CLOSER

My bank offers desk-size calendars for customers, and I use mine to help track a medicine I need to take daily.  A few weeks ago, when the 2019 calendar got replaced by the new 2020 one, I had a quick memory of some dear older folks (like 90s) whose door at a retirement home had a sign: “Perhaps today.” The reference, of course, is to Jesus’ Second Coming. Could it be this year—before all those days get crossed off?

I was reminded of that hope recently as I read Paul’s letters to the Christians at Thessalonica. I read these in different translations, including the late Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase, The Message. This time I paused to read Peterson’s introduction, which clarified the historical and cultural background. The Thessalonians really hoped for a soon-Second Coming. Life was hard! But that hope had two possible negative outcomes.  One was paralyzing fear of not being ready for judgment.  The other was a “so-what” attitude that led to what Peterson called “shiftless indolence”—the attitude of “so-what, I may as well indulge myself in sin.” (I know people who think like that, and their hearts are so hard!)

Both of these New Testament letters are packed with encouragement and exhortation, plus some blunt calling-out of lazy and Christ-dishonoring behavior. Two passages stood out for me this time. First Thessalonians 5:14-15 charges believers to show compassionate but tough love to the weak links of the church. That included those who wouldn’t work and who tried the others’ patience. Note the Christ-response to people who wrong and wound us:
  
And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.

We may not see them change, but we need to leave the results with the Lord. Then, right across the page, in 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12, came the spiritual reason for holding on to hope, and for exhorting the backsliders.  Paul said that he and other spiritual leaders (Silas and Timothy are also named) were praying that these folks live worthy of their God-calling through sanctified purpose and righteous, faith-fueled acts. And then the pivoting reason:

We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 12).

There’s a contemporary chorus with the refrain, “Glorify your name in all the earth.”  This isn’t about the beauty of nature, but about the redemption of the fallen nature.  In our daily relationships and choices, as mundane as they may seem, His honor should reign. His coming could be....perhaps today.

BLAME THE TABLECLOTH?

It had to be the snowflake-decorated tablecloth that I put on our table after Christmas. Off went the one with little Christmas trees, on came the blue plaid snowflake one. And finally we got the winter snow that leaves life-sustaining water in our foothills and mountains. Uncountable flakes left an eight-inch blanket in our valley (more in the hills). Of course, the tablecloth had nothing to do with it, but the fresh snow always reminds me of the hymn, “Whiter Than Snow.”

How many years had I sung this in church without knowing its background?  The man who wrote its lyrics, James Nicholson, wasn’t prolific like Fanny Crosby or Charles Wesley. Just a handful of hymn lyrics came from his pen, this being the most enduring. Born in Ireland in the 1820s, he immigrated to America in the 1850s. He lived in Philadelphia where he worked as a post office clerk and was active in the work of a Methodist-Episcopal Church. He later transferred to a postal job in Washington D.C. where he was living when this hymn poem was published in 1872.

Its tune came from the pen of a bookbinder, William Fischer, who became a music teacher and song leader. Fischer also associated with the D.L.Moody/Ira Sankey campaigns, leading the 1,000-voice choir in the huge tabernacle in Philadelphia. The hymn grew in popularity with its inclusion in Gospel hymn books that grew out of the crusade ministry.

So much for history, more for inspiration. The song anchors on David’s prayer of repentance after his sin with Bathsheba: “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7).

Its opening lines should reflect the heart of anyone who is listening to the conviction of the Holy Spirit regarding sin in his or her life:  “Lord Jesus, I long to be perfectly whole; I want thee forever to live in my soul. Break down every idol, cast out every foe. Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”

How often have you heard someone say, “Well, nobody’s perfect,” or, “I’m not that bad a sinner”?  Yet God knows every deceitful excuse in our hearts (Jeremiah 17:9). In a little book I often re-read, The Pursuit of Holiness (NavPress, 1978), Jerry Bridges (then of The Navigators ministry) wrote (p. 74):

The heart...excuses, rationalizes, and justifies our actions. It blinds us to entire areas of sin in our lives.  It causes us to deal with sin using only halfway measures, or to think that mental assent to the Word of God is the same as obedience (James 1:22).

Not so. David’s model prayer (Psalm 139) asked God to see if there was “any hurtful way in me”—not hard for God!—and “lead me in the everlasting way” (Psalm 139:23-24).

One thing about tablecloths: sometimes they have to go in the wash. More so, the human heart.  And thus the value of “cleansing” in the Word. In my daily “devotional” visits, I always find something that applies to my life or that directs my prayers for myself and others.  “To those who have sought Thee,” the hymn concludes, “Thou never saidst, ‘No,’ Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”

TRYING

The décor section at a local store always inspires me, 

as did this sign about relationships

We use the word “trying” in two very different ways:

“That person’s attitudes and actions are very trying for me”—as very difficult and unpleasant.

“I am trying to mend that relationship”—as in I am attempting, to the best of my ability, to better the situation.

Sometimes, we just can’t please everybody all of the time. Yet, trying to reach out to the trying (difficult) is what God calls us to do until He shows us we’ve done our best, and He will continue to work on a trying situation.

