Tag Archives: Bad

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Psalm 36

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Big Spring, a giant karst spring in The Ozarks...

For you are the fountain of life,
    the light by which we see.
Psalm 36:9 (NLT)

One of our favorite places to take guests down at the lake is Ha Ha Tonka State Park. If you arrive by boat and take a leisurely hike down the trial you’ll find a natural spring. The cool, fresh water bubbles endlessly up from the depths of the Earth. I thought of that spring when I read the lyric of today’s psalm about God being a fountain of life.

I also found it interesting that God’s bubbling spring life life comes after a descriptive image of the wicked earlier in the psalm. “Everything” the wicked say is crooked and their actions are “never good.”  In other words, they are a contrasting fountain of stuff that leads to death compared to God’s spring of life.

Jesus said that it’s out of the overflow of our heart that our words and actions spring. Today, I’m thinking about my words, my thoughts, and my actions. Do they  bubble up from an inner spring of Life, or do they emanate from a deathly emptiness of the soul?

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Psalm 14

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by HikingArtist via Flickr

But no, all have turned away;
    all have become corrupt.
No one does good,
    not a single one!
Psalm 14:3 (NLT) 

Life is full of contradictions. Our lives are full of contradictions. Welcome to fallen humanity.

If you take the time to investigate my life, you’ll find plenty of dirt. For all my chapter-a-day goodness you’ll find plenty of sin-a-day skeletons. I can spare you the trouble of the investigation. If you’re interested, just buy me a cup of coffee or a cold pint and I can tell you the whole story and show you the skeletons in my closet.

I mentioned earlier that those who put the Psalms together did so in a very specific way. Psalm 3 through Psalm 14 make up 64 lines in the Hebrew language in which they were written. The 12 Psalms all fit together. Psalm 8 ended the first half of the section talking about how wonderful mankind is, and how wonderfully God made us just a little lower than the angels. Today’s Psalm is the bookend contradiction. Man is a fool and there’s not one on the whole Earth who seeks after God.

I have never claimed to be perfect. Like everyone else, my life has contradictions. I’m simply a wayfaring stranger making my way on the journey home. The thing about skeletons is that they are just that: the left over remnant of something that died and decomposed over time a while ago. I’ve got plenty of them. Yet, with each step in this journey I’m striving to leave behind what is dead and embrace Life.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Psalm 12

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source: sebflyte via Flickr

Help, O Lord, for the godly are fast disappearing!
    The faithful have vanished from the earth!
Psalm 12:1 (NLT) 

Everyone of us feel things extremely from time to time. Stretches of life’s journey which are particularly stressful or anxious tend to feed our innate ability to feel that all of life is completely out of whack. Out of our intense emotion we then tend to speak in hyperbole.

I am often struck by news commentators, politicians, public speakers and preachers who feed on the public’s penchant for being emotionally whipped up by sensationalist and extreme statements. In an era of instant news from around the globe on a 24/7/365 basis we are constantly bombarded with stories and visions of tragedy, injustice, violence, and upheaval. It’s easy for our hearts to cry out with David: “The godly are fast disappearing! The faithful have vanished from the earth!”

The truth is that there is an equally amazing amount of generosity and good being done by countless godly people around the globe. Those stories, sadly, do not drive high ratings, web hits, converts or financial contributions.

Today, I’m putting on my filters as I hear the news coming at me from a myriad of sources. I want to be realistic about what is happening but I’m refusing to give into fear and anxiety. I’m choosing to balance all the doom and gloom with the many good things I know God and His people are doing throughout the world today.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Acts 5

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from anonymousthomas via Flickr

Then Peter said, “Ananias, why have you let Satan fill your heart? You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money for yourself. The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away. How could you do a thing like this? You weren’t lying to us but to God!”
Acts 5:3-4 (NLT)

I have found that most of the world views their own eternal standing in terms of balance:

“I do some good things, and I also do some bad things. I therefore look at life like a set of Justice’s scales. I weigh my good against my bad and try to maintain a good to bad ratio that favors the good. If, at the end of my life, the scale tips to the good then I’m golden. God’s going to let me in to heaven.”

The premise of this thinking, is that our salvation is ultimately determined by what we do and that God will ultimately judge us based on how the scale reads at the end of our life. God’s Message, however, reveals a completely different picture.

