the song of the Rock

i've always felt a pull towards the idea of missions, especially foreign missions.  i love traveling. i love adventures. i love the sights, sounds, feels and tastes.  i simply adore the camaraderie of  serving with a team, meeting goals and needs, serving side by side fellow Christians of every nationality.  it's a small piece of heaven; i want every slice i can get.

for some reason (okay, let's call it what it is: SIN) it's always been a thousand times easier to find a stranger in a foreign land and share the Gospel than it is to grab the elbow of my neighbor and share this mind-blowingly good news. 

it's Easter, friends.  this week our extended family members all over the world are celebrating the climax of Christianity.  this is it!  Easter weekend is the single reason we all have hope, love, a future, a family, forgiveness.  the TOMB is EMPTY! THAT ROCK MOVED, FOLKS!! if ever there was a time to celebrate life, it's now.  if ever there was an opportunity to share Christ that was handed to you on a silver, diamond-studded platter, it's now.

it's also the time when the whole nation is "sharing" and "liking" posts, making new hashtags and changing their profile pictures to the flag of Belgium.  social media is exploding with news about, and prayers for, the victims, their families, their country… OUR country, every country! the death toll rises, names are being released, and once again anyone with a trace of spirituality is praying to whatever or whoever they think might be listening.  instead of celebrating life, thousands are mourning death.

the exciting, and scary, thing about all of this is that we've gotten our cue.  we missed it-again- but we get a second (or ten thousandth) chance.

every word i read or hear about missions fills me with both hope and shame. hope at the idea of giving as much time as God allows to serving Him in a place still waiting.   shame, because… i'm surrounded by people HERE and NOW who don't know, don't care, don't know to care and live day to day waiting for a "something." and yet i, and so many Christians, live day to day with our mouths closed.  without the glamour and thrill of a passport stamp, the concept of bringing up faith, religion or an afterlife is deemed as  inappropriate and socially unacceptable. 

and yet...

and yet, there's a world out there crying out for answers and mercy.

for a hope that lasts longer than a paycheck.

for a life that is free of pain, guilt, death, gore, sickness, bullets and bombs.

for a ruler that… is not quite like any current (or past) dictator, king or president.

we have it.  we have all of that.

because we have HIM.

HE is it.  our Hope that "enters once for all" into the true temple "not made with human hands" with a better sacrifice than all the goats and sheep in creation- Himself.

He is our Life- the source of all Life, and the way to a Life that will never end and that makes this earthly life as pale and transient as morning fog.

He is the Ruler that will never be unjust, protects all His own and whose term in office never ends.  no currency except faith.  no taxes except joyful praise. no end at all, except of sin and all its consequences. 

this is the song that never ends; it just goes on and on, my friends! it started just outside an empty hole in the ground, and will continue for all eternity, growing ever louder as we all join our voices.

we have it- all of it.

not only that, but we also have a direct order from our Ruler to bring as many others into this Kingdom as possible. He hears these cries, and has told us to show them the Answer.

the ancient Jews celebrated the Passover every single year, to serve as a reminder of their salvation.  they were even told how to share the meaning of their festival, so they would be prepared with an answer every time someone asked them what on earth they were doing.

as great as that holiday was… we celebrate the best of all Passovers- the final one, where our Lamb paid the final price and paved the way to God Himself, open to all who accept it.  we also each have an answer, a testimony, a true drama, a personal story to share every single time someone asks us what on earth we are doing.

i promise you this- you will honk some people off.  they will tell you that are an idiot, and worse.  they will tell you to shut up. they may end friendships, cost you business, hurt deeply.  your story may mean nothing to whoever you are talking to. Jesus Himself was told off by the  "religious elite." His answer: if the people won't, the rocks will.  the Good News will not be silenced.  it WILL be told- the only difference is the "how."  i haven't done my part.  i want to start- before my garden border stones start singing and put me to ultimate shame.

but i also promise that there is someone in your immediate vicinity that will hear and respond.  whether or not you ever hear about it, someone is broken and in desperate need of a Healer.  you knowing or taking credit is soooo not the point.  the personal cost is also not the point. whatever cost to you, Christ's was eternally greater. take a leap of faith and have your answer ready. there is nobody less worthy of the Gospel than you; there is nobody more worthy of the Gospel than any ISIS leader.  everyone needs to hear. and if we don't share, the rocks themselves will instead.  please don't give them our job. it's our time to rise up together and share Easter joy!

if you remember the point in your life when the message finally sunk in,  let that give you the strength to be that joy to someone else. 

let this Easter be a vivid reminder of what is at stake.   let His hope fill you with both joy and courage.  make this the best Easter of your life, and the first true Easter for someone else.  silence those rocks-ready, set, go!

a flick of the wrist and a fling of the Rock

i don't really want to sound more spiritual than you, but…

i actually HAVE a prayer closet.

and it's IN A CLOSET.  i know- it's pretty fab.

even more fab, i had this idea before War Room came out. 

since last summer when there was a change in roommates, there was necessarily a change in the room situation as well.  so i moved across the house into the master bed that had a bathroom the same size as my previous bedroom as well as a walk-in closet that i could actually walk into, turn around in, put all my stuff and still have space left over by the window for my "secret" little prayer corner. 

the past few months this has been something of a refuge for me.  there's a super comfy chair that is tiny but is both soft and supportive for my back.  there's a ridiculously soft blanket that the cat loves almost as much as me.  there's a bedside table just the right size and height for a Bible, notebook, pens, devotional and a little candle stand, for those particularly rough devo times when i just need some mood lighting and calming fragrance.  the newest addition to my area is a bulletin board with pens, pins and fun colors of paper to write down prayer requests, Bible verses and hymns.  yeah… i need a bigger board already.

