Peace for the Journey | Elaine Olsen

Living Our Consecrated Deserts (part four): Stepping Up to Tell the Truth

July 10, 2008

Thank you for joining me today in the desert. Take time to read our scripture focus, Acts 8:26-35.

“Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ Philip asked. ‘How can I,’ he said, ‘unless someone explains it to me?’ So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.” (Acts 8:30-31).

There is risk in all writing endeavors.

Misunderstanding.

Not all readers will fully engage with the text as the author intends. It happens. I think, perhaps, it has happened with my thoughts on desert dwelling. I make no apologies for my thoughts, but I want to clarify something before beginning today.

When Adam and Eve walked those final steps of Eden’s embrace to enter into a land void of perfection, they began a desert journey that continues to this day through the likes of you and me. It’s not a popular topic. We rather prefer words of Promise. Indeed, we should, for we are a people of Promise, intended for abundant living. But there is a danger in thinking that all of life, even as Christians, will live as lush and green and ripe.

It doesn’t. Life is filled with hard. God stands with us through these times. He brings his lush and green into the matter for our filling and our refreshment, but for as long as our flesh remains, we continue in a wanton state. We are a people in need of perfection, and more often than not, God uses the desert as his classroom toward that end.

This is the truth that I know. I have lived it. And while I have witnessed many cherished mountaintop moments with God, he never allows me to make them my permanent. Instead, he asks me to carry these moments back down into the valley of my daily. Back into the world that desperately needs to know that this desert is not our home. It is our temporary, and what awaits us beyond the dirt and dust far exceeds our current reality. We have an eternal portion now, but the fullness of that portion is yet to be.

Regardless if you are a Philip or an Ethiopian or a wanderer without knowledge, every last one of us are desert dwellers. We can spin the Israelites’ Promised Land as a truth that breathes with a final and absolute abundance. We can, but it wouldn’t be the truth. They wandered for forty years because of their sin and disobedience, but almost as soon as they set up shop in Promise, they set up their idols and self-reliance alongside. The desert followed them into Canaan, and lest we think that their future was scripted with a permanent lush and green and ripe, let us remember the words of the prophets.

Let us remember the four hundred years of silence that existed between the Old and New Testaments. Let us not forget the consecrated famine that God sent into his children’s souls because they refused the voice of God. That is a desert my friends. And even after Truth presented himself in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, there are still those…

who refuse to listen.
who listen but don’t understand.
who listen and understand but still find the resurrected life a difficult cloaking.

That is how I define desert living. Plain and simple. So what is one to do with the desert? What are we to do with such truth?

We find our consecration within, even as two men did so long ago on a desert’s pilgrimage outside of Jerusalem.

The Ethiopian didn’t understand what he was reading. He was on the right track. He had the scriptures in part—the Old Testament part. He sought the truth, and it was his earnest seeking that led him to come to Jerusalem via a desert road. Listen to words of the prophet Isaiah that accompanied this seeker’s steps.

“‘He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth.'” (Acts 8:32-33; Isaiah 53:7-8).

Philip understood the meaning behind the prophet’s words. When asked, he came alongside this seeker and put voice to one Truth that would bring clarity to this eunuch’s question:

“‘Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?’” (Acts 8:34-35).

(Who is this lamb that died a death of humiliation and injustice? Who is this one who was taken from this earth without an offspring to his name? Is it Isaiah or is it someone else?)

And beginning with that very passage of Scripture, Philip told the eunuch the good news.

News of Jesus Christ. News of his new identity because of Jesus Christ.

I wonder about Philip’s words. I wonder if he encouraged this eunuch to read a few verses further into Isaiah’s prophetic renderings—words that breathed a new identity for this one who was so rarely embraced.

“Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the LORD say, ‘The LORD will surely exclude me from his people.’ And let not any eunuch complain, ‘I am only a dry tree.’ For this is what the LORD says: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant—to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.’” (Isaiah 56:3-5).

Can you even begin to imagine the pulse of that moment—the grace that fell upon the seeking heart and opened up the truth of his identity in Jesus Christ? I can, and it nearly sends me to my sandals and to the nearest desert road.

Hear me, if you will, for this is the beating in my heart today.

There is Godly consecration within our deserts.

