The last two messages at church on Sabbath really emphasized how important it is to stay close to Jesus Christ, to love Him with all of your heart, and to put Him first daily!! I am so thankful for our church fellowship - the iron sharpening iron and the sincere love for each other.
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We had a very good Feast of Tabernacles, thoroughly worshipping God and rejoicing before Him with good messages, thought-provoking Bible studies, engaging worship music, beautiful hiking/exploring excursions, soul-thrilling baptisms, unexpected reconnections with friends, opportunities to forge new friendships, and the tangible presence of God. It is likely not coincidental that Psalm 133 is one of the last psalms of the Psalms of Ascent! (Pardon my understatement!) “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” (133:1)
We are social creatures! When we’re at a feast site where the atmosphere fosters worship, rejoicing, and fellowship in community, it’s balm to our souls!! We totally “get” the imagery of dwelling in a dry and weary land; the richness of the Feast of Tabernacles is a vivid contrast to what’s back home. But it doesn’t have to be that way! That is, it doesn’t have to be just once a year when we are rejuvenated! Every Sabbath we have the opportunity to come together in community worship and to feel God filling our souls again through worship, Bible study, and fellowship. Additionally, in this age of instant communication, we should be intentional to stay in contact with new friends and long-time friends. We need each other. We need the encouragement and exhortation from each other - and all the more as we see the Day approaching (Hebrews 10:25). One song puts it this way: “We are pilgrims on a journey, fellow travelers on the road; we are here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load.” And here’s the kicker, you never know when a conversation will have a huge impact on someone, even if you deemed the words insignificant. Our great God knows exactly what we need, and, because He uses people sometimes to accomplish His goals, our chance encounters, conversations, and impulsive comments aren’t always as coincidental or unimportant as we might think. He can use each of us to “pour into” someone else His life-giving words. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem poignantly expresses this quite well: I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroken; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend. The Feast of Tabernacles takes us out of our daily routines and environment. It eliminates the distractions of daily life. It immerses us in community, encouragement, peace, and love. It reminds us of the joy of fellowship. It gives us a taste of the family reunion to come - and leaves us hungering for more. Because you know how wonderful all of that is, you know it’s worth the effort it requires to taste it again and again in consistent small ways until we meet again next Feast. P.S. Don’t be like cats: If cats could text you back, they wouldn’t. I walked out early one day this week to rake grass. The dog and the cat decided to go along. The dog thinks it’s his duty to follow me around and protect me - even from turkey vultures who have invaded our air space. But I’m not quite sure about the cat. I don’t know why she goes along. That particular morning, I decided it was comic relief.
I had raked a pile of hay about four feet tall and had moved on down the field. When I heard the cat meow, I looked to see what she was doing because she’s normally a very quiet cat. She was surveying the pile of hay. Suddenly she sprang, I assume, to get on top of it for a better view of everything. But her spring landed her about two-thirds of the way up the pile. It honestly looked like a cartoon - with hay and cat legs all avalanching down. When she touched solid ground again, she rocketed to the tree line where she lay, her tail flipping back and forth, expressing her total disgust with the whole thing. She probably didn’t appreciate my laughing. I continued working, thinking about possible ways to relate what I’d just seen to something God might be teaching me. Maybe I am attempting something that has little profit and will not succeed. But that seemed like a reach. Perhaps it was just God’s way of giving me some amusement - and I continued raking hay. Not too long later, I was tired enough that I decided to go pick blueberries; that’s a lot easier than raking hay into piles. I was in for a shock. I had last picked blueberries four days earlier. I had about decided they weren’t worth picking this year. They are small and not so sweet. In the heat and the dry summer we’ve had, they just aren’t very good. But that was before we got four inches of rain! The blueberries were twice as big as they had been and they were so sweet I decided to employ Christopher’s method of picking blueberries: one for the bucket, three for my mouth. Then it hit me. The rain! The life-giving water is such a powerful illustration of the Living Water that we can only get from Jesus Christ. We need it, and Him, for thriving and producing fruit - good, desirable fruit. What we produce in our lives, apart from God, is filthy rags - kind of like the blueberries that weren’t worth picking. In contrast, the blueberries that responded to the water were very desirable and wonderful - just like the fruit we can produce for the glory of God when we’re seeking Him, relying on Him, following His ways, being obedient to His law. The difference is almost unbelievable! And here’s the kicker! The rain which fell didn’t care if the blueberry bush was there. It didn’t impact the rain. Similarly, even though our obedience to God’s law affects God’s heart, it doesn’t impact any of God’s attributes, His holiness or character. God’s law is for our good; it’s totally for our benefit. I had thought God was using the cat to teach me something that morning. But He just used her to get my attention. The blueberries and the rain were the object lesson. Praise God for His goodness. In the wake of the death of our two labs, we have experienced the unexpected consequence of a whole lot more varmints attacking the garden. As if deer, raccoons, rabbits, birds, and squirrels weren’t enough, we’ve recently added ground hogs to the mix. Ron and I installed an electric fence with wire wrapped around the garden at three levels. And lest you think that would keep the critters from eating my garden, the lowest wire did not stop the box turtle from making his way into the patch to take a bite out of my first ripe tomato. That specific tomato plant had three layers of fencing around it and he still got through!
