A Friend of Souls

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn,

In the place of their self–content;

There are souls like stars that dwell apart

In a fellow-less firmament;

There are pioneer souls that blaze a path

Where highways never ran;

Let me live in a house by the side of the road,

And be a friend to man.

— Samuel Walter Foss

Warm–up: Genesis 14:18–20

Consider Abraham, returning from the raid on Chedorlaomer and his coalition of Mesopotamian kings—battle scarred, exhausted, fearful, aware that he had angered four of the most powerful kings of that era.There in the Valley of Shaveh, Abraham is met by Melchizedek, King of Salem, who brings out bread and wine and blesses him. 

Who is this great high priest who blesses our father Abraham? “Without doubt the lesser is blessed by the greater” (Hebrews 7:7).

We know very little about Melchizedek—only that he was the king of Salem (ancient Jerusalem), that he was “a priest of God Most High,” that he fed and blessed the famished Abraham, and then passed off the scene. 

Much is made of his name, which means “King of Righteousness,” but it was a common throne name in those days. (The name is written in two parts if it were a title rather than a personal name.) 

So, I ask you, who was this king–priest who has been lionized in the history of Israel and in the Church? The Essenes of Qumran thought he was an angel; the philosopher Philo believed he was the divine Logos; the historian Josephus said he was just a righteous man, “but as such was by common consent…made a priest of God.”

David rightly saw Melchizedek as a prototype of the promised Messiah who would establish a new order of king–priests (Psalms 110:1-4). 

The author of Hebrews, taking the argument further, said that he is like Jesus, who is a priest despite his non–levitical ancestry, whose title is “King of Righteousness” and “King of Peace,” and who, because he appears in the account without beginning or end of life, “remains a priest forever” (Hebrews 7:2-3). 

David and the writer of Hebrews have the last word, of course— Melchizedek is a type of Jesus. But, as Josephus correctly noted, he was also a man, and as such is an example of the kind of man I want to be.

I want to be a friend of souls. I want to stand by the way as Melchizedek did, waiting for weary travelers, “….laying low, in the places where the ragged people go.” 

I want to look for those who have been battered and wronged by others, who carry the dreary burden of a wounded and disillusioned heart. I want to nourish and refresh them with bread and wine and send them on their way with a benediction. 

I cannot “fix” those who pass by, though I want to and frequently try to, but I can love them and listen to their hearts. I can pray with them. I can share a word of scripture when it’s appropriate. I can sing “sustaining songs,” as every good Poohphile knows to do. And I can leave them with a blessing. 

A “blessing” is more than a parting shibboleth, or a polite response to a sneeze. We bless others when we bring them to the One who is the source of blessing. Melchizedek blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High…” As Billy Graham would say, he blessed him real good.

“To bless,” is to “bestow something that promotes or contributes to another’s happiness, well-being, or prosperity.” The Hebrew word comes from a root that means, “to kneel,” perhaps because of an old association between kneeling and receiving good from a benefactor.

In the Old Testament God is the benefactor. He alone bestows the blessing. “This is how you are to bless the Israelites,” God commanded Moses. “Say to them: ‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace’” (Number 6:24-26). 

I cannot strengthen feeble hands, nor can I straighten knees that have given away, but I can bring weary travelers to the one who can. His bread gives endurance, strength and eternal consolation. His wine gladdens the heart and sustains it.

I cannot undo the cruel or dreary circumstances of anyone’s journey, nor can I take away its travail, but I can remind those who trudge by that there is one who walks with them—who holds them with his right hand, who guides them with his counsel, and afterward will take them into glory.

I cannot help the helpless, but I can pray with them and bring them to the throne of grace to find help in time of need.  I cannot show them the way, but I can “show them God” (John Piper).

This is my benediction. 

From, Out of the Ordinary, David Roper, Discovery House Publishing, 2015.

My Times; His Hands

Psalm 31

“My times are in Your hand..." (Psalm 31:15). 

Two small words in the Hebrew text. Two nouns with pronominal suffices. No verb. “My times; your hands.” 

