Category Archives: Scripture

May22

Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment…

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I’ve been thinking about a phrase from James, Chapter Two, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” ~ James 2:12-13,

So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. ~ ESV.

And I especially like the way the New Living Translation says it, because it explains what’s meant by the phrase, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” I’ve long thought that mercy and judgment were inextricably intertwined, and the way the New Living Translation phrases it, it seems that I’m understanding it correctly:

There will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others. But if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you. ~ James 2:13, NLT.

I found a good illustration of this concept in Matthew 18:23-35, the parable that Jesus told of the unforgiving servant, and the New Living Translation tells it quite well:

Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold ~ along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned ~ to pay the debt. But the man fell down before his master and begged him, “Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.”

Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt. But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. “Be patient with me, and I will pay it,” he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.

When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. Then the king called the man he had forgiven and said, “You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?” Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt. That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.

This says to me that for mercy to triumph over judgment, forgiveness must be offered by the wronged party to the person who wronged them. So, while God certainly plays a part in the matter, if we want God to judge us mercifully come judgment day, we must act with mercy towards others in our dealings with them in this life. We must forgive when we are wronged rather than holding a grudge or seeking revenge. Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (see Matthew 5:44), and that’s certainly what He did when He forgave those who crucified Him as He was on the cross (see Luke 23:34), which is all the more remarkable considering the agony and excruciating pain He was in at the time.

So Christ is our example, and He’s the best example we have. If I need to know what to do in any situation, all I have to do is figure out what Jesus would do, and if there’s no specific precedent to follow, then follow the path of Love.

May22

Bad Days and New Mercies

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Some days are amazing and wonderful, they’re so good. And then there are those days where you wish you’d never opened your eyes, never gotten out of bed.

Yesterday was one of those days.

Even though God’s mercy was evident in many ways (Lamentations 3:21-23), I spent the day feeling frustrated at myself and wanting to scratch my eyes out at every turn. I felt fragmented, to use multiplistic terminology, and like every cell of my body was fighting a battle with every other cell, and with every molecule outside my body. It’s irritating, exasperating, infuriating, disheartening, and aggravating to see that in hindsight. Why couldn’t I have seen it as I was going through it? If I had, I could have prayed and asked God to do something about it!

Hindsight is 20/20. Yeah, yeah. Not helpful!

Thankfully, when I woke up this morning, I felt much calmer inside. I think a lot of what was going on might have been due to exhaustion. I had gotten very little sleep in several days, and I was so tired I could barely think straight. I’m so very grateful that God’s mercies are new every morning:

This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. ~ Lamentations 3:21-23, NKJV.

I am so grateful that God forgets my past and starts fresh every morning! I need to learn to do the same, and I also need to learn to be merciful to myself, because God is certainly merciful to me.

 

May17

Hodgepodge and Potpourri

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My goodness, but it’s been a very long time since I’ve written anything here! Just under a year, in fact. A lot has happened. Mom has been gone a year and a couple of months. I had no problem dealing with it at all until Christmas, and then her birthday, and then the one-year anniversary of her death. Those days were a little hard, but I have the most wonderful friends, and the most amazing God, and between my friends and God, even those days were much easier than they would have otherwise been.

I’m teaching myself to  crochet, and amazingly enough, I’m going to learn how to weave. My Peanuteer friends got me a small rigid heddle loom for my birthday. And one of the cool things about it is that it arrived one week to the day after my birthday, on the day of the one-year anniversary of Mom’s death, so that I had this cool new loom to distract me, instead of having to ruminate on Mom not being around for her birthday, or my birthday, or Christmas, or…, or…, or…, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. I got to assemble it and everything, which was a special treat.

Riverside-Karen is pregnant and is due on June 9th, and it’s a boy. Karen and her husband are naming him Jonathan David. Isn’t that a beautiful name? I’ve already been to one baby shower, and Karen has invited me to another one this coming Saturday. The last one was for family and friends, and Karen says this one is for people from work. So I have to go and get a shower gift. I’ll probably get some 12-month outfits at Carters. I got Newborn, 3-month, 6-month, and 9-month outfits for the last shower, and afterwards Karen told me that she now had enough clothes for every age up to 12 months.

Here’s an update: I ended up not going to the shower because I was exhausted, and couldn’t stay awake. I felt like I was sleepwalking. So I called Karen and told her I couldn’t make it, and she said she understood perfectly. What a relief! She’s fighting exhaustion herself because David is in the hospital and she has to go and visit him all the time. I’m very grateful for understanding friends! She wants me to be there when the baby is born. How cool is that!

I’ve been reading in the book of Romans for my Bible reading. I love the book of Romans because it’s so logical. It’s just chock-full of rich spiritual food. I think Chapter 4 is probably my favorite. I’ve been focusing in particular on Abraham, and the phrase, “the righteousness of faith”. The Bible calls Abraham the friend of God, something I’ve always wanted to be to God, but always felt was impossible.

