In my younger days I was a running back on the football team. As I took the ball from the quarterback, I rushed through the hole created by the hog-mollies, first running past the defensive lineman, along the way stiff arming the outside linebacker before outrunning the safety who was chasing me down, finally crossing the goal line for a touchdown, all to the cheers of the home crowd. Now that was as good as it gets.

However, on the next offensive series I took the handoff and quickly came face to face with that same outside linebacker, coming at me faster than an out of control freight train, who drove his helmet through my chest, causing me to fumble the ball, only to see his teammate pick up the loose ball take it to the house for six points. But this time, instead of cheers, that same enthusiastic crowd was quick to express a different kind of noise; their vocal displeasure at my failure to hold onto the football. If I wasn’t on the football field then you could find me on the track, using my speed to try and outrun the other sprinters.

I have a speech impediment that left a void in my soul, one that in my youth, and even into early adulthood, I attempted to fill through athletic accomplishments. However, my football career ended prematurely due to a serious neck injury and several years after that I finally gave up on sprinting due to nagging lower leg issues. I felt like I was “left with nothing.” You might not have played football or run track, but I’m sure you had and have success in whatever you are talented at, and if you are honest, you’ll agree that none of that brings lasting contentment. No amount of fame or fortune can permanently fill what is intended to be filled by God.   

Not only is it fame and fortune, but also more stuff, washboard abs, larger breasts, more friends, the nicest car in the neighborhood, or the latest technology gadget, that we seek after to help us fill the void that is within us. Enjoying life and the trappings that comes along with it is not a bad thing. God wants us to enjoy life. In 1 Timothy 6:17, among other things, we are told that God “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” But Scripture also tells us that worldly “stuff” does not bring soul filling satisfaction that lasts a lifetime.

Scripture is filled with verses promising satisfaction to the discontented soul.

“Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’” (John 6:35).

Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things (Psalm 107:9).

C.S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity gives us this answer to why looking for happiness in places other than God is hopeless. Here is what Lewis says – “The reason it will never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering with religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”  

So, enjoy your success and your stuff for what is it intended, but look for and find permanent peace, joy, and happiness only in Jesus. He is your lasting and living water!

Stop looking in the wrong places and begin looking in the one place that offers just what you need.  

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Have you ever been in a discussion where the other person or people seem to use words foreign to you? They use jargon unique to them. Maybe you have said, “it is all Greek to me.” Accountants talk about accruals, debits, credits, FIFO, p/e ratios, burden rates. All words that make no sense to non-bean counters. That allusion refers to the idea that accountants are often overly dedicated to detail, counting every last item (bean), often missing the bigger picture. Have you ever listened in as lawyers talk to one another? Are they speaking in code? Medical terms, they all seem to have at least five syllables.

My wife used to work as a healthcare social worker. In that job, she regularly sat in psychotropic drug meetings. While I vaguely understood what they discussed in that meeting, my mind conjured up a completely different picture; that of stoned-out-their-mind hippies listening to Jefferson Airplane or Country Joe & The Fish at Woodstock. Even pastors and theologians sometimes use words that are not easily understood by most people – eschatology, justification, exegesis, pneumatology, just to name three. When we first moved to eastern North Carolina, much of their dialect and language was foreign to me. To this day, I think they have more than 26 letters in their alphabet. 

We all have those areas in our lives that, based upon our background, education, experience, we easily understand. Those things are not Greek to us. There are also those things that on our own we simply do not, cannot, understand. Without help, those things are foreign to us, they are “Greek to us.” One of the things we need help in understanding is when reading the Bible. 

To comprehend the Bible, we need divine revelation. I believe that God first reveals himself first through His Son, Jesus, and then also through the words of scripture. And unless someone knows Jesus, they do not have the ability to understand the things of God. Through this revelation, God communicates the mysteries of faith to his people. John 1:14 says this about God the Father revealing himself through Jesus – “And the Word (see John 1:14) became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The Bible is also God’s revelation of himself and his purposes. Jesus taught that the Scriptures reveal who He is – “He said to them, ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’ Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:44-45).

