Secrets

"In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem. He took away the treasures of the house of the LORD and the treasures of the king’s house. He took away everything. He also took away all the shields of gold that Solomon had made, and King Rehoboam made in their place shields of bronze, and committed them to the hands of the officers of the guard, who kept the door of the king’s house. And as often as the king went into the house of the LORD, the guard carried them and brought them back to the guardroom"  (1 Kings 14:25–28).

King Shishak besieged Jerusalem in a campaign to gain control of the trade routes through Palestine and the Negeb. King Rehoboam readily submitted to Shishak to spare his people the ravages of a prolonged siege.

Shishak sacked the city and took away the treasures of the temple and the palace, including the fabulous golden shields the king’s body-guard carried on state occasions. Rehoboam substituted shields of bronze to maintain the fiction that things were as they should be. It was a clever cover-up and he thought no one would know. But bronze tend to tarnish after a time.

Secrets (harbored hypocrisies) seriously mess with your mind: You become evasive, devious, deceitful, paranoid—fearful that you'll be exposed. In time others begin to distrust you because you don't ring true.

“Half the misery in the world comes from trying to look, instead of trying to be, what one is not. I would that not God only but all good men and women might see me through and through. They would not be pleased with everything they saw, but then neither am I... No one who loves and chooses a secret can be of the pure in heart that see God” (George MacDonald, The Flight of the Shadow).

David Roper

6.15.18

Roper's World

This is all He asks of thee;

Be faithful where thou art. 

Jesse Watters, the ever-cheerful political commentator, stands on a street corner in New York City, sweeps his hand in a half-circle to encompass the city and delivers his slogan, "I'm Watters and this is my world."  

I look around at the four walls of our family room, 250 square feet in all, and say to myself: "I’m Roper, and this is my world." Jesus said we're to go into all the worldand announce the good–spiel. This room, at least for today, is my world.

Who knows what plans God has for us today and who will turn up in our "world." A prominent, influential person? Or no one at all.

No matter. God has but one word for us today: "Be faithful where thou art" (cf.Luke 16:10).

Fret not because your place is small,

Your service need not be,

For you canst make it all there is

Of joy and ministry.

In you His mighty hand can show

The wonders of His grace,

And He can make the humblest room

A high and holy place.

His strength upon your weakness waits,

His power for your task.

What more, O child of all His care,

Could any great one ask?

David Roper

6.14.18

Divine-Human Endeavor

"And the LORD said to him: “I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before Me; I have sanctified this house which you built to put My name there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually" (1 Kings 9:3 NKJV).

Here is the mystery of divine-human endeavor: Solomon "built" the house: hired skilled artisans and architects from Tyre, gathered exotic building materials from afar, erected the structure, crafted the furniture, embellished the walls and pillars with sheets of hammered gold, but the house was just another house until God made it holy. 

We labor over a text to understand it, utilizing the exegetical tools at our disposal, crafting our thoughts to maintain the integrity of the text, thinking through the needs of our people and linking truth to life. But our words amount to nothing if God does not invest them with holiness.

We envision a mission, impart the vision, train the workers, send them into the field and support them as they carry on the work. But it's wasted effort if God does not invest that work with holiness. 

And how do we bring God's holiness into our work? Through prayer (9:3). Prayer is the highest expression of our utter dependence on God. It is the means by which we work in concert with him and he puts his name on all that we do. Without him labor in vain. 

David Roper

6.12.18

One More Thing

My cell-phone rang and I cringed—visibly. Carolyn asked me, "What's wrong?" "I can't deal with one more thing," I muttered under my breath. 

I find myself responding with something less than alacrity to the demands placed upon me these days. Aging has forced a reluctance to engage.

I rise each morning, brush my teeth, shower, pull on my socks, trousers, shirt and shoes, throw down the pills and potions that keep me alive each day (“Better things for better living through chemistry," as the DuPont people used to say), carry out a few other ready-for-the day chores...and feel like going back to bed. I'm exhausted. 

As I thought about my reluctance to seize the day I've come to realize that it's not one single thing that brings me to my knees. It's the accumulation: "one more thing."

Perhaps you feel the same way

If so, Solomon, the wisest man in the world, has a blessing for you: "May God give you the right stuff for every thing, all through day" (1Kings 8:59, my translation).

Literally Solomon asked God to "make righteousness" (give us righteousness, the right stuff), for "the thing of the day in its day." (For the next "thing" we have to do today when we have to do it.)

You never know what the next "thing" will be, which is why we must arm ourselves each day with our Lord's prayer, "Give us this day our dailybread"—grace this day for the next thing I have to do. 

All of which reminds me of an old hymn my father used to sing as he wandered around the house:

Day by day, and with each passing moment,

Strength I find, to meet my trials here;

Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment,

I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.