"My times; your hands.” I think of days when I feel ignored, marginalized, overlooked, forgotten, set aside. When “I have been forgotten like broken pottery”—a useless, discarded chard (31:12). Yet I will trust in you, Lord. I will say, “You are my God.” I will shelter myself in his unfailing love and the good things he has stored up for me (31:16).

My times; your hands. I think of all that is contingent and changing around me as I age. Change is not chance. God’s hands control and contain every circumstance, even events that seem random and arbitrary. “God is the stability of (my) times,” Isaiah wrote. “An abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge…” (Isaiah 33:6). 

My times; your hands. Good times; bad times.  “Into your hands I entrust my spirit (31:5).”

David Roper

2.24.20

The Voice

Psalm 29

The voice of the Lord strikes

with flashes of lightning.

The voice of the Lord shakes the desert;

the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh.

The voice of the Lord twists the oaks

and strips the forests bare.

And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”  

The Lord gives strength to his people;

the Lord blesses his people with peace —Psalms 29:7-9

Many years ago my father and I were fishing a beaver pond in Colorado when it began to rain. We took cover under a nearby grove of quaking aspen, but the rain continued to fall, so we decided to call it a day and ran for the truck. I had just opened the ruck door when lightning struck the aspen grove with a thunderous fireball that stripped leaves and bark off the trees, leaving a few smoldering limbs…  

And then there was silence.  

Voltage! Percussion! Shock and awe! “The voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forests bare.”

David saw thunder and lightning  as “the voice of  the Lord,” as did Job: ”Listen, O listen, to the blast of his voice and the sound that issues from his mouth. His lightning is hurled across the heaven, it strikes to the extremities of earth. After it comes a roaring sound, God thunders with majestic voice. He does not check his thunderbolts until his voice resounds no more” (Job 37:2-4). 

God speaks with thunderous, irresistible power through His Word—to bless us with “strength." Strength to overcome, to endure, to be patient, to stand, to wait, to get up and go, to do nothing at all. 

And then there is "peace." 

“Gloria in excelsis is the beginning," German theologian Franz Deitzsch comments, "and in terra pax the close."

David Roper

The Days of Mourning

The Lord will be your everlasting light,

And the days of your mourning shall be ended.

Also your people shall all be righteous;

They shall inherit the land forever,

the branch of My planting, 

the work of My hands,

To the end that they may share my beauty.

—Isaiah 60:20,21

Did Isaiah know that these predictions would find their ultimate fulfillment in Heaven?  Perhaps he used what he knew—the promises made to Israel—to describe what he saw—Heaven and the hereafter. 

If so, there is a promise here that someday soon our righteousness will be perfected and our salvation and glorification will be complete. Further, the Vinedresser will “plant” us in the place he has prepared for us, to the end that we may share his beauty forever.  

All good, but the phrase that comforts me this morning is this: Very soon, “the days of your mourning will be ended.” 

It’s intolerable to think that sorrow will go on forever. But to know that our mourning shall be ended is to gain fresh hope and strength for the day. When we go to be with Jesus (or when he comes to be with us) our disappointment, grief and pain will be over, “sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.” Someday the last tear will fall and we will enter into joy. Our mourning will be turned into dancing—a hope that keeps us going in this present vale of tears. 

David Roper

2.11.20

Being There

We who preach and teach tend to talk too much, or so it seems to me. We’re “word–mongers,” to use Augustine’s apt description—paid by the word. 

Some of the best healing, however, comes not from words, but from just being there, hearing and acknowledging the reality of someone’s pain.

Margaret Guenther, the author of Holy Listening” tells the story of the Scottish pediatrician who comforted her hurt and frightened child with a great enveloping bear hug and the words, “Och, poor wee thing!” The poor wee thing stopped crying at once for she realized that someone understood her pain. 

Guenther concludes, “I find myself guided by the unquestioning, all–encompassing compassion of that kind man with a burr. He brought healing just by being there.” 

Sometimes that’s all we have to do.

