Grains of Sand

Pixabay One of my reading plans for this year is entitled 365 Popular Bible Quotations for Memorization and Meditation . At first reading of this verse I wasn’t sure why this particular quote would fall into that category, but here it is: “ But I know where you stay and when you come and go and how you rage against me .” (2 Kings 19:27) The context is yet another of those moments in Israel’s history when she is facing overwhelming odds against her. The king of Assyria and his forces are threatening Jerusalem. Hezekiah goes before the Lord to plead his cause and that of his people. Isaiah, the prophet, appears before the king with this message to deliver to Sennacherib, king of Assyria, a message that also serves to reassure Hezekiah that they have not been abandoned by the God of Israel. The message to God’s people in Jerusalem is this: “ Therefore this is what the Lord says concerning the king of Assyria: ‘He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow here. He will not come before...

Pixabay “Hitch your wagon to a star” they say. The expression means to: try to succeed by forming a relationship with someone who is already successful. From a very human perspective, Ruth picked the wrong “star” if she intended to be successful. Her husband was dead. Her mother-in-law was a widow without prospects, bitter and alone, heading back to a situation that was less than promising. Naomi encouraged both of her daughters-in-law to hitch their stars to a more-or-less sure thing—stay in Moab and find new husbands who could care for them and give them children. But Ruth chose to hitch herself to a fading star. Ruth 1:16 gives us her words on the subject: “ Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God ”. These words are sometimes used as a new bride’s response to her husband-to-be during wedding ceremonies. However, to my knowledge, they are never addressed to her m...

Pixabay Ahhhhh, what a wonderful thing it is to feel the heat of a warm stove on a cold day! A blankie. A cup of hot chocolate. The embrace of a friend. Sometimes even trouble has to find a corner to hide in. That's the essence of Psalm 71—a man with troubles, but a man who has wrapped himself in the embrace of God and, no matter how serious the trouble, he is comforted. The "punch line" (or one of many) is the first verse: " In you, O Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame. " Not a chance. The one who places himself, or herself, within the safety of the " rock " (vs. 3) will never have reason to regret the decision. It's not that things have always been easy. To: " Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter..." , the psalmist adds, "...you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. You will increase my honor and comfort me once again " (vss 20, 21...

Pixabay I've slept in some unusual places over the years. For several nights, while we were doing children's ministry in a remote town in the Colombian mountains, I slept in the storage room where the our farmer host kept his coffee. Sacks and sacks, piled floor to ceiling with my little cot in the middle. It was a caffeine-addict's paradise! I did wonder what would happen if we had an earthquake during the night—it would have made an interesting epitaph. It isn't true every morning, but I often wake up and give thanks to the Lord for a good night's sleep and for His protection while I slept. I seldom have trouble sleeping (except during those dreaded years of perimenopause that every woman hates) and I am grateful for that gift. The psalmist, David, slept in some unusual places too. Unlike me, he had every reason to think that he could awaken at any moment with a sword at his throat and his enemies gloating over his soon demise. It's a wonder he slept a...

Pixabay, Public Domain In 1921, the Women’s Missionary Society of his church presented my father with a devotional book. In his later years he read from it every day. The reading for September 26, the day in 1991 when my dad died, the Scripture verse on which the devotional was based was Psalm 23:4: “ Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me .” My father was alone in a hospital bed when he died—at least that was the regret I felt when I first learned the details of his passing. But later, after being divinely directed to check the devotional book dad always read, I was reminded again that, though no human being might have been with him, the Great Shepherd had been there to personally escort him through the valley. It was a huge comfort to me to remember that Truth. Whether the valleys of our lives be those of hardship, sorrow, illness, danger, or even death itself, what a wonderful blessing it is to know that our Shepher...

A friend was driving me home yesterday after we had gone out for lunch. As we waited for the light to change, an SUV, ignoring the red light, raced through the intersection, just missing a child who was crossing the street. The driver did not even slow down. The incident reminded me of the times I have come close to being struck at the same intersection by drivers watching oncoming traffic but not paying any attention to the pedestrians using the crosswalk. With yesterday’s incident fresh in my mind, this verse from Psalm 54 was especially meaningful this morning: “ Behold, God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life ” (54:4). I have a neighbour who often responds to my greeting: “How are you?” by saying, “Well, I got out of bed this morning.” And most of us have heard the old chestnut: “I checked the obituaries in the paper this morning and my name wasn’t there so I guess I’m okay.” As we age we seem to spend more and more time looking over our shoulders wondering when dea...

Labadee Village, Haiti “ When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace; In every high and stormy gale, My anchor holds within the veil. On Christ the solid Rock I stand; All other ground is sinking sand, All other ground is sinking sand .” Theses words, taken from the hymn The Solid Rock   came to mind this morning as I was reading Psalm 54. The psalm was written during a period of David’s life when he was being pursued by King Saul. His life was in danger. There were people willing to betray him. It seemed that there was no safe harbour, no peace, no rest. David begins with a plea for help: “ Save me, O God, by your name; vindicate me by your might ” (54:1), Our first port of call on a recent Caribbean vacation was Grand Cayman. I confess that I was surprised and a bit disappointed at my first look at the island as we made landfall. It is basically similar to a sand spit—not a hill in sight anywhere. As we toured the island our guide mentioned that much o...

Google Images Oops, wrong answer! There are many times when God’s response to our dullness surprises me. Many people go into spasms when the wrath of God is mentioned. True, God isn’t one-sided. His wrath is a real and current part of His character. So is His grace. Neither one can be emphasized at the expense of the other. Here in Genesis 15 we have an example of God’s grace when wrath might have been our response if we had been in God’s “shoes.” The Lord appeared to Abram in a vision and said: “ Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward ” (Genesis 15:1). I would hope that if God appeared to me in a vision and said those words, I’d be so overwhelmed by such a wonderful promise that everything else would fly out of my mind and I’d fall flat on my face before Him in worship. What could possibly be better that having God personally tell you that He is going to be your protector and your reward? But Abram’s response is more typical of what mine, and yours, migh...

