Grains of Sand

Pixabay " How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God ." So writes the psalmist in Psalm 84.  Being a pilgrim, a stranger in a land growing more foreign to the follower of Jesus every day, is not easy. The desire to reach the end of the journey, to be at last in the court of the Lord and in His presence, is acute. But the journey isn't over. The pilgrimage has not reached its end and strength must be found to endure the strangeness, the darkness, the evil of the valley that must be passed through on the way to Paradise. We understand the darkness of the death valley to which we hope to bring just a little bit of life as we pass by. But it is hard to live in that darkness. Those who read Peter's letter also understood the challenges. He writes to encourage them to resist the pull from the dead, even though it might have been difficult. ...

Pixabay Somehow it seemed appropriate to end 2018 with this verse: “ He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away .” (Revelation 21:4) As we enter a new year we are reminded that we are just a little closer to the time when Revelation 21:4 will be the reality for those of us who know the Lord. Perhaps that reminder is a little more forceful for me today. Early in December, we got news of a cousin on my mother's side who had passed away. Just before Christmas, a FACEBOOK post announced the passing of a missionary colleague and friend. Last night came the news of the death of a cousin on my father's side. For friends and family far and wide 2018 has had its sorrows. But the promises of Scripture inevitably bring us the reassurance that, for the believer, the "end" is no end at all—it simply signals the beginning of the new order. No death. No mourning....

Pixabay I used to be the first one up on Christmas morning. Long before day officially broke, I'd quietly come downstairs and turn the tree lights on. Then I would sit and wait, and wait, and wait! Life is all about waiting, because we are always waiting for something. I have spent most of my life using public transportation so I always seem to be waiting for a bus, or a train, or a plane. We wait for doctors' appointments. We wait for good news, bad news, any news at all from family and friends! We wait for Spring. We wait for raises, and for the right house at the right price in the right place. We wait for the right gal or guy to come along (or we wait for the wrong gal or guy to go away—far, far away!). In Venezuela, people wait in long lines to get basic foods and medicine. In other parts of the world people wait for rain, or peace, or freedom. Some wait for the pain to go away. For Mary, nine months must have seemed like an eternity. But like every other pre...

Google Images There is still a lot of work to be done, but Joshua and the Hebrews have entered Canaan. The land has been divided among the tribes, cities of refuge have been designated and the Levites have been assigned their towns. At the end of Joshua 21 comes this wonderful summary statement: “ So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their forefathers, and they took possession of it and settled there. The Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their forefathers. Not one of their enemies withstood them; the Lord handed all their enemies over to them. Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled ” (Joshua 21:43-45). It’s the end. God has kept His word and brought them to the place He had promised to bring them. It’s the beginning. A new page. A fresh start. Certainly they brought some “baggage” with them. Some things can’t be parked at the door of opportunity. They are who they are—at times reb...

Google Images Abraham was seventy-five years old when he set out for the land God promised to give him (Genesis 12). At the time God also promised to make a great nation out of him. He had to wait twenty-five years to even get to the first step of “great nation” status. That was when his promised son and heir, Isaac, was born (Genesis 21). Genesis 21 begins with: “ Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said , and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him ” (21:1, 2, emphasis mine). It was a “hurry up and wait” situation, one that neither Abraham nor Sarah always dealt with appropriately, Sound familiar? “Hurry up” is relatively easy, but “wait” is not. But the important part of the lesson is found in those bolded portions of these two verses. God did “ as he had said .” He was faithful to “ what he had promised .” And God delivered what he had promised “ at the very time God had promised him ....

Google Images There wasn’t room for both families. Abram had prospered by the time he returned to Canaan from his ill-advised journey to Egypt. So had his nephew, Lot. Tensions between the servants of the two households reached dangerous heights. Genesis 13 describes the agreement made between Abram and Lot. The patriarch’s nephew chose to occupy the lush plains of the Jordan near Sodom and Abram moved to the area around Hebron. By covenant, all this land would someday belong to Abram’s descendants (Genesis 12:7). Resting on that promise, he could easily allow Lot to make his own choice as to where he wanted to settle. It was at this time that the Lord renewed his covenant with Abram. Genesis 13:14-17 tells us, “ The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, ‘Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever...Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giv...

