"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom..."  (Proverbs 9:10)

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.  He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden?'...God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."  When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.  (Genesis 3:1-7)

Such a familiar story, that cataclysmic event in the Garden.  The Lord God had made all kinds of trees to grow out of the ground.  They were all good for food; they were all pleasing to the eye.  but I'm struck by the phrase that Eve saw the fruit on this one forbidden tree as "desirable for gaining wisdom", so she ate.

Wisdom...The fear of the Lord is its beginning, the writer of Proverbs tells us.

We often think the fear of the Lord is something that makes us draw back, cringe in terror.  That is true for enemies of God.  For us as believers, however, it is more often a reverence and awe for Him.  It is a positive thing.  It is an invitation to draw near in intimacy, with the spine-tingling awareness that we belong to the Creator of the Universe who calls us to come close.  It should capture us, take our breath away, causing praise to the Holy One.

We don't know how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden.  We do know it was long enough for Adam to name all the animals, to work the ground and care for it.  And to be in the very presence of the One who created it all.  The beauty of the Garden before the Fall.  The intimacy of walking with the Lord in the cool of the day.  Everything that should have inspired awe in them.  Everything that should have inspired the "fear of the Lord."

I wonder...

Did Eve - amidst all the treasures and beauty of the Garden, in the very presence of our God - become so familiar with Him and His goodness that she lost her sense of awe?  Her fear of the Lord?  Had she grown so familiar with God and all His goodness and provision that she was no longer amazed?  No longer enchanted?  Did the glory of God grow dim to her because of familiarity?  Did she just "presume" He would always be there, always provide?  And so taking the one thing He had forbidden was somehow o.k?  Somehow not that bad?

"When she saw that the fruit of the tree was...desirable for gaining wisdom...she ate."

Did she not know that the fear of the Lord, the awe, reverence and respect that produces a desire to obey, would provide the wisdom she so dearly craved?

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

So it is with me.  I am Eve.  I have found myself taking the Lord and my relationship with Him for granted; presuming on His goodness and grace.  I find lately that my study of the scriptures can be academic and dry, purely intellectual.  I realize that I, like Eve perhaps, can become so overly-familiar with the Lord that the sense of awe is lost.  May it never be so!

This year my one word is "Behold!"  It is a word often (unfortunately) translated as "See" in our English translations.  It is a word used many times in the Hebrew scriptures and it means so much more than "see".  It means to fix my eyes upon, see with attention, observe with care.  It means to remember before Whom I stand.  

Oh Lord, may I more intentionally behold You this coming year, treat my relationship with You with great attention and care, fix my eyes upon You more fully.  May I never again become so familiar in my relationship with You, that I miss Your glory, that I miss the sense of great awe that You - Holy God - have called me to come have a relationship with you.

"We saw His star in the East and have come to worship Him."

We will be visiting our kids and grand kids in New Mexico for Christmas.  Where they live is known as the High Plains Desert; the elevation is 4,000 ft. and it is miles and miles of farmland and dairies.  There is very little urban development there so the night skies are blanketed with thousands and thousands of bright stars.  It is something I don't often get to see where I live because of all the light pollution.  The artificial light and glow produced in heavily populated areas in California interferes with the natural light of the stars, making the display of the night skies difficult to observe.  So when I am out on the vast plains of New Mexico I make sure to go out in the deep of the night to look up.

The psalmist writes, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge."

When I spend time gazing at the night skies filled with the "work of His hands", I am reminded of the vastness of God and how small I am.  It moves me to worship.  I wonder if the Magi felt something similar when they saw His star in the East.  Little is known of them from scripture but they are thought to have been a sect of wealthy pagan priests from the area of Babylon who searched out the mysteries of the Universe through astronomy and astrology.  Perhaps they too "heard" the heavens pouring forth speech, declaring the glory of God.  Matthew tells us they saw His star and came to worship Him.

Searching and pondering the wonders of the night skies and the magnificence of God moves us to worship Him too.  The majesty of His Creation compels us to pause in wonder, to stare in awe and fascination, and to drop to our knees in praise.  But just as the artificial light produced by large city areas diminishes the heavenly lights above us today, so too does the artificial light that exists in the fast-paced world in which we live.  There seems little opportunity in the busyness of the "information age" to search and to ponder.  The artificial light produced by our culture gradually seeps into our lives and diminishes our ability to see the True Light of the World, our Savior Jesus.

The very One whose hands stretched out the heavens and marshaled the starry host at Creation came to us as a little baby born in a stable thousands of years ago.  Not many noticed.  Perhaps they too were busy, living in the artificial light of their time. But some noticed...because they were looking.  The Magi searched, saw, came, worshipped.