No matter how we get there, we are ordained to be there and to walk our steps with holy purpose and divine intention. We are meant to come alongside our brothers and our sisters and our strangers and to be the voice that penetrates the enemy’s dark deception with the light and truth of Jesus Christ.

We can refuse our voice in the desert but in doing so we silence God’s consecrated purpose for our lives. We can muddle through the heat, licking our wounds and our wants as we go, or we can extend our focus to include the wounds and wants of others.

Either way, we walk it. And I, for one, am tired of walking it as meaningless.

We are given this one life—these few years as earthly, yet eternal pilgrims in search of a better country. As Christians, we walk them in faith and in the sure hope of things not yet seen. Indeed, things felt. Things cherished. Things believed and things tasted. But the perspective that we need about these “things” must root in the reality that what is seen is temporary. And what is temporary rarely yields a lasting lush and green and ripe.

That which is eternal?

Well, it is everything edenic and worthy of our devoted and abiding affection. Therefore, I fix my eyes unto the hills…to my home beyond this desert, and I run these heated sands because I know that at the end of this road is a memorial inscripted with my everlasting name. It stands in God’s garden as a defining witness to the consecrated pilgrimage I now embrace. And so I pray…

Get me there, Lord. Bring me to an everlasting place of peace within your lush and your green. I do not hurry, Father, because I know that there is meaning in my now. You have given me a journey to walk that includes the lives of others who need to hear the good news of their perfected end. You are that End, Lord, even as you are our Beginning. Punctuate my now with the consecrated purpose of your will for my life. Amen.

Copyright © July 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

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Please feel free to leave your comments, even if you are new to my blog. You can leave a comment by clicking on the word “comment”, write your thoughts in the box, and then sign on as an anonymous contributor if you want. You don’t have to have a blogger account to comment. Feel free to use the questions below as a point of reflection or to offer your own words of contemplation on today’s reading.

A further pause…

*I love the Ethiopian’s question. It is one I’ve often asked in the desert. What is it about this question that resonates with desert language?

“‘Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?’”

*Describe a time when someone stepped up into your chariot to bring you God’s truth.

*When have you been called toward a similar stepping?

*Why is it sometimes so hard to “reason” the truth in the desert?

Living Our Consecrated Deserts (part three): Stepping Alongside Another

July 8, 2008

For Judith…I stand alongside you today!

Please take time to read today’s scripture focus, Acts 8:26-29.

“The Spirit told Philip, ‘Go to that chariot and stay near it.’” (Acts 8:29).

One of the gifts of walking in barren seasons is the pleasure of God’s voice. I so often miss it in my chaos and my crowded. But when I am alone and feeling the confinement of my anonymity, my heart is tender and ripe for the hearing. I think this is why I am sometimes led to walk a desert’s heat. God is ever speaking, and my penchant for the same often precludes my listening to him. Thus, a desert sometimes becomes my consecrated necessary.

God shapes our lives in the desert. Oswald Chambers speaks to such a shaping:

“If we are going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all noble things are difficult. The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but the difficulty of it does not make us faint and cave in, it rouses us up to overcome. Do we so appreciate the marvelous salvation of Jesus Christ that we are our utmost for His highest? … Thank God He does give us difficult things to do! His salvation is a glad thing, but it is also a heroic, holy thing. It tests us for all we are worth.”[i]

Noble. Heroic and holy. An utmost kind of living that requires our refinement through the gloriously difficult. Sounds like Mr. Chambers knew something of a desert dwelling and finding its sacred consecration within. I want an “utmost” life lived to the uttermost, and if a desert’s necessary becomes God’s way of accomplishing his ultimate for me, then I am prepared for its embrace.

I am at a place of contentment in my life right now, not feeling the particulars of a desert’s scorch; still and yet, I am reminded that many of you are walking its heat. I have heard from some of you. I have seen you in my community and in the church pews. I have watched you pilgrim through your daily and your constant, and I am moved by your faithfulness to keep a forward focus even though a backward glance is all so tempting.

Through you, God has issued me an invitation to walk a desert road. He has clearly communicated the need, and compelled by his love, I willingly come. Not to instruct or to correct or to whisk you away from your heated necessary, but simply to come alongside and to walk the road with you. There is refinement for the both of us in the process.

Philip came alongside. He took to the road with very little knowledge about its consecrated purpose. He simply listened to the words of God’s angel and to the promptings of God’s Spirit.

