A Land of Hills and Valleys

For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables.  But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. – Deuteronomy 11:10-12

Down in Egypt where little rain fell, the fields could be watered by drawing from the Nile River.  There in the flood plains and bottoms of the Nile, a farmer could irrigate with human or animal power running screws or pumps of some kind.  The land of Canaan was not that way.  There might be streams in the hills, and wells could be dug, but, unlike the vast and seemingly infinite water of the Nile, these sources were limited and sometimes unreliable. 

If no rain fell in Canaan, the little streams stopped running and the water table quickly dropped, draining the wells.  Man soon reached the limits of his ability.  The Israelites entering their Promised Land would have to rely on God.  Through Christ, we, too, may enter a new land.  We may leave behind us the old nature and the world system that Egypt represents.  And, just like the Israelites, we will have to leave behind our faith in man’s power to produce virtue, wholeness, meaning, and satisfaction. 

I think I expected my life to be a flat land.  When I thought about peace and contentment, I saw it as ease and certainty.  The old “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” is true, as far as it goes.  It’s also true that giants have your stuff and are not willing to give it up without a hot and bloody fight.  Once you have succeeded in driving out the enemy, you will find your inheritance consists of a lot of hills and valleys – ups and downs.  Some of our land around here is like that.  My brother bought a little 80-acre farm.  Dad looked it over and said, “Well, the good thing is you can farm three sides of it, and if you could iron it out, you’d probably have around 240 acres.”

The undulating nature of life can make it seem as if we are making no progress.  Sometimes we are up on the top, walking in the light.  Other times we are down in the hollows, shadowed and unable to see what lies ahead.  Nevertheless, God has promised to be with us, to keep watch over our lives regardless of our elevation.  The Lord’s eyes are on us as well whether we are barren and cold as winter, plowing and planting in faith as spring, enjoying growth and beauty as summer, or harvesting and rejoicing as fall.    

The temptation for me is to take care of it.  I am a problem-solver and a fixer.  If I have a catch-phrase – a printable one – it’s probably, “I’ll take care of that.”  I seem to say that all the time.  There are a lot of things I can take care of, and the same is true for all of us.  When it’s time to plow, I ought to plow.  I have a part to do.  But you can plow too much.  One of my favorite Bob Wills’ songs is “Cottonpatch Blues”.  You plow those old long, straight rows, busting the middles until the cotton gets a little height.  After that, you have to get the hoe down and chop the cotton – “Don’t go down there without your file,” Bob adds.  Finally, when the picking time comes in the fall, all you need is your cotton sack to drag and fill.   You can do all you can, but if the Lord doesn’t send the rain, there isn’t going to be any harvest. 

And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.  He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how.  The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.  But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” (Mark 4:26-29)   

When it comes right down to it, there is no use lying awake at night worrying about it.  The process is and will always be something of a mystery to us.  The land of promise is the land of faith.

Dreaming of Dreams

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. - Joel 2:28

Many years ago in a little town in Texas, an older gentleman with whom we attended church told of a dream he had about the then nearly desolate church being filled with people.  It happened some years later that the church grew significantly, though I tend to think his dream spoke of a greater fulfillment.  I'm always struck when reading through the first couple of chapters of Matthew how critical dreams are.  First Joseph, traditionally viewed as much older than Mary, dreams that he should go ahead with his marriage.  Next the Magi, also doubtless older men, are warned in a dream against returning to Herod.  Then Joseph is told in a dream to go to Egypt.  After Herod's death, he dreams that they may return home.  Finally, he settles in Nazareth because of a dream.

I would be reluctant to change the course of my life based on a dream, no matter how vivid and convincing. Nevertheless, I can attest to the damage that not dreaming does to a person.  Lack of sleep means a lack of dreams.  I am always a better, more balanced person - and that's not saying much - when I get a chance to process everything in dreams, when my sleep is less disturbed.  It is almost as if dreams denied from lack of sleep invade my waking hours.  It makes me wonder about people who do senseless things, the perverts, the suicides, and the serial killers.  Are they simply overwhelmed by undreamt dreams? 

In Proverbs 29:18 we read:  Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.  The KJV says the people perish without vision, but the throwing off of restraint is simply the prelude to death. As a nation, we seem to have stopped dreaming.  We are blind.  We have no respect for any prophetic voice.  I am not talking about the people who call themselves "prophets" or, perhaps worse, "prophecy teachers".  The prophet's job is to proclaim God's truth and call His people to repentance with power, not give somebody a "word" about his backache.  Prophecy, dreams and visions pull back the curtain on the machinery behind the play.  It reveals what is normally hidden, unearths the buried truth, exposes the lies that support the daily delusions. 