May we also take time to search...to ponder...and then to worship the One who is worthy of all our praise.

The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom. Proverbs 9:10

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.  He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden?'...God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."  When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.  She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.  (Genesis 3:1-7)

Such a familiar story, that cataclysmic event in the Garden.  The Lord God had made all kinds of trees to grow out of the ground.  They were all good for food; they were all pleasing to the eye.  But this morning I'm struck by the phrase that Eve saw the fruit on this one forbidden tree was "desirable for gaining wisdom", so she ate.

Wisdom...The fear of the Lord is it's beginning.

Scripture tells us that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom".  In the original language of the Old Testament "fear" carries with it a sense of respect and reverence; for God's people it usually is viewed as a positive quality.  It is something that moves us to be in awe of Him.  It is spine-tingling, as when you come over a mountain and see an amazing vista of creation lying before you.  It's when you come out of your house in the morning, busy to take on the day; you pause and look up at the colors of the sunrise strewn across the skies.  It captures you and takes your breath away and you praise God.  

Wisdom...The fear of the Lord is it's beginning.

We don't know how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden.  We do know it was long enough for them to work the ground and care for it.  To name all the animals.  And to be in the very presence of the One who created it all.  I wonder.  When you see that amazing vista of creation before you when you are in the mountains...when you see the unexpected beauty of the sunrise across the skies...do you ever wonder what it looked like before the Fall?  Because that is what Adam and Eve experienced every day in the Garden.  Everything should have inspired awe in them.  Everything should have inspired the "fear" of the Lord.

Did Eve - amidst all the treasures and beauty of the Garden, walking with the Lord in the cool of the day - lose her sense of awe, her fear of the Lord?

Had she grown so familiar with God and all His glorious provision that she was no longer amazed?  No longer enchanted?  Did the glory of God grow dim to her because of familiarity?  Did she just "presume" that He would always be there, always provide?

Did she not know that the fear of the Lord - the awe, the reverence and respect producing a desire to obey - would provide the wisdom she so dearly craved?

So it is with me.  I am Eve.  I find myself sometimes taking the Lord for granted; presuming on His goodness and grace; expecting from Him just because.  I find myself in a dry place again, desiring other things like Eve.  And I realize that perhaps I have lost the "fear" of the Lord.  And I pray from the deep desire of my heart,

"Oh Lord, captivate me again with Your goodness; may Your word and Your works amaze me and enchant me.  Give me a heart for wisdom - Your wisdom.  For I know the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  May I never lose the wonder."

Does How We Wait Matter?

"Have courage!  For as you have testified about Me in Jerusalem,

so you must also testify about Me in Rome." (Acts. 23:11)

Rome...The deep desire of Paul's heart.  Oh how he longed to see the Roman saints.  He had planned many times to visit them; yet each time he was prevented from doing so.

Rome...his intense longing for the Believer's there...and now Jesus has revealed that Paul must testify about Him in Rome!

But he is in chains in Caesarea.  Two long years have passed; this desire Paul has carried still is unfulfilled.  And so he waits...

Does how we wait matter?

There are others who have waited these two years.  They too have a deep desire, a fiery passion.  It too remains unfulfilled.

"Then the chief priests and leaders of the Jews presented their case against Paul to him (Festus);

and they appealed, asking him to do them a favor against Paul, that he might summon him

to Jerusalem.  They were preparing an ambush along the road to kill him."  (Acts 25, 2,3)

Does how we wait matter?

Over and over we see Paul - bound and under arrest, in the midst of His waiting - taking every opportunity to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Even as his longing for Rome remains unfulfilled, his deeper longing is to share Jesus with any audience:  Jew, Gentile, slaves, Roman guards and Centurions, governors and kings.  How he waits matters.

Two long years also for the chief priests and leaders.  Paul is shut away; yet their desire to see him not just shut away, but killed, has grown and grown.  It has become a deep root of bitterness that has filled them and they have become captive to sin.  How they wait matters.

How we wait matters too.

What is the deep desire of your heart that remains unfulfilled?  What are you longing for, waiting for but have not yet seen?  How do you wait?  Because how you wait matters.  Paul waited, in hope.  The Jewish leaders waited, in bitterness.

What is the answer to how we wait?

"Yet those that wait upon the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like

eagles; they will run and not get tired; they will walk and not become weary."  (Isaiah 40)

The advent season is almost upon us.  It is a season of waiting.  God's people had been waiting 400 years; waiting during a time when He seemed silent to their dreams and longings, their passions and their sufferings.  I'm sure they asked, "How long Lord, how long?"

