- Details
- Written by: Don Goulding
“Indeed, my plans are not like your plans,
and my deeds are not like your deeds,
for just as the sky is higher than the earth,
so my deeds are superior to your deeds
and my plans superior to your plans.” (Isaiah 55:8, 9)
“Go ahead, son, let go. You can trust me,” Dad said.
My feet dangled from a bright-green walnut tree, just beyond his reach. I shook my head and clutched the branches. A skinny six-year-old would’ve been an easy catch, but I wouldn’t make the leap. Something in my juvenile reasoning concluded that if I couldn’t catch a falling person, nobody else could either, not even my strong father.
Now it’s my heavenly Father I’m disappointing with my lack of trust. As when I was six years old, my mistrust grows out of a failure to acknowledge the differences between me and my Father.
There are two responses to the dissimilarities between God and me. The one I commonly adopt is to humanize God. I do the same thing to my pets. “Hey old girl, you look like you want to go for a walk.” I project my thoughts onto my dog. Just so, I make God into an aloof being with limited insight like me.
The other response is to be awed into trusting humility. Moses, Isaiah, Peter, and John all had common reactions when they encountered God up close—they hid their faces and stumbled over what to say. That’s where I need to exist, not contriving how God is, not limiting him by my understanding, but blown facedown by a majesty to which I cannot find the edges.
The gargantuan immenseness of God’s knowledge and love should leave me cured of trying to climb the tree of life by my strength, and willing to fall limp into his arms.
Prayer: Holy One, I trust your wisdom for my life.
- Details
- Written by: Don Goulding
But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be like your Father in heaven… (Matthew 5:44, 45)
Alley was the most lovable, huggable, happy tail wagger of a golden retriever I ever met. In her fourteen years, she never so much as growled at the children who sat on her, or tugged her velvety ears.
If I had bound Alley with a chain when she was a puppy, and every passerby kicked her or threw stones, it would have changed her temperament. She would have snapped at humans, or become a shaking heap of fear.
Many of us are like abused dogs. We are mistreated for most of our lives. Before children have their permanent teeth, they have callouses on their hearts from rejection and unfaithfulness. Then the victim grows into a perpetrator.
Only mercy and love have any hope of making a rescue. Mercy heals wounds and love restores hearts to newborn innocence. Sometimes violence can only be stopped with force. But punitive action merely interrupts the outburst, it doesn’t resolve the root problem. The only way to cure a traumatized heart is with undeserved grace and unwavering love.
The next time someone barks at me, I hope I remember they are an abused puppy. They were born joyful, but others beat them until they only knew how to snarl. I want to show mercy and extend love. To do less, to reply to hostility with aggression, is to concede the battle. I’m called to live heroically, stop the cycle, and respond with the same mercy and love that Jesus showed me.
That’s what Alley would do.
Prayer: Father, send an abused puppy that needs mercy and love today.
- Details
- Written by: Don Goulding
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9)
“Mama, it’s dark. I’m scared.”
“Hush Baby girl, we got to stay down here where Master can’t find us.”
Maroons, they were called, runaway slaves who hid in the swamps during the U.S. Civil War. Pattin and his wife were examples. They bore fifteen children inside a cave they dug from the earth. Imagine those poor kids living in constant fear, believing their cave was the world.
We are born into an earthly system that’s as unnatural as Pattin’s cave. God created us to live free in the sunshine of his love, but our secular machine hides us from the fullness of life. We grow up slaves to ease and acceptance. To pander after the world’s offerings, and call it freedom, is a delusion greater then the Pattin children believed.
When I was a boy, Jesus rescued me out of the cave. I lived free above ground, delivered from the counterfeit life, for a while. But in my teen years, my cave-dulled senses couldn’t handle the radiance of unlimited love. I crawled back into the pit.
Now, I behave like a secret caveman. On church days I dance in the sweet air of liberation. By Monday, I sneak back down the tunnel into slavery. Pattin’s cave in the swamp offered more freedom than this.
I need to get my identity right. I am not a slave, cowering every time worldly temptation cracks its whip. I belong to a royal priesthood, chosen for freedom, and adopted into the holy nation of Almighty God. A prince of the light, that’s who I truly am.
Satan says I’m a spiritual maroon, while Jesus dubs me emancipated. They can’t both be right. It’s time to heed the voice I choose to hear, and live outside the cave.
Prayer: Savior, thank you for calling me into your marvelous light.