David and His Grandma

...I was going to discuss a neat article I found on the democracy of bees, which is based on a dance contest--a complex shimmy dance they do for each other--but I figured it would start you laughing again, love. And it is Sunday after all, so here's a Sunday blog.

Backtracking in my prayer journal, I found I juxtaposed these prayers back on Yom Kippur, the Hebrews' Feast of the Tabernacles, the celebration of God's plan to take his people from being desert nomads to being the landed gentry. On Yom Kippur, I melded my own prayers to these. Yesterday, I came across this prayer from Psalm 139 in the course of this backtracking. Today, it showed up in my devotional. Oswald Chambers started the devo I was on today with the following words: "Psalm 139 ought to be the personal experience of every Christian." (from Daily Thoughts for Disciples.) I counted this extra attention to this faith song, prophetically given by King David, worthy of note here:
"You've hedged me in behind and before, and laid your hand on me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high I cannot attain it." (Weren't we echoing these words just yesterday?)
"Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I fly from Your Presence?" (My bird, eh?)
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
if I make my bed in hell, behold You are there.
Even there Your hand shall lead me.
If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me,'
Even the night shall be light to me,
Indeed the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You." (another recent topic of faith-stretching conversation between us, eh?)
Then he goes on to talk of being covered even in his mother's womb, being fearfully and wonderfully made even as a fetus. And he and the wife of his dishonor would birth the line through which Christ came. Who would have expected that?

Christ always full of surprises: disciples expect to spend the day fishing, they find the Savior making invitation to them; a woman trudging along for her son's burial, Jesus gives him back to her alive; religious leaders want a miracle as evidence of His power, He offers them a direct link to the Creator of all miracles; the Hebrew nation looks for a political leader in an immediate kingdom, He offers a spiritual leader in an eternal kingdom. Religious leaders assumed killing him would prove he wasn't who he said he was, he proved he was who he said he was by not staying dead. How much their faith must have been strained in those days considering they assumed they had it all figured out. How much that attitude haunts--possesses like the Serpent restating its position of Knowledge, that great temptation that caused the Fall--in the church of today. Would our corporate faith take the strain if He shined a spotlight on our hand, still holding that apple full of fresh bite marks, if He sent an eye-popping revelation of equivalent proportions today?

Anyway, I said there were two prayers. David's grandmother, Ruth, prayed this while he was but a seed within her...a seed that would take two generations to take form. Her petitionary prayer led to re-location to a place of profound prominence from a place completely outside God's lands of protective haven. She sought to go along with Naomi, the bitter one. I seek to go where Christ and You lead me.
"Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn my back from following you;
And wherever you go, I will go;
And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people,
And your god, my god.
When you die, I will die,
And there be buried." Ruth 1:16-17

This I've prayed. This we've both dreamed. (Yes, you know even my chicken dream had elements of this...hehehe.)
Now guess where Naomi proceeded to take her: Bethlehem.

When God gave the laws of the Sabbath, He said to remain circumspect...a strange thing to put in conjunction with the Sabbath, but not so much so when God lays a specific Sabbath at your feet, and your faith strains to receive it. Be circumspect because such a Sabbath acts like a scale holding blessing and death in the balance. "Work" on such a Sabbath and you add weight to the death and misery side. Watch for God to lead where He's said He'll lead, and you add weight to the blessing side. It would take days to summarize all the examples of this principle in the reigns of Hebrew kings, God's people called to reveal His laws of engagement. You say you came out of your "encounter dream" with a heavier sense of responsibility for this Sabbath. You are right. We recommitted to that yesterday...found our common ground, reassured each other. I have faith that we will continue to be led. Happy Sabbath, my love.