Lenten Devotional, Day 9: An Anthem, Zion, Generational Relay, No Fear

Dear Saints,

How are you faring?  Have you hit a groove? hit a wall?  Finding time? motivation?  Any discoveries?  Any heavenly touches?

I'm fatigued, fagged (look it up), foggy.  That is good.  Yes, good.  It means I've overspent my "props."  It means Psalm 73:26: "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."  In so many ways that is what Lent, "40 days," fasting, consecration, setting aside, retreat is about.  Lent — for a small season kicking out the "props" and living more solely, dependantly on a strength and source called God.

What about refesh?  Take heart! Assuredly, it WILL come!  But for me and most it comes "in the morning," i.e. afterwards.  I don't want to religiously/legalistically torque the metaphor, but the 40 days is generally the night season and afterward is morning, Dayspring, yea, resurrection!

The Scriptures today are Psalm 121, Isaiah 51:1–3, 2 Timothy 1:3–7.

AN ANTHEM:

I got a lil help, I knew Psalm 121 rang a bell.  Sure enough, that was the meditation for an anthem I wrote with regard to a specific event, as was the Star Spangeled Banner.  But anthems flow far from the original source and fountain.  My most basic thought was 'the reluctant war.'  The idea of a groaning: Here we go again.  As to kinetic war, sure, but moreover relational, spiritual.

AN ANTHEM TAKE ON PSALM 121 (nonce form):

I lift my eyes;

The hills are empty.

You ask: 'Where does my help come from?'

He who made Earth

And even Heaven —

Will never let my foot be moved!

He never sleeps

But ever watches.

Very God will my keeper be!

Let sun beat rays;

Man's arrows volley,

For He is my shade and shield!

I sought for peace,

But battle rages —

'Til again I shout in Victory!

Notes:

•  Has a melody, so meant to be sung.

•  Was thinking of 10/7, Israel's 9/11 x8.  It was at their Nova Music Festival, equivalent of America's Woodstock, that comprised the vast majority of the 1200 murdered and 251 hostages.  Still I struggled with the last line.  I don't repent of a certain "moment" of triumphalism but very short as it falls short in the end.  I thought of: ''Til the waters still and pastures green."  I thought of 'Til Messiah comes (i.e. again) and Sabbath reigns.  I thought of many endings, but in the end I left it.  I understand that first impulse.  But know for me it is an unresolved tension. 

•  (c)2024, +IMCOOK27/Poetry27, all rights reserved.

ZION:

O dear! Nothing is more fraught with intensity than the subject of Zion.  Reactions to Zion are rife within campuses, international business/banking, geopolitics, the U.N./ICJ, athletic competition, street protests, MAGA, republicans, democrats, news outlets, social media, history, conspiracy, theology, and the church.  Zion is the controversy du jour, unendingly so.

Is Zion the church or Israel or both?  Has the church replaced Israel?  Is anti-Zionism (hatred of Israel as the modern nation-state) the same as anti-Semetic (disdain for Jews as a race & religion)?  Nothing rivals Zion/Israel in the global bandwidth: not Russia invading Ukraine (1.8 million casualties, 7.1 million displaced Ukrainian refugees); not Iran's slaughter of its own people (60-70 thousand, an estimate equal to the Israel-Hamas two-year-plus war); not cartel-narco terrorists (purveyors of 79,384 U.S. overdose deaths of in 2024 and every year).  Why is Israel center stage?

Today we read: "For the LORD comforts Zion; He comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song." (Isaiah 51:3).  Reminded me of Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in 1867 (just prior to the beginning of Jewish repatriation), who described it as: "A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds—a silent mournful expanse...a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace."  He added that in a whole day's journey meeting barely tree or human.  Ah, but today it is as God prophecied: The desert wasteland bloomed.  It is a net exporter of food and flowers, due to its marvel of micro/drip irrigation.  And as to gladness, even in war: Today it consistently ranks as the second happiest nation on earth, esp. among young people and including its 2-million Arab citizens.  Lithuania ranks #1.

And why again is Israel/Zion the center of world attention: "Thus says the Lord GOD: This is Jerusalem, I have set her in the center of the nations." (Ezekiel 5:5).  And: "The waste places that are now inhabited, and the people who were gathered from the nations...who dwell at the center of the earth." (Ezekiel 38:12).

Why is Israel/Zion the disproprotionate center of seemingly everything and increasingly so?  Because of its Biblical and Prophetic and Spiritual significance.  That doesn't make Israel or Jews right without exception, hardly.  But to truly understand Israel, you'll need more than headlines and talking heads and posts and protesters.  You'll need the "whole counsel of God." (Acts 20:27).

My point today re/ Zion: I fear some are on the right side of history and on the wrong side of His-story!

GENERATIONAL RELAY:

In the 2 Timothy Passage most would focus on V. 7.  (I'll mention it in a minute).  But my bucket list idea is here: The golden, generational chain of faith, that is Lois, Eunice, and Timothy.  (They were an asymetric family, idea for another time).  Here again, as in Day 2, is a particularly helpful reminder to Evangelicals (i.e. us who emphasis a personal relationship with Jesus).  We are wont to think in terms of 2 Timothy 4:7: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."  Aye, aye, aye (smile).  Obviously a Biblical notion of the highest magnitude.  But O let us ache that our legacy be a first-place tie with myriads of other families (tribes, tounges, peoples, nations) in a 1000-generation-long, unbroken relay.  Our Reading yesterday alluded to it: "A showing [of] love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Exodus 20:6).  Lord, grant, prithee: "I AND the children whom [Thou] has given me." (Isaiah 8:18, Hebrews 2:13).

NO FEAR:

"For God gave us a Spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control/sound mind." (2 Timothy 1:7).  I guess I don't have specific reflection on this Verse at the moment.  But I wanted to tell a quick story about a salvo against fear.

I was overcome with fear/anxiety about something.  It was a real situation but one that had no seeming explanation.  (I need to keep it vague).  Anyway, I was brokenhearted and had less than zero understanding as to what had happened.  I can't remember the specific Scripture I was meditating/praying on.  But boom!  This thought, this sentence was instantly in my heart with quickening: Son, it is better to trust than to understand why.  And then with a bit more meditation, I was reminded of a Scripture: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5).

I wish I could say the situation resolved, it did not.  And still soo hurts.  But with that dynamic moment sitting at His feet, the fear progressively lifted.  What's more that lesson has lessened the severity of subsequent painful mysteries.

I tell that story not so much as a connection to fear, but Lent.  O may Jesus profoundly, yea, sublimely meet you sitting at His feet!

The Only Best in/is Christ,

tIM