But maybe the reason I feel that way is because I’m still seeing God through the lens of my father, instead of who He really is, something I don’t want to do anymore.

Anyway, back to the righteousness of faith. The Bible says in Genesis 15:6, (as well as Romans 4:3, 9 and 22, Galatians 3:6, and James 2:22-23) that Abraham believed the LORD and He counted to him as righteousness. For me the passage in James encapsulates it best,

And so it happened just as the Scriptures say: ‘Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.’ He was even called the friend of God. ~ James 2:23, NLT.

And Isaiah 41:8-10 says,

But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, descendant of Abraham, my friend — I brought you from the ends of the earth and called you from its farthest corners. I said to you: You are my servant; I have chosen you; I haven’t rejected you. Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will hold on to you with my righteous right hand. ~ CSB.

There’s a lot to think about in those two passages. God is speaking through Isaiah, and calls Abraham His friend. How wonderful to have God Himself call you His friend! Jesus called the disciples His friends in the book of John. In John 15:15 He said, “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends…” ~ NKJV.

Also, there’s that phrase again, the righteousness of faith. What that says to me is that God regards our faith in Him as more important than what we do for Him ~ our works, at least in the beginning. Once we’ve become a Christian, what we do becomes more important. At that point, our faith is still important, but works become an outgrowth of our faith. The way I look at it, I’m so grateful to God for saving me that I want to do things for Him out of gratitude. So faith in God is what makes me righteous, and then works follow because I’m grateful to God for His righteousness that He’s given to me as an incredible free gift.

I hope that makes sense…

Jun10

The Continuing Saga of My Struggles With Mom’s Death, or Why Can’t I Cry?

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Well, it’s now May 8th, seven weeks to the day since Mom died.

I’m still struggling, though the issues are somewhat different. Now it’s more about realizing how much I miss what I had with her while she was here. And the frustrating thing is, while she was here, I didn’t know I had it.

Jeff says I was never, not from the very beginning of my life, able to establish a real bond with my mother, so it’s understandable that I wouldn’t feel much in the way of grief when she died. I can see where he’s right about that, but it still feels wrong that I’m not all broken up that she’s gone.

I still haven’t had a memorial service for her. I’m fairly certain there are people who would come to one, but I can’t seem to rev up any interest in planning it. I just want to forget about the whole thing and go on with my life, but I don’t know if it’s okay to feel like that, and even more, if it’s okay to do that ~ mostly because it feels like if I did that I’d be pretending my mother never existed.

I feel like my mother left a desert in my heart. I know that’s not true, because God has done a tremendous amount of healing in me, but somehow, that’s how it feels, and that’s the picture I get when I think about my mother’s influence in my life over the years. I guess I shouldn’t worry whether my feelings are right or wrong, and just accept them as my current reality. If I do that then I can ask God to heal what’s there and change my current reality to a new one that’s better and more God-honoring, as well as mother-forgiving, with no desert. Isaiah 35:4-6 says,

4Say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you.” 5And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind and unplug the ears of the deaf. 6The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will sing for joy! Springs will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams will water the wasteland. ~ NLT.

That’s what I want my life to be like: where flowers are always blooming, and hearts are always joyful, and God is easy to find. In other words, Heaven!

Oct6

O God, Let My Blood Cry Out On My Behalf!

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O earth, do not conceal my blood. Let it cry out on my behalf.” ~ Job 16:18, NLT.

Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the LORD said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” ~ Genesis 4:9-10, ESV.

The Lord showed me something recently. I was doing my Bible reading, which at the moment is in the book of Job. I was reading Chapter 16, and I got to verse 18, and I was reminded of Genesis 4:9-10, both passages quoted above.

God showed me from Job 16:18 that Job was praying that the earth would not conceal the blood from his wounds because he was afraid God would forget about him if it did. That reminded me of Genesis 4:9-10, where God called out Cain for murdering Abel. God told Cain that his brother’s blood was crying out from the earth, and therefore he couldn’t hide what he’d done, and especially he couldn’t hide his crime from God.

Then God showed me using Job 16:18 that the reason I had already started picking holes in my cuticles as early as age two was because I was trying to get someone, anyone, to notice that something was wrong, terribly wrong with me. Harry had already begun abusing me, even at age two, and he had already threatened to kill me if I told anyone what he was doing to me, so I couldn’t say with words that he was hurting me. I had to devise a way to communicate that I was in peril without using words. What I came up with was to pick holes in my cuticles, at times to the point of causing infections.

Unfortunately, as hard as I picked, my efforts came to naught, because no one ever caught on. And while I know people didn’t think about things like child abuse and childhood sexual abuse back in the 50’s and 60’s, much less do anything about them, the fact that no one, not one single person, paid any attention to my attempts to make known my distress makes me very sad for the child that was me back then.