At last! After several days of struggling with subjects such as the murder of children and blessing our enemies, today I paused on a genuinely feel-good, it's-wonderful-to-be God's child kind of verse.
In Exodus 15, Moses sang a song about crossing the Red Sea. Exodus 15:12-13 definitely draws a line between "them" and "us." The Earth swallowed up "them"--those miserable slave-owning, refusing to let go Egyptians.
But "us?" We are redeemed--today, by the lamb of God, as surely as the Passover lamb redeemed the Israelites.
We are led by His love. Have you ever heard the quote, "The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you?" His love accompanies us, wherever we are.
He guides us. Day by day. I might like a map of the next six months (six years?) but He shows me what I need today.
We are under His protection. (That is one of the definitions of "blessing," by the way. I discovered that in my work on my Blessing Factor book)
He is taking us to His holy pasture. A pasture to rest and eat--where we are set apart.
Wow: redeemed, loved, guided, protected, set apart, provided for.
That's what God wants for you. Put it in your warm fuzzy file.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
WHEN YOUR ENEMY WANTS A BLESSING. . . (Exodus 12)
At last Pharaoh had had enough. It took the death of his firstborn son, but he couldn't get rid of the Israelites soon enough. In so many words, he said "Skedaddle! You, your wives, your children, your livestock, your belongings. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
At the end of his frantic plea for Moses and the Israelites to leave, Pharaoh tacks on a strange request "and bless me."
After God had devastated Egypt's livestock, crops, people, water--why did Pharaoh think Moses would agree to bless him?
Why did Pharaoh want a blessing from this stranger's God?
I think it might be as simple as this: In asking for a blessing, Pharaoh laid his last bit of pride on the line. The word for blessing is connected to the word for "kneel." The author of Hebrews says that the greater blesses the lesser.
By asking for a blessing, Pharaoh admitted that Moses and his God were powerful that Egypt and its gods.
Here's my great, "spiritual" takeaway: Sometimes a blessing is the best revenge.
At the end of his frantic plea for Moses and the Israelites to leave, Pharaoh tacks on a strange request "and bless me."
After God had devastated Egypt's livestock, crops, people, water--why did Pharaoh think Moses would agree to bless him?
Why did Pharaoh want a blessing from this stranger's God?
I think it might be as simple as this: In asking for a blessing, Pharaoh laid his last bit of pride on the line. The word for blessing is connected to the word for "kneel." The author of Hebrews says that the greater blesses the lesser.
By asking for a blessing, Pharaoh admitted that Moses and his God were powerful that Egypt and its gods.
Here's my great, "spiritual" takeaway: Sometimes a blessing is the best revenge.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
TELLING YOUR STORY (Exodus 10)
I've made him stubborn, him and his servants, so I can force him to look at these signs, and so you'll be able to tell your children. (Genesis 10:1-2, MSG)
God made Pharaoh stubborn for two reasons: the first was make him look at the signs God sent. I'm focusing on the second: "So you'll be able to tell your children."
In the words of a song popular when I was in college, "if I never had a problem, I wouldn't know God could solve them."
Times God came through when all seemed hopeless--those are the stories God wants me to tell my children and grandchildren. There's the Christmas God gave us a microwave (important since we only had a stovetop). How about all those contracts I received just as an expense cropped up? Or when God gave us the apartment of our dreams?
If I hadn't known poverty, or illness, or homelessness, or grief--I wouldn't know how God could work in those situations.
In a way, that's why I started this blog: God has done things for me that I'm bursting to share with others.
I'd love to hear some of your stories, about times God has acted on your behalf.
God made Pharaoh stubborn for two reasons: the first was make him look at the signs God sent. I'm focusing on the second: "So you'll be able to tell your children."
In the words of a song popular when I was in college, "if I never had a problem, I wouldn't know God could solve them."
Times God came through when all seemed hopeless--those are the stories God wants me to tell my children and grandchildren. There's the Christmas God gave us a microwave (important since we only had a stovetop). How about all those contracts I received just as an expense cropped up? Or when God gave us the apartment of our dreams?
If I hadn't known poverty, or illness, or homelessness, or grief--I wouldn't know how God could work in those situations.
In a way, that's why I started this blog: God has done things for me that I'm bursting to share with others.
