A cool dry breeze wafts in from the north this morning.  The tulip poplar leaves quake gratefully, casting light and shadows from the morning sun.  It’s like the refreshing breath of God when his spirit moved upon the waters in the days when he spoke all this into existence.  It reminds me of when he breathed into Adam the breath of life and he became a living soul.  So refreshing.  So full of life.

It brings to mind the time when Jesus, after his resurrection, breathed on his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  He, and they, had just come through a harrowing week, the trial, the flogging, the crucifixion, Peter’s denial, hiding in fear for their lives, their hopes and dreams of a Messianic deliverance from the Roman occupation dashed to pieces.  Jesus appears among them, displaying his wounds and speaking words of hope and peace to their troubled hearts.  His exhalation on them restores the divine life that was lost when Adam’s was snuffed out in the Garden.  It is a new day, the beginning of a new race of people, those living by the life of God, and the breath of his Holy Spirit, the way He intended it from the beginning.

She was born 100 years ago in Ashland, Kentucky.  My grandmother nearly died after her birth.  Healthcare was not as advanced in 1924.  My mom lived in towns and communities all over the West and in Kentucky: Phoenix, Big Bow, Stapleton, Pueblo, Colorado Springs, St. Louis, Elizabethtown, Felicity, Osh Kosh, Carrolton, Prestonsburg, even Barbados!

In college she reconnected with a childhood friend – my dad – and they were married right after World War 2.  Within 11 years, she found herself with four boys and all the boisterous rambunctiousness that comes with them.  She’d seen what city life did to boys, so she prayed for a place in the country to raise us.  God granted her request, and when her oldest was 14, we settled into a little house outside Morgantown, Kentucky.  She loved all of us intently and prayed for us, often weeping in her earnestness.  We didn’t just grow up.  She, in lockstep with my dad, RAISED us!

I wish every young boy had a mom who loved us as much as she did.  And when we launched out on our own, she didn’t stop.  Every mother knows it doesn’t end when a child heads out into the world to establish their own place.  Her prayers followed us even when she didn’t hear from us for months.  There were no cell phones then and expensive long-distance calls were reserved for serious life events.  We weren’t that committed to writing letters either.  But she cried out to Jesus for every one of us every day.

​Sometimes we boys got tired of all her passionate lamentations.  But I’d give anything to hear her “storm the gates of heaven” one more time.

John the Revelator has just wrapped up the messages to the seven churches in Asia Minor.  Now he is invited to look at something else.  The scene before him is fantastical, to say the least!  Maybe like an LSD trip.  I think that’s a pretty good analogy.  We cannot even imagine what God is like.  We live in a shadow world and have no way to describe what the world of light is like.  Imagine that you were blind from birth.  You’ve never seen anything – ever.  Suddenly you can see.  Without a lifetime of interacting with what you are perceiving, you have no context for making sense of what your eyes are now beholding.  This is precisely John’s dilemma.  Hence the crazy way he relates what is before him in this vision.

What I think he’s trying to reveal to us is the magnificence of the throne room of heaven.  Of course, using the term “throne room” is yet another attempt to paint a picture of God and the actual realities of his presence.

But what does all that mean for me today?  Well, first of all, I don’t want to get mired down trying to define every detail of what John included here.  It’s like one of your dreams where people, objects, and environments constantly morph into something different.  John’s lame attempts to describe it are like sand that slips through your fingers.  You think you have a grasp on it, and then it’s gone.

This chapter introduces us to the revelation – the key word here – of the magnificence and inscrutability of God.  As in John’s time, two-bit dictators and even some world-wide kingdoms were seen as unstoppable.  Christians were being persecuted, starved, their means of living destroyed, family members disappeared, and many slaughtered, sometimes for entertainment.  It was an ugly time and there was little hope that things would get better.  God doesn’t look very big against this backdrop of hopelessness and despair.  The whole world was “going to hell in a handbasket” and God looks powerless to do anything about it.
Now Jesus decides to reveal who God is to the beleaguered Christians through this vision to John.  And this chapter reveals a mighty God who sees everything, and who makes the kingdoms of this world look like children playing with sandcastles.  It is an overpowering picture of the God that we serve and the insignificance of the puny governments and conspiracies of the world we live in.

My response to this:

​Lord, thank you for this revelation of your majesty and unstoppable sovereignty.  As I prepare for whatever this world system throws at me, I will remember that you are the ultimate authority.  I will not live in fear of what Satan is conspiring to do to me or my family.  I will put my complete trust in you knowing that you see all and know all – even what is going to take place later.

​John chapter 15 contains one of the most important metaphors Jesus shared with us – the vine and its branches.  Each of the branches is connected to the vine.  Jesus does not include twigs, leaves, etc., in this metaphor.  There is a reason for that.  If he had created a metaphor patterned after the world system, he would have said something like this: “I am the vine, pastors are the branches, you are the twigs, and your wives are the leaves.”  You see?

Instead, each of us directly downloads our life from Jesus.  We do not depend on an intermediary to “feed us.”  Going to church to “get fed” by a preacher is antagonistic to what Jesus is saying here.  As part of this same discourse, Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and tells them to follow his example and serve one another.  Elsewhere he enjoins them to forget lording it over each other; instead, the greatest will, in fact, be a servant.