And God responded with His Son, born as a baby.  Born to die so that in Him we may live.  Our longings and yearnings will be fulfilled - in Him.  Whatever you are waiting for...whatever desires reside deep within you...whatever answers seem to go unanswered...lean into Him.

This is how we wait.

Because He is enough.

He is enough.

"...say to the Israelites, I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  I will free you from being slaves to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm...I will take you as My own people and I will be your God."

Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage."  (Exodus 6:6-9)

Perhaps one of the saddest verses in the book of Exodus..."they did not listen to him (Moses) because of their discouragement and cruel bondage."

Amazing promises of rescue and redemption from God to His people so bitterly enslaved in Egypt!  Yet when Moses carried this message to them, we are told they did not listen because of their discouragement and cruel bondage.  The original language says they could not hear because of their 'shortness of breath'.  The bondage they were experiencing under Pharaoh was so great it felt as if it was crushing them physically.  They could barely breathe; they could not hear.   So God sent Moses into His great redemption story to take them by the hand, to lead them out of bondage, to show them the way to freedom.

Sometimes life is like that.

Look around and you will see people bitterly enslaved to sin, to circumstances, to the painful issues of life in a fallen world.  People experiencing crushing hopelessness; people living under such discouragement, such 'shortness of breath'.  People, perhaps, just waiting for someone to take them by the hand, to lead them out of bondage, to show them the way to freedom.  Someone like Moses.  

Someone like you...someone like me.

Consider the shortest verse in the bible, "Jesus wept."  (John 11:35).  The occasion for His tears is at the tomb of His dear friend Lazarus.  Jesus looked around, saw the weeping and mourning of family and friends gathered there and He wept.  Was it sorrow for those who had lost a loved one? Was it the fact of death itself that moved Jesus?  All we know is what scripture tells us:  when Jesus saw the suffering of the people He was deeply moved and He wept.

Then Jesus told those gathered there to roll away the tombstone.  He prayed to His Father, calling out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"  Lazarus came out, alive, but with his hands and feet bound with strips of linen and a burial cloth around his face.  Jesus told those standing by, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

Do you understand what just happened?

Jesus called Lazarus from death to life.  It is always God's call to bring life.  But then He told those who were standing by to go to Lazarus, now alive but still wrapped in grave clothes.  He called them to remove the clothes, to set Lazarus free from what bound him.  Jesus called them to enter into His story of redemption.

...Just as God had called Moses to enter into His story of redemption.

...Just as God calls you and me to enter into His story.

Do you know someone like that?  Someone like Lazarus? Someone alive in Christ but still walking around in grave clothes?  Someone so discouraged, they need friends like Lazarus had?  Someone to take them by the hand, lead them out of the bondage they still live in?  Someone to show God's way to freedom, to help remove the grave clothes?

God is still calling people from bondage to freedom, from death to life.  He still redeems with an outstretched arm - only this time stretched out on a Cross at Calvary.  Life is a gift only He can offer. 

But then He calls us to enter into His story of redemption, to lead others out of bondage, to help remove the garb of death and destruction, to minister to those who are so discouraged and oppressed they cannot hear His voice.

As He called Moses...
     ...as He called those at Lazarus' tomb...
          ...He stills calls you and me.

Perhaps someone right next to you cannot hear God's promise of rescue because of their 'shortness of breath', because of their grave clothes.  Enter into God's story of redemption.  Soneone's waiting for you.

The Relentless Pursuit of the LORD God

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the LORD God had made.  He said to the woman,  "Did God really say, 'You cannot eat from any tree in the garden'?" 

(Genesis 3:1)

The first deception by the enemy in the Garden was not distorting God's Word - it was distorting God's identity.  Consider this...

Throughout Genesis 1 God has chosen to identify Himself as Elohim (the Hebrew word translated "God" in our bibles).  This is the intensely powerful Creator of the Universe; the One Who merely spoke, "Let there be..." and it was so.  He is the holy, transcendent, all powerful, unknowable God.

Yet...

In perhaps the greatest paradox of all time this unknown and unknowable God seeks to be known by His creation, seeks to reveal Himself to us.  Throughout Genesis 2 He does that by revealing Himself as Yahweh Elohim (the Hebrew words translated "the LORD God" in our bibles).  This is the intensely personal and immanent God; this is the One Who desires intimate relationship with His creation.