I'd love to hear some of your stories, about times God has acted on your behalf.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
DRAFT NOTICE (Exodus 7)
I will have my way with Egypt and bring out my soldiers, my people the Israelites, from Egypt with mighty acts of judgment. (Exodus 7:4, MSG)
It's hard to imagine a less likely army than the Israelites. They were slaves, used to hard physical labor but with weak constitutions because of their living conditions. They obviously weren't unified (look at all the later squabbling), and they hadn't learned to think like free men.
God called this group of ill-prepared, wishy washy, unwilling people His soldiers. No elite soldiers here. No volunteers, but all draftees.
Unwilling soldiers with an unwilling general (God, please send someone else.)
These are the people God used to accomplish one of the most spectacular freedom marches in history?
Today God calls us His soldiers. At least that's the image He gave us through Paul, in Ephesians 6. He urges us to be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power--the same power that freed the Israelites. He tells us to put on battle gear, the armor of God.
So I'm at war. Today. Sitting here in my wheelchair.
The good news is that God won the battle. He knocked Pharaoh off his pedestal while the Israelites watched, ready to march when He gave the order.
Sometimes I watch God at work. Other times I'm on the front line. But I'm always in the army, and God is always on my side.
Muster up.
It's hard to imagine a less likely army than the Israelites. They were slaves, used to hard physical labor but with weak constitutions because of their living conditions. They obviously weren't unified (look at all the later squabbling), and they hadn't learned to think like free men.
God called this group of ill-prepared, wishy washy, unwilling people His soldiers. No elite soldiers here. No volunteers, but all draftees.
Unwilling soldiers with an unwilling general (God, please send someone else.)
These are the people God used to accomplish one of the most spectacular freedom marches in history?
Today God calls us His soldiers. At least that's the image He gave us through Paul, in Ephesians 6. He urges us to be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power--the same power that freed the Israelites. He tells us to put on battle gear, the armor of God.
So I'm at war. Today. Sitting here in my wheelchair.
The good news is that God won the battle. He knocked Pharaoh off his pedestal while the Israelites watched, ready to march when He gave the order.
Sometimes I watch God at work. Other times I'm on the front line. But I'm always in the army, and God is always on my side.
Muster up.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
HIGHER STANDARD (Exodus 4)
God said to Moses in Midian: "Go. Return to Egypt. All the men who wanted to kill you are dead." (Exodus 4:19, MSG)
God repeated the order He had already given to Moses at the burning bush: It's time for you to go back to Egypt. He had answered all of Moses's questions and sent Aaron to meet him. Moses had taken the first step: telling his father-in-law Jethro that he was leaving.
After Moses had taken the first steps, God stepped in with the reassurance, "all the men who wanted to kill you are dead."
Why didn't God say so in the first place? Why did God wait until after Moses obeyed to offer reassurance?
All along, God seems a little abrupt with Moses. If I wrote dialogue like occurs between God and Moses, when He says "And who do you think made the human mouth?", I might say he snapped. God got downright angry when Moses said, "Please send someone else."
On top of all of that, God didn't deliver that piece of vital information until Moses was packing his bags.
Purely a guess: But I think God wanted to toughen Moses up. You know that verse that says God won't give anything more than we can handle? I have often retorted that I wish I was weaker, so I wouldn't have to endure so much. (You've read bits and pieces of it in this blog. If you want to read a fuller story of my travails, starting with my daughter's suicide, check out my other blog, http://darlenefranklinwrites.blogspot.com/)
In the near future, Moses would face off with the most powerful ruler of his time, the Pharaoh of Egypt. He would spend 40 years (and not the maximum of eight years afforded to an American president) leading the people of Israel through the desert, their security and well-being resting on his shoulders. Moses had to have absolute, clear-cut, no-questions-asked kind of faith in God to fulfill his calling.
Of course God supernaturally enabled Moses.
But along the way He toughened him up. Starting with calling him back from Egypt.
If it ever seems like God has given you more than your fair share of trials--maybe God has something extraordinary He is calling you to do.
God repeated the order He had already given to Moses at the burning bush: It's time for you to go back to Egypt. He had answered all of Moses's questions and sent Aaron to meet him. Moses had taken the first step: telling his father-in-law Jethro that he was leaving.
