The Cross in the Sand

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the famous Russian author, spent many years in a Siberian prison. Conditions were extremely tough and demoralising. At one point, Solzhenitsyn became utterly discouraged and decided to give up and die. His plan was to stop working one day in the field, lean on his shovel, and wait for the guards to come and beat him to death.

However, when he stopped, the prisoner next to him quickly realised what he was doing, and before the guards could notice what was going on, he leaned over and drew a cross at Solzhenitsyn’s feet. Solzhenitsyn later said that as he looked down at the cross his entire being was energised by the memories and hope that it inspired within him.

For as we look upon the cross it should bring some powerful memories to the fore: We can remember how God exuberantly created by breathing into dirt shaped into human form and then saying, ‘Live’! We should remember how God joyfully danced before his people as he led them out from under Egyptian oppression, and then again as he led them out from Exile. The cross should remind us how God so lovingly laid down his life for us all, and then how on the third day after the crucifixion God breathed into Jesus and said, ‘Let’s do it again – let’s bring life!’

The memories that the sight of that cross inspired in Solzhenitsyn meant that he could actually look forward with hope. For even though he had only the tears and despair of prison life in his immediate future, somehow he knew that God would continue to always be faithful to him – even while he was in prison – and so now he could actually look forward with hope. That wonderful combination of memories and hope not only meant he did not have to give up on life, but he could actually celebrate it. He did not have to wait until his prison term was over until he started living again, but could know a rich and abundant life in the here and now – NEVERTHELESS!

May that be so for you also! For perhaps your life feels drought-stricken at the moment – maybe you have been praying for relieving rain for months. Perhaps crime and violence has left you living with despair. Perhaps your financial situation, or your relationships, or your work or your lack of work has left you travelling with a heavy heart.

May you see the cross again, drawn in the sand of your life. May the sight of the cross provide you with the same inspiration for life that it did for Solzhenitsyn. May you be reminded that you do not have wait for tough times to pass or your circumstances to radically change before you can live to the full again. May you be brought to a place of true joy – not fleeting emotions that come and go – but an ability to celebrate life as it really is.

May you remember God’s faithfulness, may you hope abundantly for the future, and may your present be utterly transformed by God’s own character – God’s exuberance, God’s love and God’s joy!

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord our God, help us live life inspired by both the memories and hope that the cross inspires in us. Whether we are facing laughter or tears, help us to live to the full in the moment – nevertheless! Amen.

FOCUS READING
Hebrews 12:2-3 (NIV)
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Romans 15:13 (NIV)
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Source

God is the source of all joy. It is God’s joy in you that brings joy to your own soul (remember our definition of joy – the choice to celebrate all of life). However, we need to ensure that we open our hearts and live our lives in a way that properly responds to God so that his joy may be lived out in us.

Psalm 126 marks out for us how this may be done and what exactly our role can be (please read the focus reading carefully before continuing). Did you notice that the central line of the Psalm is verse 3b – ‘we are one joyful people’? The words on one side of that central line (verses 1-2) are written in the past tense while the words on the other side (verses 4-6) are written in the future tense.

The Psalm teaches us that joy begins by having a good memory! The Psalm remembers how God was with Abraham, Moses, David, the disciples, and Paul the Apostle. Remember! Remember your own life and your own past, remember how God has faithfully worked his love into you. Joy has a history, a memory.

And then on the other side of the central line are words written in the future tense. Joy is further nurtured by anticipation, hope and by trust. If God came through for us in the past, then God can and will do it again. Joy builds on the past but it also borrows from the future – ‘and now God,’ the Psalm beseeches, ‘do it again, bring rains to our drought-stricken lives’.

Notice how this Psalm never ignores the reality of pain. It is not a stranger to the dark side of life as it speaks of ‘planting crops in despair’ and travelling with ‘heavy hearts’. Christian joy is NOT escapism for sorrow, it is NOT denial of pain or suffering, it is NOT pretending to be what one isn’t. Instead joy celebrates life by plunging into it in faith. As Karl Barth once said “Joy is a defiant ‘Nevertheless.’” I will celebrate life no matter what – NEVERTHELESS.