First, in order to know God (not know about Him), we must commit our lives to following Jesus. Secondly, since we cannot comprehend Scripture on our own, we need the Spirit of God, who resides within every Jesus-follower, to illuminate our minds. This is how the revelation comes to us. As Jesus was giving his final instructions to the disciples, here is what he told them – “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).

Are you reading the Bible as if it were Greek? Or are you being led by the Spirit as you read, meditate, digest, submit your will, all while gaining divine revelation and being transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus?

So, to help the Bible not be “it’s all Greek to me,” we need to be seeking the help of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, asking Him to open our minds and hearts, revealing to us God’s divine truths and promises through the words we read.

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I am reaching back into the archives today. In this frenzied world in which we live, where stuff comes at us from all angles and at breakneck speed, where what was yesterday no longer is today, where there is just no time to quiet our souls, it seems appropriate to re-post this earlier writing.  

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Do you have too much to do and not enough time or energy to get it all done? Most of us, maybe all of us if we are honest, would answer yes to that question. We work ourselves to the bone, often neglecting proper diet, exercise, rest, and sleep, soon finding ourselves worn out and unproductive. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to have much needed quietness and rest. And even when I am seemingly quiet or at rest, I am not truly quiet or at rest. Does any of that sound familiar to you?

Not only do we need down time to refresh and recharge our body and mind, our soul need rest as well. Our culture regularly tells us, sometimes subliminally and other times in not so subtle ways, that we need to be busy all the time, that idleness is laziness, that idleness is weakness. However, Scripture tells us there is great benefit in times of quietness and rest. In Isaiah 30:15 we read these words – “In quietness and trust is your strength.”

The classic novel Moby Dick written by Herman Melville gives us a wonderful example of the importance of being productive when we need to be productive and being idle when we need to be idle. If you are not familiar with the story, let me quickly summarize the storyline of the book. It revolves around a wandering sailor named Ishmael and his voyage on the whaling ship “Pequod,” commanded by Captain Ahab. On a previous sailing voyage, an elusive and ferocious white whale named Moby Dick destroyed Ahab’s boat and bit off his leg. The story is narrated by Ishmael and tells us of Ahab’s pursuit for vengeance against Moby Dick.

In the chapter titled “The Dart,” the Pequod is in hot pursuit of the whale. This chapter gives us insight into the activity that is taking place on the deck as the captain and his crew rapidly sail out into the raging sea to kill the whale. The entire crew is focused on the task at hand, tensions are high, and by all indications, there is a lot of energy being used, even being wasted.

One member of the crew is charged with killing the whale. That person is the harpooner, and Melville tells us that even when the harpooner is exhausted, he is still expected to “drop and secure his oar, turn around on his center halfway, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with what little strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the whale.” Melville goes on to say this, “No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful.” And finally, Melville gives us his reason for such a low success rate, “If you take the breath out of his (harpooner) body how can you expect to find it there when needed most!”

On most whaleboats, the harpooner is actively helping the other crew members, but on Ahab’s boat, the harpooner is relaxed and quietly waiting. The chapter ends with these words; words that speak loudly to us (or at least to me) in this go-go-go culture – “To ensure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of toil.”

So, make it a priority to balance the rhythms of work, play, and rest in your life. Doing so is not only wise, but also healthy, and it will help “ensure the greatest efficiency” in carrying out your God-given purpose for being on this earth.

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To me, sailing conjures up an image of peacefulness as the boat smoothly sails through the water. The sun would be shining, the seas calm, albatrosses gracefully soaring overhead, and the winds just enough to blow gently against the sails. In sailing, depending upon the direction of the wind and which direction you want to go, and whether you are sailing upwind (windward) or downwind (leeward), the boat’s sails take on the characteristics of either an airplane wing or a parachute.

