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A Great Week on The Upper Road

Yesterday our small group leader closed the meeting with prayer and ended with, “Give us a great week.”

I’ve been thinking about great weeks and wonderful days and good lives. Does God interpret those phrases differently than we do?

I think so.

My idea of a great week is one in which I get all kinds of things accomplished (my own agenda, of course), things run smoothly with not too much frustration, and there’s only one rainy day. Maybe I’d even win the lottery.

God’s idea of a great week? He is still patiently trying to teach me what great weeks look like in His terms. Wonderful days are days when I get broader glimpses of His grace, His plans, His goodness, and His love. Great weeks are weeks that I pull closer to Him and then step out further in faith and trust. My reaching for a good life is my growing into His purpose for me, into my worship and my mission as His ambassador and representative in this little corner of His world.

And I’m finding that the smooth and easy roads do not take me to these places.

(sigh)

Yet I want God’s great week, not mine. Oh, how I want God’s great week!

***

I’d like to introduce you to the writing of a friend, a child of God who loves the Lord and His Word. She writes poetry reflecting on many of the things she has learned from her Father, and she’s given me permission to share some of it with you. Her verse is always accompanied by Scriptures that have spoken the message.

Here’s one piece that reminds me how much I desire a great week, God’s version.

The Upper Road

I’ve traveled on the lowlands,
Congested, wide and flat;
I need the twisting upper road,
Where strong winds chase my hat.

The rocks are sharp and jagged,
The path cuts to the sky;
My heart reminds me why I came
“You said you want to fly.”

21 Set thine heart toward the highway … (Jeremiah 31)

3 And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, “I bare you on eagles’ wings… (Exodus 19)

31 They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles… (Isaiah 40)

13 Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction…14 Narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7)

2 Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob: and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. (Micah 4)

1 He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. 4 He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust… (Psalm 91)

6 I called upon the Lord, 10 And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. 33 He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet, and setteth me upon high places. 36 Thou hast enlarged my steps under me, that my feet did not slip. (Psalm 18)

9 If I take the wings of the morning, 10 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. (Psalm 139)

— C. Ann Gerber

Have a great week on the Upper Road !!

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Waiting

I walk into the tunnel of soaring pine and balsam,
their protection a shield against the cold chill coming off the sea.
Sudden relief from the wind comes like the reassurance of warm arms,
and I know my Father’s presence holds me.
Fresh morning smell of pine blends
with some other sweet autumn fragrance I cannot name.
High above, brittle leaves of birches
sing a morning psalm of eager expectation.
I wish I could understand their words.
But every now and then a slender golden leaf
drifts down like a note from the heavens:
“Just wait until you see My new earth!”

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Discouraged. Waiting. Trusting. Rescued.

It was a tough week. A wandering and wondering week. Many battles between the old nature and the Spirit. Doubts. Debates. Turmoil.

The Dragon of Discouragement had breathed his fire all week, but by Saturday he tired of threats and stood ready to devour me whole. The last post on Eternity that I had planned … never took shape.

Sounds gloomy, I know. Don’t stop reading here, though.

*****

I find comfort in the Psalms. Not only do they remind me of the goodness and unfailing love of God, they also depict writers who are so much like I am—seeking God with all their heart, yet sometimes so utterly paralyzed or sabotaged by human weakness. Many of the prayers in the Psalms I can make my own.

Somewhere I had read that Psalm 40 was “the writer’s psalm.” But it’s also the social worker’s psalm, the bookkeeper’s psalm, the taxi driver’s psalm, the care giver’s psalm, the teacher’s psalm, the mother’s psalm, the father’s psalm, the friend’s psalm ….

So on Sunday morning I went to Psalm 40.

Every now and then, the Scriptures absolutely startle me. Yesterday, that happened again.

I waited patiently for the LORD to help me,
and he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the pit of despair …  (Psalm 40:1-2a)

And I heard the word again, “Wait.”

*****

Have you ever heard someone describing an experience when the Lord’s direction came to them as clearly as if someone had actually spoken? One woman told me once, “It was as clear as if I’d heard a voice saying…”

The closest I’ve come to that was a number of years ago, also during a time of questions and agonizing. Then, the word came clearly: “Wait. See what I have for you. Wait.”

And here, at the beginning of the very psalm I was planning to read as my prayer and cry for help, was the same clear word. Even before my prayer came out, the Word spoke: “Wait patiently for Me.”

 *****

There’s so much more in Psalm 40 that gives us comfort. Verse 3 talks about God giving us a new song, making us hymns of praise for what He’s done. Verse 4 exclaims that there is great joy for those who trust the Lord. Verse 5 looks backward to great things He has already done and forward to His plans for us, “too numerous to list.”

But for the present, for me in that hour, the word was “Wait.”

*****

Now when you wait for something, you expect it, you know it’s coming. Wait for God. Expect His rescue. King David had a whole lot of tough weeks; at times he was even so discouraged or frustrated that he felt God had forgotten him. But he always knew rescue would come. He knew that unshakeable hope is found in only one Person and one Place.

Let all that I am wait quietly before God,
for my hope is in him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress where I will not be shaken. (Psalm 62:5-6)

Wait quietly? I am much better at stewing and worrying and, really, getting quite carried away with my own fretting.

These words also came, this time from King Jesus: “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.” (See John 14:1)

There it is in a nutshell. That’s faith. “Trust me.”