And so we are brought back to the centre of the Psalm – ‘we are one joyful people,’ because our memories are filled with God’s past faithfulness and our dreams are filled not with fantasies of winning lotteries but the hope that God will continue to work his Life into us. These memories and dreams fix our lives firmly into the present because this moment, this day, is the only one we have to live. If we try to escape from today into memories or daydreams then what we are really doing is wasting today. We will never get it back. So whether it is filled with laughter or tears, we need to celebrate it by living to the full. In this way joy encompasses both tears and laughter, both happiness and sadness. Circumstances come and go, but God’s love always was and always will be. That is the hope by which we live. Perhaps more than anything, joy allows us to live in the present.

We ARE one joyful people!

PRAY AS YOU GO
We remember O’ Wonderful God! We remember how you have always been there for your people. We remember also your continual faithfulness to us personally. It is that memory that gives us hope for the future – for what you have done for us in the past; you will surely continue to do. We pray that our memories and anticipation will combine into a joyous present – even if we are facing tough times. Whether we are facing laughter or tears, help us to live to the full in the moment – nevertheless! Amen.
FOCUS READING
Psalm 126 (The Message)
1-2: It seemed like a dream, too good to be true, when God returned Zion's exiles. 
We laughed, we sang, 
we couldn't believe our good fortune. 
We were the talk of the nations— 
"God was wonderful to them!" 

3: God was wonderful to us; 
we are one joyful people. 

4-6: And now, God, do it again— 
bring rains to our drought-stricken lives 
So those who planted their crops in despair 
will shout hurrahs at the harvest, 
So those who went off with heavy hearts 
will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.

God Exults in Monotony

Joy is at the very heart of WHO God is! Joy is a fruit of God’s Spirit and it is part and parcel of God’s nature. And because joy is at the heart of who God is, then it should be at the heart of who we are as well.

In his wonderful little book called ‘Orthodoxy,’ G.K. Chesterton writes about how the joy that one sees in a little child is just a fraction of the joy that exists in the heart of God:
“Because children have a bounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again.’ And the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead, for grown up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again!’ to the sun, and every evening, ‘Do it again!’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike. It may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy, for we have sinned and grown old and our Father is younger than we.’

Isn’t that an incredible thought? We have sinned and grown old, jaded, tired, worried and irritated, rushed and blind; we have sinned and grown old and our Father is younger than we! We see this rather wonderfully throughout the story of Creation. Day 1 - God creates and then pronounces, ‘It is good!’ Day 2 – God creates and then pronounces, ‘It is good!’ Day 3 – God creates and then pronounces, ‘It is good!’ And so it has gone every day from that day until this one. It is good! That is how it is with God … but not with us: For we have sinned and grown old and our Father is younger than we are.

Joy is more than happiness because joy celebrates ALL of life. God did this in Jesus by sharing in both our laughter and our tears. Jesus laughed out loud with lepers being healed and he wept alongside grieving families. Remember what Jesus once said to his disciples as he prepared them for the day he would leave them. ‘I have given you all my teachings so that MY joy might be in you, and that your joy might be complete, it might be filled up to the brim!’

God is a God of incredible joy and so the source for all life’s joy is God himself. Don’t spend your life pursuing happiness, don’t even pursue joy, instead pursue the God who is the source of all these things and more! We come to God because none of us has it within ourselves, except momentarily, to be joyous. Joy is not us concentrating so hard on being positive that beads of sweat pop out on our foreheads! As Eugene Peterson reminds us, joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence! We don’t have to be joyful in order to follow Jesus; it’s what gradually happens within us when we do follow Jesus. Joy is God’s dancing ’it-is-good and lets-do-it-again’ nature being lived out in us.

PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord you are the source of all life and all joy. Joy is something that you form within us as we faithfully follow you and obey your commandments. We pray that your joy would indeed be within us so that our joy might be filled to overflowing. In Jesus name. Amen.

FOCUS READING
John 15:9-11 (NIV)
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

Joy and Happiness

There is a big difference between joy and happiness. Unfortunately, however, there are several misconceptions that abound in modern thought about what joy really is. Firstly, the concept of joy needs to be rescued from Christians themselves, because there is the unfortunate misperception that to be joyful one has to look and act like Ned Flanders in the TV show ‘The Simpsons’! Joy is not a sickly-sweet, unreal, lets-all-pretend-we-are H-A-P-P-Y! In fact nothing could be more real and down to earth than joy.

