SLEEP!

Twenty-two years of married life was celebrated yesterday. That’s my brother and his wife. We stayed up late to celebrate. At least, some of us did. The rest succumbed to the weariness of married life! (Just kidding, folks!)

Maybe it was the company! Or the all the food we had been consuming the last few days, courtesy of my sister-in-law’s exceptional culinary skills. Whatever it was, they slept.

But there is a theological reason why they—and all believers—can sleep.

For He [God] gives to His beloved
even in his sleep.
Psalm 127:2

God gives even when we sleep. That’s the Psalmist’s way of saying, “Nope, don’t fool yourself into thinking you are in control, or that you need to be in control—wide awake, senses alert, sweating profusely, working hard, wearying oneself. Not at all. It is God who gives. And He gives even if you are sleeping. And, well, if He gives even when we sleep, we might as well do so peacefully, trusting Him.”

Interestingly this Psalm is labeled as one of Solomon’s. When this dude was born to David and Bathsheba, Nathan the prophet named Solomon “Jedidiah,” meaning “beloved of the LORD.” And Solomon, our author puts his own name in this Psalm:

For He [God] gives to His beloved
[= Jedidiah, a.k.a. Solomon]
even in his sleep.
Psalm 127:2

“For He gives to me even in my sleep,” Solomon seems to be declaring. God does. All our frantic efforts at manipulating life, forgetting that it is God who gives, even when we sleep. The first two verses of Psalm 127 are worth hearing, especially for us who dwell in a hectic world, living out frenetic days in a feverish pace, never stopping, always going. Worrying, even when we sleep.

Unless the LORD builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it;
Unless the LORD guards the city,
The watchman keeps awake in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early,
To retire late,
To eat the bread of painful labors;
For He gives to His beloved
even in his sleep.
Psalm 127:1–2

I don’t know how your 2009 has been. Sleepless? Fretful? Loaded with care? weighed down with woe? And we’re going to do our best to make 2010 nothing like 2009, aren’t we? Struggling, striving, straining, stressing, stretching, …. Sleepless.

If that’s what we plan to do, then we need to read Solomon’s words again … and relax. For it is God who gives, and, you know what? He gives even when we sleep. Even when we are not in control.

But God is. Completely and totally in control. And He, this God of ours—He doesn’t sleep.

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.
Psalm 121:2–4

That’s why you should be sleeping …

… casting all your anxiety on Him,
because He cares for you.
1 Peter 5:7

May we sleep soundly in 2010!

The LORD is your keeper;
The LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun will not smite you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The LORD will protect you from all evil;
He will keep your soul.
The LORD will guard your going out
and your coming in
From this time forth and forever.
Psalm 121:5–8

Amen!

Happy New Year!

FATHERLY!

Unrecognized. Unseen. Undiscovered. Nobody knows. Nobody sees. Nobody cares. As long as there is plenty of food, lots of cheer, a plethora of tinsel, and cornucopia of gifts, everyone’s happy. Jesus? Who’s that?

I wonder sometimes if that’s not true of us who are believers as well. Too caught up in the hustle and bustle, and the baking and decorating, the bargain-hunting, gift-wrapping, and card-writing. Too busy to think of Jesus.

Me, too. There’s one facet of our Lord Jesus that I’ve personally not paid much attention to.

And His name will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:5

There it is. An element that has puzzled me often. A facet of our Savior that I hadn’t fully recognized or seen or understood.

Eternal Father. That threw me off: Eternal Father? Jesus? Isaiah, to me, was getting a bit discombobulated here. He should’ve taken a few classes at DTS. We’d have set the old geezer straight on the Persons of the Trinity. Eternal Father? Don’t you know better than that, Isaiah?

The answer is actually rather simple. You see, these titles do not focus primarily on the child’s deity, but on His function.

Wonderful Counselor, standing for Jesus’ function as Awesome Planner, indicating His sovereign design and marvelous purposes. He’s the Planning One.

Mighty God, stands for God who fights as a warrior: Jesus fought for our redemption—He’s the Fighting One.

Prince of Peace, Jesus is the One whose reign alone will bring peace—He’s the Ruling One.

See, all are functional titles, primarily. And then there is … Eternal Father. Well, if the others are primarily functional titles, then so’s this one.

Eternal Father—the One who does fatherly things—the Fatherly One.

This Planning One, this Fighting One, this Ruling One, is also the Fatherly One. This Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, is also … fatherly to us. You know what that means?

Who will separate us
from the love of Christ?
Will tribulation, or distress,
or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
But in all these things
we overwhelmingly conquer
through Him who loved us.
For I am convinced that
neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities,
nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other created thing,
will be able to separate us from
[Christ’s love for us].
Romans 8:35, 37–39

That’s His fatherliness: His care, His concern, His love!

That’s His fatherliness; Our Lord Jesus, the Fatherly One who loves us, who died for us.

The Eternal Fatherly One, our Savior who loves us and gave Himself for us. Everyone else’s fatherhood is self-tainted, not His. His fatherhood is sacrificial, not selfish. Every other father is inadequate. Not this One. Everyone else’s fatherhood is temporary, not His. His fatherhood is eternal. Eternal Father. His love for us is eternal. His love for us will never ever end. Never. Ever! This Child is fatherly to us, and fatherly to us forever.

That was something I hadn’t thought about much. Jesus, Eternal Fatherly One.

I love Thee because Thou has first loved me,
And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree.
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

In mansions of glory and endless delight,
I’ll ever adore Thee in heaven so bright;
I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
William Featherston, 1864

He came once. He is coming again. The Eternal Fatherly One who loves me!

UNDO!

Did you ever wish for an “undo” button for life? Did you?

