I remember a story I heard about a man who had been a prisoner of war. He said one of the torturous things about that experience was the sheer boredom. He was trapped in a small cage with nothing to distract him from his fear and pain. All he had was whatever he could dredge up from his own memories and imagination. He said he would have lost his mind except for some hymns that he had buried in his memories. He would sing them over and over, making up new verses of his own.
After hearing that story, I decided I should make sure I knew and memorized all the words to my favorite hymns. I didn’t think I was in any danger of becoming a prisoner of war, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.
Today’s verse makes me think of that story because it contains the lyrics for one of the songs I have buried in my memories. We used to sing it in Sunday School when I was a child. So many of the songs I know are made up of Bible verses. I run across them all the time.
Today’s verse is an especially comforting one. It’s definitely one that might help me maintain a proper perspective and stay sane if I were imprisoned. I hope I never ever will be, but no matter what trouble I run into, God will always be my very present help, my refuge and my strength.
Dear God,
Thank you for the people in my past who taught me the Bible through song so that it stuck with me all these years. Thank you for the promise of your presence and your help. Thank you for being a refuge for me and giving me the strength to do what you ask me to do. Help me not to despair in times of trouble but to seek your face instead.
Today’s verse makes me think of the one time I went skydiving. Don’t be impressed, I did a tandem jump where I don’t actually have to know much of anything. I think we spent about one hour before the jump going over the equipment and the procedure. Not a whole lot of preparation for a death-defying activity.
Because it was a tandem jump, my very experienced guide would jump with me. Basically, I was his baggage, his screaming baggage.
Once I had been prepped and outfitted we took off in the plane to take us over our jump spot. Then I was strapped securely to my guide. Surprisingly I was strapped onto his front like the lead rider on a tandem bicycle but snugged together close. I would jump out the door first!
I remember the scariest part. The plane door was thrown open and the vastness of the open skies lay before me. Right outside the door was a tiny step. My guide yelled over the wind, “I want you to step out of the plane onto that little platform.”
I couldn’t do it. My foot just wouldn’t move.
My guide, now speaking right into my ear, said, “Don’t be afraid, I’m right here.” I could feel his weight behind me. I could feel the snug harness. I could feel his strong hand on my shoulder.
I stepped out. And then I stepped out into nothingness. What exhilaration!
Like my skydiving guide, God promises to be with me, to help me and hold me tight. My skydiving guide was an expert in skydiving. God is God, the righteous and all-powerful Creator of the universe!
If I can trust the skydiving guide with such a dangerous and scary thing, I can trust God with anything. And by trusting Him, I can leap confidently into the exhilarating unknown.
Dear God,
Thank you for this beautiful promise! Thank you for being with me. Thank you for reminding me of your qualifications. Thank you for strengthening me, helping me, and holding onto me with your righteous right hand. What a beautiful honor. Im sorry for the times when I am afraid and fail to step forward the way you ask me to. Please give me courage and faith to trust you.
Someone once told me that heaven will consist of being around God and worshipping Him for eternity. I remember thinking that didn’t sound great at all. Why would I want to go to a heaven like that?
At the time I was a kid who was bored with church. We went every week no matter what. We had to wear uncomfortable clothes and sit in uncomfortable wooden pews for over an hour. Sometimes we stood up and sang slow, dull songs or recited strange words. And for a good part of the time, we listened to some guy drone on and on about things I didn’t understand. This is a child’s experience of church (and unfortunately, some adults experience it this way too.)
All of that was categorized in my mind as “worshipping God”. So boring, monotonous, confusing, and uncomfortable.
So when I heard heaven would be an eternity spent worshipping God in His temple, I was appalled.
But as I got to know God, I started to understand the difference between the rituals we humans have wrapped around worship and actual worship. God doesn’t care what I’m wearing or what I’m sitting on while I praise Him. He doesn’t ask me to sing songs that I can’t relate to. None of that matters.
God just wants my heart to be open to experience all that He is and to revel in it. And He is BEAUTIFUL. Imagine the most beautiful scene you have ever seen, smelled, felt, tasted… experienced. Imagine the satisfaction of learning something new and doing it well in an innovative way. Imagine the most deeply you have ever loved or been loved. Then multiply those feelings by a thousand. God is more beautiful, more lovely, good, awesome, wonderful than anything I can imagine. To be in His presence will feel better, happier, more joyous, more satisfying than anything I have yet known.
