Category: Hope

He Owns The Night

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Well, well, well.

As my son used to say, “lookee here, lookee here!”

A pretty cool reminder for those who think God has somehow checked out or relinquished the reins to all the crazies out there:

Psalms 74:16 –
“Yours is the day…

(Wait for it)

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(Wait for it)

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Yours also the night…”

(Mic drop)

Sorry, Batman. My God owns the night, not you, all do respect.

 

Night, by Elie Wiesel, is in my personal Top 25 of books that have most shaped me through my life. Elie, who survived both Auschwitz and Buchenwald during his teen years, having endured countless sadisms at the hands of Hitler’s Reich, wrote:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed….Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”

It’s no wonder such a Jewish pogrom would lead many to question the Presence of God among His chosen people. On one occasion, men were hung in public view and remained so while their fellow captives were ordered to file past and allow their deaths to effectually haunt them. 

Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing…And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.

And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:

“For God’s sake, where is God?”

And from within me, I heard a voice answer:

“Where He is? This is where–hanging here from this gallows…”

That night, the soup tasted of corpses.

There’s a line in the Gospels that could leave one as though stranded on a scary stretch of road in the most notoriously bad part of town in the middle of the night, exposed and alone, if not for the declaration which follows it.

John 13:30 ends the pre-narrative of Judas’ satanic role in the betrayal of Messiah Jesus with the refrain: “And it was night.”

That’s some chilling stuff, John.

A good story would leave go of a chapter with those four words just hanging there, suspended, leaving the reader with no choice but to turn the leaf in the book with haste.

If there were such a fresh new page, the (thankful) reader would find these opening words:

“Now the Son of Man is glorified.”

(Sigh of relief)

Read that again.

You catch it?

Now. I. Am. Glorified.

Now.

Smack in the dark heart of Witching Hour.

In one breath it’s as bad as it can get: an icy breeze hails from hades, the devil’s maw is twisted into a knowing grin, the disciples shiver, festivity is stilled…but in the next quick heartbeat we find God’s still got this. His agenda is not only unthwarted, it’s been made possible.

Oh, and it’s just getting good! Exactly one chapter (to the verse) later, THIS from the Son of Man:

The prince over this world is coming. HE HAS NO HOLD OVER ME.”

         – John 14:30

I realize the Cross wasn’t a formality. Indeed, Jesus went through hell on His way to submitting to it in the Garden the night before, but all through the ordeal this resounding truth prevails from moment one:

No man, no devil, no ideology takes My life from Me. I lay it down all by Myself.”

Then He got some help on Resurrection Morning from the Other Two in the Godhead to eclipse eternal night. For good. Talk about your book with a major twist at the end!

Are you in a night?

Here’s what you should recite to your head and heart:

  • God’s got you. He’s as committed to you as He is the Son of Man.
  • He will splash all His Light and Glory across your night. Get ready.
  • There’s not a man or devil that will get in His way of redeeming you fully and finally.
  • Your story ends with resurrection, guaranteed. Tonight is Gethsemane and Golgotha, yes, but Sunday’ll be epic.

Selah, beloved.

I mean it.

Hope Is A One-Stringed Symphony

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Take a close look at this brilliant piece of art.

Consider carefully what you’re seeing…

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Okay, what does it say?

Here’s what President Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright (I know, I know) interpreted from it in a sermon preached 20 years ago:

“with her clothes in rags, her body scarred and bruised and bleeding, her harp all but destroyed and with only one string left, she had the audacity to make music and praise God … To take the one string you have left and to have the audacity to hope … that’s the real word God will have us hear from this passage and from [George Fredrick] Watt’s painting.”

Continue reading Hope Is A One-Stringed Symphony

An Amazing Thing Happened On The Way To Our Son’s Grave

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Funny thing about rainbows, they’re actually circles, not half-arcs. Obviously they look like arches to us because of our limited perspective, seeing only half the story because the horizon kind of gets in the way.

My lovely spotted the colorful band stretched over the cemetery where our son’s body was laid to rest last Christmas as we made our approach. It was our thirty-first wedding anniversary and we wanted to share our celebration with our boy. Sandy often wants me to drive the long way around Mozley Gardens to pay respects to any of Graham’s new “neighbors” before we park at his marker, so I was poking along scanning the lawns out my driver’s side window when I heard her exclaim:

“Oh honey, look!”

I followed her graceful index finger as it stretched toward the windshield.

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A bow of beauty.

The Sovereign had kissed our evening by finger-painting a swath of grace over our Gra-Gra.

Well, that’s all she wrote. We were undone. Verklempt. A wet mess.

In a good way.

“I know about the promise of God to not destroy the earth with floods,” my bride offered, “but what else do you think God is saying?”

I was already in that vein, the Bible teacher in me calling up the Revelator’s vision of God on His throne in His abode of heaven. Verse three says “around the throne” was a rainbow and a quick study suggests it’s a full circle, as rainbows tend to be.

A perfect circle.

No beginning, no end. No pause, no break. No altered course, but fulfillment and wholeness.

Eternality.

God said, “look up.”

We lifted our watery eyes.

“See My initials in sweeping, color-laden script?”

We indeed saw the stamp of Resurrection.

The “all things new” seal of Certainty.

We’re two still-grieving parents encased in the drama of loss, sighing at the memories and could-have-beens, making our repeated pilgrimage to the sacred stone…

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BUT WE’RE

…gently carried all the while (yet again!) by everlasting Arms that scaffold our temporal home with rainbows to remind us

that Eternity awaits,

that these eyes only see half the picture,

that the Best is yet to be,

that the grace that pavilions us in these years of dust and ash,

will give way to Endless Dawn, forever illuminated by the Sun and Daystar of our souls, Jesus the Christ and Father of Lights.

That rainbow reminded us that His exhaustive archives of eternity and our place (and Graham’s!!!) in the Eternal Story is not a half-arc (half done), but a complete arc, and – my beloved fellow pilgrim – let it serve to tell you that God wastes none of your raw materials in preparing you for His Glory. All of it goes into the flourish of His finishing touches.

Just look up.

It’s there to remind you.