A couple of times when I was young my family, together with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, shared the rent on a house in New Smyrna Beach for a week.  It was an ordinary cement block house, probably built in the 1940s, two bedrooms, one bath, a living room and kitchen.  What made it worth renting was its location—right on the beach, which was not nearly so crowded in those days.  Every morning we four girls were out building sand castles and playing tag with the waves, floating on the undulating water just past the sandbar or diving below to play shark attack on one another.  We all smelled of suntan lotion and seaweed, coconuts and salt, and only came in for lunch and an afternoon of card games and board games during the worst of the heat, and were back out again in the evening when the sea breeze cooled enough to give us a shiver after once again dunking ourselves in the brine.
            Our parents got the two bedrooms, but we girls didn’t mind sharing the floor in the small living room, the gray, white-streaked linoleum tiles covered with quilts, the floor beneath crunching with a little grit despite all the sweeping our mothers did every day.  You live on the beach, you WILL have sand.  At 8 I was the oldest and usually the last one asleep.  No air conditioning in those days meant the windows stayed open wide and I loved listening to the roar of the ocean.  Over and over and over, the steady pounding of the surf gave me a feeling of security.  I did not have to guess if the next wave would roll in; all I had to do was wait for it, and eventually it lulled me to sleep.
            Fast forward to a time thirty years later.  We were camping on Anastasia Island, a beach 60 miles further north.  The state campground was still small back then, only one section just a few feet off the dirt trail to the beach, acres of palmetto groves separating it from the bridge to the city streets of old St Augustine.  The boys had their own tent, and as we lay in ours once again I listened to the surf crashing onshore, just as it had all those years before.  Over and over, as steady as a ticking clock, as a piano teacher’s metronome, as a heartbeat on a hospital monitor.  All those years and it had not stopped.
            And then another twenty years passed and we two spent a weekend on Jekyll Island.  This time we were too far from the beach to hear it in the night, but after a wonderful meal at the Driftwood Bistro we stopped on the beach for a walk and there it was.  The wind whipped around our legs and plastered my hair across my face, gulls screamed over us in the waning light, and the waves were still coming in, again and again and again, just as they have since the dawn of time.  They never stop.  Some days they may be rougher than others.  Some days the sea may look almost calm.  But check the water’s edge and that lacy froth still creeps onshore in its never-ending cycle.
            Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the LORD of hosts is his name: ​“If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the LORD, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.” Jer 31:35-36
            Jeremiah tells the people that God will restore his nation and establish a new covenant in the verses just preceding those, a covenant in which their sins will be “remembered no more.”  He uses the stability of the natural phenomena that God created as a guarantee of His promise.  Only if the sun stops rising, if the moon stops shining, if the waves stop rolling in, can you discount my promises, He says.  That guarantee counts for all of God’s promises.  He never changes, we are told.  He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, so yes, He will keep the promises He has made to us of redemption, of protection, of spiritual blessings and a final reward.
            Are you a little blue today?  Has your life been upended in a way you never expected, in a way you can hardly bear?  The sea God made is still roaring.  Those waves are still rolling in just as they have for generation after generation after generation.  The white caps you see are the same your parents saw and your grandparents and your great-grandparents on back to your earliest ancestors.  And God is still faithful to His people.  Close your eyes, listen to that perpetual roar, and breathe a little easier tonight.
 
I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the LORD of hosts is his name. ​And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’” Isa 51:15-16
 
