Babies and Alarm Clocks

When our son, Tyce, was an infant my wife and I would take shifts being up with him.  One thing I didn't realize was how often an infant eats.  In my ignorance of a first time parent I knew that a newborn needed to eat about every 2 hours and I thought "Great! I'll sleep two hours at a time, wake up, and feed him again".  That's not how it worked out.  It took about 30 minutes to feed him, then came the burping, then the diaper change, and then finally we got to lay him back down.  20 minutes later he was crying again.

I'm telling you, this kid could wail when he needed something!  When Tyce got older we moved him into his own crib in his own room.  One morning I had to get up early for something but totally missed waking up in time because I slept through my alarm.  I was so used to how loud my son's cry was the noise of my alarm didn't have an effect on me!  

Hebrews 3:7-11:

7 So, as the Holy Spirit says:

“Today, if you hear his voice,

8     do not harden your hearts

as you did in the rebellion,

    during the time of testing in the wilderness,

9 where your ancestors tested and tried me,

    though for forty years they saw what I did.

10 That is why I was angry with that generation;

    I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,

    and they have not known my ways.’

11 So I declared on oath in my anger,

    ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”[b]

There is a lot of noise in our world.  There is a lot of noise trying to compete with God’s voice.  Many of us may be struggling with waking up and doing what God needs us to do because we have let all the noise drown Him out.  Maybe right now in this moment of reflection you’re having a hard time connected with the sacredness of this moment because all of the issues in your life are trying to get your attention

Take time and quiet your mind, heart, and soul.  Make this moment for what it is, connection with the creator of the universe

Radio Football Expectations

This past week we were down in Alabama and had to drive back on Saturday during the Alabama
football game.  Reflecting back I've never had to listen to a game on the radio because I've always watched it on television.  Listening to the game is a totally different experience.  Here's what I heard: "Henry gets the handoff, spins away from a tackle, jukes left past a defender, runs through another tackle, LUNGES FORWARD!"  At that point I was getting excited.  My expectation from all that running was a gain of at least 10.  Then the announcer said, "gain of about a yard".  What!  After all that talking and excitement the running back only went forward for about 3 feet.  That wasn't anywhere close to my expectation.

We can have wrong expectations about God and who He is too.  We can get caught in the trap to think we can buy God off by our goodness.  Maybe we think God is a slot-machine where when we do some good works we get to put a "good token" in the slot machine and pull the lever hoping something good will come out or we think of God as our cosmic mac-daddy who if we behave good enough will fulfill all of our greatest desires.  Maybe some of us even think we're not good enough for God to love us.

All of us are on the same boat.  Isaiah 64:6 basically says that the best we can offer God is with our good works is "filthy rags".  Now I don't want to down play exactly what that means.  In the original language written in the Bible the directly translation is a feminine/menstrual cloth.  Many may read that passage and may think the rags are a little dirty or dusty, maybe they're good for dusting.  But no, these rags are good for nothing, they're unclean, they are tainted, even disgusting.  These rags are good for nothing except to be thrown in the trash...they are worthless.

Now you may be offended by what I've written, however, I want you to really think about why you're offended maybe even let that feeling of being offended sink in.  Now I want you to really think about this.  How offended is God, who laid His life down and paid the price with His death, when we offer our good works, our filthy rags, as payment instead of accepting what has already been offered.

We follow God's commands and do good things because we love Him.  Because when Jesus paid the price for us we gave up our rights to ourselves.  We become slaves to Jesus Christ who is the best master anyone could ever serve!  Christ did that through his death.  He took all of our filthiness and made us clean to reconcile us to God with no strings attached.  Let's reflect and celebrate this this month.