A Gift of Trust

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What do we do when everything is falling apart around us? That’s the question that Habakkuk was left to wrestle with at the end of his collection of prophecy. His circumstances weren’t great, and they were on the cusp of getting much worse. What are we supposed to do then, especially when it’s not going to be within our power to fix them? Here at the end of our journey, we finally get an answer to that question. Let’s see where Habakkuk lands in his journey with God, and talk about how we can get to the same place in our own lives.

A Gift of Trust

Do you remember the old Magic Eye books? Do you remember those images? I’ll put one up on the screen as a reminder. Believe it or not, there’s a Walleye fish and a hook in all of that gobblygook. I made the mistake of looking at one on my Facebook feed the other day (pro tip: don’t do that in public because you look really funny crossing your eyes and holding your phone up right in front of your face), and suddenly there was a new one every time I opened the app. As you can see from the Magic Eye image up here, when you look at it for the first time, there’s clearly nothing there. But once you learn how to see them and figure out what the image is, you just about can’t not see them. 

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A Special Birthday Reflection

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“Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction, and don’t reject your mother’s teaching, for they will be a garland of favor on your head and pendants around your neck.” (CSB Proverbs 1:8-9 – Read the chapter)

Some of the best movies are the ones that create a potent sense of nostalgia around an idyllic childhood. The Sandlot is a classic in this genre. It is ostensibly a movie about baseball (and one of the greatest ever released), but it’s really a movie about nostalgia. It’s about making the viewer feel a certain way. Our culture is enamored with the idea that childhood should unfold in a certain way. It should be carefree and safe and familiar and encouraging and challenging and so on and so forth. It should happen in the context of a family with a mom and dad and a sibling or two. It should be happy and fun. On that score, my childhood was about as idyllic as they come. One of the two main reasons for that turns 70 today. This is for him.

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Morning Musing: Romans 5:8

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“But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
‭‭(CSB – Read the chapter)

How do you know when someone else loves you? That’s perhaps a tougher question to answer than we think at first glance. I mean, the other person’s telling you is a good clue, but words can be dishonest. So then, which things that they do for you confirm the suspicion? It’s almost certainly not any one, single thing. It’s a combination of words and actions with a generous splash of one other key ingredient. Let’s talk about how we can be confident of God’s love and what this other key ingredient is.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus: 40:34-38

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“The cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses was unable to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud rested on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. The Israelites set out whenever the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle throughout all the stages of their journey. If the cloud was not taken up, they did not set out until the day it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and there was a fire inside the cloud by night, visible to the entire house of Israel throughout all the stages of their journey.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Here at last, then, we come to the end. We have been slowly but surely working our way through the narrative of Exodus for a little over a year and a half. And while we haven’t hit every single word directly (especially over these last few posts for reasons I explained as we were getting started on them), I’ve linked you to every bit of the text. More than once. I’ve never tackled a project like this with such thoroughness, and I’ll admit that I was a little leery at the start because of its sheer size and scope. Yet God has been good and faithful. Personally, I’ve come to understand just how thoroughly soaked in the Gospel the Exodus narrative is, and I hope you have too. It is soaked in the Gospel, but it is not the Gospel. We are reminded of that here at the end with a potent pointer to just how good and important the Gospel is. As we wrap up this whole journey today, let’s marvel together at another way God was planting the seeds of the Gospel long before it became a reality.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 40:1-33

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“The Lord spoke to Moses: ‘You are to set up the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, on the first day of the first month’. . . .Moses did everything just as the Lord had commanded him. The tabernacle was set up in the first month of the second year, on the first day of the month. . . .Next Moses set up the surrounding courtyard for the tabernacle and the altar and hung a screen for the gate of the courtyard. So Moses finished the work.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What does God want from us? More than anything else, He wants a relationship with us. He wants us to be in a right and proper relationship with Him. How do we know when we have that? Because we do what He says. Our faithful, willing obedience is the first and best sign that we understand who He is, who we are, and are willing to accept those two truths wholly. Our obedience is the best proof that we are right with Him. In this final description of Moses’ work with the tabernacle, this is where the emphasis lies: that Moses did what God said. Let’s talk through what we see here and about why this is a good pointer to something that is still true for us today.

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