outside my prayer closet, i have a real life.  one that has been kicking my tail the past weeks and months.  circumstances have been flung well outside my wingspan.  Type A people do not like this.  no, sir, not at all!  we do not like it, Sam I Am!!  but again and again i have noticed how those whispers i grasp for in the prayer closet reach me across town when i'm not ready. 

this week,  tuesday was spent doing some serious wigging out, along with working through some deep stuff with other seriously cool brains.  it concluded with flipping through some tv channels where we happened upon ABC's showing of "Of Kings and Prophets"- featuring the one and only David, son of Jesse. 

first impression: was that part… or that part… ever in the Bible?

second impression: woah- *THAT* was NOT in the Bible!!!!!!!!!!

just like last week, wednesday came right after tuesday and the Cubbies' next lesson was…. David and Goliath!! 

i think the fact that i'd been up all day and was operating solely with the aid of coffee was a saving grace, because my hyperactivity finally matched that of the 15 pre-K kids.  so we got our pictures colored, we said our verse -("Psalm 56:11 In God i trust, i shall not be afraid; what can man do to me?"), - we got everybody's height measured on the wall and sang the Cubby Song with great vim and vigor before sitting down to hear one of the most widely-known Bible stories of all time. we reviewed last week's lesson- David's anointing- before diving in to the tale of a young (but strapping, good looking, and nice) guy and his simple faith that takes on a vicious giant of mind-blowing proportions.

every day for over a month he'd stand on a hill facing the Israelite campfires and holler.  he'd just mock them, taunt them, humiliate them, slander them.  he'd tell them exactly what he though about them, their mothers and their God.  their God that nobody could see, hovered over some fancy box in a tent, and obviously didn't care enough to stop the conceited bragging of the Philistine.  the Cubbies stared wide-eyed at the paper where their heights and names were written, then a few feet above that where the teacher's names and heights were… and then where the wall met the ceiling- which is where Goliath's shoulders would have been.  they laughed when they heard about how Goliath was teasing the Israelite's God, calling him "stupid" and "weak" and "powerless."  really, it was just because i said the word stupid.  there is actually a Hebrew word for "stupid" and i forget what it is- but the point is that in those days,  the winning army "proved" that they had the superior deity.  Goliath had probably never lost any fight since he was out of diapers. he was the Chuck Norris of the ancient world, minus any sense of humility or human decency or deodorant; clearly their god was better.

umm, the Philistines worshipped a fish.  

his name was dagon.  i can't even capitalize that horrid, blasphemous name.

i was impressed that the kids listened this far to a story we all knew so well.  but after all the taunts and teases, the climax had finally arrived:

a handsome young shepherd stepped up, fresh from the fields, slingshot in hand.  the bestest ever part of this story is that the battle was won before the boy so much as twitched his slingshot hand.  with just a word, he announced his imminent victory. 

the kids finished his sentences, each time growing in excitement and volume:

"i don't need a sword, because i have-"

God!

"i don't need a shield, because i have-"

GOD!

"i don't need armor, or big strong muscles, or a physique of mammoth dimensions, because i have-"

GOD!!!!!!

with that, a flick of the wrist and a fling of a rock, Goliath fell down dead and that foul mouth never uttered another evil word.

growing up, i'd always heard this story explained something like this: David trusted in God and thus was able to defeat the giant facing him.  if you trust in God, you can also defeat your giant.

sounds great, until you actually have a giant.

Jesus and a very, very few other people know about the particular giant i'm facing now.  this giant has been coming against me every day for years, but it's been shouting extra loud the past month or so. it's big, and ugly and not really a fair fighter. 

all the dodgeballs are on his side. 

most of my players are on the DL.

none of the odds are in my favor.  whatever inning or down or quarter or half we're in, i'm exhausted.

i don't even have a slingshot (and if i did, it would be useless to me.  useless).

just over 3 years ago, our church started using a new LifeGroup curriculum for all the kids' classes.  instead of isolating each Bible story and yanking moral lessons out of them, it teaches the Bible as one progressive story, drawing together the pieces and unifying them.  by taking a step back and seeing the One Story as a whole, it is possible to see that there is really only One main character, and that each individual piece is about Him, too. His story starts even before creation, not with the manger. He is the main character in every chapter and verse.

by rethinking and rephrasing the story of David and Goliath, you instead get an explanation that is a bit more like this:

you are not David.

you're just not. sorry.

you're one of the ragtag Israelite soldiers, huddling with David's older brothers in their tent, crying like little girls at the hopeless situation and wondering if deliverance from the unbeatable foe could ever be possible.

ha ha!  you probably don't think that sounds better, do you?  it is.

because of who IS playing the part of David. you ready?  it's Jesus!

just in the nick of time, a humble Shepherd steps forward and ever-so quietly and calmly tells His terrified brethren that if God has stuck with Him through the past trials, God will certainly be with Him through this. His desert temptations and persecutions weren't for nothing- they were for this moment.  He sees the giant in its appropriate dimensions.  He's sized up the problem and can clearly see that the Immortal, Invisible, God only Wise is going to win and save His people. He is the victory.  not us. 

He is the Word that shouts his promised victory to every compass direction.

He is the Rock that is always right on target.

He is the unexpected hero that fits zero of their ideas of a proper champion, yet accomplishes the insurmountable task while the "soldiers" were about to wet their loincloths from terror. 

i don't know about you, but i find great comfort in knowing that i can retreat to the safety of my prayer closet and let my Anointed Shepherd take this fight.  His aim is much better.