Warrior Priests Pray

 [direct from my prayer journal this morning because it is my sincere hope that it is not too late and we all need to be throwing ourselves before our people and our justifiably angry God]

“Arise, cry out in the night,

at the beginning of the night watches;

pour out your heart like water,

before the face of the Lord.

Lift to him your hands,

for the life of your children,

who faint in starvation,

at the head of all streets.”

See, YHWH, and take note!

With whom have you dealt thus?

Should women eat their young

children of tender care?

Should priest and prophet be slain

in the sanctuary of the Lord?”  Lam 2

Father, should we, those who know you, those you have made priests of Jesus Christ, is it not our job, our responsibility to raise up a lament before you, to enter the breach, to stand before You, Holy God, and the people, the neighbors, the uncleansed, the uncircumcised of heart, and offer an intercessory prayer for them?  Should i not weep and cry out for the souls of my sons and my daughter and my wife?  Should i not cry out to you for mercy upon my village?  That you would spare Chalfont?  That you would spare Haycock?  That you would have mercy upon our commonwealth, that you would look upon Pennsylvania with mercy and kindness and favor and pour out your Spirit on it and not your wrath.  That you would look again to our nation as you did in years past when we remembered you and we took time to renew our covenant with you and we worshiped you in spirit and in truth and we had Bibles that we read and clung to and prayed over.  That you would again make America a humble greatness in the earth, a light and a hope to the nations.  That you would pour our spirit out upon those closest to us, so that they may join us in worshiping you, Mexico and Canada.  The islands of the Caribbean.  That you would make our enemies pause and think and see and repent and turn to you for the kindness you show us.  That you would make the wise and the gentle rise up and displace the cruel and the arrogant.  That you would overthrow men who would make themselves godkings.  Men who would suck their own nations dry to make themselves wealthy and comfortable and to lavish luxury upon their toilet seats.  Father, that you would be a father, the Father, to the fatherless, the orphans, the many many orphans of this world.  That you would again be a comforter husband to the many, many widows of this world.  That you would forgive the sins of the single mothers and heal their families and place righteous men in their lives and in the lives of their children.  That you would take the young men’s anger and violence and turn it against their own sin and that they would seek to know You with all the fire that is in their bellies.  That they would become men of renown in doing right and justice.  That you would again teach us justice.  That we would know what it means to not favor the rich or the poor but to give to those who have need with joyful hearts and to not oppress.  That those who had would seek to out do each other in giving away.  Only a working of your Spirit, your gift,  your holy knowledge and essence will do this!  Only your Son’s work can do this!  Only your Gospel going forth can do this!  Only the knowledge of the crucified and risen Christ can do all of these things!  To make even our enemies see You and worship?  Father, that you would make every knee bow and every eye weep for joy at the rising of your Son.  

Is it not we who should pray like this?  Is it not we who should throw ourselves before your wrath as our Savior has taught us and plead for this world?  Plead for our nearest neighbors?  If not us, then who?

Is it not us who should confess our sins?  Ours first and then those of our families, our clans, our villages, our towns, our states, our nations, our world’s?  

Or is it too late?  Are you telling us, like you told Jeremiah, to not pray for this people?

Have we lost our chance?  Did we waste the years of plenty?  

curse

 To be touched by those who won't know you.

To be known by those who won't touch you.

No rest for the righteous.

"I have appointed watchmen upon your walls, Jerusalem;

all day and all night they shall never be silent.

You who profess YHWH have no rest.

And you must not give Him rest until He establishes,

and He makes Jerusalem an object of praise in the earth."

Isaiah 62: 6,7

You...must not give HIM.... rest.

What does this mean?  Who are those who profess YHWH if not us?  Who are the watchmen?  The prophets and priests and witnesses to what they have seen and heard if not those to whom His revelation has come and His Spirit rests?  And what are we commissioned to do?  

