home home.

[5 minutes]

Headed home from the hospital after an 8-day stay. All praise to Jesus! So many miracles happened! As God does.

Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
Galatians 4:25-26, CSB

If you visit Jerusalem today, you will see a people who are the spiritual offspring of Hagar — born of the flesh, after the flesh. The Lord loves them and longs for them to open their eyes (2 Cor 3:14-15), but for now, they choose to wander the spiritual wasteland of blindness and deafness.

BUT THERE IS A HEAVENLY JERUSALEM (v26). That City will one day supplant the present one. It is spiritual and heavenly, populated by people who know and are known by the Lord Jesus Christ — whose names are written in heaven (Heb 12:23). Saved Jews and Gentiles. Every tribe and tongue. Righteous people, made perfect by the sacrifice of the Lamb, worshipping their King in reverence and awe.

the jerusalem above

Followers of Jesus Christ are looking for that City (Heb 11:16), not at all satisfied with this one. We are ascending — up, up, up — climbing ever upward until the day we top that final hill and behold the City of God spread out before our eyes: shining and beautiful, surrounded by a myriad of angels, all dressed out for the festival of the ages.

It took valleys and deserts to cross to get here (Psa 84:6), but there she is — a multi-faceted jewel, the eternal dwelling place of God our Father and Jesus our Brother. The Holy Spirit is its everlasting Light.

When we fix our eyes and affections on this “Jerusalem” instead, we forget that we have been set free and saved for another Country altogether. We turn to graven images and works of the flesh, practicing an artificial religion that promises some attachment to the heavenly — but all it does is detach us from our True Country.

We soon realize that lifeless religion, empty rituals, and sad attempts at tower-building are futile. So we settle. We reach for shiny things on the ground — in the dirt, in the mud — and pretend we are happy. But the heart is deceitful and wicked, and no amount of playing in the dirt will appease our empty souls.

Weren’t we once “children of promise” (v28)? Why are we in the pig sty rooting around for corn cobs when my Father’s House has fatted calves and wide open spaces? Why am I wearing a yoke of slavery when I’m meant for a robe of righteousness (Gal 5:1)? Why am I severing myself from Christ (Gal 5:4) when I’m supposed to be dancing in the House of God (Gal 5:13)?

When did I stop ascending and start descending? I was making progress. Who bewitched me (Gal 3:1)?

There is good news. In the present Jerusalem is a holy spot where the Christ of Glory became the Lamb of sacrifice. He was slain upon a Jerusalem tree by a Jerusalem mob, but was raised to life inside a Jerusalem tomb. He then ascended to the Heavenly Jerusalem and told us He is preparing a place for us.

Don’t forget your true homeland. The present “Jerusalem” is not your home. You are commanded to come out of it (Rev 18:4) and set your sights on the City whose builder and maker is God. Look away to the heavens, Child of God — there is nothing for you here. Your help comes from heaven (Psa 121:1-2). Your birth certificate is in heaven. The census of heaven has your name on it.

C. S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

He’s promised us a holiday at the sea. Pack your bags and get hoofing! The journey ahead won’t always be pleasant — at times it will be fraught with scaries and peril — but it is the only journey worth taking. Soon we’ll crest the last rise, and there She will be: the heavenly Jerusalem, spread out wide and wonderful, all dressed up for our arrival.

Just think of stepping on shore
and finding it heaven;
of touching a hand and finding it God’s;
of breathing new air and finding it celestial;
of waking up in Glory and finding it Home.
— “Finally Home,” Don Wyrtzen

taking it home

The hospital doctor came into my room this morning with good news: “I think I can confidently say that you are going home today.” It’s been a comedy of errors getting discharged, but as God does, He has a reason for everything. I’ve enjoyed my time with the doctors, nurses, and techs who have graciously cared for me. I’ve tried to shine Christ to each one — three asked for a copy of my book! — learning all their names and blessing each. For me, hospitalizations have become second business. First business is living Jesus in front of people who face death every day.

I came in with the onset of sepsis and infection spreading through my body. Multiple blood clots in my lower legs were also discovered — hello, Eliquis — contributing to my issues. The bottom line: I have been unwell since October. But I feel I’ve been gone over with a fine-tooth comb, and wherever problems surfaced, they have been addressed, one by one. I am so thankful for the hope of better health. And now I get to go home. Not home home. But home.

Home home is the one on my radar. This lower Jerusalem, for all its hardships and unpleasantries, has also afforded me quick gulps of Glory and glimpses of the land of our inheritance — if you squint hard enough.

On earth as it is in heaven…

Soon, Shahd will be here for my bed bath. Sandy will arrive and get me dressed and ready for the short trip home. Not home home. But for now, just home is good enough.

Selah, beloved.

going out weeping, coming home rejoicing

[4 minutes]

They weep as they go to plant their seed,
but they sing as they return with the harvest.
Psalm 126:6

The Bible isn’t a guidebook, it is a life book. It’s not a collection of principles to live by, but life-giving truth to rest in.

