Engineering Peace

My ten-year-old son was telling me his dreams and plans today.
He would like to be a military engineer, he said.
He and his cousin have been planning a project for the military.
They want to engineer a flower bomb.
"What is a flower bomb?"
"Instead of exploding like a regular bomb,
a flower bomb will explode with seeds of flowers.
We want to make it as big as a hydrogen bomb,
but it will plant flowers."

And He shall judge among the nations, 
and shall rebuke many people; 
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, 
and their spears into pruning-hooks. 
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, 
neither shall they learn war any more.
Isaiah 2:4

Perhaps my son has a future career with the Lord of Hosts,
beating atomic bombs into flower bombs.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Of Intercourse and Offspring

We are two.
Different from each other.
Different families.
Different ages.
Different dreams.
Different bodies.

We come together.
Union.
Communion.
Corresponding to.
Bound together.
Intercourse.

God breathed life into the man.
The sharing of breath.
Worship: to kiss; to prostrate oneself in homage.
The combining of lives.
The union of bodies dedicated to one another.
Heaven and earth.
Male and female.

The birth of a child --
like me, like him.
They are me.
They are him.
They are us.
I am in them.
Their dad is in them.
They are in us.
We are one.

Blasphemy?
Mystery.

To Your Advantage

"It is to your advantage that I go away;
for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you,
but if I depart, I will send Him to you."
~John 16:7

It seems so against reason.
But reading through John 14-17 again,
and focusing in on what concerns Jesus clues us in a little.
Jesus's concern in His teaching and prayer
is to bring us into fellowship with Himself and His Father.
To invite us to abide.
To cause us to abide -- to live with and in Himself.
While He remained, He kept them in His Father's name.
While the Holy Spirit remains, He will keep us in Jesus's name.

He prayed, "Sanctify them in Your truth. Your word is truth."
He had already told them, "When the Spirit of truth has come,
He will guide you into all truth."

How could it be to our advantage not to have Jesus with us?
Because the Holy Spirit's ministry is to unite us to Christ --
to be the medium through which we abide in Him;
to keep us;
to sanctify us in truth;
to make us one with Christ, who is one with the Father;
to unite each of us to each other.
Christ took that which is the Father's and made it ours.
The Holy Spirit takes from the Son and makes it ours.
Eternal life.
Union with the Father.
Sanctification.
The favor of God.
The love they share.

"As the Father has loved Me, I love you. Abide in My love."

The Father's love raised Him from the dead and made Him alive again.
Christ is our Resurrection and Life.
Jesus's love raises us from the dead and makes us alive.

Breathe in us, Holy Spirit, the life of Christ.
Be our unity, be our love.
Be our sanctification.
Hold us in the love of Christ, and the favor of God.

The Truth From Us

Tossed and tangled by a storm

I have a dark secret.
Some days I wake up and dread floods over me,
and it squeezes my heart,
and churns my stomach,
and twists my mind.
It whispers hateful frights in my ear.
It says I am unloved, and unlovable.
It says they'd all be better off without me.
That I'm an incompetent wife,
a terrible housekeeper,
the wrong mother for my children's needs,
an unwanted friend.

There was a time when every time I walked in my door
and glanced at my answering machine,
and there was no message,
I thought, "No one cares."
Every time.
And if there was a message, I thought, "Somebody wants something."
The Lord brought it to my attention, and made me aware that I had to stop.
He loves me, and saying 'no one cares' is a lie.

The enemy of our souls seeks to steal from, kill and destroy us.
We have an inheritance of light,
but he works to twist our hearts to darkness.
To sink us in depression.
We're afraid to tell the truth about how crushed we feel.
How beaten down, and gasping for breath;
pressed out of measure, and despairing of life.

Jesus is a Man of Sorrows.
He can hear the truth from us,
and shine light into our darkness.

A Good Day To Breathe

I looked down my street
and saw boiling slate clouds behind the steeple.
Normally the steeple looks gray,
but it looked white against that backdrop.
The other direction was bright with piled gleaming white clouds.
Toward the darkness again,
three seagulls small in their distance,
riding in advance of the lightning that flashed behind them,
and the thunder that rumbled toward us.
My wind chimes played crazily when the wind picked up.
Cool air coming.
A greening sky.
We ate our dinner almost silent.
"I like the ones that snap," Talia said.
"I like the growling ones, too, though," I said.
Soft at first, the rain poured down.
Jeff and I went out on the porch and sat down on the loveseat.
One by one, the kids followed.
Three climbed onto us with their bony wiggles.
That scent -- that God-cleaned air full of cold moisture.
I leaned back and looked up at the changing light in the sky,
and the flashes,
and the storm drain across the street with the spouting insurge.
It's a good day to breathe.

