Month: August 2020

Psalm 5: 7 – 8
“But I, by your great love,
   can come into your house;
in reverence, I bow down
    toward your holy temple.
Lead me, Lord, in your righteousness
because of my enemies—
make your way straight before me.” (1)

Psalm 5 comes fresh from the front lines of life’s conflicts. Here, there are festering wounds, and here there are silent prayers whispered to the Commander-In-Chief! 

The intensity of the conflict brings night prematurely to the soul. The sky is bereft of all signs of hope. There is a depth of loneliness for the petitioner waiting for God’s comforting presence, like a child waiting expectantly for his mother’s overdue return. “Each morning, I bring my requests to You and wait expectantly.” The most treasured word in every human’s vocabulary, ‘friend,’ is sadly missing here. That deficiency is felt all the more in the theater of personal conflict. When abandonment, based on innuendo and insufficient facts, happens, the brain seeks retaliation.
Battles in this life are well known, to this present moment surveillance reveals many weary and exhausted warriors. 

The person under our consideration here is conflicted in distinguishing friend from foe. Because of his enemies, a lifetime of happy memories grinds to a halt.                  

However, here is the story of a man who feels the winds of God. Amid the torment and anguish of his soul, he lifts his sail to catch the winds of God that transport him to his more profound inner being, where he discovers God already in waiting for him.
“But I, by your great love,
    can come into your house;
in reverence, I bow down
    toward your holy temple.
Lead me, Lord, in your righteousness
    because of my enemies—
    make your way straight before me.”

Compare and contrast the two diametrical opposite ventures experienced here. The first venture delivers our protagonist to the swamp of despair. The second brings him to a destination of magnanimous promise and everlasting hope. Be it noted that these two experiences are the only ones possible to every human. The first possible choice is firmly rooted in the physical enticements to satisfy a materialistic existence. The second choice is clarified to consciousness by an insatiable longing that burns like a fire inside an individual, to discover something more than that which the first choice offers.

As an architect plans, designs and oversees the construction of a building, that building already exists in the architect’s mind even before he draws a plan to lay one stone upon another. The building already has an existence in the spirit of the architect. 

God is the architect of each person’s life. There is a blueprint of each life ‘in God’s house.’

    “But I, by your great love,
    can come into your house;
in reverence, I bow down
    toward your holy temple.
 Lead me, Lord, in your righteousness
    because of my enemies—
    make your way straight before me.”

Deliberately, he chooses his Father’s house, ‘the house not made with hands.’  Here the Eternal Architect shows the seeker, himself as the finished product of the Creator’s loving hands: “And God saw that it was good. The suppliant sees what is and what God meant him to be.

Such is the transforming effect upon everyone who chooses to dwell ‘in God’s righteousness. Alfred, Lord Tennyson has it right in his invitation:
“Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet- Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.”(2)

+Prayer To Follow This Meditation

Bring Your peace to my Soul, O loving God.
The thunderous roar of the senseless world is overwhelming me.
Please let me feel the touch of Your gentleness, in the breeze that whispers from Heaven. From the gloomy blackness creeping into every corner that I inhabit here, I lift my eyes to see the lights shining through Heaven’s windows.
Fill my spirit with images of a Father, waiting nightly for my return to receive my assurance of safe-keeping in love.
Open my lips with songs of praise to greet the morning. Through the long night, You have been keeping faithful watch. I offer back the life I owe so that it will be fuller and more vibrant for Your Glory in the depth of Your love. In the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, I pray. Amen

HYMN: Lead Me, Lord

 

 

NOTES

1. Scripture quotes are from the NIV translation
2. Alfred, Lord Tennyson in The Higher Pantheism
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45323/the-higher-pantheism

1. Photo – Stock images and as indicated on photo

 

Suggested Scripture Reading: John 4: 1 – 42  (It is strongly recommended that the story be read in its entirety.)

Scripture Emphasis:

John 4:5-7 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. ⁷When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”

I invite you to use your imagination to consider another episode in the life of Jesus. The purpose of doing so is to examine some critical ingredients in the formation of a human personality. The story that follows represents thousands of like souls that we encounter as followers of Jesus Christ. Perhaps you will be led to show a measure of compassion because of your association with Him. You may awaken renewed Hope that self-forgiveness may yet be the guiding light, that one day leads another into the Father’s Kingdom. 

This meditation retells the story commonly referred to as “The Woman At The Well.”  Essentially, it is the account of the unmasking of a soul in grave danger of being lost in the tangled underbrush of an uncaring, and even cruel world.

