From The Sheep Pen

Sometimes when I don’t know what to pray, when I’ve got no clear direction for prayer, the lines of a song come to mind. Recently this one’s been chasing me:

“Jesus, He can move the mountains/My God is might to save…”

At the same time, I have been watching a natural mountain being moved.

This summer highway crews have been working to widen Highway 55 on Goose Creek Grade between New Meadows and McCall. The road winds for several miles along a canyon wedged between a mountain’s facade and the river curling underneath lip of the road.   The canyon road is much too narrow for the monster -sized semis and logging trucks going through McCall and New Meadows. It is also dangerously curvy, inviting irritable drivers to tailgate my back bumper or shoot by my car like bats out of a cave on the single, very short passing zone.

So far construction delays have been mercifully short. While waiting at the traffic light or for the flaggers to direct cars, I’ve watched an extremely complex project. My grandsons would love the dump trucks, tall cranes, bulldozers and drilling machines taking down pieces of the mountain or the yellow loaders creating the new roadbed atop the river.  Men and women in hard hats and bright green highway gear are everywhere, directing traffic flow, running machinery, overseeing and planning, watching the rock coming down and the new roadway taking shape. Safety for all the workers and motorists coming through is a major concern. Moving mountains is dangerous work.

When Jesus was teaching his disciples about faith and the kingdom of God, He often referred to mountains. They represent obstacles and circumstances which block our lives, the trials which impede us from living fully in God’s kingdom of light and grace. At least three times in the Gospels, twice in Matthew and once in Mark, Jesus said that faith, even as small as a mustard seed, would not only move mountains but would throw them into the sea.

And Jesus answered saying to them, “Have faith in God. “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. “Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.… Mark 11:22-25

Jesus immediately adds that forgiveness is a requirement when we pray to move mountains.

“Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. “But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.” Mark 11:25-26

Without forgiveness, the mountains remain impassable, daunting and dangerous. For us to forgive others, we have to accept the Lord’s forgiveness and come to the cross. He moves our mountains. It is not we who move the mountains of God.

The truth is that the Idaho Highway Department cannot de facto move an entire mountain. Even with all of the money, equipment and personnel involved, despite all the safety precautions, the best that they can do is to move a very small portion of granite necessary for the project. To move more than has been surveyed and deemed safe would be dangerous. It could destabilize all of the surrounding land and prove disastrous.

No human is exempt from running into the immovable mountainside of life at some time or another. I’ve run smack into the rock faces of grief, loss, insecurity, health and broken relationships so often I bear the fracture marks in my heart because I tried to be a mountain mover on my own. I never felt safe at all.

Jesus told us what’s needed to cast down our mountains. The prophet Zechariah foretold what Jesus would do:

Then he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts. Who(What) are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become a plain; and he will bring forth the top stone with shouts of “Grace, grace to it!”‘”…Zechariah 4:6

Neither money nor man power will budge an inch of the high mountains before us. We don’t need high tech drilling equipment or more trucks. Surveying the situation one more time is pointless. Finding one more  way around the roadblocks leads  into dead ends.  That tiny mustard seed of faith in the Lord and in His promised Word will do the impossible, even to casting out intractable demons for when Jesus moves a mountain, Satan’s kingdom gets thoroughly destabilized. It’s time to take off our self protecting hard hats and put on Christ. His is the helmet of salvation, keeping us free and safe from the enemy. Only Jesus Christ in the power and might of the Holy Spirit can move the entire mountain, even that which we cannot even see. He tells us…

“You will say to this mountain,’ Move from here to there’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” Matt 17:21

Therefore, do no doubt, but have faith. Pray and believe you are heard. Forgive as He forgave. Speak to the mountain in Jesus’ Name and watch it come down like an avalanche, dissolving away to nothing.

Friede Gabbert

Dan asked me if I’d seen the obituary. I had not because it was squeezed into a corner on the editorial page and I’d missed it. The death notice was only a few sentences long and gave little more than the essentials: the deceased’s name, his age and date of death last Sunday. A get together to remember him would be planned at a future time. A short enigmatic quote at the end indicated that he had loved “to ride” and was probably more than a little wild.

