Mighty to Save, Out of the Cave or On the Field

As with many of you, I watched the ongoing rescue of the Thai boys soccer team and prayed each day for their safety from the flooded cave. As days went by and the boys began to be carried out and reports told of the miraculous undertaking, it was evident that God was intervening on their behalf.

A news caption read, "A miracle or science, or what?" It was certainly a miracle that everyone got out of the cave when they did, as the water pump failed. It reminded me of the crossing of the Red Sea. When the Israelites had crossed safely to the other side, the water rushed back. But either way, by miracle or the use of science, it was God's doing, by whatever means He chose to save the team.

There were also people praying to the Buddhist rain god, imploring him to "keep showing us mercy," yet the rain itself was the cause of the calamity. Such a god is impotent to help as the ongoing rain kept coming down. No, there needed to be a higher power who could, indeed, have mercy and provide a way of escape. His name is Jehovah, and He worked mightily to rescue and save those twelve boys and their coach.

While Thailand is a land of Buddhism, Jehovah has raised up a Christian witness of His love and Redemptive plan in the locality where the boys live. One of the articles that I read included a poster image showing pictures of the boys and the admonition to "Stay Safe." The caption noted that a local Christian church of relatives and friends had made the poster and were praying for them. Another article mentioned that one of the soccer boys had been taken under the care of the church when he came from Myanmar when he was seven years old.

I googled the church and found Mesai Grace Church in the northern province of Chiang Mai, Thailand, a Christian congregation that is powerfully on the move to rescue Thai boys, not only to save them from the perils of the cave, but to save them from a life of degradation--and using soccer to do it. It's a compelling story of rescue.

How their cave ordeal will affect the boys will be seen as time passes. Surely, Jehovah is calling them to Himself. It is the kindness of God that leads to salvation (Rom. 2:4), and their rescue was certainly by His kindness, His mercy and His grace. I pray that He will continue His work in their hearts and through the Acts of Grace Church there in the city of Chiag Mai.

Jehovah is mighty to save, whether out of the cave or out on the field.

Image via Freepik

A Thought on Suffering

A comment was made in class discussion forum today that many struggle with God's goodness in the face of their suffering. I offered a few thoughts in that regard....

Sometimes the suffering is so great, and our minds are so bewildered, that we struggle with making any kind of sense as to how it squares with God's goodness. And sometimes we tend to do the defining of what God's goodness is and means...to us. This is one area where I think the '5 love languages' have lead us astray. We tend to interpret God's goodness and love toward us with how we want to be shown that love, and whether or not we'll accept it as such.

I think suffering is a watershed experience. What has gone on before in our heart and mind about God has much to do with how we respond/react to it. It's much to our benefit to understand suffering before it befalls us. But then again, sometimes we have no inclination that we need to know.

I understood just enough to know that in my own "momentary affliction," I was wrestling with God. The one thing that I understood was that I didn't understand. It's more difficult for those who shadowbox their misunderstandings. I think some sufferings make us angry and hurt so deeply because they are so painful, and we despise them. It is only God who can mend a broken heart. I am so very thankful that He pulled me closer and closer to Himself as I was searching for reality.

I think the one thing that I did know and that kept me hopeful was that God is love. That is the first thing children learn about God, if they learn about Him. For those of you who have children, bless and benefit them with an understanding of God's great love. They will need it when it is their turn to face suffering. I couldn't get away from that truth, even though I didn't understand how it fit. It took me a few years to see more clearly, but I understand so much more about God in the aftermath.

So very thankful that God continues to redeem and rescue!

Image ~ The Sick Girl, Michael Ancher 1849-1927

public domain via Wikimedia Commons

However Difficult

However difficult and painful your road, it is marked by the footsteps of your Savior; and even when you reach the dark valley of the shadow of death and the deep waters of the swelling Jordan, you will find His footprints there. Wherever we go, in every place, He has been our forerunner; each burden we have to carry has once been laid on the shoulders of Immanuel.