Google Images You can almost hear His heart break. “ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing ” (Matthew 23:37). A historian would have known what Jesus was referring to as He looked over the city during that last week before the journey to the cross. The Lord knew all the details of that history because He had been there during the period recorded for us as the Old Testament. He knew how often the nation called by His Name had rejected its God and His messengers. History was about to repeat itself once more. The picture in this verse is one of the most poignant in Scripture; and the only maternal image of God that we have. Our most intimate view of God is as our Father. But here Jesus described the image of a mother protecting her young even at the cost of her own life. But then the shocking statement: “ ...but you w...

Reading: Nahum If Jonah had still been around in Nahum's time (see http://lyndasgrainsofsand.blogspot.com/2011/09/better-class-of-help.html   ) he would have been gratified. When God sent him to Nineveh 150 years earlier to warn the Ninevites that God was about to destroy the city and its inhabitants, they’d all repented and Jonah had not been pleased! Now Nahum appears on the scene to deliver the message Jonah would have liked to have been commissioned to deliver. This time there was no opportunity for repentance and Nineveh’s destruction was assured. The Ninevites were a nasty bunch. It took one hundred and fifty years for Nineveh to go from totally repentant to totally unrepentant and sufficiently evil for God to say “enough!” That’s pretty fast work—frighteningly fast. But it is the picture of God on a mission that jumps out from the page. “ The LORD is a jealous and avenging God…The LORD is slow to anger and great in power; the LORD will not leave the guilty unpunish...

Reading: Isaiah 44-48 My last remaining aunt celebrates her 100 th birthday today. I don’t know that I want to live that long but since the timing is not up to me I will rest, as my aunt does, in some neat promises from today’s reading. God, through Isaiah, is addressing His children. He says: “ Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you ” (46:3, 4, NIV). From birth until death, God promises to carry us in safety. The verses surrounded these two remind me of why God can make such a sweeping promise. He’s the Creator. “ I am the Lord, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself ” (44:24, NIV). He’s the Redeemer, the One who has brought us int...

“ When you pass through waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze ” —Isaiah 43:2, NIV. It’s not that any of us would like to test this promise but, truth is, there are times when we do feel overwhelmed as though by flood waters. There are moments when the “heat of the day” seems more than we can bear. Then God comes along to tell us that though we might be up to our necks in water, we won’t go under; though we may feel the heat and smell burning in the air, we will not be consumed. I always think of the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when I read this verse. You’ll remember them from the Book of Daniel in the Bible. These three men refused to bow down and worship a statute erected to honour the King of Babylon. They were God-followers and would not worship anyone other than God Almighty. For their disobedience the king prepar...

The Lord is my glass window of protection… “ The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? ” —Psalm 27:1, NIV. Who hasn’t been afraid of something? And though we might wish that fear were just an occasional phenomenon, we most often exchange one fear for another, or simply accumulate them until they cripple us. For the psalmist, the fear was a “whom” not a “what” and David certainly had lots of people in his life who were a threat to him. The verses immediately following describe evil men and armies coming up against him to destroy him. Then David makes an unusual request of God. He asks the Lord for the privilege of sheltering in His house. Traditionally, the church was often regarded as a place where people could seek sanctuary and be protected against anyone looking to harm them. But long before church buildings came into being and were used for those purposes, David knew the meaning of sanctuary...

“ His eyes are on the ways of men; he sees their every step ” —Job 34:21 NIV Every man, every step, every moment. Try to wrap your mind around that. It isn’t as though one can get lost in the shuffle, or slip under his radar. It’s every man, every step, ever moment. He sees it all. David said it well in Psalm 139: “ You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways…you hem me in behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me…Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise up on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine li...

“ See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared ” —Exodus 23:20, NIV I wonder if Moses ever got writer’s cramp? We often think of the Ten Commandments as only, well, ten. In fact, there followed the giving of the basic ten a whole waft of others along with instructions for every detail of building the Tabernacle. And in the middle of taking note of the myriad of instructions about the laws that were to govern the new nation of Israel comes this wonderful promise. Perhaps this was the point at which Moses was thinking, as he rubbed his sore fingers: “How on earth am I ever going to do all this stuff?” The weight of responsibility for the physical and moral well-being of a couple of million people tracking through the desert was not a light burden. Moses had seen God’s provision in the past. But like all of us, each fresh challenge seems to require a fresh assurance that the God who looked after business yesterday...

Psalms 34-36 I began a series of studies last night as part of our Wednesday night electives at church. The theme of the series is angels and what the Bible teaches about them. Some of us might remember Billy Graham's classic book on angels published back in the 70s and reprinted many times since. We remember Frank Peretti's book, This Present Darkness , a work of fiction that unfortunately spawned some incorrect ideas that Peretti regretted. It was, after all, fiction. And who can forget the more recent television series Touched By An Angel whose reruns are still out there on classic TV. The New Age movement is littered with ideas about angels that don't coincide with what the Scriptures teach. Angels are everywhere—the fictitious and the factual. Several people in the group came to me afterward to share their stories about encounters with angels. One even asked if she could come early next week to share with me a dream her husband has had about angels that he wants...

Psalm 16-18 Think about these verses the next time you feel fearful or intimidated or weak. " In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him—the dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced, with hailstones and bolts of lightening. The Lord thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. He shot his arrows and scattered the enemies, great bolts of lightning and routed them. The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of ...