BOLD ADVERTISING

Passing through the small Eastern Washington town of Colfax is like a step back in time. Drive down the main street, and you can't miss the old-time advertisements painted on buildings. With the value of today's “trendy” denim jeans depending on their rips and bleach holes, this sign was certainly an anachronism! Imagine the warranty in the sign's last line in today's culture: "A new pair free if they rip"!

Yet I was reminded how each of us is an “advertisement,” so to speak, of the Creator God. He created us “unto good works” that He planned long before we took our first breath (Ephesians 2:10). He intended us to be “letters from Christ” to our world (2 Cor. 3:3). His teachings are to be on the tablets of our hearts (Proverbs 7:3). His truth is “rip-proof.” But sin ripped up the original, perfect plan.

Christ offers the “new pair”: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

These days, instead of building signs boasting of superior craft, our towns have graffiti, typically sprayed at night, advertising disrespect. In the spiritual realm, it's not different—and it's not all that old. The apostle Peter pleaded with his “flock” to watch their behavior because it advertised the status of their hearts: “Therefore rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind” (1 Peter 1:2). Those problems weren't unique to the First Century. When I've been the victim of someone's written or vocal graffiti, God often reminds me to keep examining my heart, so that I “advertise” a gracious person, not one intent on revenge.

Every day, those who claim to be Christ-followers write ads for their faith via their behavior. It may not be spread across the top of an old brick building, but it's visible in ways we may not even realize. Especially in these times of Covid precautions and complaints, our faith is on display through what we say and do, even when we least expect it.

By the way, I could use some of those replacement guaranteed jeans....mine are chore-worn and starting to look like the $100 intentionally-ragged jeans sold at boutiques—and that's not my style! It's a fashion trend I just don't understand!

Making 'Psense' of Psalms--Psalm 139: Known

Part of a continuing series on selected psalms.
When my son and his wife showed me the ultrasound image of my first grandchild, the words of Psalm 139 immediately came to mind:
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. (vv. 13-14)
That would probably be my choice for a “key verse” for this exquisitely-crafted psalm. Through remarkable descriptions of the God who is infinite and intimate, it expresses how all of creation, in existence and purpose, is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” English has words for these attributes of God, all starting with the prefix “omni,” from the Latin for “all”: omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. Those words suggest an outline for the psalm’s first three sections, with the final one inviting us to self-examination. But the simplicity of its structure defies the jewels that could be mined from this psalm that expresses God’s extravagant Being and love for us.
 

OMNISCIENCE (VV. 1-6)

The first two words already provide a stopping point: “O LORD.” This term of address not only establishes it as a prayer, but it emphasizes God’s high and revered essence through use of His holiest name, “YHWH,” which English translations indicate through “LORD” in small capital letters. It’s the ancient “name” of God that no pious Jew would dare write or speak out of profound reverence. David reached deeply into his native tongue to find words expressing God’s all-knowing character—ones we translate in English as search, know, perceive, discern, and are familiar with. God’s perfect knowledge includes a person’s location and subconscious life (thoughts, plans, habits, and soon-to-be-spoken words)—and all this “completely” (v. 4).

To picture God’s constant presence, David used a military expression, “you hem me in—behind and before” (v. 5). Unlike an enemy, which would hem in a city to destroy it, God surrounds us, both past and present, for our good. He is personal in His guidance: “you lay your hand upon me” (v. 5b). This expression brought me great comfort and confidence at change points in my life. When I felt besieged by circumstances and unsure of the future, being confident of God “behind” and “ahead” with His hand upon me, helped me go forward in faith.

God’s “omniscience” is so immense that we barely begin to understand it. No wonder David added: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain” (v. 6). We don’t know how He does it, but He does it. In response, we might say with the apostle Paul, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Romans 11:33).

OMNIPRESENCE (VV. 7-12)

I babysit my year-old grandson while his parents work, and if I’m not within his sight, he gets worried. When he wakes up from napping in his crib, he cries for that “people” connection he depends on for just about everything. Similarly, God’s constant presence should comfort us, as Paul observed in the well-known “God works for good” teaching of Romans 8. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul asks as a rhetorical question, listing negatives like hardships, persecution, personal deprivations, even death by an enemy. “No,” Paul adds, “in all these things we are more than conquerors through whom who loved us” (Romans 8:35, 37).

As David looks at God’s “omnipresence” or ability to be everywhere, he also touches on the sinful tendency to want to hide from God. “Where can I go from your Spirit?” he asks, “Where can I flee from your presence?” (v. 7). The answer is nowhere. God is in heaven and in the place of the dead (“sheol”). If we could travel at the speed of light (like the “wings of the dawn”), we couldn’t get away from Him. We can’t hide from Him in some dark place, for even the absence of light is no problem for Him. God surpasses the abilities of forensic law workers, who attempt to solve crimes. He sees crime when it happens. He also sees into the dark hearts of those who commit offenses. Darkness is as light to Him (v. 12).