The hills surrounding Sychar, the town which the Samaritan woman called home, vaulted the many merciless rumors concerning her. Uncontrolled tongues, bound by over-generous self-evaluation, wagged to expand upon the already rampant rumors. As Mariam, for that is the chosen pseudonym for her, made her way, in the blistering heat of the noon-day sun, echoes from the prison walls that entombed her, mercilessly rehearsed the details of a wasted life, her life! “There is no escaping this ‘ body of death,’ ” thought Mariam as she tiredly makes her way towards Jacobs Well. Which is worse, to be ridiculed in public, by neighbors who care not to distinguish fact from fiction, or the relentless torture of self-examination of her moral failures, with its predetermined conclusion that mercy has fled in horror?

Mariam scanned the scene to confirm that no potential tormentors were present at the well. She made a contract with herself to endure the pain of the noon-day sun rather than the insults levied against her troubled soul.
Disbelief stabbed her weakened embattled soul! Someone was sitting on the very rock where she placed her water jars for filling! Must she return home empty-handed or, must she prepare for one more desperate attempt at survival? Her inside voice argues for her immediate retreat ” You are not fit to come in contact with another! Like a leper, you must cry out,” Unclean, Unclean?”

The agony of the human soul, not unknown even among the refined and respectful, contrasting the difference between what is and what one hoped to be, now grips Mariam’s imagination.

The familiar themes of childhood-play had at one time engaged her. Her signature of endorsement was on all the dreams of graceful and respectful womanhood. But all was lost in the tangled undergrowth of false promises and moral deception. Yet from the direction of Jacob’s Well, it seemed to Mariam that she was entering a safe harbor’s calm waters. If the world with an iron grip fashioned who she is, would God forget what purpose He intended for her at the time of her creation? Is it not a most critical consideration for all, it is not one’s feeble hold on God, but God’s mighty grasp on us, that matters most?

It’s too late now to retreat, Jesus has seen her!
Gently He knocks upon the door of her personality with a request that reveals the common need they both share, the need for water! Mariam’s basic human decency awaits with bated breath, the answer to Jesus’ question, “Will you please give me a drink”? Should she rely upon her voluntary deafness once again? A wave of rare, unexperienced pity so needed by Mariam, emanated from Him.

 Into which room, then, within her private space, should she admit this stranger? She must be careful to take Him nowhere near the common-room, made ugly by rumors and innuendoes. She must avoid at all cost the truth about who and what she IS. 

Miriam concludes that nothing too personal will result from a conversation about religion. The ensuing conversation is deliberately scant in personal revelation. Miriam’s heart sinks like a stone into the waves of pity she just now had felt. Helplessly she follows Jesus into the darkest and most dingy room of her inner self, the place of Mariam’s greatest need.

The doors of Heaven open wide in the sacred moments that follow. The Saviour of the world restores an imprisoned daughter with the purpose God intended from her birth. Tears stain her cheeks, as Miriam sees everything that she is but only alongside everything that God has kept safe from all loss, the beautiful person she is capable of yet becoming! “Come and SEE, Go and Tell” is to, this day, the impetus behind the never-ending proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Ironically, Mariam’s next mission is to return to her most virulent critics, thereby revealing her unmasked soul, and at the same time covertly revealing the like mercy which they so badly needed to experience.

God knows our world’s most urgent need is to have Heaven’s Door open wide to disperse our darkness and instill a Living Hope for all of God’s children! Be gentle and be kind towards each other! 

   A Prayer To Follow This Meditation

Father, the world’s greatest need is to catch a fresh glimpse of Your Presence here and now. Our longing can not be satisfied with the images of You captured in stained-glass. Instead, we would see Jesus clothed in the bodies of those who are part of the New Creation as promised! 

Let me be Your listening ears to hear the cries of the lonely ones imprisoned within themselves. 

Give me a heart as deep as Jacob’s well to hold enough love to share with a broken and hurting world.

Please give me a mind ever conscious of Your empathy that I may see in others, hopes as yet unborn, and own a readiness to share possibilities waiting to be made real. 

Father, forgive me if I am partially to blame for the lack of trust that others have in You. It’s time for the New Creation to be more evident in this community and throughout the world! Here am I, Lord, let it start anew in me. Through Jesus Christ, my Lord. Amen.

Hymn: In The Bulb There Is A Flower

EDITORIAL NOTES

1. Scripture quotations throughout are from the NIV translation unless otherwise noted in the text.
2. The illustration as acknowledged above.