This Says It All About 9/11

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 NIV84)

Will You Fight For It?

I well remember them [my afflictions],
    and my soul is downcast within me.
²¹ Yet this I call to mind
    and therefore I have hope:

²² Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
²³ They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:20-23

            If you read the first 19 verses of Lamentations chapter three you will find a laundry list of similes describing Jeremiah’s feelings of loss about the destruction of Jerusalem. They detail how he feels forsaken by God. He says, “…like a lion in hiding, he dragged me from the path and mangled me” (v. 10-11). And then there’s my personal favorite, “He has broken my teeth with gravel” (v. 16a). So how do we get from that utter sadness and despair to these verses talking about the love and faithfulness of God?

            Jeremiah says when he remembers all of his problems he is saddened to his very soul. (Let’s pause here to say that spending your time recounting to yourself all of your difficulties is a recipe for depression anyway.) Then he “calls to mind” three aspects of God that give him hope: Love, Mercy (compassion), and Faithfulness. It’s no accident that he had to intentionally call those qualities of God to mind. Sometimes you just have to fight for it.

            I challenge you today to take a quick mental examination of what your focus is drawn towards. If it is drawn towards your problems and difficulties, it’s time to fight to call to mind the Love, Mercy, and Faithfulness of God. Will you fight for it?

Steer Your Fear

     I'm not a parent, and for the near future plan to keep it that way, but I was someone's child and I work with students and parents on a daily basis. It puts me in a great place to make some observations and I've noticed some cool things over the years. For instance, there are many levels of cleanliness when it comes to parents. Some people will always rinse off a dropped pacifier before getting it back to the child, some don't care. I had a friend once who used to hold the business end of the pacifier in his mouth while getting his daughter dressed and then give it right back to her. This phenomena seems to vary by child. If the first born drops their pacifier it's incinerated like medical waste and a new, hermetically sealed one is installed. By the third child the, "just blow it off" method seems more prominent.

     An important job of parents is to steer the fear of your kids. You don't want them to be afraid of the dark, but you do want them to be afraid of running into traffic. That fear makes them careful until they are old enough to understand and avoid the peril without fear. My wife has an irrational fear of dragonflies that developed from childhood. I'll be honest, not super helpful. My sister was afraid to flush the toilet for a while as a youngster because one of those automatic toilets at the mall flushed with her on it and scared her to death. I guess she thought she was going down with the ship. It's an important to steer the fears of your kids away from things that cripple them and towards things that protect them. It affords them the opportunity to grow to maturity.

     "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
               wisdom;
          all who follow his precepts have good 
               understanding.
          To him belongs eternal praise."

-Psalm 111:10

     This thought is short and simple. We get caught up in that word "fear." We think, "That's only for the Old Testament God. The NT God is all about love man!" Never forget the OT God and the NT God are the same guy. 

     Also, ponder this. The God who created the universe, with all of it's nuanced greatness, had to squeeze the concept of our need to be awed, amazed, and a little afraid of the glory and power of his presence into our language. It's sort of like trying to play a Beethoven symphony on the triangle. There just aren't enough notes to describe it adequately.

     So when scripture talks about "fearing God." Think of it as the fear our parents steered into us. Just like a healthy fear of electricity helps you to mature from childhood to adulthood in a healthy way, a fear of the Lord allows you to mature from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity.