Month: February 2020

In the wake of the puppy catastrophe, we quietly adopted another dog a few weeks ago.  I’ll admit we were a little nervous, but I didn’t want the kids to be scared to open their hearts again.  So Watson joined our family. I knew it was the right decision when my daughter said, “I feel hope again.”

 

Because of a miscommunication, Watson wasn’t in his crate the other night.  Around 2:30 am I heard a sound outside the bedroom door and got up in time to see Watson’s accident.  I cleaned it up right away, but even after everything had been sanitized, the scent lingered in the air.  “All I can smell is poop!” I sniffled.

 

This is a middle-of-the-night lesson, so bear with me a minute.  When the Lord sent manna to feed the Israelites in the desert, He instructed them to only gather what was needed for each day.  “But, of course, some of them didn’t listen and kept some of it until morning. By then it was full of maggots and had a terrible smell” (Exodus 16:20).  At its heart, all disobedience is sin, and it always reeks. Now if my puppy’s poop could create such a powerful stink, imagine the stench of all the disobedience in the world.  It’s nauseating. Yet this is what must fill God’s nostrils each day, because every one of us is a born rebel.

 

In an effort to neutralize the smell, my husband lit a match.  The light flared in the dark, and the scent of the struck match filled the room.  Fun fact: the sulphur dioxide released when a match is lit essentially overwhelms the sense of smell, covering up the offensive odor.  And here’s the lesson – as the light of the world, we’re like those matches, bringing not only light, but also relief from the stench of sin. 

 

[God] uses us to tell others about the Lord and to spread the Good News like a sweet perfume.  Our lives are a fragrance presented by Christ to God. 2 Corinthians 2:14

 

There’s a postscript to this story.  I actually cried a few overtired tears over Watson’s accident. Our older dog had had her own upset tummy troubles in recent days and I just really didn’t want to deal with anymore out-of-place bodily functions.  But when my husband lit the match, he was standing directly under the smoke detector, which I’m happy to report works very well. It was completely ridiculous, and absolutely funny. I laughed way more than I had cried.

That smoke alarm was the kindness of God. Dogs will be dogs, kids will get sick, the car will break down, whatever – stuff happens. That’s when the light is most needed. But we’re not just trying to come up with some platitudes and ignore the mess.  Instead, we’re taking an honest, fully illuminated look at the mess, and holding out the hope of this promise in the midst of it: “God blesses you who weep now, for the time will come when you will laugh with joy” (Luke 6:21).

The one thing I ask of the Lord – the thing I seek most – is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his Temple.  Psalm 27:4

 

David wrote those words.  You would think lingering in the Temple would be the kind of activity God would endorse.  But the good work God had prepared for David to do was to establish the nation of Israel. That meant he had to get out of the Temple and onto the battlefield.  And in the course of doing the very work God had assigned him, David’s hands were stained with blood, and he was disqualified from doing what he wanted to do (1 Chronicles 28:2-3).

 

The things we want, while they may be good things, must always be subject to the will of God, who often seems to be working from a different set of instructions.  That’s because He is God – completely other than us – and His way of doing things is far different from ours, His thinking is unlike ours (Isaiah 55:8-9). He knows what we cannot grasp and He can do something with the situations and circumstances that are far too much for us.

 

That’s because He knows what He is doing.  It isn’t random. God created us with a purpose to fulfill, a mission to accomplish, and it is good (Ephesians 2:10, Acts 9:15, Jeremiah 29:11).  The truth is the path there might not look anything like what you expected, desired, or anticipated. It might not look like the place you want to go.  The battlefield looked nothing like the Temple. But how could we linger in God’s presence if we’ve refused to do what He’s asked?

 

Instead we must embrace what God has made us to be, and the purpose He made us for (Isaiah 45:9-11).  This is part of putting the self to death – choosing the will or desire of the beloved over our own so that what we want becomes secondary to what the beloved wants.  This is complicated in human relationships because our best efforts are often tainted by selfishness and pride. But in our relationship with God, we can surrender having our own way knowing that the Lord has already done this for us with our ultimate good in mind in a way that is mind boggling (Philippians 2:6-8).  If He has given up His very life as part of His plan to rescue us, there’s nothing to fear in any part of His plan for us.

 

That doesn’t mean the way will be easy.  As a matter of fact it will very likely be full of roadblocks, obstacles and hardships. The Lord is not content to just lighten our load and smooth our path; instead He’s in the business of directing our steps.  The very barriers or obstacles that slow our progress are often kindnesses from the Lord designed to keep us on the right path, to send us in a new direction, to change our ways to be more like His.