That’s why, in today’s verse, the Psalmist is asking for one wish, and his fantasy is to sit and gaze at God’s beauty for all of his days.
Dear God,
Thank you for showing me glimpses of your amazing beauty. I look forward to being in your presence, gazing at your beauty, and experiencing your amazing goodness for all eternity!
I didn’t know aging was going to be like this. As a kid, even into my 20s and 30s, I saw old people almost as a separate species. They struggled with things I would never struggle with. They complained about things I would never need to deal with. They were old.
I remember the exact day I felt the first twinklings of age and degeneration. I was 22 years old. I spent the late afternoon playing frisbee with reckless abandon on a golf course. I ran fast, jumped high, and dove after the frisbee freely without a thought toward injury. What joy! But the next day I was sore. Very sore. So sore I could hardly move.
I was so perplexed.
I had experienced muscle soreness before but only after rigorous training as part of a sports a team. This time I was more sore than I’d ever been, and I had simply been playing. Just running and jumping and diving onto the manicured grass.
I realized then that I had crossed some threshold from the invincibility of youth into the nonstop, gradual decline of age.
But I still had no idea.
Now, well into my 50s I probably still don’t have a clue what it’s like to be 70 or 80. But I know that it’s not going to get any better. I’m not going to ever be younger than I am right now. I won’t be able to get much stronger no matter how hard I try. I won’t get more energy. My skin will just continue to sag and shrivel. My body is very slowly decaying. As today’s verse says, my outer person is being destroyed.
Cheery.
This is the result of our rebellion against God and the way of this fallen world. Everything decays and everyone eventually dies.
Thankfully the verse doesn’t stop there. It says I don’t have to give up because my inner person is being renewed day by day. My soul can be as vigorous as ever. I can have the invincibility of youth, in spirit, through the power and grace of God.
Because Jesus conquered death for me, I don’t have to worry about death at all. It will come, but that’s not the end. It’s no fun to age. But if I focus on the state of my spirit rather than the state of my body, I can be full of hope for the future instead of despair.
Dear God,
Thank you for the hope you gave me when Jesus conquered death. I’m so glad I do not have to fear my end. Remind me not to fret about what is happening to my body. Show me what is important. Teach me to look for and rely on your daily renewal of my inner personso that I can inspire hope in others no matter my age.
As a student in school I always hated group projects. Ugh! And as an adult I did not enjoy meetings and collaborations and projects where I needed to rely on other people. Unfortunately, this was 98% of my job. (As for that remaining 2%, since I was the boss, I did manage to assign myself some fun projects I could do all by myself.)
With maturity (and humility), I have learned to appreciate the contributions of and camaraderie with others, but I still crave some projects all to myself where I can do things exactly the way I want to.
Despite my introverted tendencies even I recognize that God did not design me to live this life alone. This is especially apparent when things go wrong or the unexpected happens. Having close relationships comes in really handy when I get a flat tire late at night. It’s helpful to have a friend to call who won’t hesitate to come help. When I had to have brain surgery, I saw exactly how important my good friends were. They visited me, brought me food, took care of me. That was a very humbling experience but is exactly what today’s verse is talking about.
The key is to be that friend and brother or sister to other people in my life. When I first read that verse I thought of the people who have loved me and been there for me in difficult times. There have been so many, thank God!
But really I should be reading that verse thinking who I have been a friend to. Who have I loved at all times and been there for in difficult times?
Dear God,
Thank you so much for providing such good friends and brothers and sisters to me in difficult times. What a wonderful gift community and love is!Teach me to be a friend who loves at all times and a sister who is available and ready during difficult times. Open my eyes to see the people in my life who need my comfort, help, or encouragement today. And please give me the strength and wisdom to provide it.
I’ve always wondered about the Old Testament and the New Testament. Why are they both included as part of the Bible? Why does God seem to have a different set of rules in the New Testament? Is the Old Testament still important?
The Old Testament describes God’s original agreements with His people and how that panned out. Short answer: it didn’t go well. When God first created people, He gave us just one rule (don’t eat fruit off one particular tree), with fatal consequences if broken. We broke that rule almost immediately. But God relented and allowed us to live, albeit with ugly consequences.
Later He gave us some new rules that came with wonderful promises if we obeyed and dreadful warnings if we did not. These rules are collectively known as the Law. He really wanted us to obey the Law and live with His blessings. But again we went very far in the opposite direction. God still allowed His people to live, but again we had to live with the ugly consequences of our rebellion.
