MOTIVATION (Leviticus 19-20)

God summarizes what He has already said in Exodus and Leviticus so far in today's two chapters--along with pausing every few verses to remind us why we should obey. Each reason is repeated at least once:

• Be holy because I, your God, am holy.
• Fear your God. I am God.
• I am God, your God.

These reasons remind of the answers God gives when we ask Him "why does evil flourish?" (Job are Habakkuk are good examples.) Because I am God and You are not.

Except God points out--I am your God. We are holy in terms of our standing; we have been set apart by God as His children.  

In Facebook speak, our status would read that we are "in a relationship."

So instead of seeing a stern God as judge He says, "Fear me. Be holy as I am. I am your God and you'll get in trouble if you disobey me," He wants me to hear, "Fear me. I have called You to be separate, part of My family. Revel in it. Learn the kingdom rules and enjoy all of its benefits."

In my prayer journal today, I wrote my motivations for obedience. 

Father, it is my delight and joy to serve You. But Your commands to obey You because You are my God leave me. . . unmotivated.

Or is it ultimately why I do obey You? Because You are my God. Because we are in relationship? If you were not my God, my very personal God, would I even care? 

I am holy because You have set me apart, but you want me to do holy. This is a case where actions are meant to reflect the truth. 

As I  follow You, stumbling along the road some times, but seeking to go where You lead--I am living a holy life, because I am living the life You have called me to. 

Holiness includes the lists of dos and don'ts. But there is so much more. 

Being holy as You are holy also means I treat others the way I want to be treated. Holiness is not a solitary act; it is a way of life that measures everything and every person I touch.

May Your light, love, truth, burn away the dross in me, that others will see more and more of Your reflected glory.

Amen.

NOT FOR THE FAINTHEARTED: INCEST (Leviticus 18)

There. I've said the word, the word that horrifies us and sends shivers and feelings of helplessness and rage through the heart of anyone who has experienced it.

And if you want to skip this one - with some personal revelations - feel free to do so. It's not for everyone, but those who need to hear it, to know their sense of something horribly wrong is shared by God--let this help. And I know you are out of there - the last I knew, one out of every four women and one out of every eight men had been abused. I've had 18 pageviews today. That means four or five people who've been sexually molested have already looked before I posted this subject.

In this chapter in Leviticus, God speaks in very specific language about sexual sin: forbidden relationships within the family, with animals, and, of course, the political hot button, homosexuality.

Today I am taking a little departure from my usual style. This chapter is difficult for me to read, not because of the boring or gruesome subject, but because I am all too well acquainted with the topic.  I was abused by my father, my uncle, my cousin, my stepfather. In fact, abuse continued at different times until I finally left home, never to live there again, after I got to college.

When I went through the deepest healing from my past, I learned a scary fact: incest is more likely to happen in highly religious families. Some men (and women too, I suppose) who believe the marriage bond is sacred, who will not violate it with an affair or divorce, somehow believe it's acceptable to harm one of their own children.

So it's also possible that an abuser or two has read my blog. And get this: I'm not here to condemn you; God's grace covers every sin and can change every heart, but you have to admit the sin first.

For those who have suffered from incest, listen to the words God uses to describe the acts: It violates--relationships, trust, your own body. It blasphemes. It's unbelievable.  It is wicked. 

God knew that incest occurs all too often. He made sure His people knew His will on the question.

He also made his feelings clear. In a rare time, instead of simply saying "I am God and I am holy, therefore do what I say," He explains His reasons for giving the commands.

Healing is a long, hard road--but God will lead you by the hand.

SIN SERVED THREE WAYS (Leviticus 16)

My son, a kosher-observant believer in his Savior, Yeshua, has told me, "There are no offerings for willful, intentional sin. The offerings are all for times when people sin without knowing it." His point was, that until the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, God had made no provision for intentional sin.

I did read that chapter, about unknown sins, a few days ago. But thank God, I ran across this verse today: "He will make atonement for the Holy of Holies, because of the uncleanness of the Israelites, their acts of rebellion, and all their other sins." (Leviticus 16:15-17. MSG)

God gave Moses three reasons why atonement was needed:

• We are unclean. Of course, Leviticus gives us a whole host of things that make us unclean (death, bodily fluids, infectious skin diseases, etc.)  But we are born unclean, sinners by nature as well as by choice. We need atonement because we will always choose sin.
• We rebel against God. We know what God wants from us--and we choose to disobey. Look at all those "do nots" from the 10 Commandments, or how about about all the things from the old nature that we are told to get rid of?
• We sin in other ways. There are those unknown sins that God provides for. We sin by omission--when we know to do good and don't act. 

Whatever the nature of our sin, God knows us. He loves us. He provides for our atonement, so that we can be reconciled to Him. 

It was true in Aaron's day.

It is still true today. 

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 1 John 1:7 ESV

P.S. I posted a bonus blog today about a love letter to God. Check it out below. :)  

Bonus post: For Valentines Day.

