sins

The Day After My Birthday

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“Through my whole life (young and old), I have never witnessed God forsaking those who do right, nor have I seen their children begging for crumbs” (Psalm 37:25, The Voice).

I’m 53 and I’m still learning that even when you don’t feel it, still you can choose to trust in God and His promises. You can claim God’s provision even when it seems slow in coming. You can thank God in advance for prayers He’s yet to answer.

The Bible says to keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking for as long as it takes. I said before that sometimes we don’t have because we don’t ask, and now I wonder if we don’t have simply because we asked a few times and gave up instead of keeping on keeping on asking. We should be like Jacob who wrestled with God and would not let go until He blessed him.

I think prayer is a taking hold of God in the secret place and not letting go. It’s claiming the promises, confessing sins of commission and omission, giving thanks, interceding for others, and waiting to hear what He would say to us.

Even when the heart is heavy with hope delayed, we can pray God’s future promises for us as if they’re already ours. We can show gratitude ahead of the gift. We can pray for those loved ones who are far from God believing that God can bring them home. We can lift up the hurting and dying in the name of the One who is able to bring life from the dead.

I’ve heard that we should never stop preaching the gospel to ourselves. I suppose that’s what this is. Me reminding myself of God’s goodness that remains when He is absent or silent.

“I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13, New Heart English Bible).

Whiter Than Snow

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We finally got our Snowpocalypse, or if you prefer, Snowmageddon. All that means is that it actually snowed here in the Nashville, Tennessee area. 6 inches, in fact. I actually got a snow day.

I know those of you up north are reading this and groaning. Six inches of snow is to you what a light dusting of it is to us. Nothing. Well, even with that light dusting, people still panic and buy up all the bread and milk. The South is weird about snow.

Still, it’s been lovely to look at. I love how it covers over everything like a white blanket over a hibernating earth.

It made me think of that verse in the Psalms (or maybe in Isaiah) which goes something like this: though our sins are as scarlet, they shall be whiter than snow. At that point, the writer could think of nothing purer than freshly-fallen snow. I can’t either.

Grace is more than forgiveness for those past transgressions. It’s a covering up of them as if they had never been. It’s a clean slate and a new start. It’s a do-over that can take place at any point in your life, no matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done.

This may be a repeat, but it’s worth repeating. The beautiful part of the gospel is that it reminds us that we don’t have to be trapped by futility and chained to past failures. Though Jesus, anyone can start over. It is indeed never too late to be what you might have always been and always dreamed you could be.

Probably sooner than later, the sun will come out and all that beautiful snow will evaporate and exist only in memory and all those photos I took with my iPhone.

Grace, however, is forever.

I really love that part.

 

A Good Word from Micah

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Quick question: when was the last time you heard a sermon from the little book of Micah? Or from any of the minor prophets? Just wondering.

I was reading Micah this afternoon in my quest to read through the Bible in a year (this year, I’m reading from the New English Bible). I’ll admit that most of what I read today wasn’t the most happy-go-lucky sort. After all, God was speaking through these prophets to a wayward and rebellious nation who refused to repent and come back to the God who had brought them out of Egypt and through the wilderness to their promised land (not that there are any parallels to this country, right?) But not all of it was dark and gloomy.

Here’s one section I read that I hope will uplift and encourage you as it did me.

“Where is the god who can compare with you—
    wiping the slate clean of guilt,
Turning a blind eye, a deaf ear,
    to the past sins of your purged and precious people?
You don’t nurse your anger and don’t stay angry long,
    for mercy is your specialty. That’s what you love most.
And compassion is on its way to us.
    You’ll stamp out our wrongdoing.
You’ll sink our sins
    to the bottom of the ocean.
You’ll stay true to your word to Father Jacob
    and continue the compassion you showed Grandfather Abraham—
Everything you promised our ancestors
    from a long time ago” (Micah 7:18-20).

Note: I quoted from The Message a) because Bible Gateway doesn’t have the New English Bible as a translation and I was too lazy to type the whole thing and b) because Eugene Peterson’s rendering is pretty powerful in and of itself.

