A Mighty Fortress

I don’t see many fortresses these days.  My neighborhood doesn’t look like a neighborhood of fortresses.  I have been to Fort Sumter, and a couple of other historic sites, so I can conjure the image of a fortress.  The purpose of a fortress is to keep people out, and also to keep people in.

Reading Psalm 48 today taught me about fortresses.  I guess back in the time David was writing this psalm, having, and being in, a fortress was a big deal. Of course David was talking about Jerusalem when he said “Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised in the city of our God!…the joy of all the earth…her citadels….a fortress.”  Are you getting the image of a college in Charleston?  🙂

 

He goes on to say in a very poetic manner that some kings came together and saw the fortress and, basically, flipped out.  It says they trembled like the “anguish of a woman in labor.” If you watch Call the Midwife, you get it.

So a fortress back then was a big deal.  It was touchable.  It was seeable.  You could walk around in it.  Very tactile.  David goes on to say that “As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God, which God will establish forever.  This is where we come in.

Today’s fortress, protected by God, is in our mind.  We must hear God’s word through the Bible.  We must see with the eyes of our heart that God gave his Son as the ultimate blood sacrifice so that we could “Walk around Zion, go around her, number her towers, consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels.”  God is saying that not only will he stay with us forever, he will protect us from the enemy.  As long as we are in, the enemy is out.

Remember this the next time your circumstances get in the way of your peace.  When your son or daughter’s actions hurt your heart, when your pet is ill, when a friend wounds you, when your spouse wounds you, when you cannot control something you want to control, please remember, you are in God’s fortress.  Imagine it in your mind.  Inside. Safe. Protected.  With your good and awesome friend, Jesus.  Pray for yourself and your attitudes to be changed, inside the fortress with our God.

 

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Inheritance of Hope

I have a hope chest.  I got it right after college. It is made of wood, it’s about 2 1/2 by 5 feet and it smells like cedar when I open it.

I looked in my hope chest recently, probably for the first time in 18 years.  In it I found a couple of homemade university blankets.  My memory is hazy about who made them.  I wonder now why I didn’t use them.  If I use them now, I would smell like I was wrapped in a cedar tree.  Then came the handmade napkins with a lobster pattern.  Once again, why not used?  Why not stored in a linen drawer?  They would have been a great accessory for our crawfish parties.

Next comes my wedding stuff, including pictures, the register, invitations, planning book and a “bride file” with all the names of the guests and the stuff they gave us.  Now that we’re divorced, should I send it back?  Or is there a statute of limitations, say, if you were together for at least 10 years, go ahead and keep the gifts.

The last items I placed into my hope chest were things related to my daughters.  Birth announcements, a calendar of baby’s first year, the christening dress, and various artwork made by little hands.  Growing up goes by so fast.

I haven’t looked in that chest since placing the last items for my youngest daughter, now 17.  But now, in my new house, with the ink still wet on my divorce papers, God has nudged me to look.  Hope. Chest.

He is asking me, where does my hope lie?

In my education? Looking back on it, I sure had a blast in college, and got good grades, too.  It prepared me (or it was more like a stepping stone) for my accounting career.  Here in reality today, though, I have to say that although I like accounting and I think it’s fun (yes, I’m an accounting nerd), my hope doesn’t lie there.  If God blesses me with financial provision, I won’t have to work.  If God wants me to be working, there I will be.  To me, it is just a matter of where will I meet people to be in relationship with – to witness to.  It’s going to be one place or another.

Does my hope lie in lobster napkins?  Those parties at that time in my life involved a lot of drinking.  Alcohol, not water.  The blur of good times was just that, a blur of shallow and insubstantial relationships.

Now we’re up to the wedding, the marriage.  I tried for a long time to be half of another, yet independent at the same time.  I hoped it would work.  In my heart of hearts, I hoped.  I even prayed.  It just didn’t work out.  No hope there.  In fact, for a few years there, my hope was sucked out of me with the force of tornadoes.   Wow, I don’t seem to be batting a thousand on the hope chest.