Dan had known Curt in his legal practice. I knew him from the food bank. He’d been coming for years when we were still located in the storage units. His were the all too recognizable symptoms of poverty: poor health and poorer options. He had difficulty breathing and walking the short steps into the building. I could see how the years had torn up his body. One hot afternoon as he was waiting to be served, he trembled and shook so badly from a diabetic attack that I considered calling the EMT’s, but he insisted he was quite all right. After a cooling drink of water, some granola bars and resting on a chair, he seemed better. He told me many times about his health problems and how the doctors didn’t seem to know what was wrong with him. In many respects, he merely accepted his lot in life.

Although I only interacted with him very briefly as he came through the food bank, over the years there was something else. I grew to love a stranger. I don’t know why I loved like that for we had little in common personally. But I understood Curt’s malaise which the doctors were unable to diagnose. There was a huge God hole inside of him which the doctors could neither fill up nor heal. Once I had the same emptiness inside my soul before the Lord took a hold of my life. Recognizing that gaping wound in another person does something in the heart. It ignites the merciful love which Jesus has for each one of us, lost without Him, eternally secure in Him.

During the last few weeks and prior to his death, Curt came to my mind at odd times. I wondered how he was doing. I felt an urgency to pull him out of the line at the food bank so we could have a few moments face to face. I wanted to offer him what he needed most: a word of hope in a personal Savior. But then, it is always busy during food bank hours. I seem to scurry from one problem to another, make decisions, answer phone calls, get involved in other conversations. The right moment to talk with him was never the right moment. And then one day I noticed he hadn’t been around for a while. I’d been too busy.

Jesus tells efficient and capable Martha that all her busyness keeps her from the “one thing necessary.” Her sister Mary sitting at His feet, paying attention to Him, hanging on every word out of His mouth, “has chosen the good part.” Mary has chosen love instead of duty. She’s chosen to be still and know Jesus instead of knowing everything that’s going on around Him.

But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:41-42

The Lord’s admonishment to Martha still convicts us “Martha types “ through the Holy Spirit who directs us to “the one thing necessary” – to love as Jesus loves. In our well meaning, eager response to serve others well, we choose and do many good things, but like Martha sometimes we miss the whole point. It is not what we do for one another, but how we are for one another that leads us to love, especially to love the poor and the stranger. We serve God best by laying down our time and our efforts, allowing the Holy Spirit to filter what is distraction and what is truly “the good part. “

I never had that conversation with Curt. I missed a “Mary” opportunity with him but I won’t indulge in regret and self pity. Although Jesus gently chided Martha He loved her as much as her sister and never condemned her. God is always the God of second chances when we allow Him free access to our will. There are other faces whom God slips into our minds and there are countless other suffering hearts which need His healing Word of hope. Not very far off there awaits the next person toward whom God draws us.

I am watching the wind ruffling the leaves of the aspen. As the afternoon heat builds up, the wind swirls up from below into the trees. The heart shaped aspen leaves are light as quicksilver, twirling even in the slightest breeze. I find it quieting, this green afternoon dance when the work in the gardens is over.

This morning my dog insisted on an early walk. He was done sleeping and woke me up with a sharp bark that indicated he needed to go out and check on his turf. It was a beautiful morning, clear cloudless sky, cool air awakening my thoughts and sunlight streaming through the pine trees like golden honey. I silently thanked Rudy for having gotten me up to walk with him. We roused a small covey of quail and startled songbirds which took to the air. Then – a flash of blue caught my eye. It was a mountain bluebird, here but for a moment and then gone again. I always consider the rare sight of a bluebird to be a special l blessing.

At such times, usually unexpected, I’m stopped in my tracks. I can hardly breathe and my heart fills up with an inexplicable awareness of God as close as the cool wind on my skin. Jesus tells us that He will never leave us nor forsake us. The psalms speak of God’s Eye searching us, knowing us even more than the sparrow or bluebird. But so often I forget that He is omnipresent, not just in times of trouble but in all things, at all times. The Presence of God never departs. The Voice of God never stops calling and speaking. It is we who are the departed ones, the ones who forget how close He is to us, who mostly ignore Him until we need grace or mercy.

