Category: Jesus Christ

Selah: An Active Rest

Selah. Say-lah.

While the Hebrew word is difficult to translate, most believe it is a musical term that means “pause” or “interlude.” I’ve also read that it could be a worship leader’s direction to change the tempo. For instance, to have the instruments and singers  s l o w  d o w n,  or, in some cases, pick up the cadence. If you dig even deeper, you find the word is also understood to encourage reflection. Like the applause sign in a live studio’s taping session, some suppose it signals to the listener “there is something hidden here; do not miss it…listen very carefully…”

Oh, and a really neat tidbit about “selah” is that it is used in thirty-nine of the Psalms, which is, as you well know, equal to the number of books in the Old Testament. And what is the Old Testament? It is the history of the people of Israel that is written down for our benefit and teaching. You’ll find that hidden little gem of a truth in 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

Twice.

Look it up.

The point I am making is that we have been called to a “selah” life. Sometimes we pause. Sometimes we pick up the pace. At times we rest overnight. At other times, we park at the foot of the mountain for a year or so. We sing (“alamoth” at the beginning of Psalm 46 is thought to indicate a choir solo for all the sopranos), we dance, we bow, we kneel. When our Director tells us, we pack up our tents and get a move on. And when He tells us otherwise, we make camp and get our groove on. There is marching and there is standing still. He speaks and we listen or He is silent and we wait.

Right about now some of you are moving into an “aha!” moment. You’re thinking, This is starting to sound like hearing and following the Voice of God and you would be right. Life is way too harsh and unforgiving to attempt on our own. Three million (or more) people moving as one through the desert can get noisy and distracting, so you can see how weekly sabbaths and daily selahs can turn a march into a journey. Likewise, as you and I journey through life, we must be constantly attuned to those inner prickings and promptings from the Holy Spirit:

“Make camp here for awhile. I have something I want to teach you.”

“There is an enemy afoot. Be on guard.”

“Turn here.”

“You need to let go of that. It will be a snare. Give it to Me.”

“You need to spend some time today with her. I will give you words that will encourage her.”

“Wake up. There is much to do.”

The “selah” life is the Spirit-led life. “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons and daughters of God,” the Apostle Paul says. As we pass through this wilderness on the way to Promise, every step walked in faith is a lyric to the Almighty. Every mile is a stanza of praise. Two or three walking together is a church hymn. Tribes and nations journeying as one is a cantata that the angels want to add to their repertoire. As for me, I cannot wait until the grand finale: the Hallelujah chorus!

Selah.

    7O God, when You went forth before Your people,
         When You marched through the wilderness, Selah.
    8The earth quaked;
         The heavens also dropped rain at the presence of God;
          Sinai itself quaked at the presence of God, the God of Israel.
                                                                           Psalm 68:7,8

There’s The Plow

 

Decisiveness is the fulcrum of true discipleship.  Luke says that Jesus “resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:51)  He’s about four months away from Calvary and the language that Luke employs emphatically illustrates our Lord’s decisiveness in seeing His mission through to the end.  It’s more about His state of mind and not a geographical change.  It has nothing to do with His checking MapQuest or getting a TripTik from Triple A.  He knew who He was, what He was called for, and nothing was going to get in His way.

 

A few verses down, He encounters three would-be disciples.  He says to each of them, “Decide!”  Me?  Or the world?  Me?  Or your will?  Me?  Or your level of comfortability?  In each case they chose what was behind Door Number Two and left satisfied with that.

 

He says that a true disciple is one who has set his hand to the plow, or, in Elisha’s case burned the plow (see 1 Kings 19:21).  Jesus set His face (“like flint”, Isaiah 50:7) to Jerusalem and we are to set our hand to the plow.  Plowing is about harvest, and in the succeeding verses, Jesus sent out the seventy with this pep talk: “Pray that the Lord of the Harvest will send more plowers into the field.”  Some plant, some plow, some water…but the Lord gets His beautiful harvest!

