promise

This morning is almost gone. The song that the bird sang while the sky was still a soft blue evaporated, and now the heat of the sun has fully dried the grass. My spirit is spent.

The Lord is here and has given me words. Each of you face different challenges: the sinking weight of responsibility and authority; the fear of surrendering to God what seems impossible; the deep neediness of having fallen to pieces, of having given into the the deception of condemnation; the thirst for freedom from fantasies. In lifting each of you to the One who meets all of our needs, I can’t get Miriam out of my head.

She is the one who danced Israel into the desert, singing and playing the tambourine. I didn’t know, but on the other side of the Red Sea, she foretold the overcoming of all of Israel’s enemies: Philistia, Edom, Moab, Canaan. All before even entering the desert, let alone the promised land.

I am struck by this because her song contains the seeds of Jesus’ resurrection. She sang about God, and she sang to Him as if God were delivering Israel from future enemies, right in front of her eyes:

“…You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode. The peoples have heard; they tremble; pangs have siezed the inhabitants of Philistia. Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed; trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them; because of the greatness of your arm they are as still as a stone, till your people, O Lord, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased. You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.

The Lord will reign forever and ever…”

It is rebellion that refuses, out of fear, or condemnation, or lack of faith, to speak the promises of God, and rebellion is everywhere in our culture today. Individuals, wanting control, “choose” options that are best in their opinion, and determine their own destiny, holding onto reservations, skepticism, calling all of that intellectual pursuit. Looking at previous generations with disdain, our culture calls their faith superstition, and thinks that human progress is NOW, that individuals are the supreme example of that progress, NOW- as if the people of the past were not privy to the progress that unfolds in the individual today.

The selfishness of our culture is not reality. Try as it may to tempt us into rebellion, it is not reality. The temptation to follow rebellion leads down a path of progressive human separation, isolation and torment.

I am not afraid to speak of the promises Miriam sang, because they, containing the seeds of the resurrection, are essential to reality. My prayers for each of you this morning are anchored in her song. If Israel is purchased, how much more are we, purchased with the very blood of Jesus?

Let us live this life in Christ, submitted to the only true God, and to the promises spoken not to a superstitious generation, but to all of eternity. Let us live, totally dependent on Him, without reservations and without any individual pursuit apart from pursuit of Jesus. Let us live, trusting, aware of consequences, honoring wisdom. Let us live our lives in Jesus Christ, admitting to sin, the condition of humanity, the condition of the individual, but let us hope in the resurrection. God will not disappoint us.

We hope, not by our own doing, but by the eternal working of the Holy Spirit. He causes us to hope, to forgive, to love, to rise up, and to live.