God's Creative Witness    

 This is my least favorite month, because not only is it the end of a 'flower season' but it is also the month of my least favorite day - Halloween.  

A verse came to my mind from Isa. 59:19 - the words are on the image below.  It is such a comforting promise -- the enemy can do what the enemy can and will do, but God is watching and He will lift up a 'barrier' that the enemy cannot cross.  Satan can only go so far, before God says, "Thus far, and no farther."   This is the same God that set the borders of the ocean when He created the world.  If He can command the seas, the enemy is no threat at all!  

 


I came across something I wrote quite a few years ago, but in rereading it I thought it worth sharing again, if just to encourage us to pray for our grandchildren. . We sometimes despair praying for loved ones that do not know God and I think the story below proves that God knows how to get someone's attention. 

I was reading Habakkuk 2 this morning and was struck by one of the verses that reminded me of an experience my granddaughter shared with me.
The verse is Habakkuk 2:14 which says.."For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."   

What part of the sea is not covered with water ?  It is not even a question, is it...there is no place the water does not cover!  It flows to the lowest places and spreads as far as the borders of the sea reach.
I thought of the fact that  as I pray for loved ones that do not yet know the Lord, I often pray that God will use whatever He can to bring Himself into their thoughts or awareness.

How creative God can be in His reaching out into people's lives was brought home to me by the following story told to me by my granddaughter. who was about 18 at the time. 

My granddaughter and her friend were enjoying time together at a local lake, sitting on the pier as they chatted with one with another.
The friend was recently baptized, having given her life to the Lord.  My granddaughter told me how much she had changed. Although she no longer did drugs nor kept company with her old friends who did, they still sought her out begging her to hang out with them.

As they sat on the pier, two of these friends happened by and greeted their old friend saying, "Let's hang out together!"   Without waiting for an invitation, the two girls joined my granddaughter and her friend on the pier.  They pulled out their drugs and started smoking them.  My granddaughter's friend said, "Let's just leave", and she and my granddaughter walked away.
A short distance later, my granddaughter realized she had left her cell phone on the pier, and turned to go back.  Her friend protested .. "No, I don't want to go back!"   and on impulse took out her own cell phone and said... "Here, let me call your cell to see if it really is still on the pier."
My granddaughter's friend's name is Christa and  when she calls my granddaughter the display screen identifies her as 'Christ', my granddaughter purposely having left off the letter 'a'. 
No one answered the cell and Christa  reluctantly agreed to go back to the pier to  retrieve the cell.    Approaching the spot on the pier where they had sat, the other two  girls were still  there, still smoking pot.  My granddaughter noted that one of them had my granddaughter's cell phone in her hand staring down at it .  Looking up at my granddaughter when she and Christa approached, she asked,   "Is this your phone ??  It says that Christ is calling!"
My granddaughter and her friend immediately confirmed .. "Yes, that is so true !! Christ really IS calling YOU!"  

I wonder if that young girl had a grandmother who was concerned for her  and was  praying for God's influence to be brought across her path.
I love how God will use whatever He can to influence someone to know that He IS calling them - calling them because He loves them and desires them to be saved. 
Especially, this month, when the enemy is celebrating evil and ugly, let us pray for protection over the children that God will hold His hand between them and any tricks of the enemy to draw them aside.  

Not One Without the Other

 I read a book this week set back in Bible times and a Jewish ritual was described that caught my attention and stirred  my thoughts .

 When the Jews celebrated  the Passover meal, important in the meal besides the roasted lamb,  were the herbs maror and haroset.

Let me quote from the book.

              "The maror, or bitter herbs, always made my nose and eyes run . But the bitterness made everything else taste sweeter. Papa said maror helped God's people recall how bitter life had been for their ancestors as slaves. Maybe I needed to remember that life was never meant to be heaven on earth. Why would anyone seek heaven if it were? 

The opposite of the maror,  haroset, was so sweet that after one taste , everything else seemed more bitter. Papa said haroset reminded us of the sweetness of the promised Messiah love and freedom."

 I thought about the relationship between sweet and bitter, between good and evil.

Can we truly appreciate good if we have not experienced the opposite?

We take for granted the things that are without question.. 

Have you ever appreciated  how your knees move and bend without effort , unless you, like me, have had your knees lose that ability!?

Until the 'good' things in our life are threatened or lost , we do not appreciate them. Until something comes at a cost, we do not appreciate its value.

Without sorrow, is there joy? 

Without sickness do we appreciate health? 

Without darkness, do we love the light?

Without pain, are we grateful for the lack of it?

Without turmoil, do we appreciate peace? 

Without lack , do we appreciate plenty?

Without loneliness, do we appreciate fellowship?

Without feeling lost , are we grateful for being found?

Without cold, do we appreciate warmth?

Without seeing hate , or being judged or rejected, do we value being loved?

Without being hungry, are we grateful for food?

Without seeing death, would we value life?

You could add to the above list, but I'm sure you see how the bitterness of life sweetens the rest of it!!

 

I thought of the tree of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. I often wondered, as you may have, why God put the tree there, when He knew Adam and Eve would eat of it and bring sin and evil into the world.

 God is love, and He is good, and nothing happens that He does not know.

We tend to understand good and evil in the extreme, but what if we define evil as "everything that is not good"? 
And is that not true? Is sickness, sorrow, suffering, hunger, pain, darkness good? Is it of God? No, of course not, so we can define anything not of God as  'evil', the opposite of 'good'.

What did eating of the tree of good and evil give Adam and Eve? Did it give them divine wisdom as Satan promised?  No, we see that it didn't, which is clear if we just keep reading man's story.

 Adam and Eve in the garden experienced only the good..Everything was perfect. Were they happy? Yes, I'm sure they were, but were they able to appreciate it? Recognize how blessed they were? Know how good God was?  No, they didn't. After they ate of the tree, they did not trust in God's goodness - they tried to hide from Him. 
God in creating man wanted more than creatures living in a perfect environment taking it for granted.

He wanted a people who had learned to know Him, had chosen Him freely,  who knew He was 'good' and from full hearts worship Him. 

We wish for 'heaven on earth' , but we were not created to live on this earth. God had much more in mind when He thought to create man. We were created "in His image" which includes the ability to know what is good and choose it. 

So even though God knew that Adam and Eve would eat of the tree  He knew that if they ate of it , His plan and purpose for man would be accomplished.

 My granddaughter recently had her first child. In the hospital the nurse needed a blood sample from the baby that involved pricking her little heel, causing her to cry. My granddaughter burst into tears, and when they later needed another sample , she sobbed and left the hospital room, telling her husband to deal with it 
If we weep for the pain of our children, necessary though it be , don't you think God wept for Adam and Eve and weeps for you and me?
We see  so many passages in scripture that express God's compassion toward us.

( see Isaiah 30:18, Lamentations 3:22,23, Psalm 123:3) 

Compared to eternity, this earthly life is comparable to one grain of sand in an ocean of sand.

God created us to live forever with Him on a perfect new earth and He wants  people who are wise in understanding what is good and able to appreciate it. He wants a people that He can intimately fellowship with and enjoy. 

That can happen only if we are trained in this short earthly life. Having experienced 'evil' the joys of eternity with Him will be ever so much sweeter, and, unlike Adam  and Eve, we will not be tempted to choose 'evil'.

 God truly does all things well. Can we do other than trust Him with all our heart? And give Him all glory and praise? 

 

  Time to be Born

I am waiting ....  any day my first great granddaughter will be born!  I don't have to tell you what my mind has been focused on. 

I wonder ... while we all know there is a time for a baby to be born, do we consider the baby's feelings?  If asked, would my great-granddaughter want to stay where she is?  If you think about it , it is a pretty good place to be.  It is always just the right temperature, food is always available,  mommy's heartbeat is so reassuring, it is safe and protected.  Maybe it would be scary to think about leaving and be pushed into what is  unknown and unfamiliar. 
While children love to hear about how they were in their mommy's tummy, and we are all aware of where we came from, I have yet to hear of anyone who wished they could go back!  