There are moments of exquisite beauty when God breaks through into the heart. It was the flash of a bluebird this morning. Sometimes it is the precise pattern in a delicate dandelion or complex sunflower head. Sometimes it is the memory of those who loved and are no more. Often it is the Voice of Jesus from Scripture: “Simon, Bar Jonah, do you love me? “ “Fear not.” “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” “Follow Me. The moment may be something I’ve experienced a hundred times before, except this time it is different because God is revealed in it. It is always so fleeting it makes me stop in wonder. It can’t be recaptured. Though my heart yearns to hang on and not let go, it is even more precious for being ephemeral.

Moments of exquisite beauty whet the desire for God who created mankind for Himself. They make us restless for our Father, the Creator and for Christ who reconciles us to Him. St. Augustine describes the pursuit of the heart so well.
Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.

When a single purple flower petal falls to the ground like an angel’s wing and suddenly, the heart is electrified, surely it is God speaking a language of imagery I recognize. I cannot help myself. The moment is to acknowledge Him in the finite and infinite. The moment is Love made visible.

Morning disasters are the worst. They try to color and misshape everything else that follows, like a contrary wind which flattens everything in its wake.

I’d gotten up early to give the gardens and flower beds a good soak before it got hot. As I turned on the valve for one of the sprinklers, water shot straight up out of the plastic tubing into the sky like a fire hose. Several other splits in the tubing puddled the soil, making mud holes. I turned the sprinkler off, getting a cold morning shower in the process.

At first I thought yesterday’s unusual heat had damaged and split the sprinkler. But then I turned on another and another and…. Each one was the same, with water shooting like a geyser everywhere except through the sprinkler heads. Then I saw that one or two inch chunks were gouged out of the tubes. Along some of them, pin prick holes had been made with what definitely were teeth marks. Something was dining on black plastic tubing in the garden . I quickly reasoned that it must be a thirsty squirrel seeking a water source. It didn’t help my frustration.

In all, five different sprinkler systems were ruined. I was upset to put it mildly. Really more than upset. I was MAD. Since spring I’ve been fussing with sprinklers, laying out tubing to water where it’s needed the most. Since spring I’ve been drenched in cold water, caked with dirt and grime and ached at night from constantly bending over. I had finally tweaked all the systems to work pretty well and was looking forward to the rest of the summer, simply turning sprinklers on and off, sitting on my deck drinking ice tea, watching the garden grow. So much for the day dream.

Tonight I came home and found that a rubber garden hose was chewed through. Water was like a fountain pouring out over the walkway and steps. Really? A garden hose? This critter means business. I googled for an answer: “What’s eating up my plastic tubing and garden hoses?” The answers were quick and not encouraging: chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, coyotes and wolves all like to munch on rubber and black tubing. In addition there have been eleven fox kits in drainage culvert dens. We live in the woods and we are not alone. It hasn’t rained for weeks and all God’s creatures are thirsty.

I don’t want to lose my gardens, especially now that the bright cone flowers are coming on, the clematis is showing off and summer is bursting in wild profusion. I have to figure out how to water everything before it withers and dries up. There is definitely a problem and I am stumped for a solution.

I’ve found that the answer will come. God even pays attention to gardening fiascos and if I am humble enough to ask Him for help, He will respond. Surely He knows quite a lot about water and gardening! In the mean time, I will get up a little earlier and go outside to the flower beds not out of frustration but because it is a blessing. It is a blessing to share my beautiful corner of the world with thirsty creatures even if they are naughty. I’ll water by hand for a while and in doing so, watch water spraying into the air like pale strings of pearls. If I am still enough, I can hear the water speak. Morning prayer is like that – God, unexpectedly close.

Friede

We had a rather quiet anniversary yesterday. Last year we celebrated our 50th on the Oregon Coast with children, grandchildren and my always adventurous brother Pete who flew from New York to be with us. It was a very special week. We ate fresh crab, grilled steak and ate gobs of cake, played card games, and wove our bikes through the crowds on the boardwalk. The children collected sand dollars and discovered transparent jelly fish abandoned at low tide. The beach sandpapered their skin. We walked for miles along the shore, looking for shells, examining the secrets hidden in the tidal pools with the little ones, dipping our toes into the still frigid Pacific Ocean. Mostly Dan and I felt blessed by our family and thanked God that we were together, enjoying ourselves.

