DEATH < LIFE

I found this photograph on my phone the other day. It was taken in Jerusalem. The little ‘block’ like things at the bottom of the picture are hundreds of tombs. It got me thinking about a painting I did a while back. It’s not a good painting, really, I’m not being modest. But it’s special to me because it carries a message I have needed to hear a lot recently. I read this ancient prayer somewhere a few months back and it really stuck with me, so I decided to paint it.

 

 

The text says:
BLESSED ARE YOU

KING OF THE UNIVERSE

IN YOU

THE DEAD HAVE

L  I  F  E

So when I found this prayer I had been struggling with this inner turmoil, because there was something I just couldn’t let go of although I knew with all my heart I should. Like an addiction, I just kept going into this territory even though I knew it wasn’t wise or healthy to go into.

And I started to feel guilty. And useless. And eventually, I was bordering on hopeless. And then I read these words.

In GOD (the Creator) the dead, have life.

Now that is a huge statement.

There may be areas in our lives (in our soul, our mind, our body, our past…) that feel tainted by death, or that feel like they are dead never to rise again…hopeless. In GOD, these areas can have life once more, because in God, the dead can have life. 

So looking at this picture of the many tombs on the hill in Jerusalem, sun sinking behind them, I remember that, although the sun will set and the night will be dark, the following morning the sun will be shining over those tombs again. And the next day the same, and the next day the same. And so we can hold onto the hope that the areas in our lives that we have basically buried because they are as good as dead, are not hidden from the light of the sun and are not beyond GOD’s rays (arms) of LIFE.

God, who gives life to the dead, and calls those things which are not as though they were.

(Romans 4 v 17)

For his anger endures but for a moment; in his favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

(Psalm 30 v 5)

I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. (Psalm 34 v 4)

Who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion.

(Psalm 103 v 4)

I love the LORD, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live.
The cords of death entangled me,
the anguish of the grave came over me; I was overcome by distress and sorrow.
Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“Lord, save me!”

(Psalm 116 v 1 – 4)

When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished.

(Mark 5 v 38 – 42)

WATER/CHAOS

This is not an established philosophy; this is my experience at this moment in my life.

 And this is a story about desert seasons.

 When you are in the desert:

1. You don’t see where the great, dry expanse ends and life begins again.
2. You don’t feel you have access to enough to sustain you.
3. You feel you have to take it day by day to be able to hold onto hope.
4. Your resolve rises and falls in the same way your pathway climbs steep and winds down low before you.

 In the scriptures there is this link between the desert and the number 40. The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert; Yeshua (Jesus) spent 40 days in the desert. This pattern is repeated like a tapestry throughout the story.

 One of the earliest forms of writing was in the form of pictographs. A pictograph is a pictorial symbol for a word or a phrase. Often, the pictograph would also be linked to a number. In Hebrew, the letter MEM is linked to the number 40 and its pictograph looks like the following:

This pictograph (and therefore the letter mem and the number 40) symbolise WATER or CHAOS.

The intriguing thing is, as I have already pointed out, in the ancient scriptures, deserts are linked to the number 40. And number 40 is linked to the letter mem, symbolising water. Why is this?

 Bear with me.

 I am going to make a long story short right now.

Yeshua (Jesus) was tempted in the desert 40 days by the devil (don’t be offended by the word devil. If you want, understand it as evil; or the root of deception; the opposite of the force of love). There were 3 things the devil (evil; force to remove love) wanted from Yeshua:

1. To command stones to become bread so he could eat.
2. To throw himself down from a height to see if God will send angels to catch him.
3. To worship the devil (to choose evil and selfish ambition) in exchange for being able to control all the kingdoms in the world.

 What is the essence of what the devil was trying to say here? “If you’re hungry, make your own bread! If you’re feeling disenfranchised by God, test His limits to see if you will get your own way! If you don’t have what you want, do an exchange and you can get it!”

 In other words, “You are suffering in the desert, you can’t see the end from the beginning, you don’t have enough to sustain you, you are holding on with all you have to your last little bit of hope so TAKE MATTERS INTO YOUR OWN HANDS.”

 But Yeshua refused to do this, why?

 Well this is how I see it right now. I think He knew that history is the story of mankind taking matters into their own hands in order to avoid dealing with the repercussions of the desert season. Mankind took matters into their own hands because it was easier to do that, then to trust God in the desert season. The problem with this is that it foiled the plan. It foiled the Creator’s plan.

 Are you in your desert season? Does it feel like it has been 40 days, 40 months…40 years…of waiting, not seeing, not understanding, not feeling fulfilled, not feeling whole, confused by the ups and downs, confused by your never-ending perception of the landscape?

 Well, I am there. I’ve been there. Are you there?