Dene Ward
 

My mother taught me when I was a teenager, that if you make the bed the minute you get out of it, it's done in 5 minutes and it was no big deal.  Marrying a man who thinks that making the bed is ridiculous got me out of that habit, but I still get it done eventually, and usually before the morning is half over.
            I've heard it from many:  why make the bed when you are just going to get back into it that night?  Well, for one thing, I like for things to look tidy and making a bed makes a bedroom 90% tidy all by itself.  For another, my bedroom is visible from our dining room table, which is usually where we are entertaining guests.  For another, when you leave it unmade, all those sheets that you put your face on all night long are open to catching whatever dust falls on them—and I have a dust mite allergy.           
            But as for that reason most people give, "why make it when you are just going to get back into it?"  Let's think about that for a few minutes.  Why wash your clothes when you are just going to wear them again?  Why wash the dishes when you are just going to eat off of them again?  In fact, why cook dinner when you are just going to get hungry again?  Doesn't work so well with all those things does it?
            What I am afraid of is that attitude will bleed off into something really important, like why try to overcome a temptation when you know you are just going to sin again?  I hope you can see that one really doesn't work.  Overcoming once will make it easier to overcome the next time, and then the next, and then the next, and someday you may find yourself sinning less often.  Isn't that what you are hoping for?  Not to mention, God always gives you a way out.  Try working your little argument on him after he has gone to all that trouble, and his Son has died in order to help you win those battles over Satan.
            No, it isn't a sin not to make your bed, not even if your mother said it was, but be careful with the arguments you use for the simple things.  Don't let it affect the things that really do matter.
 
For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world— our faith (1John 5:4).
 
Dene Ward

I remember when they started, just barely, on July 1, 1963.  I was still in elementary school and never sent any mail myself, but I remember my parents having to memorize our brand new code—the US Postal Service Zone Improvement Plan, or ZIP code for short. 
            If you never knew it, those numbers do mean something.  The first number is the National Area.  The next two are the Sectional Center or Large City Post Office.  The last two are the Associate Post Office or Delivery Area.  It all came about because of the huge increase in mail and the new automated systems.  At first, using zip codes wasn't legally required, and actually, it still isn't, but if you want a relatively quick delivery, I wouldn't buck the system if I were you.  It works so well that it has become a model for other countries.  Imagine that (of something run by the government).
            Did you know that four people have their own personal zip codes?  The President of the United States (20500-0001), the First Lady (20500-0002), Smokey Bear (20252), and of course, Santa, who takes the Canadian postal code HOH OHO.  Not so in the US, where all his letters are sent to North Pole, Alaska, and he shares his zip code with that town, 99705.
            Although zip codes are supposed to help mail carriers and others find addresses more quickly, it doesn't always work that way.  In central Pennsylvania off interstate 80, the town of Conyngham, with the zip code of 18219, sits right smack in the middle of Sugarloaf, PA, with the zip code of 18249.  The residents of Conyngham, then, live within the zip code of 18249, but they don't live in it—like a hole in a doughnut isn't actually part of the doughnut.  You may not think this is important, but it can affect your insurance rates and property taxes, your voter registration, jury duty, and more seriously, emergency response time.  Conygham is known as the town that got swallowed up by a zip code.
            That's one thing you don't need to worry about with God.  He knows exactly where you are any time of day.  If you need Him, He can find you and your zip code doesn't make any difference at all.  In fact, His response time can beat anything man has to offer with or without the help of a zip code.
             Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love,  (Ps 33:18).
            ​When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles,  (Ps 34:17).
            That can be very comforting to the faithful, but don't forget the negative aspect of this promise:  For a man's ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths, (Prov 5:21).  Not only can God always find you to help you, but He also knows exactly what you are doing, whether good or bad.
            But for today, ponder this comforting promise.  Not only will God never forsake you (Psa 37:25,28; Heb 13:5), He doesn't need a zip code for rapid response.  He will not become confused should you, like the residents of Conyngham, Pennsylvania, be lost in the middle of the wrong zip code.  In fact, it is not a matter of His "finding" you, because to Him you are never lost at all.
 
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, (1Pet 3:12).
 