In a perfect world, life would also be smooth sailing. But life is not perfect, and it certainly is not smooth sailing. “Out of the blue” sometimes happens, threatening to capsize your boat, messing up your well laid out plans, tossing you and your possessions into the raging seas, and leaving you feeling helpless in the grip of the storm. The origin of out of the blue has evolved over time as a shortened version of an old idiom, a bolt out of the blue, referencing lightning that suddenly appears in the blue sky.  

Not only does the unexpected happen, but life also gets twisted, it gets made crooked. I have a t-shirt that sums up the story of my life, and I suspect it sums up yours as well. It shows two graphs; What I planned and What happened.

Our efforts to try and figure out that twistedness, to straighten things out, to supply what is lacking, often leaves us exhausted and confused. We just do not always have answers. In the book of Ecclesiastes, we find that very thing – “What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted” (1:15).

A few years ago, we experienced one of those out of the blue, life getting twisted up moments. I suffered a stroke. Prior to the stroke, there were no warning signs. Thankfully, my wife got me to the hospital quickly, affording me the ability to receive the clot-busting drug, which breaks up the clot causing the blockage and helps restore blood flow to the brain, lessening damage to the brain.

While life is different these days than it would have been without the stroke, and while I do have a few cognitive and neurological deficits, we do press on, looking for, and continually learning, new ways to thrive with a brain that functions differently than it once did.    

Staying in Ecclesiastes, we are told that some things are just not in our control, and we are to accept both prosperity and adversity, knowing God is sovereign over both, without being able to explain just how it all will be worked out. Here is what we read – “Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him” (7:13-14). Those two verses do not say that God initiated my stroke, but what I do believe they do say is that He can use the out of the blue, the unexpected crookedness, to test my faith and grow my faith.

Do I sometimes have moments of frustration and sadness? Do I sometimes wish things could be different? Yes, I do. But it is because of God’s unwavering faithfulness to me, even as my ever-growing faith sometimes wavers, that I can live out these words – “He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD” (Psalm 112:7). And these – “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3).

So, today, and every day, amid the out of the blue and crookedness of life, when what is differs from what you planned, will you rejoice, pray, be thankful, trusting that God knows what He is doing (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)? For me, some days that is easier than others, but I am committed to unfailingly trusting God and giving Him thanks, even when it is hard to do so.

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What do you get when mixing the colors blue and red? You think know the answer? If you said purple, you would not be correct. Purple is not an actual color found in the color spectrum. Mixing blue and red creates violet. Sir Isaac Newton’s Theory of Light proved that the color spectrum consists of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. I memorized these colors in science class under the acronym ROY G BIV. Maybe you did as well.

Whereas violet is a spectral color (single shade), purple is any of a variety of combinations of blue and red (multiple shades). Violet is a “real” color, purple is only “perceived.” Unlike the seven spectral colors, which are single wavelength colors (monochromatic), there is no single wavelength that will make you see purple. To make violet, neither blue nor red have to give up their unique attributes, but rather, it is those attributes that make violet, violet.

We live in a country in which approximately an equal percent of people lean “blue” as do “red.” Earlier this year, Pew Research Center reported that about two-thirds of registered voters identified as partisan, roughly split between blue Democrat (33%) and red Republican (32%). The remaining 35% identify as independent or something else. However, of that number, only 4% say they do not lean either blue or red, with the majority leaning almost equally toward either color.  

We don’t seem to agree on anything, in fact, we don’t even agree to disagree any longer. Instead, we live in a world of “I am right, and if you disagree with me, then frankly, you are wrong.” We seem to never see violet.

What if, in this volatile election year, each of us, regardless of whether we are blue or red, or any other color of the spectrum, made it our goal to be (or become) someone who instead of simply seeing blue and red, instead sees what those two colors, when mixed, create – violet. What if the goal of every interaction, every dialogue, was to have a relationship with the other person, rather than prove a point, or to simply be right? What if we focused not on how someone voted, but on how we treat those who voted differently than we did? What if we learned to create violet? Seeing violet does not mean giving up your blue or your red. What is does mean is knowing that both colors add a vibrancy that can only be found when mixing the colors.  

