Today Matters: A Meditation on Daniel 10-12

I’m guessing that I’m a lot like you, when it comes to how much I reflect on the little things that make up my average day.  Since I’ve technically entered “mid-life,” I’ve had plenty of practice at doing the things I do, from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night.  My morning coffee, quick look at the news, touching base with my lovely bride and daughters on the events of the day, the city commute, the daily work, the home-bound commute, the extra-curricular activities, and a cold drink around the modern campfire (read:  TV) before heading to bed.  It’s amazingly predictable, when you boil it down, and being that predictable, it takes almost no thought at all.  I’ve often wondered if I could make my way to work and home each day with my eyes closed, and sometimes it feels as if I did.

The last few chapters of the Book of Daniel, help to remind us, that no day is ever forgotten.  All those things we do without thought or consideration, and all those days we let slip by us, never come back again—but they don’t disappear, either.  Our past, whether we think of our youth, our young adult years, or yesterday, are captured forever in the mind of God, who is the basis of reality for all that was, or is, or is yet to be.  Because God exists from eternity to eternity, and God is omniscient, knowing all things, every moment of time is always present for Him.  For you and I, as temporal beings, our past is behind us, our future before us, and the only moment we can influence is the present one.  We cannot go back in time to undo, or redo, anything that is behind us.  Likewise, we cannot lean forward and do what is ahead of us.  All we have, is this present moment, in which to work, love, fight, trust, disbelieve, build up or tear down.  This moment, right now, is the one we’re given to live in.

And, at some moment not too long in the future, we will all die (should the Lord tarry.)  At that moment, our whole life has passed behind us, and with it, all our opportunities to do, or act, or work.  In that first moment of eternity, we stand before our Maker naked and exposed, as our life which is our past, is brought into His eternal present, and there judged perfectly and righteously according to the good and holy Law of God.  In that moment, there are no more excuses, no more pleading, no more opportunities for repentance or grace.  That moment, in which our whole life is behind us, is a moment of destiny that marks our eternity.  We stand before the Judge of the Universe, to give an account of every careless word we have spoken, and moment of time we carelessly discarded.  Now, without time to change or time to turn, we give an account of the time we were given, to Him who gave that time to us.

I don’t know about you, but that is a terrifying thought to me.  How many moments, just today, did I waste?  How many words, just today, did I cast carelessly about?  And beyond today, how many of my moments, now cast forever into my past, shall be revealed before the Lord of Glory as wasted, or worse—used maliciously or selfishly, discarding the needs of my neighbor, and serving rather myself?  How many moments of this life so graciously given to me, shall cause me to hang my head in shame before the Judge?  Knowing who I am today, and who I have been yesterday, what hope do I have that tomorrow, should the Lord of Glory choose to give me even one more day of life, that I shall be any better a steward of tomorrow’s moment, than I have been of today’s? For we who are sinners through and through, the prospect of that Great and Terrible Day of the Lord should bring forth a divine fear unlike any other—a fear, that we will finally get what we deserve.

This is the Day of which Daniel speaks, in chapter twelve, verses 1-3:

And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great

prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and

there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since

there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time

thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found

written in the book.  And many of them that sleep in

the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life,

and some to shame and everlasting contempt.  And

they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the

firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the

stars forever and ever.

Whether we face that Day as we step from this world through the portal of death and into the presence of God, or upon that Day when He returns to judge the living and the dead at the final Resurrection of all flesh, it is clear that what we do in this moment we are given, follows us for eternity.  The good or the evil we have done, will be brought forward to our remembrance, as it is always before the Eternal Present of the Lord of Glory.  The real question that emerges from the text above, is who is to be found “written in the book”?  Who will be raised to everlasting life, and who to everlasting contempt?

The answer is found in Jesus Christ.  If we stand before the Judge, robed only in our own works, the totality of our lives will leave us condemned to an eternity of shame and contempt.  Our misuse of our time, talents, and treasures, shouts out our condemnation before the Judge—and while we may forget our past and think we have escaped it, for God, it is always present and before His Holy Face.  We cannot escape the Judgment of our past, and we cannot hope to live long enough to expunge our just sentence.  On our own, we are lost, and destined to an eternity of shame, surrounded by the cacophony of all our wasted moments, declaring the justice of our place in hell.

But our God knows our condition, and the futility of our works.  He knows that on our own, all is vanity, as the Preacher has said.  He sees our hopeless condition from all eternity, and in divine love and compassion, pierces our temporal moment with His Eternal moment of grace, forgiveness, and life.  Where we struggle, He has succeeded.  Where we fall, He stands.  Where we waste, He does all things well.  In His Life, Death, and Resurrection, He effects a salvation so great, that His mercies pour out upon not only our present moment, but our past and our future.  Our life becomes hidden in His Life, our temporal moment in His Eternal Moment of Grace.