With refreshing transparency, Andrée Seu Peterson confessed her once weak-kneed approach to scripture during a particularly painful season of grief. While “grousing” she read from another writer who leaned hard into the Word of God in her own similar season of trial.

In her book Won’t Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, Andrée Seu said she was more prone to “pursue minimum Christianity: saved by the blood, but entitled to grouse.” Patti McCarthy Broderick, however, believed when the Bible said ‘suffering produces character and character hope,’ it means that suffering produces character and character, hope.’*

Andrée Seu:

I, on the other hand, have interposed a baroque system of hermeneutics between the Bible and my life. I have seminary training. Unlike simple people who obey the Bible because they don’t realize how complicated it is, I find ambiguity in every verse. I don’t obey scripture, I discuss it.

She and Broderick had both heard the same statistics and psychological findings regarding the ‘natural’ course of grief and the amount of time needed to ‘process’ it. “I went with the statistics and gave myself permission to be as bad as I wanted to be. She, more simple-minded, files the following report: ‘So I chose instead to bank my life on scripture being true, and I was not going to let even well-meaning Christians talk me out of it’…

Of Broderick, Andrée Seu said, “She took the Bible as practical…She made a conscious choice to trust in God, to take his word as truth, to see opportunity, and to wear his praises publicly on her lips. And she did not find him disappointing.”

It’s necessary to draw a distinction here between distrustful whining and trusting God even as we grieve. Some sorrows run so deep they may take years to heal. But at the heart of Psalm 126 is a promise that will never disappoint.

jerald

I still recall my friend Jerald’s beautiful exposition of this verse. Jerald served as my right hand man for several years when I was pastor in Douglasville, Georgia. I remember his teaching as if it was yesterday.

Picture it: God directs a farmer to take the precious seed, the last seed in the barn, and plant it in the dry soil of his field. It hasn’t rained for weeks.
What? Waste my seed? Why would I do that? How will my family survive?
See him as he kneels in the dust, taking the last of the seed and putting it into the dry ground. He’s risking everything on God’s coming through for his starving family. Tears fill his eyes as he surrenders to the soil, praying with uncertainty. He looks up at the sky. No clouds. He writes his sweaty brow. The seed does no good in his hands, so he presses it into the hard-packed earth.
The next week he hears thunder. He rushes outside and sees dark clouds filling the sky! Torrents of rain wash down on the farmer’s fields. The ground is suddenly bathed in precious streams of living water, as valuable to him as if he discovered gold.
He had wept when he planted the last of the seed but now he rejoices because he knows the Almighty has heard his cries and has seen his sacrifice. The farmer now laughs as he stands under the showers with arms raised to the sky…

I sat by Jerald’s hospice bed one Sunday morning when he quietly slipped off into eternity. Marie, his wife (and one of my regular readers!), joined me in singing as many verses as we could remember of Leaning On The Everlasting Arms as we kept vigil. Somewhere in the middle of the hymn, Jerald left this earthen sod.

In in his lifetime Jerald wept much because of cancer, but Marie and I were witnesses to the exact moment when her husband heard God’s gentle thunder inviting him Home. He took flight from his sick bed to where the fields of grace are always green, always growing, always lush with crops. I believe Jerald was laughing when he saw Jesus.

those who dream

Beloved, one day your soul’s deepest cries will be heard and you will be as one of those who dream about reaching the crest of the last hill after a long wilderness journey. Every thorn and desert, each and every stream of bitter water, and all the giants who towered over you and made you feel weak and unprotected, they will all be behind you, drowned in a sea of forgetfulness.

Oh, but beloved, it’s not a dream. It’s a promise for us too, not just for an ancient people who were just like us. Trust the Almighty Tear-Wiper. You will not find Him disappointing.

Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!
Psalm 126:5

One final word: this promise is not merely for those who cry in this life, but for those who are willing to sow their seed — trusting, believing, hoping — in the midst of their tears. They will be the ones dancing in the rain.

Selah, beloved.

*from her book He Said, “Press”: Hearing God Through Grief by Patti McCarthy Broderick

sometimes miracles take time

[7 minute read]

I forgot to include this music video as a benediction to my previous post so I’ll just sit down (!) and write a new post. <Smile> You may recall I referenced the passage in Hebrews that has been ministering to my soul these days, “As things stand right now, we aren’t seeing all things subjected to Christ’s reign, but we see Jesus…” (Heb 2:8,9, my paraphrase). This song has been getting a lot of background play as I wait on the Lord to (how shall I put it?) unburden me from specific burdens I carry daily.

Full disclosure: the biggest burden is me. The unfinished me. The Scott who requires a lot more fine-tuning. Sanctifying. Paul prayed for the Galatians that “Christ would be fully formed in them” (Gal 4:19) and I’ve been asking the Holy Spirit to do the same for myself. It’s been a stretching season, to say the least, but Christ has been an ever-present help through it all. The ironic thing is during this burdensome season I’m also seeing a crazy amount of answered prayer in many other areas.