As I was walking back from relocating him to the pond, I was contemplating the attack on our garden by the critters this year, as well as the severe lack of rain, and now the extreme heat. Getting anything to grow, much less thrive, under these conditions is a lot of work - requiring determination and perseverance. Hmm. Working hard. Perseverance. Not giving up. Fighting the good fight. Staying the course. Working to produce fruit. It seems like there’s a spiritual application here. In gardening terms, then, what fruit am I producing for the King? Am I being fruitful for His glory? Is there something to show for my existence? If I have been called into His service (aka accepted His Son as my Savior and now call myself a Christian), then I’d better be producing fruit. Not weeds. Not dry ground. Not barren bushes. That’s going to require some work. (That’s a hyperbolic understatment!! ) O.K. What kind of work?
So what am I learning from this experience?
It’s amazing how God can use the physical elements in our lives to teach us spiritual truths!! So in gardening terms, regardless of what varmints, heat, weeds, and drought you are currently experiencing, stay the course, fight the good fight, and produce fruit for the King! We don’t like death - unless it’s spiders and mosquitoes. We hate suffering. We avoid pain, like, well, the plague. We don’t even particularly like uncomfortable situations. So it’s no wonder the topic of the death of Jesus Christ is something we tend to keep at arm’s length. We grieve, I grieve, that it was my sin that caused his suffering and death. So the tendency is to consider Jesus’ death with our head, dispassionately, rather than our heart. It hurts less.
Because we want to avoid that pain, I wonder if that’s part of the reason God allows pain in our lives. We intensely miss family members who are no longer with us. We dread the passing of the ones we know are getting older and more frail. But a person usually lives 70+ years . . . until their warranty expires, as one septuagenarian quipped. But it’s the death of our pets (horses, cats, dogs, fish, chickens, bearded dragons) that hits us almost unexpectedly. When we take home a puppy, we don’t think about how quickly the next 10 - 15 years is going to fly by; we don’t want to consider how soon we’ll be dealing with the end stages of the life of a pet who shared so much joy and companionship with us. But God allows it for our good. How do I know this? Consider the Passover lamb. It was chosen from the flock on the tenth day of the first month (Exodus 12:3). Once chosen, Ron Dart once opined that it was probably adopted into the family for the next 3-4 days - until the beginning of the 14th day of the month. Then they killed the lamb. That lamb that they’d had their heart softened towards, developed a bond with, had a relationship with (if you will) would die at their hand - and not because of anything the lamb had done wrong. It was so that the blood would prevent the death of the firstborn - at least in the original Old Testament passover. Subsequent years, the lamb was killed as a reminder of being saved from the Death Angel. Regardless, the death of the Passover lamb pointed to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for each one of us. We can’t bring Jesus into our homes as if He were a lamb. But in these days leading up to the Passover, we should be spending more time considering all of the symbolism - allowing our hearts to be softened towards Jesus and the work He is doing in our lives; developing and deepening the bond that we have with our Messiah; strengthening that relationship. Jesus died for us - not because He’d done anything wrong. He was innocent! But He died that our sins might be forgiven, that we might be reconciled to the Father, and have the assurance of Eternal Life. We know this. We talk about it. But do we truly know it enough, deeply in our hearts, to the point that it changes how we live our lives? Put in other words, does the suffering and death of Jesus Christ impact us enough that sin becomes anathema to us?! Do we strive with everything we are to make Godly choices, to avoid transgressing God’s law, and to show by these actions that we value deeply what Jesus did for us? We can’t just let the Passover come and go each year as a theoretical, theological construct! It has to move us deeply. It has to resonate enough to create a change - a change in our heart and mind and lives, where we focus our attention and goals and desires. Our family is suffering the death of our 15 year-old black lab. How I hate death! I long for the day when the last enemy, death, is thrown into the Lake of Fire! But I can’t help thinking that it’s no coincidence that she was nearing the end (and died) just as we are approaching Passover. And I am impressed again with the fact that Jesus’ death needs to be more painful to me than Velvet’s death is. He’s my Savior! I daren’t become so complacent (because I face it every year) that I fail to recognize its importance and pertinence and value. So why does God allow suffering and death? I believe there are several answers to that. The short answer is that death is a consequence of sin. But God can use something bad for our good, even as Jesus learned obedience through the things that He suffered. And, it’s all part of the examination process that we must go through prior to taking the bread and the wine each year. We must recognize the enormity anew each year of what Jesus has done on our behalf. We must apprehend its significance to our lives and allow God to change us more and more into the image of Jesus Christ because of that understanding. I hate death. I don’t eagerly embrace pain and suffering. But I am humbly grateful for the redemption Jesus achieved for me because of His suffering and death. It’s a good, if sobering, place to be as we go into the spring holy days . . because we observe Passover to proclaim the Lord’s death ’til He comes. We’ve talked about repetition in the Bible. The phrase “verily, verily” is an assertion of truth. When God says something two or three times, we know that He’s emphasizing it for a reason. So have you ever counted how many times the phrase, “And you shall know that I am the LORD,” is found in the book of Ezekiel? Some form of it is found 50 times! That’s amazing. In Ezekiel chapters 6-7 alone, it’s found seven times!
These are chapters delineating the unrighteousness of the various nations (including God’s people) and the consequences incurred by their violence, disobedience, pride, arrogance, and overall iniquity. After God states the judgement which will come upon them, He says, “And you shall know that I am the LORD.” He is God; the idols are nothing. God’s laws are to be obeyed; He is the omnipotent Judge; He will be recognized as the only God. But there is also an intimation that they didn’t know God; if they had truly known God, they wouldn’t have been doing the things they were doing. This same idea is in Hebrews 3:12, Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. An unbelieving heart causes disobedience of, and rebellion toward, God. Unbelief, furthermore, caused a lack of miracles. Look at Matthew 13:58, And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief. Mark 6:6 records Jesus’ response: And he marveled because of their unbelief. To say that this is not good is an understatement! That Jesus would marvel at the unbelief of the people is striking. He is, after all, the One who created mankind. You wouldn’t think that we could do anything that would surprise Him. But the unbelief of the people of His hometown amazed Him. But we, the people of God today, we wouldn’t be guilty of unbelief. Would we? Take a look at this scripture: Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, (Hebrews 12:1) It is not an accident that those witnesses are found in the preceding chapter - the Hall of Faith. These are the true believers who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. 36Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— 38of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews 11:33-38) These believers, this great cloud of witnesses, showed their faith through their deeds - regardless of whether it meant great victories over fire and lions and war or whether it meant suffering, pain, imprisonment, or death. They ran their race with endurance - because of their belief in our Great God, because of the hope set before them. In a word, they knew God. Do you know the Lord your God like that? But really, more than us knowing God, we must be known of God (Galatians 4:9). We know how very important that is (Matthew 7:23)! So what do your actions say? Do you know God? Are you known of Him? Or do you have an evil heart of unbelief? Jesus said, "In this world, you will have trouble."
