Hiding Place

 

As part of my work at Roy Maas’ Youth Alternatives in Boerne, Texas, I received training in Trust Based Relational Intervention, in which psychologist Karyn Purvis explains that a person’s capacity to venture confidently out into the world is based upon lessons of trust and security properly learned in the first years of life.

 

This makes perfect sense to me, and brings to my mind the vivid image of the fortress formed by my father’s crossed legs – left foot on floor, right ankle atop left knee, so as to produce, in the imagination of a very small boy, the outlines of a castle stronghold, the opening in the ceiling of which (formed by the bent right leg) afforded access to the larger world, with all its dangers and fascinations.

 

Judging by my own crossed legs now, I expect normal growth would have required me to forego residence there after not much more than three years of age, but as a grown man I retreat to that castle often* and the extent to which I have lived the subsequent decades out of the security and confidence established there would be difficult to overstate.

 

* One of my favorite notions of God comes from Psalm 32:7:

 

            “You [o God] are my hiding place;

            you will protect me from trouble

            and surround me with songs of deliverance.”

 

Rare are the days that do not provide plenty of reason to retreat, like a very small boy, to God my hiding place. The crossed-legged castle of my infancy provides the illustration for that retreat.

 

 

Walls

               Everyone clamors to get in where the rule of law prevails. What is the rule of law? It is the Mosaic principle that every person is created in the image and likeness of God and must always be considered in that light.

               But “unless God watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.” Why? Because unless the city wall itself is the Mosaic principle of the brotherhood of all persons, the law of the jungle played out inside the city is the same as the jungle law outside the city, albeit with different rules.

 “The feeding trough in America is infinite,” T. Boone Pickens said. If you know the rules.

           The same drama is acted out continually inside every human heart. That’s what is meant by, “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” Unless my thinking is predicated upon my stake in the well-being of every other human, it’s just predation.

Confidence

Every single moment of our lives is a Psalm 27:3 moment. 

("Even if I'm surrounded by an army I'll fear nothing; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident." (Confident in God's capacity to accomplish His purposes through me and in the certainty that my unity and collaborations with Him will yield a beautiful bountiful harvest! That is, war has been declared against God's purposes in your life; an army is besieging you and all of those God would have you touch with His love (powerful forces that grow out of our fears are at work to separate and isolate and destroy us) yet you need worry about nothing!)) 

If God does not miraculously deliver us, we're going to get slaughtered. "But take heart!" Jesus said (John 16:33). "With Me, you're in the eye of the storm."

Mac & Cheese

Life without God is empty, like macaroni without the cheese. But God will not be your cheese unless you ask. You've got to say, "God, I'll be the macaroni, You be the Cheese; fill me up!"

The Incarnation Advantage

               It’s exciting to remember that from a Biblical perspective, because of the Incarnation we celebrate today, the kids we work with at the residential treatment center are no worse off than you or I. Indeed, the Bible says their poverty puts them at a strategic advantage, because they’re unlikely to mistake this world for their true home. It’s the comfortable who are at risk of imagining they’re at home apart from Christ, that their hearts of stone are actually hearts of flesh. Yeshua (Greek: Jesus) will give our children brand new hearts, fill those hearts with His Spirit of power and of love and of sound thinking, and give them beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning, if they will only ask Him. Please pray with us that it would be so.

“Lord, You have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.” Psalm 90:1

Ponds

Going 65 on my way home from my brother’s after the Red Sox satisfying shellacking of the Yankees last Monday I hit one of the ponds that are common on San Antonio roads when it’s raining. I did a 360 and came to rest 100 yards short of who I take to be the pond’s previous victim, wobbling about the margin in the vicinity of his vehicle. I neither hit nor was I hit by anything.

               Less than 16 hours later, driving to work in the opposite direction, in approximately the same place under approximately the same conditions, traffic crept past an accident scene that included the remains of three mangled vehicles strewn across the highway, one a pickup with its cab clean off.

               Life can change in an instant; our lives hang by a thread. Pack your moments with all the love they’ll hold; it’s the only baggage that won’t be jettisoned when things begin to spin out of control.

Good Company 3

This Splendid Life can, indeed should, be yours!:

“Yet I am always with you [Abba; father];
    You hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with Your counsel,
    and afterward You will take me into glory.
 Whom have I in heaven but You?
    And earth has nothing I desire besides You.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but You are the strength of my heart
    and my portion forever . . .

As for me, my unity with You is my good.
    I have made You my refuge;
    I will tell of all Your deeds.” Psalm 73:23-28

Unite your life to the life of Yeshua* the Messiah, through faith, and your life will become a romance!

*Jesus’ name in Hebrew. This is what his dad would have called him; sounds just like the Hebrew word for salvation. The angel said to Joseph, “You are to give him the name [Yeshua] because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)