Yesterday, I brought out our yellowing wedding album and left it on the kitchen counter. Dan and I flipped through the photos and wondered who “those children” were. We looked so vulnerable and young. I confess to shedding a few tears as I saw the beloved faces of parents, sibling, friends long gone now. I gave Dan a card inscribed with my heart, watching him grin at the sentiment. Then, we left the house for a day trip. I’d packed the wicker picnic basket and filled it up with love and more food than two people need. Astoundingly, we found an unoccupied spot along Upper Payette Lake with large shade trees and huckleberry bushes carpeting the ground. The sound of the river falling over rocks quieted me as nothing else can. Dan didn’t need much to quiet him: he had a book, a folding chair and time away from his office. Within minutes he was napping next to me, despite the pesky, buzzing flies and the furnace like heat. All is well with us.

There is such a peace with one another when you’ve been married for half a century, when you’ve endured pain and sorrow that you could never imagine and which a merciful God keeps hidden from you on your wedding day. The grace of God has fallen on our marriage and on our family. The Lord picked us out of the ash heap and cleaned up the mess. It is a miracle. I am still astounded by a God who cares for His children, fiercely, unceasingly, minutely personal. He saved my soul and then He gave me everything I always wanted in our marriage: trust, joy, security, a loyal friend and above all love. Above all His love poured out like a river of honey on a hot summer day.

It is an irony that the Supreme Court ruled on same sex marriage almost on our anniversary. Because of that, I am compelled to write and to testify to the contrary of the Court’s decision. I want to thank God for Dan and my 51 years together. Without God in our life, we would not have made it. I praise Him for the bedrock of faith He’s establishing in our children and grandchildren. Without Him, there would be no hope for our offspring. I want to testify that the essence of marriage comes from the Word, from God’s Spirit for it says:

Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. Mal 2:15

It is not defined by any court, by any social movement, by any relativism, revisionism or rationalism. Marriage is not about legal interpretations or playing around with semantics. Marriage is covenantal, between the lesser and the Greater. Dan and I are the former. The Lord who ordained our marriage in His Word is the Greater. What judicial declarations to the contrary can stand against that?

There is an urgent call for married Christians to declare God supreme in their marriages. There is a desperate need to be visible Light and Salt for those who are so lost they grasp at all legal straws, hoping to cure innate brokenness, loneliness and deception. What better way to affirm what the courts try to negate than to praise God who ordained Biblical marriage and who “made them one flesh” , to thank Him, declare Him and model His Word.
Friede

They all were there yesterday.

Five or six sat on the bench facing the door of the food bank, waiting for us to open up, but it was still early, an hour early in fact. They sat very still, not even talking to one another. Perhaps it was the heat of the afternoon that made them sit so silently. Or maybe it was the sameness of being there again this week, just like last week and just like next Wednesday would be. They looked like a row of unidentified birds on a wire watching the shaded window, listlessly waiting for the sound of the door.

These were the ones who come early week after week. One woman consistently arrives early enough to be the first on the list. I wondered why it was so important to her – but I have learned that the poor have their own unique reasons for what they do. I’ve learned not to question them or ask for reasons. Mostly I’ve learned not to judge. Wednesdays may be the only time when she is first for anything.

“The poor will always be with us,” Jesus said. They will be with “us.” Jesus included Himself in that simple phrase. The poor will always be where Jesus is and where He calls disciples to be. He meant that the poor are always with us right here, right now, not somewhere else. He implies that s there is a hungering, impoverished need for Him. We too are poor without Him. I wonder if He saw these souls in McCall, perched on the bench, surely thirsty, needing food, needing connection to others. Above all, needing Him.

I walked from the car and touched one or two of them in quiet greeting. Sometimes I don’t have to say a thing. They know me well, as I know them. “Ma’am, can I have a drink of water,” one of them asked. He looked overheated and flushed. Of course. I’ll get you some. No need to wait. There is water overflowing and available.