Not give HIM rest.  We are to wear out heaven with our pleading and our supplication and our reminding of God of His own promises.  With our desire to see His glory finally shine forth.  To see Isaiah 60 fulfilled.  

To pray without ceasing.  In the name, the honor and glory of the one in whom all of the promises are and will be fulfilled, Jesus.

It is not for the kings

It is not for the kings, O Lemuel;

drinking wine is not for the kings,

nor is strong drink for the rulers.

Or else he will drink and forget what has been decreed,

and he will pervert the rights of all the afflicted.

Give strong drink to him who is perishing,

and wine to those in bitter distress. 

in bitterness of soul,

He will drink and forget his poverty,

and his misery he will not remember anymore.

Proverbs 31

When i read this the other day, i gotta admit, my heart first rejoiced that there was a good reason for alcohol and dissipation for some of us.  i include "dissipation" because that is what is really at stake here.  Forgetfulness.  Disconnecting.  Unplugging.  Mindlessness.  Unconsciousness.  Checking out.  There are as many ways to do it as there are sinners who desire it.  Alcohol, wine, strong drink are just convenient proxies but fill in the blank: sex, drugs, music, eating, hobbies, binging television, isolation, community, social media, even types of work, none of these things are evil in and of themselves.  Most if not all were created by God for specific purposes and our delight in His goodness through creation.  It is how we use them which makes them forms of mental suicide.  Not in obedience to how their and our Creator designed them to be used but as gods ourselves, whose cravings must be filled, whose lust for comfort must be satiated.  

Under three things the earth trembles,

and under four, it is not able to bear up:

under a slave when he becomes king,

and a fool when he is satisfied with food;

under an unloved woman when she gets married,

and a maid when she succeeds her mistress.

Proverbs 30

A slave who becomes king, who is elevated higher than his or her master.  What else but pride could this be?  The pride of Lucifer.  The pride which Eve swallowed.  The pride which rules all mankind now; to look God in the face and say, "Not your will but MINE."  This is what drives behind dissipation and drunkenness in all its forms.  A servant, for servants we are, who has made himself unfit for service, even if only temporarily.  A child who has stopped up their ears, turned up the music and refuses to hear her father's calling.  A disciple sleeping instead of praying.  A steward beating the slaves in his charge.  A lamp without oil.  Kings filling harems and stables and building our own citadel palaces.  A watchman turned inward.  Asleep at our post.  An ambassador reveling with the locals.  A soldier without his weapons.  It is eating the Passover but not being ready to travel.  No belt, no sandals, maybe even naked.  A dumb witness, or worse, a foolish one.  One unready or unwilling to give his testimony.  

Who may be so?  The perishing.  Those bitter of soul.  Those in abject poverty and misery.  Those without hope.  Those without redemption.  Those without a savior.  Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die, this life, as sad as it is and can be, is as good as it gets.

This is not our testimony.  This is not who we are, we who know the Savior who refused the wine mixed with myrrh, a narcotic, so he would be clear headed and able to serve to the best of his ability, even in his death, as he obediently took all the wrath of man and Almighty, Holy, Holy, Holy God for our sin of rebellious pride against his own Father for the joy set before him...so that he could make us co-heirs with Himself when he became King of all kings and Ruler over all authorities and powers in the earth and heavenly realms.  We who were hand picked by him now serve this King as ministers of His authority, priests and witnesses of His testimony to a poor and perishing world, ambassadors of His Kingdom come, coming and yet to come, servants with access to all the King's joy, comfort and resources.  Let us today, be ready to work and die while it is today, for tomorrow, 

we drink and dine in Paradise!

