Like a Tree

Psalm 1

He shall be like a tree,

Planted by rivers of water,

Bringing forth his fruit in his season.—Psalm 1:3 

In these quiet years I'm watching a tree grow, a birch tree I planted forty years ago. It was a sapling then. Now it stands in mature verdure, just outside our picture window, beautiful in every season of the year. 

So it is with our efforts to help others grow: We plant and water and fret over our “saplings," but God, the maker of trees, can make grow.

Occasionally I hear from those I’ve not seen for awhile, and discover to my delight that "my children are walking in truth"—with no help at all from me. It’s a gentle reminder that it takes God to make a tree (Ephesians 4:15).

German theologian Helmut Thielike wrote, “The man who doesn’t know how to let go, who is a stranger to quiet confident joy in him who carries out his purposes without us (or also through us 

or in spite of us)... that man will become but a miserable creature in his old age. Can the reason why many aging people are melancholy and fearful be that for decades they have never been able to ‘let go and let God’ and now are nothing but run-down merry-go-rounds (The Waiting Father).

And so, though I'm unable to care for my saplings these days—more's the pity—I can "let go" and watch them grow. I have no greater joy.

David Roper

9.28.19

Just for You: Welcome

 A Call to Prayer 

9/26/19

From Carolyn

God is always calling us to come closer. His is an open invitation, issued from an open heart. James tells us to “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”

Well, how and when do we do this? We draw near to God as we pray.

Often in a church service or fellowship there is a special time set apart to pray: A Call to Prayer.  However, there are also other times when there is a call to prayer if we are alert and attentive.

This week two friends each told me something. Each communicated in her own words her own experience. Though different, each was a call to prayer for me.

One friend, thinking about a difficult situation she was called to respond to, told me her heart was resisting a bit. She said her life felt like a Rubik’s-Cube that she couldn’t complete because there was always one piece that wouldn’t fit.  I loved that analogy and as I considered it realized that at times it could apply to me! I asked her how I could pray for her. Without a moment’s hesitation she said, “Pray I will trust God.”

My other friend told me of some significant changes and health concerns she is walking through. She also mentioned some anxiety that accompanies these concerns. I said I would pray. She responded, “Thank you! I'm obviously a control freak and I really don't want to trust God.      Well——I do want to trust God, I'm just not very good at it!”
I laughed out loud at the response of my second friend and told her, “Well, you and I make good company because I’m not very good at trusting God either!”

One of the things I value about these friends is their honesty. I also value these friends because they know both their need, and where their help comes from. Their desire is to trust God more with their challenging but different circumstances.

Both the challenges and the need to increase in trust, trust in the living God, are calls to prayer.

Jesus knows about our trust deficit. And we know how He responds to such. There was a man whose son had serious challenges. The father had tried everything for his son, to no avail. He brought the boy to Jesus, asking for help. Jesus said to the man, “If you only believe, I can help.” In this desperate situation, in which the father might have been losing hope, the man was brave and honest enough to cry out, “I believe. Help my unbelief!” There was a piece in his life that wouldn’t fit. He wanted to trust, but like my friend and me, this man was just not very good at it. But he came to Jesus and then cried out to Jesus, openly and honestly. That’s called prayer. The man prayed. (Mark 9:24) “I believe, help my unbelief!”

Ahh, but that trust deficit did not stop Jesus. The trust necessary was accomplished in drawing near to God. Drawing near in itself is a fledging faith accepted by Jesus. In another place Jesus said all one needs is a tiny bit of faith, like a small seed. And yet another word from Jesus is “all you who are weary and heavy laden come. I will give you rest.”

My difficult circumstances and my lack of great trust are a call to prayer. My tiny scrap of trust is pleasing to Him. I show my trust and actually increase it as I draw near to Him—repeatedly. My acknowledgement that He is the One who can increase my trust fund is pleasing to Him. He has spoken. Can you hear Him speaking? His heart is open. Come! Draw near!

I find the trust process begins with the small areas I encounter daily. You know, things like “when the dog bits, when the bee stings when I’m feeling sad.” Today those areas of trust might be:
when my plans are interrupted,
when I have to wait,
when that car cuts me off in traffic,
when the invitation doesn’t come,
or when I need to say “no.”

As I learn to depend on Him, to lean on Him in the small areas this becomes a pattern for depending on Him, trusting Him with the so-called bigger challenges of life. Any challenge and/or lack of trust in Jesus is a call to prayer.

