This Very Day

Photo: www.allblackwoman.com

I keep forgetting that I can live my life in only one way--one day at a time.
God knows this, but I often don't.
Sure, I know all the repetitive tasks that need to be done every day--making beds, dishes, going to work, caring for children, preparing meals--as well as the ones I sneak in from my to-do list--clean the hall closet, take a meal to Mary. But one thing never appears on my list: consecrate my life to God.
I need to intentionally give my life to Christ the same way I carefully plan everything else--every day.

I don't decide to follow Christ once for all. I do it every day, every hour, with every breath. 
I know this is true whenever I open my mouth and decide to lie or speak an unkind word. I decided for myself in that moment, not for God.
I know this is true whenever I raise my hand for a third piece of cake or to push away annoyance or embrace frustration. I decided for myself, not for God.

God intends for us to live like this--to be constantly aware of the need to choose Him with every thought, every action, every word.
I have to live every day aware that I live it before the Lord.

Decide this day who you will serve--Joshua 24:15

This day is important to God. I looked it up. My concordance has nearly 1500 instances where it uses the word 'day', and many of them have numbers. They're all over the place.

At dawn the first day of the week--Matthew 28:1
On the first day, hold a sacred assembly--Exodus 12:16 
The second day of the month he did not eat--1Samuel 20:34
On the third day, He will rise again--Luke 18:33
On the fourth day, they assembled in the valley--2Chronicles 20:26
On the fifth day, prepare nine  bulls--Numbers 29:26
On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much--Exodus 16:22
On the seventh day, hold a festival--Exodus 13:6
The seventh day will be your holy day--Exodus 35:2
On the eighth day, when it was time--Luke 2:21
The evening of the ninth day of the month--Leviticus 23:32
On the tenth day of the seventh month--Leviticus 23:27
On the twelfth day of the first month, we set out--Ezra 8:31
On a single day, the thirteenth day--Esther 3:13
On the fourteenth day of the first month--Leviticus 23:5
On the fifteenth day of that month--Leviticus 23:6
On the seventeenth day of the second month--Exodus 16:1
On the twentieth day of the second month--Numbers 10:1
On the twenty-fourth day of the first month--Daniel 10:4
On the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month--2Kings 25:27
The day after Passover, that very day--Joshua 5:11
By this time the day after tomorrow--1Samuel 20:5
I will raise him up on the last day--John 6:40

The Bible is a book of single days--not all of them rolled up together and put before us as eternity, but individual days, written one at a time, exactly as we live them. Its stories have not happened in a hazy, non-specific past, but with detailed what, who, where, and when, just like ours.

I did not know this morning when I got up whether this day would be significant in the story of my life or whether my choices would be life-altering for somebody else. But I do know where the day came from--
 This is the day the Lord has made--Psalm 118:26
 and what I am supposed to do with it.
Teach us to number our days--Psalm 90:12

This is the day I am to use my free will to choose Christ.
This is the day I am to consecrate to God.
This is the day I decide to be holy, one act, one word, one thought at a time.

This day. This day. This very day.

Swatting the Gnats

Photo: mudpreacher.org

We all stumble in many ways...--James 3:2
That's for sure.

Temptations surround us all. And some of them are pretty obvious. Ten Commandment stuff.
Lying, cheating, stealing, wanting what is not ours, hating....we know them, and we know they end in sin.
But reading and studying the Bible?
Stumbling over the Word of God?
Are you kidding?

No, actually.
Even deep, careful study of the Bible has its snares.
We miss the mark when we revere the words more than their Author.
You strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel.--Matthew 23:24

We pick, and poke, memorize and philosophize, the words themselves. But where is God in all of that?
The Lord says, These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.--Isaiah 29:13

There is a heart to the Word of God, a heart we must wear before one memorized verse will have any effect at all.
God gave us His Word not to first to memorize it or pick it apart in study, but so that we can know, believe, and follow Him.
We have to know God, not just His Words.
Gnats, after all, hover because something attractive has called them. They do not bring anything of value at all.
The words of the Word of God are small, too, and serve as indicators, as warnings, as signs, of a much greater Presence.
The power does not belong to them, but they point to it. 
Look beyond them, or they will trip you up.

Round and Round We Go

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Oh, those Israelites.
Round and round in the same circle.

They soon forgot what He had done and did not wait for His counsel. In the desert they gave in to their craving; in the wasteland they put God to the test. So He gave them what they asked for, but sent a wasting disease upon them.--Ps 106:14-15

Round and round.

Actively loving God, then complacent, then rationalizing sin, then worshiping idols, then subjected to bondage, then rescued by God, then back to actively loving God again.
They never quite got it, did they?  I wonder why?
I should know, after all. I do it, too.
So do you.

Nobody lives in a constant state of awe and humility before God. Nobody always credits and adores Him for life and love and faith. We all cycle through our own sinful tendencies.
And He knows this. So God gave us a conscience. And He put up danger signs, so we don't have to retrace the same sickening circle all the time.
Do you know your danger signs?
I know mine.
My danger sign is rationalizing.

Here's what rationalizing sounds like:
First comes that prick of conscience, the annoying one, the one I want reason to ignore. Then the justification--
"God won't mind that second, or third, piece of cake. He wants me to be happy and satisfied. He says so."
"I can stay a little later. My husband won't mind."
"I'm so tired. The kids can make their own breakfast. I need to take care of myself, after all."
And I can find a Bible verse to support every one of these.