And now comes today’s verse which is sort of between the Old and New Testaments. Isaiah is prophesying that God will begin to relieve the horrors of those terrible consequences of our rebellion. He will do a “new thing”.
The New Testament is the story of that new thing: Jesus. Jesus summed up the Law for us in two simple commands: love God and love other people. The huge difference with this new thing — the new rule, the new agreement — is that God knows I will fail again. He planned for that. He sent Jesus to take my disobedience upon Himself and die for it so I don’t have to. All I have to do is accept that gift from Jesus and keep trying to love.
Imagine a kid in a batting cage excited to try to hit baseballs coming out of a pitching machine. The balls are flying hard and fast. The coach is standing by the machine telling the kid where to stand safely and how and when to swing. The kid thinks she knows better and steps too close to the plate. Smack! She gets hit in the elbow because she didn’t listen to the coach.
She really wants to learn to hit fast balls though so once she recovers the coach gives her a helmet and an elbow guard, but she tosses them aside saying they are too cumbersome. She thinks she knows better. She steps up to the plate and crowds it. Smack! She gets hit in the shoulder.
The coach is sad. The kid is in pain.
The coach watches the kid try to recover and comes up with a new plan. He calls over his son, Jesus. He says, “Jesus, go stand between the ball machine and that kid. If she crowds the plate again, stand so that the ball will hit you instead.” Jesus agrees.
Hopefully when I am that kid, I accept Jesus’s gift and thank him, but also try my hardest to obey and not step into the line of fire.
Dear God,
Thank you for your new wonderful plan to save me from myself and my own stupidity and selfishness. Thank you for sending Jesus to die on my behalf so I don’t have to worry about my past sins. Guide me toward obeying you in the future and give me strength and wisdom to avoid making the same stupid, selfish mistakes again.
I don’t like reading this verse, if I’m honest, because I have definitely gotten out of the habit of going to church. Since Covid I have watched my local church’s live streaming service every Sunday morning.
Covid is no longer what is preventing me. I have all sorts of excuses and rationalizations and reasons, but it’s largely just so much easier to flip on the TV at the prescribed time and sit on my couch to listen to the praise songs and then the sermon. I can even watch it later if something important needed to happen during the church hour. (What could be more important than church?) And if I can watch it later, it’s so easy just to not watch it at all.
But then I come to today’s verses.
Clearly I am not being obedient here. I am not gathering together with other Christians to encourage them or consider them or provoke them to love or good deeds.
Now, it’s true that the “gathering together” part does not necessarily have to be at church on Sunday. It could be anywhere, anytime, for any reason. The problem is that my husband and I moved to where we live now at the start of the pandemic. We didn’t get a chance to find a church and go in person to meet people and establish any relationships there. There is no one at the church we “attend” every Sunday that knows who I am or that I am there (in Spirit.) How could I possible encourage anyone while staring at a TV screen? (Other than my husband, I suppose.) How could I provoke love and good deeds in anyone when they have never met me or even seen me once?
Sitting in a pew listening to a church sermon is also not really the place where these things happen, but by physically being in the group, I will meet people, interact with them, gradually get to know some — even as an introvert. It happens. There are also other group activities within a church — volunteer events, classes, celebrations — where I can show my consideration for other people, love them, provoke them to love, and encourage them.
I just can’t obey today’s verse from my couch, no matter how much I want to.
Dear God,
Thank you for today’s verse even though I do not want to hear it. Thank you for shining a spotlight on this glaring failure in my walk with you. Please forgive my laziness, selfishness, and rationalizations. And now show me how you’d like me to step into a group of your followers so that I can encourage them and love them and provoke love and good deeds among them. Give me wisdom, strength, and courage!
It’s true. I should have quit sooner, but I just couldn’t seem to let go. Fear of the unknown held me back. Terror actually. And I suppose a little pride too. I was proud of my job title, Technical Director. (See, even now I’m still proud of it enough that I had to include it in this story.)
But then I encountered something even scarier than not having an income. I was so miserable and desperate that I contemplated ending my life. That scared me even more.
It was then that I stumbled across this verse. At that time in my life it felt as if God were speaking directly to me through this one verse, saying everything I needed to hear.
He said, “You don’t need to live your life the way you’ve been told to live it your entire life. I know you think you should want money, power, status, a career… success. But you don’t really need any of those things. That’s the pattern of this world. Those things are only getting in the way of you knowing me. So it’s time to let them go.”