To the God who is love. Who defines and exemplifies love. Whose standard of love is lifted so high that we at best can only reflect that love. I worship You, I adore You, I love You on this day of love. I write a love letter to You. . .

I love You because You first loved me. You are my Father. You made me. You made me and designed me, inside and out. You made me over again at my new birth, and gave me new and beautiful gifts. 

You put me with people who loved me, in spite of all their flaws. Mom and Grandma, Aunt Violet, 

Aunt Lucille. 

You put me in a country where I could think independently and not be punished. Where I could pursue an education. Where I could enjoy Your gifts of music and art and literature--and even to express them myself.

You've given me the beauty of a sunset, the majesty of a mountain piercing the sky, the lullaby of ocean waves crashing on the shore. 

You've given me the love of a child, or two children, of grandchildren . . . and such a wealth of life and love and memories and pain lies in those words, but in them, I know Your deepest love.

You have given me friends and churches and writers, fro here to Australia and back again, who have enriched my life. 

You have given me Ray. Which is still the newest, and most precious, gift of all, on this day of love.

Not to mention all those spiritual gifts. Salvation, forgiveness, justification, hope for today and hope for tomorrow. 

You have walked with me through each and every day of my life, through the times when I was mistreated, when my heart broke, when I screwed up. Your presence sustained me even when I was unaware of it. 

How do I love Thee? Let me count the ways, and come up short, because the reasons why I love You are beyond measure. 

You love me beyond the farthest reach of the most distant galaxy. You love me to the depth of the bottomless sea. You love me beyond time itself. 

Happy Valentines Day to the Lover of my Soul. 

A TALE OF TWO BIRDS (Leviticus 14)

Leviticus 14 details the offerings to be given when a person with infectious skin diseases, or a mildewed house, are declared clean. Both offerings involve two birds.

God gave the option of two doves or pigeons for those who couldn't afford a total of three lambs. Whether livestock or birds, one becomes a whole burnt offering and the second animal, a compensation offering. The priest dabbed he blood of the animal on the right earlobe, thumb and big toe.  (This is where I get squeamish and dash on ahead.)

The house offering also involves blood (of course). But there are several differences: birds are the required offering, and cedar wood, hyssop, scarlet thread, and the second bird, are dipped in the blood of the first bird.

And then . . . here is what caught my attention with a sense of relief--the second bird is released in an open field. 

Four birds brought for an offering. Three die; one is released. Why? and more importantly for the reasons of this devotional, why do I care?

A little meditation suggests several things:

• People are more important than things. The more costly offering--in terms of money and of life--celebrates the release of a person from uncleanness.
• The creation suffers when we suffer. This is not a sin offering, but for our disease. Call it an early version of animal testing, as it were. (does that make me political? LOl)
• God is sovereign. Sometimes He chooses one over the other. One bird dies, the other lives.
• With the last thought: God sometimes spares us when we deserve death. 
• When God does something amazing for us, such as healing us from an infectious disease or providing healthy housing, we should respond with an offering that costs us something. 

I pray you find these life lessons from the nuts and bolts of the law as challenging as I do. 

HUMAN TOUCH (Leviticus 13)

Today's chapter - 13 - deals with skin sores. Ouch. That's me. 

I'm not sure what the technical term is. The skin over my belly, which was cut twice for c-sections and once to remove a hernia, is stretched and prone to boils which erupt and then get infected.

If I am reading Leviticus 13 right, I would be considered "unclean." Forced to live out among the lepers. Cut off from human contact. 

To make it worse, I'm a hugger. I crave human contact. To imagine that I had to live in isolation, without physical contact. How . . . horrible.

I am grateful to live in an age where treatments are available and protective gear such as gloves and bandages prevent the spread of infection. I am thankful to live in a place where caring hands clean the boils and spread the medication over them. 

But two millennia ago, without protective gloves or access to antibacterial ointment, Jesus touched lepers. Before He healed them. Before they were ritually clean, infection free and safe for his human body.

In the words of an old song, "He touched me, and made me whole."

Had to include - I love cats!

PASSING TODAY

Two things happened today:

One is that nothing jumped out at me upon my first reading of Leviticus 11-12.

The second is that I accidentally  posted the blog about the anniversary of my daughter's and mother's deaths to this blog.

So maybe it's a God-thing, and that's the message he intends for you to hear today.

And for anyone who is interested in visiting my journey through the depths of grief . . . the whole story is laid out in my other blog, http://darlenefranklinwrites.blogspot.com/, which I began as a way to give voice to my pain.  If you have experienced a similar pain, it may help . . . or not.

God bless!

DANCING WITH GRIEF PLUS FIVE YEARS #2

Here is the piece I recently wrote about Jolene: It's an excerpt from my WIP, The Blessing Factor, and an updated, expanded version of an earlier blog post.

THE GIFT OF GRIEF

A Mother’s Story

My daughter Jolene died at the age of twenty- three.

            She didn’t die of disease, or accident, or even murder. I guess you could call it murder. She murdered herself: she committed suicide.

            I know grief on a first name, call-in-the-middle-of-the-night basis.  