This all starts with recognizing my need to trust (Trust is the path to His shalom.) and recognizing my own attempts to control. Trust comes as I draw near to Him, asking for trust-help, with a readiness to do the next thing He asks me to do. And in the way He asks me to do it. Always counting on Him to work a life-bringing miracle in me. Jesus is pleased with our child-like dependence.

My insufficient trust is a call to prayer that is often revealed in challenging circumstances.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. Please turn my trust deficit into ruthless trust in You.

Lets’ pray for one another as we each seek to have our trust in God increase.

In anticipation and hope because God is both merciful and mighty,

Carolyn Roper

“Happy, Happy Trees”

Psalm 1

“Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; but he delight in the instruction of the Lord, and on that instruction he meditates day and night.” He shall be like a tree… (Psalm 1:1).

Alexander Pope had another take: 

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 

As to be hated needs but to be seen; 

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Whatever—villainy and vice come easily. All we have to do is follow the crowd. First we take delight in its counsel, then we embrace its behavior, and adopt its cynicism. Inured to goodness we become distracted and heedless, blown about and borne along by every whim and vagary that comes our way.

Or, we can withdraw our roots from world of group-think and travel to the river of God. We can delight in and listen to God’s counsel, think about it and pray it into our souls. 

We can be a “happy, happy trees,” as John Keats would say, full of life and energy, towering over our former selves, verdant, multi–hued, and majestic. “The north cannot undo them, With a sleety whistle through them, Nor frozen thawings glue them, From budding at the prime” (“Happy Insensibility”).

The process begins with “meditation.”

To “meditate” is to “mutter” or speak softly,” with the implication of speaking quietly to one’s soul. It’s what an earlier generation of Christians called “spiritual reading.” 

Spiritual reading involves reading the scriptures slowly, thoughtfully, prayerfully until we’re arrested by a thought. Then “God’s word has come,” the old folks say, “God is speaking his word to me.” 

We can then think about that “word”, what it is, what it means and how we are to be changed by it.

Finally, we can turn our thoughts into prayer and ask God by his spirit to transform our attitudes and actions, for we are helpless to change ourselves. "Only God can make a tree.”

This “snippet” from psalm 1 and others that follow are the products of that practice. They’re not expositions of the psalms, per se, but those times when God spoke his word to me. I offer them to you with the prayer that he will speak to you as well. 

David Roper

9.27.19

The Good Life

There are many who say, “Who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!” You put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound (Psalms 4:6,7).

I watched the Democratic Debate a couple of nights ago—it could just as well been a Republican Debate—and thought of this psalm and the question, "Who will give us the good life?" 

David answers: "Lift up the light of your face upon us, Lord! You put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” 

Many seek the "good life,” hoping to find joy in prosperity and pleasant circumstances. David's happiness welled up from within and was not dependent on happenstance. He was content with God alone and the love he saw in God's eyes, a “good” far better than wine!

Emily Dickinson wrote:

Ours be the tossing - wild though the sea 
Rather than a Mooring - unshared by Thee. 
Ours be the Cargo - unladen - here 
Rather than the “spicy isles-” 
And Thou - not there.

David Roper
9.15.19

The Cause of Conflict

“The sole cause of wars and revolutions and battles is nothing other than desire.” —Plato

James asks, as we do, why there is so much violence in the world. “Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up  (James 4:1-10).

What causes fights and quarrels—border disputes, racial tensions, family squabbles, marital spats, sibling rivalry? Why is there so much discord and dissonance in the world? Why can’t we just get along? James answers his own question: violence occurs  because, “You want something and don’t get it.” 

James swings his axe at the root of the problem—a smothering absorption with ourselves—getting what we want when we want it. Frustrated in the pursuit of our own good we resort to rage and cruel force.

All the conflict in the world stems from “desire,” says James, a Greek word from which we get our word “hedonism.” Hedonism is the notion that only what is pleasant, or has pleasant consequences, is intrinsically good. Taken to its extreme it’s the relentless and ruthless pursuit of personal pleasure without regard for others. 

There are no bad or unlawful pleasures. “Everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated (put to it’s intended use) by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4: 4, 5). “Pleasures are shafts of glory,” C. S. Lewis states, intimations of God’s goodness and love, serendipitous occasions of his grace. 

Nor is there anything wrong with desiring pleasure or seeking it. Pleasures only become unlawful when they are snatched in the wrong way, or at the wrong time. It is the stealing of a watermelon that is wrong, not the melon.

