Sounds all around us

The hummingbird buzzed my head this morning as I was watching the sun rise. I didn’t see it, I heard it. The distinct whir of it’s wings and my thought was “a hummingbird!” - I love hummingbirds! I turned to look in the direction of the sound, and sure enough it was a hummingbird. Just as soon as it realized I was moving, it flew off. There and gone, but unmistakable the sound of it’s wings. My mind started wandering, do I know other birds simply by the noise they make? And I for sure can tell you the pair of woodpeckers that are in the tree to the right of the deck where I like to sit and write have their own unmistakable chirp. It’s fascinating. I know when I hear it, that they are close by and I start to look for them. Usually very quickly I can find the redheaded bird in the tree from there. They are also immediately recognizable when they are pecking the tree! I recognize the call from the hawk. I’m convinced she has a nest high up at the top of one our trees. Her sound is unmistakable as well. I could go on, the pair of cardinals, have taught me their chirp and the Canadian geese on the lake - well everyone would know that one.

As my mind continued down this path, the sun shone brighter and brighter. It’s a clear morning not a cloud in the sky but distinctly cooler than it has been all week. I started thinking of our dog Daisy’s bark. We know when it’s her bark at night keeping us up. My mind travelled to my children. Like when they were younger and I heard "Mom", I knew it was my child. That alert panic that enters your soul when you hear the cry of “Mom” with a note of something desperately wrong in it, or the sweet sound of something fun and exciting - you still know when it’s your child. Today I still recognize their voice in a crowd and sometimes still sense that panic of the cry of “Mom” if something is wrong.

Just as swiftly as I thought about my children, and the fact that I can pick their voice out of a crowd, I thought of my Heavenly Father. Just as I have learned as an ordinary person to listen and hear the sounds around me and connect them with what I have seen, how much more extraordinary is it that we can “hear” what our Heavenly Father says to us. He has already told us that He knows who we are - that we were planned from the beginning of time, that he formed us in the womb. He knows the number of hairs on our heads, and the tears that we cry. He is intimately involved in every aspect of our lives. Our Creator God is astounding and awesome. My mind fails to understand how he can keep up with all of us, it seems so unlikely and impossible. What’s even more amazing to me is the way that if we spend time reading His words, meditating on His Scriptures, and talking with him in prayer, we can learn to hear the sound of his voice. The unmistakable leading of His hand just as clearly as the sound the wind makes when it moves the trees to bend and sway.

Unfortunately this is where I have a breakdown personally. I sense His leading, I hear his calling, and I start to walk the directions I know He’s told me to go. But I am full of doubt, and insecurity and start to wonder “did I really hear what God was telling me?”. This morning, I sensed that God just wanted me to remember that as I am faithful to walk daily with him, and hear from him, I can walk ahead confidently knowing that what He has told me and placed within my heart is His specific leading.

What a great way to start the day! It’s been a lovely morning so far, I can’t wait to see what lies ahead.

The Story Teller

Fascinating!  as I am working on my novel I am intrigued by the process.  As a voracious reader for my entire life, I am fascinated by being on the flip side of the coin.  The idea of creating something that I would like to read - so many fun parts to doing this! There are parts of the story that I am writing, while already knowing in advance how the story is going to end.  I know the plot, and I know the characters and how each will play their role through the story.  As I am working to write a scenario that will end up being unfinished as far as a particular relationship goes, I know it has to be unfinished because I know the end of the story.

As I sit back and think through the implications of this, I had the most impressive thought strike me that that is exactly what is going on in our own stories of our life.  We don’t see the end. We aren’t infinite.  The only point of view for our story is the moments that we are in right now and when things don’t turn out the way we expect them too we feel failure, pain, disappointment and even discouragement.

NEWSFLASH! But here’s the thing we don’t KNOW the end of our story.  We have no idea how the Divine Storyteller is currently weaving the story of our lives, and we don’t understand the plot twists.  We can’t understand because we haven’t seen the ending yet.  BUT HE HAS! And, even better, we are promised that He works all things for our good and for His glory.  Forgive me for having a moment here my friends, but I feel as if God has just given me a bit of insight into some of the things He’s working in my own story right now.

Many times I don’t understand the discouragement, the disappointment or the doubts - but I don’t know the ending.  Even better, I don’t have to know the ending, I just need to trust my StoryTeller and have faith that He is writing my story perfectly.

