Dwelling Place

St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.

 For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling;

he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle

and set me high upon a rock.

Psalms 27:4-5 (NIV)

God’s house is a glorious place, shining with transcendent beauty, full of perfect peace and joy. As we dwell there, experiencing the pleasures of his presence, our soul finds fulfillment and satisfaction.  As we gaze upon his beauty all the blessings of his house surround and fill us up.  We were made for this house. 

From this our home base, our shelter, our place of security we are strengthened to face the frustrations and difficulties of life.  From this place, the problems we face here below seem small and insignificant, light and temporary.  The beauty of his house and his presence far outweighs any trial we may face.  We are concealed in his home when trouble comes.  We are hidden and yet we are present.  It is not an escape from reality, but a living in the glorious reality of God’s presence.   

You will show me the path of life;

in Your presence is fullness of joy,

at Your right hand there are pleasures forevermore.

Psalms 16:11 (AMP)

Abundance

“I am the LORD, I am the LORD, the merciful and gracious God. 

I am slow to anger and rich in unfailing love and faithfulness. 

I show this unfailing love to many thousands

by forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion.”  

Exodus 34:6,7 (NLT) 

As we sit down to the abundance of our Thanksgiving table, we are reminded of the riches and abundance of God’s love. 

  

If God were to write his own resume the bullet points would look like this:

• Merciful and compassionate 
• Gracious
• Long-suffering, patient and slow to anger 
• Abundant in loving-kindness and goodness
• Faithful and trustworthy 

This is God’s description of himself.

Lord, we thank you for who you have declared yourself to be.  We thank you for your abundant pardon, your unfailing love and companionship, your never ending generosity and inexhaustible grace.  You are our God, our loving and attentive father. 

As we partake of the turkey and dressing, the mashed potatoes and gravy and the pumpkin pie let us also feast on your abundant love and spread it to all around our table.  And let us remember the poor.

May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love. 

May you have the power to understand 

how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. 

Eph 3:17,18  (NLT)

Turn

And when I wake up, you are still with me!

Psalms 139:18 (NLT)

So the Lord must wait for you to come to him

 so he can show you his love and compassion.

  Isaiah 30:18 (NLT)

When I wake in the morning, I look, and there I see God waiting for me.  As I turn to him he responds with his loving attention.  He longs to bless me today, so he waits for me to awaken my eye to see and my ear to hear encouragement for the day ahead. 

As the day heats up, I turn toward him.  As noise and confusion swirl around, I take a moment to turn and find him waiting with his gracious gifts of peace and quietness in the midst of chaos. So, he grants strength to deal patiently with everything.

In the evening, when I am overcome with drowsiness, I turn in thankfulness for he has faithfully kept me through the day and I rest secure that he will again be waiting for me when the day dawns anew. 

It is good to proclaim your unfailing love in the morning,

 your faithfulness in the evening,

Psalms 92:2 (NLT)

Light

The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. 

And for those who lived in the land where death casts its shadow, 

a light has shined.”

Matt 4:16 (NLT)

Moses prayed:  If it is true that you look favorably on me, let me know your ways so I may understand you more fully and continue to enjoy your favor.   Ex. 33.13 

Solomon prayed:  Give me an understanding heart so that I can govern your people well and know the difference between right and wrong. For who by himself is able to govern this great people of yours?” 1 Kings 3.9

The recent sex abuse scandal at Penn State University clearly demonstrates the devastation caused by individual moral failure.  The consequences of violating God’s system of morality are far reaching, damaging our own souls and hurting those in our circle of influence.  Whatever is done in secret will one day be exposed by light.

If we jump off a building, we will fall to the ground and get hurt even if we do not believe in the law of gravity.  So it is with God’s moral laws.  Even if we do not accept or understand or are ignorant of God’s laws, we will still suffer the consequences if we disobey them.  His laws are woven into the fabric of the universe. 

Our minds can be so dark and confused.  We can excuse our bad behavior in so many ways if we think it is to our benefit.  The leaders of Israel knew they needed God's help so they asked for understanding to discern good from evil so they could govern wisely.  We, too, need to pray that God would enlighten our minds to see and understand what is really going on.  It takes God given wisdom and courage to know what to do when we discover evil in ourselves or others.  

Lord, grant us understanding hearts.  If our minds are in darkness, send your light to shine on them so that we can discern right from wrong and have the power to stand up against evil where ever we find it.

Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding. 

  Search for them as you would for silver; seek them like hidden treasures. 

Then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord,

and you will gain knowledge of God.

For the Lord grants wisdom!

From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest.

He is a shield to those who walk with integrity.

He guards the paths of the just and protects those who are faithful to him.
  Then you will understand what is right, just, and fair,

and you will find the right way to go.

For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will fill you with joy.

Wise choices will watch over you.

Understanding will keep you safe.

Wisdom will save you from evil people,

from those whose words are twisted.

These men turn from the right way to walk down dark paths.

They take pleasure in doing wrong, and they enjoy the twisted ways of evil.

Their actions are crooked, and their ways are wrong. 

  Prov 2:3-15 (NLT)

  

Joyful is the person who finds wisdom,

the one who gains understanding.

For wisdom is more profitable than silver, and her wages are better than gold.

  Wisdom is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her.

She offers you long life in her right hand, and riches and honor in her left.

  She will guide you down delightful paths; all her ways are satisfying.

Wisdom is a tree of life to those who embrace her;

happy are those who hold her tightly.