The trouble comes when the pursuit of pleasure puts us in conflict with another human being similarly inclined. Two people desire a pleasurable thing, but both cannot have it at once. (Two drivers converging on the last parking space at a crowded mall comes to mind.) One or the other is thwarted in his desire, a frustration that can soon escalate into anger, blows and lethal rage. “You want something, but don’t get it, (so) you kill.” (It is a fact that most homicides are not premeditated acts, but “crimes of passion,” as we say, prompted by frustration and deeply regretted after the fact.) The unguarded pursuit of pleasure can lead to terrifying violence. James does well to warn us.

Every evil in the world springs from unrestrained desire. “It is insatiable desires which overturn not only individual men, but whole families, and which even bring down the state. From desires there spring hatred, schisms, discords, seditions and wars,” wrote Cicero, the Roman statesman. 

Philo, Cicero’s Jewish near–contemporary, said much the same: “Is it not because of desire that relations are broken, and natural goodwill changed into desperate enmity, that great and populous countries are desolated by domestic dissensions, and land and sea filled with ever new disasters by naval battles and land campaigns? For wars famous in tragedy…have all flowed from one source—desire for money, or glory or pleasure. Over these things the human race goes mad.” Undisciplined, unrestrained desire is at the root of all that is wrong with our world.

James’ solution is profoundly simple: when you want something and can’t get it—ask God for it. When your need for human love and approval is frustrated—ask God. When your hunger for appreciation and respect is ungratified—ask God. When your desire for peace and quiet is hindered—ask God. When in the pursuit of any pleasure you collide with someone pursuing his or her pleasure, rather than insist that your needs be met—ask God. He is the giver of every good and perfect gift and it delights his heart to give. If our needs are not met, James says, it is simply because we have not asked.

But there is one proviso: we must ask with a submissive will. We cannot dictate the time or terms of our satisfaction. It may be that God will give us what we want, but give it to us later than we would like to have it. It may be that he will not give us what we want at all. He may ask us to forgo the thing we want, but he will give us the satisfaction we are seeking. It’s not the thing we seek that matters anyway—it fades and is forgotten. It’s the joy that accompanies it. Authentic joy is an effect quite apart from any natural cause. 

What this means is that we must give our deepest desires to God and let him satisfy us his way. The alternative—taking matters into our own hands—James calls adultery. It’s an apt metaphor. When we seek satisfaction on our own and apart from God’s love, we are unfaithful to the lover of our souls who longs to satisfy each desire of our heart. 

Furthermore, James continues, such unfaithfulness is “friendship with the world.” It aligns us with the world’s way of doing things—its motivations, methods and moods. Here again is worldliness: the uncompromising pursuit of pleasure, making our good the highest good. It’s nothing more than self–centeredness and pride. Of all interfering things pride is the worst for it keeps us from God and all that he has in mind for us. That’s why he must oppose it and, if necessary, bring us to our knees. Only then can he do good things for us. 

There is, however, an alternative to God’s humbling: we can “humble ourselves.” We can submit to his will—acknowledge his right to give us what we want his way. By so doing we “resist the devil,” who is behind our restless, loveless self–seeking. “And with that  (by drawing near) Apollyon spread forth his dragon wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more” (John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress). 

We can “draw near to God” in prayer. When we do so he will draw near to us. In his presence we find the satisfaction we crave. 

We must “wash our hands and purify our hearts”—cleanse ourselves from selfish actions and attitudes that defile us and demean others. Self–derived, self–centered pleasure is not a small indiscretion, or a slight impoliteness, but a deadly perversion. We ought to “grieve, mourn and wail” over it. Selfishness is serious sin indeed. 

Then, having humbled ourselves, God will exalt us, lift us higher than we were before. The thing we sought—the thing we thought we must have—is lost in the pure pleasure of God–given delight.

Bernard of Clairvaux wrote long ago, “What will you do if your needs are not met? Will you look to God to meet your needs? God promises that those who seek first the kingdom and his righteousness will have all things added to them. God promises that to those who restrict themselves and give to their neighbor he will give whatever is necessary. Seeking first the kingdom means to prefer to bear the yoke of modesty and restraint rather than allow sin to reign in your mortal body” (from On the Love of God).

Asking God to meet our needs is much better than getting what we want our way, for, as James puts it, God gives a “greater grace” (4:6)—a grace greater than anything we could ever get on our own.

David Roper

9.12.19

Excerpted from my Growing Slowly Wise, Discovery House Publishers