He says Trust me when we are all too aware of our humanity, when our old nature rises up and stomps on our best intentions. He says Trust me when we are doubting, when we’re discouraged, when we feel too weak for the battle. He says Trust me when we’re haunted by the past, fretting about the present, or worrying about the future.

“Don’t let your heart be troubled. Trust in God; and trust me.”

That’s not just a last resort, clinging to a straw when we are desperate. Trusting Him is the ONLY place we can go to live fully the life He died to give us. Trusting Him is the ONE place He wants us to live.

“Just trust me.”

The assurance of my King comes while I wait quietly.

.

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Eternity: Confidence in the Eternal

This letter is from Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. I have been sent to proclaim faith to [or to strengthen the faith of] those God has chosen and to teach them to know the truth that shows them how to live godly lives. This truth gives them confidence that they have eternal life, which God—who does not lie—promised them before the world began (Titus 1:1-2). NLT

Here we read something else about God’s plans for our eternity—He will give us assurance that it will happen. In this short letter, Paul repeats it again in the third and last chapter: God, in His grace, gives us confidence of our immortality.

Think about this for a moment. It is one thing to read that God promises eternal life; but as is the case with so many things we say we believe, this must sink deep into our bones (figuratively speaking) before we are truly confident of the promise.

God’s truth can make us confident.

As we’ve already said, we do not have the capacity to understand or grasp eternal. Or maybe we do have the capacity (since we were created to live forever) and our “sight” has been so dulled and weakened by our sin that only God’s power can bring that faculty, that sense in us, alive again. In human language, perhaps we need to relearn how to see the eternal, just as some people after devastating injury need to relearn how to walk or read or use an arm. Those glimpses I was describing yesterday are signs that God is teaching us, He is re-training that eternal part of us—bringing back to life the eternal dimensions He gave us to begin with and restoring sight that can see the eternal.

We do not have the ability to see the eternal; it is only by God’s grace that we learn to see and believe it. That’s all pretty hard to get hold of, very difficult, nebulous, and elusive.

But as the psalmist points out, our gracious Shepherd God provides all that we need; and the verse above tells us that He has provided something to bolster our confidence in our own eternity: His truth, found in the Word and in Jesus Christ, and made plain to us by the Holy Spirit.

* God’s Word teaches us how to live in His paths—in His eternity, if you will—even while we are living within our earthly dimensions.

* Jesus says that all of God’s truth resides in Him. Knowing Jesus, coming to Jesus, learning from Him, trusting Him with our lives and ourselves, putting ourselves in His hands and in His service—this puts us smack dab where we need to be to have our understanding illuminated by God’s truth.

* And this is so amazing to me — God puts His Spirit within each of His children, a connection that tunes us into God’s thinking, even, Paul says, to the “secrets” of God! (1 Cor. 2:10-12)

A simple illustration. I was arriving home late—much later than I’d expected—and so I had not turned on the porch light before I left. No moon lit the sky, and the street lights do not reach to the back door under the tree. It was very dark; I could not even see the sidewalk. My feet felt their way along, slowly, because I was remembering the big toad that sometimes hops among the flower beds.

And then my fears were realized. The lump on the sidewalk squished around my shoe. I let out a small shriek. Oh, disgusting, disgusting!

Finally at the door, I unlocked it and snapped on the light and looked to see what damage I had done. There, slightly flattened, lay one of my grandson’s squishy baseballs.

Finding God’s truth is very much like turning on the porch light. I love Jesus’ words that assure us His Holy Spirit will be our guide “into all truth.” We are not left groping in the dark. His Spirit gives us better vision, and we begin to see things as they really are. Seeing God’s truth may not be as instantaneous as snapping on a light switch (although sometimes it does happen that way!), but the point is that as we seek truth, we learn to see things as God sees them. We learn to see eternal things.

God doesn’t leave us floundering about, trying on our own effort to believe huge promises we can barely grasp; He gives us His truth to build our confidence! The more we get to know Him, the more clearly we can see as He sees.

The more we seek God’s truth, the more confident we become of the eternal dimensions of our lives.

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Eternity: God’s plan before the beginning

For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan from before the beginning of time—to show us his grace through Christ Jesus. And now he has made all of this plain to us by the appearing of Christ Jesus, our Savior. He broke the power of death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the Good News (2 Timothy 1:9-10). NLT

From before the beginning of time, God planned for us to live forever. I have always thought of the “beginning of time” as the time of Adam and Eve’s creation. But perhaps, instead, the beginning of time is actually the time of their sin; that sin brought the curse of death into the world. Perhaps that is when “time” began—when we started measuring things with beginnings and endings, with birth and death.

But we were created to live without such measured limits. We were created in God’s image: in eternal dimensions. There is no beginning and ending in eternity.

This is about as far as my mind can go. We can only catch glimpses of the meaning of eternal. I see and measure and judge everything with my three-dimensionsal way of thinking and with my limited senses; eternity is outside of such measurement and perspective.

In the last few years, I’ve begun to catch glimpses of the eternal dimensions of the present, but those glimpses are fleeting and small; just as I reach out to grasp and savor them, it seems I cannot hold the idea or take it further. I imagine that glimpses are all that God can give us now. We will need new eyes to live in eternity.

Catch this point that Paul makes here: God planned life and immortality for us long before we even knew Him! Jesus appeared on earth to reveal the plan to everyone and to say, “Have faith in Me. Through me, you will have the immortality that God created you to have. I am the way to life in the eternal.”

Today, ask God for just a glimpse of the eternal scope of His plan for YOU, His child.