Are We Allowed?

After I asked Elisa again to please get on with eating her dinner, she said,
"Mom, are we allowed to savor communion?" 
"What do you mean?" I asked, puzzled.
"Well, it seems like we're not allowed to savor it,
because I feel like we have to hurry up and eat it fast."

Maybe we should slow down, then.
It really ought to be savored.

But Today

If you didn't already know, we are a homeschooling family -- which means that my house is messier than I would like, because we have to get to work on school, and when we finish school, I am often drained. We're regularly behind on laundry. We don't have a dishwasher in the house, so I do dishes three times a day. If I skip a time or two, there are a lot of dishes to catch up on. We moved less than a year ago, and my dining room is still full of boxes we haven't unpacked. We updated the living room, the laundry room, the guest room, the fire alarms, much of the electrical in the house, and put in a new furnace. Those boxes have moved in and out of three rooms while we fixed them. Our table is in the kitchen until the dining room is cleaned out and finished. Next week, our downstairs bathroom begins its transformation. It will have its walls removed and replaced. There will be tile on two walls. Clean, white tile. The water damage behind the tub will be repaired. It will get a new floor, and eventually, paint on the cabinet and the untiled walls. A working outlet. The upstairs bathroom will also be getting a new floor. And a section of fencing will be installed shortly.

But today, we will enjoy our first full 'day off' of the summer. We finished our curriculum last Friday. And we finished our testing yesterday. On my plate for the summer: that dining room; finally cleaning out and organizing my bedroom, which has been a depository for extra mattresses and boxsprings, books on makeshift shelves (until the completed bookshelves were installed in the living room), and various other junk that did not yet have a home. I did clean and organize two of the three kids' bedrooms, but you can no longer tell. We will tackle the closets. Eventually. Set up the dining room hutch we were given, and fill it. Find places for the games, and the craft supplies, and the pictures on the walls. There is more painting to do everywhere. Oh, and I need to teach my youngest to read. And of course, the laundry will continue to outstrip us, and the dishes will be constant, and the meals will always need making, and the plants will need watering, and I am not going to go through this summer without tracking in a lot of beach sand which will need sweeping and vacuuming. Half of the family will leave toys in their wake, and every one of us will leave a trail of books through the house. I'll be ordering new curriculum soon, and wondering where I will store the years not being used. And I have those fourteen curtains I have to make for the porch windows.

Some day it will feel like we can just do maintenance and enjoy it. In the meantime, we battle the mess and try to get ahead just long enough to get something lasting accomplished. And sometimes we will close the door on the house, and go appreciate the beauty God gives us for the short season that we have and not miss out on the memories we'll treasure longer than our clean toilets.

He Waits At The Scene Of The Crime

 
This was a really interesting article. It talked about some of the descendents of top Nazis, how they grew up not knowing these horrendous secrets about their parents and grandparents. One brother and sister, so horrified at the history of their progenitor's sins, both had themselves sterilized, in order to prevent the family from ever having another heir. They have walked around with a burden of guilt. 

I couldn't help but ponder: what do we do with our sin? With our family history of sin? Do we run from the facts? Do we visit the scenes of the crimes? Do we mutilate ourselves to keep it from happening again? Do we pretend there is nothing wrong in our past -- even if our family's past remains as the world-wide definition of evil? One man went to Auschwitz, where his father was brought up in luxury, and wept when he saw 'the gate to hell' that he recognized as a backdrop to old family photos. He was approached by victims of his own family, who told him their stories. He was forgiven, and felt joy for the first time in his life.

These descendants feel guilt by blood association. It seems they consider themselves tainted, although they have had no hand in the wicked deeds. It brought to mind our kinsman redeemer. The One who came in our likeness -- the likeness of sinful man. He came as our relative. He came to save us from inside the family. But in a sense, He is also our victim. Jew and Gentile alike laid their hands on Him and crucified the Son of God -- the Son of Man. We beat Him. We cursed Him. We tore His beard and nailed Him there. And He waits, at the scene of the crime, to offer redemption in His blood. That scene of our guilt, of our family shame, is the place where He waits to welcome us as brothers.

Prayer in the Morning, and How?

For the quiet of the morning;
for the softly falling rain;
for the cooing of the mourning dove --
thank You.
Lord, help me to be salt and light:
neither flavorless nor dim.
The age in which I live is distressing.
Please be my Helper.
Be my Friend.
Lord, I want to be Yours -- set apart for You.
I want to bless You with my hands, my thoughts, my faith.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength."
"He seeks those who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth."