I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh...

i used to write.

i used to HAVE to write to feel..not whole, i never feel whole (it strikes me as a linguistic irony or perhaps, justice, that the word,"hole," is in the word,"whole."), not whole (i often make my parenthetical asides so long that i'm afraid, as i certainly have, you the reader may have lost my original thought, so i repeat the last bit to get us both back on track.) No, i never feel whole, (see.) not  to feel human-i don't even know what that means, but ...me.  There was a time in my life when my life felt so much like wearing someone else's shoe, a shoe that did not fit, a shoe that did indeed fit so poorly, my entire body was wracked.  When i felt this, when i lived like this, writing wasn't just a compulsion, or a hobby, or a diversion, it was a scream of protest.  It was a lament.  It was a maskil of a prayer for deliverance.  i needed to write to escape and grumble and complain and seethe and sob and make fun of and do all of the emotions that my detached and unemotional childhood never taught me to express properly.  To bare the soul that i kept so carefully hidden in shame.  

The same might be true of my other artistic ventures.  My cartooning.  My drawing.  Attempts to live a different life.  Minor rebellions.  Passive-aggressive revolts against ...well, let's be honest here, if God is sovereign then He has arranged and ordained the circumstances of my life, so against God.  

i have always believed in God.  i have always believed in Jesus as the only way, truth and life.  i have always known that if i put my trust in His finished work, my soul would be saved.  i say it that way on purpose--my Soul would be saved.  Because what i never really believed or even had a concept of, was that my Life would be saved.  What i have struggled with from earliest memory was believing that God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, loved me.  In point of fact, i suspected they were far too busy and important to even notice me, or if they did notice me, it was as a disappointment.  At the same time, i've always believed that God was in control of my life.  i've never understood how other people plan and set goals, i've never really even understood how people dreamed and invented possible futures for themselves.  To me, events just happen.  i'm not a sailboat in a sea of possibility.  i'm not a motor boat upon a lake of dreams.  i'm not a ship plying a course to a destination.  i'm a raft with a leak so i have to keep inflating it from time to time to keep from going under.  And somedays are relaxing and i can sit back and enjoy the sun and somedays are stormy and i have to paddle and bail alternately to keep from being swamped or capsized.  But a destination is beyond my understanding.  It is not even a concept.  There are only two possible outcomes: rescue or drowning.  And one seemed much more likely than the other.

When one reaches adulthood however, one is forced to make decisions.  Long term decisions.  Decisions with ramifications for oneself and one's loved ones.  Marriage.  Career.  One is forced to face what one thinks about Life.  What is Life for?  Why was one given Life?  Why are we here?  The answers to those questions, whether we articulate them or not, are shown in how we make those long term decisions.  And then how we react to the consequences of those decisions.  Having no matrix to hang my expectations on, i didn't always feel like i made those decisions well, or correctly, or at all.  Things just sort of continued to happen to happen and i floated along with them.  And grumbled.  

Pastor Steve Lawson says one of his seminary professors threatened to sit in the front row any time he was preaching and within five minutes of his sermon, hold up a big sign simply saying, "SO WHAT?"  The point being, preaching, like blog writing, if it is only for the preacher/writer is self-indulgent and vanity and so much chasing after the wind.  Vapor.  With that in mind, if you're still with me, let's try and find a point in this self-indulgent musing mist.

The compulsion to do something, anything, just because you like it, i believe we can safely say, is not evil.  It is gift.  It is the image of God in us.  God creates.  God created us in His image, to model Him, to be like Christ in some ways; corrupted, inward-curved, self-serving, misused and mishandled, to be sure!  But Like Christ in its origin!  In 1 Chronicles 25 King David arranged the Levite singers and musicians.  Two hundred and eighty-eight of them into twenty-four teams, twenty four divisions, twenty-four rotating shifts who would lead the praise and worship in the temple that Solomon was going to build and one assumes, at a tabernacle of some sort that David must have erected for the Ark of the Covenant and the worship of YHWH in Jerusalem.  Over them were Asaph, Jeduthun and Heman (not the Master of the Universe but it is interesting to note there is a Heman and a Sheerah in the Bible).  If those names sound more familiar to you than just a mention in Chronicles it is because they are also mentioned as authors, musicians and music directors in the Psalms!  Now that alone should tell us how important their job was.  

