Into the Future

When the Lord brought back the captive ones of Zion,
We were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter
And our tongue with joyful shouting;
Then they said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us;
We are glad.
Psalm 126:1-3 NASB

To dream, to have a vision for a future where gladness reigns and joy is established.  A place, a time, a moment where laughter resides.  Where the one who is downtrodden is lifted up.  A safe spot where affliction is no more and where the heart can sing because of desire's fulfillment.  A sacred ground where faith becomes sight, hope reality and love the common currency.  Where the presence of God is so thick that His Holy Ones would want to flee, but having nowhere to go they breath in the greatness of His glory.

We build for ourselves many dream worlds during our stay on this planet.  Whether it is a dream of wealth, health or just being without encumbrance.  God is, in His presence with us, the ultimate "vision."  I see Him in the wonder of a newborn child, the toddler that runs to you as best they can, calling your name as they long for you to simply lift them up.  I see Him in the tears of joy carried by the sons and daughters of our sons and daughters returning from their military deployment.  I hear the cry of relief and hope fulfilled in the lovers' reunion at the airport, at the front door and entwined in their embrace.  The simplest of dreams is found resolved in connection.  With mouths filled with laughter and joy on their lips, returning to what is right in relationship intoxicates the soul.

Many remain out there still.  Captive in their self made prison, grasping at the dreams that resolve in ashes, they struggle to make ends meet, they slave in hopeless parody of relationship and fail in their hapless endeavors to resolve the world around them.  They have need, but refuse to confront it.  Their captivity enslaves them to a cyclic experience of almost success through disappointment back to failure.  The end result is finding themselves back to themselves without recourse.

As we stand on the edge of a new year, I pray for those I love that they may know the captive ones' dream resolved.  I pray for my nation to hold fast to the only one who can fulfill the need within the heart's void (it is not found in bigger sheds for our stuff).  I pray for the world that so desperately needs a fix for its constant lust for blood, money and power.  I pray for a vision of real relationship where the Lord is at the center, a vision that sees beyond the bankruptcy of ourselves. 

I know that this is beyond what many will imagine as good and right and helpful; but I would dream of gladness because the Lord "had done great things for us."  Religion will not accomplish this, only right relationship with God.  May 2013 bring laughter to our mouths as we return from captivity.

Desmond

Just a little dumb poem.

Desmond likes bananas, yes

They’re his favorite fruit

He peels ‘em

Sliced all nice

They’re neatly placed

When he soaks flakes

Yes, Desmond likes bananas

As snackies at his work

He puts ‘em

Still wrapped tight

Brown bagged, au natural

For lunch he takes

Bananas, yes, Desmond likes

At least a few a day

He counts ‘em

One, two, three

Or so he’s told

Him big and strong it makes

Likes bananas, yes, Desmond

Could sing a song to this

He dreams ‘em

Grouped in trees

Tons ‘round his house

All wispy ‘fore he wakes

The Devil is in the Details

He may not have a red cape, horns, bushy slanted eyebrows or a pointy thing "what sticks," but this fella is no red herring. He loves the attention of the faithful, the fearful and the faint; as well as the rejection by intellectuals and their lot as a figment of some undefined mythical antecedents of our cultural past. The Devil does devil good.

Biblical words that indicate his prowess include the Greek words diabolos, slanderer, apollyon, destroyer and the Hebrew words abaddon, destoyer, and satan, adversary or accuser. These characteristics are supreme in their inferiority. Their sense is negative, unproductive and clearly destructive in nature. The Devil does devil good.

But the Devil also gets a bad rap. He is seen as the root of all evil by some and thus the "creator" of all that is bad. The Devil, by some appraisals, is the grinning genie behind all the storms of life. He tracks us down as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, to be Biblical. He is, by some estimations, the force behind all our evil, ungodly, and destructive choices. But most times, we humans do devil good.

Testimonial alert!