OMNIPOTENCE (VV. 13-18)

David could not have chosen a better example of God’s all-powerful hand than the miracle of creating a human life from one cell merging the mother’s and father’s genetic codes. He couldn’t know about coils of DNA when he chose the wonderfully appropriate Hebrew word sarak (“to entwine”) that more modern English translators render “knit”: “You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Even when hidden inside a mother’s womb (now seen in shadows via ultrasound), our growing “beings” were never hidden from God. God also “knew” the life-path for each of us “before one of them came to be” (v. 16). God has a purpose for each human being, as many other Bible verses attest. He described Jews who would return from Babylonian exile as those “whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made” (Isaiah 43:7). Each of us has a divinely-crafted role: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). When we go off and do our own thing apart from God, then come back, He will help us change to do “his good, pleasing, and perfect will” (Romans 12:2).

Against all these reminders of God’s presence and power, it’s easy to feel insignificant, especially when life’s problems dim our perception of who He is. That’s why the concluding verses of this section are so comforting. They’re a wonderful prayer for those “down days” when God seems distant: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would out number the grains of sand. When I awake [even when I waken to dread the day ahead] I am still with you [which gives me hope for the day ahead!]” (verses 17-18, my comments in brackets).

RESPONSE (VV. 19-24)

The concluding section almost seems out of place after the majority of the psalm exalts God’s great knowledge, presence, and power. David expresses righteous indignation about his enemies when he asks God to slay the wicked. This seems strange unless we remember that God is holy, and all face the choice of accepting Him in all His holiness, or choosing to sin and reject Him. Sinners are objects of both God’s love and God’s wrath: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). David is also separating himself from the evil around him (vv. 21-22) as he seeks to love and serve only God.

Not only does David abhor the evil of his nation and culture, he wants all of it purged from himself:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (vv. 23-24)
Of course, God doesn’t need to “search” because He knows all about David (and us), anyway. But David is expressing his desire to be shown his sin.  As someone once put it, “Roof off to God.” Paul explained it to one of the New Testament churches, as taking captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians. 10:5).

A key word for this psalm is “known.” God is so great—so all-knowing, so “everywhere,” and so powerful--that we cannot “know” all that He is. Yet He knows everything about us, from the very first cells that became “us,” custom-designed for His purposes. And that brings us back to David’s awe expressed in verse 6: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.”

Next: Psalm 145

Tired of winter

Snow is predicted as I write, but I don’t expect to see much. All around, spring is whispering its approach. Near my home, some daffodils have already pushed stems out of the thawing ground. This time of year, I’m drawn back to the poetry in Song of Songs (Solomon): "See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come" (2:11-12). Yes, I know this is supposed to be a love song between a king and his beloved. But it’s also a celebration of God’s lavish love for me. He, too, says, “Arise, come, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me” (v. 13).

God programmed into flowers the cycle of living and dying, seen so clearly in those that rise from bulbs. When I clip off the daffodils’ spent stems in late spring, I think of their pungent, brilliant yellow blooms. I’m also confident they’ll return the next spring.

If only such confidence fortressed my prayers for those in a persistent spiritual “winter.” Every day as I open my prayer notebook, my fingers pass over the names of many in this nation and overseas, who are missing out on God’s best for their lives. Some have no relationship with the God who created them. Others acknowledge God, but are stuck in life, like a February that stays gray, flowers that never push through soil, dirty snow piles that never melt. For them, I sometimes let the words of Ephesians 2:10 become my prayer: “Father, I know You care for them more than they’ll ever know. Remind them that they are Your workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which You prepared in advance for them to do. Help them rise out of ‘stuckness’ to the challenges and joys of serving You.”

Winter is part of nature, and of life. Because we live in a fallen world, we’ll all experience the chill of hardship and sorrow. But we also live in the light of Easter, the history-shattering reality of a Christ who didn’t stay dead and buried, but came back to life. God has “rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:13-14).

Go back and re-read that verse. It thrills me. It’s part of Paul’s phenomenal prayer for the Colossian church, and includes petitions that their lives would bear fruit in loving service for God. Or, to borrow an old saying, that they’ll bloom for Him where they are planted.

I’m ready for spring. Let the thawing continue!

Poetic license

Long ago, I heard someone ask, “What rhymes with ‘orange’?” I still haven’t discovered the magic word! Although I’ve spent all my working life writing, please, please, please don’t press me to write a poem. I could count on one hand the number of poems I’ve had published, and they squeezed out of me like toothpaste way past its expiration date. (Then there are folks like Greg, a prolific poet-pastor who grew up in my hometown, and whose nationally-read poetry blog about daily life and news morphed into a 268-page book.) I began my writing life with hope. As a college freshman I submitted a poem to the writing contest sponsored by the school’s literary magazine. Want to know its name? Hold on to your seats. It wasn’t “Western Student Literary Review” or “Scribes from our Tribe” or “Words from the Wiser” or anything somewhat sophomoric like that. It was called "Jeopardy." Yes, “Jeopardy,” and this long before millions watched a television show in which three mega-brains showed off their grasp of obscure facts.

