Salt residue marred the smooth, shiny concrete flooring.   Fine powder formed semi-transparent, circular eddies and ripples that lined and colored the straight gray aisles.  The store manager was not happy.  Accustomed to a shiny and unremarkable surface resembling a lengthy gray walkway of polished stone,  the chalk-colored, swirling designs were an unwelcome distraction.

The earlier heavy snow had resulted in ample ice melt being sprinkled on the sidewalks, and  as salt clumps clung to the incoming shoe soles, the salt was generously re-distributed throughout the inside of the store.  Add to this a need for the surfaces to be hand-mopped, and a clue to the discolorations was discovered:  an increased but undetected salt-water concentration had built up in the mop water, resulting in the visible pale etchings as the floor completely dried.

Even as I observed the swirled edgings, I felt like the Lord used that image to impress me with the importance of leaving rings of spiritually salty residue wherever our interactions took us.

In Matthew 5, Jesus moved from calling those who were gentle, merciful, pure in heart, and persecuted for His sake as “blessed” into stating, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again?  It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.” (Matt. 5:13, NASB)  The Passion Translation reads, “Your lives are like salt among the people.  But if you, like salt, become bland, how can your ‘saltiness’ be restored?  Flavorless salt is good for nothing and will be thrown out…”

Becoming bland.  Not recommended.  Becoming flavorless.  Even worse.

A short but interesting bit of Scripture from 2 Kings came to my mind as I thought about the admonition not to lose one’s saltiness.  In 2 Kings 2, Elisha has succeeded Elijah, but the “sons of prophets who were at Jericho” are skeptical of his power and/or anointing.  Continue reading “The Residue of Salt” →

My husband and I had just ended a quite-active weekend of hosting our youngest grandson.  After weaving together a steady and exhausting variety of activities throughout the 48-hour period, it was pretty clear that his overall expectation of life’s goodness could be fairly well summarized by 3 phrases:  entertain me, entertain me more, and  entertain me with something new.

For a four year old, of course,  that’s nothing unusual.  Then I chuckled and felt like the Lord gave me a playful finger poke through the Spirit as I mused to myself,  That really isn’t such an unusual attitude even among people in the above-four crowd...and what about the above-twenty-four crowd….or thirty-four….or forty-four?  

I stopped there.  Any farther and that age will start getting too-close-for-comfort to my own.  It’s just a fact:  the entertain-me mindset does not necessarily end with the arrival of a fifth birthday.  Given today’s American culture, I suspect that a relatively small number of people would even dispute that pervasive influences both nurture and support a ready acceptance of shallow-and-never-ending distractions.  Cradle-to-grave rabbit-trails, you could say.

But there is a second edge to this issue to consider, rather like taking the time to thoroughly examine the full blade of a two-edged sword.  And it has to do with destiny.

I believe that as a people chosen of God, a people for God’s own possession according to the Apostle Peter, we are doing ourselves — and the Father who loves us and adopted us in to fellowship/relationship with Himself, the Son and the Spirit — a great disservice when we dally on any of these random trails for any length of time.  Phrased more simply, we are allowing ourselves to be cheated. Continue reading “Samson’s Mill and To Whom We are Joined” →

I have become particularly fond of Christmas carols performed by Celtic Woman, this season.  And as New Year’s Day approaches, I know I am going to miss them.

It isn’t simply the lively music that captures my attention, but the sense of joy that often emanates as the notes, melodies, and rhythms are released.  This is music that engages you to toe-tap and clap with a joyous heart.  Like the most profoundly-worded and engaging carol, it extends an invitation to move from mere intellectual praise and acknowledgement into touching fingers and holding hands with our glorious God  — Emmanuel, God with us —  as an act of genuine worship.

Listening to the vigorous composition Join the Dance immediately sent my mind flying to two different “dance” references I have pondered at length.  The first is a book by theologian C. Baxter Kruger entitled The Great Dance and the other is a thought-provoking melody of a few decades ago, entitled  Lord of the Dance.

Of the very purposes of God and, subsequently, our core design in this life, Kruger has written, “When we start with the Trinity, the purpose of God in creation begins to emerge.  The very nature of God’s existence as Father, Son and Spirit is fellowship and shared life.  Every thought of this God–every idea and dream and act–is birthed out of this fellowship and bears its stamp.  The idea of creation does not arise in a vacuum of divine boredom or loneliness or sadness.  The idea of creation flows out of the glorious life shared by the Father, Son and Spirit.  If this God is going to create something, then it is quite ‘natural,’ so to speak, to do so for the purpose of sharing life.  And that is exactly the point.  The Father, Son and Spirit created the human race so that what they have together could be shared with us, so that their great dance of life could be extended to us and played out in our lives.  It is no accident that when the apostle Paul was grappling with the eternal purpose of God for humanity, he chose the word ‘adoption’ to describe it. (Ephesians 1:3-5)  The basic idea of adoption is to include.  It means that one who is foreign, outside the family circle, is drawn in grace and love, within the family circle.  And the purpose of that act of adoption is so that the outsider can share in the family’s  life.  The whole mind-boggling act of creation is driven by the desire to share the great dance with us.” *

Shared life, with the very One who designed both the life to share, and included us, with whom He desires to share it.  This is dynamic! Continue reading “Joy! Joy! We’re Part of the Dance!” →