God is great – Page 4 – Roberta Writes

Finding our place

Years ago when I was a young woman I had a discussion with a youth minister. I was concerned with some changes in the choice of music at the church. The move was toward new contemporary worship songs. I didn’t actually have an issue with the new music. I have always loved music of all types and genres. I was upset with the attitude to the old music. There was a philosophy that suggested we needed to upgrade. The old-fashioned music was out of touch, ‘unrelatable’, old and dusty. I didn’t see it this way. At the time I loved the old hymns and even now I still do.

I had an instinctual reaction to this shift. At the time I was offended musically. I thought it narrow-minded, ignoring music of such an incredible quality. Some of these old hymns were written by brilliant people, both the music and lyrics. This didn’t mean I couldn’t see brilliance in some new music. I thought it arrogant to shove the old music out the door.

I realize now there was a greater danger in this. This attitude toward music signified a much bigger problem. In the early 1990s churches started to worry about being relevant. We needed to be cooler, more hip to the culture. The music needed to be updated. The topics of discussion needed to be updated. We needed cool “full service” Sunday school programs and coffee shops and lots of palaver.

And yet humans are as they ever were. There is nothing new under the sun.

I have come to understand that this was a kind of human vanity, a desire to be a “kingdom builder.” When in the past it was enough to be a part of the kingdom. This attitude sought to bring glory to God by being more culturally recognizable. This on the surface is an excellent goal. But somewhere in that process we felt we needed to help God be more approachable. Yikes!!

I see now the vanity in this. We were the centre of this movement (I say we, because I got swept up in it too). God doesn’t actually need our help. He can use the willing and the unwilling. He can use the Christian and the non-christian. He can use blessings, and He can use suffering to bring people to Him.

These old hymns have in them the suffering of centuries. They recognize our shared humanity (as do many of the new songs). We don’t need to improve on the past, we need to take our place in it. This is God’s story, not ours.

The light of the moon

God is like the sun; blazing, bright and overpowering. Moses hid his face when he approached the burning bush. Our humanity, our sin, keeps us from being able to understand God. Just as the heat and furious power of the sun prevents us from fully understanding it. Yet we live by His light. Everything we have is because of the sun and its warm rays.

He sent His own son to earth as a man. Jesus crossed the bridge between man and God. He showed us, in terms we can understand, what God is. He was the human example, a reflection of God. In the same way the moon reflects the sun. The moon does not have its own light, but rather that of the sun. But we can stare at the moon in a way that we can’t look directly at the sun.

Like the moon, Jesus was a reflection of God. The light belongs to God, but in taking a lesser, human form he gave us a version of the light that we can examine and study and understand.

John 14: 6 – 7 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you really know me, you will know my Father as well.
From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

The tide is turning

I was listening to G.K. Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy.” There was a line that jumped out at me. “The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” This simple line struck me as so profound.

I have been trying to make sense of our world. And when I try to do that I can work my way into a terrible state; angry, frustrated, scared, and tired. My head begins to ache with the effort. If I choose to look for God’s hand in the world, rather than rationalize, I am more contented.

And when I look for God’s hand I see it. People are standing up and speaking truth. Leaders are beginning to rise and other brave souls are starting to support them publicly. The pendulum is starting to swing back. Light is starting to push back against the darkness. It is happening.

God is moving.

We can’t guess what form it will take, and we can’t predict what will happen. But I see it… I see it happening. I hear the rumblings. People are coalescing. They are aligning themselves with God and they are growing in strength. Every day a bit louder. The rumbling is increasing. Men of power and influence cannot hear it, they can’t see it. A hurricane is coming their way, and they can’t see it, they are blind. But I see it and I know it’s coming. For now, it’s a small cloud on the horizon.

Take heart the tide is turning.

1 Kings 18: 44 The seventh time the servant reported,
“A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.”
So Elijah said, “Go and tell Ahab, ‘Hitch up your chariot
and go down before the rain stops you.'”

Judging a book by it’s cover

In grade nine my son decided to join the school wrestling team. I was able to attend a couple of the school matches. It was so great to see all these kids mixing it up on the mats.

My son had three matches. When his second match came up, I worked my way closer to where he was wrestling. Standing with him on the mat was a little guy, easily a foot shorter than my boy. I shook my head in confusion. I thought they were matched by weight. There was no way this boy was in the same weight class as my son. I felt sorry for the boy and hoped Gavin would go easy on him.