David Roper

2.19.20

Respite

“He who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin” (1 Peter 4:1)

I think of the weariness of those who have struggled with sin their entire lives, rising only to fall again. Is there no respite? 

Peter assures us that those who have “suffered in the flesh” have “ceased from sin” (1 Peter 4:1). Here, or so I believe, Peter is using the phrase “suffered in the flesh” to mean, physical death (as he does with reference to Jesus in 4:1 and 3:18). Accordingly, he is declaring that death puts a final end to our struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil. Then, our Father will deliver us from sin and its pollution.

To battle sin within and without, with no hope of deliverance, is demoralizing, but a day is coming when we will be “finished” with sin. (Peter’s verb tense suggests a completed action). We will be taken beyond sin’s seduction, gathered in and wholly sanctified. We shall see Jesus and be like him! 

That prospect of certain, final victory encourages us to live, as Peter puts it, “the rest of the time in the flesh not for human passions, but for the will of God” (1 Peter 4:2). In other words, we can be strong and battle bravely against our sins, for, though we may lose an occasional skirmish, final victory is assured. The good work that our Lord has begun will be completed. Sin will be finished with us and we will be finished with sin. 

English poet, George Herbert, has written a poem entitled “The Pilgrimage,” in which he describes his struggle with sin as a series of grueling ascents, assaulting and overcoming one mountain peak only to face another. “Can both the way and the end be tears?” he asks. Then he sees a final hill—one steep gradient and then eternal relief and consolation. “After so foul a journey,” he sighs, “death is fair, and but a chair.”

So, don’t give up in your battle against sin. Soldier on. “There is a rest for weary pilgrims, a calm for those who weep” (Herbert).

David Roper

My Favorite Valentine Story

The Golden Key, by George MacDonald, is my favorite love story. It's about a boy, Mossy, and a  girl, Tangle, who meet as children, fall in love, marry, enjoy numerous adventures as they age and journey together toward “the land from which the shadows fall.” (Tangle knows that she can safely travel with Mossy because he has in his pocket the golden key, a symbol of Jesus). In the end Mossy and Tangle are separated by death and Mossy must trudge on alone for seven long years. Finally, wearied by time and life, he comes to a great mountain that stands in his path and impedes his journey. On it he spies a door and a keyhole...

 

“Mossy tried the key. It fitted. It turned. A great clang and clash, as of iron bolts on huge brazen caldrons, echoed thunderously within. He drew out the key. The rock in front of him began to fall. He retreated from it as far as the breadth of the platform would allow. A great slab fell at his feet. In front was still the solid rock, with this one slab fallen forward out of it. But the moment he stepped upon it, a second fell, just short of the edge of the first, making the next step of a stair, which thus kept dropping itself before him as he ascended into the heart of the precipice. It led him into a hall fit for such an approach-irregular and rude in formation, but floor, sides, pillars, and vaulted roof, all one mass of shining stones of every color that light can show. In the centre stood seven columns, ranged from red to violet. 

 

And on the pedestal of one of them sat a woman, motionless, with her face bowed upon her knees. Seven years had she sat there waiting. She lifted her head as Mossy drew near. It was Tangle. Her hair had grown to her feet, and was rippled like the windless sea on broad sands. Her face was beautiful, like her grandmother's, and as still and peaceful as that of the old Man of the Fire. Her form was tall and noble. Yet Mossy knew her at once. "How beautiful you are, Tangle!" he said, in delight and astonishment. "Am I?" she returned. "Oh, I have waited for you so long! But you, you are the old Man of the Sea. No. You are like the old Man of the Earth. No, no. You are like the oldest man of all. You are like them all. And yet you are my own old Mossy! How did you come here? What did you do after I lost you? Did you find the keyhole? Have you got the key still? She had a hundred questions to ask him, and he a hundred more to ask her. They told each other all their adventures, and were as happy as man and woman could be. For they were younger and better, and stronger and wiser, than they had ever been before.”

 

I  think of E.B.Browning’s lines, words I quoted to Carolyn this morning: “I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears and all of my life and…I shall but love thee better after death.”

 

David