Straight to the Father's Knee

"Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!" (Psalm 107:1)

This poem revolves around four human predicaments: "Some wandered in desert wastes" (4); "Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death" (13); "Some were fools through their sinful ways " (17); "Some went down to the sea in ships" [and encountered gut-wrenching storms] (23). 

Loneliness, depression, guilt, anxiety. The answer in each case is the same: “They cried out to the LORD..." (6,13,19,28). 

Prayer is the spontaneous, irrepressible, and sometimes inarticulate, cry of a heart under duress. "God, help me!" is our primal prayer.

When our troubles overwhelm us, when our resources fail us, when our hearts are broken, "the natural thing is straight to the Father's knee" (George MacDonald). There we are given what no other person, place or thing can deliver: God’s relentless love (107:1,8,15,21,31,43).

David Roper
2/19/16

Metamorphosis

“Miss Oldcastle told me once that she could not take her eyes off a butterfly that was flitting about in the church all the time I was speaking of the resurrection of the dead. I told the people that in Greek there was one word for the soul and for a butterfly—psyche; The butterfly is the type in nature, and made to the end, amongst other ends, of being such a type--of the resurrection of the human body.” —George MacDonald

Butterflies begin as caterpillars, though some would insist that they begin as butterflies, evoking the ancient enigma of the chicken and the egg.  Generally, however, we think first of the caterpillar, those homely, creepy—crawly, earth-bound worms with which little boys tease and torment little girls. How can these paragons of unsightliness—caterpillars that is; not little boys—become objects of winged, luminous splendor?

Paul writes, “Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself (Philippians 3:20,21).

We too, like caterpillars, must enter into death, for our timeworn bodies cannot in any other way experience that redemption of the body for which our redeemed spirits sigh. “Death exists for the sake of the resurrection,” George MacDonald said. “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies...” (1 Corinthians 15:36).

So through death and only through death, can a new being emerge. It rises from the ruins of the old, bearing not one of the marks and stains of the former life, but bearing "the image of the heavenly Man!" (1 Corinthians 15:49). We rise made far better, transformed and conformed to the likeness of God's own Son. John, who was the soul of simplicity, put it this way: "We shall be like Him" (1 John 3:2).

Then shall this groveling worm

         find his wings, and soar as fast and free;

As his transfigured Lord with lightning form

         and snowy vest—such grace He made for thee.

David Roper

When You Fall…

"Happiness is walking in God's ways!" —Psalm 119:3

Psalm 119 is the longest psalm in the psalter, twenty-two stanzas with four lines each arranged around the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The psalmist throughout affirms his love for God and his desire to "walk in His ways" (Psalm 119:3).

But the psalm concludes with a dull thud: “I keep wandering off like a lost sheep—help me!" (119:176).

Nobody never sins. That's where grace comes in.

"When you are distressed by your failures, do not run from the Lord—as if any of us could hide from Him! Instead, run to Him quickly ... and say, ‘I have corrupted myself and made myself filthy, and I hate it because now I’m not like you. I cannot be clean again—I cannot be free from this corruption—unless you come and help me.“ —Julian of Norwich, I Promise You a Crown

When you fall, all you got to do is call…and He'll be there.

David Roper