If I had to define joy it would be as follows: Joy is a courageous and persistent CELEBRATION OF LIFE, even when times are tough (in fact, especially when times are tough). Joy is that which helps us to embrace all of life, both the laughter and the tears, without the need for escapism into daydreams or by pretending to be what we are not.

We must understand that happiness is not the same as joy, although happiness can form a part of joy. Joy is much bigger than happiness! Because circumstances allow for happiness (it comes from the same root word as ‘happening’), a change in circumstances can therefore make our happiness dissolve into thin air. Happiness is emotion, whereas joy is a choice, it is a discipline that doesn’t come and go with circumstances but defies them and lives to the full despite any difficulties.

Joy can coexist with doubt, ambiguity and pain. Joy doesn’t seek to escape from tough circumstances but rather to overcome them without losing who we are in the process. Joy is an inner contentedness, trust, peace and knowledge that takes us through tough circumstances knowing that God has never let us down and that God NEVER will!

So the pursuit of happiness is actually a misguided one. God created our souls for joy – that’s what is promised as a fruit of God’s Spirit. When we pursue happiness instead of joy we blur the lines of what it is we really need. We begin to misunderstand and misdirect our soul’s yearnings in a number of different ways.

Eugene Peterson pointed out one of these common misunderstandings when he said: ‘We try to get joy through entertainment. We pay someone to make jokes, tell stories, perform dramatic actions, sing songs. We buy the vitality of another’s imagination to divert and enliven our own poor lives. The enormous entertainment industry in [the world today] is a sign of the depletion of joy in our culture. Society is a bored, gluttonous king employing a court jester to divert it after an overindulgent meal. But that kind of joy never penetrates our lives, never changes our basic constitution. The effects are extremely temporary – a few minutes, a few hours, a few days at most. When we run out of money, the joy trickles away. We cannot make ourselves joyful. Joy cannot be commanded, purchased or arranged.’

The question you may well be asking yourself now is, ‘Why is joy important to me then? Why do I have to know about it?’ Well, joy is vital to faithfully following Christ because it is that quality that triumphs over adversity without losing who God made us to be in the process. In an age when sadness abounds, joy is the triumph of God’s Spirit being worked in and through the human spirit.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Holy and loving God, help us to understand what joy truly is. Help us to not confuse it with happiness and help us to never be false and pretend to be what we are not. Fill us with your spirit and your joy so that we might learn to celebrate all of life and live it to the full in your name. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
Philippians 4:4, 6-7 (The Message)
Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him!
Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the centre of your life.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Many of us would recognise the title of this week’s devotions from the recent major movie starring Will Smith. In the movie (which is based on a true life story), Smith plays Chris Gardner, a man who is bright, ambitious and driven and yet always puts the safety of his son, Christopher, first. The movie tells the story of Gardner’s struggles to make something out of his life. He encounters one setback after another, at one point even ending up sleeping on the streets with his son.

After months of poverty and hardship, facing one disappointment after another, Gardner finally becomes rich beyond his wildest dreams! … And then the movie ends. ‘So is that it?’ we are left asking ourselves. Is that what the pursuit of happiness is all about? Getting rich beyond our wildest dreams?

Now, I am not aware of how closely the movie portrays the ‘true story’, but I do need to say that the conclusions this movie draws for us sends some serious shivers down my spine. Do we really believe that endless wealth will provide us with all the happiness we desire?

Yet, in all honesty, I know that my personal daydreams have sometimes involved winning lotteries or somehow getting rich. We all do that to some extent. When times are tough we tend to daydream about past happy memories, or we daydream about a bright and prosperous future. We place our hopes in fantasies like winning the lottery or drastically changing our present circumstances in some way.

This is accentuated because times are quite tough for South Africans at the moment. Over the last few weeks we have dealt with country-wide strikes, sky high crime rates, seemingly never-ending petrol and food price increases and even natural disasters such as the fires that devastated whole areas of KZN. In our personal lives, many of us may have been struggling with work commitments, family commitments, studies, balancing our budgets and all sorts of other pressures.

Times are quite tough for many at the moment. Which is why the title ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ probably stirs something deep within our souls. All of us, probably without exception, would like to find and know some happiness. Who wouldn’t want more laughter, fun and inner contentment to be part of their lives?