Inside the building they all were there:
My friend Jayne was in charge this month. She had a large group of volunteers working to get the shelves stocked, the produce arranged neatly, the refrigerators cleared. Most from this church have come before and return to help out. Usually, volunteers are the ones blessed by God with more prosperity, with more of the good things in life. Working at the food bank changes people. Perhaps it is recognizing our many blessings and being thankful that we walk in different shoes. More likely, it’s understanding that except on socio-economic levels, “the poor” includes us also, just as Jesus prophesied. Whatever wealth we possess is temporal and fleeting for at the end of life, it is all scattered straw. Knowing our inescapable poverty should drive everyone equally into the Lord’s arms.

They all were there yesterday: The retired California policeman working the door and carrying boxes of food out to the cars ; the girl- woman holding her six month child in arms, smiling that things were going well for her; her doped up kid brother whom she brings along because he won’t come by himself; the man who patiently waits in his wheel chair at the door and never says a word; the ex mayor putting donations away; the stylish woman who took photos for the church bulletin; the tongue- pierced teen on her cell phone; the woman who works at the care center who quietly said she’d had to kick out her meth using daughter; again; the volunteer wearing perfume; the man wearing booze; the ladies breaking down rice and garbanzo beans; the Hispanic father taking beans and rice home; the children getting play money for the market; the new families signing up in my office, reticent to reveal themselves.

We were all there both giving and receiving food, but like the multitudes around Jesus really seeking acceptance, comfort, shelter, healing, forgiveness and love. I was blessed to be among those poor ones whom Jesus loves and looks upon so kindly … and for a few hours got a glimpse into the kingdom of heaven first hand.
Friede

Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely. Rev. 22:17

The peonies are stunning this year! Their heavy, furled heads cascade over the wire supports almost to the ground, like ripe fruit ready to be plucked. Within a  single flower lies a spectrum  of subtle shades: fuschia, lavender, pink and pale, pale rose. In the evening I tuck drooping stems back inside their supports and marvel at tiny black ants scurrying around the sticky petals. In the early morning I turn on the soaker hoses to give the plants  plenty of water before the heat rises. It’s the first year the peonies have been so luscious and lush. After 5-6 years they finally have grown into themselves – and are now showing off. They’re definitely the drama queens of my late spring garden.

I replanted and changed most of the flower beds in early spring to add shrubs and perennials for easier maintenance in the future. However, I did not touch the peonies. Like me, they don’t like to be uprooted and replanted. No doubt the relatively mild winter and spring rains aided all of the flowers and plants, especially the peonies, but I did change one major thing – how I water the gardens. Watering adequately has been my biggest gardening challenge. We don’t have an in ground sprinkler system. Since we live on a hill of rocks, excess water runs right off the fractured granite more than it soaks down into the ground and the soil dries out very quickly.  This year I’ve watered more often and water more consistently to thoroughly soak every flower bed. If I wait until the clumps of Shasta daisies flop over or the top 2 inches of soil are bone dry, the gardens don’t thrive. They maintain, but they never flower profusely.

Much of what happens in my garden is a lesson. I don’t have to look much farther than myself. Like peonies wilting without sufficient water, I some times wait too long to rehydrate. I become so parched water alone won’t quench my thirst. In the spiritual life, Jesus is the living water of the soul, the essential refreshing, ongoing and outpouring life for us. He is the well in the desert, the fountain head, the pure spring in the rock, the river overflowing into our lives. If the lovely fragile flowers in my earthly garden can’t survive without water, if they only flourish at their best when the roots are deeply soaked, so must the heart’s depths be watered by Jesus, by the Word and by His Holy Spirit welling up inside of us in a rush and a torrent.

In the parable of the “sower and the seed,” Jesus talks about seed which falls on the rocks, by the wayside and on fertile ground. Later He explains to the disciples that the seed is the Word of God which can grow only in good soil. One can only assume that the disciples understood water was essential for the “seed” to grow. When Jesus also spoke of Himself as living water, did they understand He was both?

The mystery and wonder of Jesus is that He always is far more than the disciples – and  “we” understand Him. He is the Word of God recognized and acknowledged by John; paradoxically, Jesus is also the Water of that Word through the Holy Spirit. In Him, through Him and by Him, the Seed falls into us and is thoroughly drenched by His Spirit for abundant and eternal life of God.