i grew up in a family that didn't really value art and by association, artists much.  Art isn't necessary.  It does not produce something that the family can eat, that will keep the rain out, it will not keep you warm, it will not heal a broken arm, it won't fix a legal matter, it does not balance ledgers, it does not quarry stone, it does not engineer a way to cross large rivers, it isn't inventing a solution to a particular problem, it does not even really look like work when one is singing or dancing or playing a piano or guitar or drawing or painting or sculpting or making a scale model or carving or writing a story or a poem or a song, or decorating something that actually is useful.  It's vanity.  It's more than useless, it's sinfully proud.  The people who practice it are lazy parasites and the people who pay them are fools.  At best, it was cute and interesting and something to do when all your chores, important work, useful work was done.

But that's not how God treats it.  God didn't just make a tree useful.  He made it beautiful.  If no one uses it for paper or firewood or structural material or eat its fruit or nuts, or take shelter under its shade or in the rain, or plants it to muffle the noise of the world or privatize their yard; it's still beautiful.  It's beautiful to see.  It's beautiful to hear when the breeze rustles its leaves.  It smells beautiful.  It's tactile.  i don't necessarily recommend tasting them but...they're beautiful.  They are art.  God is a gardener.  A planter for purpose.  For beauty.  God is a creator.  God deserves worship in beauty and holiness and the beauty OF holiness (1 Chron 16, 2 Chron 20, Ps 29 and 96)!  And as if that wasn't enough there is the purpose of beauty and art...

"Moreover David and the captains of the army separated for the service some of the sons of Asaph, of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with harps, stringed instruments, and cymbals."  1 Chron 25: 1
"...the sons of Asaph were under the direction of Asaph, who prophesied according to the order of the king." verse 2
"...under the hands of their father Jeduthun, who prophesied with the stringed instrument with thanksgiving and praise to Yahweh." verse 3
"... All these were sons to Heman, the seer of the king, according to the words of God to raise a horn."  verse 5

Prophesying.  Seeing.  According to the words of God.  For as the angel said to John in the Revelation 19, "Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”  When is art more than art?  When it is worship AND prophecy!  When we tell the truth we have learned about our God and His order and His kingdom in some small, toddler to his father with his building blocks kind of way!  To bring this full circle, the truth about God that i've had to painfully learn through my life is not only is God sovereign, but God is Good!  God really does know me!  And loves me!  And in some weird way that i may never fully understand, likes the real me in Christ!  And this is what i'm hoping to prophesy to you today!  To anyone who reads this and needs to know it.  That your life isn't random.  Your life isn't organized by a detached and disinterested God.  Your life isn't only the product of your poor decisions.  Your life has been fearfully and wonderfully made and crafted to make you,  yes, even you, a prophet of the Living God who tells the world something about Jesus Christ.

Now more than ever, as our lives have been reduced, as our essentials are being boiled down and our dross is being skimmed off, what is left of us?  What is God pulling you to?  What is God giving you a godly desire for?  What habits draw you TO Him and not away?  What activities have given you life or made life more delightful rather than drudgery?  What do you have a pang to share with others who appreciate such things?  What are you sharing online?  What gives you hope?  

It might, i say might, just maybe, be art.  It may, in its best form, be worship.  And if it's those two things, it might just be prophecy.  

(*complete side note here: one of my favorite forgotten worship songs came to mind while writing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVMR7ZFVHdo)

Short or long, life is for the strong....of faith.

We may fear God calling us to short, dramatic lives and a martyr's death but it seems to me, in many ways, that would be easier than the long, quiet resistance of anonymous faithfulness in constant danger of folding into the warm, soft, fuzzy, smothering embrace of the perfumed, comfortable, luxuriant, bosom of Babylon.

We may hate affliction and suffering, but it is truly God's gift to His people which keeps them in dependence upon Him.

a fourth rumination from the Sequester

"In the beginning God..."

A story, i once read from an author who was quoting a roommate, is simply put:

A character
who wants something
and faces obstacles to get it.