Dene Ward

On June 9, 1972, the Black Hills were struck by a severe thunderstorm that simply would not go away.  Over six hours it dropped twelve to fourteen inches of rain.  Rapid City, South Dakota, was hit the hardest.  It lies along the Rapid Creek, which is usually five yards wide and only a few feet deep but it rose steadily from late afternoon into the late night.  At 10:45 pm, local time, the dam at Canyon Lake, which is on the northern edge of the town, broke, sending a wall of water running as fast as 50 mph through the town.
            A deputy reported that he had to abandon his car because a two story house was coming down the street toward him.  A retired truck driver had left his pickup to try to help someone in a stalled car and wound up being swept away and pinned against a wall by a floating tree with his head barely above water for seven hours before being rescued.  His wife and two children managed to survive in the pickup all night, rescuing one man by grabbing him as he was swept by.  Another family lost four of their five children, including a two year old, when they tried to escape their vehicle.  The water was simply too strong for them to hold on or be held onto.  In all, 238 people died and more than 3000 were injured, over 1300 homes and 5000 vehicles were destroyed, and damages reached $165 million.  Multiply that several times for an amount in today's dollars. (latimes.com)
            I cannot imagine the terror those people felt as a wall of water 12 feet high came barreling toward them.  We have only a small inkling from our experiences.
            We live on a hillside.  You don’t really notice it when you first drive onto the property.  The hill is shallow as hills go, dropping about twenty feet in five hundred.  In another climate one would seldom think anything of it.  But in Florida, in the summer, torrential downpours are common.  Not too long ago we had two and a half inches come down in less than thirty minutes.  Two or three days before we had six inches, but it took all day to accumulate that.  When nearly half that much pours out of the sky in such a short time, you feel like ten have fallen instead.
            It was as if a giant bucket were being upended over us.  We could hardly see the blueberries only a hundred feet away.  The roar on the metal roof was deafening.  The rushing water overwhelmed the culvert in the drive and washed over the road and out to the garden where it ran against the berm in a narrow creek clearly visible from the house.  We had built that berm precisely because of rains like this one—we were tired of wading “downstream” to rescue washed away garden plants. 
            Eventually we left our viewing station on the porch which was not much shelter in a rain like that—the merest breeze left us damp and shivering, even in the summer.  So we stepped back inside and looked out the windows to the north.  Now you could really tell—we are definitely on a hill.  Water ran like a river across the entire width of the yard, from the front steps to the fence, ten to twelve inches deep.  We watched leaves, twigs, and moss float “downstream” to the run on the east side of the property.  After the rain stopped, it kept running, draining the whole hillside, for another two hours.
            A week after that rain, I walked the path the water had taken.  Leaves were washed into piles a foot deep along the runnel.  Limbs hung up on some of the bushes but others, dragged by the running water, lay piled up against the fence which had acted as a sieve as the water ran through it.  Channels several inches deep marked the dried mud, and the grass was still bent over in the direction the water had flowed.  Running water is powerful.  And that leads us to an even more powerful Flood.
            The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep, Gen 7:17-20.
            The waters of the great Flood “prevailed.”  Those waters not only covered the earth, they drowned every living creature on it that was not in the ark or swimming in the newly created worldwide ocean.  Have you ever seen a flash flood?  Have you ever heard the stories of one like the one in the Black Hills?  No one can win against those “prevailing” waters.  If you try to hang on to something, you simply wear out and are washed downstream. 
            The same word is used in Ex 17:11: So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed.  We are talking about winning a war with that word; that’s the strength implied in its use.  It should be no surprise that “prevailed” is also translated “strong” and “mighty.”
            So why is that important?  Because the same Hebrew word is used in Psalm 117:2.  For great [that same Hebrew word] is His steadfast love toward us.  God’s love for us is strong; it is mighty.  It is like rushing water that carries along everything in its path.  It is like an army winning a war.  Sometimes we seem to doubt that.  “But I’ve been so bad,” we say, “how can God love me?”  He can love you because His love is great. It can prevail against the worst of sins.
            The next time you doubt it, think about flood waters.  Think about an army that can win a war.  God’s love is just like those things.  It prevails over all.
 
​I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand  John 10:28,29.
 
