Scripture

³⁴ “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me.” Luke 13:34

Observation

Jesus knew Jerusalem.  He was there in the beginning.  He knew her more intimately than any of the learned scholars could ever know.  He felt joy of her birth and the pain of her continual betrayal.  Jesus compares her to babies who need protection and refuse it from Him.  In Hosea, she is his wife and prostitutes herself out to other men.  When Jesus utters these words, I can imagine Him replaying in His mind all of her rejections.  He is not angry, but sorrowfull.  Perhaps He sheds a tear.  She has broken His heart over and over again and yet He still loves her and will die to save her.

Application

How many times have I told Jesus that I want to know Him more?  I sing it in song, I pray it before starting the day, I tell Him I desire to know His heart.  Yet, I dislike reading the Old Testament.  It is so full of pain and betrayal.  I feel like screaming at the Israelites for their treatment of God.  The choices seem so clear when I read it, because I know the end of the story.  But, as I am reading the Old Testament, Jesus is showing me His heart.  He is showing me what He felt watching history unfold.  If I truley want to know Him, I must feel the pain and sorrow He felt.  I must relive the history He endured.  But He will be there with me; sharing His heart, his pain, His reasonings, and help me apply them to my life today.  He will show me how to not repeat their mistakes and how to live like those who remained faithful to Him.  He will be my guide and I will be His companion as He reveals His heart to me.  This is what I have asked of Him.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank-you so much for enduring the pain, not just of your death, but the pain of our betrayal and rejection.  Thank-you for saving us even though we broke Your heart.  Thank-you for sharing Yourself with me.  Help me to understand Your heart as I read through Your word.  Help me to apply it to my life to make me more like You.

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Scripture

¹⁶ “Say to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian,^[a] ‘This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: I will do to this city everything I have threatened. I will send disaster, not prosperity. You will see its destruction, ¹⁷ but I will rescue you from those you fear so much. ¹⁸ Because you trusted me, I will give you your life as a reward. I will rescue you and keep you safe. I, the Lord, have spoken!’” Jeremiah 39:16-18

Observation

Ebed-melech was an eunuch.  Basically, he was a neutered, black man under the kings service in Israel.  He was a foreigner, who had once saved Jeremiah’s life by getting the king to pull him out of the cistern he was thrown into.  He even had enough empathy to give Jeremiah rags to put under his armpits to protect him from the ropes used to haul him up. God took a brief moment in the middle of proclaiming the coming destruction of the land, to give Ebed-melech reassurance that he would be safe because of his faithfulness.

Application

God is so wonderful.  This passage reminds me how personally involved in our lives He is.  Yes, He is the Judge and can destroy nations, but he takes time to individually be a part of our lives no matter who we are.  If we remain faithful to Him, He will keep his promises to us.

Prayer

God, help me to know how intimately involved you are in my life even if things around me seem to be falling apart.  Help me to be obedient to You, even when I feel I would be justified in doing something else.  Please forgive the times I don’t listen to Your sweet, small voice telling me which way I should go.  Amen.

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Scripture

¹⁴ She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. ¹⁵ “Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?”

She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.”

¹⁶ “Mary!” Jesus said.

She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”). (John 20:14-16)

Observation

Imagine this scene: Mary is upset because she just watched a very good friend, the man who saved her from a life of prostitution, suffer brutality and die a painful death.  She went to put spices on his body, and probably to talk to him in private as we sometimes do at peoples’ headstones.  He wasn’t there.  Now she’s doubly upset.  She’s probably looking at the ground trying to hide her swollen eyes.  As she turns to leave the tomb, her shoulder bumps someone.  She probably doesn’t even look up, or if she does, she sees the man through a haze of tears, wet hair, and internal anguish.  She doesn’t expect it to be Jesus.   She pleads with the man to tell her where he has taken the body.  It isn’t until he says her name and speaks to her that she recognizes who it really is and turns to him with joy.

Application

I love this little scene.  It is a scene that I believe is played out many times in all of our lives.  Some circumstance in our lives gets us down.  We are in dispair.  We look, but do not see, our surroundings.  We live inside our self pity and see everything through darkly painted glasses.  When we do look, we expect to see more suffering, more pain.  We are not looking for goodness and so we do not see it.  Then a common person bumps shoulders with our daily existance.  Someone we are not expecting to see.  Maybe an acquaintance we barely know, or the lady behind the counter at the grocery store, or a man in recovery at church, or a bum on the bus.  They are commonplace in our lives; people we pay little attention to.  They are “just the gardener.”  We may project our anger on that person.  We think this person must in some way have contributed to our suffering.  What we do not realize is this person was sent by God to be an encouragement, to be a light in the darkness, to be His representative in our dark lives.

When Jesus speaks to us through His sent one, we can choose to turn and embrace Him with joy like Mary did or we can continue to brush past Him with head down lost in our own world of despair.

Prayer

Lord, often times I pray that I will be an encouragement to those who need a touch from You.  Many, many more times I have been encouraged and blessed by the most unlikly sources.  Thank-you for sending me your angels.  Help me to always see You when You call my name.  Forgive me the times when I have been so absorbed in my own pain that I fail to look up and see You calling out to me.

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I am going to try to write a post from my Blackberry. Hope it looks okay.

Scripture: They think the Lord will do nothing to them, either good or bad.So their property will be plundered, their homes will be ransacked. They will build new homes but never live in them. (Zephaniah 1:12)

Observation: Here is another example of people who do not believe they need God. How many times have we heard people speak flippantly about God; as if they know about Him but don’t believe He is relavant in their lives.

Application: The Israelites were founded BY God. THey were His own special people, yet when they did not have hardships because God blessed them, they were quick to push Him aside until He was inconsequential in their lives. What we have done is no different. We live in the most blessed nation in the world. As generations come and go, we have moved from total dependance on God to flippancy about His very existance. Most of us will say we believe in a higher power, but cannot say that it has any real effect on how we live our lives. What does it take to turn a nation back to God? For Israel, it took disaster, calamity, sorrow and profound loss. Then they would turn to God and ask for His help. I hope it doesn’t take that to get us to turn away from our own provision to God.

Prayer: Lord God, I can see the Israelites sin so plainly because it happened do long ago. Please help me to see my own sin and be able to turn to You. Help us as a nation to find you again. I prauy that there does not have to be a great calamity before thid happens. I love you, Lord, and I know that whatever happens, You are sovereign and Your ways are just.

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