Go to the desert road.
Go to that chariot and stay near it.

Herein lies one of the glorious truths of the desert.

Deserts are full of fellow travelers.

Our self-indulgence allows us to reason that we go it alone…that there is no one else who shares the sandals of our hard. But the reality of our pilgrim identities paints a truer picture. The desert is replete with a parched people. Unfortunately, the laboring and tearing of our own thirst rarely permits us the privilege of noticing another’s.

But occasionally there comes a friend, perhaps even a stranger who is able to look past self-interest in order to preserve the sacred interest of God.

Philip was one of those people. A stranger in a strange land living out what, some would say, was a strange and mysterious calling. From table service to chariot chasing, indeed, Philip was no ordinary servant. He was extraordinary in his service to God and to mankind.

At the Spirit’s prompting, he took the time to embrace a man that was rarely embraced.

An Ethiopian—a man of ethnic difference.
A lesser man some would say because of his eunuch’s status.
An unclean and fully blemished man.
A Gentile.
A foreigner.
A wealthy man.
A stranger to the truth, and yet…

A seeker of the Truth…of the one God who captured his worship and who sent him on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in search of that Truth.

I don’t know what he found while in Jerusalem, but I do know what he found while in the desert.

He found a friend named Philip. And better still…

He found a Savior named Jesus.

He found the Truth, simply because of one man’s obedience to walk a desert’s heat and to maintain an outward focus so that God’s consecrated purpose could be birthed within sinner and saint, alike. Not a bad trade for a desert’s pilgrimage. In fact, a very good exchange worth every blistered tear and parched longing.

Purpose in the desert. Yours and mine and theirs. We all walk its heat for different reasons. Our thirsts are uniquely crafted by God’s consecrated will for humanity. A noble, heroic, holy, and perfect will that leads to a perfect end—an utmost kind of end where eunuchs and Gentiles, foreigners and strangers, family and friends, will gather to worship the one God who authors us all.

Home is where we are headed. It is not far, friends. It is just on the other side of this desert. On the other side of a sometimes, hard obedience. On the other side of steps that are gloriously difficult but that are willing, nonetheless, to keep an outward focus.

We are moving through these sands to get to God’s unshakable mountain. Better to get there with a few fellow pilgrims by our sides, and so I pray…

Carry me through the desert, Lord, so that I may reach the shores of an unshakeable faith. Direct my steps and lead me to those who will best pilgrim the journey with me…both for my sake and for theirs. Yoke us as one to your yoke so that, together, we can find our consecrated purpose for the journey. I thank you for the fellow sojourners whom you have placed on my road. Give me the ears to hear your voice, the courage to obey your voice, and the faith to walk toward your voice even when I cannot see through these uncertain sands. Bring me to my noble and utmost end. Amen.

[i] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (Uhrichsville: Barbour Publishing, 1935), July 7th.
[ii]Sara Groves, I Saw What I Saw from “Tell Me What You Know” (Nashville: RBI Productions, 2007).

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As a way of closing today, I want to share with you a song by Sara Groves that speaks the story of a desert road. For those of you who are walking one right now, I echo her heart when I say…

“Your pain has changed me. Your dream inspires. Your face a memory. Your hope a fire. Your courage asks me what I’m afraid of. Your courage asks me what I am made of and what I know of love.”[i]

Living Our Consecrated Deserts (part two): Stepping Toward a Desert’s Heat

July 4, 2008

If you haven’t already, please take time to read Acts 6 & 7 as the background for our time together in God’s Word. Today’s scripture focus is Acts 8:1-26. Please read and return.

“Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ So he started out…” (Acts 8:1-5, 26-27).

There is one, and exactly only one, reason why I braved the ninety degree plus temperatures yesterday afternoon to find my pace upon the heated asphalt of a sweltering obedience.

Better health.

Seven laps of 3.2 miles worth of health. I thought about you and what I might say today in regards to desert living. I thought about how “doable” it all seemed on laps one and two. I thought about my sweat and my “want to” in laps three, four, and five. I thought about the sweet smell of a laundry’s drying that flooded my nostrils on lap six. And all I could think about on lap seven was lap eight—the cool down. And all I could think about on lap eight was what awaited me at the end.

Home.