Jesus said that the little bit of bad we do is like yeast in bread dough. It’s the smallest of ingredients, yet it taints the entire loaf. Once the yeast is in the dough you can’t reverse its effect. In the same way, even the “little white lies” that we tell, like Ananias and Sapphira in today’s chapter, taint our entire soul. There is no amount of good that we can do to negate and purify us from the effects of the bad that we have done. Salvation is not determined by what we do because no amount of effort can eradicate it from our hearts and lives. Sin is a lethal, spiritual super virus. Once it’s in our system (and it’s in all of us) there is no regimen, no matter how rigorous, that can flush it out.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Hebrews 12

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Deutsch: Historische Federzeichnung einer schu...
Image via Wikipedia

No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way. Hebrews 12:11 (NLT)

I still remember many of the spankings I received as a child. I don’t remember them because they were awful or excessive or unjust in any way. Spankings were relatively few in my home and reserved for times we’d totally been caught being naughty. For the record, I also remember sitting on the bathroom sink while my mom soaped up her hands and proceeded to wash the inside of my mouth out. I deserved that, too. Funny, my sister says she can’t remember ever getting a spanking, but she did. Several times. I guess I remember those for her.

As a parent one of the most difficult parts of the journey is disciplining your children. You don’t want to be too lenient, but you don’t want to be heavy handed. Each child is different in the way they respond to it, and every circumstance is different in the severity of discipline warranted. Appropriate discipline changes with the age of the child and his or her temperament. I had one child whom I could discipline with the mere look of disappointment and another child who seemed never to admit doing or saying anything wrong….ever. Needless to say, in our home discipline sometimes required different approaches depending on the offender.

No parent disciplines perfectly.

At the same time, discipline is required. It’s required for all of us if we’re going to develop into well adjusted and behaved people. We need clear understanding of right and wrong. We need to know when we’ve done well and when we’ve crossed over the line. We need appropriate negative reinforcement along with appropriate positive reinforcement.

Today, I’m thankful for parents who knew when to punish and when to praise. I’m thankful for good kids who responded to both pats on the back and pats on the butt. As the journey draws nearer to the time when my children may be having children of their own, I pray that they will find wisdom and balance in their own parenting. As I continue my journey as a child of the Creator, I pray that I will respond appropriately to both discipline and praise all the days of my life.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Colossians 2

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debt
debt (Photo credit: alancleaver_2000)

He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. Colossians 2:14 (NLT)

Anyone who has been deeply in debt knows the heavy weight it can become on one’s life and soul. It feels unescapable. With each payment you stick your shovel into the debt load to try and dig yourself out, but the interest on the debt seems to fill in every hole you make.  It leaves one feeling utterly hopeless.

The same is true of our spiritual debt. The things I want to do are the things that never get checked off the task list. The things I tell myself I’m not going to do because they are bad for me (or others) are the things I find myself doing again and again. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to stop doing the things I don’t want to do and do the things I should do. It leaves one feeling utterly hopeless.

Imagine being that person so deeply in debt that you can’t possibly pay back what you owe. The phone rings off the hook with collectors pressing you for money. Repo men are casing your place to take away your things. You’re left living each moment of every day with the knowledge that you about to lose everything you own and leave you utterly bankrupt. How would you respond if someone came along, a person to whom you owed one of those debts, and that person wrote a check to pay off everything you owed? No strings attached and nothing requested in return. You walk away free and clear, your debt paid. Would you feel grateful? Would you not offer to do anything that person asked in thanks for the exceeding, unwarranted kindness they showed you?

According to God’s Message, that’s exactly what Jesus did for us and our spiritual debt. Despite what we’ve done. Despite our inability to stop our bad behaviors and consistently do what we know we should do. No matter how great a debt we’ve built up from all the shitty things we’ve done in secret and in public to ourselves, to others, and to God Himself – Jesus paid our debt. The end we each deserve is the end He experienced when He died on the cross. He was paying off our spiritual debt once and for all.

How am I going to respond to that?

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Isaiah 30

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God, the Master, The Holy of Israel, has this solemn counsel: "Your salvation requires you to turn back to me and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves. Your strength will come from settling down in complete dependence on me—The very thing you've been unwilling to do. Isaiah 30:15 (MSG)

Reading today's chapter I was reminded of this song. I've always loved this song because it makes me laugh and I think it so honestly captures what I believe to be the most common lie that we deeply believe: That on the great balance scales of life, we're basically good people. I'm an alright guy. And, if I put forth a little effort to keep the "good" outweighing the "bad" then God will give me the thumb's up and reward my effort.

The more I read God's message, the more I realize that in the economy of God's kindgom there is no amount of good works that can earn me the thumb's up. God doesn't grade on a curve. It's a pass fail test and only one red check mark guarantees my failure (you should see my list of red check marks – oy!).

I know. It doesn't seem fair. If that' true then no one can pass that test. We've all done something wrong.

Exactly. That's the point.

That's why God sent His son to pass the test for us and, while He was at it, to take the punishment for our failure. We can stop our silly efforts to save ourselves. No more trying to do enough to keep my "alright guy" status. It has nothing to do with what I do. It has everything to do with what Jesus did for me. The reality is that Jesus was the one and only "alright guy" and my dependence on Him is my one and only hope.