The Father keeps reminding me of the scene by the seashore in John 21. Jesus tells Peter that he will have a rough but rewarding life of following him, but compels the disciple to trust and follow him anyway. The Master is certainly worthy of it.

Peter turns and considers John for a moment then asks Jesus, “What about John? Is he just going to traipse off to heaven on flowery beds of ease?” Who among us hasn’t fretted about our assignments once or twice?

Why don’t they ever seem to struggle?

Why does she always get her way?

Why does everything turn out fine for him?

Why do I always have to take the high road?

Why does John get all the love?

Why, why, why. There’s probably a reason “why” starts to sound like “why-ning.” (Lord, make me/us better.)

This morning Sandy remarked that our journey has often asked more of us than others’ journeys do of them…or so it feels. [Truth bomb: faith > feelings] We know in our hearts that God is for us, his ways are perfect, and the payoff in following Christ is worth living — and suffering — for.

we know in our hearts that God is for us, his ways are perfect, and the payoff in following Christ is worth living — and suffering — for.

Sometimes miracles take time. I just got off the phone with a very dear ministry friend, a faithful reader of this blog, who is in AFib and requires a pacemaker to control his heart function. He was told by more than a few that he would “feel like a new man” with his pacemaker, but, days later, he’s still not feeling it. He’s waiting for a miracle.

No one likes being told to wait. Waiting almost feels like delaying the inevitable the same way a streetwise child hears a parent say “We’ll see.”

In Practicing the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence tells of someone who “would go faster than grace” (she was impatient to become holy) and I hear that same caution in my life today. I’m so eager for God to get everything sorted out I’m not surrendering to his meantime mercy. While we’re waiting for our miracle, God is busy doing a thousand other things for us.

while we’re waiting for our miracle, God is busy doing a thousand other things for us.

God not only has the last word, he has the next-to-last word, too. And all the words that come before that. In a later psalm of David, he praised a God who knew every page of his life, start to finish. How wonderful! This means that the Almighty is just as engaged in every minute of our days (good and bad) as he is committed to our telos (finished product).

Miracles take time sometimes. And sometimes, if we’re being honest, they may never see the light of day — at least not in the way we hoped. There are rebels who adapt to the far country just fine and never come home. Some diseases aren’t cured. Marriages fall apart no matter how often we pray and fast and hope against hope they don’t.

I don’t remember where I heard this, or read it, but I’ll tell it as I remember it. Most of us know that Charles Spurgeon, for much of his life, suffered with deep, dark depression. Sadly, he lived with depression the rest of his life. He saw himself as a lonely lighthouse, beaming the light of the gospel out to the hopeless souls lost at sea, though he himself remained in darkness. Not the darkness of being lost, for he carried the gospel light within him, but the darkness of never being healed from the oppression that plagued him. Even still, he embraced his ministry with gladness, knowing countless others were rescued and set free.

I’ve often prayed to walk again, but I will keep trusting and living onward and upward; I’ve got thousands of other healing stories anyway. I happen to be in the middle of one right now.

Sometimes miracles take time, and sometimes they get unexpected upgrades. When I, a permanently disabled man, prayed for a wife, I had no idea how blessed my life would be. My idea of a miracle was to get married at all. God’s miracle was Sandy. Yahtzee!

sometimes miracles take time, and sometimes they get unexpected upgrades.

I’ve written about this before, but my lifelong dream was to see the Grand Canyon. It would take a miracle to get me there at all, what with all my health problems and near-death experiences. But God gave me my miracle…and upgraded it to the best road trip ever…with some of our dearest friends…witnessing the grandeur of the canyon after the most beautiful snowfall…a picturesque sunset…dozens of dazzling photographs…and a thousand-and-one other grace-happy moments to relish and treasure.

And all of us born again brothers and sisters. What upgrade did we get? We didn’t just get our sins forgiven; we got eternal life, the indwelling Holy Spirit, the mind of Christ, a new spiritual family, new mercies every morning, ongoing sanctification, answered prayers, hope in our suffering, power for living, grace for dying, a heavenly Father, a heavenly home…and (drum roll) Jesus.

If I may, I’d like to pray for us, knowing a post like this affects us all in varying degrees. Each of us carries the “yes, but not yet” reality like a counterweight to our fixed eternal hope. I’d like to ask God to avert our eyes from the circumstances of our day-to-day burdens to the Living Christ who has overcome.

Father of mercies, we confess that we are often so focused on our predicaments we miss the importance of waiting. We find ourselves in the waiting room once again and ask for grace to prove faithful in this uncomfortable season. All our fountains are in you, Jesus, and we eagerly wait in hope for your promised outcome. It will be glorious, we know, because you are an Artist and everything you do is perfect. May you receive all the glory from us and in us in this season and always. In the name of Jesus, we say Amen.

Selah, beloved.