In this very divided world in which we find ourselves, where every color seems to think it is the only color in the spectrum, this mixing of diverse and sometimes very different colors might best be summed up as “artistic” peacemaking.

And if you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, being a peacemaker comes as part of the deal; it isn’t an optional add-on. In His most famous teaching, the Beatitudes, one of the things Jesus said was – “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9). The apostle Paul says this, found in Romans 14:19 – “So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.” There is a real connection that occurs between people when peace is pursued. The psalmist writes this – “Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other” (Psalm 85:10).

While blue and red are beautiful colors in and of themselves, what if instead of seeing violet as losing both blue and red, we see it as a mixing of those two distinct colors to create something of greater beauty! And it is important to remember that both colors are needed to make violet.

So, my challenge to all of us – in this polarized country we live in, what can you and I do to not just be blue or red, but rather, the mixing of blue and red into violet?

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The current culture in which we live is a steady stream of negativity. Politics. War. Weather. Sickness. Societal divide. Rising prices. And just a few days ago, an assassination attempt on the life of a former President, who is also a candidate for that same office again. Do I need to keep going?

From morning until night, we are bombarded with news and information that tends to suck the life right out of us. The half hour news program my wife and I regularly watch is most often twenty-nine minutes of “bad” followed by one minute of “good.” This barrage of bad news, our own or someone else’s, close to home or far away, takes a toll on our heart, mind, and soul? It dries us out. Do you sometimes wonder if God is taking a siesta? Or maybe, has He forgotten us?

Does your soul feel dry? Do you feel like tumbleweed, driven by the wind, rolling across the dry desert? If you are like me, when I find myself parched, it is sometimes hard to experience the closeness of God. Are you having a hard time feeling the presence of God? Has it been weeks, months, maybe even years, since you experienced God’s sweet intimacy?

Psalm 13 is a short six verse lament in which the psalmist (David) feels forgotten. David is crying out, probably yelling out, “where are you God?” He is sick and tired of waiting and he’s begging for an answer. But, amid his existential crisis, David does not wave the flag of surrender, giving up on God. Instead, the psalm’s trajectory turns as David makes a choice to keep trusting in his God’s unfailing love. This trust is not based upon feelings or circumstances, but rather solely upon God’s character. Life is not always good, but God is always good. That is the anchor that secures our trust.    

v.1 – How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

2 – How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?

3 – Look on me and answer, LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,

4 – and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

5 – But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.

6 – I will sing the LORD’s praise, for he has been good to me.

The first two verses reveal what David sees as the problem. Do you see the depth of David’s despair? Four times in these two verses he cries out “How long?” Maybe right now you find yourself crying out, “How long God must this go on!”

In v.3, David petitions God. Look what he says – “Look on me and answer” and “give light to my eyes.” Can you hear the urgency in David’s voice? Quite possibly, you have that same urgency today.

David is praying for victory in v.4. If losing wasn’t bad enough, the sting of hearing the victor boast after the victory was almost too much to bear. One of the hallmarks of David’s psalms is his awareness of both God and the enemy.

We see in v.5, despite his agony, David declares God’s mercy. Even if he can rejoice in nothing else, here we see David rejoicing in God’s salvation, just possibly in that moment the only solid ground David is standing on. What are you rejoicing in today?

David began this psalm by pleading but in v.6 we see a huge transition. David’s pleading changes to praise! Even as he cries out “how long” to God, David’s eyes are enlightened, just as he asked them to be, and he moved from a place of woe is me to a place of praise, from a place of despair to a place of declaration!

So, today, whatever it is that you are facing, or how dry you feel, maybe even as you cry out “how long?,” will you allow yourself to sing Yahweh’s praise simply because He is good? Don’t let the trees or the morning mist lessen the beauty of the sun that is awaking from its night slumber.

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