​This is not to say that you should not get any “food” from preachers.  You just need to recognize that all the branches are connected directly to the vine, and you can learn from all of them, not just the ones who are preachers or leaders.  

Jesus makes a curious statement in John 3:8: “So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”  They are like the wind; you hear them, but you can’t tell where they come from or where they are going.  What does that mean?

Such a statement should give all of us pause who claim to be believers, who espouse the tenets of Christianity.  Can people explain what makes you tick, why you say the things you say, why you do the things you do?  Then it is not from the Spirit.  It does not emanate from a life born from above.  There is nothing new or fresh that would make someone stop and say, “Where did that come from?”  It’s just more of the same stuff that makes this world tick.

I could easily apply this to religious institutions because, a vast majority of the time, their actions can be easily explained by the protocols of the world system.  But what about me?  Is that true of me as well?  What evidence is there in my life that I am born from above?  Does anyone hear my words or see my actions and say, “Okay, now that’s new!  That can’t be explained by anything in my world view.”  Can they predict what I will do next, or will it surprise them in a positive way?  Will it belie the guidance of a paradigm that emanates from another source outside the world system, from the Spirit?
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Lord Jesus, will you act and speak through me today.  Will you attune me to your voice so that I can respond to your impulses and carry out your bidding.

“The word of God is alive and active.”  And sometimes God speaks it through us to bring life to the plans he has for those in our sphere of influence.

In John, chapter 1, Jesus meets Simon, the brother of Andrew.  As soon as Andrew introduces him, Jesus begins speaking things into Simon’s life.  He says, “You are Simon, but you will be called Cephas (Aramaic) which is “Peter” in Greek.  Both of these words mean “rock.”  I think that perhaps Simon did not feel like his personality could be characterized as rock-like.  In giving him this new name, Jesus was affirming what he could be – what he would become.
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Lord, today I want to discern what God is speaking into the lives of those who cross my path.  And I want to be able to be the Holy Spirit’s voice and call them to the new life he is bringing into existence in them.

Distinct shadows lie across my lawn, distorted silhouettes of the black walnuts, cedars, hackberries, and yellow poplars gracing the landscape.  The bright versus shadowed grass belies the blazing orb that sits 93 million miles away, infusing our world with the energy that sustains all life on earth.

It’s an amazing wonder, a gift from God that singularly supplies nearly all the energy that supports our lives.  Except for geothermal energy, the sun is directly or indirectly the source of all the other forms of energy.  And it is also the wellspring of nearly all the beauty of nature.  No wonder the pagan civilizations worshipped it, ignorant of its creator.
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Lord, when I gaze upon the clouds as they slowly morph, when I watch a hummingbird kiss a begonia, when I see walnut branches dance in the breeze, I will remember the sun you fashioned and placed at exactly the right distance to preserve the cosmos you established so long ago. 

What a dismal day it must have been.  Whether the sun shone brightly, or the sky remained overcast, I don’t know.  But for Mary, Martha, and the disciples, it was a day of lead skies and dead calm.  Some of them huddled together in a room in Jerusalem.  It was the Sabbath, but none of them were motivated to participate in any of the Passover rituals.  A lot of the day was just spent looking at each other with blank expressions.  The question on all their minds was, “What do I do now?”  No one needed to say it.  It was a question that hung in the room like fog on the Sea of Galilee.

How could this have happened?  How could He enter Jerusalem like a Messiah at the beginning of the week and end up dead on a Roman cross yesterday?  How could they have become such different people in such a short period of time?  Judas a betrayer? Dead.  Suicide.  Peter, so mortified by his own emphatic denial – over and over again!  All of them forsook Jesus in the Garden! 
Occasionally some of them wept quietly.  Almost all their emotions were past being spent.  Watching Jesus traverse the Via Dolorosa was enough to wring every last tear from their eyes until they were literally exhausted.  Then watching him from a distance as he writhed on the cross in agony kept them from sleeping lest that image indelibly fixed in their minds’ eyes produce nightmares.

​I know. Sunday is coming.  But the little group of women and disciples didn’t know what was going to happen the next day like we do.  For them, this Passover was a day of mourning, not celebration.  They did not yet know the connection between the blood of lambs splashed on the lintels and door posts, and the blood of The Lamb that was shed for them yesterday.  They mourned in ignorance for the Lamb whose blood caused the angel of death to pass over them.

But it’s okay to mourn.  It reminds us that our world is broken.  Instinctively we know that.  And we yearn for the day of deliverance.  We pine for the one who will come and make it all right again.  It reminds us of our hopeless situation.  It reminds us that without a Savior, a Messiah, we are already in hell.

"But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first." -- Matt. 19:30  NIV

Just because you've left all to follow Jesus and have made a huge impact on the world because of your sacrifice does not mean that you will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  When we come into the fulness of the Kingdom, after this life is over, after all the veils are lifted, when we will all know each other "even as we are known," there will be a woman or a man in the highest place of honor that none of us have ever heard of.  She/he will be a person who gave up everything to follow Jesus and ended up in some obscure role, perhaps in some obscure corner of the world, pouring out her/his very life for another in response to the calling of the Father.  We will all stand in utter humility in the presence of this most highly favored believer who followed Jesus into the glory of his suffering, and now into the exaltation of his presence.  That is the reality of the upside down Kingdom.