And so, I decided to take God at His word. I wouldn’t end my life. I would just end my job and see what happened. If things got worse, I could always revisit option A.
But things got better. I discovered that God’s will is good, pleasing, and perfect just as the verse says.
I’m not saying my life has been all sunshine and butterflies since quitting that job. But I learned a very valuable lesson about what I think I’m supposed to do simply because that’s what people do. The lesson is that it’s ok to do something weird and different, something that perplexes other people, if it’s something God wants me to do.
Because of stepping out in faith that one time, I’ve learned to take more steps toward God. And I keep learning that He is faithful. He can be trusted. His will is always better than what I could have managed myself or even dreamed of.
Dear God,
Thank you so much for pursuing me, for showing me a better path when I was on the wrong one. Please continue to point me in the best direction, your direction. I trust you. Forgive me for letting fear hold me back and for letting pride change my course. Teach me to be courageous and step boldly and humbly forward as you lead me.
Old movies and tv shows used to portray primitive cultures that sacrificed people to their volcano god. The Simpsons did an episode like that. And I guess the King Kong movie was similar except that instead of a volcano they would sacrifice to a giant ape to appease their god.
How did these people know how to please their god? Was it trial and error? And who first thought of the idea to throw someone in the volcano? “Hey, maybe the crops will be plentiful if we toss Betsy over that fiery cliff!” It’s actually not far-fetched. People will do crazy things if they think “the universe” will reward them.
As Christians, we are very fortunate to have a God, the only true God and Creator of everything, who told us exactly what He expects of us. He even had people write it down for us.
Yet we still disobeyed!
The ancient Israelites were noted to have, at times, ignored God’s less deadly commands and instead sacrifice their children “in the fire” to the foreign god Molech.
What’s up with all the sacrificing? God doesn’t ask for this. He hates it, in fact. I’m very glad of that.
Today’s verse is a reminder that all I need to do to obey God is ask Him for instruction and listen to His answers. I should not come up with my own ideas and use trial and error. I should not do what feels right or feels sacrificial just because it feels sacrificial. God loves me and He makes His will plain. It starts with love. Always.
Dear God,
Thank you so much for your word, the Bible. Thank you that I can read it anytime I want in almost any language. What a gift! Thank you that I don’t have to guess and I don’t have to sacrifice any children to a volcano or a giant ape. Please guide me back to your beautiful, loving path when I have gone astray.
We bought a house several years ago that had a pretty significant safe built in. I’d never had a safe before. I pondered what I should put in the safe. I guessed that typically people put in their gemstones and jewelry and gold bouillon and rare coins — the kind of stuff you see spilling out of treasure chests in pirate movies.
I didn’t have any of that stuff.
I had to spend some time thinking about what my treasure was. As a photographer, I realized my photos were my treasure. And they are all stored digitally on a hard drive. Thousands and thousands of photos that I sell online. I have backups of my photo hard drive and thought it would be a good idea to put one in the safe.
Imagine the disappointment a burglar would have when breaking into our safe. A hard drive? Where are the stacks of cash and the rubies and diamond necklaces?!
Today’s verse makes me think about whether I have a safe in my heart where I keep my treasure. It would be something I protect and value and lock up and check on often. I guess that would involve memorizing and remembering my treasure.
What do I treasure in that way? Memories? Names and faces of people I have known? Things I learned or books I read or movies I watched?
Am I treasuring the right things?
If I treasure a person, I will keep photos of them around and notes they have written me. I will keep their name in my address book from phone to phone. I will stay in touch with them even if I move across the country. I will remind myself of them by looking at the photos, reading the notes, and contacting them often or getting together with them if possible.
If I don’t treasure a person, I will forget about them. I will delete their contact information from my phone. I probably won’t have any photos of them, but if I do, they will be buried at the bottom of a box in the back on my closet. One day maybe I will think, hey, that’s someone I used to know, what was their name?
Do I treasure God in my heart? Do I read His word and keep it handy and refer to it often, reminding me of who He is and what He looks like? Have I stored His word in the safe in my heart? Or is it at the bottom of a box in the back of my closet?
Dear God,
Forgive me for the ways that I do not treat you and your word like a treasure. You are my most valuable treasure in fact! Show me ways that I am crowding my safe with stupid things that aren’t valuable. Help me to clear out the wrong treasures and fill my safe with your word and your will.
