to the detriment of the greatest relationship in all of eternity.

The God who stretches, bends and forms direction over the empty places of life wants to creatively fabricate worth over our “nothing”. The God who hangs the massive substance of the whole Earth on nothing wants to hang purposeful substance on your moments when you have nothing.

Like the folks in the glimpse of the earlier thought this week, the chains of nothing will continue to limit our vision by holding us back from seeing what is in and beyond the moments when we feel we are left with nothing. God is in the delays, God is in the exhaustion, God is in the loss, God is in the defeat, God is in the separation, God is in the grief, God is in the isolation, God is in the confusion, God is in the disappointment, … when we feel “We've got nothing!” be encouraged; God is in the nothing.

Don't be satisfied with the Nothing, unless God is filling it. Luke 15:5

HLFA,

Jeff

Get Caught in the Act

During an early morning cruise in the “Radar” Red Outlander on I-70W in Maryland, somewhere ahead of us, we could see a bright flash of light. As we moved forward through the heavily signed, 55 mph speed limit, construction zone … we looked down at the speedometer with the confidence that we would not be “flashed” by the roadside camera. That Camera loves to shoot those pictures of your license plate, and deliver them to your doorstep with a $200.00(+) fine.

{There is one of the sad things about this planet; when you are doing right no one notices, no “flash” pictures are taken, no $200.00 reward is sent your way, and righteousness is left in anonymity.}How does this fit in this weeks diatribe? I guess we will have to wait to the end to find out.

Woe, what dream this morning! It was a culmination of my years of dealing with America's unruly but wonderful youth. Here is the “Quick Pic” of the dream: Sixty or so rambunctious teens of various ages, gender, nationality and social standing, leaning, sitting, slouching, etc.; all in one room. The room had two glass entrance doors on one wall, two blank side walls, and the wall opposite the doors had large windows to the outside world all along it. Through the glass entry doors peered faces that could have been used for “Far Side” models. Out side the windows on the opposite wall there was a muddy wrestling match between a giant and a midget that had mud slinging everywhere. The crowd of young people inside the room seemed to care less about anything but their 100db conversations.
I, apparently, was assigned the task to challenge these youth.

The call for “Please open your Bibles”, produced everything but Bibles (science fiction mags and novels, ratty clad lust novels, soiled covered books, splattered goo paged books, comic books, National Geographic Magazines, dictionaries, and books labeled “Bible” that contained a Hodge-podgy of anything but the Bible). AND Somehow the guest speaker (Me) … didn't even have a Bible. The time with the teens became a furious and chaotic search for a Bible so that we could “turn to Revelation 2(???).” (Never happened!)

Between the grotesque looking old folk peering through the doors, the weird muddy wrestling match outside, the unruly teens inside, and the frustrated screaming leader inside … I could stand no more. Time to wake up! Though I left the dream back in La-La Land, I did carry a desire for Revelation 2 with my arrival back into the land of the Living.

Some of you at this point are already worn out, but please hang on, here is where the dream of nonsense led me: Revelation 2:4 - “Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy fist love.”

Many of us have heard this verse through the years and without knowing it may be subliminally shutting down. Most folks that I have discussed this verse with don't seem to pull the full passion that was delivered by the Holy Spirit. We will rarely step back to look at Jesus in this passage, who introduces Himself to the Church of Ephesis as the One who "holds (having and holding with grace and power to the point of being adorned with) the seven stars (Angelos - God Appointed Messengers of the Churches) in His right hand, and walks (with full responsibility, opportunity and fellowship) in the midst of the seven Golden Candlesticks" (the seven churches). WE DON'T GET IT!!!

DON'T GET WHAT?

In the midst of our tedious struggles to uphold our positions and posessions in the Church... with truth, purity and righteousness; in the midst of mistakenly trying to do the task that Jesus takes full responsibility for; we walk away from the One who brought us into this everlasting love relationship. We abandon the nurturing of the greatest love story in the universe, and spend our days in frustrating power struggles that DO NOTHING to help bring us closer to our First Love.

For God so loved the World … as He called us ... we met Him at the cross with our sin ...to find that He was there first ... loving us in spite of our sin ... to wash us from our sin … and in trusting His love, He brought us into an everlasting relationship with Him … so that He could actively love us and we could actively love Him ... for now and all eternity.  Wow!!!