As Christ could not have come into the world or survived to reach Golgotha without the dreams of men, so we will see no restoration or revival until our vision of the kingdom is quickened.  We need old men to dream Reality again.

The Wait of Repetition

I will stand upon my watch and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what He will say to me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved.

And the LORD answered me and said: “Write the vision and make it plain upon tablets, that he may run that reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie. Though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come; it will not tarry. Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright within him; but the just shall live by his faith”. – Habakkuk 2:1-4

Fuzzy, ephemeral mental images sometimes lose their glow when they have to be organized into coherent sentences and reduced to combinations of twenty-six letters, ten digits, and a handful of symbols -- I like my dashes. When you climb the tower and gaze out to the horizon, much is in view but not all is focused and clear. The unevenness of the ground may hide something of importance even from the watchtower; we may lose perspective, not realize the immensity of what we see, imagining it to be closer to us than it is in reality. Prophecy is a tricky business.

Walking in the Spirit is a matter of careful balance. As John said in his first epistle, we do not know exactly what we will be, but we know when Christ appears to us we will be like Him for we will see Him as He is. We cannot get ahead of the revelation -- though it tarry, wait for it. How often we act in the manner of Abraham, knowing that something must come to pass, we seek a shortcut and produce Ishmael instead of Isaac.

Every vision has its appointed time. All we can do is ready ourselves, cultivating purity, prayer, and patience. We have eternal life, the life of Christ now through faith in Him, but it may not be in full bloom – for each of us the time and season varies when we produce the broad, open, glorious flower of the saint, when our lives unfold in all of the shocking, rich beauty they possess in potential. Though it tarry, wait for it.

It will surely come. It is impossible for God to fail or deceive. He is not a trickster, giving you something evil because you did not word your request precisely enough. Rest upon the word of God, upon His promises. Notice that the sentence opens encouraging us to wait even if it tarries then closes telling us that it will not tarry. It will not tarry beyond its appointed time, and that timing is never wrong, never too late, and never too early. I have many times wished God operated ahead of schedule and delivered what we need early, but He does not. He always gets it to us precisely when it is needed, when it is most effective in carrying us to the summit, lifting us out of the pit, or transforming us.

There is no room in faith for pride or self-exaltation. No one who is living by faith should ever say, “Look how great is my faith and what it has accomplished.” We are reminded again that all virtue lies not in the one who believes but in the One who is believed in. Even our trust does not “earn” the grace or favor of God. Trust is the child of humility.

If the Lord says something once it is important. How much more if He repeats it as He does Habakkuk’s cry: the just shall live by his faith. It echoes word for word in Romans 1:17, in Galatians 3:11, and in Hebrews 10:38. John 3:36 says: He that believes in the Son has everlasting life. In First John 5:4 we read: This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.

Believe, and live.

In Search of Martyrdom

He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” – Acts 1:7,8

A witness is a martyr, or it might be better to say that our word martyr meant witness. This is just a guess on my part, but I doubt that there is a similar word in the Islamic lexicon. The West has adapted martyr to fit the perversion that is suicide/homicide bombing, but such actions could only in the most inverted sense have anything to do with the word as Jesus used it.

The association between being a martyr and dying came about because of the persecution of the early Church. It was necessary as a part of being a witness for Christ to endure suffering, imprisonment, torture and even death. Frankly I find it offensive, not just to myself, but to God, to call some half-wit who blows himself up in order to kill innocent little children a martyr. He is a murderer. If he is “witnessing” for his god, then his god is a murderous and despicable entity. In fact I would equate such a god with “the god of this world” of whom Jesus warns us.

Let me hasten to add that not all of Islam holds to such a belief any more than all Christians are like Jim Jones. The terrorist thugs of Syria, Palestine, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are likely as much an offense to the decent Muslims – Sufis and others – as they are to me.

Jesus said that the believer will be clothed and infused with a spiritual power, like plugging a light into an electrical outlet. It is this power than enables me to be a martyr – if I might be allowed to reclaim a valuable mot. This goes beyond any kind of formal or traditional “testimony”, beyond preaching or public displays. To be a martyr in the sense Christ intended is to illuminate my own soul and the spiritual environment wherein I live and move and have my being.

To be a martyr is to bring God into contact with the world.

I don’t get extra credit for this. I don’t get special privileges in heaven, or a heavenly maid who looks like Ava Gardner. It does not involve going out and provoking persecutory responses from the heathen. Being a witness does not necessarily mean that I hand out tracts in the promenade or pester passers-by by singing into a bullhorn. I don’t have to annoyingly knock doors on Saturday mornings.

