Show Me

Cunningham Pond, fall 2016

Some mornings, you wake up with overwhelming brain clutter.

A night of restless sleep filled with multiple bizarre dreams that had no connection to one another.

“Turn your pillow over,” mom used to say.

But on these kind of nights, the movies keep playing, just on a different channel.

It is a relief to wake up, even if very early in the morning.

If you’ve been there, you know.

Coffee helps but it is hard to focus on anything after all of that.

It would be easy to start the day in a tailspin and be a bummer to all around you…if you let it.

Sometimes, a better decision is to simply turn on music that will soothe the soul, as David’s harp did for Saul, and which can counter the bizarreness of the night…

…And soon, a prompting out of nowhere: “Psalm 25.”

“I don’t even think I know what that one is.” More dream craziness?

Until you turn and your eyes fall upon this counterattack to the night’s bizarreness:

Show me Your ways, Lord, teach me Your paths.

Guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are God my Savior, and my hope is in You all day long.—Psalm 25:4-5

Your. You. Hope. All…day…long. 

Just camp out there for a few minutes.

The atmosphere is changing now.

Who can explain how that happens?

One translation answers:  “for You are my God, my Savior—Helper. Victor.”

Over the brain clutter, and so much more.

And as you read these words over one more time, a song “randomly” shows up on the playlist.

Wait. No way. How can this be?…

“Holy! There is no one like You,

There is none beside You.

Open up my eyes in wonder.

And show me who You are

And fill me with Your Love

And lead me in Your Love to those around me.”

Even in the overwhelming brain or any other kind of clutter, it was a morning-after reminder that God’s promises never fail:

“…with a deep longing you will seek Me and require Me as a vital necessity, and you will find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”—Jeremiah 29:13, Amplified

Selah…

The Maine Thing

Earlier this summer, while waiting in line at a favorite ice cream stand in Maine, my eye caught this saying (pictured) the owners had screwed to the wall. All I could think to myself in response was, “Amen to that.” 

Problems have always been real and can make you angry. People have always been mean and some have been evil. Politics, as the people in Jesus’ day knew all too well, have always been known for confusion, hypocrisy and self-serving. But that little sign in the ice cream shop was a reminder that we (points to self) who Believe need to hold onto—check that, live—the truth that “The earth belongs to the LORD, and everything in it; the world and all its inhabitants” (Psalm 24:1-2, Expanded).

It's one reason why I like posting photographs and stories that show the other side of God’s creation. A small counterattack to the craziness. It’s also a preaching to myself sort of thing, because I know how easy it is fall down that rabbit hole of endless ranting along with everyone else, all the while making God to be quite small and inadequate not only in my own eyes but in my witness. It’s too easy to forget what we who Believe were born (again) to carry a different message. Darkness and disgust will be a given and will increase until That Day, but until then, Jesus still shouts down through the ages: “You (yes, you) are the salt of the earth!…You are the light of the world!” (Matthew 5:13-16). "So be that!"

There’s another saying in Maine that sums up all that state's wonderfulness:“The way life should be.” It’s also a good slogan for actually living the wonderfulness of “the LORD reigns!,” just as the Word repeatedly declares. Because it acknowledges the world’s woes without either being preoccupied by them or pretending them all away. “The way life should be” is not wishful thinking but what we find as heavenly counterattacks in the Word of Life that have stood the test of time and everything that has ever been rotten and miserable, because God has been its Commander in Chief. Shocking things like:

“Don’t be selfish;

Don’t live to make a good impression on others.

Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourself.

Don’t just think about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and in what they are doing.”—Philippians 2:3-4, Living

Imagine such a world.

Still not perfect, but maybe not quite as crazy.

Not idealistic, but certainly less mean and angry.

Definitely not easy, but when lived out can become contagious beyond borders.

Because as with a lot of constructive things in life, it always begins with one.

One with a flashlight and a salt shaker.

With Words of hope for a world that can’t seem to find many…

...To help make that ice cream stand sign a reality.

“How often we hear the words, ‘Have a good day.’ Pleasant as the words are, they can fall on the ear without heed because of their frequency. Early today, I was startled into attention at a gas station when the cheerful words that sent me on my were, ‘Give a good day!’ Did I?"

—from “A Book of Hours,” Elizabeth Yates

Veggie Tales

 

“So when the Samaritans came to Him, they begged Him to stay with them, and Jesus stayed there two days….After spending two days there, Jesus left and went to Galilee.”—John 4:40, 43

Wait, that’s it? Where’s the action? Two days here and a journey there, and when it’s Jesus at the center of it all, there must have been a lot of exciting things going on. Probably a lot, but probably just as many hours of not. It’s true that the Word of God is as alive and active as it has ever been, but despite what our imagination may crave, we forget that the Bible is not always an action movie. We forget that there are days upon days of silence, of routine, of apparently not much going on. And that’s a good thing—it’s something we can all hold onto whenever it feels like a long season of routine and you begin to wonder if your spiritual life is all right...

And so God created tomatoes.

Days and seasons of routine and not-much-going-on can be a lot like watching tomato plants each spring and summer. Not much seems to be happening from day to day, but then quietly, a little yellow blossom, then a fruit or two appears and then it seems to take forever for them to ripen…but you know that they will because that is how God made tomato plants.

A nice veggie tale perhaps, until you think of those tomato plants as a God encounter in your own life on a routine day, when He is painting a picture of the importance of staying faithful in the daily grind of not much happening. “Hurry up, we want those tomatoes!” We want to see fruit in our lives and we want to see it now… But the Word answers: 

"But GROW in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 3:18).

And don't forget, “that He who BEGAN a good work in you will bring to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6).

Even when our spiritual life doesn’t feel like an action movie, it’s good to remember that as with those tomato plants, fruitful growth often is deepest during the waiting, and that instead of rushing things we are called to “WALK [day by day] in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” (Colossians 1:10)

Lord, no matter the season, help us to remember that You are in them all, and to look for You in the smallest details of this day, this life—in tomato plants and apples on branches and in Your creation all around us, and even in what we think are routine encounters and conversations but where one encouraging or confirming word said in passing seems like an arrow from Your quiver to our heart that will help us…grow. 

“Daily life is a continual and increasing revelation of God.”

—Thomas Keating