Tag Psalms

Cats are Not the Only Things I’m Allergic To

Todd R 1 Comment

Although highly allergic to cats, I love the two we have, but sometimes wonder if it’s worth the trouble.  One past Saturday night, one of the cats, named Misty, was up crying much of the night, waking us up regularly.  Eventually, I realized she must have been upset about her litter.  The store was out of the “usual,” so I tried to get away with a replacement, even though I know how finicky cats are.  Sure enough, once I changed it to what I had left of the usual stuff (kept in reserve in case of finicky cat trouble), she stopped complaining.

Why am I telling you this?  Because what happened next reminded me that God is concerned about even the most minor details of our lives, and about every living creature He has made.  That Sunday morning my reading schedule began with Psalm 8, which includes this:

“You have given [man] dominion over the works of your hands;
            you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
            and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
            whatever passes along the paths of the seas.”- Psalm 8:6-8

Misty, an indoor cat who may feel like she’s trapped in the ark.

Under the mandate given in Genesis, mankind is supposed to take care of whatever God has given us – the earth and everything in it.  My study Bible helpfully noted that this includes pets, which reminded me of Misty’s crying!  I thought maybe our cats were worth the trouble after all, but God wasn’t finished making the point.

Also on my reading schedule was Genesis 7, which includes: “And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.” – Genesis 7:24

During the flood, Noah and his family were flooded in the ark for 150 days with two of each kind of animal (but seven of each kind of clean animal, because provision was made not only for the survival of Noah’s family, but also provision for continued worship of God).  After the 150 days, they had to wait months longer for the waters to recede and the land to dry before coming out of the ark.  Noah’s family took care of an ark full of animals for more than 150 days.  They probably lost a lot of sleep!  As for me, I only have two cats and get to leave the house.  I also have allergy medicine to make it more tolerable.

Looking back at Psalm 8, the last verse declares: “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

This Lord is the same one who brought Noah, his family, and those animals through the flood.  He also cares about my family and even my pets.  In seemingly small acts like taking care of pets God has given us, we can declare the majesty of God’s name!  In whatever influence we have, big or small, God wants us to participate faithfully in the work started at creation, with the authority He has given us.

In addition to perhaps cats, what else might we be allergic to? Sin is not just a list of things we shouldn’t do, but it is our allergy to God’s dominion over the world and the way we each should have dominion over it and under him. We’re too often allergic to loving this world the way He did on the cross, yet we claim to hope for a world where that sacrificial love governs 100% of all actions.

Our Lord wants nothing more than to greet us in Paradise and say “‘Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.’”[1]  He literally died to make such a greeting possible.  Therefore, consider what creatures or people our Sovereign God has delegated to each of us.  What tasks or roles?  Jobs or ministries?  Do some of those things irritate and annoy us, as if we were allergic?

In aggregate, the church’s role is to have dominion over His entire creation, but not in the way the world would, exploiting everything for our own benefit and casting aside what doesn’t seem useful, but as a servant would.  Like a God who abhors all our sin as if He were allergic but decided to cover our sin with His own precious blood.  The same blood that covers us so that, like a compassionate Father, our Lord can gently say on a Sunday morning after a bad night of interrupted sleep:

“Be thankful you aren’t stuck in an ark for 150 days with thousands of animals.”

[1] Luke 19:17

On Spiritual Mood Swings

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Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Life is often a battle with inconsistency.  We go from feeling good about our situations and God’s favor, to feeling like we are in a spiritual desert, and back again like a pendulum.  Knowing this, God provides verses like Psalm 126:4-6, which says:

“Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
            like streams in the Negeb!
Those who sow in tears
            shall reap with shouts of joy!
He who goes out weeping,
            bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
            bringing his sheaves with him.”

The metaphor is a comparison to the south of Israel, which has a very dry climate, yet experiences flooding in a rainstorm.  The Negeb also is mentioned in the story of Caleb and his daughter Achsah.  Her inherited land was in the infertile Negeb, and she asks him also for springs of water, which he gives her.[1]

Like Achsah’s father Caleb, our Father God also provides for us in our seasons of trouble.  Here, the Psalmist compares tears to seeds, reminding us that in the dry times as well as the times of overflowing blessing, God is with us, using those circumstances.  Our current loss is future gain, and our current time of suffering is bound and measured by God’s will, like the Babylonian exile was measured at 70 years[2] and the year of Jubilee came after every 49 years[3].  After our time, we will enter His rest and rejoice eternally.