Air condition. Bottled water. A bath to wash away the heat and the sweat that filled my flesh with the living proof that I had run in the desert. Not walked. Not crawled. Not bawling with a fit of my will. Simply running to the finish and knowing that with the finish, my heart is better for the obedience.

I am a desert dweller. I bet that some of you are, too.

Some deserts are divinely ascribed to us—designed and ordained for our feet. Some deserts we create through our chosen disobediences and willful sin. Some deserts we inherit—the parched remnants of another’s doing. Some deserts we choose because we know that with the choosing comes better health. Regardless of how we get there, desert dwelling is often our allowed portion, and such seasons can find roots in God’s consecration if we choose to walk them with his kingdom perspective.

Desert living is a vast concept, encompassing and all-consuming. The Bible is replete with its teaching because our spiritual history is a family tree filled with desert wanderers who walked its road—if not a literal pilgrimage, then pilgrimages of the soul.

Abraham and Sarah. Hagar. Moses. The Israelites. Joseph. Elijah. Gideon. David. John the Baptist. John the Beloved. Peter. The woman at the well. The woman with the issue of blood. The woman at Jesus’ feet. The woman at the end of a stone’s throw. Jesus, himself.

Indeed, God’s Word would not be complete without these desert dwellers and the stories of countless others who walked this earth with a thirst that would only be quenched by the living water from an eternal well. In many ways, we walk the same, and until we reach the shores of heaven, our steps will be soiled with the dust of a journey that was never intended to be our final.

Like the saints of Hebrews 11, our alien hearts echo with the longing for a distant promise…for a better country—a heavenly one where the heat and sand of a desert give way to the lush and green of a garden’s embrace. It is a good and rightful longing, and there are moments in my life when I have tasted a portion of its fulfillment. Still and yet, my flesh lingers. And as long as this flesh remains, the fullness of Eden’s return rests ahead. My next. My hope and my sure.

Thus, I am left to my current. There is good to be had in the here and now. There is life and balance between the extremes of a desert’s dry and a heaven’s wet. Psalm 33:18-19 speaks to this balance.

“But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death, and to keep them alive in famine.”

God doesn’t intend for us to simply wander into our next. He intends for us to live in our now. His eyes are on us because he longs to deliver us from death and to teach us how to live in our famine. Really live. How to walk it through and how to find an eternal abundance in the midst of our parched and hot and hard.

That is what this study is about. It is not about glorifying our deserts, or feeling sorry for ourselves, or looking for a way of escape from their confinement. It is about living within their fences and finding God’s purpose through our every step of faithful obedience. It is about finishing well, even when the finish involves a less than perfect run in temperatures that threaten a will’s resolve.

As so often the case with a wilderness walk, there are events that usually precede its embrace and that prime our wandering hearts with an unquenchable thirst. Philip was, perhaps, no different from us. His desert pilgrimage began long before his feet would walk the desert road that led to Gaza. He had every reason for his resolve to find a measure of weakness. Reasons like…

Philip was called to table service. Some would consider his a “less than” calling—a behind the scenes obedience that didn’t merit the glory of the stage. After all, the apostles would tend to the preaching of God’s Word. He would simply tend to the feeding of mouths. (Acts 6:2-5).

When have I come into a desert for such a similar reason?

Philip lost a treasured companion. Stephen’s death touched the heart of all who witnessed his passing. And while it may have bolstered their faith and resolve for the work ahead, it also left a gaping wound—a tearing of deep grief that always accompanies a deep loss. I am a woman who has known some deep losses, and thus I wonder,

When have I come into a desert for such a similar reason?

Philip was relocated—scattered and sent abroad to an unfamiliar and, sometimes, unwelcome place. Samaria. To the least of these he would travel. Perhaps, running for his life. Perhaps, alone and without clarity. Perhaps, reminiscent about the glory days instead of living with the current realities.

When have I come into a desert for such a similar reason?

Philip was overshadowed. When word spread about Philip’s faithful imparting of the Gospel in Samaria, his mentors showed up to bring the fullness of that Gospel by baptizing believers with the power of the Holy Spirit. And while scripture does not record the least hint of Philip’s regard in the matter, I am prone to my own feelings of insecurity with such situations. When others have the capacity to do more for Jesus than me, I am prone to my sandals and to my wandering.

I know that I have walked a desert or two for such a similar reason!