 Do you remember this?

Mem

40

Water or Chaos

 History reveals a pattern of mankind in the desert, choosing to take matters into their own hands and the end point being chaos. Selfishness, pride, greed, pain, betrayal. Fear. The opposite of love. Melting slowly into chaos. Call it organised chaos if you like, but chaos nonetheless.

 There is another option. To want to take the path less travelled by. To want to believe that there is water in this desert picture. And that the journey is not so much about reaching the end point of the vast expanse of ‘not understanding’, but rather seeking the water that comes along, hand in hand, with the season. The water that so few in the past have dug for.

 One more thing, why the water? What is water?

1. 60% of your body is made up of water, mostly held in the cells of the body.
2. Water is a polar compound known as the “universal solvent” for its ability to dissolve many substances.
3. Water flows and moves; it is not static.
4. A human can only live 3 to 5 days without water.

 Could this mean:

1. You will know where to find the water in the desert as easy as you know your body, its likeness is already held within you.
2. The water is the antidote to the chaos, it dissolves the components of your inner chaos (resulting in less outer chaos).
3. Water is not made to remain in one place forever: put your hope in that.
4. Water is life.

 So.

May we embrace the discomfort of the desert season.

May we seek the water in faith instead of relying on ourselves in fear.

May we take the journey of water instead of the course of chaos.

 And, one day, may we say: Deep calls out to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls;  All Your waves and breakers have passed over me.

(psalm 42 v 7).

 

[Image sourced here]

John 4 v 7 – 13

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

 Psalm 42 v 2

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?

 Psalm 23 v 2-3

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters; He restores my soul.

 Isaiah 43 v 2 – 3

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
 For I am the Lord your God,
 the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. 

 

Encounters

 

They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”

He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 

[Mark 8:22-25]

When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.

[Matthew 8:14-15]

One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

[John 5:5-8]

And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.

“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.

When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.”

But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”

Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you.Go in peace.”

[Luke 8:43-48]

 

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

[John 8:3-15]

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

[Isaiah 53:2-6]

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

[Revelation 3:20]

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

[Matthew 7:7]

Image  [Source 1][Source 2][Source 3][Source 4][Source 5][Source 6][Source 7]

ROCK HEART

For months now, a certain verse has repeatedly come across my path:

Psalm 73 v 26, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

The original Hebrew for the word that has been translated into ‘strength’ is ‘rock’.

So the verse reads like this, “…but God is the ROCK of my heart and my portion forever.’

I think that this is beautiful imagery, God is the ROCK of my heart…but what exactly does this mean?

In order to try to answer this question I need to explain a bit of my story. I grew up going to church every Sunday and having my mom pray with me and read me bible stories. God was a part of my life from the beginning. God wasn’t a foreign concept to me.

When I reached my teenage years, long story short, I made more of a commitment in my heart to pursue this God, I started to read my bible more and I went to youth group. By the time I reached the end of high school and when my university years began, I felt like there was less and less place for God in my life, more often then not it felt like He was getting in the way of me having fun and doing what I want to do.

So I turned my back on God and walked 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

Still, there were times when I acknowledged His existence. Emergency times, mostly. Like exam time. Or the time a man was walking towards me to mug me and I cried out ‘Jesus’ and he turned and sprinted away from me. Or when I broke up with a boyfriend and felt broken inside. Or when I was drunk and fearing for my life. During times like these, I called out to Him, I asked for help.

And so it went for many years, when life went well I was happy to not think about God and when life was difficult I cried out to Him to make things go back to being good and easy.

You see, God had become a plaster that I used every now and then to bandage a wounded situation. When I felt better that plaster could not get into the bin fast enough.

In the last two years I have realised that I cannot deal with God on my own terms. I have had to learn that in order to know God, God has to become the ROCK of my heart, and not my occasional plaster. I have had to stop running after every whim and fancy of my heart; I have had to make some sacrifices and give up some things in order to ‘create the space’ for God to begin to form solidly in my heart.

Is it easy? Not always.

Is it worth it? Absolutely with absolutely no doubt at all.

Is it a journey? Yes.

Why should I desire for God to be the Rock (strength) of my heart? Because then the strongest and most solid thing about you is the partnership you have with the creator of the universe and the creator of YOU. If God is the Rock of your heart you are enabled to walk out your true purpose and destiny on earth in your full potential, fearless and unhindered. 

If you feel without purpose or uninspired or like something keeps holding you back from what you want to do in life, I want to suggest that you take a look at your heart situation.

Have we made up our own ideas about who God is?

Is our relationship with Him on our own terms or on His? 

What if there is more to knowing Him then we have allowed ourselves to believe?