Yet Scripture would challenge this kind of response to life’s difficult times. The pursuit of happiness is understandable but ultimately hugely misguided. For if we pursue only happiness then we are really looking for all the wrong things in all the wrong places. Scripture emphasises that what our souls need is to know joy rather than just happiness. And there is a huge difference! We will spend the rest of this week studying that difference and discussing why exactly joy is such an integral part of the Christian walk.

In the meantime, spend some time thinking about your daydreams. When times are tough, what kind of daydreams do you escape into? What can you learn about yourself from this?

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord, we know that the pursuit of happiness is something that drives us powerfully. Help us not to look for all the wrong things in all the wrong places in the hope they will provide us with the inner happiness and contentment we so desire. Help us to find all we need from you, and you alone. Amen.

FOCUS READING
Psalm 16. 8-11 NIV
I have set the LORD always before me. 
       Because he is at my right hand, 
       I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; 
       my body also will rest secure,
  because you will not abandon me to the grave, 
       nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
 You have made known to me the path of life; 
       you will fill me with joy in your presence, 
       with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Finding Forgiveness

Even after a whole week of focussing on this issue, you may still be struggling to forgive. Let me encourage you not to give up on that struggle because it is very important. You may not have reached a place of complete forgiveness but the very fact that you are striving really means something. In his book, ‘Letters to Malcolm’, C.S. Lewis wrote these words, "Last week in prayer, I discovered, or least think I did, that suddenly I was able to forgive someone that I had been trying to forgive for over thirty years."

We all know that forgiveness can be incredibly difficult at times. We know how difficult it can be to hand over that which grips our heart and seemingly won’t let go of us! So let’s just say straight up that there are no magic formulas or potions and there are no easy routes to forgiveness, instead like everything else in life, there is only choice. And what greater gift can Christians choose to give the world than the passing on of a gift so generously given to us – the legacy of extravagant and gracious forgiveness for all.

Make no mistake – it is a costly gift – it will cost us our pride, our right to be wounded, and probably much time and effort, but it is so necessary. For Jesus made it plain that in this case it is only in the giving that we will receive. In other words, in order to find forgiveness, we have to first share it!

Jesus leaves us in no doubt that forgiveness is a law of God as fundamental to healthy life as is remembering to breathe, or to eat and drink. Forgiveness is a choice that begins and ends in the inspiration of God’s gift of forgiveness and Jesus reminds us through this parable to never forget what has been done for us by God. That the vast debt we owed God (a debt bigger than any human’s ability to deal with – remember the parable) has been totally and utterly forgiven through Christ on the cross. Never forget what has been done for us. Never!

For as difficult as forgiveness undoubtedly can be, the truth of the matter is that it is not only necessary for us to be free and alive but fundamental to all life itself. So perhaps the only hope for the future of our children is that we learn to break any chains of ‘ungrace’ and instead pass on to them that which has been so graciously poured down upon us by our Father in heaven – forgiveness and all the freedom, life and love that goes along with it.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord our God, we do pray that we would find inspiration to forgive in the forgiveness you have lavished upon us all. Even if we have to wake up every morning, and forgive the same person again and again, we pray that you would give us the strength, will and persistence to do so. For we know that we find forgiveness by sharing it out with others. In Jesus name. Amen.

FOCUS READING
Read the whole Matthew 18. 21-35 in your Bible.

(V35) "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart."

Cycles of 'Un-grace'

The thing about un-forgiveness is that it potentially not only imprisons us but also those around us. The famous Christian author, Phillip Yancey, in a talk he gave last year in Durban, spoke about chains or cycles of ungrace. Ungrace is a word he made up to describe situations where we refuse to show one another forgiveness.

Yancey illustrated this point by speaking of a situation where his grandmother could never bring herself to forgive her drunken, abusive father, even after he had cleaned up, become a Christian and asked for forgiveness. She said to him ‘I never want see you again’ … and kept her promise. Her daughter (Yancey’s mother) grew up watching this, and when she and one of her sons (Yancey’s brother) came into a sharp conflict, she repeated to him those words: ‘I never want to see you again’. And so far she has also kept her promise.