To us He comes, bearing His Word of forgiveness, life, and salvation, that we may stand in this moment, and in all moments for eternity, wearing His righteousness and grace.  For those who will receive Him by faith, the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord has lost its terror.  For those who fall down in faith and repentance for the wasted lives we have led, we shall be raised up in a Life and Hope not our own, but given to us in Jesus Christ.  This moment, this day, the Lord calls to all of us sinners, to repent and believe the Gospel, to give our wasted lives to Him that He may nail them to His Cross.  He calls us to rise in a new life, empowered by His Holy Spirit, to live by grace through faith in Him, and bring forth fruits of love, and mercy, and peace.  And to us is the promise, that with His Holy Absolution, our shame is buried with Him in His tomb, and that like Him we shall rise again, without the shame of sin and guilt, but rather shine forth as the stars of heaven, evermore reflecting His perfect glory.

Today matters, and this moment matters.  It will ring throughout eternity.  Let this day be for you a day of rejoicing in the love and mercy of Jesus by faith and repentance, so that when you stand before the Judge on that Great and Terrible Day, your evil is absolved in the Cross of Christ, and your eternal future is life forever blessed.  Amen.

To Devour the Poor is to Invite Destruction: A Meditation on Amos 8

There are many nefarious consequences to the growing secularization of our land, and the psychology of atheism or agnosticism that creeps behind it.  The relativity of morals is amongst the most noxious, since without God as arbiter of Good and Evil, man imagines himself as the measure of all things.  And even amongst those who still profess a belief in God, often there is a misunderstanding about who He is, and what He has promised to do.  So many in our day discard the Holy Scriptures either because they discard the God who breathed them out, or they have become vain in their imaginations about who this God actually is.  While the self-styled atheist or agnostic discards Divine Revelation because he repudiates the idea of the Divine, the self-made Christian (or other religious adherent) discards God’s Word to replace it with their own words, imaginations, and philosophies.

The prophet Amos reminds us, that regardless of our self delusion—be it our self idolatry that casts God aside, or our idolatrous syncretism that permits God to remain subservient to our own desires—God still reigns, and He still judges the living and the dead.  There is no person that escapes His watchful eye, and no action made upon the earth that He is not aware of.  No one comes into being without His permissive grace which bestows life upon them, and no one leaves this world without His permissive will.  No thought, word, or deed ever escapes Him, regardless of how fleeting or remote it may be.  If not even one sparrow falls to the ground without His knowledge and care, we may be sure that every hair on our head is numbered.  He knows us, and all His creation, more intimately than we know ourselves.

And with such knowledge, He, and He alone, judges rightly.  While we may think our best and brightest people know a great deal, it is only limited to their senses and capabilities.  Even the most brilliant philosopher or scientist is still constrained by their ability to perceive the world around them, and to structure that perception of the world with reason and logic inherent in their person—a person which is, by the way, broken in sin, and destined to die.  But for God, this is not so.  Where we are limited, He is unlimited.  Where we are bound, He is free.  Where we are distorted and corrupted, He is pure and holy.  Where we are destined to die, He is eternal life.

Yet knowing this, we strut around this globe, as if we own the place.  We act either personally or corporately as if there is no God, or if there is, that He is unable or unwilling to judge His creation.  We consume the poor through manipulation and greed.  We abuse the orphan and the widow through policy and procedure.  We oppress the homeless and the destitute by statute and law.  We craft whole economic systems that prey upon the weak of mind, as if tricking a person out of their money or their labor is justified as “good business.”  We inflate our prices to line our own pockets, and leave others to scratch out the most meager of existence.  We feed ourselves gluttonously on the plunder of the poor, while the poor struggle to eat at all.

Amos shows us that God is not blind to our sinful condition, nor to the evils we perpetuate.  While we abuse the poor, He swears to uplift and defend them.  While we abuse the orphan and the widow, He pledges to be their protection and their deliverer.  We think in our pride that God has blessed us because we are rich, and He tells us that He will cut us down and cast us out for the sake of the poor we have defrauded.  Make no mistake, He who rules from on high, sees the plight of the poor and the oppressed, and He shall rise up to defend them.  He will lay low those who elevate themselves, and lift up the lowly and the downtrodden.  He will cast out the prideful, and call in the humble.  Hear the Word of the Lord—He has said it, and there is none who can resist or stop Him from the execution of His judgment.  When the Lord rises up to judge, there is none to deliver from His hand.

Oh, you who have defrauded the poor, filled yourselves with good things, and left your neighbor empty, where shall you flee?  Where shall you run to escape the righteous judgment which will so swiftly fall upon you?  To whom will you plead your case, when the Immortal and the Almighty comes to rip your life from your body, and cast you into the eternal fires of hell?  You fat, prideful, gluttonous, selfish, idolatrous brood of vipers—who will deliver you from the wrath which is to come?