- Charles Spurgeon, in Morning by Morning

One who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Hebrews 4:15

Image via pixabay

CCO Creative Commons

Evil Beyond Words

Jesus Wept

The horrific deaths of those whose lives are taken only because they are there causes us to ask, how can anybody be so entirely and completely mastered by such evil and wickedness as to kill and maim the innocent, especially children? And who would we ask, except God? I don't know if even the wicked perpetrators themselves would know.

This past Sunday's attack on the church family in the little town in Texas is almost beyond belief as to the heinousness that burst from the heart of the killer. I cannot wrap my mind around such evil to understand it. I cannot find the words to describe it. I read an article yesterday, though, by Janie Cheaney at World Magazine titled "The Terror of the Void" that gave me a little understanding. She was discussing the previous shooting in Las Vegas, and her thoughts could apply to any such violence as we've seen this past week.

She talked about evil being the absence of good. There is a void in our hearts that only God can fill with Himself and His goodness. When the heart has no goodness in it, that void is evil. Not filled with evil, but evil itself. God is the creator of all things, and goodness is from Him, but He did not create evil. Evil is the absence of God's good. It is that void without the goodness of God.

Janie Cheaney explains it so well, that I leave you with a link to her article. You can find it here. It helped me to understand a little more, even though it's still hard to imagine a person's heart so void of any goodness whatsoever that he could look at a baby's sweet face, see the innocence in the eyes, and continue his dastardly, cowardly, wicked, evil deed.

I've been thinking, how do we discuss this evil deed, or any evil, with our children and our grandchildren?  How do we help them process what has taken place? I will ponder it more, I'm sure, but I think we need to help them understand that the absence of God and His goodness in our hearts leaves the void, the evil. And evil becomes the master. The more we love God and His ways, the more our hearts are filled with His goodness. And He becomes our master.

All I know is to pray for those who mourn and weep, and to ask for God's grace and mercy to comfort and console, that they will know Father God in a way that they have not experienced before. I pray that He will strengthen them in their spirit, in their physical being, in their hearts and minds. Only He can do any of that. He is Goodness. God is great and God is good.

Painting ~ Jesus Wept, James Tippot (1836-1902)

Wikipedia, public domain

Through Gates of Splendor

I had read the book many years ago and grew up hearing the account many, many times. Recently, we watched Through Gates of Splendor as a 35-minute documentary which told of the events leading up to the death of the five missionaries who were trying to bring the gospel to the Aucas in 1956 and how the Aucas were initially reached. The documentary was particularly interesting because it was narrated by Elisabeth Elliot herself as a young mother, based mostly on home-movie film footage and Life magazine photos.

I found the account of Elisabeth's and Rachel Saint's return to the Aucas to be a bit different than what I had understood it to be. My own misunderstanding, to be sure, but I had always envisioned these women tenaciously heading right back into the jungle, determined to do what their husbands had been thwarted in doing. Not exactly. The desire to reach the Aucas with the gospel message was, of course, their heartbeat, but how they ended up living in the village was more of God's direct intervention than that of their own sheer determination.

Once again I was reminded that it's all about God, not about us. It's not even about Elisabeth Elliott, as much as I am grateful for her life and writing. Neither is it about Rachel Saint, who lived with the Aucas until her death, translating the gospel into the Aucan language. Nor is it about Dayuma, the young Aucan woman who played a key role in bringing the gospel to her people.

God's purpose was to reach the Aucas, and Elisabeth, Rachel and Dayuma were simply willing instruments in the hands of the Redeemer. Dayuma's role in spreading the gospel among her own people was part of the story that I had somehow missed down through the years.

I do recommend the documentary, but you'll want to use discretion in its viewing. The Aucas are shown in their natural attire at that time, so there's nudity throughout. 