The match began and after a putting up a few seconds of fight, my son was on the mat. The smaller boy having skillfully taken him down. I was flabbergasted.

My son worked his way towards me smiling. I looked at him in surprise and said, “I thought for sure you’d win that match!”

He laughed and said, “No way! That kid is from my school. They allow him to wrestle above his weight class cause he’s so good. I knew I wouldn’t beat him. I was happy I lasted as long as I did.”

Gavin had information I didn’t have. He knew more about his competitor than I did. I was looking at the surface. Like the Israelite people when they picked Saul as their king, God saw something the people didn’t see. Or Saul’s army when they feared Goliath, David in his sureness of God’s goodness saw something they wouldn’t see.

It is almost impossible to be aware of our own blind spots. That is why it’s important that we continue to humble ourselves before God and allow him to show us where we err. We need to continue to turn to Him for wisdom.

Psalm 25: 4-5 Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.

Thinking of Easter

For most of my life it has been assumed that Christians are on the back foot.

The messages of my life thus far have been; take your faith and keep it out of the public square. Christian perspectives were relegated to matters of church and family; until that also became a problem. Now even having Christian values within your church or in the walls of your own home is frowned upon.

But if we take the message of Easter seriously, we should take courage. The battle is won! It’s over. I don’t need to apologize for my beliefs because I am on the side of the victor. Does this mean I personally am always right? Of course not. I am human, I need to grow and learn and gain wisdom. But I do not need to feel shame about the God I serve.

That is the primary message of Easter for me.

Be brave!

Be true!

Step up and take on the mantle of Christ!

BE COUNTED!

Romans 8: 37-39 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through
Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life,
neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,
neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to
separate us from the of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Great King

Jesus rode into Jerusalem to shouts of Hosanna. The triumphant return of the King. If this was a story written by human hands this is where the story would end. The return of the king and goodness to the land.

But this is not where the story of Jesus ends. The great king is killed. Taken down by evil and plotting forces. The great hope for humanity is squelched by evil. All hope is lost.

Until… he returns. This time not only conquering evil but death itself.

Only a great and worthy king could do this. No human could. He lives on. His story lives on. It never ends, replaying every day in the lives of all who follow him.

Hosanna – YouTube

An example of faith

Daniel has been one of my favourite books of the Bible for years. It has all the elements of the great Bible stories, but even more so. For example, Joseph gets framed and falsely accused, and ends up wasting away in jail. But in the book of Daniel jealous elements of the court conspire to frame Daniel, and he gets thrown in a den of lions. No sissy prison for these rulers. Daniel’s friends get thrown in a fiery furnace! These guys ain’t messing around.

To a kid who loved the action of the Old Testament, Daniel is a great book. It combined visual descriptions of dreams and stories with extreme events. As a child this was pure gold!

As an adult, I love the story of the hand writing on the wall. It again is such a visual story. But now I not only react to the imagery but the also to the impact of its meaning. Belshazzar is hosting a banquet and in an act of arrogance he demands to have the spoils from their Jewish conquest, the temple goblets, brought to him. They drink from these and praise their own gods and goddess. It is an act of supremacy over the Jewish people and their God. A hand then appears out of nowhere and writes on the wall. He calls for his wise men to come interpret the writing. They all fail so Daniel is brought in to decipher the meaning.

Daniel 5: 25-30 “This is the inscription that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN “Here is what these words mean:
Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.
Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.
Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

Then at Belshazzar’s command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a gold chain
was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in
the kingdom. That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain,
and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two.

The idea I like most is the idea of an external judgement. The visual representation of a truth that is separate and beyond the powerful. The reality that the ruler by which we are measured is not held by men, or by the authorities of the day.

The events of our world lately have many people on edge. It can be easy to feel helpless and small in the currents of world affairs. And yet, the scriptures offer a different view. We like Daniel can cling to what we believe to be true. We can hold the line as individuals. This may come with hardship and suffering, but we are fighting for the stronger side. We do not need to feel like victims. We serve the All Mighty.

Kings came and went, but Daniel remained faithful. He served God.

Thoughts on artificial intelligence

I love listening to cultural and political issues. I’ll listen to podcasts and video interviews about all sorts of topics. Even topics I know little or nothing about can intersect with the issues I do care about. This intersection is usually at the corner where values and beliefs meet the subject at hand. A great example of this is Artificial Intelligence.