This is the God Adam and Eve knew.  They never knew God as just "Elohim", transcendent, powerful, unknowable.   In fact that title for God is never used in the account of God's interaction with them in the Garden.  He had always and only revealed Himself to them as "the LORD  God".

This personal, intimate LORD  God picked up dust from the ground...

     ...formed the man Adam...
          ...breathed the breath of life into his nostrils...
               ...caused a deep sleep to come over the man, took a bone from his side
                   and closed the flesh at that place...
                    ...fashioned the bone He had taken from the man into the woman Eve...

This was Yahweh Elohim...the LORD  God...intensely, intimately in relationship with His people.

Then one day the serpent, the deceiver, said to the woman,

"Did Elohim really say..."

"Did God really say..."

And the woman, who had only ever known her Creator as the LORD God, the intimate and personal One who sought relationship with her and the man, fell for the lie of the original identity thief.

She listened to the thief strip away that very special part of God's identity; she listened to the enemy refer to her LORD God as the all powerful and unknowable God who isn't intimately involved in relationship with her. 

Eve responded in kind to the enemy's deception, 

"...God did say..."

She fell.  When she and Adam ate the forbidden fruit, rather than run to the LORD  God, they ran from God.

Yet who pursued them in their shame?  in their fear?  

Yahweh Elohim!  The LORD God!

He asks them, "Who told you that you were naked?  Who told you that you were shameful?  Who told you to hide from Me?  Who told you...?

This is our LORD God, Who pursues us relentlessly in our sin just as He pursued Adam and Eve in theirs.  He pursues because He is an intimately personal God who desires relationship with all of His creation.  He pursues to restore our perception of His identity - to restore what the enemy has stolen.

He pursues to provide proof that He is who He says He is.  He pursues because He knows that if  I have a distorted view of His identity - of Who He says He is - I will never have a true view of my identity, of who He says I am in Him.

Oh Lord, you prove Yourself over and over again that You are who You say you are!  You don't have to.  You are, after all, Elohim - the immensely powerful Creator.  You are the Potter and You don't have to prove Yourself but You do, You do!  Praise you LORD God!  You are the great I AM!  Always the Pursuer and Rescuer of Your people.  Oh take off your shoes - this is holy ground!

We Saw His Star in the East....

"We saw His star in the East and have come to worship Him." 

(Matthew 2:2)

High above the busy traffic in Southern California sits the Hale Telescope, the world's largest until 1993. Just 70 miles northeast of San Diego, Palomar Mountain was chosen as the location for the telescope because the surrounding area was sparsely populated.  This was a critical decision as artificial light produced by more densely populated urban areas would interfere with the natural light of the stars, making the display of night skies difficult to observe. 

Artificial light produced in such areas as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City is known as light "pollution" because the glow from these busy urban areas diminishes the ability of astronomers to search the night skies overhead.  It "pollutes" the ability to see the reality of God's Creation.

The Psalmist writes,

"The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the works of His hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge."

(Psalm 19:1,2)

When I look at the skies on a clear night I am reminded of the vastness of God and how small I am.  It moves me to worship.

I wonder if the Magi felt something similar when they saw the star in the East.  Little is known of them from scripture but they are thought to have been a sect of wealthy pagan priests from the area of Babylon who searched out the mysteries of the Universe through astronomy and astrology. Perhaps they too heard the heavens declaring the glory of God.  Matthew's gospel tells us they saw His star in the East and came to worship Him.

Searching and pondering the wonders of the night skies and the magnificence of God moves us to worship Him too.  The majesty of His Creation compels us to pause in wonder, to stare in fascination, and to drop to our knees in praise.

But just as the artificial light produced by large city areas diminishes the heavenly lights above us, so too does the artificial light that exists in the fast-paced world we live in today.  There seems little opportunity in the busyness of this 'information age' to search and ponder.  The artificial light produced by our culture gradually creeps into our lives and diminishes our ability to see the True Light of the World, Jesus.

The One whose hands stretched out the heavens 

     and marshaled the starry host at Creation 

          came to us as a little baby born in a stable 

               2000 years ago. 

                    Not many noticed. 

                         Perhaps they too were busy,

                              living in the artificial light of their time.

But some noticed,

      because they were looking.  

          The Magi searched, saw, came, worshiped.

Today we live in a culture of literal and figurative artificial light.  As the bright artificial light of urban areas makes it harder to discern the stars of the sky, the artificial light of our culture can make it hard for us to discern the magnificent awe-inspiring truth that,

"The true light that gives light to every man

was coming into the world."

John 1:9

This Christmas may the Light of the World shine bright in our lives.  May it dispel the artificial light of the world we live in.