Files of the Mind

 

I heard a good sermon recently, about “file folders.” I can hear you yawning, but I’m serious. The preacher said we all have those things in our minds, and everything we see, hear, taste, or experience in any way wind up in an appropriately named folder.

 

For instance, many years ago I persuaded my husband to take a tiny taste of olive oil because he was so suspicious of it. Don’t ask me why - I don’t know. But unfortunately, I didn’t realize the oil was rancid. After a good deal of spitting, pseudo-gagging, and recriminations, he filed “olive oil” in his folder entitled, “Things I Really, Really Hate.”

 

Olive oil aside, we all collect file folders in our minds, according to the minister. I believe we begin labeling them when we’re very young and continue stuffing the file cabinet all our lives.

 

Some people never examine the contents of their folders – they consider changing their minds about anything a sign of weakness – it also may mean they were wrong about one or two things. Others, however, find that quite a bit of refiling is needed through the years, even some trashing of entire folders! Potential candidates for the waste basket: “Prejudices” (may be several stuffed folders), “People I Can’t Stand/Forgive” (hopefully not multiples), “Things I KNOW I’m Right About,” “My Unchangeable Interpretations of Scripture,” and so on.

 

We must invite a supervisor for the file cabinet of our minds, Someone to make sure our records please the Lord of our souls! In agreement with God’s Word, the Holy Spirit refiles, adds new folders and gets rid of contaminated ones. Thank you Jesus.

 

Tremble!

A quote - not an exact quote - by a man named Tremper Longman from Kent Jobe’s Sunday’s sermon: The inbreaking of the kingdom always results in the restoration of creation. 

 Makes chill bumps on me! Whenever the Divine pushes through the veil of humanity and makes himself known in some way, it ought to make us tremble in addition to breaking out in a few bumps.

 Jesus broke through the veil when he entered Mary’s womb, and again when he broke forth from that nest  into the night air in the stable. Tremble!!

 We all have experienced the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God into our fallen existence when the Holy Spirit enters into us when we accept Jesus as Master forever. Tremble!!

 And praise the Lord! We will experience the final inbreaking of the Kingdom on that day when these bodies of “dirt packed hard” (Mike Ireland) are transformed in the twinkling of an eye to be exactly like the glorious body of Jesus, our Savior and Redeemer. Tremble!!

Jesus, All in All

“For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. I live because of the living Father who sent me; in the same way, anyone who feeds on me will live because of me” (John 6:55-57). Unless I accept Jesus completely, and not just one or two agreeable things about him, I will have no spiritual life. I must regularly, continually “feed” on him. 

It isn’t a matter of “going to church” Sunday after Sunday – that’s not necessarily proof that I am feeding on Jesus. The true food and the true drink are unpacked to look like this: I take the Lord’s perspective on everything and everyone. I absorb his attitudes, I love what he loves, and reject everything he rejects. What he pursues, I pursue. It’s choosing to spend my days making every single characteristic about Jesus a permanent part of who I am. 

Am I doing it well? Oh, no, so feebly at times! I get caught up in so much – junk! I never plan to get distracted, it just seems to happen. But, praise his name, I come to myself as the prodigal son did and ask God to allow me to come back to his table filled with the bread from heaven! He always says yes. 

 “Why are we so dispirited by our infirmities, when we know that Jehovah is our strength and our song, He also has become our salvation? I tell you, brethren, we do not possess our possessions. We are like an Israelite who should say, 'Yes, those terraces of land are mine. Those vineyards and olives and figs and pomegranates are mine. Those fields of wheat and barley are mine; yet I am starving.” Why do you not drink the blood of the grapes? He answers, “I can scarcely tell you why, but so it is—I walk through the vineyards, and I admire the clusters, but I never taste them. I gather the harvest, and I thrash it on the barn-floor, but I never grind it into corn, nor comfort my heart with a morsel of bread.' I trust the children of God will not copy this madness. Let our prayer be that we may use and enjoy to the utmost all that the Lord has given us in His grace.” (C. Spurgeon) 

 To put this in today’s lingo, to fail to feed on Jesus Christ means we sit in a church house most Sundays, perhaps some even eating a pinch of bread and sip of grape juice, singing, obediently bowing our heads in prayer at the proper time, dropping something in the collection basket and listening to a guy talk about John 6 (feeding on the body and blood of Jesus Christ) and wondering what in the sam hill that means. Like the starving Israelite, never tasting of the grapes, figs, olives and pomegranates that are ours, never using the wheat or barley available to us for the bread that sustains life – just living each day on the top ½ inch of spiritual life, never truly knowing/experiencing the living, risen Lord. 

Do any of us ever come to know Jesus perfectly in this life? Paul answered that when he said, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Cor 13:12). Seeing and knowing completely is a joy reserved for heaven. However, that truth does not keep us from a full, rich, intimate relationship right now with the one who died for us! Jesus made this promise in John 14:23: ‘All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them.” Sounds like pretty close company to me.

Coupons and Maturity

Don’t you wish you could download a coupon off some internet site for a stronger, more beautiful and vibrant spirit? How convenient to redeem a heavenly coupon at a godly corner market for instant spiritual growth!

Alas, it doesn’t work that way.

Yes, I can use a coupon to purchase shampoo that promises “thicker, fuller hair” (and probably for my dog’s hair too), but it doesn’t fluff up my heart one bit.