Every narrative everywhere follows that essential guideline at its heart. In the first four words of the Bible, we are introduced to the main character. God is the one who wants something, a people for Himself. A people He has imagined and now that he has can no longer imagine living without. But by the third chapter we see that He will have to overcome some pretty big obstacles to get them. The whole Bible is this story. God is the Hero. God is the protagonist. God is the one knocking down the walls in His way. God is the pursuer. God is the triumphal King who gets his Bride in the end.

Is this how we read the Bible?

a third rumination

It has become very popular to angrily and self-righteously call for people to, "wake up!" Which never includes the person doing the calling, of course. They are the ones who see. They are the ones who know what is going on.

But are they? Do they?

"And it will happen in an instant, suddenly.

You will be punished by Yahweh of hosts

with thunder and earthquake and great sound,
storm wind and tempest and the flame of a devouring fire.
And the multitude of all the nations who fight against Ariel,
all those who fight against her and her stronghold,
and those who inflict her shall be like a dream, a vision of the night.
And it shall be as when the hungry person dreams—look, he is eating!
And he wakes up and his inner self is empty.
Or as when the thirsty person dreams—look, he is drinking!
And he wakes up and look, he is faint,
and his inner self is longing for water.
So shall be the multitude of all the nations who fight against Mount Zion.
Be astonished and be amazed!
Blind yourselves and be blinded!
They are drunk but not from wine;
they stagger but not from strong drink.
For Yahweh has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep,
and he has shut your eyes, the prophets,
and he has covered your heads, the seers.

The whole vision has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one who is literate, saying, “Read this, please.”

And he says, “I cannot, for it is sealed.”

Then the book is delivered to one who is illiterate, saying, “Read this, please.”

And he says, “I am not literate.”

Therefore the Lord said:

“Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouths
And honor Me with their lips,
But have removed their hearts far from Me,
And their fear toward Me is taught by the commandment of men,
Therefore, behold, I will again do a marvelous work
Among this people,
A marvelous work and a wonder;
For the wisdom of their wise men shall perish,
And the understanding of their prudent men shall be hidden.” Isaiah 29

a second rumination...

1st and 2nd Chronicles are held by scholars (do with that what you will) to have been written during the Babylonian exile. A people yanked from their homes and driven a thousand miles away and held as prisoners, refugees, resident aliens in a foreign empire who actively tried to breed, educate and legislate their culture out of them. You could say, Chronicles and many other books which were written down or recopied at that time were an answer to that pressure to conform. That pressure to assimilate. That pressure to synchronize with their neighbors and political overlords drove them to remember. It drove them to go back into their history to see two things:

God's marvelous, undeserved, graceful election of them as His own.

Their horrendous, rebellious, mistreatment of Him as His own.

In other words, how did we get here? As we look around 2020 and we see the undeniable growing pressure of a society that preaches tolerance while weaponizing intolerance, shaming and legislation against God's people and against the true God himself and His Word, we might do well to take Israel's nod and remember how we got here.

And when we do, there's a third thing we should see and remember...

God is still sovereign, still on the throne, and still working. A different King, a true King is coming...

Thoughts during this Sequester

"Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." Rev 12

The anger of men is portrayed as a flood.  A torrent.  A raging river.  Even though YHWH, you control the waters.  You are the only one who has destroyed in your wrath by the flood.  But the serpent will open his mouth and spew forth a river to wash away the children of the woman.  And if you are not on our side, we will be swallowed alive.  We will go down in the torrent.

"A Song of Ascents. Of David.
“If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,”
Let Israel now say—
“If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,
When men rose up against us,
Then they would have swallowed us alive,
When their wrath was kindled against us;
Then the waters would have overwhelmed us,
The stream would have gone over our soul;
Then the swollen waters
Would have gone over our soul.”

Blessed be the Lord,
Who has not given us as prey to their teeth.
Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers;
The snare is broken, and we have escaped.
Our help is in the name of the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth." Ps 124

i think making the effort to memorize, memorialize in music,
the songs of the ascents and many of the psalms will help us greatly in the Last Age to come out of this.

