How Many Kings?

Follow the star to a place unexpected
Would you believe, after all we’ve projected, A child in a manger?
Lowly and small, the weakest of all
Unlikeliest hero, wrapped in his mother’s shawl – Just a child – Is this who we’ve waited for? ’cause…

How many kings step down from their thrones?
How many lords have abandoned their homes?
How many greats have become the least for me?
And how many gods have poured out their hearts

To romance a world that is torn all apart How many fathers gave up their sons for me?

Bringing our gifts for the newborn Savior All that we have, whether costly or meek Because we believe.
Gold for his honor, and frankincense for his pleasure And myrrh for the cross he will suffer Do you believe?
Is this who we’ve waited for?

Only one did that for me
All, all for me…..All for you.

“How Many Kings” by Downhere
Written by Marc A. Martel, Jason Ronald William Germain.

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

Isaiah 7:14

Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Isaiah 53:1-3

All for you, all for me.

What’s it like up there?

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. Revelation 22:1-5

What’s it like up there God? Down here as we are so affixed to the earth, held here trapped by gravity and time. This morning as I sat listening to the heater in the shop tick amidst the backdrop of freeway traffic I found my thoughts drifting toward Heaven. So much of this world seems dirty and rude and noisy, marred by the effects of sin and yet………parts just take my breath away. Those are the things that still hold a glimmer of what it must have been like when all things were new. The Bible says set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. So sometimes in my quiet moments like this morning, that’s what I do.

My mind wandered out beyond the borders of this earth, into the blackness of deep space. I looked back at the earth, aware of what I am leaving and it fills me with sadness, and yet something propels me forward. The excitement of what I am about to see. I am stunned by the brightness of the stars. Faster and faster I go, leaving the press of time behind. I see a distant light which is brighter than anything I have ever seen before but only because I finally have the eyes to see it.

It’s a place I recognize as home. I have glimpsed its borders sometimes between sleeping and waking. It’s a place unlike Narnia where it’s always winter but never Christmas. In this place it’s always Christmas and when it does snow, it’s like diamonds that settle on the green leaves yet it’s never ever cold.

All I want to do is stay here forever.

I see Jesus at the right hand of the Father who is impossible light. I am aware that I have never seen colors like this, never even knew they existed. I was lost but now am found.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory. At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Let me Introduce you………

The LORD said to Moses, “I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you.” Then Moses told the LORD what the people had said. Exodus 24:15

I love living by the Superstition mountains because they remind me of when God met Moses on the mountain. It reminds me of how He meets me, every single day. A few years ago there was a song called Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones. Well, I have none for him, but as I thought of writing this post, one of the lines went over and over in my head.

So, Let me introduce you……………..to my approachable God.

How you view God, if you believe in Him, has the power to shape your whole life. For many of us, the way we view Him was set in stone from what we heard sitting in the church pew. Maybe you had a Pastor who bored you to tears and made sitting in church for an hour or so an excruciating experience.

Maybe you heard fire and brimstone, sermons stripped of any love at all and walked away condemned, bereft of hope. You came away empty, thinking that kind of God was nobody you would want to know, or would want to know you. Maybe experiences you had with God’s people left you out in the cold. Maybe you went to them with nowhere else to turn seeking a kind heart and a listening ear but got pelted with stones instead.

All those things have made you reject even the idea of God. Or maybe you have manufactured your own version of a warm and fuzzy God who is only love and nothing else. Benign God. Let me introduce you to the real God. The up close and personal version. The one who longs to know you, to hear from you. The one who wants to be a part of your every day life, until your final breath.

This is what His book says about Him:

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. (That means, God wants to dine with you, and he wants to dine with you in a very intimate way, the way you dine with close friends or family.)

The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.

From the very beginning, He was with us. Yet it was always us who drew away from Him and went our own way. But the God who walked with Adam and Eve in the garden, wants to walk with you too. At work, in line at the grocery store, on the subway, at your job, at home with your family. God was never satisfied to let us go our own way, He has always created a way for us to get home.