When the entry way windows of our lives are filled with grotesque condemnatory peers, they should be able to catch a snap shot of us loving Jesus. When the mudslinging mismatched struggles of life wrestle their way into our field of vision, the participants should find us calmly and joyously courting our Saviour. When the chaotic crowds of diminutive listeners are engulfing us with their rebellious responses … oh, that they would “flash” find us on our knees in love and at peace with our God.

Revelation 2:4 inverted – “Nevertheless, I am fully excited for you, because with full abandon you have continued on in intimate courtship with your first and only Love, Jesus Christ!”

HLFA,

Jeff

Live openly and joyfully in love with Jesus!

Leaning on Straw

Matthew 7 --- Take your time and Read the whole passage.

Crazy ...purely crazy! All I wanted was someone to carefully help me. My vision had been blurred by a piece of high velocity straw or chaff that had blown into my eye while I was busy about seeing the sights of the day. Sometimes all we have for our first alert system is our eyes, they let us know of potential opportunities and looming danger. When that perception system is down, man, are we vulnerable. Matthew 7:2 – “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

The sign did say, Emergency Medical Clinic, but once inside it was more like a circus practice performance. It appeared like the mentally disturbed patients were running the asylum. (this is very difficult to describe without a little help from your imagination, so please ... shake your head, roll your eyes, flap your arms and get a little crazy... Here goes!) (Oh, and remember I walked in for help???)
... A woman in a colorful floral patterned uniform was yelling at a man who was holding a bloody rag to his mouth (with possibly had half of the rag in his mouth), "What is your first and last name, PLEEEEASE, and try to talk like you have some brains!". He groaned a few incoherent syllables and stopped. As her weird painted on eyebrows lifted ominously and then pointed very quickly at her buzzard-like beak of a nose, She raised her voice even more "You don't get it do you, we have to fill out these forms before we can treat you!" (She needed thumped on the head with a heavy class ring!)
... A young male? A medical assistant? (still not sure if I have this right because of my straw impinged, blurred vision) This individual was dressed in an almost florescent orange jumpsuit and apparently was tasked with the job of distracting and entertaining children in the midst of the traumatized chaos. BUT if his outfit wasn't disturbing enough, there was large mallet-like protrusion hanging from his face that "bopped" every child he came in contact with. This object was so obscenely large that it was down right scary even to an adult. He didn't even remotely seem aware of the pandemonium and additional stress he was actually causing in the midst of "just doing his job!".... Wait a minute, my vision was coming back and this scene has just multiplied by the intensity of its insanity:
... all the staff had these "mallet-like boppers" positioned on their faces and these objects actually had words written on them. I was ducking and weaving to avoid getting hit by the erratic movements of the staff ... but I did catch some of the words: protocol, password, procedure, protection, preservation, practice, profile, pre-qualify, permission. I don't get it? Good words, and there is a need for processes, but these processes were preventing the staff from doing what was truly needed ... emergency medical care. They were failing to care for the patient. Matthew 7:3 – “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

When the support structure (the beam or log) is all our eyes can see, then we cannot begin to decide a course of rescue for those who may only need a bit of straw (the mote, the splinter) removed from the corner of their eyes. It is sad but true, some soul rescue organizations have become so focused in the qualification of the people, the processes and the demographic relevance of their mission that they can't see the need sitting right in front of them.

This writ is in no way a war cry to abandon planning and processes, nor is it meant to throw caution to the wind, nor become an excuse for poor planning and lame execution of ministry. It is a feeble attempt to push the reset button on why we are here on this side of Heaven. The gain and accumulation of stuff (tangible or intangible) will turn to sand and slip through our fingers at the end of our days, but the eternal ventures of love for people will be the substance that will embrace us as we end our days on this spinning ball of dust. Matthew 7:25 – “And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock." 

Eternity, right now is in a constant state of flux because it is contained in fragile, nervous earthen vessels, but the constant in those vessels (if Faith has found the Savior) is Jesus Christ. Christ in you and me is the Hope of Glory; and there will be absolutely no regrets in extending that hope to the hopeless through the conduit of the gift of our every day living.

Make sure your support system is neither the beam of personal pride nor the straw of private pain … Trust in, and live openly for Jesus.

HLFA,

Jeff