Keep the Main thing the Main thing

Psalm 119:165 has been circling my mind for awhile.  As I have “chewed” on it, it seems like each article I read, each Facebook post I see, and each tweet that scrolls through my feed needs to be processed in light of this verse. I love the word offend here in the KJV because we understand it – we get offended about everything currently.  Each day, more and more people of every size, shape, skin color, variation, denomination, school of thought, Christian, non-Christian and beyond have been offended by something.  Each day, I shake my head and grieve over the direction that our nation’s culture, and the cultures of the world seem to be declining right before my eyes. Yet what grieves me most is what we choose to get vocal about.  I’m not sure I really understand why we must get up in arms over every slight and wrongdoing, and let's face it there are many.  But this doesn't stop us from raising the rhetoric  and we love it when others join in with us.  I do understand that the bigger picture of this verse that's brought out in the other translations is the idea of not having something that makes us “stumble”.  Well, frankly, that works too…if I am following so closely after God, then nothing will make me stumble that people can do or say.  And in today’s world that promise is vital to my character and my comportment.

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There seems to be a generation that has missed out on some important training.  Not schooling, but disciplines of good living -how to be productive citizens and good people.  I do understand that our world apart from God will never be “good” but behaving with maturity has always been a sign of leaving adolescence behind and embracing adulthood. Something that we understood culturally was important for adolescents to embrace.  Yet there are entire groups of people who seem to have never been taught these things.

I have always expressed to my children that our number one goal is  “to love God and love others.”  That was it – nothing additional – that has been and is our theme each year.  We have worked hard to keep it simple and to keep the main thing, the main thing.  This is so hard some days.  Our family wears many hats, and stays on the go.  Having something singular to focus on helps sometimes when the good things try to crowd out the best.

The second lesson, we have worked on through the years is to believe the best about others.  When there are hurt feelings from actions or words – believing that the other person didn’t intend to hurt us almost always insulates us from bitterness.  This is certainly an ongoing lesson, because our human nature would rather not let things go.  We instantly believe that someone intended to hurt us not the other way around.

And finally, the third lesson has to be that we don’t have to be offended at everything that happens to us.  We don't have to be offended at the words people say, or the things people do.  We are all human, we are all capable of doing and saying the wrong thing at any given moment on any given day.  Instead, we have the right to choose to let it go and choose joy and happiness instead.  Loving others many times requires for us to put our needs and our desires secondary.   And certainly loving God the right way requires for us to lower ourselves – John 3:30 - "He must increase, but I must decrease."

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In our world it seems more and more difficult to decide the best way to continue to be the light that we are called to be. Do we stand quietly on the foundation of God's Word, being ready to always give an account of our changed lives to those who ask it of us or do we fight for our rights, and our beliefs and our opinions at every turn. Do we run to help those who don't look like us, act like us or think like us, so that we can demonstrate mercy and the love of Christ, or we do stand by and yell indignantly about the state of collapse around us while doing nothing about it.   While I don't believe that we should be a people who do nothing - far from it, we need to be people of action.  But I would like to see more of us demonstrating the POWER that lies within us, by working to  reach the lost world for Christ.  I would like to see us become indignant or outraged over the loss of lives each second of every minute of every day to a Christless eternity.  We seem to lose our passion and our voice when it comes to proclaiming the Good News, but we sure can argue and get irate over the current issues of the day.  Distraction seems to be the winning tool in the Devil's toolbox and we are falling for it hook, line and sinker.

Let the change start in me..will you join me - let's keep the main thing the main thing!

“ We are to praise God even for afflictions; through grace we get good from them. Those that love the world have great vexation, for it does not answer what they expect; those that love God's word have great peace, for it outdoes what they expect.”

Matthew Henry

Chronicles & David's Mighty Men

In my Bible study this week, I came across a passage in Chronicles that was something I had already read earlier in the year. I read it because of the book by Mark Batterson who told the story of Benaiah in his book In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. (Loved this book by the way, but that’s not the topic at hand!) I am doing a chronological read through of the Bible this year and so my two assignments were 2 Samuel 5:1-10 and I Chronicles 11:1-12:40. I struggle with certain books of the Bible I’ll just be honest. Sometimes they are just long lists of names..generations of people who did good things, but on the page - it’s still a long list of hard to pronounce names. I love reading the books of the Bible that are rich with promises, or give me deep significant Spiritual truths for how to live my life, how to think, how to behave etc. In general, Chronicles just doesn’t usually seem to help me in this regard. Reading early in the morning has it’s benefits - it’s quiet, and it’s just me and my coffee and the sunrise…but this is challenging too if I’m really tired. Some mornings I really have to work to keep my eyes open. Yesterday was like that for me and I struggled.

