As we start another new year, God in his wisdom has guided me to be studying Lamentations 3. We look for times to begin anew with making desired changes in our lives and often choose the beginning of the year. We have New Year resolutions that may include time in God’s word, organization, weight loss, exercise, and other improvements. But most of us will stray away from our resolutions and we often think “Oh well, I’ll try again next year.” But based on my studies, I’ve decided to not make New Year resolutions because God does not work on a yearly basis to renew us. “I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall, I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me, yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:19-23 (NIV) When we wander from our goals, we get down on ourselves and feel like failures. When this happens we need to remind ourselves that our wanderings will not consume us because God, who helps us and strengthens us, never fails. There is no need to wait until next year to try again. God’s mercies are new every morning. I have made my New Year resolutions New Day resolutions. Every day is a new beginning.

So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess. Deuteronomy 5:32 (NIV)

I love walking in the woods and this last weekend was a beautiful time for enjoying God’s creation and the explosion of autumn color. As I was walking along the main trail, I noticed another smaller path forking off and, out of curiosity, started following that path. After a short time of walking along what looked like a path I suddenly realized there was no path. Nothing in front of me and nothing behind, either, and I was far enough from the main trail that I couldn’t see that, either. Fortunately, I am quite familiar with these woods and was never in danger of getting lost, but it reminded me of how easily we can get side-tracked from following the path God has laid before us. The Lord’s direction is clear, yet out of curiosity, or maybe even rebellion, we decide to start following a different path and before we know it we are lost without any clear direction and we can’t see our way back to the main trail. The only place to go when we find ourselves in this situation is to our knees to ask our Savior to show us the way back.

The very steps we take come from God; otherwise how would we know where we’re going? Proverbs 20:24 (Msg)

Thank you, Lord, for your guidance, for your patience and protection when I wander, and for your faithfulness in leading me back.

Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it. Hebrews 13:2 (New Living Translation)

While visiting my daughter in San Antonio, I went to church with her and took away a great definition of hospitality. We often think of hospitality as those activities surrounding the holidays when we have friends and family to our houses after marathon cleaning and cooking sessions. However, the pastor pointed out the difference between hospitality and fellowship as he was preaching on the passage where Abraham is unexpectedly visited by the Lord. When we plan for a gathering or a guest and prepare our home and food with the expectation of the event, our time with our guest is fellowship. Hospitality is when you unexpectedly, inconveniently entertain someone in your home, possibly including a meal or allowing them to spend the night or two.

I’ve always admired those who seem to be prepared for company at the drop of a hat. Their house is always spotless; there are deserts and beverages on hand at all times. I prayed that the Lord would help me learn more in the area of hospitality. In answer to my prayer he landed two delightful young men from other countries in our home for the entire school year. I guess He decided I was up for the accelerated course on hospitality. I didn’t even recognize it as an answer to prayer until hearing this pastor’s discernment between hospitality and fellowship in his sermon. I discovered that it wasn’t growth in the ability to entertain friends and family that the Lord wanted me to experience. He truly wanted me to learn hospitality: how to graciously serve and love strangers. And at the same time, he answered my prayer to be more involved in missions. He provided me with my own mission field right in the convenience of my home. Thank you, Lord, you always know exactly what I need.

Well-spoken words bring satisfaction; well-done work has its own reward.  Proverbs 12:14 (The Message)

How often are we satisfied with the job we have done and seek no more reward than the knowledge of having done well?  Our society promotes going after awards and accolades.  We don't feel good about our performance unless we get first place, win the game, hear applause, or get the promotion - yet do we ask ourselves was it well done, regardless of what others may think?  Isn't doing the task well enough?  Our desire should be to live our lives so well that we hear from our Savior, "Well done, good and faithful servant."  This will be the greatest of all rewards - disintegrating all earthly rewards by its brilliance.

Strolling down the sidewalk, walking away from our hotel in Colorado, we turn around to go back and there in front of us is a snow-covered Pike’s Peak, one of the tallest mountains in Colorado, surrounded by blue skies and little white puffs of clouds. The view takes my breath away and I quickly turn on my camera to photograph the scene, but no matter how many pictures I take zooming in and out, I can’t completely capture the majesty of the mountain. Driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains, we come up over a hill and there laid out before us is ridge after ridge of mountains in various shades of smoky blue. Once again, I grab my camera, but just can’t get the wonder of God’s creation into a single picture regardless of how hard I try. Walking along the beach with huge waves crashing against the shore, I try once again to frame the panorama of the shore in my camera, but there is no way to totally get it all in the picture – the rolling of the waves as they break, the foam sliding up the sandy shore, the water slipping back home to the seam, the variety of greens, blues and browns, the hermit crab skittering across the hard packed sand, the giggles of children playing in the water. I can get individual pictures of various aspects of the scene, but they are all two dimensional snapshots of a moment that fall short of the glory surrounding me.

 

The hymns on my MP3 are resonating in my head and I suddenly realize, our view of God is like a bunch of photographs each capturing only a small part of the total majesty of Him, limited in dimensions and senses. We can’t experience the full magnificence of God this side of heaven and maybe we won’t even be able to in heaven, either, since He is infinite in his glory. Even Moses was only allowed to see a part of God’s glory as God passed by (Ex 33:20-23). Yet what we see of him still takes our breath away, so how much more amazing he must be in His fullness of glory.

