All in Salvation
Nestled in the middle of the Psalms are three verses that describe the blessed life of a believer. The psalmist begins by describing a believer’s heart. Blessed are those….who have set their hearts on pilgrimage (Psalm 84:5). In other words, blessed are those who have a longing in their souls and a determination in their minds to journey through life with Jesus.
Jesus told a short story to a group of grumbling religious leaders to illustrate a poignant point—God will intensely search for those who need His love and salvation. He used a desperate woman, of all things, for his story. She’d lost a coin worth a day’s wage. She had only ten and one was lost. She lit a small oil lamp, the only source of light in her small windowless home, and searched carefully until she found it. She then invited her women friends and neighbors to rejoice with her. Jesus adds in verse 10, “I tell you, in the same way, there is joy in the presence of God over one sinner who repents.”
Jesus’ focus from the beginning of His ministry was that direct. The people were loving the healing miracles; whereas, telling as many as He could the good news of the kingdom was why He was sent.
Remember our definition of a parable: “an illustrative story that compares or contrasts an earthly reality with a spiritual truth.”* I am intrigued as Jennifer Kennedy Dean** describes the Incarnation as the “lived-out parable” of the love of God. After all, Jesus was not only with God in the beginning; He was God. And with His birth, life, and death among us He would illustrate the spiritual truth of God’s love. A parable “puts flesh on the eternal truth so we can see it.”**
How many times have I fallen for the “buy one get one free” sales gimmick? I love getting something for “free.”
A clip of a reality courtroom program came up on my social media feed. A cute little dog was involved so I had to watch it. Both the defendant (a woman) and the plaintiff (a man) claimed that the dog belonged to them, and they both provided supporting documentation.
Duke, our labrador retriever, seldom retrieves a ball in our yard. However, the first time we took Duke to our land, he quickly found the pond and plunged in. Don threw a stick into the water. Duke immediately swam to the stick and brought it back. Duke retrieved the stick again and again and again. With his webbed feet, he is designed to swim and retrieve. He naturally does what he’s created to do.
I love dogs! Every dog we have owned has been my close companion. Therefore, when our 7-year-old Chocolate Lab died suddenly of a stroke, I was heartbroken. Two days later, Don noticed an advertisement in the newspaper for a litter of chocolate labs. Though I was still grieving, I decided to begin looking for a puppy.
As I ate lunch with a fairly new friend, I shared my adoption story with her. Conceived in an act of adultery, my biological mother chose adoption. After seven months in a foster home, a young couple became my adoptive parents.
Our youngest grandson got so excited when he saw the Christmas lights on our house. He could not wait for us to turn them on. Then he came inside and saw our decorated tree with wrapped presents already underneath it.
Nothing gives me joy like Christmas carols—the ones about the birth of Jesus, anyway. The other ones are cute, funny, and fun to sing, but they do not touch my spirit. The ones that move me declare Jesus’ deity while coming to earth through the virgin birth. I love to sit in my living room in front of the lit Christmas tree and contemplate the true meaning of those songs, Jesus’ birth, and Christmas.
My life story is being rewritten by the one true God, who is, always has been, and always will be—Creator of the universe.
When my daughter was about two years old, she loved to play games with her daddy. During one of these games, she would run to her daddy, he would catch her and throw her up in the air. She would giggle and as he put her down, she would run away and say, “Do it again!” and run back toward him giggling.
We spent the day in lawn chairs watching my brother, his grandsons, and a “windmill expert” assemble a 100-year-old windmill in our pasture. By the evening, the seemingly random pile of metal transformed into a functioning mechanism for pumping water from a hundred feet below the ground’s surface.
Yesterday, as I sat on our backyard deck and basked in the warmth of the Son, God moved my heart to praise Him. I'd just returned from a gathering of women who were assembled to learn about a local organization that supports teenage girls in foster care.
I noticed a For Sale sign in a yard yesterday. Written at the bottom of the sign in bold red letters were the words TOO LATE. I remarked to Jerry that life is full of those signs. I think we all experience them.
But God is faithful. He promised to send a final prophet to awaken the hearts of His people. According to Constable: “Whether the original Elijah will appear before the day of the LORD, or if an Elijah-like figure, similar to John the Baptist, will appear, remains to be seen.”* We rest assured that God has it under control.
My husband, Don, is a woodworker. He designed the box in this picture from discarded lumber—wood that was fit to be thrown away. The decayed, cracked wood was perfect for Don’s project. He broke the wood, poured resin to fill the cracks and holes, and then carefully constructed this beautiful box. The beauty of the resin is seen only because of the broken and cracked places in the wood.
It had been a full day of running errands, traveling out of town, swimming with my grandchildren… That night I noticed the diamond in my ring was missing. It wasn’t a large diamond, but it was treasured.
Throughout the Old Testament we see a “remnant” of God’s followers who live through the hardest circumstances and the greatest sins. They came back to God time and again and received forgiveness.