I placed something like “honorable mention,” which was quite honorable for a lowly freshman. My poem took the idea of how Michelangelo sensed that “David” was waiting to be carved from that hunk of marble. Likewise, as a writer, I wished great literary effort could emerge from my blank paper. Yes, I know, way out there. Paper is unforgiving whiteness, like the blank computer screen I’m facing now. To be truthful, no greatness oozes from my fingers. It’s blood, sweat, and tears and sometimes a bit of carpel tunnel syndrome from too many revisions.

Anyway, one upper division literature class was going to critique the winning poems from that year’s Jeopardy writing contest. I decided to sit in. Sitting incognito in the back, I thought surely they would realize this generation’s answer to Emily Dickinson (although free verse, not rhymed) was upon the campus. So much for pride. When they started reading immoral analogies into the poem—none of which had ever entered my mind—I seriously wondered whether I was born into the wrong generation. I had written the poem thinking of a quote attributed to Michelangelo regarding “David,” “As the chips fall, the image emerges.” I probably should have chosen to write about a statue with some clothes on.

A few years later when the Bible came alive for me, I was excited to learn that I was a poem—God’s poem. When Paul wrote the Ephesians, “For you are God’s workmanship” (2:10), he used the Greek word poiema. It’s the same root from which we get our English word “poem.” It means “something made.” Just like a literary poem is “made” with meaningful word pictures and rhythm, we are uniquely created by God Himself. We’re signed originals, #1 of one produced. No clones!

But you can’t have the first phrase of Ephesians 2:10 by itself. The rest of that verse reveals our purpose: “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” God intended, not that we fulfill selfish pleasures, but that we do the “good works” that He already had in mind. We’re get-your-hands-dirty poems. And that, I suppose, describes how Michelangelo finally found “David” in the slab of marble. Every work day he got caked with marble dust, but he knew eventually he would succeed. It took him more than two years.

“As the chips fall…” is just as true of the Christian life. The hammer of adversity only serves to bring out what God intended all along. “Tribulation brings about perseverance…character…hope” (Romans 5:3-5). Hardship isn’t the whole story. It’s part of God shaping our character for eternity. “When the chips fall, don’t bawl. God’s at work. Don’t shirk.” See, I told you I wasn’t much of a poet.

Flight Fare

I don't always have my camera along at our riverfront--and it's the "no camera" times when geese fly close enough for what would have been a great photo. Look close--a few are in the midst of changing the lead position.
Honk, honk, honk…before I even saw them, I knew that Canadian geese were headed my way. I scanned the sky and spotted their traditional V-formation, one of those marvels of nature. Flying in a “V,” with each bird slightly higher than the bird in front of it, is aerodynamic and energy efficient. Because this configuration helps the birds act as windbreakers and reduce drag, they have a 71% greater flying range than if they flew alone.

I also watched them take turns leading, falling back as they tired. I’ve learned that they travel 40 miles an hour (70 mph in a good wind) and can go 1,500 miles in 24 hours with ideal weather conditions. Whew! Just driving four hours wears me out, and I’m sitting!Then there’s the constant honking, like irate taxi drivers in the middle of a big city traffic tie-up. Even this has a purpose: to encourage each other to keep up the speed. Could geese (despite their habit of fouling lawns and beaches) teach us a thing or two? Maybe, that…

*God designed us for community. Sharing a common direction helps us progress in life. Loners have a hard time of it: “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers, they succeed” (Proverbs 15:22). Community is better: “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24).

*We can’t do it all, all the time. Even Moses, to whom God accorded extra responsibility, realized his physical limits. When the newly-freed Hebrews battled the Amalekites, things went well as long as Moses stood on top of the hill holding up his staff. But when the eighty-year-old wearied and drooped, Aaron and Hur helped hold up his hands until victory came (see Exodus 17:8-16).

*Cheerleading is a group activity. In our fallen world, there are “takers” (people who drain us with their constant neediness) as well as “givers.” Proverbs 12:25 addresses all of us: “An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up.” It’s not just the idea of “buck up and keep going.” We need to remind each other of our spiritual calling: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

One more goose truth. Sometimes a goose gets sick, wounded, or shot down. It’s not left alone. Two drop out of the formation and follow it down to help it. They stay until it can fly again, or dies. Lessons here: problems that disable us from forward progress become the problems of a few who must care for us. They must give up or put on hold their original plans for living out God’s will in order to “encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone” (1 Thessalonians 5:14).

Next time you hear honking geese, flying in formation, remember more than their amazing survival habits. Thank the God of creation, even of geese, for how He cares for you.