Out of Orbit

I love my church family.  Don't you?

Every Sunday, the same dear faces, smiles of recognition, hearts that have prayed for whatever concerns cloud my heart, sweet familiar voices lifted all around in songs repeated so often they seem gentle friends themselves.  A refuge of common faith.
How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!--Psalm 133:1

We stay together; we pray together....
But we can also stray together.

The Ephesians discovered this when John warned them:
You have forsaken their first love.--Revelation 2:4

The believers in Ephesus started out fine, just like us.  They cared about one another.  They prayed.  They ate together.  They did good works together, but somehow, they ended up off course, out of orbit.

This didn't happen all at once.
It happened in a slow creep away from the light, step by small step.

The church--every church, your church and mine,--can walk into darkness together, feeling perfectly fine about it.  We are still in unity, we think.  Surely, we can't be too wrong.

But we can.

So how do we test our church?
We do it by remembering that our church is not our church.  It belongs to Christ.
God placed all this under His feet and appointed Him head over everything, for the church, His body.--Ephesians 1:22

We do it by growing closer to Him individually and so maintain our rudder corporately.
Whatever binds us together as a church must take second place to what binds us to Christ.
The most important commandment is this: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.--Matthew 22:37-38

Our love for one another can push us out of orbit.
We can travel safely together only when we look primarily not toward each other, but toward Christ.

Getting Burned

The sun rose red this morning.  It crested the horizon in stunning pageantry, shining with glorious promise, and by its gentle light, I welcomed a new day.

But I would not have found the sun so hospitable from a closer vantage point.

The temperature on the surface of the sun is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  It doesn't glow; it explodes in blazes of fierce fire.  Anyone drawing near would burn up before they got within 3 million miles.

God created the heavens and the earth to display Himself.
Our God brings life and warmth, but at the same time burns white-hot and dangerous.

Our God comes and will not be silent; a fire devours before Him and around Him a tempest rages.--Psalm 50:3

We draw near to Him with warning, but cannot resist His call.
I am God Almighty; walk before Me and be blameless.--Genesis 17:1

The sun, now warm and nurturing, now a destroying furnace, stands inexorably above all things, every day reflecting its maker.

The closer we get to the sun, the more we are aware of its power.  Like God, it only seems friendly from a long way off.

I cannot know the sun's physical touch, but I can feel its influence.
To approach would mean death, but to witness and experience is glorious.

Who Really Rises

The sun does not rise.
Just saying.
That big yellow ball on the eastern horizon every morning is not the one moving.
We are.  The earth.  The blue marble.

Now, intellectually, we already know this.  The earth revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth, but when I look out of the the window at 6AM, I think, "The sun is coming up."
But it isn't.  Instead, I am on the earth, and the part of the earth I occupy is turning to face the sun.  Every day, my patch of earth slowly rotates relative to our stationary sun, then turns during the night away from it.  Our dawn is simply my face turning into the light.

Now, when you think about it, this makes perfect sense.
God made the world to reflect Himself.
He is the sun...constant, glorious and full of light.  We are the earth...vacillating, moving now toward Him, now away. 

You remain the same, and Your years will never end.--Psalm 102:27
I, the Lord, do not change.--Malachi 3:6

God finds delight in us as we seek Him, as we turn from dark to light.
He does not move.
Luckily, that makes Him easy to find.

Who Is My Enemy?

It's hard to think about having enemies. 
I have family connected by blood, friends connected by heartstrings, and acquaintances connected by circumstance, but enemies?
Nobody is shooting at me, cursing me, or actively blocking my progress, are they?  No, not really.

But God thinks they are.
He keeps telling me that He will defend me from enemies as though He assumes I have them.
What am I missing?

I think it is this:  My enemy is not a person.
My enemy is blindness.
My enemies are the people and things I bring close enough to block my vision, to distract me from God.

The Lord said to Moses, "When you cross the Jordan, drive out all the inhabitants before you.  Destroy their images and idols and demolish their high places.  Take possession of the land, for I have given it to you."--Numbers 33: 50-53

The territory I have to conquer is not only physical, it is the ground I have given to an enemy in heart or action.  
What habits do I maintain that come from former times? They are my enemies.
What thought patterns placate or distract me?  They are my enemies.
What plans and desires derail God in my life?  They are my enemies.