 

More Snow, Snow, Snow

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“‘Come. Sit down. Let’s argue this out.’
    This is God’s Message:
‘If your sins are blood-red,
    they’ll be snow-white.
If they’re red like crimson,
    they’ll be like wool.'” (Isaiah 1:18-19)

Well, apparently Middle Tennessee is catching up on all that snow we were supposed to get this year (according to the famed Farmer’s Almanac). Ok, it’s still not that much by New York or Boston standards, but snow is snow. And Nashvillians still can’t drive in it. Not that they can drive in any other kind of weather.

At the risk of sounding like an old fart, I can remember back when it used to REALLY snow. There was that one time when I was a freshman at Briarcrest High School when Memphis got 13 inches of snow. 13 inches! Again, that’s a light dusting for places like Minneapolis, but for us folks down South, that’s a big deal.

I also remember the Great Ice Storm of ’94 when I was a student at Union University and people lost power for a couple of weeks. Thankfully, the campus shared the same power grid as the nearby hospital, so we only went without power for a few hours.

This time, it’s nowhere near as dramatic as that. Still, even with only an inch or two on the ground, it is rather pretty. Even at night, there’s still enough light reflecting off the snow for me to be able to see out the front door when ordinarily I wouldn’t be able to see much beyond the glow of the streetlights.

I’m thinking how snow covers up so much ugliness and makes everything beautiful again. I wonder if that was what Isaiah was thinking when he penned the words about how “though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.”

I’m hoping with all this Arctic (for Middle Tennessee) weather we’ve been having that there will be less bugs next summer. I wonder what the Farmer’s Almanac has to say about that?

 

A Little Sunday Perspective

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“Look carefully at your call, brothers and sisters. By human standards, not many of you are deemed to be wise. Not many are considered powerful. Not many of you come from royalty, right? But celebrate this: God selected the world’s foolish to bring shame upon those who think they are wise; likewise, He selected the world’s weak to bring disgrace upon those who think they are strong. God selected the common and the castoff, whatever lacks status, so He could invalidate the claims of those who think those things are significant. So it makes no sense for any person to boast in God’s presence. Instead, credit God with your new situation: you are united with Jesus the Anointed. He is God’s wisdom for us and more. He is our righteousness and holiness and redemption. As the Scripture says: “If someone wants to boast, he should boast in the Lord” (1 Cor. 1:26-31).

Hi. My name is Greg and I used to be a nobody with no hope, no purpose, and no future. I was hopelessly lost and about as far from God as humanly possible.

Then Jesus found me.

Those of you who know my story might be scratching your heads right now and asking, “Weren’t you 7 when you got saved? What bad things could you possibly have done at age 7?”

Well, according to the Bible, anyone without Christ is dead in sins and alienated from God. That was me.

I look back at when Jesus found me. I don’t remember the exact day or feelings I had. I do know Jesus changed me and has been transforming me ever since. I do know I got a direction, a purpose, a new name, and a future.

According to Forbes or GQ or Entertainment Weekly, I am a nobody. But Jesus knows my name. That more than makes up for looking like a fool and an idiot in the eyes of the world for what I believe and how I live my life.

Jesus knows my name.

I can’t get over that.

At least when I’m not caught up in mind games about how this person may or may not like me. Or how I might have offended this or that person.

If I have everything the world has to offer and don’t have Jesus, I really have nothing. I lose. If I have Jesus and absolutely nothing else, I have everything. I win.

I am so forgetful about what really matters. The best things in life aren’t free; they’re not even things. They are the people God brings into your life, whether for one hour, one day, one month, or a lifetime. They are the ones who remind you of who you really are and Whose you really are.

You can replace things. You can never replace people once they’re gone from your life.

So that’s why I can say I’m blessed. I’m rich in the currency of love. I am living my miracle every day, the miracle of seeing blessings everywhere, of finding joy in every place and circumstance, of always finding God right where I am if I only know where and how to look.

It truly doesn’t matter if people remember my name after I’m gone. It won’t matter if no one ever finds me attractive or desirable. My Abba is very fond of me, has chosen me, made me His child, and forever called me His Beloved.

That’s enough for me to last a lifetime. That’s enough for a lifetime of lifetimes. I’m good.