This is the next great technological front. The brightest scientists seem to be putting their energies into this study. I have listened to long, complex and often boring discussions about AI. I have no interest in the technology, except how it may impact my life. This is of course hard to tell until the technologies are fully explored. Having said that, basic AI is already impacting how we get news, what we think, what we buy and how we behave.

I do hear, in these discussions, great hubris and vanity. If you do not believe in God and you believe that humans are the pinnacle of evolution, then the sky’s the limit. But… if you believe that man is a lovingly made expression of a wildly powerful and all-knowing God, then the achievements of mankind are less impressive.

Human exploration and ingenuity is great and God given. But we are foolish if we think we fully understand God’s creation. We are only barely scratching the surface.

I love the story of Babel in the old testament. The people were going to build the greatest building and reach the sky and be like the gods. The work or their minds and hands were to rival that of the Creator.

Genesis 11: 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.

Again it’s a question of scale. The humans are building the highest building ever and God has to come ‘down’ to see it. It’s a little throw away line, and yet it says so much.

If this is a topic that is of interest to you, I love what John Lennox has to say about it.

2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity | John C. Lennox – YouTube

Psychological safety

I am not a daring person. All I’ve ever wanted is a safe life. Extreme sports have never been attractive to me. I haven’t wanted to do anything spectacular. Safety and comfort have been my main aims.

Everywhere I look there is concern for mental health. ‘Psychological safety’ is a term that has almost become ubiquitous. According to the world I should be aiming at a safety. I should be coddled and wrapped up and feel secure. My desire for safety and the worlds urging are on the same page.

It appears to me that God has had other ideas. My life has been a series of terrifying tightropes. Using all my strength to stay balanced. One wrong step and I fall. My goals and what I live are two different things. Yet God keeps tossing me off the cliff and I am left hanging on by my fingertips.

Maybe safety isn’t the goal.

Maybe comfort isn’t the aim.

Maybe we are all wrong.

The idea of resilience has been hovering around for years now. How to make people more resilient is the big question in education and medicine. This newer idea of Psychological safety and the idea of resilience are at odds.

There is only one way to build resilience in people. Let them fall and then pick up the pieces. Resilience is a by-product of suffering. Plain and simple. No magic pill. No shortcut. No painless way. Resilience is the scar covering the wound.

Based on my own life experience I will say I feel the most successful when I remember where to feel safe. I can feel safe in God’s hands regardless of the storm. Nothing around me is safe, the world isn’t calm. I need to turn to God for that.

The image that always comes to mind is our little boat flaying around in an awful storm – no help in sight. The winds and waves more than we can handle. We feel desperate and alone. Yet, when the picture zooms out, way WAY out, the tiny boat is floating in a great rumbling sea and holding the whole works are God’s impossibly large hands. He may not have me, but he has the whole storm.

The only way forward is through the storm. God is my safety!

Mark 4: 39-41 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves,
“Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this?
Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

A line in the sand

How do we grapple with modern Christianity? Voices on every side telling us what it means to be a Christian. What you must believe, who you should support, what cultural idea you should adopt. Its everywhere. Both sides.

We seem to have politicized our faith. This is something that causes me great concern.

Several years ago, we began a very personal road of faith and just couldn’t find a ‘church’ where we could hang our hats. We have many supportive friends, family, and a great community, which we built over that time instead. For us this was a good thing. As a result, our relationship with God has been intensely personal.

I realize this is not the answer for everyone and I would never hold our experience up as an example. But I do believe God protected us from much of the chaos that I see happening in churches today. From the outside it seems many Christians have lost focus and confidence in their beliefs. It looks to me like churches have come under direct assault from the cultural changes.

Like in the Old Testament, in the story of Joshua, the Israelites also had come to a crossroads. Joshua stood before the people and gave his great speech. I can see it my minds eye. A rousing speech reminiscent of the great orators of old. A Winston Churchill “We shall never surrender” sort of speech.

It appears to me that we are at that kind of crossroad as followers of Christ. We are reaching a point where there is a line in the sand, and we need to pick which side we will be on.

Last year I painted a sign and we put it up in our entry way. I want it to be a daily reminder of where we stand. I want my family to remember who we serve!

Joshua 24: 14-15 “Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River
and in Egypt. Serve the Lord! And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites,
in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”