sideways

One of my favorite words is ‘snug’.

‘Snug’ makes you feel all tucked in as a down comforter beside a warm fire on a snowy night. It’s short for snuggle and who doesn’t like a good snuggle? Even the word feels cozy.

I remember our ritual of tucking our little Graham into bed at night, signing off with the words “sleep sweet in Jesus.” He usually never fell asleep until mom acquiesced and laid with him until he dozed off.

On those rare occasions we let him sleep with us he would position himself sideways, his head cradled in Sandy’s side and his piggies burrowed into mine. So long as he could feel both of us, Graham sailed into the ocean of dreamland all safe and sound. Our little bug all snug and warm.

As he grew, those rituals rightly tapered off and Graham needed our touch and reassurances less and less, but never completely.

He never ended a phone conversation or left our company without “love you” as his own ritual. Those glancing words were his way of still touching us both to make sure we were still there, still in his corner, still accessible. More so when he knew he had upset or disappointed us. Even still so when we had hurt him. His love yous were like his fingers thrumming on Sandy’s tummy or his feet kicking me in the night: I’m still here, are you there?

How we wish we had one more night of our little boy pointing east and west to our north and south and completing our universe.

His last night on earth Graham fell asleep all alone and never woke up. We weren’t there to play with his feet or tickle his tummy or tuck him in and, six years later, that still kills us.

A few hours after I found out Graham took another voyage to another place not immediately accessible to us, I tapped the breast of God with my outstretched hands and kicked at the door of heaven with my feet. I needed assurances. East and west, God, here I am… are you there?

More importantly, is Graham there?

I had dreamed* Graham was burning in hell and I could hear his screams. My heart was racing to know, is our Gra-Gra safe and sound with you, Lord? I don’t have the most acute or accurate memory to tell you how it happened, I can only tell you that it happened.

God said, “Go to my Word.”

I opened my Bible to Psalm 85 (didn’t know why) and read these words:

Psalms 85:2
You forgave the iniquity of your people;
you covered all their sin. Selah

I kept reading, and the more I read the more my heart felt reassured. I zipped through the rest of the short chapter, into the next, and on into chapter 87 where I read these words that sealed it for me. I knew it from my head to my toes: Graham is safe. He is snug. He is home. And I’ve never doubted it since.

Psalms 87:4-6
4 Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon;
behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush—
“This one was born there,” they say.
5 And of Zion it shall be said,
“This one and that one were born in her”;
for the Most High himself will establish her.
6 The Lord records as he registers the peoples,
“This one was born there.” Selah

Those nations included in God’s census? They were not only Gentile lands, they were rebel nations with checkered histories. And God made room for them in His Eternal Zion too.

My sister texted me this morning saying she knows how difficult this day is for us, but reminded us how much she loves us and how much she loved Graham. I thanked her for loving him with all his messes and goodnesses, that I didn’t understand how God’s grace works, but I sure am thankful for it.

Grace is for sideways people.

Jesus said he didn’t die for healthy people but those east-west souls whose lives are so crooked with sin they have no hope of ever finding True North.

We east-west people were put on an upright cross with Jesus (2 Timothy 2:11), were laid in the grave with Jesus (Romans 6:4), but when he was raised from the dead, he took us with him, pointed us North, and taught us how to walk upright. Straight up.

Graham is in that number. I know it because God said right there in the text, in so many words, “Graham is born in Zion. He’s a registered citizen. He’s mine. Satan, you can’t have him.”

“This one was born in Zion

Make no mistake,

this one is Mine

This one was born in Zion

This one will never,

this one will never,

This one will never die”**

Do you need some reassurance today? First you’ve got to be sideways. But then you’ve got to want to change your direction, and you’ve got to reach out and touch the only One who can make that happen.

You don’t earn it. You don’t luck into it. You certainly can’t hold onto someone else’s coattails and get in. Unless it’s Jesus, and you most definitely can do that because he’s made provision for it. It’s called faith.

In the end I know my son went to sleep sideways, touching Jesus, and woke up on top of the “Holy Mount” where “glorious things are spoken.” (Psa 87:1,3)

Selah,

and hallelujah!

___________________________________

* I know this wasn’t a “God–dream” because God does not manipulate his own by fear; this was either a construct of my own subconscious or a direct attack from the enemy

** Wayne Watson, “Born in Zion”, from album “Giants In The Land”, 1987

can i have your attention, please?

Luke 18 is all about being heard.

First, in Jesus’s signature story-form, we find a widow hanging on to her last thread of hope; unfortunately, her hope is found in a Gentile judge (not a picture of God, btw) who has little time for her. Nevertheless, through persistence, she at last gets a hearing and a judgment…in her favor.

