Brown's Daily Word 11-26-08

Good Morning,
Douglas Copeland wrote a book entitled Girlfriend in a Coma. In the book, a young woman comes out of a coma that she has been in since ‘79. After she has been out of the coma for quite awhile, someone asks about her impressions of people who live in the ‘90s. She says, “A lack. A lack of convictions, of beliefs, of wisdom, or even of good old badness. No sorrow, no nothing. The people I knew when I came back, they only, well, existed. It was so sad.” But what would you expect from people who have crammed their lives with everything but God. Praise the Lord that, the Bible tells another story. It is a story about a God who created a world and called it good. It tells about a God who says he loves the world and has loved its people into existence. It says that he came to redeem people even if it meant dying for them. It claims he came to show us that death has no power over us, and that this world is not all there is. The Bible’s story is that history is headed somewhere and that there is a divine purpose to our lives and the world. It’s message is that there can even be meaning in suffering. The Psalmist tells us: “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name” (Psalm 100:4). At the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., there is a large wooden altar from a Jewish synagogue. It was vandalized by Nazi soldiers who had come to remove all Jews from that city. The soldiers had tried to destroy the altar. You can still see the hack marks of their axes, but still decipherable across the altar is a single Hebrew phrase carved deeply into the wood. Though the axes of man attempted to delete the words, the phrase is still reads: “Know before Whom you stand.” The problem with our pagan culture is that we do not know before whom we stand; therefore we do not understand the value and purpose of life. We cannot stand at all. Is it any wonder that we have such a low view of the world and life itself? It is not a surprise that we have missed the clues about how good and wonderful life is since we have tried to erase the fact that we are to live before God in this life. David said, “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:1-3). Too often we are afraid of life. But how can we be afraid when Jesus said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Erwin McManus tells about an experience with his son who had become afraid: “One summer Aaron went to a youth camp. He was just a little guy, and I was kind of glad because it was a church camp. I figured he wasn’t going to hear all those ghost stories, because ghost stories can really cause a kid to have nightmares. But unfortunately, since it was a Christian camp and they didn’t tell ghost stories, because we don’t believe in ghosts, they told demon and Satan stories instead. And so when Aaron got home, he was terrified. ‘Dad, don’t turn off the light!’ he said before going to bed. ‘No, Daddy, could you stay here with me? Daddy, I’m afraid. They told all these stories about demons.’ And I wanted to say, ‘They’re not real.’ He goes, ‘Daddy, Daddy, would you pray for me that I would be safe?’ I could feel it. I could feel warm-blanket Christianity beginning to wrap around him, a life of safety, safety, safety. I said, ‘Aaron, I will not pray for you to be safe. I will pray that God will make you dangerous, so dangerous that demons will flee when you enter the room.’ And he goes, ‘All right. But pray I would be really, really dangerous, Daddy.’” We can be afraid of life and retreat from it, or we can become dangerous and face life with boldness. In other words, you have to know that there is a God shaped future for you and the world. All the sufferings, all the injustices, all the pain of life will one day be redeemed. As the Bible says, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” (Revelation 21:4-5). This is what Isaiah prophesied when he spoke for God saying: “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind” (Isaiah 65:17). Dr. Dale Robbins writes, “I used to think people complained because they had a lot of problems. But I have come to realize that they have problems because they complain. Complaining doesn’t change anything or make situations better. It amplifies frustration, spreads discontent and discord.” Complaining makes us miserable — not to mention everyone around us. It is a failure not to realize that God is not through with the world. God is up to something wonderful. He will redeem the world in the end. He will restore all things. He will make, “justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24). The innocence of the world will be restored and goodness will be renewed. God is up to something wonderful and he invites us to be a part of it. The world is not going around in circles, it is going in a definite direction. God will prevail over all human sin and arrogance. He will make new heavens and a new earth. With the blast of one word from his mouth all violence and quarreling will cease, and he will usher in his unshakeable kingdom that will never end. God is concerned with saving the world, not destroying it. The question is not about why this thing is taking place in your life, but what is God doing in the world and where is he taking it. The answer is that he is taking it to a glorious end. If you read the book of Revelation you realize that the world ends with triumph, blessing and the renewal of all things. In her book Mystery on the Desert, Maria Reiche describes a series of strange lines made by the ancient Nazea people in the plains of Peru, perhaps as early as 200 years before the time of Christ. The area where the lines are covers over 37 miles. It is impossible to make out what these line drawings are from the ground, and people at one time assumed they were irrigation ditches. No one really knew what they were until 1939 when Dr. Paul Kosok, of Long Island University, studied them by flying over them in an airplane. There is an assortment of perfectly straight lines, many running parallel, others intersecting, forming a grand geometric form. In and around the lines there are also strange symbols, and pictures of 70 animal and plant figures that include a spider, hummingbird, monkey and a 1,000-foot-long pelican. One geometric figure goes in a straight line for nine miles across the plain. All of them are etched on a giant scale that can only be appreciated from the sky. When viewed from high in the air, these seemingly random lines form enormous drawings of art. They have meaning. People often assume that since they cannot see the purpose of something from their perspective that there is no purpose — no reason or rhyme to what they are facing. But from God’s perspective it makes perfect sense. There is not only order and design to what he is doing, it is a work of art. It doesn’t matter if you are too small to see the whole masterpiece, it is still there. One day, looking from heaven, the mystery of what God has been doing will be clear to us. What looked like a ditch to us will be seen as a part of God’s design that has been stretched out over his universe. All the beauty and purpose of what God has done will make us say: “For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations” (Psalm 100:5).
In Christ,
Brown