Out of Control

A small natural disaster created a major inconvenience here the other day. On national radar it was a blip; locally it was a rockslide.

Literally.

Seven thousand tons of rock slipped off the mountain and across U.S. Highway 50 like a string of broken beads. The 20-foot swath closed the two-lane road west of Canon City for nearly a week. Commuters, tourists and delivery trucks had to reroute more than 100 miles out of their way.

Twenty feet doesn’t seem like much, roughly the length of a modern living room. But when individual boulders are themselves 20 feet across, there’s no getting around the issue.

Road crews broke, blasted and drilled the boulders into more manageable pieces before loading them into trucks. Three hundred truck loads, by the way, to clear the main artery that flows through Colorado’s Arkansas River canyon.

It doesn’t take much to stop our forward progress: a big rock, downsizing, a disabled refrigerator, a disabling illness, rumors of war, death.

How startling to discover that we are not in control.

How dare those rocks slide into our path. How dare our boss fire us. How dare we get sick now, when we’re so busy.

How dare the carefully threaded beads of my life come tumbling down around my feet and roll away.

And how glad I am - truly - that it’s not all up to me after all.


“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (I Peter 5:7).

They've Come!

At last, the finches and sparrows have come to my feeder. It took a foot of snow, freezing temperatures and chilling wind, but they came.

The feeder hung outside my living room window for months while the birds skittered and scratched around beneath it, ignoring its luscious fare. Finally, when they couldn’t work things out on their own, couldn’t find enough to eat, couldn’t reach through 12 inches of snow with their twig-like legs, they looked up and there it was. Full and easily accessible.

This sounds an awful lot like my personal journey with God. Does he, in his infinite wisdom, see the storm coming and know it will work something good in my life? Does he use deep distress, frozen circumstances and chilly relationships to show me he has a better way?

Does he know that when I can’t make things work on my own, I show up at his window sill?

He’s always there, waiting there for me.

Why don’t I just go to him in the first place?

Got a bullish problem in your life?

Do not be afraid of their faces,
for I am with you to deliver you says the Lord
(Jeremiah 1:8 NKJV).

Jeremiah was a biblical prophet called by God to preach to his backsliding countrymen - not exactly a coveted career. He argued that he was just a kid, prophetically speaking, not a public orator. He might have said, “Look at these people, God. They’ll never listen to someone like me!”

But God told Jeremiah not to be moved by what he saw, not to be intimidated by the scowls, frowns and threatening looks. He encouraged Jeremiah to focus on what he didn’t see.

“I am with you,” God said.

That’s a promise we can count on today - whether we’re facing down a mob of opposition or an ocean of apathy.

Cowboys often stand around before the rodeo studying the horse or bull they’ve drawn to ride, asking others who have ridden the animal how it moves, which way it turns. Does it cut back, spin, kick? Animals, like people, are creatures of habit. They usually follow a pattern, and riders feel better prepared if they know what’s coming.

But a rider can psych himself out by focusing too much on his opponent. It’s easy to look a bull in the eye, watch it paw the ground, and let its reputation rip you apart. It’s better if a cowboy is prepared, geared up and outfitted properly with his head on straight. Then he’ll have an opportunity to ride for the full eight seconds and get off safely.

It’s the same in life’s other arenas. Where is our focus? Is it on the opposition, or our support system? Is it on the evils and accidents of this world, or our loving Creator and Defender.

Instead of allowing what we see to frighten us into a stupor, let’s remember that God is still with us today. And he is bigger than anything we may face.

The Rest of the Story

“Rest. O God, I need rest.”

I’ll give you rest.

“Really?”

You’re tired, overloaded.

“No kidding.”

Come to me.

“Okay.”

Here, put this on.

“Wait a minute--“

It’s mine; try it.

“But this is a …”

Learn from me.

“Learn what?”

Undemanding gentleness and humility.

“But doesn’t this mean more work?”

It is soul-rest.

“I could use that.”

Put in on; I’ll be right next to you.

“But it’s a yoke.”

My burden is light.

“Light?”

I am the Light of the world.

“I see.”

You will.




Matthew 11:28-30

Only the Clean and Unbroken

I drove past the local flower shop, and cringed when I read the sign.

“Only the Clean and Unbroken.”

