Gadfly's Muse

Life Is Simple....

[Indian Paint Brush, 2010, JA VanDevender]

Micah 6:8  He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?

It really appears simple... when we just look at it from Micah's perspective.  God doesn't demand that much after all.  It certainly is not as if He is outrageous in His expectations.  He simply wants us to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly.... with Him. 

He sends His Son into the world, to inhabit the flesh of mankind, to experience the pains and sorrows of broken humanity.  He sweats in the hot sun and is pricked by the bugs and gnats.  He feels the sharp taunts of His enemies... He grieves as friends desert Him... He loves ... and hurts .... and weeps... and laughs.  God does all this as an act of pure good will.  That's complication... that's complexity.... that's layers of obligation.

But what does He require of us in return?  In contrast.... not much.  He asks for our lives, yes, and completely.  But in what does He ask us to give our lives?  He asks us to do justly... to walk in wisdom, redeeming the time for the days are evil.  He asks us to penetrate the sludge of selfish babble in which we are immersed and to find firm ground on which to place our feet.  Doing justly is walking in equity with God and man... returning good for evil.... building instead of tearing down... seeking the well being of all, especially the household of God.  What is the price that we pay for this?  It is not costly at all... it is actually the way of profit... the way of peace... the rewards of which are immediate and eternal. 

He asks us to love mercy, ... to rejoice in it.  To forgive and be forgiven... to exist transparently with God and man such that our failures are not hidden and our tolerance of those in others proves our love.  Is this costly to us?  Not at all, for it means we forgo the heavy burden of animosity, grudges, wounded pride, resentment and all the other multitudes of prickles which make life miserable.

He asks us to walk humbly... with Him.  Is there any other way to walk with Him?  To stand next to the Infinite is to contrast our smallness.  No man staring at space feels large.  But in our smallness we walk with Him and He accepts us and upholds us and overcomes all things for us.  Is this costly?  What price is privilege?  What can purchase a gift?

Life is simple.... it is sin that is complex.  God help us to remember that.

With All Your Heart.....

[Tulips, 2010, JAVanDevender]

Joel 2:12-13 " Now, therefore," says the LORD, "Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning." So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm. 

I sometimes wonder if we fallen human beings really know what it means to love someone.... even ourselves... with all our heart.

God calls us to such a complete immersion in Himself, such a complete giving over to Him of our entire being, that I often think that we really don't know what it means because it is something so outside our own experience.  We live in a world of emotions and, in this particular cultural era, a preoccupation with them.  In the pendulum swings that is human history, today we think of "to know" in terms of "to feel."  How sad it may be then if by this definition we are cut off from "knowing love' because we have never truly "felt love."

Taking a step into the minefield of offering definitions, I would posit that "love" is not so much responsive affections, as in a warm, outgoing "feeling" as it is a "desire" properly limited.  In this case, "to love" in my thinking is to be moved by the strongest kind of "desire" for the well being of the other person, or the object of love.  To love someone is to desire their good.  The more intense the "love" the more intense that "desire."  To love God is to desire His glory... His honor... His delight.  To love Him with all our heart is to desire that glory... that honor... that delight above all other things.

Necessarily "love" as "desire for an other's well being" is self-denying.  If we love someone with all our heart then there is no room left over for loving ourselves in a manner that might diminish the other person's well being.  Is this not how God loved us?  Is this not the manner in which Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, loved His Father in Heaven and us, His brothers and sisters?  Jesus' love for us is rooted in His love for His Father.  His Father is glorified in the bringing of many sons and daughters into His Kingdom.  His Father is delighted when a life is transformed from the worship of sin to the worship of righteousness.  His Father is honored when a person's speech is transformed from God slandering to God honoring.  At every point we can see that Jesus' love for the Father is the causal basis on which He does the work of transforming our lives.

But we also are loved at the same time.  Because all of those things which bring glory and honor and praise to God in us are also things which rebound to our delight, to our glory and, with caution, to our honor.  And this is what brings me back to my opening concern... about fallen man not knowing what it means to love.

Jesus' love for God which then is expressed in love for us, is what teaches us... opens us up to the whole reality of love as it really exists.  We love because God first loves us... apart from that "experience" or "knowledge" communicated to us... all of our "loving" is so weak and slimy that for all practical purposes it doesn't even deserve the appellation.  Yet... yet!  ... God having loved us transforms us in such a way that love is not only possible to us but inevitable.  His love awakens love.  And though, in our fallen state, we cannot persist in loving with all our hearts without interruption, yet in our life we can, episodically, actually do so.  There can be moments and more than moments when we are completely given over to our Savior and to our God and with weeping eyes and joyful hearts, we focus on Him and desire only Him and only His glory.