We transition to a true-to-life episode that contrasts two worshipers at the Temple. One is in his customary pew, spouting off all the religious jargon of a prig (C.S. Lewis’s word), while the other won’t dare set a foot inside the narthex lest he be struck by lightning. One expects he will be heard (he is not), and the other only dreams of being heard (he is), at which we find he gets, not a day in court, but a seat at the table.

Next we see playful Jesus bouncing babies on his knee. The disciples lose their bleep and try to whisk the little hooligans off to their mothers. In no uncertain terms, the Lamb of God lets his men know they had best leave well enough alone. In fact, if they resist the bleatings and shovings of little lambs to be under the watchful eye of the Shepherd, they’d find themselves outside the pen.

Widows need justice.

Tax collectors need mercy.

Children need time.

All need Jesus.

And all just want the ear of the King.

As the chapter rolls out, nearing its end, a blind beggar is straining to be heard over the loud din of a gathered mob as the God-Man Jesus passes by. Blind “son of Timothy” (he’s so much an afterthought the poor fellow does not even warrant a name) is not seen and he is not heard – at first. Everyone around him tells the pathetic man to shush as the Holy Man cannot be bothered by someone who is so obviously a wretched sinner. He’s having none of it. The scripture tells us all the bluster just made him “call out even louder.” The man wanted to be heard.

I love the next two words that come next:

“Jesus stopped.” (Luke 18:40)

Let your ears rest on those words and dispel every other noise around you right now.

He stopped.

Earlier, God, as the father in the prodigal story, is seen running. Here, he stops in his tracks.

You have to remember Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, on mission to do what he came to do. Earlier in this same gospel we learn Jesus “set himself to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51) and Isaiah adds color to this with his face being countenanced like “flint” – so hard and firm and resolute was his bent to go forward to Calvary.

He stopped his march,

his mission,

time,

everything.

In that sacred second all held their breath as Jesus turned his piercing gaze from the road ahead to the tragic figure on the fringe of the crowd. Those lyrical eyes looked past the religious, the zealous, the able-bodied, the excited, the would-be followers, all of the rabble, and found him.

The throng had no choice but to part like the Red Sea as the poor man was brought to the Healer. The exchange took all of forty-five seconds, maybe a minute.

After all, what’s a minute delay when there’s a chance to change a person’s life?

Pilate would wait for him.

Judas would have time enough to plan his dirty deed.

The High Priest could use the extra minute to consider his ways.

Barabbas would be cool with it, considering how his fate would turn.

But the Son of Timothy? This was his only shot, and he was going to be heard.

Something else I love about the story is that it sheds light on the earlier scripture about the widow and her repeated appeals to the “unrighteous judge.” If you wait a tick, you’ll find that Scripture interprets Scripture.

That passage you’re struggling to make light of, keep reading; the hidden will come to light. I have often puzzled over that story until one day I realized God is NOT the judge of that parable. Unfortunately, the caustic judge – to many – is exactly who God is to them: obstinate, uncaring, elusive, aloof, mean-spirited, vindictive. This is not the point of the parable, proven by this moment of mercy for the blind beggar on the road outside Jericho.

He called out more intensely on that roadside. He would be heard. He would not take NO for an answer. *That* is the point of the earlier parable. But rather than nagging, you just up the ante.

The key to being heard, to getting the attention of God, is not verbosity but intensity.

God is not listening for a casual, half-hearted, ritual, repetitive, obligatory prayer, but he will stop in his tracks for a cry from a wounded soul.

In 2009 I prayed again and again like a persistent widow for God to do something for me I couldn’t do for myself. Each and every prayer was important to God, and I know he heard, but was waiting to hear the shrill edge of my desperation. That came weeks later as I was “quiet-timing with God” in my van. I simply but straightforwardly said:

If you don’t, God, it won’t. I don’t want to live another day with this. Oh God, I don’t have the strength to ask for it again. I’m tired. I’m desperate. Please…

Do you ever get the inexplicable sense when something shifts in the atmosphere? That happened to me as soon as my prayer trailed off. I didn’t even want to add an amen. I just left it at the Healer’s feet and crawl into his lap. I called out one more time, and I was heard.

God stopped for me.

I can’t say that I’ve ever heard God audibly, but it came pretty close in the front cab of my van.

I’ve heard you, Scott. I will answer your prayer – you won’t like the way the way I do it, but you will give praise to me in the end. I am with you. Trust me, Scott…

It may not have been these words exactly, but you get the gist. I needn’t tell you that my cry was supernaturally, specifically, and spectacularly answered within a few very dark and grueling months. There were moments I felt abandoned and more than a few when I felt fearful of the outcome, but God won the day and my testimony stands as a ‘miktam’ (Psalm 16): archived in holy writ, penned in 24-carat gold. It is my story and I’m sticking to it.