There is only one hope for you, and for me.  There is one avenue of escape, for sinners such as you and I, only one Savior to whom we may flee.  But let us not be deceived, our God is not mocked—the same great and almighty God who has promised to execute judgment upon this sinful world, is He who has come to deliver us all.  We who are oppressed and abused and downtrodden by sin, death, and the devil, have one Deliverer who comes to seek and to save us.  This same Jesus, by whose Word the Law is spoken to our condemnation, is the one whose Word speaks also forgiveness, life, and salvation through His Gospel.  The Judge of All has become the Deliverer and Savior of all, through His sacrificial death on the Cross of Calvary.  Through His death, our debt of death and hell are paid, that His resurrected Life may be our life as well.  The Judge has judged righteously, and taken the guilt of us all upon Himself, that He may have mercy and grace upon all who will come to Him in faith and repentance.

And so the Word of the Lord comes to us—a sinful, prideful, stiff-necked people, who by our own hands deserve nothing but death and hell.  To us, a word of grace pierces our darkness, calling us to repent, to turn from our evil, and believe in Him who has come to save us by grace through faith.  Of course, the choice remains with us, to remain in our sins, to discard the Word of the Lord, and perish in the Day of Wrath that so quickly comes upon us.  The call of the Gospel is urgent and unwavering, calling sinners to repentance, faith, and life, before the sentence of righteous judgment falls upon us.  May we hear this good news, believe and live.  Amen.

Seeking and Saving the Lost: A Meditation on Luke 15

In Jesus' parables of Luke 15, there are three examples He gives of seeking and saving the lost. The first is a shepherd who goes out pursuing one of 100 sheep; the second is a woman who searches for one of ten coins; and the other is a father who searches the horizon for one of two sons.  In each case, there is a primary focus on the pursuit of the lost, and tremendous celebration over every lost one that is restored.

This focus on seeking and saving the lost can seem smugly quaint to us-- particularly those of us who sit comfortably in our Sunday pews, and figure we don't need saving. Isn't it nice, we may think to ourselves, that Jesus goes out into the darkness and tries get back those wandering lost souls. Of course, He wouldn't have to, if they would just come back and be good little Christians.  So, when Jesus finally gets back with those lost souls, sure, we'll throw a little party, but we'll also have a good dose of snooty "told-ya-so" to meet out. After all, if they had been safe and sound where we are, Jesus wouldn't have had to go out in the first place.

All along, we're revealing quite a bit about ourselves, not least of which is pride and ignorance. First, we think ourselves good and safe and righteous, elevating ourselves over our fellow man. Second, we fail to remember that on our own, we're nothing but lost and condemned sinners ourselves. And lastly, we forget that we are daily losing ourselves in sin and evil, and that daily Jesus must plunge into the darkness to retrieve us by His grace and mercy.

Oh, yes-- make no mistake about it.  We are the lost sheep Jesus has gone out to find. And for good reason, too. You and I, lost in the dark domain of sin, death, and the devil, are easy prey for the one who prowls ceaselessly about the world seeking someone to devour.  We are slow and clumsy, selfish and self absorbed, prating on and on regarding how great we are while wolves lick their lips in anticipation.

Imagine how we look from Jesus' perspective. Lambs we are, defenseless, dirty and weak, with no particular strength to resist the wolves closing in. To compliment our weak physical and spiritual powers, we add to them a mind that is clouded and delusional, holding up our certificates and worldly honors, as if all the forces of good and evil somehow quake when they see our "I-love-me-wall".  And if we have been brought safely within the Ark of the Church, we often disdain the troubles from which we have been saved, thinking lightly of our own culpability and destitution.

But it is for lost souls like you and I that Jesus has come-- lost sheep who neither understand their decrepit condition, nor their enemies which surround them on every side. For sinful, ignorant, prideful people like us, who will never really know this side of heaven, either the depth of the danger we have been saved from, or the Sacrifice made for our salvation.

But be of good cheer, little flock, for it is His good will to seek and to save even you. To you He has come through the crucible of the Cross, put you upon His shoulders, and carry your sinful, prideful, arrogant self to the gates of His heavenly Kingdom. And there you can hear the revelry of countless others whom Jesus has brought there before you, joined with the shouts and cheers of the whole Angelic Host, that one more who was dead, is now alive forevermore.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Choosing Life or Death—A Meditation on Deuteronomy 30

Choosing between life and death, seems the easiest and most natural thing that we do every day.  I choose to get out of bed, to go to work, to eat meals, to tend to my house and family, to relax in the evening, and go to sleep when I’m tired.  I choose to breathe, to walk, to talk, to love, to fight, to make peace, to make war… all those things that go with being alive.  I choose what to think about, and what to ignore, what to remember and what to forget.  Choosing to live versus choosing to die, should be natural and easy for me—completely rational, and obvious to every human being on the planet.