Preceding events—those life experiences leading up to the angel’s voice that would summon Philip to a desert walk. Perhaps these initial “tastes” of the desert prepared his heart for the obedience that would follow. Regardless of the location or situation, Philip was prepared to move his life forward in the direction of the heat. He knew that life could be found within the sands of an uncertain and famine-threatened tomorrow.

He knew that better health—heart health—would find its perfection, not in the cool and conditioned comfort of a usual, but rather in the hot and sweat of a divinely, hammered unusual. A consecrated run that would yield a faith worthy of a Father’s eyes, a heaven’s stage, and an eternal garden.

We can know a similar portion. In fact, we can know the fullness of that portion because it is our promised inheritance as children of the Most High God, and so I pray…

Ready my heart, Father, for the heat of the day. Keep my obedience in forward motion, and when I am tempted to stay in the cool of my current, remind me that an occasional desert run is good for the heart. Hammer me into my perfection, and when my quit screams loud, drown it out with the truth of what awaits me on the other side…Home. It’s where I am headed, Lord, and I am undone with the thought of walking Eden’s shores with you. Amen.

A further pause…

~Ponder some preceding events that may have contributed to your most recent desert walk. Do they mirror any of the four mentioned above?

~What “heart value” have you received because of your obedience to walk in the desert?

~Which scripture “desert story” has meant the most to you and why?

Feel free to offer your thoughts on these questions or any others that you may have regarding today’s reflection. I will post again late Monday. Shalom.

Living Our Consecrated Deserts (part one): Stepping Up to the Table

July 2, 2008

Today, I begin a new mini-study with you on what it is to embrace the life of a desert dweller. It is an existence that has chased me my entire life. Only now am I beginning to live in the sacred potential of such a pilgrimage. I welcome your participation and look forward to your walking this road with me. There can be peace in our journeys, friends—even when the journey boasts a desert road. Pack your bags, put on some good walking shoes, and let God turn up the heat! I believe that he has something to teach us all.

“So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.’” (Acts 6:2-4).

There is story in God’s Word that has followed me for nearly two years. I can’t seem to shake its prod. It is easy to miss if one is prone to lingering in the pinnacles of scripture—those big story moments that have remained in the spotlight for thousands of years. Nestled between a martyr’s stoning (Stephen) and a persecutor’s redemption (Paul), is the story of one lesser known. He was a man content to live in service to his Lord, even when that service required a desert’s walk.

His name was Philip, and from his first mention in scripture until his last, Philip lived his consecrated calling. No task was beneath his servant hood. What began as a ministry of literal feeding emerged into a ministry that exceeded the needs of the flesh to include the spiritual needs of the soul.

And when those needs required a scattering—a relocation to a lesser desired location—Philip obeyed. He went without complaining and with the holy perspective that God’s kingdom agenda would best be served somewhere beyond his comfort. Beyond his normal. Beyond his now. Philip would be called to the desert, and rather than run from its heat, Philip reached to take hold of its warmth.

What emerged from this lesser preached obedience is a story rife with application for those of us who, like Philip, find ourselves in a desert’s pause and who sometimes feel adrift, forgotten, and certainly not consecrated for such an existence.

Desert dwelling.

It is a hard walk. A hot and arid journey, where water falls brief and sand sticks thick. A day’s pilgrimage that sometimes turns into weeks. Months. Years. Maybe, even a lifetime. It is an uncomfortable reach, especially for children who have been promised a spacious land filled with the milk and honey of an abundant grace.

I could skip over this seeming contradiction. Pretend that waterfalls and full living are my constant, but the truth of my matter is the fact that, for most of my life, I have been a desert dweller. For reasons beyond my understanding, I often stay stuck in my desert. I stay as I am, and as each day passes, I grow exceedingly weary with my seemingly little progress toward nowhere. I believe that there are others who share my sandals and who have walked the same. This wilderness wandering is one of the many breathing realities within the Christian community today.

We are a people existing in desert conditions, desperately searching for our consecrated purposes within its heat. If we can’t escape its hold, then we often choose to wander within its confinements with our aimless and angry intent companioning alongside. Rather than accepting its parameters and finding God’s sacred objective in our allotted space, we relinquish our feet and hands and hearts to the blisters and parch that rarely yield purpose and almost always birth resentment.