            The first time I read the beatitudes after her death, the words slapped me in the face. “Blessed are they that mourn.”

            Oh, I understood the comfort part. God comforted me, in spades, giving me strength to carry on and using me as a testimony to the people around me.

            But losing a daughter in the prime of her life did not feel like a blessing. Today, almost five years later, it still feels wrong, unnatural, unnecessary, heart-rending, life-changing. All of that, and more.

            I wrestled with the idea of grief as a blessing. Mourning and grief are feelings; I didn’t “feel” happy, no matter what word Jesus used in preaching the Sermon on the Mount.

            Jesus didn’t deny my feelings, discredit them, or tell me to be happy when my heart had been ripped from my chest. Instead, He blessed me with His actions, with facts that took on a whole new reality. Ten months after the tragedy, I took stock of the rock-bottom truths which had gained a new depth.

·         Jesus died to give me eternal life.

·         Jolene has eternal life because she placed her trust in Jesus.

I had witness her decision to follow Christ, I have heard her testimony from her own lips and read her words. She is alive.

·         Jolene is in heaven, where tears and pain are a thing of the past.

Even if Jolene could return, I would never ask her to. She is healed of the Borderline Personality Disorder that made her so uncertain and unhappy.

·         Jolene is watching me as I continue to run the race before me.

Jolene wants my happiness. She is cheering me on. I am the missing generation—she is there with her great-grandmother and her grandmother.

·         I will see Jolene again.

The more of my loved ones go ahead, the more I want to join them. What a reunion!

·         Because God became man, He understands my pain and mourns with me.

I knew Jesus had experienced grief—look at Lazarus. He might have also known the pain of losing someone to suicide. He cried right along with me.

·         Jesus welcomed Jolene home.

Jolene wrote about Jesus hugging her in His arms. As life ebbed from her body, He cradled her in His lap.

            I have always accepted these facts as part of my believe system. With the blessing of grief, facts traveled from my head to my heart and etched themselves on the raw nerve endings, seeking to scab over as I healed.

As if all of those biblical truths weren’t enough of a blessing, God added another to enrich the life-from-death truth of the gospel: my first grandchild was born nine months’ after Jolene’s death. Jordan Elizabeth Franklin will never meet her aunt this side of heaven, but her smile, her bouncing brown curls and bright brown eyes, her giggles—she is God’s gift here and now.

Holidays have come and gone. Each Resurrection Day reminds me of my loss; we learned of Jolene’s death on the Monday of Passion Week. With Christmas came a different kind of celebration. What I enjoyed wasn’t the trappings of Christmas—presents and lights and trees seemed hollow without Jolene... I went through most of advent praying, Lord, just let me survive.

Even the things that gave me joy faded. How could I sing my favorite Christmas carols without remembering the caroling Jolene and I did each year, waiting at the bus stops after a night of Christmas shopping?

How could we decorate the tree without crying over each and every memory? Baby’s first Christmas 1984. A hand-crafted tree-top angel made out of a lace doily. A blue delft disc reminded me of the visit we made to the Dutch Festival, and the golden boot with the Olympic rings brought back vivid memories of going to the Salt Lake City Olympics.           

And yet, as I struggled, Christmas became more real than ever. God became man.

The incarnation—God becoming man—that is the blessing of grief for me. 

THE HEART OF THE MATTER (Leviticus 10)

Today's reading brought me to one of those uncomfortable, I-wish-this-wasn't-there passages of the Bible: when God's fire killed Nadab and Abihu for offering strange fire.

Shades of Cain: They offered the wrong thing.

God had given extensive, specific directions for the ordination offerings. The breed, sex, age of animals. The spices. The ingredients for the anointing oil and the incense. And over and over again we read some variation of "they did all that the Lord commanded."

Aaron and his sons had just completed seven days of being closeted with the Lord in the Tent of Meeting, completing the days of ordination. Imagine the joy, the hopes, the pride mixed with humility, of that week! How they must have studied and reviewed the laws God had given them, to be sure they understood. Of all the 600,000 Israelites, God had chosen this small family unit--Aaron and his four sons--to serve God throughout all generations as a perpetual priesthood.

A high of all highs for Aaron and his sons.

The ordination week ended, they began their ministry on day eight, and right out of the gate Abihu and Nadab offered "strange fire."

I struggle to understand this. My experience with God is of Someone who looks at the heart more than what I hold in my hands, not a teacher who will rap my knuckles for passing notes in school.

And from what the Bible says over and over again elsewhere, I know the truth that God desires mercy and not sacrifice.

So why here? Why to the anointed leaders? Why after such a high?

I have to think that, the same way as I mentioned about Moses a few days ago,  God held the anointed priests to a higher standard.

After seven days of fellowship and intensive study, they knew how to present the offering. And they chose to do something different. Something not God-ordained. They more or less said, "We don't care what You say, God, we're going to do what we want to."

The question switches from "why did God send fire on them?" to "what were they thinking?"

I suspect that, after all, God did look on their hearts--and didn't  like what He saw.