All things were made through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made. John 1:3

And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 1.John 5:11

If consistent water produces luxuriant peonies, then consistent life in Jesus through prayer, meditation and study of His Word will grow inner seeds and plants of far greater beauty. When faced with spiritual drought, doubt or weakness, how thoroughly has the soul’s parched roots been watered? With what consistency of the Word and the Spirit has the heart been drenched by Jesus? Too often my spirit is a parched land without water because I’ve waited far too long to spend time with the Lord. He waits and waits for us to come and drink of what is prophesied in Revelation…

“… A pure river of water of life, clear as crystal proceeding from the throne of God and from the Lamb.” Rev 22:1

That life is a glorious future planned for us by God since the beginning. But eternal life has already begun for everyone reborn in Jesus and while still earth bound for a while, we need Word and Water , freely given, to flower into His image, transformed from weeds into “Best of the Show”  Prize Peonies.

Friede

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in HIm should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

On this Memorial Day Monday, I’m including part of a news story last night which showed hundreds of people participating in “Carry the Load.” It came out of a former Navy SEAL’s conviction that we who enjoy so many freedoms in this country need to remember those who sacrificed their lives for those freedoms.

A few years ago, former Navy SEAL and war veteran Clint Bruce sat at a barbecue on Memorial Day. As he thought about his friends he lost in combat, he couldn’t help but notice that the people around him had a very different view of what Memorial Day meant. To some it was a party. To others, a day off of work. Not knowing what else to do, Clint came up with a way to honor his fallen brethren, and share in the pain that they went through to give us our freedom. He decided to do what he did most when he was protecting our country along side the buddies he lost. Clint strapped on his pack and began walking, all the while thinking about the guys that sacrificed for him, and for you. As he walked, he encountered another veteran, an older gentleman who knew exactly why, and exactly what Bruce was doing without either of them speaking a word. With understanding and wisdom the man simply said, “Son, who are you carrying?” And with those five words, Carry The Load was born. http://carrytheload.org/about/#

 Mr. Bruce’s idea has grown into local “walks” mostly along the East Coast. People carry names of fallen service men and women on placards,   remember family veterans of every generation, and hold American flags. Some walkers carry very heavy military back packs as a visible sign of the weight others bear for us in war and conflicts, weight which crushes them with loneliness, fear and too often death.

It’s an honorable way  to celebrate Memorial Day and I’m touched by Mr. Bruce’s efforts   to turn the usual  holiday activities nto something more meaningful. The stark reminder is that peace comes at a sacrifice and freedom is not free.

On of my pastors has taught me, “as in the natural, so in the spiritual. The people walking with  laden back packs made me think of something else. Or rather Someone. “ I think of the Lord Jesus’ life and His ultimate sacrifice. I think of the weight He carried to save us from Satan’s power over us in death.

Was there ever a weight more heavy than the cross which Jesus carried to Golgotha? Was there ever a sacrifice greater than Jesus who laid down His life for his friends because He loved them?
As He hung on the cross, Jesus carried the entire world of sinners upon Himself, not just names of those who were close to Him. The weight of that was so utterly crushing He cried out to God in David’s  words: ” My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” As God separated Himself from Jesus because of man’s sin, Jesus’ despair and loneliness are unimaginable.

The Good News is that Jesus was victorious  on the spiritual battlefield. Unlike our fallen world where warriors often do not come back from wars and hostile territory, Jesus overcame death and the grave. His tomb is empty. He is risen, He is not here. Because of Him, in Him, and through Him, “Death where is your sting?”

Has there   ever been a victory greater than the one which Jesus won over Satan?  Is there any freedom more important than the freedom from sin’s bondage or  the promise of eternal life?  What Warrior is greater than Jesus, the victorious Prince of Peace who brings peace “not as the world would know it”, but reconciling peace with the Father?

Before the beginning of time, God the Father already had the plan of salvation for the world. Before the fall in the Garden, He already knew the answer to “Son, Whom are you carrying? “ It was you and me. Through His obedience, the Son of God carried the world to the cross. By accepting Him as Lord and Savior, we’re given freedom, joy and eternal life with God.   That’s worth celebrating every hour, every day. Memorial Day is for those who’ve died in earthly battles, but for everyone born again to life in Christ, we celebrate Him who carried us.