But I get ahead of myself …

This is the story about a cake. A Swiss madrisa. A lush conglomeration of fruits, cream, and nuts, with a little flour and lots of sugar. Healthy. (NOT!)

I’ve already bought six of these for various and sundry parties this Christmas season.

Yesterday was a day that sped by so fast, I don’t know what happened. Engaged in a writing project, I suddenly noticed it was 5:45 pm. And I’ve gotta be at a party 25 miles away at 6:30. It’s the PhD Students’ Christmas Party and I’m on DTS’s PhD Studies Committee. Oh, dear.

Shower. Check. Shave. Check. Etc., etc.

Rushed down to the garage. OK, I need a white elephant for the gift exchange. What shall it be? Yup, moisturizers and soaps. (That will help clear my garage a bit, too). Check. Gift bag for the hostess, a colleague’s wife. More skin stuff. Check. Oh, no, forgot the cake. That Swiss madrisa. Rushed up a flight of stairs. Back down again. Then I forgot my Bible. (Yup, I’m giving a season-appropriate devotional to the assembled faculty/students and their spouses.) Up two flights and down. Check. Ready to go.

It’s a horrible evening. Cold. Wet. And the traffic on Hwy 75 is as horrible as the weather. Crawling traffic for miles leading up to the exit for a major mall and crawling traffic for miles beyond it. Both ways.

It’s 6:25.

Finally things clear and we speed up.

That’s when it happened. The guy in front suddenly braked hard. Screeech! And he swerved into the shoulder to avoid hitting the car in front. Slam went my brakes, too. I missed him by 2 inches. He stopped. I stopped. He had the presence of mind to stop. I had the presence of mind to stop.

But that Swiss madrisa. It did not have the presence of mind to stop.

The Swiss madrisa kept on going even after I had stopped and the guy in front had stopped and everybody else had stopped. It just kept on going. Off the front seat. And on to the floor. Where it finally came to an ominous halt and a sad demise.

Once upon a time, it used to be a cake! No longer. RIP!

Where’s the undo button when you need it? Gosh, MS Word has it, Photoshop has it, Excel has it, Powerpoint, and every other piece of software. Why not life?

There is. An undo button for life.

And it will be hit once. And everything will be back where it ought to be. In its right place. Unbroken. Pristine. Perfect.

Jesus Christ is the one with the undo button.

“Behold, the tabernacle of God
is among men,
and He will dwell among them,
and they shall be His people,
and God Himself will be among them,
and He will wipe away
every tear from their eyes;
and there will no longer be any death;
there will no longer be any mourning,
or crying, or pain;
the first things have passed away.”
And He [the Lord Jesus Christ]
who sits on the throne said,
“Behold, I am making all things new.”
Revelation 21:3–5

One day. Soon. That’s what He came to begin the first time. And that’s what He’ll come to finish the second time. Soon.

Hang in there.

Oh, and the cake? Well, guess what? I get to eat the whole mangled mess all by my sweet self. I can tell it's gonna be a great Christmas!

SAVIOR!

The Gap is one of the busiest tourist spots in Sydney Harbor and one of the prettiest. Between two ocean cliffs, it is literally a gap into the Harbor.

It is also a notorious spot. About 50 suicides (and an odd homicide or two) occur there every year, despite the warnings, and the phone help-lines prominently displayed.

But Don Ritchie, 82, has saved over 200 potential suicides in the 45 years he’s been at this task. Some at his urging followed him home for a beer or a meal. Others, tragically, escaped his grasp to leave jackets or hats in his hand as they plunged 150 feet on to the rocks below. Many of the ones he’s managed to save send him letters, champagne, and other such gifts. Their savior! He is the watchman of The Gap. Ritchie was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (2006) for his yeoman service to suicide prevention. Savior!

Saving lives is not only for the counselors and others like Ritchie. Christians are integrally to be involved in this enterprise as well, with one difference. It is eternal lives they are after. The good news of the salvation in Jesus Christ is the life-saving message we carry.

In Christ, God was reconciling
the world to himself, not counting
people’s trespasses against them,
he has given us
the message of reconciliation.
2 Corinthians 5:19

God reconciling the world to Himself. Sin would no longer be an issue of separation between God and man, for Jesus Christ, God incarnate, had paid for mankind’s sins.

He made Him who knew no sin
to be sin on our behalf,
so that we might become
the righteousness of God in Him.
2 Corinthians 5:21

No more the threat of eternal separation from God for sin for the believer in Jesus Christ.

For the wages of sin is death
but the free gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23

And now we are the representatives of the King, heralding this good news.

Therefore, we are
ambassadors for Christ, as though
God were making an appeal through us;
we beg you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God.
2 Corinthians 5:20

Helping save lives. Graciously, prayerfully, lovingly.

… sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts,
always being ready to make a defense
to everyone who asks you to give
an account for the hope that is in you,
yet with gentleness and reverence.
1 Peter 3:15

Paul’s earnestness in his ambassadorial task ought to be our model. Always seeking to preach Christ, always ready, always depending on God for the strength to do so!

… pray on my behalf,
that utterance may be given to me
in the opening of my mouth,
to make known with boldness
the mystery of the gospel.
Ephesians 6:19

Whether he lived, or died, he wanted to be carrying the message of reconciliation. Saving lives. That was his goal:

… that with all boldness,
Christ will even now, as always,
be exalted in my body,
whether by life or by death.
For to me,
to live is Christ and to die is gain.
Philippians 1:20–21

As Fanny Crosby wrote in 1869:

Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,

Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;

Weep o’er the erring one, lift up the fallen,

Tell them of Jesus, the mighty to save.

Rescue the perishing, duty demands it;

Strength for thy labor the Lord will provide;

Back to the narrow way patiently win them;

Tell the poor wand’rer a Savior has died.

Save lives!