August 18, 2024

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations, there they were strangers. The land they left behind them was so desolate that no one desired to travel through it. This is how they made the pleasant land desolate.” (Zechariah 7.14)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Before moving on to Zechariah, chapter 8, which is God’s response to the question from the men of Bethel concerning “do we continue to fast,” I want to end with “a whirlwind.” I have a vivid memory of a whirlwind. We saw many of them in Texas. Some people call them “dust devils” because they stir up trouble. They are not tornadoes and as a boy I was never afraid of them. In fact, given the opportunity, we would chase them on our bikes across the field or down the alley or around the elementary school ground curing the summer. It was fun getting caught up in one if we ever caught it. It was quick. It showed up seemingly out of nowhere. It had a mind of its own. It seemed to enjoy moving small things as if to toy with our imagination that maybe we could fly. Then the day came on the way home from a fishing trip. It had just been a day trip. We left early in the morning and fished most of the day until it just got too hot. We put our fishing gear (rods, reels, tackleboxes) in the boat along with stools and lawn chairs. We didn’t bother to cover the fourteen-foot john boat because we were just travelling down the highway a couple of hours. It didn’t seem necessary. We were just a few miles outside of Rockwall on Interstate 30 when we spotted a “dust devil” out in the field. The dust was lifted hundreds of feet in a nearly cloudless sky. We watched as it spun and twisted in the field. Occasionally we saw paper or trash get picked up, carried for a moment and then dropped back to the ground. It was moving in a direction that would have taken it across the highway. It was almost like a race to see if we would catch it or it would catch us. We waited with happy and hopeful anticipation. Then it seemed to slow down. My dad didn’t. He kept driving the speed limit even when we urged him to slow down. It was close to the highway. It crossed over the service road, through the ditch and then right across our boat behind us. My brother and I turned to watch it. Then it happened. Right at the back of the boat near the motor and fuel can was my father’s tackle box. It was one of those big, heavy tackle boxes loaded with all his favorite lures, hooks, bobbers, sinkers, line and more. It just jumped out of the boat. It was lifted up just a couple of feet in the grasp of the whirlwind long enough to be deposited on highway at full speed. We yelled at my dad to stop. Before he could and pull to the shoulder of the highway, a large semi-trailer truck ran right over it. He didn’t see it in time and surely wasn’t expecting it. Not only did that truck hit it but several cars following it did as well. There was no way they could see it in the road because of the truck. All I could think of was saving as much of what was left as possible. I jumped out of our station wagon and ran down the highway. Fishing gear and pieces of the tackle box were scattered everywhere. Cars zoomed past in the other lane, but I didn’t notice them. My brother ran through the grass of the side of the road and picked up a few lures and scattered fishing supplies. I was doing the same but in the road. Not much was left that could be salvaged. I heard my dad and my mom yelling to get out of the road. That’s when I noticed the pain. I thought maybe I had stepped on a lure or a hook and looked down. I had no shoes on my feet. In my hurry to rescue what was left of my dad’s tackle box, I didn’t even think about putting on my shoes or my flip-flops. I just ran. Summer heated asphalt brought blisters immediately to the soles of my feet. They were already spongey with fluid. I hobbled to the grass on the sides of my feet holding what I had been able to salvage. Tears running down my eyes, I looked at my dad with disappointment that I could do more. I wanted to gather as much as I could, but I couldn’t walk. I surely couldn’t walk on the highway as cars now filled both lanes oblivious to what had happened. My dad carried me back to the car. It was a couple of hundred feet that I had run not counting the cost. As we resumed our drive home, it didn’t take long before we passed the truck and several cars with punctured tires full of lures and hooks. If it wasn’t so sad, it would have been funny. All I could feel was the disappointment that my dad had lost his tackle box and all his favorite lures and special fishing gear. It took a while before the disappointment changed over to the pain I felt from the soles of my feet seared by the heat of the road.

God said to Zechariah that He scattered the people who surrendered their faith in God to the world with a whirlwind. It was the image of God’s fury and anger which could not be resisted or assuaged. The people had left themselves uncovered and unprotected. They made themselves vulnerable to the ravages of nature and to the enemy of God. In a quick and power sweep of God’s hand, His mighty wind (His ruach or “breath of God”) escaped from His mouth like a kid blowing out the candles on their birthday cake. If God had made a wish, it would have been that His people would understand what they had done, would repent and find their way home. While that whirlwind, like the one in which God spoke to Job, was powerful and awe-inspiring, it was no less devastating. Perhaps Job, as I still do now, never looked at whirlwinds the same. Ezekiel saw a whirlwind, too, a great whirlwind that spun from the north of the Ur of the Chaldees along the Chebar River. In it, Ezekiel saw the powerful and awe-inspiring presence of God like a wheel within a wheel way up in the middle of the air. Caught between heaven and earth, this vision was of the judgment of God indicative also of the power to redeem. I wonder if there was a whirlwind which spun across the face of Golgotha on the late afternoon when Jesus hung on the cross before He breathed His last. Did His surrender of His ruach, His breath of God, cause the storm which raced across Jerusalem and in consort with a mighty earthquake rent the veil of the Holy of Holies in two and snuffed out the censors which burned before it? And when the “wind” was gone back to heaven what kind of silence remained which gave room to consider the cost, the loss and the sorrowing solitude in that breathless moment? Unfair? Unjust? Ungodly? Hardly. We have to deal with the truth and reality of the power and the effect of God’s love. It is like the double-edged sword of God’s Word which swung in one direction intends to defend and in the other direction to excise inwardly. We know the joy because of sorrow. We sense the gain because of loss. We run to the light because the darkness scares us. We feel great love because of the death which has spared us. We put ourselves in harm’s way racing toward something we think we want without thinking more wisely about what is right and good for us which is what God wants for us. We don’t consider, too, the cost of such adventures without preparation and thinking ahead of the consequences of what serves us instead of what serves God. We are told the fruit of the Spirit and is that not what we should be focused upon? We do know that the world will rise up against us for aligning ourselves with God and not the world. Jesus warned His disciples about that as He prepared them for the day (trial and crucifixion), the days (waiting for the unknown which was revealed in resurrection so they would remember), the weeks (the seven leading up to Jubilee and Pentecost) and the months and years and centuries of service and worship ahead. Why are we in such fear of these days when we know they are coming? Why are we not living in confidence knowing of what is beyond these days? Is it better to fear the world and capitulate and forsake our faith as if this life is all we have? Isn’t it better to trust the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind and lean not upon our own understanding and suffer for the faith to walk with Christ instead of against Him? This is the whirlwind we are in now as these days are revealed to us by the reveling of the world in its own wallow of sin and sinfulness. It is better for us to be in the center of the storm where there is authentic peace than to believe we can escape the storm either by running away and hiding or by becoming a part of it.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit brought us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit in order that others be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind so we would know we are Your people and You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.