Yancey tied this story up by saying that he recently was on the phone to this same brother discussing the brother’s divorce, when his brother said of his wife in an angry voice, ‘I never want to see her again’.

Yancey described the stunned silence as both of them instantly recognized their own mother’s voice speaking through his brother (indeed their own grandmother’s voice). Chains or cycles of ungrace are passed down almost like genetic code! Forgiveness breaks these chains and it sets prisoners free.

When I was ministering at a previous church, there was a woman in the congregation who many years previously endured the trauma and humiliation of her husband cheating on her, and then leaving her for someone else. She struggled for many years to forgive him. This struggle made her and her children miserable. She eventually resolved to go to a colleague of mine for counselling and after much time, and many difficulties, she finally managed to forgive.

Then, unexpectedly one day, she received a phone call from her estranged husband. He had contracted AIDS/HIV, his medical aid had depleted, his lover had thrown him out and he had no where to go. So she took him in. This woman cared for and nursed her cheating husband until he died. Now let’s get something straight – she wasn’t IN love with him any more, she wasn’t trying to recapture a lost marriage, she wasn’t trying to patch anything up. She had simply forgiven him and now was able to love him with a Christ-like love.

You may say what she did was crazy, or silly, or impossible. But let me ask you a question. What do you think she passed onto her children through that action? I think she passed on a God-like grace, a larger than life spirit, a generous heart & attitude, and a freedom from prisons. I think she made real men and woman of God of her children. And I think that through those actions she broke a potential chain of ‘ungrace’, and instead left behind her an inspiring legacy of love.

PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord, it is our desire to leave behind us a legacy of love rather than un-forgiveness and hatred. Help us to understand that when we refuse to forgive, we potentially entrap not only ourselves but others as well, especially those who look to us for spiritual and moral guidance. Help us to live our lives in a way that is true to your amazing grace. Amen.

FOCUS READING
Read the whole Matthew 18. 21-35 in your Bible.

(V35) "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart."

Self-made Prisons

You will remember that yesterday we left the crowds absolutely seething at the conclusion of Jesus’ parable: That they would be thrown into torture chambers unless they learnt to forgive their neighbours from the heart. We left them quickly counting up all the people they had heard Jesus teach were their neighbours – Romans, tax collectors, Samaritans.

‘Forgive all of them?!’ we hear them raging, ‘otherwise we too will know the torture chambers?! What kind of God would ask that?!’

Perhaps some of them might have walked out on Jesus and his story at this stage, fuming at the injustice of it all. But maybe, later that day, while they were in bed at night, still tossing and turning angrily over what Jesus had said, something else about this parable might have struck them. That this is not a parable about a mean God who will torture you if don’t do what he says. But that this parable about a loving God who warns us of the grave dangers of an unforgiving spirit that potentially can bring prison-like consequences into our lives.

This point is incredibly crucial for you to understand: The torture chamber, in the context of this story and its message of un-forgiveness, is entirely SELF-INFLICTED. It is spiritual not physical. Jesus is not speaking of a hell to come that God will send you to but a hell in the here and now that we create for ourselves. A lack of forgiveness will warp us, diminish us, embitter us, and yes - imprison us. Dale Carnegie once said that: “When we hate our enemies we give them a power over us – a power over our sleep, appetites, and happiness. Our hate is not hurting them at all, but it is turning our days and nights into turmoil.” Lewis Smedes puts it this way: “The first and only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness…When we genuinely forgive; we set a prisoner free & then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.”

This is why Jesus refused to pull any punches in this parable because forgiveness is absolutely central to the Christian faith. It is central to the very heart of God, and therefore it is central to life itself. It is also, you will remember, at the centre of THE prayer Jesus taught us to pray – ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’

The only person we punish (torture) through a lack of forgiveness is ourselves! Spend some time thinking more directly about the people you are struggling to forgive. Write their names down for use in the following prayer.

PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord, as difficult as it may be for us, we do desire to forgive. We understand how a lack of forgiveness imprisons us, twists us and diminishes our spirits. We pray that you would help us to forgive [NAME/S]. Help us to let go of all anger, hurt or bitterness directed towards that person for what they have done to us. In the name of the Great Forgiver - Jesus. Amen.

FOCUS READING
Read the whole Matthew 18. 21-35 in your Bible.

(V35) "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."