Dene Ward

I am different from most women, I guess.  I do not enjoy those cutesy-pie sayings that sound like they came straight out of a sugar canister.  For one thing, I think they can engender the opposite feeling they are intending to--guilt, mainly.  How many times have you heard that even if you don’t feel good, you should go to the assembly because it will make you feel better when you leave?  Yes, on occasion, it does just that, mainly because I was too busy having a pity party and the services put my mind on things besides me. 
           But what about the person who is genuinely ill, or who is so old and feeble that he needs to rest after putting one sock on?  My own Daddy reached that point before he passed on.  Do I really think that going to church and spreading germs to the elderly and small children is going to make me feel better, and even if it did, wasn’t that awfully selfish of me?  Or if pushing myself too hard could cause me to collapse during the services, what great good did that accomplish for anyone else?  Yet sometimes these people do push themselves—they are in fact the ones most likely to push themselves--so they come and infect everyone else, because they have been made to feel guilty for not doing so by things I have come to call duck-billed platitudes.
            I see another problem with some of these things—they smack a little of the health and wealth gospel.  “Sacrifice for the Lord isn’t sacrifice if you really love the Lord.”  Nonsense.  Try that one on a first century Christian who is about to have his throat chomped on and his belly ripped open by the lions in the Coliseum.  Sacrifice feels like sacrifice and God never promised anything else.  What He did promise was that sacrifice is worth it.  That doesn’t mean anything if you have annulled the pain of the sacrifice.
            The things we need to hear are the true things.  Yea, and all that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution...For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps, 2Tim 3:12; 1Pet 2:20-21.  What we need is to be told how to endure what will surely come if we live like Christ did, not how to avoid it or worse yet, how to make it “fun.”
            Sometimes life is just plain hard.  That was the punishment we got when we were thrown out of Eden.  Christians are not immune to that penalty, we are just forgiven for it.
            Be strong, God is always telling us in His Word.  Be courageous.  It isn’t courage to turn everything into one giant tea party.  That’s denial, and I see too many Christians living in that state.  And this is what it leads to when you finally realize you cannot platitude your way out of it—“Why did this happen to me?”  This is why:  We live in an imperfect world, made that way by sin, which, no matter how much we like to believe otherwise, we have participated in.  And it won’t get any better.  Tragedies are a part of life.  BUT---
            We live in hope of a better world, a better place that will be perfect and will never end.  That is what you need to remember, not a bunch of saccharine sayings on poster after poster after poster.  I have something much better, and so do you if you will take hold of it.  It does not tell us that everything will be wonderful in this life, that God will spare us from anything painful.  Instead it promises pain, but it also says this:
         Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom 8:35-39.
 
Dene Ward

Does anyone besides me remember Romper Room?  Romper Room was a program designed for preschoolers to teach them the elements of courtesy and character.  I was confused about it growing up.  It seemed that the "Romper Room" I watched was filmed in Orlando, where I lived for a few of my earliest years, but at the same time it was a syndicated program.  How could that be?    
            The show was actually an idea that was franchised across the country.  So yes, I was seeing a local version, but there were many others and they were exactly alike.  And if none was available in your area, you saw the syndicated version.
            Miss Nancy was the first hostess of the syndicated version.  I believe that my own hostess was also a Miss Nancy, but perhaps that was part of the franchise.  I am not really sure.  The part I remember most were the "bees."  There were "Do-bees" and "Don't-bees," all stated by someone in a giant bumblebee outfit.  He would always remind the children, "Do be kind," or "Don't be a tattletale," or any of several other characteristics.
            At the end of the show, Miss Nancy would pick up "the Magic Mirror," an empty frame, actually, and look through it, reciting along with the children, "Romper bomper stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me do. Magic Mirror, tell me today. Did all my friends have fun at play?"  Then she would call out children's names as if she were seeing them through the mirror.  That original Miss Nancy finally passed away on April 26, 1997, three years after the show ended its 41 year run.
            I must have been channeling Miss Nancy when I thought up the title of this essay.  We’ve been studying faith lately in our weekly women’s class.  Part of that study involved looking up every passage we could find that contained the word, then categorizing the verses into some sort of sensible outline.  One of the categories we called “acts” of faith, all the verbs associated with the word. 
            That also had me looking up the original Greek word.  I have said before and constantly remind the class that I am not a Greek scholar.  I have enough trouble with English.  Yet looking at a Greek word can instantly bring another English word to mind and give you some insight into the word.  Here are some of the things we found.
            2 Cor 5:7 says “we walk by faith not by sight.”  That word is peripateo and you should instantly think of the word “peripatetic.”  Someone who is peripatetic is a pacer, constantly moving back and forth, usually talking at the same time.  Think ADHD and you have the picture.  We aren’t to be just strolling on this faithful walk of ours.
            Gal 5:6 mentions “faith working through love.”  The word for “working” is energeo.  That brings to mind the English words “energy” and “energetic.”  This is not a lethargic faith that simply assents to a belief, but one that works because of that belief.
            Paul says we are to be “striving for the faith” in Phil 1:27.  That word is sunathleo.  Don’t you see the word “athlete” there?  We are supposed to be working at it the way an athlete works out—hard enough to raise a sweat.
            “Fight the good fight of faith,” Paul says in 1 Tim 6:12.  “Fight” is agon and if you don’t see the word “agony” there, you simply won’t see anything.  Then there is this, which I have gleaned from years of crossword puzzles—an agon was the fight between two gladiators in the coliseum, a public fight, usually to the death.  Are you publicly fighting for your faith, and fighting so hard that you often find yourself in agony from the sheer effort you are putting forth, understanding that it could very well mean spiritual life or death?
            We found several other passages as well, all of them strong active words.  None of them had anything to do with mental assent, with saying, “I believe,” and thinking that would do.  Even such simple things as “Ask in faith,” took on a new meaning when we discovered that the word is often translated “beg” or “plead.”  This is not a casual request.
            No one should ever need to ask if you are a believer.  It should be evident every minute of your life.  They should see it in your service to others (Phil 2:17), in your morality (Phil 1:27), in your love (Eph 6:23), in your confidence (Heb 10:22).  Believers do work and they work hard.  Lazy people need not apply.
 
