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- Written by: Don Goulding
Go, my people! Enter your inner rooms! Close your doors behind you! Hide for a little while, until his angry judgment is over! Isaiah 26:20 (NETFull)
I watched a Nigerian weaverbird gather leaf strands from a palm tree. Over, under, over, under, the yellow marvel knit the strips into his nest. At the bottom of the six inch globe was a small entry. A hundred nests dangled like Christmas tree ornaments and kept birdie families snug against the storms and predators outside.
God tells his people to hide in their rooms from his wrath against the world. This is not an injunction to become a recluse from the lost. It’s a warning to keep our hearts protected for our true love.
Earthly life threatens to consume me, both its lures and its pain. Nature’s beauty, agonizing diseases, technology, relationships, politics, wars, births—there is so much to digest.
Jesus says, “Let me be your nest, your place of safety away from the mayhem swirling around you. Withdraw your heart into friendship with me while I deal with everything on the outside.”
I’m invited into a quiet yet passionate interior life with Jesus. By faith, I must let Jesus weave a hushed sanctuary, 360 degrees around me, against anything this life can dish out, good or bad. Each new event is an occasion to curl up next to Jesus, rest in his peace and grow in the fullness of love.
So much of what is said or goes on around me is never meant to come inside the nest. I must trust Jesus to whisper those few things I need in order to serve him and thrive. All the rest is marked to be destroyed by the wrath of God, so leave it outside.
Prayer: Jesus, hide my heart from the uproar of the world.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
He [God] provides grass for the cattle, and crops for people to cultivate, so they can produce food from the ground, as well as wine that makes people feel so good, and so they can have oil to make their faces shine, as well as food that sustains people’s lives. Psalms 104:14-15 (NETFull)
A balance scale reaches its arms out side to side. My spiritual life sits on the right arm while the left side holds my physical needs.
I often say my only goal is God’s spiritual kingdom but my current assignment is to live in a material world. Without attention to both sides, the scale goes out of level.
Prayer, Bible study and fellowship go onto the right side. On the left, I must add food, rest and godly recreation or the body God gave me will waste away from a lack of stewardship. However, if the left side becomes my primary focus, I’ll plunk down into the animalistic life fit only for hell. I struggle to find the right equilibrium.
To resolve my dilemma, Jesus says, “Move closer.”
His words introduce another dynamic at work on the scale of equilibrium. As I move nearer to him, my hinge point changes which causes the scale to tip down on the physical side. To keep it level, I must lighten my temporal comforts, which is now possible because I’m closer to the Source of life.
Equilibrium is not so complex as I first thought. It’s a joyous life process of daily heeding what is in the pans and inching ever closer to my Lord.
Prayer: Incarnated Jesus, keep my heart in precisely the right equilibrium.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
Sinners are afraid in Zion; panic grips the godless. They say, ʻWho among us can coexist with destructive fire? Who among us can coexist with unquenchable fire. (Isaiah 33:14 NET_FL)