The cross is our way home.

Because Jesus bridged the gap between God and man, we have restored fellowship. That is the message I would like every single person on earth to know. Really, it’s the only thing in this life that matters. All the other stuff is just stuff unless we know Him.

Let me tell you, that when you have that relationship? Nothing compares to it. The God of the universe wants to walk alongside you in this life. I don’t know what could be better news than that. I can only tell you how it plays out in my own life. It means I will never, ever have to go it alone. It means His own Spirit lives within me. It plays out in joy unspeakable and full of glory on an ordinary day. It means that sometimes I feel so much gratitude that I want to shout it out to all who will hear.

It means that even in the midst of sorrow and heartbreak I don’t have to be overwhelmed, because He has promised to be with me. And He has been faithful. Since I said yes to Him all those years ago He has never left me, even though at times I have walked away from Him.

Never again. I am here to stay.

And you can be too.

Throw away all your previous notions and ideas of God. Open His word today and get to know the God who’s willing to fight for you. Who longs to be as close as your next breath. Open the windows of your soul and let the wind of His Spirit flow through. He is big enough to keep this whole thing in motion and yet small enough to fit in your heart.

It’s the one thing in life you will never regret. And the thing you will most regret if you don’t.

God’s not beyond getting small

“Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” Hebrews 13:20

I heard something today and the gist of it was, true love always involves some kind of sacrifice. Like what God Himself did on the cross. He wasn’t below getting small. We are getting to the time of the year when we celebrate that. God getting small.

God doing something radical like becoming a baby in a manger.

That’s what I love about the God we serve. There is nothing He wouldn’t do to show His love for us. When we call on Him in prayer, He answers. And sometimes, His deliverance is immediate. Like the other day. It was my last day with my family and something had happened the precious night that was distressing. My sleep was fitful and I tossed and turned, my only comfort the trains that passed in the night. I have always loved to hear trains in the night.

In the morning, I was still ticked. My anger flared anew. It was a choice I had to make and I didn’t want my last day there to be wasted. I wanted love to win out. I needed peace, and yet I drew the covers over my head not wanting to face the day. Defiant.

Anger seeks a target and sometimes it has unintended victims. I didn’t want that pall over the day. I had a choice to make.

So I prayed there in the dark. And just like that, it was gone like a vapor. The Lord was with me under those covers and He heard my prayer in the dark. He made Himself small in those quiet moments before dawn, all of a sudden.

It was resurrection Morning.

And time after time, day after day. It’s Easter all over again.

That’s the God I love.

Thoughts at week’s end

You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you! Isaiah 26:3

There is a day set aside for all activity and clamor to cease. Sunday is a day to take a deep breath, look back on the week and breathe a prayer of thanks that God got you through it all. That’s what I did this morning. I think it’s important to have one day singled out where we: “Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

We live in a loud brash world, and each day it crashes in on us. Yet throughout the workweek there are those moments of peace that come. One night on my way home I was sitting at a stop light waiting for the green, when overhead there came a flock of Canadian geese. I watched as the lead goose took his place at the front. I watched their perfect flight formation and I marveled at how God has created them to do that. What is it about nature that makes us stare in astonishment at times? It’s as if the whole world stops for a moment.

Or maybe that’s just me. Nature has always brought me a strong sense of wonder, but that wonder only creates in me a powerful sense of God Himself. Some people just marvel at nature and stop there. While that is possible, I believe we miss something huge when we don’t then turn that marveling into Worship and Praise to the God who created it all.

How hard is it to imagine eternity when you are standing at the edge of the ocean? I believe God gives us these moments in order to point the way to something even bigger, even more perfect. I can just hear Him say, “If you think there is beauty here, just wait until you see what I have prepared for you in Heaven!