Prov 3:13-18 (NLT)

Living Word

During that time the devil came and said to him,

“If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.”

 But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say,
‘People do not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” 

Matt 4:3-4 (NLT)

A word study of Psalms and especially Psalm 119 reveals the many benefits produced in our lives from hearing and receiving God’s living word.  The creative voice of his word heals and revives.  It brings encouragement and hope.  It is a lamp to guide our feet and gives light to our understanding.  The psalmist rejoiced in the word like someone who has just discovered great unexpected treasure. 

The word certainly is like a great treasure.  It is a book that is more than a book. It is a fathomless depth of life and knowledge that offers something fresh every day even from passages we have read many times.  It is not just a book of knowledge, but a book of life.  Just as bread gives sustenance to our bodies, so God’s word feeds our souls and illuminates our minds.  As we read, it works deep in our hearts at the core of our being.  

Here again are some words from Anne Rice about reading the Gospels:

Also something else has happened to me in the study of these documents.  I find them inexhaustible in a rather mysterious way.

I’m at a loss to explain the manner in which every new examination of the text produces some fresh insight, some new case of connections, some astonishing link to another part of the canon, or to the Old Testament backdrop which enfolds the whole. 

The interplay of simplicity and complexity seems at times to be beyond human control.

Picking up the Gospel on any given morning is picking up a brand-new book.

In sum, there’s no visible bottom to this well of meaning.  It’s unlike my experience with any other written text.*

For the word of God is alive and powerful.
It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword,
cutting between soul and spirit,
between joint and marrow.
It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. 

Heb 4:12-13 (NLT)

Open my eyes, that I may see

Glimpses of truth you have for me;

Place in my hands the wonderful key

That shall unclasp and set me free.

Silently now I wait for Thee,

Ready, my God, your will to see;

Open my eyes - illumine me,

Spirit divine!

Clara H. Scott (1841-1897)

*Rice, Anne, Called Out of Darkness, a spiritual confession, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), pp. 221-222.

Anne Rice on Love

Let love be your highest goal!

1 Cor 14:1 (NLT)

Today some quotes from Anne Rice who, in her autobiography Called Out of Darkness, a spiritual confession, tells the story of her return to faith.  Her childhood, filled with the beautiful images of churches and chapels and statues and pictures and Mass and the sounds of Latin hymns, engendered in her a sincere faith as a child.  At the age of nineteen she walked away and lived as an atheist for thirty-eight years.  During that period she was a popular and successful writer of supernatural tales of vampires, witches and devils, each tale reflecting her own spiritual search.  Those early childhood images eventually drew her back until her faith was restored at the age of fifty-seven.

Here she writes of the struggle to love and not judge. 

“How has returning to Christ actually influenced your life?”  I found myself thinking about this and then answering:  "It demands of me that I love people."  This was a turning point, this simple acknowledgment.  Because I began then to realize what the message of Christ was for me:  to love my friends and to love my enemies.  And the mystery was that loving my friends was sometimes harder than loving my enemies. 

And that if one loved both, completely and sincerely, and if one could convince others to do this as well, one could, theoretically, bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.

And something came clear to me that had never been clear before.  Loving our neighbors and our enemies is perhaps the very hardest thing that Christ demands.  It's almost impossible to love one's neighbors and enemies.  It's almost impossible to feel that degree of total giving to other human beings.  To practice the daily love of neighbor and enemy calls into question one's smallest and greatest competitive feelings, one's common angry reactions to slights both great and small.  In sum, the will to love all human beings must pervade every thought, word, and deed.

I am a baby Christian when it comes to loving.  I am just learning.  Again and again, I fail because of temper and pride.  I fail because it is so easy to judge someone else rather than love that person.  And I fail because I cannot execute the simplest operations - answering an angry e-mail for instance - in pure love. 

This is Christianity!  If it isn’t Christianity, then what can Christianity possibly be?  It’s the toughest way to live that there is.*

*Rice, Anne, Called Out of Darkness, a spiritual confession, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), pp. 223-228.

Belonging

My prayer for all of them is that they will be one,

just as you and I are one,

Father – that just as you are in me and I am in you,

so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me. 

John 17:21 (NLT)

One crisis of modern life is a sense of isolation and loneliness.  “Each human being comes into the world alone, travels through life as a separate person,and ultimately dies alone.”^*   Even in a crowd or with friends or family we can feel alone.

Jesus describes his intimate relationship with his father in this way - “you are in me and I am in you.”  It was a complete and total unity.   As we ease drop on his prayer in John 17 we begin to hear that deep longing of his heart that we, too, could experience that intimate sense of belonging that he experienced with his father.  Yes, we do belong. We are no longer lost and wandering alone but have come home to the closeness of a loving and united family.

 

As much as we belong to him, we belong to each other.  Jesus desires that we as his people would be one as he and the father are one.  He continues to teach and train us daily to this end - teaching us to express this unity to each other in tangible ways so that not one of his children would feel on the outside looking in, but would truly sense the closeness that belongs to his intimate circle of friends.

All who are mine belong to you,

and you have given them to me...

John 17:9-10 (NLT)

Holy Father, keep them and care for them – all those you have given me – so that they will be united just as we are.  John 17:11 (NLT)

I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are – I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one. 

Then the world will know that you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me.  John 17: 22-23 (NLT)

^*Carter, Michele; excerpt from Abiding Loneliness: An Existential Perspective, Park Ridge Center, September 2000