We Return, But Not Upward

They do not cry to me from the heart,
   but they wail upon their beds;
for grain and wine they gash themselves;
   they rebel against me.
Although I trained and strengthened their arms,
   yet they devise evil against me.
They return, but not upward;
   they are like a treacherous bow;
their princes shall fall by the sword
   because of the insolence of their tongue.
This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt. - Hos 7:14-16

As I reflectively read Hos 7 the other day, I was struck by how similar my heart is to the people Hosea was writing to over 2 millennia ago. How often do I "cry on my bed" but not from a love for God or compelled by the love of Christ, but simply because something's not working the way I want it to? How often do I "return, but not upward", not so much repenting from my sin but rather being sad at getting caught in my sin?

Now, I realize this is a warning / rebuke delivered back in the OT days to a specific people in a particular circumstance. Yet, I can't help but see the universality of fallen men and women in the heart attitude this rebuke calls out. When God afflicts us, how do we respond? Maybe more to the heart of the matter, do we love God or his stuff? I'm guessing the good old Sunday School type answer is that certainly we love God more, but do our prayers and our passions actually display this?

The good news, of course, is that God is the God of 2nd, 3rd, and 99th chances. And, if we take seriously his promises, perhaps our first task could be to ask him to reveal to us how often we "do not cry to him from the heart" and ask him to move us toward the point where our the joys and the aches of our hearts are more in alignment with his.

To God Alone Be The Glory.

Truth and Promise from Revelation

To often I shy away from the book of Revelation for two man-centered reasons:

1) Its truths, while deep and profound are "locked up" in symbolism and the interpretive debate seems to over shadow the truths to be proclaimed

2) Poor interpretations have often "boxed in" our thinking on the book and truths it contains and overcoming that hurdle seems to be more effort than one can muster.

Yet, with that bagged in tow, as I entered my first reading of Revelation for 2011, I was struck by the repetitive pattern of the letters to the seven churches in Rev 2 & 3. And, as I reflected on the attribute of Christ at the beginning of each letter and the promise to the overcomers at the end of each letter, I thought it would be worthwhile to compile those items into a list to be read in concert with each other.

So for what its worth here are the truths and the promises of Revelation 2 & 3.

Who Christ is:

• The one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.
• The one who is the first and the last, who died and came to life.
• The one who has the sharp two-edged sword.
• The one who is the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
• The one who has has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.
• The one who is the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.
• The one who is the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation.

What Christ promises to those who overcome:

• To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
• Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.
• The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.
• To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.
• The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. And I will give him the morning star. 
• The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.
• The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.
• The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. 

To God Alone be the Glory