"That beauty that you feel on the inside, it's that confidence, that radiance inside of you, that's what glamour is," Katie Stam, Miss America 2009
Have you noticed the way babies often have that spontaneous look of gladness? Sometimes I think that's exactly what everyone has, but adults seem to bury that deep under their calculations, their anxities, their posturing ...
Katie Stam, a girl from a small town in Indiana, won the Miss America pageant last night. I found it easy to notice she wasn't pretending to be someone she wasn't. She was just glad to be herself.
My wife got me into watching the episodes before the pageant. She was definitely an underdog candidate coming from a state with a relatively low population in the midwest (where the pool is much smaller, and the state competitions are presumably less competitive than states like New York and California).
But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Matthew 6:30
Katie sang Via Dolorosa for the talent portion of the pageant. My wife has told me this is a fairly common song heard at pageants, but I found it to be a bold way of explaining what her Saviour had done for her.
All this is to say that we should look at babies and folks like Katie Stam and remember the blessedness, the joy of view the life we have been given with simple eyes and thankful hearts.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8
Psalm 46 For the choir director. A Psalm of the sons of Korah, set to Alamoth. A Song.
God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; Though its waters roar and foam, Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride. Selah. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, The holy dwelling places of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered; He raised His voice, the earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah. Come, behold the works of the LORD, Who has wrought desolations in the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two; He burns the chariots with fire. "Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." The LORD of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah.
This Psalm is a poetic account of the way human estimations and assurances melt away in the presence of the Almighty God.
He raised His voice, the earth melted.
However consistent we see things happen in this life with our limited vision, God has the power to bend or break every known law in the physical universe. Analysts may judge a nation's military by the size of it's standing army and it's military budget, but it is God who decides the outcome before the battle begins.
He doesn't need bows and arrows to win a war. He doesn't need bloggers like me to spread his message. He doesn't need money, or electicity, or popular support. He needs nothing from the world or in the world, and His reign is not by its consent.
These verses present a terrible and severe claim to those who live according to the normative laws of the world. The day will come when Christ returns and the unbelievers of the world will tremble because they will know (and already know) how they have squandered their days.
At the same time these verses present the children of God with a peace that is higher and more profound than anything our human understanding provides us today or has ever provided anyone.
It is not only the physical laws which God turns back. He not only melts the mountains with his Word. He has melted away the law of death with His word, for his Son is His word. The regulations which have exposed our guilt for what it is have been nullified for those who have faith in him.
God has prepared a place in heaven for the people of Israel, for the people who have become sons of Abraham through faith. God dwells in this place, and he provides the waters that make his people glad.
Praise the Lord, who watches over his people. He delivers them in His timing and with his perfect judgment. He knows their weaknesses, and He gives good things to those who fear Him.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:25-34
Jesus, in this passage, does not bring into question the need humans have for food and clothes. It was, after all, God who clothed Adam and Eve after they sinned, and it was Jesus who fed the five thousand and the four thousand.
Many preachers these days pass quickly over the verses and say, 'Stop thinking about your needs and think more about the needs of others.' And, 'Trying to acquire things is selfish.' This isn't the point Jesus is making here.
Jesus tells us his Father knows we need these things. His emphasis is on the priority of these things in our lives and whether each listener is living in faith or not.
There are atleast two places here where Jesus emphasizes the priority of these pursuits. He asks if life is more important than food, and he asks if the body is more important than clothes. If your answer is, 'Yes, I believe life and the body are more important than these things, these objects', then you are obligated to weigh life and the body more heavily than food and clothes.
The second place where Jesus addresses the priority of our tasks is in his command to 'seek first his kingdom and his righteousness'. He does not say, 'Seek only his kingdom...'. Although God does at times require sacrifices from his children, they are not what he desires.
Christ's yoke is easy and his burden is light. He didn't come from heaven to make our lives miserable. In fact, he didn't even come so we could serve him; he came to be a blessing to all human beings for our welfare and also so that we could bless each other.
The other salient aspect of this passage is the emphasis on faith.
The pagans are in a sense led by their doubts. They doubt they will have the food and clothes they wish for. They are always trying to compensate for these doubts by making vigorous efforts and running restlessly after them.
It is important to realize that Christ is not telling his followers they should stop working. His emphasis is that they seek first God's kingdom and that they trust God will extend all these things to them.
In some ways this passage mirrors the words of Paul in his first letter to Timothy. He did not order the rich to give away their riches, but he commanded the rich to not put their trust in their riches. Under divine inspiration Paul tells us the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (and not that money is the root of all kinds of evil). The faith element is where Paul tells his readers that God "richly supplies us with all things to enjoy".
So the next time you are tempted to worry, ask yourself if your anxiousness for food and clothes is of more value to you than your life and your body. When you doubt that God is able to meet your needs, consider the lillies of the field and remember how God clothes them.
"When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, `I will return to my house from which I came.'
"And when it comes, it finds it swept and put in order.
"Then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first." Luke 11:24-26
People put a lot of energy into sorting, managing, and beautifying the trivial aspects of their lives.
At a certain point, a person comes to ask, "What good is any of this? This life may look good to others, but what does it matter to me? This life maybe orderly, but where is its basis?"
Occasionally such people consider how they get up in the morning and go to work. They go to bed, and they start all over again. They begin to wonder where the meaning is in it all, where their meaning lies.
When people are released from their demons, when they are set free from their obsessions, their anxieties, their neurosis, their dark and lawless thoughts, the demons wander restlessly.
The victims who have been set free often begin their restless activities as well. Such victims busy themselves with empty delusions to the point where their old masters find grounds to return to the places they have left.
The demons are not attracted to people who are 'well swept' and 'put in order' because they like orderliness for its own sake. They recognize the defiance and vanity in jumping through such empty hoops. When a person begins to understand the emptiness of it all despair sets in. They say, 'All the things I have done amount to nothing, and I am nothing.' The temptation toward suicide becomes more prominent even though it was present from the beginning.
And suicide is the culmination the demonic hosts wish for.
The deception is not that a person has become nothing. Indeed the Apostle writes,
If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:2
The deception of the demons is to pronounce such a man hopeless.
The demons work diligently to convince men there is no inner life except for tidying and managing the trivialities of life. They do not want anyone to believe in a way out, and Jesus is the way out.
If a man or woman is willing to receive Jesus into their lives, the Holy Spirit will live inside of that man or woman. Such a person discovers what it means to have their needs met with divine completeness.
God does a far superior job of ordering and tidying the lives of people when they allow him into their lives. When a man allows God to guide him, he begins to leave behind his crooked ways, his hypocrisy, and his phoniness. However ugly or unsightly he becomes on the surface, his care for his God and his neighbor as himself gives him an appearance more beautiful than the lillies of the field.
When the demons see that the Most High lives inside a person, they quickly leave. Such a person knows the joy of personally finding God in his or her heart, and that joy disgusts the unclean spirits.
Yes, God is able to plant hope in the strangest of circumstances. If He is there living inside someone, that person will always have the means of finding hope -the hope that nothing else can bring.