After Moses had taken the first steps, God stepped in with the reassurance, "all the men who wanted to kill you are dead."
Why didn't God say so in the first place? Why did God wait until after Moses obeyed to offer reassurance?
All along, God seems a little abrupt with Moses. If I wrote dialogue like occurs between God and Moses, when He says "And who do you think made the human mouth?", I might say he snapped. God got downright angry when Moses said, "Please send someone else."
On top of all of that, God didn't deliver that piece of vital information until Moses was packing his bags.
Purely a guess: But I think God wanted to toughen Moses up. You know that verse that says God won't give anything more than we can handle? I have often retorted that I wish I was weaker, so I wouldn't have to endure so much. (You've read bits and pieces of it in this blog. If you want to read a fuller story of my travails, starting with my daughter's suicide, check out my other blog, http://darlenefranklinwrites.blogspot.com/)
In the near future, Moses would face off with the most powerful ruler of his time, the Pharaoh of Egypt. He would spend 40 years (and not the maximum of eight years afforded to an American president) leading the people of Israel through the desert, their security and well-being resting on his shoulders. Moses had to have absolute, clear-cut, no-questions-asked kind of faith in God to fulfill his calling.
Of course God supernaturally enabled Moses.
But along the way He toughened him up. Starting with calling him back from Egypt.
If it ever seems like God has given you more than your fair share of trials--maybe God has something extraordinary He is calling you to do.
Monday, January 21, 2013
PHARAOH'S FINAL SOLUTION (Exodus 1)
Every boy that is born, throw him in the Nile. (Exodus 1:22, MSG)
Pharaoh wasn't happy that the Hebrews were growing in numbers. He made them slaves, he gave them the hardest possible work, and when that didn't slow the birth rate, he commanded the midwives to kill all Hebrew boy babies.
The midwives refused, and then Pharaoh took a radical course. He offered his final solution to the problem of too many Hebrews. (Hitler was far from the first to try to get rid of the Jewish people.)
This much of the story I knew. But I saw something different when I read Exodus 1:22 in The Message. I read it once, then went back and read it a second time. Then I looked at Exodus 1:22 in all forty translations included in Bible Gateway. A small majority, 5/8ths, say "Hebrews boys."
The remaining 3/8ths, almost half? They simply say that Pharaoh ordered every boy to be thrown into the Nile.
Pharaoh was so obsessed with getting rid of the Hebrews, that he was willing to kill his own people to achieve his aims.
I bet there were a lot of Egyptian parents wondering why . . . questioning their own gods--their king. Why does a Supreme Being allow this to happen?
A little more than a month has passed since the Sandy Hook shootings. I lived in Denver at the time of the Columbine shootings, and now I live in Oklahoma City, where a national memorial was raised to honor the victims of the bombings.
Why does evil happen to good people? Why does evil so often target the most innocent and most vulnerable, our children? No one can visit the National Memorial in the heart of Oklahoma City without being shaken by the nineteen child-sized chairs, representing the day care children who died.
I have no easy answers--the possibility of evil is implicit in our freedom to choose--but I take comfort in this verse from the end of Exodus 2: "God listened to their groanings. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw what was going on with Israel. God understood."
God understood. And He acted.
In my favorite words ever heard on television, from a long-defunct comedy that I can't even name anymore, "God's heart was the first to break."
When the Israelites cried out, God understood and He sent Moses.
When I trusted Jesus as my Savior, God intervened and removed the man who had abused me for six years of my life. He listened--and He acted.
That is the only answer I've found that eases the hurt. God sees, and He cares.
God understands. That's a truth we can grab onto.
Pharaoh wasn't happy that the Hebrews were growing in numbers. He made them slaves, he gave them the hardest possible work, and when that didn't slow the birth rate, he commanded the midwives to kill all Hebrew boy babies.
The midwives refused, and then Pharaoh took a radical course. He offered his final solution to the problem of too many Hebrews. (Hitler was far from the first to try to get rid of the Jewish people.)
This much of the story I knew. But I saw something different when I read Exodus 1:22 in The Message. I read it once, then went back and read it a second time. Then I looked at Exodus 1:22 in all forty translations included in Bible Gateway. A small majority, 5/8ths, say "Hebrews boys."