So if choosing life is so easy and natural, why am I surrounded by death?  Why do neighbors murder neighbors, or even members of their own families?  Why do nations rage against each other, or even within themselves, spilling the blood of countless thousands?  Why do mothers and fathers murder their children, or children murder each other on school yards?  If choosing life is natural and easy for me, why is it so hard for everyone else?

But is it really so easy for me?  When I rise to meet the day, would I rather not be lazy and stay in bed?  When I go to work, do I grumble about it, and then do as little as I can for the money I receive?  When I eat my food, do I eat what is good for me and contributes to health, or do I gluttonously gorge on things I ought not… or perhaps rather starve myself in a vain pursuit of beauty?  Do I tend to my home and family as I ought, or do I only give them the time that I scrape together between my other endeavors?  Do I make peace when I should fight for truth, or make war when I should pursue reconciliation?  Do I butcher love into self serving debauchery, and take it from those to whom I owe it?  Do I use my reason and will to ponder and pursue the good, or rather, do I waste my mind on frivolity and vanity, chasing the illusions of fancy?

Ah, there’s the rub.  In reality, choosing life is not so natural nor easy for me.  For me, choosing death and destruction is my default setting—as it is for the whole human race.  My broken, deformed, and fallen human nature has lost its inclination to life, and rather pursues the wide and easy path to destruction.  Why do the nations rage, and the peoples imagine vain things?  Because they are filled by people just like me.

Into this darkness of our own making, comes light and hope.  As Moses’ eyes begin to dim, and God tells him that his death is near, Moses once again sets the Word of the Lord before the people, calling them to choose life rather than death.  Where the people were lost in their own trespasses and sins, inclined to every kind of evil under the sun, Moses calls them to hear a different voice, and follow a different path.  The words of men emerge from their own broken hearts, but the Word of God shines forth from the Author of Life Himself.  To hear and remain in His Word, is to choose life—to hear and believe His Word, is to live, rather than die.

And yet, even to those whom the Word of God came, there was struggle and strife.  The broken and fallen nature of man, even when it hears the Word of Life, wrestles against itself in the war for the soul.  God calls everyone to life and salvation, because He does not desire the death of even a single person—but every person on this globe is hell bent on destroying themselves, with the poison of the evil one coursing through their veins.  So for us, who have heard the Word of God and yet struggle to keep it, who know the Law and the Gospel and fail to persevere in it, who can see the divergent paths of Life and Death yet battle to set our feet upon them—what hope is there for us?  We who feel the war of good versus evil raging in our own person, tearing at our minds and blistering our flesh; we who by the mercy of God have become at the same moment both sinner and saint, an old and new creation battling for dominance in the vaults of our own soul; what is our hope in such a war as this?  What is our deliverance from the suffering and death we know comes so easy to our thoughts, words, and deeds?  Who shall deliver us from this body of sin and death?

Thanks be to God, it is Jesus Christ, our Lord!  When we cannot keep the Word God has spoken to us, Jesus as the very Word Made Flesh comes to dwell among us, full of grace and truth.  When we can only see the heavenly city by revelation even as well fall by own hands into the pit of hell, Jesus comes to seek and to save we who are lost.  Naked, blind, poor and dying are we, and yet Jesus comes to us with healing, forgiveness, and life eternal.  In the light of His Divine Word we see and acknowledge our just penance of eternal death for the wickedness and twisted evil that we are, but Jesus comes to take our justice upon Himself, so that He might speak His Word of grace and peace to us through His shed Blood and broken Body.

How is it, that we choose Life rather than Death?  Of our own, we could not make such a choice—but thanks be to God, that in Jesus Christ, He has chosen Life for us!  As Jesus said to His disciples, they did not choose Him, but He chose them—and so He has chosen us.  Jesus has chosen Life for us, and paid the penalty of eternal suffering and death owed by every man, woman, and child that has ever lived, and shall ever live.  Through His Cross, He has defeated death, destroyed hell, bound the devil, and opened the gates of the Heavenly City to all who will receive Him.

Jesus has chosen life for us, called us out of the world to be His own, and to live forever, forgiven and free.  In this Life He has given to us, which is His own eternal Life, He sends us forth to breathe this Word of Faith and Repentance to all who will hear and believe.  Jesus is the Word in whom we abide, the path of Life and hope and peace—and it is the Word of Jesus that abides in us, welling up to eternal Life, and a hope that shall not disappoint.  In the midst of all this suffering and pain, of evil rising and death sweeping over both ourselves and our world, we hear our Risen Lord speak His Word of Life to us:  “be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”  Be at peace, and remain in Him by faith in His Word, that His grace may overflow upon and within you.  By the power of His Gospel come to you, choose Life, and let death and the devil flee.  Amen.