I speak from experience, for I have lived and breathed such a witness. For all of my years of walking with Jesus, one would reason me past the confines of a desert’s enclosure. But years and experience and wisdom aren’t always enough to warrant me worthy of its escape. No, sometimes something more is required of me. God’s more. And God’s more is always rooted in his best.

Thus, there are seasons when a desert walk becomes my consecrated necessary.

What I choose to do with that “necessary” is solely up to me. God will never force my consecration in the matter, but lovingly he offers it to me as the best option. He knows that there is a time and purpose for every season in my life and that sometimes, his best purpose is fleshed out upon the sands of an uncertain desert.

Philip walked upon those sands. He stepped up to the table when he was called to serve. He wouldn’t know the fame of the apostles. Indeed, his story is easily missed if we are prone to the prestige and pageantry of bigger biblical moments. But it is his story, as contained in the book of Acts, that has shadowed me for a long season, and now I am ready to put thought into his consecrated necessary so that I, too, can find purpose in mine.

There are things—sacred and unseen truths—that birth in our seasons of seeming barrenness. On the front end, we are often blinded to their realities. Sometimes we enter the desert knowingly. Sometimes, we wake up to find ourselves already drenched in its dry. Either way, our only certainty in these uncertain seasons is Jesus. Simply Jesus. When we allow him his purpose in our necessary, the outcome always favors his kingdom agenda…in our lives and in the lives of those we meet along the way.

I don’t know how your season is currently living. Mine is living pretty well considering that I have just come down from some recent mountain moments with God. I much prefer my time on the sacred pinnacles, but the valley is where I do most of my living. It is where God most often chooses to hammer out my faith. In the heat and in the dry, but with the promise of a consecration that boasts kingdom purpose and abundant return.

We will witness this truth in life of a servant named Philip over the next several posts. I hope you will join me in the desert. Many of you are already there. Let us walk the sands of our uncertainty together and see what great things our Father has in store for us.

The table has been set. The time has been chosen. Today is that time. God is inviting you and me to receive his eternal purposes for our lives, even in the midst of our heated temporal. Would you be willing to step up to the table and allow him to consecrate your desert for his kingdom agenda? I am and so I pray,

Lead on O King Eternal, in the heat and in the cool of my desert. I confess that I do not always understand your wisdom in the matter, but I am willing to try. Keep me to your Word, Father…to the truth of a desert’s embrace. Consecrate my every moment, every encounter, every word, and every act of service for an eternal purpose that exceeds my weary. And when I can no longer stand, when the drought of the desert threatens my thirst, bring me to your well of living water for lasting refreshment. Teach me, Lord, how live as a desert dweller. Really live. Beyond my usual. Beyond my aimless, until I walk straight into your eternal purposes for my life. Amen.

A further pause…

~Describe the setting of your most recent desert dwelling.

~How would you categorize your walk during that season (i.e. aimless, angry, unsettled, purposeful, settled, content, etc.)?

~After reading Acts 6 – 7, what are some reasons that might have Philip already walking a figurative desert road, even though he’s yet to walk one physically?

elaine

If you would like to join me in the desert, please take time to read Acts, chapters six and seven over the next couple of days. These verses will set the stage for our study of Philip’s sojourn in the desert. As a way of further reflection, I will offer a couple of questions with each post. Feel free to comment regarding those questions or add any additional thoughts you would like to share. I won’t be posting again until the weekend, so you have plenty of time to reflect. Shalom!

Concluding Exhortations

June 29, 2008

“Let love of the brethren continue.” (Hebrews 13:1).

Concluding exhortations.

That was the topic of this morning’s adult Sunday school class. I am not on the circuit of regular teachers for this group of mature seniors, but I have been attending their class for nearly three years. I dearly love them, both collectively as a group and as individuals. Their words drip with wisdom, and their love breathes as genuine. They’ve lived long enough to find their compass—to anchor their hearts within a centered peace and an abiding faith that are not easily shaken.

So when I was asked to offer my voice as their leader, I welcomed the opportunity. Problem was…the invitation was issued a few months back, and in the busy of my past two weeks (i.e. vacation in Gatlinburg), I neglected its remembrance. Mid-week of my mountain retreat, I remembered and was tempted to bail. After all, I had left my curriculum guide at home and was weary with my lazy.