How do we worship in Spirit and in truth?
The opposite, I suppose, would be to worship Him in material form and hypocrisy.
The falseness of setting up a sacrifice and withholding my soul.
A song from my mouth and silent disdain from my heart.

True worship chooses to do the honoring thing when He is the only audience.
True worship not only refrains from murder, but also from hatred.
It marries from the heart -- eschewing even the lustful thought of another.
Secret charity, and secret prayer.
Secret forgiveness, and secret fasts.
Secret trust: a hidden hope.

In Search of the Source

I just finished reading a book that I loved.
It's called In Search of the Source -- A First Encounter With God's Word, and it was written by a man who spent twenty years in Papua, New Guinea, with the Folopa people learning their language and culture and translating the New Testament and Genesis for them.
I always like to hear stories and read books that show how the Gospel changed things when it came in.
We have had The Book in the hands of our English-speaking culture for so long that we forget its power.
We argue over its meaning about the things we don't understand.
I like hearing about the peace and the turmoil brought on by Jesus's words when a new culture hears them.
The book also challenges how you think about language. He discusses passages that gave him trouble in translation because of cultural differences and how he came to find the words to say the message.
I love when he had no word to use, and the stories of how the word came through some weird situation being served bugs to eat, or hunting bats in a cave.
Or his explanation of communion to people who just a few short years before were eating their dead, family and foes alike.
But the most moving thing in it was when he was translating Jesus's suffering to them.
He had to find words for 'flogged', and because these people had actively participated in the brutal treatment of their enemies, they knew firsthand the scene of horror the story portrayed.
It stunned them.
I think it can be beneficial to your spirit to see the truth through someone else's eyes now and again.
I wish I was better at book reviews, because I love to recommend books.
This one is worth reading.
It was written by Neil Anderson.

The Difference

I am part of a group in which someone asked,
"What do you see as the difference
between playing church and being the church?"
This came from that.
I thought I would share it here.

I guess I would have to say it's the difference between playing house and being a family. 
If it's, "Here, you be mommy, and I'll be Daddy, and Susie can be our baby," it's playing house. 

But if it's, "Will you marry me?" 
And "Yes!" 
And a long miserable labor and birth. 
And love. 
And home. 
And sleepless nights. 
And working out a way of peace even though we don't agree. 
And choosing to eat a burnt meal 
because your wife doesn't know how to cook, but she's trying. 
And cleaning out and packing each others' wounds like a nurse. 
And kissing the messy face of your baby. 
And getting up and getting a drink because they can't reach the counter. 
And taking out the trash. 
And helping kids to wipe. 
And listening to boring stories that you already heard before. 
And being hurt for their benefit. 
And being thrown up on. 
And having to forgive, because they did it again. 
And realizing you were wrong, and saying, 'I'm sorry'. 
And being forgiven. 
It's letting their pain be your pain. 
And rejoicing when they rejoice, 
even though you feel like crying in the bathroom for yourself. 

It isn't acted out perfectly, 
but with practice, you get better at it, 
and your husband gets better at it, 
and then another newborn comes along, all selfish and squalling, 
and you all have to learn all over again 
how to be kind and how to teach kindness. 
And he grows into a toddler and pulls his sister's hair, 
and he has to learn to be kind, and she has to learn to forgive. 
And then one day, you see them sharing, and helping, and choosing to love. 
And there are love notes from new writers, 
and you ignore how they spelled them, 
and you don't care that there is no punctuation and no spacing. 
It's recognizing progress instead of noting imperfection. 
It's sharing blood. 
It's the reality of love, instead of the fantasy. 
It recognizes value in the most useless members. 
They belong to us. 
We don't care if they are crippled, if they're old, if they're in diapers. 
If they have bad breath and running sores. 
They are ours. 
Our babies. 
Our great-grandfathers. 
We're glad they're with us, because they belong to us. 

But when we're playing house, we can do without that, 
and just put on our princess clothes and sparkly headbands, 
and pick the best looking companions to be there with us, 
and the prettiest dolls to be our children. 
And let's kick out the ugly little kid with a birthmark and all the bedwetters.
They smell.

Whose Image and Inscription?

"The Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle Him in His talk. 
And they sent to Him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, 
'Teacher, we know that You are true, and teach the way of God in truth... 
Tell us, therefore, what do You think? 
Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?' 
Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, 
'Why do you test Me, you hypocrites? Show Me the tax money.' 
So they brought Him a denarius. 
And He said, 'Whose image and inscription is this?' 
They said to Him, 'Caesar's.' 
'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, 
and to God the things that are God's.'"