He Whose heart is kind beyond all measure

Gives unto each day what He deems best—

Lovingly, its part of pain and pleasure,

Mingling toil with peace and rest.

Every day, the Lord Himself is near me

With a special mercy for each hour;

All my cares He fain would bear, and cheer me,

He Whose Name is Counselor and Pow’r.

The protection of His child and treasure

Is a charge that on Himself He laid;

“As thy days, thy strength shall be in measure,”

This the pledge to me He made.

Help me then in every tribulation

So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,

That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation

Offered me within Thy holy Word.

Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,

E’er to take, as from a father’s hand,

One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,

Till I reach the promised land. —Karolyna W. Sandell-berg 1865)

David Roper

6.11.18

To Be Done With Sin

Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion,

which cannot be moved, but abides forever.

As the mountains surround Jerusalem,

so the LORD surrounds his people,

from this time forth and forevermore.

For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest

on the land allotted to the righteous,

lest the righteous stretch out

their hands to do wrong.—Psalm 125:1-3

We were living in Idaho in 1980 when Mount Saint Helens blew her top. We got some of the fallout—ash and other debris—though we are over four-hundred miles away. A year after the eruption I flew over the mountain with a friend and we were astonished at the devastation visited on that majestic peak. In a moment of time titanic, inexorable, underlying forces blew it to smithereens.

Sin is like that, you know. It can destroy our lives in a moment. Is anyone safe?

Indeed. Mount Zion, a symbol of those who put their trust in God, like Mount Zion, cannot be moved; the "scepter of wickedness” cannot rulethere. We are secure, surrounded by God's love "lest we stretch out (our) hands to do unrighteousness," and once for all ruin our lives. 

Surely, we will sin. Temptations to sin are sure to come," Jesus said. We're besieged on every side by inducements to follow the evil impulses that cross our minds. Yet Paul assures us: “Sin will not have dominionover you" (Romans 6:14). We can become like Zion—immutable, fixed, firm, indomitable, un-menaced and undisturbed by evil.

Oh, not all at once and not right away. But, as Peter assures us, “after you have suffered a little while, God Himself... will restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you" (1 Peter 5:10). We will never be perfect in this life, but we can make progress as God’s Spirit makes us over into the image of his Son.

The finale awaits Heaven "When we see him. Then and only then, we shall be like him. Then we be done with sin forever! 

David Roper

O Jerusalem!

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
May they be tranquil who love you!
Peace be within your walls
and tranquility within your towers!”
For my brothers and companions’ sake
I will say, ‘Peace be within you!’” (Psalm 122:6-8).

Jerusalem, in David’s day, was a drab little village, newly wrested from the Canaanites. The "house of the Lord" was a patched and threadbare tent. 

But it was the place God chose to gather His people in unity and tranquility. It was a city “bound firmly together” by God’s love (122:3).

Our "Jerusalem" is the Church: We "have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God." Our “house" (122:1) is not a building, but a body of "brothers and companions" in which we find solidarity and rest (122:3-5).

But sadly, congregations can be restless, unhappy aggregations of querulous people, wrangling over trivia, what Thackeray called, "the pigmy spites of the village spire."

What can I do for my brothers and companions?

I can “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” Prayer is always the starting place for any human endeavor.

And I can “seek her good” (122:9, which means, among other things, that I, in humility, gentleness, patience and love will set aside my own good “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” for the greater good of my brothers and companions (Ephesians 4:1-3).

David Roper

The Paradox of Power

And they have conquered him (the ancient dragon) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death"(Revelation 12:11).

The weakness of evil is that it cannot overcome weakness. We overcome evil, as Jesus did, through the power of the cross, a symbol of voluntary, loving renunciation of power. 

I'm not a categorical pacifist; I believe, as a national policy, that evil men and women must be contained by force of arms. Paul commends the formation and maintenance of armies of national defense: “He (the state) is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword (an instrument of capital punishment) in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4). George Orwell said that "we sleep peacefully in our beds at night only because a few rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf." (Though I did a stint in the U.S. Army I never achieved the sobriquet, "a rough man." I was mostly in charge of a swimming pool.) 

But, to get back on track: It seems to me that everything is about power these days: social, economic, political, coercive power. But in an odd irony the only way any of us can gain power, when personal relationships are disordered,is to give it up. (I’m thinking this morning of tension in our families and with our friends.) Humility, meekness (non-defensiveness), forgiveness, love, and other aspects of personal righteousness forever trump brute force. In a jujitsu-like move, weakness becomes our strength. Paul, as you know, wrote exactly that (2Corinthians 12:10)

Evil in others (and the seven devils that reside in us) cannot touch us when we're willing, like Jesus, to lay down our lives. "In the end the Shadow is only a small and passing thing... righteousness and beauty are ever beyond its reach" (Tolkien).

David Roper

5.30.18