Charis

Last time, I wrote about the names of God, looking at a handful of psalms for the ways that God is described. As I meditate on and come to believe that God truly is “my stronghold, my refuge, my light, and my salvation,” I will find it easier to experience the perfect peace that Isaiah promises to those who stay fixed on God.

It’s knowledge of God that allows us to trust Him, and knowing these names is one way to know Him better. The Psalms also reveal His nature in more detail as David and other writers praise God at length for different aspects of His character. Today, I want to point you toward just a few psalms that can build our faith in God.

Need a reminder that God is able? Take Psalm 29, as an example; David begins with “Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.” The rest of this psalm describes God’s majesty and power. For instance, David tells us: Continue reading »

Last time, I wrote about God’s perfect peace that comes to those who stay focused on Him. We find this wonderful promise of peace in Isaiah 26:3:

You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on You,
because he trusts in You.

According to Isaiah, the key to keeping our minds stayed or fixed on God is to trust God. Sounds simple enough, and those of us who have been in church for long know we ought to trust God. This is one of those times, though, when it’s easier said than done. Circumstance gets in the way, and many things compete for our attention. My work is not going well: do I keep my mind fixed on that problem or on God? Money is tight, my child has a health problem, a tragedy has occurred to a close friend—the list goes on. As the commercial says, “Life comes at you fast.” And with each problem, we are tested in our focus.

And it really is a matter of focus. Continue reading »

My friend Sandy wrote today about her pushy cat Pepper, describing how she (the cat) gets in the way of being fed. Sandy writes:

But as I reflected on my demanding feline, I wondered if I do the same thing when I pray. I beg and plead with God to respond to my needs and my wants… and then I promptly get in the way. Like He needs help or something. And I wonder if my “help” is sometimes responsible for the delay in an answered prayer, if my life would be so much more peaceful if I could simply learn, like David, to wait before the Lord.

She concludes with Psalm 38:15: “But for you, O Lord, do I wait; it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.”

Thanks, Sandy, for reminding me of my childhood cat Willie (also pushy)—and more importantly, of giving me a really vivid picture of what getting in God’s way looks like!

I was looking at the often-quoted Zechariah 4:6 the other day and noticed something new. I always hear, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit” or maybe, “…by my Spirit, says the Lord.” But here’s the complete verse:

Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.

In most Bibles, you’ll see Lord written in small caps, like this: Lord. This variation in type is the standard denotation in Bibles that the word being translated is actually Yahweh. This distinguishes it from lord and Lord (regular type), which mean master. So, in this passage, we have both being used:

Then the angel who talked with me answered and said to me, “Do you not know what these are?” I said, “No, my lord.” Then he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.

When Zechariah says, “No, my lord,” he’s saying, “No, master.” And in reply, the angel tells the prophet that this isn’t the word of the master but the word of “the Lord”, Yahweh, and that Yahweh of hosts said it.

You may be thinking, “and so…? What’s here besides a lesson in typography and translation?”

God’s choices about how He represents Himself are worth noting, because they give us insight into the character and nature of God. Continue reading »

Last night’s compline prayers included a passage by 17th-century British clergyman Jeremy Taylor:

There is no greater proof in the world of our spiritual danger than the reluctance which most people always have and all people sometimes have to pray; so weary of their length, so glad when they are done, so clever to excuse and neglect their opportunity. Yet prayer is nothing but desiring God to give us the greatest and best things we can have and that can make us happy. It is a work so easy, so honorable, and to so great a purpose, that (except in the incarnation of His Son) God has never given us a greater argument of His willingness to have us saved and our unwillingness to accept it, of His goodness and our gracelessness, of His infinite condescension and our folly, than by rewarding so easy a duty with such great blessings.

I like this because it is so wonderfully expressed—Taylor is noted more for his good writing than for his deep theology—but there’s a lot to think about here. In particular, I’m drawn to Taylor’s definition: Continue reading »

Most of us like personal attention, knowing that someone else has given thought to us individually and specifically. But so many Christians don’t seem to believe that personal attention can occur between themselves and God, and certainly, the lost don’t believe that such a thing exists—and they often make fun of us who not only believe in it but expect it.

Growing up, I heard about “getting saved,” and it wasn’t until I was an adult that I heard phrases like “a personal relationship with God” or “accept Jesus as your personal Savior.” I had mixed feelings about such wording, particularly the second one, which sounds a little too much like Jesus is in the same category as personal chefs, personal assistants, and personal trainers.

But, I have come to appreciate more and more the thought behind such phrasing, because it points toward the heart of what I believe Christianity is about: relationship, as opposed to religion. Continue reading »

I have come to dislike resolutions because they don’t work very well for me—or apparently for most other people, based on what I read in magazines. Instead, I ask myself, “How do I want to grow in this new year? How would I like to be different in 2007?” Because I teach one-semester courses, I view my year as having three beginnings, spring, summer, and fall. And I like that, because it gives me plenty of opportunities to step back and evaluate where I’m headed and how things are going. So, as I enter January, I try to think more about the next few months rather than the entire year, and that makes the task much less daunting.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reminded that I tend toward criticism. Some of it is personality: I’m detail-oriented, and as I take in the details, I tend to notice the problem areas. That can be a blessing—if you’re in a situation that requires evaluation. But it’s not a blessing when it becomes the normal mode of interaction with life.

I find it easy to focus on the negative, both in myself and in others. This personality trait was magnified by past experiences. Growing up in a religious tradition that constantly evaluated who was in and out of the Kingdom made it easy to live in perpetual judgment. This, coupled with a dominating sense of God as Judge, set me up for some problems.

I think I’ve come a good ways in changing this. Continue reading »

I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you.” (Psalm 16:2)

It’s been almost two weeks since I posted—and not a particularly positive two weeks, either. I’m not sure what season of life I’m in, but I do know it’s been a test. Perhaps I’ve been having what some call a “wilderness experience”; I have felt at times as if I were circling the same thing over and over, much like the Israelites circling that mountain for forty years. It’s hard for me to imagine: to think at 42 I might have spent my entire life in the desert!

In the past few days, though, some things have changed—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I have changed, am changing. Instead of having only a mountain of problems constantly in my view, I am heading toward something better; the Promised Land is in sight. Continue reading »

One of the psalms in The Divine Hours yesterday was 123, which somehow did not show up in my search for scriptures with the word mercy. Here it is:

To you I lift up my eyes,
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
Behold, as the eyes of servants
look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maidservant
to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
till he has mercy upon us.

Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough of contempt.
Our soul has had more than enough
of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.

It’s as if the psalmist is saying, “We’ve had it up to here, Lord! These people around us are awful. Help us out, Lord, help us out!” I can’t say that there’s a single somebody that I’ve got in mind to play the part of the proud in this psalm, but I can certainly relate to the emotions of the psalmist. Continue reading »

If you’ve read my last two posts (here and here) on Isaiah 40, you may well have wondered why I totally ignored verses 9, 10, and 11. After telling us that we are all like grass before the Lord, Isaiah says,

Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Behold your God!”
Behold, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.

Continue reading »