The remaining 3/8ths, almost half? They simply say that Pharaoh ordered every boy to be thrown into the Nile.
Pharaoh was so obsessed with getting rid of the Hebrews, that he was willing to kill his own people to achieve his aims.
I bet there were a lot of Egyptian parents wondering why . . . questioning their own gods--their king. Why does a Supreme Being allow this to happen?
A little more than a month has passed since the Sandy Hook shootings. I lived in Denver at the time of the Columbine shootings, and now I live in Oklahoma City, where a national memorial was raised to honor the victims of the bombings.
Why does evil happen to good people? Why does evil so often target the most innocent and most vulnerable, our children? No one can visit the National Memorial in the heart of Oklahoma City without being shaken by the nineteen child-sized chairs, representing the day care children who died.
I have no easy answers--the possibility of evil is implicit in our freedom to choose--but I take comfort in this verse from the end of Exodus 2: "God listened to their groanings. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw what was going on with Israel. God understood."
God understood. And He acted.
In my favorite words ever heard on television, from a long-defunct comedy that I can't even name anymore, "God's heart was the first to break."
When the Israelites cried out, God understood and He sent Moses.
When I trusted Jesus as my Savior, God intervened and removed the man who had abused me for six years of my life. He listened--and He acted.
That is the only answer I've found that eases the hurt. God sees, and He cares.
God understands. That's a truth we can grab onto.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
INHERITANCE (Genesis 49)
Jacob's farewell blessings to his son is one of my favorite parts of Genesis. In spite of the history of rivalry and favoritism, Jacob understood his sons. He knew their natures, and he gave each one "the blessing appropriate to him." (Genesis 49:28, NIV)
So I'm not sure how I missed this before. Some of the so-called blessings read more like back-handed compliments, like Issachar: "When he saw how good the place was, how pleasant the country, he gave up his freedom and went to work as a slave." (Genesis 49:14-15)
Two of the brothers didn't even receive that much. They received, not a blessing, not a criticism, but a downright curse: Simeon and Levi. The two brothers had killed the men of Shechem after the prince raped their sister, but Jacob's words suggest their tempers continued unabated throughout their lives. He said, "A curse on their uncontrolled anger, on their indiscriminate wrath." (Genesis 49:7)
The terms of their curse? They would be scattered throughout Israel instead of having land of their own.
That sounds close to disinheriting his sons to me.
In case you're wondering, Jacob's prophecy did come true. As the priestly tribe, Levi received no land; and Simeon's allotment was swallowed up by Judah.
But think about that. From the riotous, angry, murdering, Levi came the lawgiver Moses. (Come to think of it, Moses was a murderer too. Hmm.) And of course his brother Aaron instituted the priesthood.
God took the curse and turned it into something amazingly beautiful. Like He had already done with using Joseph to save the known world during the famine.
What harm I do or intend - and no matter what harm has been done to me - doesn't write "the end."
It only ends when God says so. Changed. Redeemed.
Praise the Lord.
So I'm not sure how I missed this before. Some of the so-called blessings read more like back-handed compliments, like Issachar: "When he saw how good the place was, how pleasant the country, he gave up his freedom and went to work as a slave." (Genesis 49:14-15)
Two of the brothers didn't even receive that much. They received, not a blessing, not a criticism, but a downright curse: Simeon and Levi. The two brothers had killed the men of Shechem after the prince raped their sister, but Jacob's words suggest their tempers continued unabated throughout their lives. He said, "A curse on their uncontrolled anger, on their indiscriminate wrath." (Genesis 49:7)
The terms of their curse? They would be scattered throughout Israel instead of having land of their own.
That sounds close to disinheriting his sons to me.
In case you're wondering, Jacob's prophecy did come true. As the priestly tribe, Levi received no land; and Simeon's allotment was swallowed up by Judah.
But think about that. From the riotous, angry, murdering, Levi came the lawgiver Moses. (Come to think of it, Moses was a murderer too. Hmm.) And of course his brother Aaron instituted the priesthood.
God took the curse and turned it into something amazingly beautiful. Like He had already done with using Joseph to save the known world during the famine.
What harm I do or intend - and no matter what harm has been done to me - doesn't write "the end."
It only ends when God says so. Changed. Redeemed.
Praise the Lord.
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