The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. [Genesis 6:5-6 (NLT)]
In preparation for my mother-in-law’s 100th birthday, I’ve been creating a timeline. After perusing a century’s worth of history, I juxtaposed high points in her life with what was happening in the world around her. During her life-time, my mother-in-law saw the advent of everything from three-colored traffic lights and the Monopoly game to E-Z-Passes and X-Boxes, from pop-up toasters and World Book encyclopedias to microwave ovens and Google, from rotary dial phones and the first airmail to iPhones and email, from the first transatlantic flight and Admiral Byrd’s South Pole expedition to space shuttles, lunar landings and Mars’ probes.
As I searched through the Web, what truly struck me was something I didn’t include in her timeline—man’s ability to be monstrous. It wasn’t just that World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, ISIL, Afghanistan and all the clashes in-between proved that the First World War wasn’t the “war to end all wars.” It was events like 9/11, Boko Haram’s kidnapping of school girls in Nigeria, lynch mobs, and the murders of civil right workers. It was Israeli athletes being massacred by Black September, Charles Whitman shooting 49 people from a tower, Columbine and every other school shooting. It was the Holocaust, the Ku Klux Klan, and genocide in places like Armenia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Dafur. It was reading of 100 years of atrocities—of man’s inhumanity to man—riots, beatings, intolerance, slaughter, and torture. The world my mother-in-law came into wasn’t all that different from today’s hate-filled world. Terrorism is nothing new; ninety-six years ago, a dynamite-rigged carriage exploded on Wall Street, killing thirty-eight and injuring hundreds. The last century had its share of violence, carnage and horror. It’s just that today we’re more efficient in delivering hate and the horrific results of our actions are better publicized.
In a recent Nancy comic (written by Guy Gilchrist), Sluggo asks Nancy if she’s afraid of monsters. “Nah,” she responds, “Wolfman, King Kong, Frankenstein’s monster—I kinda feel sorry for them.” Then she adds, “I’ve never been afraid of the monsters who look like monsters. I’m afraid of the monsters who look like people.” Although I got the timeline done (minus the monstrousness of the last century), my heart is heavy from the task. I wonder how to fight off all those monsters who look like people. Perhaps we simply do it by refusing to become one of them. We must never stop loving God and our neighbor—no matter who he is, what he looks like, where he lives, or what he believes. The Apostle Paul put it succinctly: “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”
Although I think I have plenty of faith and love, right now I’m a bit short of hope. Father God, we so desperately need your guidance in the days ahead. Forgive us for the past and fill us with hope for the future.
God is the only one who can make the valley of trouble a door of hope. [Catherine Marshall]
I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. [Romans 15:13 (NLT)]
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Also, the Spirit helps us with our weakness. We do not know how to pray as we should. But the Spirit himself speaks to God for us, even begs God for us with deep feelings that words cannot explain. God can see what is in people’s hearts. And he knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit speaks to God for his people in the way God wants. [Romans 8:26-27 (NCV)]
I never thought I’d enjoy my smartphone so much, especially instant messaging. Now that I’ve gotten the hang of it, I love the way it keeps me connected with friends and family who are thousands of miles away. Between the grands’ recent report cards, Halloween costumes, trick-or-treating and the World Series, our phones have been dinging and whistling with texts and pictures for the last several days. Unfortunately, that dinging and whistling can go on much later than we old folks like! With our children living in time zones west of us, what seems like early evening to them is bedtime for us. During the Series, we’ve taken to silencing our phones before going to bed. Like our children, we want the Cubs to win; unlike them, we can wait until morning to find out if it happened!
True confession time—although I often write about making prayer an ongoing part of our daily routines, I tend to compartmentalize my own day. I allocate specific times to prayer and the rest of the day to living when, in actuality, my entire life should be a prayer. Granted, I’ve been known to offer quick thanks for God’s “Aha!” moments and “Please!” and “Help!” are often submitted to Him, but those brief messages are just the emojis of prayer. If I can send a picture or text to my kids, I can pause long enough to tell God how blessed I am by the moment or how much I love and need Him.
Patience may be one of the fruits of the Spirit but there appears to be a shortage of it in my life’s orchard. Paul tells us that hardships teach us patience and patience develops strength of character but I imagine most of us are impatient to see all of that character building come to an end. Moses must have grown impatient leading the Israelites all those years, yet consider the patience God had during those same forty years as He dealt with His children’s disobedience, ingratitude and complaints. In fact, consider how patient God has been with mankind since the beginning of time. We err and stray, forget and disobey, ignore, defy and even deny Him, yet He still hasn’t given up on us. Mercifully, we have a God who loves us and, as Paul tells us, love is patient and kind. Remembering that the measure we use to give will be used to measure what we receive, we must be patient with others if we want God to be patient with us.
As the weather up north cools, our snowbird neighbors have begun returning to their southwest Florida homes. One neighbor recently arrived from Portland, Oregon, a city that ranks third in a list of cities with the most depressing winters. Their weather forecast alternates between cloudy with rain showers to partly cloudy with a 60% chance of rain and that’s not likely to improve! Their early November temperatures will range from highs in the mid-60s to lows in the mid-40s with a UV index that never gets above a 2. On the other hand, our ten-day forecast fluctuates between sunny and mostly sunny with no more than a 10% chance of rain. Temperatures will rise to the mid-80s during the day and fall to the mid-60s at night; the UV index is 6 or 7. In short, Portland is damp, gray and dreary and we’re dry, warm and sunny (and should wear sunblock). On my neighbor’s first day back in our tropical paradise, while relaxing on her lanai with a book, she happened to fall asleep. Upon waking, hearing the mockingbird’s happy song and feeling the warm gentle breeze on her face, she had a moment of confusion and forgot where she was. Feeling incredibly peaceful, relaxed and refreshed, for a moment she actually thought she’d died and gone to heaven!
Printed on the tee-shirt were Paul’s words from Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things.” While the shirt, part of a new line of Christian workout wear, would be a great conversation starter at the gym, the message is somewhat misleading. I could wear that shirt and say those words but, try as I might, I’d still be unable to bench press 450 pounds! That, however, is not why the message is misleading. It’s because the rest and most important part of Paul’s words—“through Christ who strengthens me”—are missing. Paul’s words are not words of self-sufficiency but of God’s all-sufficiency. The apostle was not boasting of himself and his strength but rather of God’s strength and power that enable us to do His work.
Devotions of the Heart 