Strange days indeed

Some not-so-random

thoughts and observations

on the first day of my “isolation”

• Sick Sick Sick by the Queens of the Stone Age didn’t seem like a good way to start my day
• Giving a check to my work partner and noticing how old he’s gotten in the nearly seventeen or so years we’ve been working together and hoping i saw him again when this is all over
• Shutting down a job site with no idea when anyone will be back feels weird
• Being yanked around by the customer through phones and intermediaries and hoping it’s not because he won’t come out of his house and talk to me directly.
• Leaving there and driving all over the county closing offices for my wife’s company
• Empty parking lots and darkened stores.
• Cherry blossoms and dogwoods in full bloom reminding me of God’s promise of resurrection after death in Spring
• A line of cars snaking around a large parking lot hoping to get into the bank drive-thru.
• Joggers, walkers, bicyclists, bikers, kids with loud cars, old men with convertibles enjoying the weather.
• A line of people wrapping around the corner hoping to get into the gun and ammo shop.
• Full parking lots in grocery stores, liquor stores, and beer stops.
• Remembering i’m carrying around all of my empty gas cans to fill them.
• People wearing gloves at the grocery store.
• Me wearing gloves in all of the offices i’m entering.
• Forgoing dinner with my folks because i’ve been every where and met lots of people and just want to make sure i’m not symptomatic before i go there.
• But the best was the first thing this morning— my reading plan called for Psalm 91 today. 

“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High

will lodge in the shadow of Shaddai.”

The secret place of the Most High.  That phrase always strikes me.  The shadow of Shaddai.  Almighty, all powerful.  i don’t know all it means but to me it reminds me that Jesus isn’t great because he saves us from affliction but through it.  The flames are taken by him and we hide in his shadow.  But it seemed all the more poignant because like the Queens of the Stone Age, Psalm 91 repeats sick, sick, sick three times. 
“For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler,

from the plague of destruction.”

“You need not fear the terror of the night,

or the arrow that flies by day,

or the plague that spreads in the darkness,

or the destruction that devastates at noon.”

“No harm will befall you,

and no plague will come near your tent.”

“My lord, what will be the outcome of these things?”

"Now I myself heard, but I did not understand, and I said, “My lord, what will be the outcome of these things?”

What if there was nothing on teevee?

What if there was nowhere to go?

What if groups of ten or more were forbidden or at least, very, very frowned upon?

What if travel between cities stopped?

What if contact between neighbors stopped?

What if there were no hugs, no kisses, no shared meals, no parties, no assemblies, no place safe for society to gather except the ironic forced assembly of the sick and the caregivers in hospitals?

What if we saw more police than priests on the streets of Rome and the Vatican?

What if there were curfews and it became unlawful to leave our houses after dark?

What if whole economies collapsed because no one could go to work?  

What if stores ran out of food and who could go to them anyway?

What if only Amazon became our only provider?  Our only employer?  The only vehicles on the roads other than emergency ones?  

What if all the schools closed?

What if the worst estimates are right and hundreds of thousands of people began dying?

What if it's true that this won't be measured in weeks but months?


What if nations, their economies wrecked, their people desperate, their governments jealous for their own power, take advantage of the situation to attack their neighbors?

What if this marks the change of life as we know it?

What will the church do?

Well, what are we going to do?

We are the church.  We do not mourn as those who have no hope.  We are the ones freed from our fear to think creatively and the ones given the knowledge of God to think purposefully about next steps.  Baby steps and giant steps.  What can we do to ensure the good of our communities and the furthering of God's kingdom today and ten years from now?  What is God saying to us through His Word about this moment?  About how we will spend our time?  About how we will care for our families and each other's families?  About what is important?  About what is necessary and what should never have been as necessary as we made it and by God's grace we are being invited to let go?  How will we communicate these things to each other?  How can the Body continue to operate in this disconnected state?  What does justice and mercy look like in this brave new world?  What does courage look like?  Will we be like those in Numbers 11 who longed for what we had in Egypt or will we be those who sojourn in this land as exiles hoping in the country to come?