God gently reminded me that no curriculum was necessary. The truth of his Word, alone, was enough to carry me through. Thus, I contacted one of the class members to retrieve the scripture.

Hebrews 13:1-16.

A to-do list of sorts. Some final thoughts to punctuate the previous twelve chapters detailing the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus Christ.

Loving one another.
Entertaining strangers.
Remembering those in prison.
Keeping sexual purity at a premium.
Keeping a love for money at a minimum.
Finding contentment in the “have”, realizing that the “have”—Jesus Christ—is all we’ll ever need.
Receiving the truth of that “have” as changeless—yesterday, today and forever.
Imitating the faith of the saints.
Guarding the Gospel as the truth.
Bearing the reproach of Christ.
Offering the praise of sacrifice.
Doing good and sharing that goodness with others.

Indeed. Some final, heavy thoughts, packed into sixteen verses of scripture duly categorized by modern-day translators as some…

Concluding exhortations.

And for all of the ways I could have taken the lesson this morning, sticking with the theme of this one phrase was the right way to go. Even though these words of organization are not included in the original manuscript, they are rich in their application, especially as it pertains to the contents of Hebrews 13.

I asked the class to consider their concluding exhortations. Exhortation, as found in Hebrews 13:22, is the Greek word paraklesis. It is a word meaning “encouragement, entreaty, consolation, admonition, importation, refreshment, and persuasive discourse.”[i] Thus, I challenged my pupils (whose wisdom and maturity surpass me by at least three decades) to pause and to consider what they might like to say as a concluding word of encouragement to those whom they love and to a world who desperately needs the exhortation of such Godly influence.

It is a tough question to ask, especially to souls who are aging and who, undoubtedly, live with some memories and pains and regrets that have shadowed them into these golden years of living. But tough is not always wrong, and this morning, tough was very right and became the tender soil of God’s plowing. I witnessed my students’ tears of understanding as we marshaled our way through sixteen verses of “forget-me-nots.”

They laced the discussion with their laughter, with their memories, with their truth and with God’s. And as quickly as the ten o’clock hour arrived, it left, and I was stunned by the provision of God’s grace and presence who arrived on the scene to partake in our discussion.

It is his promise to us, straight out of Hebrews 13:5-6.

“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’ So we say with confidence, ‘The LORD is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?’”

Indeed, if there is one exhortation that breathes from the hearts of the Friendship Sunday School class, it is this simple truth. For all of the years traversed upon this earthly sod, there is God who has journeyed it with them. Fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, and almost ninety year’s worth of walking it through with the LORD, Covenant God. Helper and Sustainer of life.

Man has already done his doing over their lives–years worth of doing that have left some scars. But the fear, well it is mostly gone now, for they have learned the secret of being of content. In little and in much. In sorrow and in joy. In sickness and in health. In the present and in the tomorrow yet to come, for with each day comes Jesus. And they have all reached the conclusion that Jesus is, in fact, worth their living.

This is why they were there this morning, present and accounted for in a “doing” that they’ve been doing for a long season. This is why I was there this morning and will continue to attend the senior-adult Sunday school class at my church. The class members live and breathe a concluding exhortation worthy of my pause…worthy of my embrace. They warrant my time and my preparation, for they are my brethren, and my love for them and their love for me…continues.

Deeper. Stronger. And more fully with every conversation that we share. We are a Hebrews 13:1, loving kind of people. We’re working on the other verses, but this love thing?

We are living it, and it is my great joy and privilege to be living it alongside them. And so I pray…

Make me like them, Lord. Let my life breathe a concluding exhortation that includes love as its anchor. Keep me close to the wisdom of these saints, even closer to your truth, so that we may grow as one body in the unity and grace given to each one of us through your cross. Give me ears to listen, a heart to receive, and a hand to serve these precious friends of mine. Give them, each one, the strength to find their voice and the praise to find their lips so that their final chorus sings with a faith that will melody throughout the generations to come. Thank you for the privilege of their companionship along the road. They have been your grace to me, and I am the better for having them in my life. Amen.

[i] http://studylight.org/desk/?l=en&query=Hebrews+13%3A22&section=0&translation=nsn&oq=&sr=1

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God has been stirring my thoughts for another mini-study to begin in the near future. Stay tuned for further details. Shalom.