That reminds me of the verse in Isaiah 65:27 that reads, "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind."  
Will we really not remember this earthly life when we leave it to be forever with Jesus?  If we don't remember it at all, would that not be like spending  years going to school to learn how to be a brain surgeon and then we finally finish our training and get a job , and then promptly forget all we learned!!   What kind of surgeon would we be?? 
If we do not remember our earthly 'training' that makes us 'fit' for heaven, then would it not be wasted?   
But....  isn't that what the quoted verse says, that we won't remember?  I have mentioned it before but I'll note it again.  'Remember' in the original Hebrew does not have the same meaning as in English. In English 'remember' is the opposite of forget, and 'not remember' IS to forget!  But in Hebrew the word 'remember' means 'to act upon' and 'not remember' means 'not to act upon'.  
As in God 'not remembering our sins' means that He will not 'act',  - will not hold forgiven sin against us ever again.  (Is. 23:45)  Or as God 'remembered Noah' in Gen. 8:1 and 'acted' by sending a wind over the earth to subside the waters. 
So I think just as we know and understand we were once in our mother's womb  but have no desire to go back, there is the same sense of  meaning  in  Is. 65:17.  We will remember our earthly life but will never 'act on it' in a way that would stir our emotions or mental longing to go back.
Just as a mother remembers giving birth, she remembers it without reliving the pain.   The 'eternal' life that awaits us will be so much better in every way that  no memories of our earthly sojourn will ever tempt us to desire to go back, no more than we would long to go back into our mother's womb.

 

Just as my g-grandbaby is totally unable to conceive of what is awaiting her -  she has no way of knowing how richly she will be surrounded by love and everything she could want or need - so also God says to us, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who live Him."  I Cor. 2:9

 Eternity

Have you ever heard of a glass sponge? 

I hadn't, but recently I was curious to know what animal lives the longest!  You can google it yourself - the info about glass sponges is interesting.  I can't believe I never heard of them before.  The numbers about them being extinct and then found in 1987 use crazy numbers , but what the scientists do agree on is that they can live 15,000 years!  Do you know what that means? That means that the sponges found today were supernaturally created on the fifth day as recorded in Genesis 1. These animals don't have a brain, nor do they have eyes, but they are living, breathing animals.  

I think one  of the hardest concepts to grasp is eternity. Our finite minds can't understand an infinite concept.

But God desires that we understand as much of Him as we can so He has revealed Himself in creation - something we can see and grasp with our little minds, and apply what we see to what we cannot see.

Even 'forever'.

Below is an image of a man-made device that has what is called perpetual motion.

What is it? The marbles in the wheel fall in such a way that they cause the wheel to keep on turning , indefinitely ,forever., for an eternity!  If man can devise something that turns forever all on its own, it should not take much faith to believe God can do so much more - like create bodies that last forever. If Methusalah could live almost a thousand years, what's a few thousand plus more!!??

God also reveals His eternal attribute in space.

I remember an argument I had as a child with my girl friend. We were walking home from school and admiring the clouds in the sky. I don't remember my comment but I clearly remember her response. She informed me quite emphatically that the clouds  bumped up against the sky which was a solid ceiling. I knew enough to know that wasn't true and I argued that the clouds were hanging IN the sky and we could go to the other side. She was not about to admit she was wrong and I finally gave up. I hope she has heard  a more scientific answer since!

We know today that science has not found that solid ceiling, nor the end of space....the farther they can see with ever more powerful telescopes the more there is to see.

IF there WAS a ceiling that still could not be the end because there would have to be SOMETHING on the other side of the ceiling - even if it was empty space.

So if you believe what scientists can see, then can you not believe what you cannot see, if God says it is so? An eternally existing God of all creation has put 'eternity' in space.

Human beings have a sense of eternal life. If they chose not to believe in God, then they look for other explanations, such as reincarnation, or ghosts being departed people,  or some cosmic energy that we are all part of and will be absorbed back into.

Ecc.3:11 says that God "has set eternity in men's' hearts."

God has given us more than enough 'helps' to be able to understand Him and His ways.
He wants us to know that this earth is only temporary, eternity and perfection is yet to come when we will forever live with Him on a perfect newly created earth! 

We truly have been given  everlasting  life so we will live forever with an eternal God!

John 11:25,26 "I am the resurrection and the life.He who believes in Me, though he die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me will never die. do you believe this???"
Do we?  Do we believe that? What a hope it is!