What must we do to do the works of God?  The floor is yours, Pray, read the Scriptures, pray again and then i and we look forward to hearing what the Spirit has been telling you.

"And now, Israel, what is Yahweh your God asking from you, except to revere Yahweh your God, to go in all his ways and to love him and to serve Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep the commandments of Yahweh and his statutes that I am commanding you today for your own good. Look! For to Yahweh your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it. Yet to your ancestors Yahweh was very attached, so as to love them, and so he chose their offspring after them, namely you, from all the peoples, as it is today. So you shall circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn. For Yahweh your God, he is God of the gods and Lord of the lords, the great and mighty God, the awesome one who is not partial, and he does not take bribes. And he executes justice for the orphan and widow, and he is one who loves the alien, to give to them food and clothing. And you shall love the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. Yahweh your God, you shall revere him, you shall serve him, and to him you shall cling, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise, and he is your God, who has done with you these great and awesome things that your eyes have seen. "  Deut 10

What if...?

• abortion is a symptom not the disease
• Like a parent who becomes more concerned with their child’s moral behavior than reaching and teaching their heart, we risk losing both and become tyrants
• God cares about our heart’s relationship with Him more than our body
• In the flood, in Sodom, in Judges, God destroyed the children with those who sacrificed their children
• God is at least, as much concerned with the hearts of those who would sacrifice their children to their own kingdoms as the lives of the children sacrificed
• All this is getting us to focus on the body rather than the spirit
• All this is actually making us unloving
• The denial of abortion to unregenerate hearts is an existential issue to them
• We, by being unloving and uncaring (in a sense) become the very reason they feel they must destroy the church
• We by being focused on a physical/temporal issue (bodily death, even of something as heinous as infants) become easily manipulated by political forces who (appear) aligned with our cause but simply want power over us
• Satan’s point in making abortion so terrible and huge has been to distract us from our true task?

What a tool.

When is a tool not a tool anymore?

When it’s a god.  Or maybe just our means to remain god.

There are many ways to obtain the emotional state of control, of security, of what we might call ‘freedom’.  All of them are forms of power.  Money can give us power.  Influence can give us power.  Education, knowledge are routes to power and control over one’s own destiny.  A path to avoid that which we’d like to avoid and have that which we’d like to have.  Or keep what we think of as ours.  To avoid the consequences of our actions or simply not have to bow to another’s demands.

Safety.  Security.  If necessary, isolation.  Hiding.  Speed, if you can’t catch me, you can’t make me do what you want and more importantly, what i don’t want.  Freedom of choice.  Power.  Violence is a way of maintaining control.  The threat of violence.  Make them more afraid of you than you are of them.  No one can tell me what to do anymore.  i have power.  The power to reach out and harm those who would harm me, those who would control me, those who would place me in their power and make me their victim, their servant, their slave.  No one can tell me what to do.  i have the power over life and death.  

Even my own.

i am god of me.

But what if someone threatened the means to my power?  The source of my security?  What if someone told me i was no longer god, but i had to turn in my lightning bolts, my security, my sanctuary, my source of power and join the mortals below?  The sheep?  The victims?  The slaves?

Fear returns.  Anger lashes out because something made us afraid again.

For that is what the tool has become, that is what our godhood is about, we want freedom…freedom from fear.  The irony being that we never actually attain it.  Only the illusion.  We are actually more afraid than ever.  More anxious than ever.  More angry than ever.  Less free, for we become the tool’s slave.  The fear’s slave.  For when we demanded freedom from the true God Almighty so we could be gods ourselves, that is what we inherited: fear, for we are such puny gods.

But only listen and i shall point you to a better way, maybe not less fear but the right and in the end, the only rational kind…Luke 12