It says they went away marveling.
And as I thought about the coin with the image of Caesar on it --
that self-proclaimed god --
I marveled, too.
Because my mind fell back to this:
'And God created man in his own image, 
in the image of God created He him; 
male and female created He them.' 

They tried to entangle Him by provoking Him
to advocate withholding taxes from royalty.
And He made it clear that they were withholding God's property from Him.
Property He had stamped His image on, created in His likeness.
And an inscription,
the writing declaring we were put into circulation in His name:
"He hath set eternity in their heart, 
yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done
 from the beginning even to the end."

"What shall I render unto Jehovah For all his benefits toward me?"
I ought to render myself.

The Beauty That It Is

When my husband and I went to Israel, 
the tour guide reported to us that the weather forecast was hot and dry 
for the entire time we were going to be there. 
In February. 
It is supposed to be the rainy season. 
Of course, we tourists were delighted.
We had come from a cold winter.
But the guide said it was bad news for the people who lived there.
They needed rain.

Rain.
Why do we complain about it? 
Liquid water is so necessary to our existence that without it we die.
Our crops fail.
Our forests burn.
Our land withers up and blows away.
But we only want it when it isn't given.

See it for the beauty that it is. 
And use it for restful meditation. 
Rain is one of the mercies of God, 
sent on the just and the unjust alike. 
It ought to remind us to be kind as He is kind
to those who love us, and those who don't.
To forgive.
To provide nourishment.

My husband bought me a rain barrel last week.
I have been waiting for this rain to drip from my gutters into my barrel,
so that when the sun shines, 
I can water my plants with His mercy.

The Spirit of Adoption

In church today, I heard this:
"The Lord doesn't adopt you,
and then look for the first opportunity to get rid of you."

"For you did not receive a spirit of bondage again to fear, 
but you received the Spirit of adoption 
by Whom we cry out, 'Abba, Father.' 
The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit 
that we are children of God."
~Romans 8:15,16

Calling Him Abba -- Daddy -- Papa -- is a direct contrast to adoption.
"We are adopted into intimacy, into family love."
Adopted into love.
It is the work of the Spirit to remind you that you are God's child.

Why Wait?

"Sisera, who had 900 iron chariots, 
ruthlessly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years. 
Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help."
~Judges 4:3

Does your mind stick at then, too?
Twenty years before they broke?

Back in Judges 3:7-9, it says,
"The Israelites did evil in the Lord's sight. 
They forgot the Lord their God, 
and they served the images of Baal and Asherah poles... 
He turned them over to King Cushan-rishathaim... 
and the Israelites served him for eight years. 
But when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help, 
the Lord raised up a rescuer to save them."

"Once again, the Israelites did evil in the Lord's sight, 
and the Lord gave King Eglon of Moab control over Israel 
because of their evil... 
And the Israelites served Eglon of Moab for eighteen years. 
But when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help, 
the Lord again raised up a rescuer to save them."
~Judges 3:12-15

They seem to have grown in their tolerance of oppression,
and to have grown dull in their remembrance of the Lord's help.
But there He was, after all those years of being forgotten,
with ears open for their cry of desperation,
ready to save them.

Fellowship in Knowing

A friend confided hurts to me -- hurts I've also had.
Received in different places, they caused the same wounds.
What to say?

"I exhort you to forgive them.
They are wrong, and they hurt you, and God can deal with them.
But you must forgive, for your own sake.
Because I am sure you want His forgiveness.
I know I do.
And I know for certain I have failed others.
I can't fix that.
But I can forgive when I am failed.
And sinned against.
And hurt."

That rejection and betrayal cuts deep.
"But I think about Jesus,
and how He looked at His disciples when the crowds left,
and He said, 'Are you going to leave, too?'
There is a fellowship with Him in knowing He felt rejection.
He was betrayed.
And He was abandoned by His friends to suffer alone.
And He loved them to the end.
Look at Jesus to learn how to forgive.
And look at Jesus when you feel afraid of fellowship."

I said it to my friend, and I said it to myself.

Hidden in the Walls

Ruins of Beit Shean

The walls of Jericho bring to mind destruction.
Everybody knows the story of the battle.
"And the walls came tumbling down!"

Rahab, the harlot, had a house built in the walls.
It was in these very walls she hid the spies and joined her lot to Israel's.
She first lived her faith there, within the walls.
And it was in the walls, in her home, that the spies told her she would be saved.

Between 1929 and 1936, Jericho's ruins were excavated.
Its destruction was dated to roughly 1400 B.C.
The walls had fallen down flat.
They were double, with an outer wall 6 feet thick,
and an inner wall 12 feet thick --
both about 30 feet high.
They were 15 feet apart, linked by the houses built into the top. 