I knew the store owner was recycling floral vases and encouraging people to bring them in rather than throw them away. I knew the sign referred to the inexpensive glass containers used to deliver bouquets and rosebuds.

But somehow the words felt like a personal indictment: I was anything but clean and unbroken.

“Oh, God,” I thought. “What if you required me to be unsoiled and whole before coming to you? What would I do with the stained and broken pieces of my life?

Israel’s great shepherd-king wrote, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17 NIV).

The Message version puts it this way: “Heart-shattered lives ready for love don’t for a moment escape God’s notice.”

King David cried out in Psalm 51 as a broken and sin-stained man. He had not only stolen another man’s wife, but also had that man killed. As a result, an innocent child died. Not exactly a pristine situation.

Yet David knew he could run to his God in spite of the blood on his hands and the blackness of his heart. He knew the Lord would look on his brokenness and repentance and forgive him, wash him, and make him whole again.

Centuries later when Jesus was accused by religious leaders of hanging out with the riff-raff, he replied, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting the sin-sick, not the spiritually-fit.” (Mark 2:17 The Message).

God is in the recycling business, but unlike the local florist, he restores and recycles human wreckage.

Yes, he wants to use us again, but first he will do what we cannot: put us back together and wash us with the sin-cleansing blood of Jesus.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

There is a spot between a rock and a hard place
called a cleft: a crack, crevice or fissure.

I’ve been there. Have you?
It’s not so bad. In fact, it’s rather secure and protective.
Nothing can reach me there.
Nothing but the hand of God.

That’s where Moses was when desperation backed him up against the mountain.

He was arguing with God because everything he had worked for so long and hard had shattered around his feet.

He was arguing with God because things weren’t going the way he planned. People had disappointed him. He had disappointed himself. Life was not good.

“You said you’d go with me -- where are you?” he shouted.

Had he forgotten the Red Sea?

“I am with you,” God said.

“Prove it. Show yourself.”

A death wish? No one sees the face of God and lives to tell about it.

Have you been that desperate? So desperate that death seems better than what you’re going through?

I have.

But God said,

“There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock.”

And he hid Moses in the hard place - the cleft - and covered him with his hand.
The hand that held a man of clay,
and held back the sea,
and would one day hold the nails.

And as he passed by, Moses peeked out and saw the back of God.

Have you been that close to God?
In the hard place?
Where fear and fatalism die?

It is the sweetest place I know.

So why do I wait for pain to push me into his presence?
When I can choose to be in that place

near God.
Standing.
On a rock.

“And I will … cover you with my hand.”

O God, cover me.


Exodus 33:21,22

***

Ever feel like you’re missing the performance because you’re stuck under the bleachers?

When Mike was rodeoing, our first Fourth of July run into Montana took us to Red Lodge - an Old West type of town tucked up against the mighty Bear Tooth Mountains. As was our custom, we parked our rig back of the holding pens and unloaded our menagerie: Mike’s clown mule Ike, our border collie Bobbie, four guinea hens, two chickens, and a little pound-found mop of a dog we called Fifi.

Busy with our routine of making camp, we failed to notice the meandering mule work itself underneath the aluminum bleachers bordering the backside of the arena. We didn’t see how Ike had gotten in there, but when we noticed his predicament, we knew it wouldn’t be easy getting him out.

Ike’s hankering for the tender mountain grass lured his muzzle and the rest of him over and under the aluminum crossbeam supports. Leading a horse to water is one thing, but leading a mule through a maze of metal proved to be something else altogether.

It took most of the afternoon, a bucket full of grain and a strong lead rope to drag that mule back out from under those bleachers. Mike and couple of cowboys would coax it down on its knees and pull it under one beam, then it would jump to its feet and they’d have to start all over again. It was a lot harder on Ike coming out than it had been going in.

I can relate to Ike.

It’s a lot more fun getting into trouble than getting out.

Most of us don’t notice where temptation is leading, especially when we’re just taking one little curious step at a time. But when we finally stop and look around, we see we’re trapped, just like that mule, with no way of getting out of our predicament on our own.

Our good Lord never leads us in the wrong way. But when we wander off, if we ask for his help, he’ll sure get us back on the right path - even if the going might be a little rough.


James 1:13