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- Written by: Don Goulding
…Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. (Matthew 5:8)
How can I be pure hearted when I have unclean attitudes every day? I desperately want to see God, as Jesus said, so I have to know what it means to be pure hearted.
We picked our way through the mud toward a palm thatched hovel. A six-year-old mute girl in a yellow dress shot out from the curtained doorway. She ran past the Nigerian Bible college student leading me, and threw her arms around my legs. In the villages, my white face normally frightened children who’d never seen a Caucasian, but this precious girl clung with uninhibited love.
Who was pure hearted that day? Not the girl’s mother who was in the hut practicing witchcraft. The neighbors only mocked the child’s enthusiasm. The Bible college students tried to pull her away from their missionary. Instead of swooping her up and saying, “Don’t try to stop her, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these,” I stiffened, and set the girl aside. None of us adults were pure hearted.
The six-year-old wasn’t troubled by what others thought of her. She didn’t concern herself with pride in her stature. She only wanted love and protection, and that made her pure, ready to see God.
It’s been fifteen years since I encountered the pure hearted girl. But whenever I need a reminder of what God expects from me, I close my eyes and see the yellow dress. I remember the squeeze of love at my knees, and I know that pure hearted isn’t complicated. It’s just loving others with arms open wide.
Prayer: Jesus, give me pure love for others.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
For we groan while we are in this tent, since we are weighed down, because we do not want to be unclothed, but clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2 Corinthians 5:4)
Mom was swallowed by life. When she was a young adult, ailments began to accumulate. She quietly suffered migraines, hypertension, arthritis, fibromyalgia, neuropathy, hypothyroidism, and lymphoma. In the end, it was not illness that took her, but life that swallowed her whole.
We thought we were here in life fighting to keep Mom from death. Sometime in the last days, as she lay in the hospital, she discovered it was the other way around. Her body was death, and life coaxed her free of the cocoon. She demonstrated this discovery by a joyous countenance as she yielded.
As Mom floated away from suffering, a cable of concern for bereft loved ones held her back. True life drew the cord taut and suspended her in the middle.
“If you need to go,” our family told her, “don’t wait until everyone is gathered for goodbyes.”
The cable disintegrated in a gentle pop. And Mom rose.
An image developed out of the fog, Jesus, arms wide, his life pull urgent. Mom raced to him and it happened at contact. Thrill electrified her spirit. She snapped awake to know her life on earth had been a shadow of this new union. Sparks drifted down to reveal peace—permanent, immovable peace the size of a granite mountain.
All this as the arms of Jesus swallowed Mom in life.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for consuming my mother in life.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
Look! I will come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays alert and does not lose his clothes so that he will not have to walk around naked and his shameful condition be seen. (Revelation 16:15)
My dothi is coming loose!
As I took my seat on the stage before hundreds of expectant brown faces at a women’s conference in India, the knot holding my man-skirt popped open. The prospect of going to the podium while my essential covering remained on the chair was troubling. During the longish introductions, I clutched the overlap of my dothi, and slipped offstage for repairs. Most of the ladies never realized how close we were to a foreign clothing train wreck.
In addition to a dothi, I also wear a white robe of righteousness. It covers my sin, because the tag on my robe reads, “Washed in 100% innocent blood.”
Revelation says, “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” While he was on the cross, Jesus filled the washtub with the only agent that can clean sin from robes.
I pushed my filthy garment into the blood of Christ, and the stains lifted away. The brightness of his righteousness fused into each fiber. By the miracle of miracles, it was transformed into a radiant shroud that covers my dirt.
Now, the robe is my secret power. I slip it on and bounce through my days with the innocence of a child. I’m even made bold to live out some of the holiness with which I’m dressed. Nothing I’ve tried by my effort does what my robe does.
I’d be a fool to take my robe off, ever. If I attempt to go even a short while without it, like when I go to church or when I’m praying, Satan points at my guilt and mocks damnation at me. I mustn’t go anywhere at all in my shameful bare self.
Prayer: Jehovah Tsidkenu (The Lord Our Righteousness), save me from my many stains.