There, at the point of attack,
she huddled in her house with her family, awaiting her salvation.
The spies didn't tell her to hide in the center of town --
away from the crashing walls.
But right there in the chaos and destruction, she was safe.
They burned the city: the outer walls suffered the worst of the fire.
Houses alongside the wall were burned to the ground.
"The stratum generally was covered with a deep layer of black burnt debris,
under which were pockets of white ash,
overlaid with a layer of fallen reddish brick." (Haley's Bible Handbook)
But the scarlet cord she had hung out her window
marked her trust of the God who broke her walls down,
and took her out of that doomed city.

But the just shall live by faith. 

Do You Belong To Us?

"And it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho, 
that he lifted up his eyes and looked, 
and behold, there stood a man over against him 
with his sword drawn in his hand: 
and Joshua went to him, and said to him, 
'Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?'
And he said, 'No; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come.'
And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and worshiped, 
and said to him, 'What saith my lord to his servant?'
And the captain of the LORD'S host said to Joshua, 
'Loose thy shoe from off thy foot,
 for the place on which thou standest is holy': 
and Joshua did so."
~Joshua 5:13-15

I read through a number of translations of this
and commentaries on it this morning.
Some of them translated Joshua's question as:
"Do you belong to us, or to our enemies?"
Are you ours, or theirs?
And the answer: "Nay.
I am the prince of the army of Jehovah; I am now come."
I am now come.
It has such a stepping-out-of-eternity-into-time ring to it.
And I wonder -- should there be a comma after that first I am?
Prince of the army of Jehovah.
I guess Joshua mistook his rank.
The Prince doesn't fall into line with our campaigns.
We fall into line with His.
And Joshua fell on his face, and called himself His servant.

His Ears Are Open

"The Lord told Joshua, 
'Today I will begin to make you a great leader 
in the eyes of all the Israelites. 
They will know that I am with you, 
just as I was with Moses...'"
~Joshua 3:7

I read this today.
And it got me thinking about what makes great leadership.
What makes leadership respectable?
A good leader is a listening leader.
A leader with open ears to the Lord.
A leader whose direction comes to pass,
because the Lord gave it to him to pass on.
Joshua was presented to the people as their leader
in his obedience to the Lord's words.
The Lord spoke to him, and he spoke to them.
And in that, the people recognized clearly that the Lord was with him.

I thought about Moses.
Moses was a great leader.
The thing he failed in, that kept him from the promised land,
was stepping ahead of the Lord,
letting his own anger, instead of the Lord's words
be what spoke to the people -- even striking the rock
through which the Lord gave them water.
And when leaders are no longer listening to the Lord's voice,
striking the Rock can result.

Saul was a leader hand-picked by God --
who shut his ears to the Lord's voice.
The Lord gave him a direction, and he did something else.

"...He did this so all the nations of the earth might know 
that the Lord's hand is powerful, 
and so you might fear the Lord forever."
~Joshua 4:24

The purpose of raising this great leader up
was that people might know the Lord.
I think one thing that is interesting to me about Joshua
is that he seems personally boring.
His personality is not the remarkable thing about him.
He did what the Lord said.
The Lord worked through him mightily.
Miraculously.
Although he led them in battle,
I think of him more as an accountant type.
Over and over again, the Lord tells him to be courageous.
His ears are open to the Lord's encouragement, as well as His commands.
And the Lord was with him.

"Joshua the son of Nun, 
the servant of the Lord, 
died at the age of 110. 
They buried him in the land he had been allocated, 
at Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash."
~Judges 2:8

The servant of the Lord -- buried in the promise.

When I See the Blood

"And the blood shall be to you for a token 
upon the houses where ye are: 
and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, 
and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, 
when I smite the land of Egypt."
~Exodus 12:13

"And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, 
saying, 'Drink ye all of it; For this is My blood of the new testament, 
which is shed for many for the remission of sin.'"
~Matthew 26:27-28

"And standing afar off, 
the tax-collector would not even lift up his eyes to Heaven, 
but struck on his breast, saying, 
'God be merciful to me a sinner!'"
~Luke 18:13

"And the other answering, was rebuking him, saying, 
`Dost thou not even fear God, 
that thou art in the same judgment? 
and we indeed righteously, 
for things worthy of what we did we receive back, 
but this one did nothing out of place;' 
and he said to Jesus, `Remember me, lord, 
when thou mayest come in thy reign;' 
and Jesus said to him, 
`Verily I say to thee, Today with me thou shalt be in the paradise.'
~Luke 23:40-43

"The next day John sees Jesus coming to him and says, 
'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!'"
~John 1:29