Google Images After a year in his floating zoo, Noah must have wondering if God had forgotten all about them and if they were doomed to becoming the world’s first perpetual cruise line. Perhaps Moses, considered to be the recorder of these events, wormed his way into Noah’s mind and somewhat tongue-in-cheek wrote: “ But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded ” (Genesis 8:1). As if God could forget! We know theologically that God doesn’t forget but sometimes, in the midst of our daunting life experiences, it feels like He does suffer from memory lapses or gets too busy with other things to concern Himself with our affairs. I’d wager, if I were a betting person, that Noah had his moments when he wondered if they had been abandoned on the high seas. Isaiah writes, speaking of God: “ Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne...

It’s minus one degrees and snowing. But I have a Gerber Daisy coming up in my balcony garden despite all that. What is it about WINTER that this little daisy doesn’t understand? But that’s the nature of faith—it believes even when everything around it screams not to believe! Romans 4 contains Paul’s description of Abraham’s faith. The man believed that God would give him and his wife a son even though they were far beyond childbearing years. “ …he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised ” (Romans 5:20, 21) Like my little Gerber, Abraham’s faith persevered despite every evidence that what he believed would happen was impossible. That faith was rewarded by the God Who specializes in the impossible. If I take a look at my faith today, what would it look like? I hope it looks like a Gerber. What does yours look like?

Leviticus 24-27 I’ve seriously toyed with the idea of buying rather than renting an apartment. With the coming of Abby and Lou the possibilities of finding something to rent have shrunk. The cats are complicated. I can’t say that the Lord orchestrated their coming to Canada to force me to take yet another leap of faith and entrust the majority of what I have saved over the years to a piece of property. However, I know enough to be able to say that nothing happens by accident. This morning’s reading included a section on buying and selling. I won’t apply what I read too literally, but I will claim the promise that comes with this passage, should the Lord open the door to buying a place of my own. Part of my concern about buying is using all the resources I have put aside for retirement and ending up with nothing to sustain me when I stop working. That concern, so quickly turned to anxiety, means that I am forgetting again the “God factor.” The issue in Leviticus 25 was the Year of Jubil...

Exodus 5-7 “ This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says: ‘Let my people go… ’” (5:1). And as much as Pharaoh tried to stop God, there was no way God wasn’t going to accomplish his purposes. The ruler of Egypt was defiant and said he didn’t know this God so why should he obey him (5:2). He made excuses for his own convenience: “These people have too much time on their hands, let’s give them more to do and they’ll stop wanting to take off” (5:4ff). He made life impossible for the Israelites by withholding the materials they needed to do the work assigned to them (5:14ff). The people were upset and so was Moses because of all these obstacles (5:22f). But God … The Lord renewed his promises to his people: “ …I am the Lord…I will bring you out…I will free you…I will redeem you with an outstretched hand and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God…I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifte...

Exodus 1-4 It’s true that you can’t apply literally everything you read in Scripture. But it’s fascinating to me that the timing of my “exodus” from Venezuela so perfectly combines with my devotional reading. I certainly wouldn’t say, for example, that I have been a slave here and that God has needed to rescue me from servitude (1:11ff). Nor would I say that I’ll have to kill someone in the process of leaving! (2:11-12). And I’m not into circumcision (4:24ff). But there are overriding principles that I will take away with me from this passage that directly relate to this major move. 1. God is with me as he was with the midwives, Moses and his family (1:20, 21; 2:1-10) and the Israelites. He will rescue me from whatever I need rescuing from. 2. God is sending me and I confess, not to any reluctance to go (unlike Moses), but to some anxiety as to being able to fulfill the upcoming mission (3:11). But here again I claim the promises that God gave to Moses: “ I will be with you…Who gave ma...

