journey onWord with us

A few days ago, I was in a deeply meaningful early morning coffee conversation with my Mom when my Dad slipped into the room and joined us. He seemed quite content to listen as we talked. We certainly weren’t solving any world-sized problems, but there was good and godly wisdom being shared on the subject of the big “C” Church’s response to the current state of things in our fractured land. At some point, Dad very quietly stood and walked over to the bookshelf in the corner of the living room. My focus didn’t follow him, but he seemed to linger for only a short time then returned to the couch empty-handed. “What were you looking at?” my Mom asked very soon after Dad sat back down. I don’t recall his exact response, but he spoke little more than the words of the chapter and verse he had gone to the bookshelf to confirm.

“There’s just a couple of things that would make all the difference. II Chronicles 7:14. If my people who are called by my name would humble themselves and pray.”

In an instant, all else seemed like just talk. It seemed so in God’s glorious and gracious way that didn’t take from the good and godly that had already been shared, but spoke all its truth strongly, succinctly, simply and solely in His words. Can you imagine the outcome of a great humbling and praying in our country, of all God’s people choosing the way of forgiveness and mercy? The whole of verse fourteen speaks perfectly to the healing that is so desperately needed in our land and turns our human instincts upside down in the way the Beatitudes did … and do. Maybe you question the application of that truth to where we find ourselves today, but I would suggest that it speaks into it quite wholly. I believe it would be right to judge us as too proud if we do not see first our own need to humble ourselves, pray, and seek His face.     

I am choosing to take two things from that sacred morning conversation with my Mom and Dad. The first is the reminder that my (our) posture in regard to all things should be humility. It was the way of our Savior in all things, and it should also be ours. And in that spirit (maybe better capitalized), it should also be our first instinct to fall, not fight. We should be falling into the arms of the Father in trust, and to our knees to seek His will, way and wisdom for all things. There are wrongs we should stand opposed to and forces to be resisted, but who is doing the fighting?

My second takeaway was the great goodness and imperative of being in God’s Word daily. The whole of the early morning with Mom and Dad reminded me just how important it is to hide God’s Word in my heart (Psalm 119:11) and respond with IT, rather than with words and wisdom that can so easily become my own. I love being involved with Journey onWord, whose singular purpose is to provide opportunity and encouragement to read the Bible daily.  

In these first few days of a new year, it feels for many like things are beginning again. The turn of a page on a calendar or the sunrise at the beginning of a new day are intensely welcome to the one whose heart is bending in the direction of newness and hope. But I am also keenly aware that this is not so for some. Dawn broke on 2021, and its morning and evening were not a new beginning for them… and the forecast isn’t suggesting much different for the next today (or the next one after that one). For a reason only God knows, I cannot shake a compel to offer a link to a post written this past Resurrection Day. It speaks a truth into the darkness that some are still experiencing at the second dawn or noonday of the new year. If you are the nameless one who God has so strongly on my heart right now, I invite you to click here to read about a powerful and not oft mentioned detail of Resurrection morning. In reading, I pray you are reminded that God sees you, is for you, and loves you without condition or ceasing.