Now, all the noise, all the rushing, all the driving, all the phones are silent.

Today, I receive God again here in the place of pausing. Once again, He has brought me through another challenging week as He always does.

Selah.

Today I fly out to California to see my family. I am looking forward to the moment I see those faces, and one very excited girl……..her “Aunt Nori” is coming.

Eventide

As shadows lengthen and the day stretches behind us, we pause. The last bird calls to the others tree to tree, as if he’s calling them all home. They know it’s time to find a place to huddle together heads under wings, feather to feather in the dark boughs.

All day they have taken flight and we have taken ours. Here and there, crisscrossing roads and skies.

But now the moon and God say: “It’s done.” The stars concur from where they shine high in the sky. Now I wonder as I often do, what’s going on in Heaven where there is no night and not for the first time, it feels just as real as being here down below. For that’s what Sabbath is: Knowing that Jesus is our Sabbath wherever we go. Now and forever more.

“Father, as I reflect on this day, I see the faces of my loved ones near and far. Thank you for keeping us all safe another day. Thank you as we live and breathe to enjoy another evening benediction.”

The breeze has stopped and it feels as if the earth is taking a deep breath. There is not a sound, save motorized vehicles here and there and every so often that one pesky mosquito buzzing my ear out for blood.

Still I persist. I don’t want it to end. Some days are just like that.

One more stinging bite on my ankle and I am gone………….the curse of the Fall nips at my heels even as Heaven fills my heart.

Day is done……..And it was evening, and it was the seventh day……and it was very good.

There remains a Sabbath rest……….

“There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the One who has entered His rest has Himself also rested from His works, as God did from His.” Hebrews 4:9,10

The chair creaked as I settled into it in the dim light of early morning. The first line of my prayer was a grateful sigh. There are times when sighs can be prayers. The end of the week once more and I wondered again at how I got here so fast. Settling into sabbath…..I gazed down the trail of years, wondered and wandered along the halls of my memories.

As I wandered, images and sounds came softly, floating over and through and then emotions along with them following close behind. “A Mighty Fortress” was the theme song of the little claymation cartoon I used to watch on Sunday mornings before church, Davy and Goliath.

I hear the echo of our voices in the upper room where we had children’s church and then after, Sunday lunch at Helwigs, Chicken on a Bun. And my Grandma sighing out loud and crinkling her Reeds wrappers while the Pastor is speaking, and my Mom being so embarrassed.

I remembered the way the light slanted the shadows as we walked to Sunday evening service on warm summer nights. And there was choir practice and the rustle of robes coming off hangers and the silence right after we all stood as one and waited for those first notes from the piano.

Service upon service……all through the years. All through the denominations, each one I loved in different ways. I hear the rustling of onion-skin pages as we all found our places as one. I find myself sometimes missing those days before iPads and iPhones in church.

As the candle flickers in the corner, these are the Holy gifts I unwrap one by one.

And someday, I will unwrap these days too.

This is Sabbath rest right here and now.

Enter into Sabbath rest

And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay.” And she prevailed upon us. Acts 16:13-15

I love the imagery of this verse……I like to think of Paul and Timothy and that group of women praying by the river. And Lydia, a well to do successful business woman, who was receiving those words into her heart. I think of how the Holy Spirit forbade Paul and Timothy to go all those other places but that He sent them there, to Macedonia. And that He chose a woman, Lydia, to be the first convert in Europe.

This morning as my fingers fly over the keyboards…….I pause every now and again to meditate and let my words fall where they may.

Pandora is playing Holy, Holy, Holy by David Nevue in the background. And it is Holy here in this place.

In my quiet place today, I read of where Elijah was taken up to Heaven in the Chariots of Fire, and Elisha, the farmer who took his place performing miracles, healing the Shunammite woman’s son. The son she never thought she would have. She was a wealthy woman too, and offered Elijah food whenever he passed by there. She even went to far as to fix him up a little guest room.