Like flowers bursting forth from the near frozen earth, the beauty of love blossoms and turns to the sun (Son), adding its glory to the Garden of creation... to the delight of Him who created that Garden for this very purpose.

Tender Affections

[TheHaircut, 2009, JAVanDevender]

Hosea 11:8  " How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I set you like Zeboiim? My heart churns within Me; My sympathy is stirred.

It is an exceptional (and most likely, non-existent) parent who never gets exasperated with their children.  Some children are seemingly naturally disposed to be less unruly than others.  Some come out of the womb bent on trouble.  But wherever each falls within that spectrum, they are never-the-less, all of them, dyed in the wool sinners and sooner or later they act like it.  Parents have to deal with it on two levels:  first, the natural and just energy that is needed to properly convey parental disfavor at a given wrong doing, and second, our own sinful nature which resents having to take the time, energy and attention which is needed to handle it. 

Invariably, assuming the family not to be excessively dysfunctional, there is that stirring of sympathy in the heart of the parent.  No matter how severe the chastening, nor how necessary and just it was, there is that heart tug that arouses us and moves us to the hug that comes sooner or later as we receive the repentant spirit with joy and the world is right again - we have been reconciled.

What a tender picture God paints in these verses.  He portrays Himself in the same way as the parent of a child who has been severely disciplined and now He is longing for that restoration.  How warm is His affection!  How we easily we see ourselves in the imagery. 

What a great and good God He is... loving and kind .... yet fierce in His righteous wrath and indignation.  We treat Him like trash and He deals with us firmly... yet, amazingly, His anger is not greater than His grace but complies sweetly with it.  With infinite patience He brings us back, working repentance in us so that we see our lives and our actions in their true light... as will-full disrespect, arrogance and ingratitude.  But our tears are precious to Him at all times and never more so than when we come, as a child, an say... from the heart... "Father, forgive me... I am sorry."

Blessings and Blessings... even in this.

A Hurting Husband...

[Natural Beauty, 2009, DCJohanson]

Hosea 3:1  Then the LORD said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the LORD for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans."

There is a sculpture in Vigeland Sculpture Park, Oslo, Norway which perfectly embodies the thoughts that occurred to me today.  I could not find a photo of it... it is the one which has the lone woman, trapped in the coils of a sleeping serpent, bound fast by its hold on her until the time when it awakens and consumes her.

This image from my friend Dave Johanson is a stylized photo which can be seen in a similar light.  The ferns in which the woman is immersed and her posture and gesture can be taken as despair.  She is being sucked into the binding tentacles which grip her body... she struggles but cannot escape... she knows it is hopeless.  The "things" which God designed for good have been transformed into evil... in their perversion they ensnare and feed on their prey.   Such is the character of compulsive sin.

Hosea's life calling was not an easy one... He was set aside by God to experience just a taste of what God Himself goes through with His people.  How miserable it must have been.  Hosea was given a wife to marry and to love.  His heart was to bind to her.  They had children together.  There was a movement of his spirit toward hers.  Yet, from the beginning he knew that she was ensnared by sin.  There was a fundamental weakness in her... a fatal defect.  She lusted after pleasure... after other men... she was a harlot by inclination if not by profession.  She sinned because she wanted to sin.  It was not external circumstances... the pressures of providing for her children... the absence of a loving and generous husband... that moved her.  It was the clinging tentacles, the sucking, crushing grip of obsession that kept her eyes wandering and her feet chasing after the flesh. 

Hosea knew all this going in, just as God knows the wandering heart of His bride, His Church.  Hosea experienced the gut wrenching jealousy... the shameful rejection... the very, very personal and intimate pain that goes along with this type of rejection.  She longed for something that was not him!  She despised beauty, righteousness, honesty, integrity, constancy, and faithfulness.  She interpreted patient loving kindness as weakness and despised it.  How clearly she embodies and portrays us.

Yet, Hosea also is given the task of loving her back to himself.  The love that God gives him to express to her is a type of the self-sacrificing power with which He draws us, His wandering Bride, back to Himself.  His power withers the power of sin... the radiance of His person shrinks the voluptuous foliage that requires the dark and damp jungle to support its vigor. 

God's love is greater than our sin... it is the scalpel which gently scrapes away the leeches draining our life.  God is the perfect Husband because He loves us even when we don't love Him.

My heart goes out to my brother Hosea.  But what a wonder God accomplished in him... and, in retrospect, what a privilege he was given.  May we be as faithful... and even more, may our lives be used by God to such glorious ends... though I tremble at the idea of what that might entail.