 

Our Lord cannot use scribes (the first guy) who are worried about looking foolish to their rich buddies when they are found sleeping in caves or under bridges “for a carpenter” instead of their large-mortgage house.  He cannot use the ‘I’ll catch up with you down the road but right now I have a lot of personal stuff to iron out’ candidates (the second guy).  The call is NOW. And there’s the plow!  And He will pass over those who waver between two worlds and the Lord knows this world will usually win out (the third guy).

 

The call is NOW.  And there’s the plow.

 

 Who are the harvesters?  Who are the ones “pressing into the Kingdom” (Luke 16:16)?  They are people who will empty their entire life savings at His feet even though the religious tell them every reason why they shouldn’t.  They are people who will walk away from a lucrative career because their life and livelihood is in His hands.  People who will drop the nets at their feet, leaving every security behind because they see the Greater Incentive, a Treasure you cannot refuse.

 

We need to be more decisive than ever in these changing times.  Before I finished that last sentence I was interrupted by a call from someone I know who just won over $20,000 in the lottery tonight.  Isn’t that ironic?  The world will do stuff like that for us—anything to keep us from treasuring Christ.  Anything to keep us from pressing in, pressing on or setting our hand to the plow.  Tragically, the third certainty of life—after death and taxes—is that twenty grand’ll be gone in a few days, weeks or months.

 

Then what?

 

Decisively pressing in means fighting against that twinge that says, “man, I wish that had happened to me.”  It means being unimpressed by what the world offers because you know nothing can compare to the richness of knowing about a Greater-than-all Treasure and going after it.

 

There’s the plow.  It may look worn, earthy, scarred and rusty, but it’s Who you set your affection on at the far end of the field that really matters.     

15:20

“And he got up and went to his father. But while he was still far away, his father saw him and was moved with pity for him and went quickly and took him in his arms and gave him a kiss.”

–First century parable from the lips of Jesus

Long about noon on Saturday a father and son will meet in a giant bear hug far from the horizon that once separated them.  And Mom will be there too, just the right touch needed to make a three-corded strand.  Perceptive onlookers might catch a glimpse of something arcane and otherworldly in this simple tapestry: a family wrapped, cinched and secured in the keeping power of the Strong-Armed One.  I’d call that an unbreakable family bond.

The son is, at long last, coming home.  Gone will be the rags and fetters of the far country and, though the memories of depravity and hellishness will linger, the air will be gloriously cleared of the demons that enslaved and harrassed. 

I noticed a subtle nuance about that story this afternoon.  I found in my Bible, the NASB’s translation of Luke 15:32 to be, “this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live…”  The translators took the verb anazoo and made the distinction in it’s aorist tense that a process or action has begun that, if it continues, will certainly end in a completed action or effect. 

That’s pretty technical sounding so let me dumb it down for you and me.  When I have told others of our son’s return, I (a) do not refer to Graham as a “prodigal” because he no longer wears that moniker by the grace of our Lord, and (b) advise them not to expect our boy to exude an ethereal glow and matching halo.  The boy has begun to breathe again the new air of the liberty by which Christ has set him free.  He is just now beginning to lay hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of him. 

Like me (and you), he will not have “arrived”.  He might break our hearts again.  (I sure wish there was a verse 33 in that chapter so we could see how it plays out six weeks, six months or six years from the banquet!)  He might revert.  I pray not, for the scriptural phrase “a dog returning to its vomit” is not such a good thing.  It’s deadly, in fact. 

All we have is today. 

And 15:20.

And verse 32.

And that’s got Mom and me giddy from the word go.

And go we will.  To meet our son on a hillside of grace, restoration, reconciliation and…

JUBILEE!      

Finally, let me end with this captivating story found in Philip Yancey’s book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?  The details might not mirror ours exactly and while it is about a young girl rather than a teenaged boy, you’ll see why I’ve done it.

A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old- fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. “I hate you!” she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away.

She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.

Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she’s ever felt before. She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun.

The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car–she calls him “Boss”– teaches her a few things that men like. She lives in a penthouse, and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there.

She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline “Have you seen this child?” But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit.

After a year the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. “These days, we can’t mess around,” he growls, and before she knows it she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. “Sleeping” is the wrong word–a teenage girl at night in down town Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens. Continue reading 15:20