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:8-10
 
Dene Ward
 

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

It seems to be popular to make comments about the old church of Christ attitudes as though the last generation knew little of grace and faith and focused only on obedience, exact obedience.  I have made a few of those comments myself and can point to sermon outlines from 35 years ago where I endeavored to change such attitudes. However, when the comments become disparaging and self-serving (look how much better I am), then perhaps it is time to consider.
 
They grew up in tough economic times, faced tough spiritual battles to be allowed to exercise their faith in the way God commanded, and they did not express emotions as readily as today’s generations. They did not talk a lot about God’s grace for that was God’s business. Their business was to obey God.
 
That they did understand that obedience must proceed from faithful trust and was founded on God’s grace can best be understood by the songs they sang:
 
“True hearted whole hearted, faithful and loyal…..
“My faith looks up to thee……
“Looking to thee from day to day, trusting thy grace along the way….Sure of thy soul redeeming love….
“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
“I know whom I have believed….
“He will give me grace and glory…where he leads me I will follow, I’ll go with him, with him all the way
“Faith is the victory….
“Is thy heart right with God?
“To Christ be loyal and be true in noble service prove your faith and your fidelity, the fervor of your love
“What a friend we have in Jesus….
“Purer in heart O God….
Take time to be holy….
“Only in thee….trusting, I’m cleansed from ev’ry stain, thou art my only plea….
 
And it was in those days and by one of those men that “Lord I believe” was written.
 
And, the list could go on and on.
 
 Because some treated service like a checklist and may not have expressed as much heart as some do today, please do not mark them all as empty. In fact, if a checklist religion was the spiritual ceiling for some, “who art thou that judges the servant of another?” (Rom 14).  More people should fear minding God’s business about God’s servants!
 
And, if all the expression of heart and trust and faith and grace today makes one careless toward obedience, then how is that one any better before God?
 
These were our parents and grandparents, our spiritual fathers in the faith.  Most knew more about the grace of God than many today who spout fancy words, but they just tended to their own business of serving faithfully.
 
But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness (Rom 6:17-18).
 
 
Keith Ward
 

Today's post is by guest writer Lucas Ward

The last several of my entries have used the lives of people in the Bible as illustrations of eternal Biblical principles. I want to try that again, using a lesser known Biblical person. This man is so obscure that even some of the better read Bible students out there might not know much about him. His name was Abraham. *Wait for laughter to die down.*

Of course, we all know of Abraham. The father of the faithful. When we first meet Abraham (then called Abram) in Genesis 12, his faith is already at a legendary status. God tells him to leave all he knows to travel to a foreign land, which he as yet knows nothing about. Abraham then leaves! In leaving Ur, Abraham left a surprisingly modern city. There is archaeological evidence of indoor plumbing among other conveniences. When he left, he lived the rest of his life in a tent. A very nice, very plush, very comfortable tent, but a tent is still a tent. A house is much better. In leaving Haran, Abraham left his family and all he knew to be a stranger and live among strangers. Abraham’s faith in God and His promises was so strong that he willingly left all.