In this life we may experience spiritual and emotional extremes, like drought and flood in the desert.  Don’t overreact to the pendulum swing but count your tears as seeds.  Pray that He will restore your fortunes and thank Him that our seasons are in His hands.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” – Matthew 5:4

[1] Joshua 15:18-19
[2] Daniel 9:2, 9:24
[3] Leviticus 25:8

Perfecting Faith Through Struggle

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King David wrote many Psalms during the difficult times in his life.  Psalm 18, written “on the day when the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul,”[1] is a song David wrote to praise God for His deliverance from difficulties in the past.  David describes the depths of the troubles he faced in verses 4 and 5:

“The cords of death encompassed me;
            the torrents of destruction assailed me;
the cords of Sheol entangled me;
            the snares of death confronted me.”

There were many moments where David faced enemies seeking to kill him, a situation we may never face.  But, like David we all face struggles and, while not literally life-threatening, some of them may feel like what David describes.  Our enemies may be external or internal, physical or spiritual, and Psalm 18 can be applied to them all.  David magnifies the powers that assailed him, which John Calvin wrote, “enhances and magnifies so much the more the glory of his deliverance. As David had been reduced to a condition so desperate that no hope of relief or deliverance from it was apparent, it is certain that he was delivered by the hand of God, and that it was not a thing effected by the power of man.”  David was truly in a desperate situation and sometimes we are too.

So, how can this Psalm help us in our struggles?  I’m going to focus on only a few of the Psalm’s 50 verses, including verses 1 to 3:

“I love you, O LORD, my strength.
The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
            my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
            my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised,
            and I am saved from my enemies.”

Note that these verses come before the ones quoted earlier because before coming to God with his problems, David contemplated who God is and what he has learned about Him from experience.  When we’re struggling, we should also take the time to contemplate the nature of our God so we can get the right perspective.

David uses some military metaphors to tell us about God.  David says God is a rock, a fortress, a shield, a horn, and a stronghold.  These tell us that God:

Photo by Mario La Pergola on Unsplash
  • is a rock, immovable by our enemies and our problems.
  • is a fortress and stronghold, a secure place to flee from our enemies, where they cannot get in.
  • is a shield that protects us from harm.  Our enemies’ weapons can’t pierce God’s protection.
  • is a horn, with all the power we need to defeat our enemies.  A horn was a symbol of might in the Bible.

God is all these things for us too!

In verse 7, David added that when God answered his call for help, “the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry.”  God’s power, His “horn”, is so powerful that even the earth fears it, but we need to learn to trust in it, and it alone.

There is no sure way to learn to trust a fortress or shield, other than to test them in battle.  C.S. Lewis wrote that “God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.”  When we’re fighting an external battle against an enemy or against painful circumstances.  When we’re fighting an internal battle against temptation, a bad habit, an addiction, or maybe an unattractive character trait, God can teach us about who He is through the pain of those battles, and we can learn to trust Him more.

Although we will not defeat all of our enemies while we live in this world, and we may be frustrated knowing God is powerful enough to win, but we still fail anyway, we know that:

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
            his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
            great is your faithfulness.”[2]

He is faithfully by our side in every struggle, and eager to restore us when we fall, even if it’s every day (or more!).  But most importantly, we know that He is working in all things – even our fiercest battles – to perfect us and that He will not fail.  Even if we are unfaithful at times, He remains faithful always, and it’s His faithfulness that makes the difference.

If you’re fighting something today, remember that God is your rock, fortress, shield, horn, and stronghold, and you can trust Him.

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”  – Philippians 1:6

[1] Psalm 18:0 (title)
[2] Lamentations 3:22-23

The Lord Cares Even for Your Wilderness

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If you are like me, some days feel very eventful and productive, but other days remind me of the saying: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”  There are times when we all wonder: Who cares about what I did today?  Did today matter?  Did anyone notice?

When recently reading Psalm 29, verse 8 struck me, which says: “The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.”  Why is this verse here?  Earlier in the Psalm, the voice of the Lord thunders, shatters the tall cedars of Lebanon, and flashes like fire.  Who cares about the wilderness?  It reminded me of the tree falling with nobody around.  Why does it matter?

It matters because the Psalmist (David) wants us to know that God’s power exists even where we can’t see it and in ways we may see as inconsequential.  However, to Him, nothing is inconsequential, and no detail is too small.  Jesus tells us in Matthew 10:30 that “even the hairs of your head are all numbered.”  If a tree falls in the wilderness, God cares about it even if nobody else does.