Night Visions.....

[Tulips, 2010, JAVanDevender]

Daniel 7:13-14  " I was watching in the night visions, And behold, One like the Son of Man, Coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, And they brought Him near before Him.  Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, Which shall not pass away, And His kingdom the one Which shall not be destroyed. 

The sheer exuberance of this vision, the metaphorical detail which sets it apart and the amazing breadth of its content can easily explain the affect it had on poor Daniel.  The next verse tells us that he was "grieved" in his spirit after wards.  I think that it putting it mildly.  I would have been a little puddle of badly shaken nerves.  Even today as I read it I get the sensation of cold chills running up and down my spine.  The ... HOLINESS.... of it... grabs my heart and my mind and unites them in astonishment.

I don't believe there is any other genre of ancient literature, outside the Bible, which has the sheer audacity to seriously portray such a prophesy.  This vision is as far removed from the oracle at Delphi as you can get.  Astrologers, working for pay, always smoozing up to their king, have often given him very encouraging predictions about how great he is going to be... what great battles he is going to win... etc.   But no where do you see them going out on a limb and talking about something with this world encompassing result.

One day there will come a man, but more than a man, the Son of Man.  One day there will come an individual who will, in Himself, sum up the entire human race, the entire created span of two legged thinking beings that we call humans.  He is the Son... the product... the culminating number of a finite sequence which represents the sum of all that has gone before...

This Son will be given dominion over all the earth... every nook and cranny.  No one will be outside His sphere of authority.  There will be no opposition left because all enemies will be defeated.  He will reign forever because He will be beyond death, having defeated that last enemy personally in His own Person.

And He shall reign... forever and ever (Handel, Messiah, has anyone ever sung it better?).

There is only one response that is both appropriate and possible to such a vision.  It is to worship with gladness and anticipation.  It is to throw down whatever paltry crowns of achievement we possess before His feet and hail Him as worthy... Maranatha Lord Jesus, Come Quickly...

Revealed In The Flames

[Cherry Blossoms, 2010, JAVanDevender]

Daniel 3:24-25  Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished; and he rose in haste and spoke, saying to his counselors, "Did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?" They answered and said to the king, "True, O king."  "Look!" he answered, "I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God." 

What a story!  The courage of those three young men, Shadrack, Meshack and Abed-Nego, has echoed throughout the eons, wherever the Gospel has been proclaimed.  To face the most fearsome man then alive, Nebudchadnezzar, and with unswerving virtue proclaim to him... (Daniel 3:17-18 ) "If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king.  "But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up."

Those words still resonate with us.  Here is obedience.  Here is the confidence of faith.  "You don't have to wait for an answer, O King, we have it already.  Do with us as you will.  Our God can shield us from the flames or He can burn us to a crisp.  It is His call.  But this is our call -  this is our freedom - that we will not bow to any other god but that One True God who is above all kings, all principalities and all powers."  Oh to have that confidence and faith... to stand unafraid before the prospect of the unthinkably horrible.  Yet... in one sense... these men had no other choice.  They were being threatened with Heaven (as a friend of mine long ago called it).  To choose anything other than heaven was simply absurd.  But still, what an encouragement to us.

There it is the other aspect of this story that intrigues me.  It is how Christ, the Son of God, is seen in the flames.  It was obedience to God which caused the men to be tossed into the fiery furnace.  But it was the enduring of the flames that set the stage for seeing Christ in them.  It was only in the midst of the trial that they saw Jesus (pre-incarnate).  And is this not true still?

Why do we face trials?  So that Christ may be revealed in them... to us and to the world around us.  If and when we suffer unjustly (and truly there is nothing that we ever actually experience that is truly unjust... we deserve nothing better than what ever happens to us and usually a lot worse) for the cause of Christ, this consolation is our hope.  God's purposes in bringing us to that suffering, to that trial, is so that He may be revealed... that His power may be made manifest... that His wisdom may be demonstrated.  Christ is revealed in the flames... often with more power, authority and perfection than any of our spoken words or written theological treatises.  We are not to seek out opportunities to suffer... that would be to arrogate to ourselves that which belongs to God alone... but neither are we to unduly fear them or be panic stricken at the prospect.  Trials are God's refining fire... and the gold that shines once the slag has been removed is the image of Christ.

Glory Nipped In The Bud

[Budding Genius, 2010, JAVanDevender]

Daniel 4:17   17 'This decision is by the decree of the watchers, And the sentence by the word of the holy ones, In order that the living may know That the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, Gives it to whomever He will, And sets over it the lowest of men.' 

You don't spit into the wind, you don't step on Superman's cloak, you don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger and you don't mess around with.....