The Psalms state many truths so eloquently, and they don’t fail us now:
“Send out your light and your truth; let them guide me. Let them lead me to your holy mountain, to the place where you live” (43:3). Isn’t that where we long to live – with God?

Who is this Light the psalmist mentions? Who is this Truth? Jesus, of course! He blazed the way so that we can be “dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed” (1 Pet 2:24).

How are we to live for what is right? How are we to know what is right?

Peter lays it out in his 2nd letter, chapter 1:5-7, 10b: “Make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love … Do these things and you will never fall away.”

Do we add these to our new nature under our own steam? Hardly.
“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen” (Eph 3:20-21).

My grown-up grans are awesome. They are productive, God-fearing and loving people. Still, I can’t hold any one of them on my lap, and not one has snuggled in between Jim and me at night lately. I haven’t pretended to eat chocolate dirt pudding with the 27 year old in quite a while. You see what I’m saying?

Our younger four are still open to that stuff. VERY open. I love it – I want it to last forever! But I know so well that it’s contrary to God’s intentions for them to stay little. I know too that we eventually would grieve over their lack of maturity – it’s unnatural. So it is with us, folks.

“You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong” (Heb 5:12-14).

Last night

I had organized a group of people to attend a special event at a local university. They were riding in the same car, chauffeured by a young guy I had hired for the occasion. Two children, excited about being included, chattered with the amused adults. Two little girls, children of one of the women, stayed behind with me.

Sometime later my cell phone buzzed. One of the children, an eight year old girl, with cracking voice told me she was lost. After piecing together her muddled story I decided that she had gotten separated from the group, gave up searching in the building and slipped outside, hoping to find them there.

Why are you still outside? I immediately wondered, but didn’t ask because she added in a tremulous voice, “Scary-looking men are out here, and they’re looking at me. What am I going to do?” She erupted into sobs.

My blood pressure veered skyward. “Get back inside right now,” I ordered.

“I can’t” she wailed, “The door is locked!”

I thought my heart was going to thump its way right out of my chest. I couldn’t think; my brain was befuddled.

I needed to alert the chauffeur – didn't have his cell number. My frustration centered on him. Why had he not kept up with the child? I should never have used him – he’s completely irresponsible!

I raced around, trying various numbers, getting nowhere. Minutes passed. Suddenly one of the little girls quietly asked, “Do you have an altar?”

Surely I misheard her. “Have a what?” I turned to look at her. Why would she ask a totally unrelated question like that in this time of upheaval? Didn’t she see I was frantic?

Her curly head bent over a coloring book, she repeated, “An altar. You know, to pray.”

Shame slowly seeped through my being. To pray hadn’t even entered my consciousness. We, a humbled grown-up and two cherubs, retired to our knees and sought the face of God.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the dream I had last night.

Thank you, Lord.

A Psalm of Spring

O Lord, our Lord, how great,
How excellent you are!

At your bidding, the pear tree
gowns herself in soft, snowy sweetness.

You beckon, and the jonquils
rise from the chilled earth,
their laughing, sunny faces turning
upward to you.

At your gentle command, tiny
lavender-hued violets
leap up with joy, carpeting the
barren ground.

Summoned by your voice, the sleeping
forsythia awakes
to adorn her graceful limbs with
exquisite golden array.
She shouts the glory of you,
her maker!

You tenderly whisper to the dogwood;
he obediently heralds his rebirth
with waxen, delicate flow'r.

Herb, grass, shrub, pinewood, silent
meadow -
slumbering soil -
all resurrect at your behest
to praise your holy, holy name!

O Lord, our Lord,
How great, how excellent you are!

Doin’ Nuthin’

Once, while in my getaway nest, it occurred to me I needed to get busy and do something worthwhile. After all, didn’t I somehow have to pay for this time alone? Nothing is free, you know.

It wasn't acceptable to do nothing. “Nothing,” as defined by some such as: reading a book for entertainment, leafing through magazines, or steeping in a bathtub of warm water. Napping. Playing around with watercolors. Grazing in a discount store, or, literally doing nothing. Sitting quietly, thinking. When I do such things, this vague feeling always slips in that I’m probably lollygagging – and that’s an activity that’s a little iffy for God’s disciple. That troublesome feeling makes me rebuke my un-industrious self: “Get busy! Get yourself in gear!! (I could almost hear a whip cracking.)

Good grief!

Who conveyed to me this guilt-soaked concept that doing nothing occasionally is an abomination? An abomination to whom? Perhaps to those who see incessant bustling as “next to godliness”?
My parents didn’t teach me that perpetual “productive” motion is a fruit of the Spirit. As a kid mom and dad allowed me to explore, pretend, devour books, or simply hang out in trees - thoroughly delighting in my world. Oh, I had chores – work was essential in our family, but, thank the Lord, my parents also were good with “do-nothing” time.

Maybe if I work at it hard enough (huh?), I can shush that nagging voice that snips at me when I do “nothing important.” You know what? In “doing nothing” I just might glean some inexpensive ideas to help young women on limited budgets (is that mentoring?). The watercolor dabbling may morph into illustrations for the book on contentment for my grans. (It did.)That nap could sweeten my disposition by the time hubby comes home –yea! That fictional novel convicted me with its message on forgiveness.

Best of all, doing nothing, being still and quiet with my God may bring me into an intimate relationship with him I would never have otherwise experienced.

Perhaps “doing nothing” isn’t so bad after all.