Just as I can't know salvation until I know I am a miserable sinner, God cannot destroy my enemy until I acknowledge its identity. And the enemy often comes from within.

God reminds me that I more often embrace my enemy than engage him. 
But when I do choose to stand my ground against an enemy, the fight is God's and I am guaranteed victory.
In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.--Romans 8:37

The Cool of the Day

Imagine being Adam and Eve, juice still dripping from their chins, and hearing this:
The Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?"--Genesis 3:9

As if He didn't already know.
But His question reminded Adam and Eve they'd done something wrong. And they grabbed for fig leaves, looking for a place to hide..
It's easy to see that not much has changed. 
We still sin, we still feel shame, and we still try to hide.

And God still takes the initiative to find us.
He still asks, "Where are you?"
This is the real beauty of Eden--God was already seeking Adam before Adam gave Him a thought.  
Adam languished with his wife, satiated, absorbed, waiting to become as wise as God, when God interrupted Adam's torpor with a reminder that He still walked in the cool of the day and still wanted Adam, now disqualified, as a companion.

He does the same for us.
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.--Romans 5:8
The Son of Man came to seek what was lost.--Luke 19:10

He calls, He leads; we answer, we follow.
And when we do, we can walk again with Him in the cool of the day.

What I Want

What do I want more than anything else?
Happiness, safety, comfort, health, wealth?  Yes, I want all of these.
But one thing above all others?

Yes, there is one thing.
I want--we all want--this:
What a man desires is unfailing love.--Proverbs 19:22

Yes, that's it.
I want to be loved without hesitation or interruption, no matter whether I am good, or cranky, or even downright evil.
I want a lover I cannot wear down, ever.
I want a companion who comes back time after blessed time, no matter what I do.

Why?
Because I know that no other love is love at all.
Love that even hints at an end is just a brief stroke from a generous hand.  It's negotiation.  It is a dream.

Love has one impossible, defining characteristic.
Love never fails.--1 Corinthians 13:8

In a human world, love always fails.
I want a lover who loves me, not because of who I am, but in spite of it.
I need this kind of love because without unfailing love, I will fall, completely and disastrously.

And I can find this kind of love, but I have only one option.  No man, no child, no friend can give it.
I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know that this love surpasses knowledge..--Ephesians 3:17-19

No person can truly love, but Christ can, surpassing reason and knowledge, rising above flesh and blood, walking out of the grave and taking my hand so He can show me the way home.
That is what I want.

Why Didn't I Take the Blue Pill?

Nuts. Here I thought I had to do something bad to succumb to evil.  I don't.  All I have to do is give up. 

Following Christ has brought so much to my life--a hope and a purpose, a solid foundation, a clear path to walk, a promise of eternity, the touch of God Himself--but sometimes it doesn't seem like enough.

It's not enough when justice does not appear to be served.
It's not enough when Christians don't act like Christ.
It's not enough when I get tired of fighting.
It's not enough when the world behaves so much like, well, the world.

When evil triumphs.  When power and privilege corrupt, then corrupt more. When people who have made wrong decisions make worse ones.  

Living went so much more smoothly when I went with the flow, when I let the world carry me along rather than buck its trend, even though I know its trend leads to destruction.
Anyone who tries to follow Christ is subject to this:
I am afraid that, just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds might be led astray from devotion to Christ.--2Corinthians 11:3


In the end, an expectation of ease leads to evil.  It happened to Adam and Eve.  It happens to us.

We have got to understand that our lives as Christians will be hard and will not get much easier this side of heaven.  That's why God warns us that He has to be enough.  Always.  Just Him.
Or:
Since they did not think knowledge  of God worthwhile, He gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done.--Romans 1:28

God gives us peace, but peace does not equal ease.
As odd as it sounds, peace comes from not giving up, from arming ourselves every day, from admitting that the world is Satan's territory and a hostile place, then living in it as God's own.  
Ease and comfort come with living in Satan's world as Satan's own, and this I cannot do.
I know the truth.  I already took the red pill.  There is no going back.

Lord search me; test me and know my anxious thoughts.--Psalm 139:23