another try 23 July 2019

The last two weeks' sabbatical from this blog were needed, for several reasons.  I've had a whole lot to ponder, to pray over, the consider.  That is an ongoing process, of course, but sometimes there is a need to replicate the experience of a hermit.
I will not, here, try to report on all of it, and it is after all an ongoing effort.  I do want to mention a few of the themes;

• one of the texts for today in the New Testament is the great "love chapter", 1st Corinthians 13.  A wonderful text, certainly.  But I've spent a lot of time today trying to get a real understanding of what "love" is.  Yes, "God is love".  Certainly true.  But I truly don't understand such love, not really.
• And, by extension (and a question at any rate already) the need is for a real deep meditation on the nature of the Lord Himself.  Obviously (I hope it is obvious) none of us will ever really understand Him.  Not even when face to face:  Satan obviously didn't and he was face to face.  So no, I don't understand Him.  But I want to know Him better, and better every day.  It needs to be a priority in my life.  I've failed Him in that.
• our faith is not, and was never intended to be, a "spectator sport".  Yes, the Lord Himself is running things, and it is He who saves, who touches hearts and souls.  But we have a role, a duty in fact.  Few of us act accordingly, and most of us are obviously at fault here.  We need to address that.
• We have a duty to the Lord.  A duty as pressing and as pressing as if we were in the military or the chief servant to a feudal lord.  So, not only is this not a spectator sport, it's also not something we can punch the time clock on and leave the work.  It's a full-time calling.  We have no right to tell Him "I'm too busy".  Or any variation on that.
• I used to work, for 30 some years, trying to devise ways to make various business and manufacturing systems work better.  One of the approaches was to create the attitude throughout the organization that "we are seeking excellence, and seeking to do better all the time, "good enough" is not "good enough", we're called to better.  Yet in the church, too often (and I grew up in it) the intent was to replicate the way great-great-great-grand dad did things.  We seem to act as if, once we have "fire insurance", (and don't laugh:  I've heard that very term used IN THE CHURCH HOUSE), that is all that is required.  Just coast the rest of the way.  Nope.
• Souls and lives are in the balance.  Which of us wants to have the Lord ask us why we didn't bother to make Him known?  Yet we all know that there are those all around us who, should they die tonight (and some will), Heaven is not their eternal destination.  Don't we care?
• But, also, not all of us are called to be evangelists.  That's one of the gifts.  I don't have it.  Few do,  But we can and must carry out the roles we are designed for in order to further that outreach.

Finally, I've had two hymns playing almost constantly in mind.

Rescue The Perishing

1

Rescue the perishing,
  Care for the dying,
Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;
  Weep o’er the erring one,
  Lift up the fallen,
Tell them of Jesus the mighty to save. Rescue the perishing,
  Care for the dying;
Jesus is merciful,
    Jesus will save.

2

Though they are slighting Him,
  Still He is waiting,
Waiting the penitent child to receive;
  Plead with them earnestly,
  Plead with them gently;
He will forgive if they only believe.

3

Down in the human heart,
  Crushed by the tempter,
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore;
  Touched by a loving heart,
  Wakened by kindness,
Chords that are broken will vibrate once more.

4

Rescue the perishing,
  Duty demands it;
Strength for thy labor the Lord will provide;
  Back to the narrow way,
  Patiently win them;
Tell the poor wand’rer a Savior has died.

Let The Lower Lights Be Burning

Brightly beams our Father’s mercy,
From His lighthouse evermore,
But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore.

• Refrain:
  Let the lower lights be burning!
  Send a gleam across the wave!
  Some poor *struggling, fainting seaman
  You may rescue, you may save.

1. Dark the night of sin has settled,
   Loud the angry billows roar;
   Eager eyes are watching, longing,
   For the lights along the shore.
2. Trim your feeble lamp, my brother;
   Some poor sailor, tempest-tossed,
   Trying now to make the harbor,
   In the darkness may be lost.