Tag Archives: Fear

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Psalm 142

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The best Birthday present of all. Your people will form a circle around me and you'll bring me showers of blessing! Psalm 142:7b (MSG)

Last weekend we attended the birthday party for a young friend who was turning three years old. We sat with a veritable hoarde of family and friends to eat cake, drink punch, and watch him open his gifts. After opening each gift, his parents reminded him to go and hug each of the people who gave him the gift. Hugs for grand parents. Hugs for great-grandparents. Hugs for aunts. Hugs for uncles. Hugs for friends.

On the way home from the party, my wife, daughter and I commented on our young friend's large "circle of love." His three-year-old brain is just developing cognitive memory. It's likely he will forget 99 percent of the memories of that day. The presents he received, which were the highlight of his day, will soon be lost, broken, worn out, and grown out of. He doesn't yet realize that the greatest gift he received that day was the doting love of so many people. He will not grow out of it, and it will not be lost, broken or worn out.

I found it interesting how David's lyrics were all about how lonely he was, but the last verse finds him blessed within a "circle of love." It's easy to feel feel the isolation of our melancholy. Depression is often a blinding fog. In our fear we lose sight of, and keep ourselves out-of-touch with, the veritable hoarde who love us.

For Facebook readers: formatting issues are the result of the automatic import from the original blog post.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and clevercupcakes

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Psalm 130

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A long list on the balance sheet. If you, God, kept records on wrongdoings, who would stand a chance? As it turns out, forgiveness is your habit, and that's why you're worshiped. Psalm 130:3-4 (MSG)

Part of my job is analyzing phone calls that people take as part of their Customer Service job, and then coaching them on how they can improve (a la "your call may be monitored to ensure quality service"). When I go into the coaching sessions, I never cease to be amazed at how hard people are on themselves. It's rare that I have to convince somebody they can do a better job. Most often, people criticize their own performance far more mercilessly than I ever would. Most of us are hurtfully self-critical.

I've discovered the same thing to be true when talking to people about their faith journey. Many of us, deep down, are so convinced that the balance sheet of wrong doings to good deeds is so heavily weighted towards the wrong doings that we're convinced God wants nothing to do with us. "You don't know what I've done," is a phrase I've heard a time or two. I've uttered it a few times myself.

On one hand, our natural inclination is correct. If God judged us based on our balance sheet, not one of us would stand a chance. However, when God's message tells us about Jesus dying for our sins, it simply means that He paid the price for our wrong doings. If you will believe Him, God makes a habit of tearing out the negative side of our balance sheet and tossing it in the incinerator.

I'm sure he's surprised when we keep bringing up the subject.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and Alpha_Delta20