Nebudchadnezzar.

Apologies to Jim Croce but I couldn't resist.

It certainly held true in his day.  Nebudchadnezzar was "King of Kings", the Big Cheese, the most powerful man in the world.  The law of the Babylonian empire was whatever happened to be his mood or inclination at a given instant.  What he said went and he said a lot.  Furthermore he achieved incredible things.  Under his leadership the city was transformed in glory.  The wise men (astrologers and such) of the Chaldeans were known far and wide for their learning and observation.  On the whole the general population prospered, shored up as it was by the availability of cheap labor from the hordes of conquered peoples, among whom was this interesting guy Daniel.

But Nebudchadnezzar had a pipeline from heaven through which he received these worrisome dreams.  Daniel had already proved his worth regarding these dreams and also there had been that incident with the lion's den.  Nebudchadnezzar respected Daniel and listened carefully when the Jew spoke. 

What Daniel told him now was puzzling.  God didn't seem to be impressed with all his glorious achievements.  Somehow or another this "Most High God" that Daniel worshiped seemed to be somewhat jealous.... downright picky... about sharing glory with kings and such.  And Daniel now was telling him that God was saying that all these things that he had accomplished actually were not of himself at all but rather were the workings of God.  The obvious intention was that God expected him, Nebudchadnezzar, to humbly admit it... to point to God and give the glory to HIM!  That seems so unfair... after all it was he that lead the armies, it was he that stayed up nights with building plans, it was he that fought off the political intrigue... it was he that did all the work... What is the problem with this God?

As we all know and as Nebudchadnezzar learned the hard way.  The problem wasn't with God at all.  The problem was with the pride, the self-centered-ness, the arrogance in his own heart.  It is God the Most High who rules in the kingdom of men.  It is He who gives it to whomever He wills... and it is He who sets it over the lowest of men.

What applied to Nebudchadnezzar applies no less to each and every one of us.  God doesn't just raise up kings and ordain kingdoms.  God is just as concerned with the housewife as He is with the CEO.  His work is perfect because all the parts are coordinated and we are those parts.  This is a source of great relief to those of us who know our own weaknesses and know that only through Him can we have any hope of doing anything significant.  Yet the sin of Nebudchadnezzar always crouches at the doors of our heart and perhaps we ought to remember his story.  We would not be the first to discover that only then do we have a shot and recovering from our insanity.

The Unholy and the Holy... the Unclean and the Clean

[Steeple&Contrails, 2010, JAVanDevender]

Ezekiel 44:23  "And they shall teach My people the difference between the holy and the unholy, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.

Ezekiel's vision of the Divine plan for the new temple was amazingly precise... precisely clear and clearly precise.  You get my point I think.   God intended for the place where He would dwell with His people to be most hospitable to Him and most inspiring to His people.  Of course no human effort could attain the Divine perfection in construction.  But the purpose of an ideal is give us fallen mortals a target at which to aim... a goal toward which we strive.  We are to never "settle" for our fallen capacities and be content with only what we can achieve.... our hearts should long for perfection because that perfection is our God.

Those who were to minister in the Temple were to be "ideal" also.  The priests who labored among the people were to keep in mind their ultimate solemn duty and to strive in this, as in all things, for the perfection of their instruction.  They were to teach the difference between the holy and unholy, the clean and the unclean.  In the ideal church those whom God has set aside to teach would lead people into that blessed state where the things of God would be opened to their hearts and spirits in such a manner that their lives would cling to the good and they would despise the tawdry and common.

It is no less the case in the New Covenant as the Old.  Through the indwelling Holy Spirit we are to be taught by God (John 6:45).  This doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit floods the new believer with the fullness of all that he or she needs to know and learn.  Sanctification is all about growth.  Faith which begins as a grain of mustard seed is to sprout and become a tree sufficient for the birds of the field to find a nesting place on its branches.  This process includes teaching and being taught.  Always... always... these divisions of subject matter are in view.  The Holy contrasted with the Unholy... the Clean standing in stark relief against the unclean.

That which is Holy and Clean is that which the Lord Himself has blessed and that which is compatible with His Kingdom.  It is the prescription for health and peace.  It is the way of love compounded with righteousness.  It is understandable by all but can only be loved by God's people.  To embrace the Holy is to aspire to perfection and purity... only one Man has ever attained it... but through Him we can embrace it by embracing Him.  His promise is that He will give us the desire of our hearts, He will give us that for which we yearn... if that for which we long is the Holy and Clean.

To hunger after righteousness with the knowledge that we shall be filled... to know what righteousness is so that we may hunger for it... this is the pathway to wholeness and holiness.