As strong as it was in the beginning, Abraham’s faith had room to grow. Many of the stories of his life over the next 25 years deal with his struggle to understand God’s plan and to even help it along. We first really see this in Gen. 15:1-4:

“After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: ‘Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.’ But Abram said, ‘O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’ And Abram said, ‘Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.’ And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: ‘This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.’”

Notice that this isn’t a lack of faith, but rather a question that Abraham is asking God. God’s promise requires Abraham to have children. As of this point, he has had none. It was customary at that time for the chief steward of a wealthy man to inherit if the wealthy man had no heirs, and so far Abraham’s designated heir is Eliezer, his chief steward. Abraham doesn’t doubt God, but he can’t see how the promises are going to work out, so he asks. God tells him that his very own son, proceeding from his bowels is the literal translation, will be his heir. And so Abraham continues, some of his questions answered. In the next chapter, though, we see Abraham starting to try to help God’s plan along:

Gen. 16:1-4a. “Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram, "Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived.”

It’s been 10 years of waiting. Ten years of living in a strange land, surrounded by strange people, because of faith in God’s promises, and yet nothing has happened. Maybe Abraham and Sarah were thinking that God was waiting on them to have the faith to step up and get the ball rolling. Who knows? What we do know is that Sarah was desperate. Desperate enough to try to capitalize on a custom of the time that said that any child born to a wife’s servant was legally the child of the wife. We see this illustrated in the competition between Leah and Rachel, the wives of Jacob, as each gave Jacob their servants to obtain children from. Not surprisingly, tension builds between Sarah and Hagar, but what I want to focus on is that Ishmael was born when Abraham was 86 (16:15-16). Abraham now has a son, his own son, issued from his own body. He thought things were now set up for God’s promises to commence. Thirteen years later, God again appears to Abraham, repeats the promises, institutes the covenant of circumcision and tells Abraham that Sarah will bear him a son. (17:15-16) Abraham then falls on his face laughing at what God has said! From a logical standpoint, this is understandable: Abraham was 99 years old and according to 18:11, Sarah had already undergone menopause. It made no sense that Abraham would have a child by Sarah. He just couldn’t understand how that could be. He believed in the promises of God, but he thought it made much more sense for those promises to flow through Ishmael. In fact, Abraham pleads to God for that to be the case: Gen 17:18 “And Abraham said to God, ‘Oh that Ishmael might live before you!’” God replies, “No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.” (vs 19). And so, about a year later, Isaac is born to Abraham by Sarah. (21:1-3)

The promised child finally arrived 25 years after the initial promises were made, but it seems that Abraham might still have been hedging his bets. Child mortality rates were high in those days and Abraham might well have been thinking that, if anything happened to Isaac, he still had Ishmael. There is an indication of this when Sarah demands that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away. She had seen Ishmael mocking Isaac and demanded that they be sent away so that Ishmael would not inherit with Isaac. Abraham doesn’t like this because if nothing else, Ishmael is his son. He doesn’t want to send him away any more than any father would want to send a son away, but from God’s response, there might have been more than just that: “But God said to Abraham, ‘Be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’” (Gen. 21:12) The fact that God saw fit to reiterate that Abraham’s seed would go through Isaac seems to indicate that, just as Abraham tried to help along God’s plan by having Ishmael, he now was holding a back-up plan for God, just in case. He never doubted God’s promises, he just wanted to understand how the plan would unfold. He wanted to help nudge it along on his time-table, not God’s. He wanted the reassurance of a back-up plan. God has now stripped him of all these things. The next thing recorded is, of course, Abraham’s biggest test.