Then along comes my girls.  My precious babies.  I was so a mama, and I like to think I still am.  I love them and I love taking care of them.  And that’s exactly the problem with making my children my hope.  When they do or become something I never envisioned for them, a little piece of my heart hurts.  All I can do is move on and keep supporting and encouraging them.  I can’t make them my hope, that’s too much of a stretch.

So I can’t place my hope in my education, my career, shallow relationships, marriage, my ex husband or my children, no matter how much I have in my hope chest.

You know, I think the hope chest is misnamed.  It should be called a memory chest.  One day my children will inherit my hope chest, with all those memories.  I realize, though, that is not what I want their inheritance to be.  I want them to have an inheritance of hope.

I have experienced hopelessness, so I understand the lack of hope, living in the dark.  The Bible says those who lack hope are despairing, are choosing their own mad course, are dead, are miserable, have shame and sorrow, and are spiritually dull and indifferent.  I do not want to be those things, I want to have hope!

Hope is not a “looking back” action.  You don’t hope that yesterday you didn’t run out of gas.  You don’t hope that last week you were peaceful.  Hope is a continuous, forward looking action.

Hope throughout the Bible is described as these things:

– Courage

– Protected

– Resting in safety

– Salvation

– The LORD alone

– Help

– The Word

– For the living

– Deliverance

– Seeking

– A future

-Plans for good

– God listening

– Boldness

-Confident assurance

– Finding God

– End of captivity

– Restoration of fortunes

– Unfailing love

– Merices

– God’s faithfulness

– Freedom

– Waiting patiently and confidently

– Happy

– Peace

– Daring

– Belonging to Jesus

– Honoring Christ

This is why and how I hope.  This is what I want my daughters to inherit.

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Stars

I gave my problems to Jesus today,
And in his fanciful merciful way
He took my hands, curved them just so
Helping hold those problems I would not let go.

He and me, we blew breath on that living dish,
And like a dandelion wish,
Those problems swirled to ash
Bringing my heart peace in a dash.

To my amazement the ashes they flew,
To what end I hadn’t a clue.
Up to the heavens new stars they made
Light from the darkness the Master bade.

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Nature’s Music

In summer

Cricket song

Rises and falls

   heat rises

  bird song falls

  to our ears

 

The music of nature

Never ceases to be

 

Even the quiet 

  tells a story

of hunger

of fear

of waiting, and watching,

a story of rest

of trying to best

  others

 

Like nature, humanity is

  struggling

  succeeding and failing

  living in joy and pain

 

And through all our Master watches

In quiet

From His dwelling place.

 

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Stray Dogs

I saw him by the side of the road, in a gas station/truck stop parking lot.  I hadn’t planned on stopping, but he pulled at my heartstrings.  I turned the car in and tried to get him to come to me, but he wouldn’t.  For every step I took toward him, he took two back.

A minute away from giving up, I struck up a conversation with a fellow traveler about the stray she picked up one day.  She said if I would keep trying, she would go in and get something for me to feed him.  She came back with a chicken nugget plate.  The dog would eat good today.

He had gotten out of my sight, so I hunted up the long haired black lab-looking dog, and threw a couple of pieces of chicken towards him.  I sauntered back to my car. The black dog followed, and brought a friend with him, a brown mutt- looking dog.

While tearing the chicken into pieces and tossing it to them, I soothingly spoke about how they could come home with me and I would find them somewhere to call home.  They could have someone to love them, play with them; they could have a safe yard, and maybe a couch to lie on.

All to no avail.  They approached me as close as the chicken lay, but they always retreated.  Once the chicken was gone, they were too.

Sitting in church the next day, I realized that people are like stray dogs.  Some of us see Jesus as a different species, one to be wary of.  We look at him with skepticism, perhaps thinking he may be laying a trap for us.  Not letting ourselves believe the great mercy that awaits, we turn aside before he can capture us with a sly move.