Still, the advice in this sign is noble and worth trying.

I’m reminded of advice in several parts of the Bible.

First, that because of the sinful nature, some people are simply trying (difficult) to be around: The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

Next, God offers second chances when hard hearts are softened: If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened, but God has surely heard my voice in prayer. (Psalm 66:18)

God understands the difficulty of reconciliation when a hard heart is the other’s problem:

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.  Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath. (Romans 12:18)

Glance in a spiritual mirror to evaluate your own heart condition: If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:8-9)

A humble heart is a tried-and-true approach in difficult relationships. We live in an imperfect world. God knows that. If it were perfect, we wouldn’t need a Savior or the grace of God to get through the brambles of brokenness. Or signs like this one to remind us of a better way to live.

BE STILL

Be still and know, the Lord is on thy side!

Sometimes life can be a real battlefield, and I need encouraging words like these. They’re the hymn paraphrase of Psalm 46, which hundreds of years ago inspired a little-known, devout German woman. We know the hymn by its tune from Sibelius’ second symphony celebrating his homeland, Finland, which was written 150 years later.

I play violin, and in high school and college was privileged to be in chamber or symphony orchestras. Of all the symphonies in my musical experience, this one by Sibelius is my favorite. I appreciate the agitation and rolling power of its early sections, which suggested Finland’s battle against Russian oppression. But then comes this mellow, hymn-like movement. First performed around 1900, it soon proved a good musical match for the English translation of a poem written probably 150 years earlier, about 1752, by a devout German woman named Katharina van Schlegel (1697-?after 1768).

Little is known about her other than she lived during times of the German pietist movement, which arose to restore spiritual vigor as century-old Reformation fires waned. It paralleled the Wesleyan revival across the channel in England. Apparently, she never married but lived in a facility for single Lutheran women in Cothen, the same city where Bach wrote his Brandenburg concertos. She is believed to have written about 20 hymn poems, and this is the only to survive in widespread use. It was translated into English a century after it was penned, appearing first in a British hymnal in 1927 and an American Presbyterian one in 1933.

Psalm 46 is an old friend. When the late Billy Graham was asked to address the nation after the 9-11 tragedies, he used that for his Biblical text. How appropriate: “The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The LORD Almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress” (Psalm 46:7). I was privileged to speak at a women’s retreat not long after 9-11, and chose to teach from that passage. I’d have to dig in my files to recall what I shared, but I know I tried to emphasize the command “Be still!” (v. 10).  Literally, “cease striving.”

We all have our personal battles. I’ve had my share of praying over people and situations that left me bruised and bewildered. When I come to a time of prayer and have no words, just sighing, for what seems a hopeless situation, I am reminded: “Be still, my soul!  The Lord is on thy side!” And as the hymn ends:

Be still, my soul! When change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

TRUST/OBEY

Blossoms spent, leaves wilted--winter coming

I felt spent…depleted…confused. Someone for whom I’ve prayed for years—that they’d make a U-turn from abusive actions and words and toward righteous and gracious behavior—made a very negative decision.  I’ll leave it at that. But I know my disappointment was almost physical: that deep-down ache inside of a soul in grief. As I wrapped up winterizing chores several weeks ago and noticed this wilted hydrangea plant, I thought, “Yes, this is a picture of me.”

Sometimes God answers my “why” questions through simple words, and this time it was “trust and obey.”  I recalled an interview with Christian author Elisabeth Elliot in which she was asked the secret to walking with Christ. Those three words—made famous by an old hymn—were her answer. Elliot, whose first husband was missionary martyr Jim Elliot, died in 2015 at age 88. But throughout the six decades of her very public life as a writer and speaker, she lived out those three words. In her website, www.reviveourhearts.com, author Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth remembered her this way:

Elizabeth steadfastly demonstrated what it meant to simply “trust and obey.” Because she viewed God as being altogether sovereign, faithful, wise and good, even when she could not fathom His plan or His purposes, she knew He could be trusted. The appropriate response was to obey Him.

Observing that today’s typical view of God is as a “cosmic dispenser of their comfort, wishes and needs,” Wolgemuth contrasted Elisabeth Elliot’s message: that “God doesn’t exist to meet our needs.  Ultimately, He is God; He is worthy of our obedience, our worship, and our surrender to Him as Lord.”(1)

Beautiful blue bloom from another year

HYMNED
It’s a profound concept, yet simple enough for a new believer. The hymn, “Trust and Obey,” in fact, came from something said by someone who’d recently become a Christian. It happened back in 1886, at a crusade where D.L. Moody was preaching. His song leader, Daniel Towner, asked people to share how they had been saved.  One young man stood and said, “I am not quite sure, but I am going to trust, and I am going to obey.” That statement moved Towner, who wrote a friend, John Sammis, who had left the business world to train for the ministry. Sammis wrote the hymn text, Towner came up with a tune.  Millions have sung:
When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word,
What a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will, He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way,
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.


(1) https://www.reviveourhearts.com/true-woman/blog/she-trusted-and-she-obeyed-a-tribute-to-elisabeth-/