Psalm 29 closes with “May the LORD give strength to his people!  May the LORD bless his people with peace!”  His strength and peace are available on good days and bad.  On days we feel motivated and days we don’t.  On eventful days and on days we feel we are in the wilderness with nobody to hear.

Today, God will notice you, and will work in ways that you may only know when you look back on them from eternity.  No tree falls without His knowing about it.

May His strength and peace be with you always.

“God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.” – John Piper

“The Way to Death”

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Is everything a matter of life and death?  In Deuteronomy 30:19, Moses said to the people of Israel about God’s law: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.”  This idea of things being a choice between life and death also shows up in wisdom literature, like the Proverbs, and elsewhere.  Paul wrote in Romans 5:12, “as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”  These verses don’t mean that every time you sin lightning will come down from heaven and strike you dead.  They also don’t mean that whether you choose to have corn or peas with dinner is a life-or-death decision.  But they do mean that, absent God’s grace, the necessary, inevitable consequence of sin is death.

Paul also wrote, in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Because of this gift, our bad choices and bad intentions don’t have to lead to eternal death, but we still make bad choices, and the verse(s) I’m going to highlight today is(are) a good reminder that we get tricked into bad choices.

In response to a reader suggestion, I’m writing a series about the verses I’ve quoted the most on this blog.  Today’s post is #4 of the series, covering the verse(s) quoted the 4th least out of the 10 most quoted:

“There is a way that seems right to a man,
            but its end is the way to death.” – Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25

Yes, Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 say exactly the same thing, as if the point being made was so important that it needed repeating.  This Proverb tells us that we make bad choices because they seem right.  Here I’ve used this verse a few times and in a few different ways, which I’m listing below:

Sometimes what “seems right” is physically bad for us
In one post, I explained the famous “Marlboro Man” advertising campaign begun in 1954, where a cigarette with a red filter designed for women was changed overnight into a cigarette for “manly” men, who usually had a cowboy hat and a horse.  I wrote “To make Philip Morris money, the ads declared that smoking was not a “way to death,” but that it was “right to a man” to be like the Marlboro Man.”  However, smoking can literally kill you.  Not a very spiritual point, but still true!

What’s right is not always what we’ve always done
I’ve also written about the dual Proverb that what “seems right” might be keeping us stuck in a rut and not progressing in life or in holiness.  Rather than do what’s actually right, “It’s easier to do what others have done before, or to continue what you’ve already done before, especially if repeated for a long period of time.”  While what’s comfortable may be the easy thing to do, 1 Peter 1:14-16 says (quoting Leviticus 11:44), “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.””  Since none of us are holy yet, getting there requires change, and therefore staying where we are can be “the way to death.”

Photo by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash

What’s right is not always what’s popular
In most (maybe all) cultures there are popular assumptions and ideas that just go unchallenged.  Anyone who speaks against them suffers some kind of consequence, from being shunned to even being killed in some places.  I wrote a list of quotes called “Popular Orthodoxy” about this, which included today’s Proverbs.  Popularity and peer pressure can be powerful things, giving us constant signals about what “seems right to a man”, but I’ve also written that “Sometimes wisdom flashes a red light while others are flashing green.”

What’s right is not always what we think is in our own best interest
For this one, I used an extreme example, where Herod ordered the killing of every child under 2 that lived where Jesus was born.  He didn’t want any rivals to his rule, and he didn’t want a populist uprising, so as I wrote: “Herod saw [the killings] as in his own best interest, and in the interest of Rome, but this is one of many examples of “a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.””  As I said this was an extreme example, but if you study economics, you usually learn that it assumes that people are “rational,” meaning they act in their best interest.  So, the economic theory of what “seems right to a man” is self-interest.

However, the Bible teaches us that what’s best for us is to defer our judgement of what’s best to God.  Too often we’re wrong, and Proverbs 1:7 declares:

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
            fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

This “fear” doesn’t mean we are afraid of God, but that we feel a reverent awe toward Him.  This fear leads to wisdom and leads us to choose the way that is right to God, not what “seems right” to us.  Only the omniscient God has the perspective needed to know what’s right.  Psalm 25:12 says:

“Who is the man who fears the LORD?
            Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose.”

As Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 tell us, we are easily misled to believe there is a better path than the one God chooses for us.  It’s so important that Proverbs tells us this twice, and I agree, which is why it/they make my list of most-quoted verses.