Leaving the past

What is behind you fades like footsteps in the sand:
only a reality until the next gust of wind, until the next unruly wave.
You are blank-slated by the elements
and
cleared clean by the Creator of your soul.

Terrorism and Turbulence

I woke up this morning to news that there had been a mass shooting in America, another violent attack in what seems to have become a wave of terrorism and death internationally. Recent incidents have occurred in Paris, Lebanon, Mali and now America…more incidents have occurred and not gained widespread media attention. It seems like a storm is brewing in the world.

It’s like we’re on an aeroplane, and the seatbelt signs have lit up and the plane is starting to experience turbulence. Here is a trusty Wikipedia definition of turbulence: In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is a flow regime characterized by chaotic property changes.

Is the world heading into a season of chaotic property changes?

The other day I was thinking about recent terrorist attacks and about incidents more close to home, someone I knew had been shot and killed. I felt heart sore and unsettled.

A friend messaged me to go and read in the book of John, chapter 10. I had read these verses so many times in the past, but the message sank in deep on that day.

In it Yeshua (Jesus’ Hebrew name) speaks about a narrative that is not new to mankind: good versus evil. He uses the analogy of a shepherd and his sheep.

He says this of the source of evil, “The thief does not come except to steal, to slaughter and to destroy.” (Verse 10).

I thought these are good words to describe these terrorist attacks, people’s lives have been stolen – people who, like us, had destinies and purposes and were on this earth for good reason, their lives were stolen, they were slaughtered. How terrible.

What happens if more terrorist incidents occur? What happens if they occur in South Africa, in Cape Town? What happens if war breaks out in the world as a result of them? With weapons of mass destruction on hand and a clamour of hatred and violence, is there any hope for humanity?

Well, as a matter of fact, there is.

Right after the verse about the destroying thief, Yeshua (Jesus) says this of Himself, “I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it beyond measure.”

He offers life beyond measure, without bounds, without limits. Can my human brain fully comprehend this? Well, no. But I believe it.

So here is the narrative: there is a source of evil, the ‘bad guy’, the thief. His intention towards humanity (the sheep) is to slaughter them, to steal from them, and to destroy them.

And there is the ‘good guy’, Yeshua (Jesus). And His intention is to give humanity a life beyond the known and measurable bounds and limits of human life.

In this turbulence before the storm, Yeshua (Jesus) is offering us a door of hope, an opening of hope – a petach tikvah – to escape the darkness and destruction and to live with hearts at peace, no matter what is going on around us. He says in verse 9: “I am the door. Whoever enters through Me will be saved, and will go in and will go out and find pasture.”

The key that opened this door and this hope for us, is simply God’s love for us.

Would you be afraid of the turbulence, if the creator of the skies held your soul in His hand?

 

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” (Verse 11).

 

[Images sourced from here, here and here].

Knowing GOD?

So I’ve been asking God lately to help me to know Him, truly know Him.

Not just know of Him based on what other people have told me. Not just know Him according to what I’ve heard in church growing up or what biblical theology or interpretation I have been exposed to. I don’t want to know Him based on my own opinion or personal belief of who He is. I want to know Him fully, for who He is in TRUTH.

So I made this request to God, that I really want to know Him.

And since then I have come across some scriptures that talk about what it means to really know God. And let me tell you, it’s not exactly what I thought it would be.

The first one I came across was in the book of Jeremiah, verse 15:

     “He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the LORD.

• So looking out for the poor and the needy is one way of knowing God.

A few days later I remembered this from the book of 1 John, chapter 4 verse 8:

     Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

• So loving others is one way of knowing God.

I like two things about this:

1. I like that prerequisites to knowing God are not about being perfect or being in a church with a steeple every Sunday. Defending the cause of the poor and needy and loving others are practical, daily life things.
2. I like that these two aspects of knowing God reveal the character and nature of God, what He cares about and what His heart is inclined towards: He is love. He is concerned about the poor, the needy, the oppressed…the confused, the frustrated, the depressed.

He wants us humans to love each other. This is how we can start to get to know Him. 

May we learn to love with all our hearts. 

 

JOSH WHITE – Enclosed By You

Will You stay with me,
When I forget You’re there?
Will You still love me,
When my love lingers elsewhere?

I hear you softly speaking,
Secrets that enclose
Words that softly linger,
With sweet repose

“I will never leave you
Leave you waiting ’round
I’m the One who’s been waiting
For you to turn around
For you to turn around”

How can I contain You
When You contain everything?
The house of my soul is far too small
Still I will sing

I hear you softly speaking,
Secrets that enclose
Words that softly linger,
With sweet repose

“I will never leave you
Leave you waiting ’round
I’m the One who’s been waiting
For you to turn around
For you to turn around”

Enclosed by You
In close I see
I am in You
And You are in me

 

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