Genesis 43-46 Such a roller-coaster of emotions and changing circumstances for the brothers who had so easily sold Joseph into slavery without a thought for their father’s feelings or for the consequences of their actions. Joseph tested his brothers. Would they save themselves rather than try to save Benjamin? Would they cause their father additional grief by abandoning another favoured child? This time, the brothers passed the test. Imagine their surprise to discover that this figure of authority who seemed to know so much about them, was really the brother they can once so callously delivered into the hands of Midianite traders. Joseph was quick to reassure them right from the beginning that their actions, evil as they had been, were divinely orchestrated. “ …do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you…to preserve a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it w...

Time for Monday Manna hosted by Joanne at An Open Book . Check out more thoughts on Philippians 4:13 there. I am hooking today's Monday Manna onto my Scripture reading for today from Genesis 10, 11. It works very well—thanks, Joanne. “ Terah took his son, Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran ” —Genesis 11:31, 32. What stopped Terah from completing the journey to Canaan? It would be left for his son, Abram, to respond to God’s call and leave, not Ur, but Haran, to finish the move that Terah had started. Did the road ahead seem too difficult, too fraught with impossibilities? We are not told that Terah’s vision of settling in Canaan was the result of his response to the call of God, as was true in Abram’s case. Perhaps that is the important point. Sometimes God’s call...

When my parents died I was forced to reexamine a truth that I had believed in academically but had never, until that moment, tested. Did I, or did I not, believe in the afterlife? If I didn't, then the road ended there. All I would have left would be memories and a few momentoes. If I did, then I would see mom and dad again. Curling the mind around such a concept is difficult. After all, I don't know anyone personally who has come back from the dead—except Jesus. That's a huge exception, and the point. Paul writes: " Brothers we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him " —1 Thessalonians 4:13, 14. As Jesus is our example in everything else in life, He is our example in death as well. He lives, and because He lives, so do mom and dad. And so will I. When I fall "as...

Time for Monday Manna over at An Open Book . Slip over there for more thoughts on this wonderful passage of Scripture. Worried about losing your salvation? Don't. If there were ever two verses that demonstrate how secure the believer's salvation is, Romans 8:38, 39 are those verses. " For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. " Like many of us, those who received Paul's letters probably had their days when they wondered if they were really part of God's kingdom after all. You know, those days when Satan whispers in your ear, "Did it again, eh? What makes you think you're a Christian?" Then there's the overwhelming sense of unworthiness that sometimes morphs into, "No, this can't be true—God save ME?" In ...

Up to this point in Jesus' famous sermon, the disciples probably figured that the theme didn't have much to do with them. The majority were fishermen. They had no "treasure" as far as material things were concerned, so focusing on the Kingdom was easy—well, until they thought about the cost of the commitment they had made to their Rabbi. Just a little while earlier, Jesus had taught them His prayer. In that prayer appears the phrase: " Give us today our daily bread " —Matthew 6:11. I imagine that this immediately sparked some chaotic thoughts in the minds of the men who had left their livelihood behind them to follow Christ. In the euphoria of the moment, they might not have not thought about how their families were going to survive without that income. That phrase in the prayer was a reminder of who they were dependent upon to meet those needs. But Jesus knew that His followers would have moments of anxious concern about the practical realities of life, so ...

…I tithed not only my money, but my time and talents? I have at my disposition, 168 hours a week. If I were to tithe my time and talents to the Lord, that would mean an investment of 16 hours and 48 minutes per week that would be exclusively dedicated to Him. Now math has never been my strong point, but I think that works out to a little over two hours a day that we could give to Him. Malachi 3:10 tells us: "'Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,' says the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.'" What would happen to our spiritual lives, in our churches, to our mission as witnesses to a lost world, if we tested God in this? God doesn't fail in fulfilling His promises. The possibilities boggle the mind.