We Do Not Lose Heart

Reflecting on the discussion in our small group last evening. The passage was relevant to how distraught some have shown themselves to be these past several weeks. Those with faith in that which is temporal have plunged into hysteria. Faith and hope have been misplaced, and they are frantic and distressed.

Yet God is raining on the just and the unjust, as He is righting some of the wrongs that have taken root in our national soil. And He seems to be using a Motley crew to do it. His ways, indeed, are not our ways.

Verses 15-17 of 2 Corinthians 4 caught my attention in our discussion:

For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Do you see it?  

For all things are for your sakes, so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God. 

God is always working for our good and for His glory.

And look again...

so that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God.

For it is only God who can make a change for the good of America. His grace is spreading to more and more people. Thanks be to God. To Him be the glory!

Therefore, we do not lose heart.

Painting ~ Woman in the Open Air 1853, Alajos Gyorgyi Giergl 1821-1863

 

Crossing Paths Again

I was talking with a friend recently about our upcoming move, and she commented that I probably would miss running into friends while out and about shopping and such. Yes, that I will miss. A friend that I hadn't seen for several years came into the restaurant where we were eating on Sunday. It was so good to catch up with how things are going with her and then hug goodbye. Then we ran into one of My Beloved's friends yesterday, and they talked for awhile.

Today a friend that I haven't seen for many, many years crossed my path at the grocery store. I was ever so glad that I didn't go shopping yesterday as is my usual routine. I would have missed a wonderful, timely blessing. 

She has been taking care of her 95-year-old mother who has had Alzheimer's for eleven years, staying at her mother's home and keeping it up for her since it was familiar to her, tending to her flowers, planting some zucchini, keeping things as best she can as her mother knew them. My friend has had shoulder replacements and has difficulty moving one arm, so her son helps with getting his grandmother in and out of bed and tending to some basic needs, while his little 3-year-old plays and brings joy to Great-Grandma, sitting on her lap and talking to her. Before caring for her mother, my friend had taken care of her father for three years before he passed on. Before that she and her husband had brought someone into their own home that they had met while camping and was caregiver to her, and before that they had brought a friend of their son's into their home and had taken care of him for three years. Sad to say, though, her adult daughter's life is a mess. She has a lot that could depress her.

But in the midst of it all, my long-time friend is a joy-filled woman. She says that some people tell her that she should put her mother in a care home. "What?!" she says, "And miss all of the love and joy I've had over these years with her? Memories I will cherish forever?!" We had a wonderful conversation about God's abundant grace and how His mercies are new every morning. Grace and mercy that she may never have known except for the difficulties and challenges of life. His grace is truly sufficient. And His love abounds.

Father God knew that my friend and I needed that conversation today. He planned it that way...for both of us, for our paths to cross once again. For her, because she doesn't get out much to talk to people. For me, because I was discouraged after listening to My Beloved's friend yesterday talk about all he is doing--writing books, speaking several times a week in different locations, visiting in nursing homes, overseeing a chaplains' group, and how so many people are so glad that he's doing what he's doing. And on and on. I came away from that conversation feeling like I wasn't doing much of anything that really mattered. Does anyone even read my little blog posts?

Then I look up today across the rows of produce, and there's my friend from long ago. And God uses that encounter to remind me that there are a gazillion ways to do good and to bring Him glory. And that what I do does matter....to Him and to others.

Long-time friends pick up where they left off. So we hugged goodbye and said that we were so glad we ran into each other today, that both of us needed that conversation, and that if we don't see one another again here, we'll look for each other up there. And please give your mama a hug for me.

So, dear one, keep looking upward and homeward, where blessings abound and God's mercies are new every morning. And remember that what you are doing today matters. A lot.

Painting ~ The Day's Catch, Daniel Ridgway Knight 1839-1924
Wiki Commons public domain

To Be or Not to Be .... Noticed

Sharing with you from my quiet time today as I think through what I'm reading in Matthew 6. It helps me to write out some thoughts. Thinking about the first verse where it says, Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with our Father who is in heaven.  