It doesn't matter whether you are a Christian or not; you're going to experience trouble from time to time. So what do you do when trouble comes? First, remember the second part of what Jesus said: "But take heart, I have overcome the world." (John 16:33) So when trouble comes, remember that God is mightier than any trouble we might face. Go to Him in prayer and ask for His intervention. Secondly, God has mercifully given us His written Word and His Holy Spirit. Proverbs 3:6 says, "In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths." We need His direction all the time, but when trouble comes, our first response should be to seek Him, not only in prayer, but in Bible study as well. Third, trouble will not last forever. Jesus is coming back to set up a kingdom that will never end. "Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning" (Psalm 30:5). And lastly, if your trust is in Him, then you will be at peace (John 16:33). That peace is an incredible witness to those around you of the great God we serve. On this day in 1543, King Henry VIII made reading the Bible illegal for commoners. To the day, 243 years later, Thomas Jefferson finally succeeded in getting the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom passed - an act which established complete freedom of religion. A person should be, he argued, free to spread their own religious opinions without punishment from the "state church" or government.
There was a time when a person's tongue might be cut out for preaching without a license or a person's ears cut off for listening to unapproved preaching. Even in our nation's history, people were taxed to support the state-sanctioned church, regardless of whether they believed in the stated doctrines or not. Praise God for the freedoms that we now have! Do you treasure your freedom to read the Bible? Do you devote some of your day to studying the Word of God? I pray that it doesn't take some degree of persecution for us to value what we dismiss so casually today. Fact source: This Day is Christian History, A. Kenneth Curtis and Daniel Graves (eds.), Christian Publications, Inc., 2005. Are you free? Well, you have to have truth to be free.
How do you get truth? You have to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. How do you know if you are a disciple of Jesus? You have to hold to His teachings. What does that look like? You have to do what He says. How do you know what He says? You have to study the Bible. Make Bible study a daily part of your life. But don't just read the words; seek to deeply understand them and make connections across the books of the Bible. Dig and study and seek - and you will be blessed. Try it. Gardening is hard work! Don’t laugh at me. I’m serious! I’m not talking about tilling the ground, pulling weeds, watering, planting, keeping the critters out (repeat as needed); I’m talking about the harvest! We don’t often think of the harvest as hard work. We think about the joy of going out to the garden and picking a ripe tomato, sauntering back inside to prepare a BLT. But what if it’s not just one tomato? What if it’s 6 bushels of tomatoes and today’s already Thursday and you’ve already canned 50 quarts and you’re only halfway done? (This happened this week to someone I know!) Or how about cucumbers by the 5-gallon pail? Or gallons and gallons of grapes?
I’m not complaining. I’m feeling so incredibly blessed at the abundance of produce from the garden. Many days I go outside and pick what is ripe and then come inside and work until dark getting it processed and preserved. Harvest season is hard work! Two things occurred to me as I was thinking about that this week. First, as we (as a society) get further and further from an agrarian lifestyle, we can very easily miss some of the object lessons in the Bible because so many of them are based on farming or animal husbandry or both. That’s a shame! The words of life are becoming more and more of a mystery to us (as a people) as we get farther and farther from the land. Secondly, harvesting is hard work. And as I experience that in my garden, I’m wondering if I somehow missed the object lesson: preaching the gospel, letting our lights shine to those around us, exhorting, encouraging, planting seeds - it’s hard work. Do we really understand the dedication that God is asking of us as ambassadors of Christ? Are we content to stroll out to the garden (spiritually speaking) and pick a solitary tomato? Don’t we understand how much time, effort, blood and tears goes into this? But here’s the really cool part of it: harvest season is the highlight of the whole year. It’s the time when we see the blessings of God. The joy and satisfaction we feel from slicing into a ripe watermelon which cracks before the knife can cut all the way through! That’s the joy and contentment we should feel from working in God’s harvest field. And that spiritual harvest is a lot more meaningful than gallons of green beans or tomatoes or grapes. |
AuthorCynthia Saladin is a homeschooling mom of three, with a passion for teaching them about God and having a personal relationship with him. Archives
November 2023
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