What are you wanting God to stop and do for you? Sometimes the hardest part of ‘faithing’ is in the last half-hour, when it seems like God isn’t going to come through.

F. B. Meyer offers this counsel:

The lock of prayer sometimes turns hard, and calls for strength of purpose. The kingdom of heaven has to be taken by force. Let us pray so that our prayers may reverberate with repeated blows on the gates of God’s presence chamber.

“Repeated blows.”

Maybe, just maybe, the next blow that falls will stop God in his tracks and break the door down. Keep hammering away with your prayers, beloved. You’ll get his attention. I promise. I’ve got scripture and a testimony that proves it’s so.

my own private bethesda

Today is sacred to me.

I understand every day is sacred, but this one has an extra blast from the ram’s horn for yours truly. Not coincidentally, on days like this, I am prone to go off by myself (this time a coffee shop in Carrollton, Georgia) and peck out some thoughts on a keyboard, of which such exercise is probably more for me than it is for you. Sorry, no offense.

This is how I process: I write.

Today is year thirty-eight of disability and I couldn’t be happier. Weird, huh? I guess if you knew me it’d make better sense, especially the many of you who have walked with me these nigh-unto four decades. By the way, thank you for that. Some of you have been my ‘inner circle friends’ and I can’t possibly know how I ever deserved you but I’m eternally grateful. The dude who was the rehab psychologist at Shepherd in Atlanta was worried about me back in ’81 because I smiled all the time. He assumed I was in denial about my condition until he saw the steady stream of friends who visited my room every week. It dawned on him, bless his heart, that my faith family were medicine for my soul. Still are.

So…thirty-eight. Crazy, huh?

Each year that passes causes me to ask what it might mean and where the next year takes me. I like to look at the numbers themselves and find their (possible) spiritual significance. I don’t go all harebrained, mind you, but some numbers just work in powerful ways in God’s economy. In the natural, many lay down their bets on ‘Lucky 7’ and avoid the number ’13’ like the plague. It might surprise you to learn (not you-you, but the other ‘you’ reading this) God has given us numbers to identify the working out of his redemptive plan in the cosmos. I embrace the number ‘5’ often in my walk with Christ as it represents ‘grace’ and we all need as much of that as we can get.

I started looking at the number ’38’ and had to laugh because after some degree of mulling, the most obvious reference to it sneaked its way past my mental firewall. Ah yes, of course. How could I miss it?

John 5:1-6
After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.
In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.
One man was there who had been an invalid for THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS.
When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”

One more time for the people in the back:

[How long?] “THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS.”

“It me.” 😊

Pretty sure the Father was like, ‘Helloooo…”

The story picks up at the “Sheep Gate” in Jerusalem; this fact alone should call to mind the Shepherd whose voice the sheep hear, not to mention John the gospeler has already called Jesus “the Lamb” (John 1:29) and the “Good Shepherd” in chapter ten. One gets the idea this is a pretty important theme for the beloved disciple.

Here’s a downcast sheep lying among a great crowd of cast-down sheep and he can’t do a thing to help himself into the healing spa-like waters of Bethesda (Beth=house, hesed=mercy). Suddenly, One who is called the Lamb of God kneels down where he is and asks if he’d like to be healed. Can you just picture every head in the vicinity popping up and spinning in their direction?

The area was lousy with sick folk and here comes Mercy Incarnate winding and wending His way through the nooks and crannies at the direction of His Father’s Voice (John 5:19; 8:28-29; 10:14). He pulls up suddenly, looks down, and parks right next to this particular man on this particular day at this particular moment.

A word, if you will. If you are waiting on your healing, do not lose heart. Mercy will find its way to you. Nothing will hold it at bay or block its path so long as God directs it through in your hour of trouble. Keep going to the “pool” in the backyard of the House of Mercy and don’t stop going. I’ve been going to the same Living Water for thirty-eight years, waiting expectantly for the Day, but each one that passes and I don’t hear my “Get up, son” I still hear His “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. Let’s sit together and watch what unfolds together.”

I can’t tell you just how comforting His Presence has been to me these years. Thirty-eight of them, occupying this same patch of ground every day, day after day. My own corner of Bethesda. It’s often a grind but I’m daily sunning in His Mercy. ‘Hesed’ has been my trusty beach umbrella. Hope is always playing in my earbuds.

As it closes in on sundown here in this coffee shop I know weeping is likely to have its say, but I know the sun’ll come out tomorrow and My Shepherd will still be here, beside me, at this pool. And we’ll do it together until I hear my “Today’s your day, Scott; time to get up.”

Maybe this is my year.

Maybe next year.

That’s up to the Good Shepherd, and, believe you me, I’m listening for His Voice; you’ll forgive me if I run out on you if this turns out to be my year.