My heart wants to say, come, where you will be loved.  Where you will have peace, comfort and a place to call home.  There is no trick, no gimmick.  Just a sincere unfailing love waiting for you to accept it,  accept him.

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Wings of the Morning

I can never escape from your spirit!

  I can never get away from your presence!

If I go up to heaven, you are there;

  if I go down to the place of the dead, you are there.

If I ride the wings of the morning,

  if I dwell by the farthest oceans,

even there your hand will  guide me.

  and your strength will support me.

                     New Living Bible, Psalm 139: 7 – 10

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Capture

The sunny day I captured God

I reached into a mountain brook

And pulled out a stone

Flat on one side, it looks like a nut,

Sparkly, colorful on the other

Just like us.

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The Door

The pastor portrayed a lovely word picture yesterday.  Here is the scripture:

Look!  Here I stand at the door and knock.  If you hear me calling and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal as friends.  I will invite everyone who is victorious to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat with my Father on his throne.  Anyone who is willing to hear should listen to the Spirit and understand what the Spirit is saying to the churches.     Revelation 3: 20 – 22.

 

The preface to this scripture was about being neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm.  Sometimes when we are lukewarm, we can ignore Jesus, maybe ask him to leave the house.

What this scripture says is that even when we treat Jesus mean, he doesn’t just leave the house and walk away.  Doesn’t give up on US.  He patiently turns around, stands at the door, and knocks.

Beautiful picture of unconditional love.  One that is difficult to find on this earth.

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The Word

…and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Eph 6:17, New Living Bible)

 God’s Word is an indispensable weapon (The Message)

Last week I took the opportunity to be mad at someone.  I mean really mad.  He was a business partner;  my husband had been working on a deal for several months, and was in the last throes of completing it.  Then this guy changed his mind.  In my eyes, he did a one-eighty from what he promised us he would do.  I felt the anger rise in my heart and in my mind, consuming me.  In the heat of my moment, I became an idiot, and I called the business partner and left a message saying some terrible things in a quite angry tone and hung up still mad.

The thing of it was, I knew I should not have made that call before I picked up the phone.  Nonetheless, I picked up the phone.

Then something worse happened.  As I sat at my desk thinking how terrible and Un-Christian-like I was, he called back.  Did I calm down and listen to his side of the story?  Of course not. Continuing on as an idiot,  I raged and rambled some more, and I hung up on him.

Here’s the crazy thing:  two Bible verses came to me.  The first one convicted me: “Your anger can never make anything right in God’s sight” (James 2: 20).   The second one (in my mind) convicted him: “…for a doubtful mind is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.  People like that should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.  They can’t make up their minds.  They waver back and forth in everything they do” (James 1: 6-8).  I understand I cannot change anything about the business partner’s decision, but that one sure made me feel good.

Astoundingly, I was able to link the Word with my life.  These particular verses came to mind because I have been memorizing the Book of James.  I took a Beth Moore course about James in which she challenged us to memorize the whole book (it’s five chapters).  It has amazed me how often those verses will pop into my head at the appropriate time.

This was a living example of spiritual warfare.  The Message says that God’s Word is an indispensable weapon (Eph 6: 13-18).

Anger is one of the Devil’s tools, and I forged a wall with it.  I had a friend who told me one of his mother’s sayings was: “Those who the gods wish to destroy, they first make angry.”  Oh dear.  The next day,  I applied what I memorized, and I called and e-mailed the business partner and apologized.

We are a work in progress with our sinful nature. If we commit to fighting spiritual warfare, one of the best uses of our time  is memorization of the Word.

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Confession

To you I pour out my

  confession and repentance,

My confession pulling itself

  up over the dune,

My repentance

  looking at the horizon

  feeling the sand between its toes

  and the lapping of the waves.

Your forgiveness stretching

  over the sparkly gray water

As far as the eye can see.

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