A martyr’s calling is to live. “The one who believes in Me,” Jesus told those at the graveside of Lazarus, “even if he dies, will live.” The zombies and the vampires won’t like him, and may well make his life tough, attempt to kill him, or even think they have killed him. Nevertheless, he lives.

The martyr’s reward is life – real life, the life of God, being eternal or everlasting in quality and nature.

Church is not the place where Christian salesmen gather to learn the latest marketing scripts. It is the place where martyrs gather to celebrate and renew life in communion. To use the image from the Motel Zero link, it is where we mend our broken cords if need be and get plugged back into the power.

This next point seems important to me, but it may be important only to me. I don’t think the martyr needs to concern himself with who might be watching him. Hebrews chapter 11 talks about the many faithful who had gone before: the patriarchs, the judges, and the prophets. The chapter concludes with these words -- “All these were approved through their faith, but they did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, so that they would not be made perfect without us.” Then the twelfth chapter begins with this:

Therefore since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and run with endurance the race that lies before us …

Sometimes I feel just like that light in Robin’s picture. I am forgotten, stuck to a lost wall and useless. Why should I bother? How is my light going to benefit anyone here?

The martyr’s calling is never to the derived temporal world, but, always, his witness is to the eternal realm of the spirit. It may be reflected in the world, but the reality is always a heavenly one. This journey is of necessity one of separation and isolation to a degree. I think if we could see behind the veil it would be a great and terrible sight. Where we walk in shadows there is a blazing light. Where we stand alone there is a vast host.

When the servant of the man of God got up early and went out, he discovered an army with horses and chariots surrounding the city. So he asked Elisha, “Oh, my master, what are we to do?”

Elisha said, “Don’t be afraid, for those who are with us outnumber those who are with them.”

Then Elisha prayed, “LORD, please open his eyes and let him see.” So the LORD opened the servant’s eyes. He looked and saw the mountain was covered with horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. -- 2 Kings 6:15-17

...'Til Somebody Puts Out An Eye

Nahash the Ammonite came up and laid siege to Jabesh-gilead. All the men of Jabesh said to him, “Make a treaty with us, and we will serve you.”

Nahash the Ammonite replied, “I’ll make a treaty with you on this condition: that I gouge out everyone’s right eye and humiliate all Israel” 1 Samuel 11:1,2


Most of us, I would like to think, are born with something like full spiritual vision. It does not take long, though, for the world to begin its work of blinding us to the Real. Putting out the right eye leaves us with a flat, two-dimensional view of things. Life, according to the prince of this world, should have no depth and no meaning. The devil will lock us up inside our own heads and let us go mad as circular reason spirals in, ever tighter.

The enemy comes up threatening and intimidating. I think perhaps compromise is the best course. All I have to give up is one eye. Is it really that big of a deal? What good are two eyes when you are dead?

It is worth considering in this context that Jesus said, “If your right eye offends you, put it out. It’s better to enter the kingdom with one eye than to go to hell with both.” The difference is that Jesus is speaking metaphorically. Ray Charles was blind and couldn’t leave the girls alone. Jesus uses the concept as another way of saying, repent, turn away from the economy of the flesh and die to it.

But the enemy wants me impaired, confused and helpless. Nahash, at least, had the audacity to state his purpose: to “humiliate all Israel” – and, by extension, to humiliate the God of Israel. It’s one of the problems with proclaiming I am a son of God; it draws the whole Family into whatever mess I get myself into.

That’s also the good news. There is a “rest of the story”.

Saul had just become king over Israel and he had not gotten on the path to destruction as yet. The men of Jabesh-gilead sent word that they were in trouble. When the king heard it, he was plowing. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he hacked an ox into twelve pieces then sent a piece to each of the tribes. No RSVP invitation, it was show up or else. Then Saul sent back a message to Jabesh. “By the time the sun is hot tomorrow,” he said, “you will have help.”

So it was that the king went up, took out Nahash, and delivered Gilead from the Ammonites.

I have a choice every day. I can listen to the world’s deception and lose the better part of my ability to perceive the Real, or I can call upon my King and Elder Brother to stand with me. He will not fail me or forsake me. It doesn’t matter that I am somewhat of an outlier, that I am perhaps not all that I should be, He will show up when things get hot.

But what if I have compromised in the past? What if I am already blinded?

As Tolkien said, “The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known.” Reading in the Gospels one cannot help but think there were a great many blind in the days of the Lord’s earthwalk. When they encountered Jesus they did not remain blind.

If I call upon Him, my blinded eye will be opened, my sight will be restored, and my deliverance will be complete.