The bottom line, though, is that I don't want to give up my pleasure and I want God to agree with me.
Sounds a lot like "Did God really say...?", doesn't it?
Rather than using my Bible to teach and enlighten and bring me into God's throneroom, I use it to justify myself.
Here's the beartrap:
The minute I go to my Bible to get more of earth rather than more of God, I'm in trouble.
I have entered my own cycle of sin.
When this happens, this is the next place I must go:
Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy Name and glory in your praise.--Ps 106:47
It's all God. All God.

The Squiggles of Fate

A few years ago, when I was still teaching English, I always wanted a good example of punctuation's importance in the grand scheme of life. After all, using a comma rather than a semicolon to join a two sentences into one, or adding an erroneous apostrophe to the possessive pronoun 'its' just didn't seem very important to students. I knew, though, that I could prove punctuation's grave implications with the right example, if I could ever find one. Eventually, I did.

To my delight, the example in question involved one of the most memorable of Bible verses:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.--Isaiah 9:6, Thompson Chain Reference NIV

These words bring with them some of the most beautiful truths of Christianity: the existence of the Trinity as three distinctive parts of one almighty entity, and the prediction of Savior and Christ born as a baby human being. They exalt God with both their meaning and their beauty.

I also have a Hebrew Tanach that I often read and I find the same passage there with essentially only three differences: changed tenses of two verbs and the location of three, and.....wait for it.....punctuation. These almost inconsequential changes transform this verse from prophetic to historic.

For a child has been born to us, a son has been given to us, and the dominion will rest on his shoulder; the Wondrous Adviser, Mighty God, Eternal Father, called his name Prince of Peace.--Isaiah 9:6, Stone Tanach

The punctuation change occurs after the word 'shoulder' where the translators replace a period with a semicolon, turning the phrase that follows into a corollary of the first rather than a continuation. The effect is that the four titles no longer belong to the same almighty being, but the Wondrous Advisor, Mighty God, and Eternal Father refer to God, and Prince of Peace refers to a man, in this case according to the commentary, Hezekiah, whom God will some day honor with dominion. Suddenly, the Messiah whom the NIV's Isaiah so clearly prophesied vanishes like smoke.

Neither translator erred regarding the original punctuation; Hebrew has none. Each, therefore, brought prejudice along with expertise to their table in this work. I will not argue which is right and which wrong, but at least allow that those little punctuation marks can carry momentous worldviews on their small shoulders.

Nits and Tittles

Nineteenth century painter George Seurat was a pointillist--he created his works of art not by lathering up a broad brush and drawing it expertly across a canvas, but by placing thousands, sometimes millions, of tiny dots, precise in color and position, side by side so that up close, they look like beautiful grains of sand, but from a distance, they blend into something much more. One of his paintings, called A Sunday Afternoon, hangs in Chicago's Art Institute. It is huge, taking up most of a whole wall and when I had the chance, I lingered there sometimes. The painting had as much to say in its parts as it did as a whole. Individually, I admired the dots for their perfection and precision. Together, I never failed to marvel at how they gradually merged into something lovely, complete, and cohesive.

Seurat's paintings remind me of Your Word.

He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code with all its regulations that was against us and stood opposed to us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross.--Colossians 2:14

For the Israelites, You were never near. They approached You only through priest and sacrifice, even those times filled with fear for their lives. Moses and Abraham rose above the rest because You talked directly to them, but for everyone else, all most men knew of You were Your laws. As a result, they held your law, every tiny detail, as the closest they could get to You. By obeying every regulation, every little nuance, they came near to You, loved You. You gave them this opportunity through giving them the law and they loved You for it. In those times, they stood close to the painting, handled each little dot with reverence, and were careful to replace them exactly. Rabbis still do this, arguing over tiny points of Torah, and glorying in the argument because it brings You closer to them. The King James Bible calls these little points jots and tittles, and warns us not to change them. We call the same practice nit picking, but the idea is the same and the warning well taken. Even Seurat's paintings would change in the whole if someone altered the color or position of the dots.

You never changed the dots, either. Every tiny portion of Scripture remains just as You ordained it. You did something else. You nailed it to the cross. You killed it. Just think of the image of that. Paul wrote this verse around 60A.D., when ordinary citizens still saw people tortured and murdered this way. They saw these victims scream and writhe in agony before dying. You put the old law, the law Your people loved, on that same cross, and it goes out kicking and screaming, too.

Our Scripture gives detailed step-by-step instructions regarding how to approach You. To better understand it, I still pick it apart, separate all its nits and jots into pieces small enough to understand. This respect for detail pleases You, I think, but also leaves me in danger of missing the whole picture. When I concentrate too long on the individual parts of Your newer law, the one you tore open the temple veil to expose, I can, over time, destroy the glue by which they form the new whole You died to create. Your new law takes all the little pieces, the finite instructions, and assembles them with the glue of love. When I disassemble them, and let them stay that way, the love leaks out and all that is left are little, lovely, disassociated dots.

I must not love only the dots in your beautiful Sunday Afternoon. Even while I love every single piece of Your Word, I have to ingest whole gobs of it, to dive into its whole ocean, read great hunks daily. You show Yourself in the smallest parts, but they are only parts. The Scripture is immense because You are. The pieces tell me what to do. The whole tells me who You are.

Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call on Him while He is near.--Isaiah 55:6