Can you imagine fixing up a guest room for Elijah??

We are rich, my friends. We have all these people, these heroes of the faith. They are all our relatives. These are our heritage, our Heavenly family. And someday in the future, we will all sit by the River of Life basking in the glow of the Lamb, looking forward to a future we could scarcely imagine while here on earth.

I leave you to your own meditation now…………and wherever your feet may take you today, I hope you take your Sabbath rest along with you. Thank God for the week you just passed through, knowing those burdens are behind you. Breathe deep, take in the Peace that passes understanding. We rest in Grace my friends.

I leave you with this little poem by Hafiz, which I just discovered in my travels along the internet.

Once a young woman said to me, “Hafiz, what

is the sign of someone who knows God?”

I became very quiet, and looked deep into her

eyes, then replied

“My dear, they have dropped the knife. Someone

who knows God has dropped the cruel knife

that most so often use upon their tender self

and others.”

Deep calls to deep

Some people think nature calls in a soft voice. I think it shouts quietly. There’s a difference.

What’s it shouting you say?

Things aren’t always what they seem…….like this bloom from a lowly thistle we know as the artichoke plant.

Do you see the bee? I almost missed it, and I took the picture a year ago.

There is a whole universe wrapped up in your back yard.

Just step out the door and open your eyes.

And you will see God.

He is waiting to fill us……so that we may never thirst for anything else. He calls us to the deep end.

It’s easy to tread water when you know you can touch bottom.

He’s calling us to swim further out.

Better yet, just jump.

He has never once failed to catch me.

Tired of treading water in the cesspool of worry?

Stop treading and float, my friends.

I took my troubles to the LORD; I cried out to him, and he answered my prayer. Psalm 120:1

Why it’s good to remember………

As I left this morning in the dark, I straightened my flag out and remembered. That day 13 years ago. Frozen in front of the TV, incredulous; watching the news in disbelief. I remember my Mom calling and weeping on the phone. And now I am in disbelief again that so many years have flown by…..It doesn’t seem possible.

As I walked into work I passed the security guard who was raising the American flag which I thought looked a little dingy. It would have been nice to see a bright splash of red, white and blue against the sky. It felt like such an ordinary day…….too ordinary. I guess that day started out pretty ordinary too. And that’s not a bad thing.

That’s what makes this all so significant. If 9/11 were to teach us anything, it is that each day holds within itself a wonderful capacity for complete normalcy and utter disaster. So we need to embrace the normal for what it is.

Ordinary life tinged with the miraculous.

In and around and through, each little insignificant moment of every day there is a thread of wonder. The thing we usually don’t realize though, is how fast it can all be taken away. I know, I’ve been there. I am one who stood at the edge of the great wide gulf of grief, wondering what I could have done differently, wondering how I would ever make my way to the other side.

We’ve all had loss, we’ve all had our times of wishing we could reel back all those little moments and see them for the small miracles they were. How clear it all seems from a distance.

Now I do my best to live in the moment. I don’t always succeed, but I am better at it than I used to be.

Set aside all the other lessons we could have learned that day 13 years ago. And set aside all the things we could be doing right now to prevent it from happening again.

The thing that matters most is that we live life with our eyes and hearts wide open. Knowing that each and every day we walk on Holy ground, and that person you wake up to? Ride that bus with? Work next to in that cubicle? They all have lives, hopes, dreams that matter to them. They all started out with a spark of Godness.

Tonight when you go home, go and sit beside the one you love, hold their hand and look into their eyes and ask them, really ask them how their day went. And then really listen. Who cares if they ask if you are alright. Thank God you still have them.

And in your reflection today, remember the ordinary heroes who died that day and the ones who tried to save them.

And everyday, remember the One who died to save you, for without Him nothing is possible.

With Him, everything is.

Lori's Prayer Closet

"And when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done is secret, will reward you……"Matthew 6:6

Reflection