As I have been working over the last three weeks on the “fear nots” of the Bible, I find myself looking for them everywhere and I had some serious doubts about finding them in yesterdays study. But God had nuggets for me yesterday, and I have marinated in them for more than 24 hours now. It started in verse 9 of I Chronicles 11, which by the way is almost exactly a word for word repeat of 2 Sam. 5:10. 2 Sam says “And David became greater and greater, for the LORD, the God of hosts, was with him.”

I Chronicles is slightly different it reads “And David became greater and greater for the LORD of hosts was with him.”

The context for this verse is that David has just finished the long season of running for his life. His very survival, his very life, depended on living in caves, and being in hiding and even living with his enemy, the Philistines, for a time. But after Saul’s death, God’s promise that he (David) would be king was finally coming to pass and David was anointed as King by the elders of Israel. Immediately, he took over Jerusalem from the Jebusites, and He lived there in Jerusalem. The next verses detail how Joab was his chief right hand man, and that he repaired the rest of the city, and “David became greater and greater for the LORD of hosts was with him.”

My first take away was that while we may never understand God’s timing, we can always trust His promises. And second, if God is with us in any task we are undertaking, for His honor and His glory, He alone will make us greater so that we can fulfill His purposes in us.

But I’m not done yet, because that’s not the end of the verses, and I was done reading yet. (Plus I’m a preacher’s kid, I can’t be done yet right?)

The next few verses are labeled “David’s Mighty Men” - here we read of these men of valor who let nothing intimidate them or sway them from their course. They were courageous and full of integrity - the most trusted of David’s men. Their stories are amazing - they read more like fiction - Abishai fighting alone killed 300 men. Benaiah killing a lion with his bare hands, then killing an Egyptian man over 7 ft tall holding a spear while having no weapon of his own and more. I mean these guys threw caution to the wind because they believed in David, in God's hand of blessing on David, and in defending him and his kingdom.

Some great friends to have around you think?

The list is long - the rest of the verses to follow are filled with names of mighty men. I stopped though when my eyes hit a familiar name in the list. vs. 41 - Uriah the Hittite. If you have studied Scripture for awhile you’ve heard the stories of David - a man after God’s own heart, but he definitely had his faults and this one that involved Uriah’s wife was a big one. I knew Uriah was a soldier in the army, but here he is listed as one of David’s Mighty Men. Here Uriah was listed along with other these other names of David's Mighty Men.  It was important to God for us to know each of their names, and then in the verses to follow the tribes they each came from and how many there were. Some are listed as being able to shoot stones from a sling with either hand, or were experienced warriors, experts with shield and spear. The Gadites themselves were officers of the army it says in vs 14 of chapter 12 - “the least was a match for a hundred men and the greatest for a thousand” One man could battle a thousand? crazy odds in my mind to even think about! These men crossed the Jordan when it was overflowing its banks - another astonishing feat - and battled all enemies in the valleys both in the east and west.

So it made me sad to think that Uriah was one of these men that David so trusted and who obviously held David in such high regard - because I know how the story ends. I know that David falls in his sin, and Uriah is murdered because of it.

But God..

He already knew this part of the story too, and He continued to bless David because David is part of God’s story and was accomplishing His purpose in David for His glory. I again thought about how many times each of us mess up and we decide that there’s no use for us to continue to try. I can only imagine that David must have felt that God had made a mistake picking him for the job of King, but he continued to follow after God anyway. He confessed and forsook his sins, multiple times, and he faced his consequences. The Psalms are full of his words of repentance and praise for the everlasting love and mercy of our great God. How much more can we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off, knowing that God sees us through the gift of redemption and Christ’s shed blood over our mess of sin.

I’m still not done though..God had something to tell us about unity in the body! It’s possible for large groups of men to be unified with the singular purpose of following after God and pursuing the job of accomplishing His plans!

vs 38 - "All these men of war arrayed in battle order, (there are literally tens of thousands of them - read it for yourself) came to Hebron with a whole heart to make David king over all Israel. Likewise, all the rest of Israel were of a single mind to make David king."

Thousands of men, warriors, came together with unity of purpose and singleness of heart to make David king. After all the days of hiding, and running David’s time of standing in the spotlight had finally come to pass. And God was in every detail - not just the promise that it would occur, but in the timing and the unity with which he was made King.

How does this passage speak to you? I would really love to hear your thoughts!