That statement caught my attention as I thought back to Matthew 5:16 where it says, Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. What's this? A contradiction? Don't be noticed? Do be seen? 

But there's a big difference. It's all in the intent. If I'm doing some good thing for the purpose of being noticed and bringing honor to myself, that's worthless. Worse than worthless. It gets me nowhere, gains me nothing of eternal value. It's all about me.

On the other hand, if my intent is in bringing attention and glory to God, then He says to let my good works shine on! Let people see how good and gracious and kind and providing and all that God is. It's all about Him. He's the answer to all their needs. Not me. Not you. 

We are simply a window to be seen through, to get a glimpse of God the Father a little more clearly. We are His hands and feet, to bring help to the needy, encouragement to the fainthearted, admonishment to the unruly, good to all, especially those who are of the household of faith, prayer for those who misuse us, blessing to those who curse us. That's a hard one.

My takeaway from the Word today — 

Don't be hypocritical to magnify myself.

Do be humble to magnify God.

It changes people. It changes us.

Painting ~ The Thick of the Plot 1924, George Goodwin Kilburne 1839-1924
Wiki Commons public domain

Sunday Ponderings ~ The Path of Life

You will make known to me the path of life; 

In Your presence is fullness of joy; 

In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.

Psalm 16:11

Image ~ Butchart garden victoria canada - panoramio, 
bynyalcin [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Refreshing in His Presence

The Luncheon, Claude Monet

I’m continuing to read through the Bible chronologically, and today I paused at this verse:

Repent therefore and return, that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19). 

These words were spoken by the Apostle Peter when he explained to the Jewish people that they had disowned and put to death the Prince of Life, Jesus the Messiah; that He was the one the prophets had spoken of who would suffer for our sins, and that God had raised Him from the dead. Peter tells them that he knows they acted in ignorance and calls them to repent.

What struck me about this verse as I read it today was that in repenting and returning to God, we find refreshing in His presence. This is what most of us are trying to find—refreshing amid the struggles of life. Oh, to be able to convince those who think they have no need of God! How often we live our lives in ignorance of what is true and right. Oh, to be more aware of that myself when I struggle with my own ignorance!

Jesus the Christ is the very one who brings times of refreshing. His ways are not grievous. They are the very antithesis of that. His ways are the refreshing waters for our spiritual drought.

You will make known to me the path of life;

In Your presence is fullness of joy;

In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.

(Psalm 16:11)

Painting ~ The Luncheon 1872, Claude Monet 1840-1926
Wiki Commons public domain

God is Good

A friend was telling me about a discussion she had been a part of that questioned the goodness of God because of assumed unfairness in who got beauty, brains, breaks in life, etc. Most of us probably wrestle at one time or another with reconciling the goodness of God and the presence of unfairness, or even evil. The problem of pain and suffering is real and touches us all. Some would deny the existence of God because of the presence of evil, pain, and suffering. "Evil exists; therefore, the Creator does not."

We cannot deny the existence of God but accept the existence of evil. To call something evil means there must be something good to measure it by. God is good, whether or not we believe it or understand it. Ravi Zacharias says, in his book Jesus Among Other Gods:

"If evil exists, then one must assume that good exists in order to know the difference. If good exists, one must assume that a moral law exists by which to measure good and evil. But if a moral law exists, must not one posit an ultimate source of moral law, or at least an objective basis for a moral law? By an objective basis, I mean something that is transcendingly true at all times, regardless of whether I believe it or not."

We live surrounded with God's goodness. He is good to send the rain that nourishes the earth to bring forth the flowers of spring. He is good to give the birds a song and people ears to hear their singing. He is good to bring the new life of a baby and to use a mother to continue His creative work. He is good to show us mercy and grace and His abundant faithfulness in our times of doubt. God is good, whether or not we believe it or understand it. 

Photograph: Golden Marguerite, Mark Bolton

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