EAG

“Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him.” Luke 15:1

Lately, I’ve been intrigued by a television series, “The Bible: A.D.” Despite liberties taken with God’s truth in the New Testament and some lame attempts to provide a back story for Mary and fleshing out rather insipid disciples, the shows present a fairly believable, historical picture of what Jerusalem might have been like in the first century.

What’s particularly striking are the scenes showing the multitude of people who lived in Jerusalem- Jews, Greeks, Ethiopians, and Romans, people of different races and heritages all crammed together. There are no consistent population records for the time so the estimates are anywhere from 30,00 to 80,000. During the Jewish festivals and particularly during Passover the number swelled to a million or more. In narrow congested streets, people were pushed together en masse. Jerusalem’s ordinary people eked out livelihoods cheek to jowl with their neighbors, but intrigue, unrest and undercurrents of rebellion against Rome’s violence were never far away. Rome’s brutal might was always prepared to crush Jewish dissenters. The first century was not a peaceful time. Violence and contempt for God is as old as the fall of man.

We forget the circumstances Jesus encountered when He preached in Jerusalem. The Gospels describe the multitude of people who surrounded Him everywhere He went, often crushing Him so that He had to leave for safety and preach from a boat or hill top. The multitude was a mixed crowd of the curious, the scoffers, the desperate and especially those who loved Him and believed in Him. Luke says it was sinners and tax collectors who “drew near to Jesus to hear Him.” It was the lost sheep of Israel who crowded around Christ, jostling and pushing their way closer and closer to hear His voice because He gave them hope and love. It was not the learned Pharisees who came to hear the Word because they had already rejected Jesus in their hearts. I imagine they kept a respectable distance away from Jesus, not wanting to touch Him nor the sinners pressing closer to Him.

Being in Idaho it’s difficult to imagine Jerusalem sized crowds. Here open space rolls for miles toward a distant horizon. The population is among the lowest in the nation. How can we begin to fathom Biblical multitudes, especially the unruly population pouring into Jerusalem and swelling an already overcrowded city.

I lived in New York City where 8 million people exist together. I often took the subway during rush hour and it was not a pleasant experience to be crushed up against total strangers. New Yorkers have the unique ability to avoid eye contact and become invisible behind newspapers, shopping bags and earphones. I developed a need for “personal space”on subways. But in the process something has gotten lost.

Often in church we are exhorted to press into the Lord’s Presence, to push through for the Holy Spirit and to draw ever nearer to Jesus. It’s an invitation to the believer’s heart to approach God one or two steps closer and then push through even more until there is no distance separating us.To press through means we have to get close enough to touch the hem of Christ’s garment. More than that we have to be so close that Jesus can touch us. We have to take a risk like the woman with an issue of blood. She pushed her way through the chaotic crowd , got close enough to touch Jesus’s hem and was healed for her faith.

There can’t be any “personal space” cocooning the Christian from the Lord’s presence. We resist getting close to Jesus and to one another, physically and spiritually because this idea of body space arises out of pride and control. We say to one another – and to the Lord- this far and no farther. I can hear just fine in my private space without actually being touched by You. We place boundaries on intimacy with Jesus and set ourselves at the outer fringe of the multitude, alongside the scoffers, doubters, curious and Pharisees. Instead let us position our hearts in the innermost space where sinners, tax collectors and a desperate woman pressed as close as possible. God promises us his adopted children that “nothing can separate us from His love in Christ Jesus.” It is not distance apart from but being drawn into inseparable closeness to Christ which is the most personal space of all.
Friede

“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Exodus 3:5

Signs of spring are everywhere. My daffodils have already come and gone, the robins visit each morning to breakfast on worms wiggling in the damp earth and daylight lingers well past 8:00. Winter is gone – except for the sudden snowstorm which practically blinded me last week with saucer -sized snowflakes in the headlights. I have a favorite bookmark: “Blossom by blossom the flowers appear.” That’s how a mountain spring comes, practically unnoticed until suddenly it is in full bloom.