In Genesis 22, God tells Abraham to offer Isaac to Him as a sacrifice. What must have been buzzing around in Abraham’s brain? Not only would he have been suffering as any father under those circumstances, he would have been wondering about the promises. Ishmael is gone, sent away at God’s command. He has no other sons. God promised that the blessings would flow through Isaac. In this test, we see the culmination of Abraham’s faith. When Isaac asked his father where the lamb was for the offering they were on the way to make, Abraham answered, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” (Gen. 22:8) Essentially, Abraham turned it all over to God and trusted that God knew what He was doing. Yes, we know from Hebrews 11:19 that he thought God would resurrect Isaac after he sacrificed him, but, whatever Abraham’s guess was, he turned the solution of the problem over to God. He no longer needed to understand the plan. He no longer needed a back-up plan to reassure him. He just trusted God to handle things and turned it over to Him. "God will provide”.

That complete trust of God to handle things we can’t understand is the whole point I wanted to make with this. I could have started out by quoting Rom. 8:28 (“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good”) and cited several other passages dealing with trust in God and had everyone reading this saying “Amen”, but it might not have had the punch of seeing Abraham go through the process of reaching that point. I could have gone to Heb. 12:7-11 and written about how God disciplines all His children so that the end result would be their attaining the “peaceable fruit of righteousness” and everyone would be nodding their heads, but then we leave the computer and enter the real world. Romans 8:28 sounds good until you are burying your first grandchild. Discipline for the ultimate fruit of righteousness sounds ok until you are watching your spouse slowly die from a wasting disease. When the career I thought I’d follow my whole life suddenly dries up and I find myself delivering pizza to make ends meet, how does that work for my good? It’s easy to read these passages and say “Amen” in church on Sunday. It is harder to remember them and understand how it works Monday-Saturday. The life story of Abraham shows us that we don’t have to understand it. We just have to believe. When Abraham was trying to understand God’s plan, when he tried to help it along, that’s when he got himself into trouble. It was only when Abraham stopped trying to understand and just trust in God to work His plan that God said to him, “now I know that you fear God”.

So, when the economy changes and I lose my house, how does that help me? How does it work for my good? I don’t know, but I believe that God has a plan and He is working it. When I get passed over for promotion, or even have my hours cut because I’m talking too much about God, how does that work for me? I don’t know, but I trust that God knows and He is working His plan. We are not promised answers in this life. We may never know why the horrible things that happen to us happen. We are told that God is in charge. That God knows what He is doing and He is working for our good. We just have to trust in Him. If we do, and cast our cares on Him, we are promised peace in this life.

Phil. 4:6-7 “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Lucas Ward

“A wall of fire about me, I’ve nothing now to fear.”
 
            If I were surrounded by fire, I would probably be scared to death.  Obviously this figure is meant in an entirely different way.
            And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the LORD, and I will be the glory in her midst, Zech 2:5.
            Zechariah was a minor prophet who prophesied shortly after Haggai.  In fact, you can think of him as writing the sequel to that prophet’s book, Homer Hailey once said.  The Jews have returned from Babylon and are in the midst of rebuilding the Temple.  Zechariah’s job was not only to encourage them to finish the task, but to look ahead to the glorious coming of the promised kingdom.  But here they were, a small remnant (42,360, Neh 7:66, out of an estimated million in Babylon), with no armies, no weapons, and not even a wall around their old city. 
            In the vision Zechariah sees a young man trying to measure the city, as if it were a finite place.  In verse 4 God says Run, say to that young man, ‘Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it.
            “My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus told Pilate.  It would not be a physical, measurable location at all.  The Jerusalem God had in mind was one too big for walls.  It is open to multitudes of peoples.  And the only wall it needs is the protection of God Himself.
            The Hebrew writer calls the church “the heavenly Jerusalem.”  We are in that city and we do not need stone walls or mighty weapons of war.  We have “a wall of fire about” us in the person of the Almighty God.  That fire represents not just the protection, but also the glory of our Savior.  Even as we approach what could be a new era of persecution in our country, if we have faith in those promises, what have we to fear?
            Of all the old hymns we sing, I can’t think of another with as many scriptural references as The Lily of the Valley, over forty if you count them all.  Wouldn’t it be a shame to assign this one to the trash pile just because it doesn’t have modern rhythms or harmonies?  And isn’t it shameful to us if we can’t understand what these lyrics mean?  Jesus should be to us and to our descendants in ages to come “the fairest of ten thousand” to our souls, and God “a wall of fire about” us.
 
What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also, 1 Cor 14:15.
 
Dene Ward