 

The song “I Can Only Imagine” comes to mind and I wonder what will my reaction be when I finally see God – breathless amazement. The other thought that comes to me is thankfulness and awe at how God created our senses. Our eyes can take in a full scene like these and take it all in within a second. Our eyes focus in and out to get every detail while a man-made lens has many limitations. God gave us several ways to experience the scene in addition to our eyes which is part of why you can’t capture the moment totally with pictures: the sounds of the waves, the birds, the wind, or water babbling in a brook or even the silence; the smells of beach, mountain flowers, pine trees, or the forest floor; the feeling of the sun, the breeze, the water spray, the coolness of the waves on your feet are all part of the scene we can’t capture. As we read our Bible, pray, participate in worship, or enjoy the glory of God’s creation, we are getting snapshots of God; but we need to realize that as wonderful as these glimpses are, there is so much more to God that we aren’t able to experience that will be even more breath-taking.

I am not sure that we take sin seriously enough anymore.  With Jesus as our sacrificial lamb we allow ourselves to be too far removed from the price tag of sin.  Attempts are made to understand the cost through singing songs about Calvary, watching movies like "The Passion of the Christ," and meditating on Jesus' sacrifice during communion; but I wonder - does it have the same affect on us as having to purchase a perfect animal, especially a cute lamb or calf, and watching the priest kill it in order to atone for our wrong-doing?  Don't get me wrong, I know that Jesus dying was far more valuable than an animal and I'm sure that if I had to stand there and watch him take the beatings and watch him suffer on the cross reality would hit me real fast, too.  I'm just pondering whether being so far removed from the sacrifice if lends toward our being too casual about how often we sin and the gravity of our failings.

 

I too have been reading in Numbers (yes, John, I am also guilty of reading only a few of the tribes' sacrifices and realizing it was repetative skipping to the end), and as I read through the requirements of the sacrificial system I can't help but think of the parade of animals that would be required to cover my sins on a regular basis.  With all the people bringing their sacrifices to the tabernacel and later the temple, the stench of burning animals along with the flies that must have been attracted to the blood would have been constant reminders to everyone nearby of their own sinful nature. We have no such constant inducement to dwell on our shortcomings and to realize just how much we are sinning.

 

Jesus responded to the woman who washed his feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, and then annointed them with perfume in Luke 7 by telling Peter "Her sins have been forgiven - for she loved much, but he who has been forgivin little loves little."  So, how does our love for our Lord grow -  by realizing how serious our sins are and how much we have been forgiven.  Start counting sheep and watch your love grow.

I Samuel 13

 

Saul has only been the king of Israel for two years and he antagonizes the Philistines by attacking Geba and killing one of their leaders.  Tens of thousands of Philistines seek revenge on Saul and his band of 2000 soldiers.  Saul is shaking in his sandals while waiting for Samuel, the priest, to make sacrifices to the Lord on his behalf.  Meanwhile Saul’s army is deserting him left and right.  What’s a leader to do when everything is going to pieces?  In desperation Saul decides to take things into his own hands and offers up the burnt sacrifice without waiting for Samuel to do it.  Just as the last bit of offering is smoldering away, up comes Samuel.  “What on earth are you doing?”  Samuel asks.  Saul gives one excuse after another for not following God’s command for the priest to offer the burnt sacrifices and ends with his faulty reasoning “I couldn’t wait for you any longer.”  Samuel’s response jumps off the page at me “That was foolish of you.”  He goes on to explain to Saul that if he had done what God had told him to do instead of rushing ahead, his throne would have been well established for a long time.  But because of Saul’s choices, God was already looking for someone to replace him and Saul had missed his golden opportunity.

 

How many times have I been a fool because I was impatient and wasn’t willing to wait and do things God’s way?  Far too many.  I keep thinking “I can handle this myself” and forge ahead, not letting God work things out.  I try to fix the world in my own power.  What a fool!  What on earth am I doing?  What great opportunities and rewards have I missed because I wasn’t willing to wait?  Psalm 27:14 says “Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”   We don’t show our strength by handling the problems ourselves; we show strength when we wait for God’s timing and handle the problems as He commands.  “’Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty”  Zechariah 4:6b

Psalm 8:3-4 from The Message says:

 

I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry,

Moon and stars mounted in their settings.

Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,

Why do you bother with us?

Why take a second look our way?

 

I love to lie outside on a clear, starry night and ponder the vastness of the universe. Most of the stars we see are suns of other solar systems. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has approximately 200 billion stars with solar systems. Consider that number – the Milky Way has 200,000,000,000 stars with solar systems. That’s a HUGE number. If you spent a lifetime, say 90 years, visiting all those solar systems, you would have to race to 70 different systems every second – 70 solar systems every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every year for 90 years! And that’s just one galaxy, never mind the billions of galaxies out there. My mind spins considering how grand the universe is.

 

And yet, our solar system is a relatively small system on the fringes of the Milky Way; a galaxy that is in a far corner of the universe. Earth is one of the smaller planets in our solar system and there really is no significance to our planet other than it can sustain life. So why would God create such an overwhelming universe that and put me in a tiny corner of it? To let me know how enormous He is and how insignificant I am. But even though I am only a speck of dust, He loved me so much that He sent His Son to die a cruel death for me. Amazing love, how can it be, that you my King should die for me?