Yesterday I saw another harbinger of spring: a jogger in shorts and T-shirts, a hardy early bird of sorts. It was 42 degrees out, I had the car heater cranked up and had to marvel at his dedication, especially since at first glance I thought he was running barefoot on the sidewalk. I think he must have had on running sandals but it looked like his feet were naked in the cold.  I couldn’t get the picture out of my head.

Then at church a word came forth about allowing ourselves to become vulnerable to God and to each other, by metaphorically taking off our shoes. When we stand before God in prayer, we are on God’s ground not ours.  Moses was told by God to remove his sandals because the fire he saw burning, the fire he was approaching was  on “holy ground.” It was not to be approached profanely. I think of that story: Moses’s turning aside to see the strange sight, the fire of God’s Spirit burning in the wasteland, God’s voice, the command to acknowledge the Lord’s Holiness. It doesn’t get much simpler than this picture: God is God, Moses is mortal and then there beckons an invitation for a   relationship: “To love the Lord Your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength.” This is the first and the greatest commandment as set forth in the Torah. It is the reminder that in God’s holy Presence, we have to come vulnerable and naked. Loving God requires our coming to Him without our shoes on.

Jesus adds the second commandment, “To Love our neighbors as ourselves.” He always deepens the call of God. He broadens the invitation God made to Moses by inviting us closer to Himself and to the Father. Could it be that we’re to approach one another similarly, also vulnerable, without anything coming between us? Not only yes, but it is the yes of Jesus showing us how it’s to be done. Just hours before He was crucified, He celebrates Passover with His disciples and washes their feet. Most of the time the message we get from this story is that Jesus takes on the servant’s role, that He humbles Himself to do the most menial task and that He is washing their filthy feet just as His death would wash away all our sins.

But it is also that before Jesus could wash Peter’s feet – and the others’- He had to take off Peter’s sandals. The shoes had to come off. That which protected the feet of the disciples when they were literally walking with Jesus in Galilee and Judah now had to be removed. There in the Upper Room was Holy Ground   right in front of their unseeing eyes. Perhaps Jesus didn’t actually remove 11 pairs of sandals. Perhaps the shocked disciples saw what He was doing and slowly began to unbuckle their own sandals. What emotions must have been churning in their hearts as they did so, awaiting the intimacy of the Lord’s washing hands!

I was touched by the pastor’s Word and considered the shoes all of us were wearing:  me in patent leather flats, other women in dress shoes, teens in flip flops or slippers, men is tough construction boots and sturdy cowboy boots. Many folks wore athletic/tennis shoes. Little kids kicked off shoes and ran in their socks.

What do shoes tell about us? How well do shoes reveal our self- identities ? I wonder if there are subtle reasons for our choice of footwear. The shoes I put on often often reflect my mental attitude and my spiritual disposition more than anything else.  We wear shoes to keep our feet from the elements and from harm.  Some wear shoes for comfort or to protect their feet from injury at work.   Some wear special shoes for medical problems. Hippie types come in Birkenstocks and sandals. Some wear their vanity; some their independence and pride. Some just want to be comfortable and casual and put on anything within reach. Some show off wealth or try to hide poverty. The disciples wore sandals for a reason and so do we still.

When Jesus removed the disciples’  shoes, He was also removing the one protective layer which came between them and intimacy with Him. When we come before God in prayer or into relationship with our “neighbor”,  those idolatrous things our shoes represent also have to be unbuckled, untied, undone, slipped off and removed. Jesus calls us to Himself but He wants us on His ground which is holy, not ours which is muddled and muddied. Pride, self protection, emulating idols,  vanity, health, sports and recreation, gritty independence – what’s worn in the heart and displayed on our feet comes between us and God , between you and me. Of one thing I am certain: I cannot remove my “ spiritual sandals” by myself. Even this simple thing is beyond my ability for I fail over and over. Without Jesus loosening my protective shoes which I’ve worn too long, comfortable, familiar shoes which I think are useful, but are really worn out, beat up and useless, how can my feet be washed in and for humility ,  fit to trod onto Holy Ground, to love God and my neighbor? I have to come barefoot and for that I need my Lord.

Friede