I don't need the Devil to help me choose stupid. I am quite capable of doing that myself. I find within me the capacity to fulfill the dark desires of this flesh in which I reside. The Greek word for flesh is "sarx," and that is exactly the great tension that I find. It sarx to deal deal with this flesh. My body loves Twinkies, soda, my taste in music, my kind of everything and my way! Paul outlines this so profoundly in Romans 7, crying out with almost defeated gusto, "Who will save me from this body of death?" Yet, Paul had the answer immediately. "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Christ Jesus is the answer to the problem and the Devil is only partially the problem. Most of our problem is us.

We want to deflect the blame. It is our human right! Let them have it, is our rallying cry. But the truth is that we are the main culprits. We are the primary suspects of culpability when problems arise. I don't like that, but, if we are honest, that is the way it really is. We do devil good.

I hope that somehow the trust in Christ, which I have offered to Him, will see fruit in my body, as I continue to thank Him for His marvelous work within me and, by faith, persevere. I may trip up now and again, but the "Lord is the One" who holds my hand. And He will deal with the Devil good.

In Memory of a Friend (A repost)

Here is a poem I wrote for a great friend of mine. She was a co-worker for many years in a private Christian school. She taught English. When she was the students' teacher, they hated her strict adherence to form and grammar. Later, they lauded her teaching style and its effect on each of them. Her memory is still a blessing to me and I thought you might like to get to know her. She went home to be with the Lord on April 4, 2012.

In Honor of Jan Meadows

She’s a vixen, a harpy, a raptor,
When it come to words.
Nay the rapier and foil are insufficient for her labor.
Give her the mighty claymore to slash
And hew the hopeful’s prose.

And yet, though honored not in sync
With their moment
They all fall in capitulation to her power
With admiration for the very thrashing
They received at her hand.

O hark unto me, you who know not her acumen.
May all give her glory who have known
Her whip, her lash, her work of love.
She is the wonder of a woman
From the fields, rhetorically speaking.

More or Less

A wonderful picture of life without Christ is the experience of passing from the old year to the new one. Standing on the edge of that old and looking to the prospects and hope of the new, we resolve. We resolve to do what I call “More or Less.” We resolve to eat less, drink less, waste less, worry less, spend less, and any other “less” we can think of. We also resolve to run more (or walk), pray more, read more, save more, vacation more, friend more, trust more, hope more, even love more; and any other “more” we can conjure up. These resolutions take place in the blink of an eye, when the clock strikes midnight, then the humanity kicks in.

Many of us resolve because we couldn’t resolve during Xmas (please see my previous blog entitled, “My Xmas Rant”). We have pigged out during the ramp up to the baby Jesus’ arrival and we know. If one were to count how many almond rocas we have stuffed down our gullets, we would probably be shocked. I loved every one of them, over and over and over again. I resolve to not have any almond roca in 2012; until perhaps the 10th of December, when the church folk bless me with tins and tins (which adds up to tons and tons) of almond roca. We resolve to quit this and start that, to less this and more that and we set ourselves up to fail, fail fail.

Jesus, Himself, tried to give us a clue about our own power to effect real change in the face of the typical challenges we confront. He said in Matthew 26:41, "Keep watching and praying, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." The flesh is weak. The depth of that phrase is more or less the crux of our earthly experience. We want to do the right things, we want to “More or Less” our lives, but we do not have the “umpf” to truly accomplish our goals. Paul says that he beat his body so as to make it his slave (rather than the body making us our slave to appetite), so he would not be disqualified. Not from the grace of God, but from the living each day as an example. For Paul to have accomplished this was only based on his awareness that he could do all things through Christ who strengthened him (Phil. 4:13). The same goes for us.

We will only master the “More or Less” of a new year when we enslave ourselves to the Master. Enslave sounds so rough and medieval, but sometimes we don’t get it unless we see how all encompassing it must be to give our lives to Him. This is accomplished when we realize that there must be more of Him and less of us and just do it. Without Christ richly moving in each of our lives we will flounder on in this life, more or less. We will, every year, make our decisions to “More or Less” our lives and fall short, if He is not an integral part of our every endeavor.

I pray this New Year that we might come to the only one who can make a difference in the New Year; that we might submit to Him and see what more of Him and less of us is like. And that’s more or less what I wanted to say.

Happy New Year!