WHO'S IN CONTROL?

HE MAKETH NO MISTAKE

(A. M. Overton)

My Father's way may twist and turn

My heart may throb and ache,

But in my soul I'm glad I know

He maketh no mistake.

My cherished plans may go astray

My hopes may fade away,

But still I'll trust my Lord to lead

For He doth know the way.

Though night be dark and it may seem
That day will never break
I'll pin my faith, my all in Him
He maketh no mistake

There's so much now I cannot see
My eyesight's far too dim;
But come what may, I'll surely trust
And leave it all to Him.

For by and by the mist will lift
And plain it all He'll make;
Through all the way, though dark to me
He made not one mistake.

   

EASTER SIGHTS/SOUNDS

Easter 2011 was a good thing from above.

 

Brad's family from NYC came for seven nights and the week was chocked full of grandbabies and thunderstorms, Branson and chocolate and giggling and hair bows...and a fourth birthday party.

Blue sky for four hours in Branson!  

Nate loved playing with his three girl cousins, Mike and Brad had some good time together, Laura got her AQ Chicken fix, and Mimi read lots of stories.

 

We loved getting to know our new lil Lily!  She's a wonderful third child...easy-going and expressive. Lily just mostly watched all week.

Hanna and Caroline are on the couch, watching a Sleeping Beauty DVD birthday present.

Even the daily downpour didn't seem to matter so much.

Of course, now Hanna and Caroline associate Arkansas with loud thunder and lightning and rain.

And so do we.

Doubletree Drive went under water for the first time ever.

You can't see our house, but it is behind, at the top of the hill.

We have yet to hear the official rain totals, but we know just in the last week we got 12-15 inches.

This is what we call "the bottoms" down the hill from the house.


Our neighbor Phoebe said we added $100k to the home value because it is waterfront property.


The weather WAS a big story this week, but also we heard that in an alternate reality, Lady Gaga released a new tune @Easter, praising Judas.  The song was predictably provocative.  Gaga joins a list of those through the ages who would presume on Jesus' vulnerability.  I am awestruck to consider that the Rescuer would volunteer for His assignment considering the hostility...or worse, the apathy...that was His.  THAT is the passion of the Christ.

I wonder if Lady Gaga is one of the ones Jesus talked about from the cross.  Remember when He asked His Father to "forgive them because they know not what they do"?  Gaga is a moxie New Yorker who picked the time of the song's release specifically for maximum impact.  Can she plead ignorance of what she was doing?

No more than I.  Lady Gaga will stand to give her own account, but what I know is that when I sin, it is not out of ignorance.  I know I'm sinning; I do wrong because I want to.  I don't need a primer on WHAT sin is, I need to know how to get out from under it and keep from doing it again.  When Jesus made that statement on the cross, He meant that those around the cross had no clue that His crucifixion was their way out of sin and the Father's good plan.  The Romans didn't kill Jesus.  Nor did the Jews.  The things that I did against a holy God required Jesus' death.

And at His death, the Bible says several things happened...

DARKNESS
When the Light of the world breathed His last, God turned out the great light.  From noon (when the sun should have been highest in the sky) until three in the afternoon, it was dark.  God punctuated His Son's death with a global notification.  He gave us the darkness we asked for when we rejected the Light.

EARTHQUAKES
The Japanese might attest to how unsettling earthquakes can be.  But the Jerusalem earthquake was even more unsettling because that quake rattled the tombs open.  Then the Bible says the dead were brought to life and walked around and were recognized by many people.  Whoa!  Three days later, perhaps it was an aftershock that rolled the stone away from Jesus' tomb.  God had no problem moving the stone because we needed to see inside.


TORN CURTAIN
In the picture of the temple you can see three distinct areas.

The large area in front of the temple was the public area where a pilgrim would come bring their sacrifice for purification.

Moving to the back, the next section was for the priests to go about their daily maintenance and sacrifices.

Then the tallest area in back was the place called the Holy of Holies, home to the presence of God.  It was separated from the rest of the temple space behind a thick interwoven drapery, three stories tall. When Jesus died, the temple curtain was torn in two from top to bottom.

The torn curtain revealed what was inside the Holy of Holies...the Ark of the Covenant covered in pure gold.




The ark was said to contain the tablets of the Ten Commandments, Aaron's rod, and a container of manna.

On top of the ark was the mercy seat, guarded by cherubim.  


When the high priest brought in the sacrifice, the blood was sprinkled onto the mercy seat.  


God meets man on the basis of the blood sacrifice which covers sin.

The people and even the priests are separated from God because of their sin and His holiness.

Only the high priest was allowed behind the curtain and that was only one time a year, on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).

He came into the Holy of Holies with a sacrifice for himself and for the nation of Israel for the past year.

Today Jesus is our High Priest.  When He died, the  curtain was torn.  We realize that man could not have torn the thick curtain. The tear was from top to bottom so that we would know Who did the tearing and what it symbolized.

Jesus' death made a way into God's presence.  Now there would be no more need to placate God by bringing animal sacrifices.  Through Christ, man can go directly into the throne room of God.  What a Savior!

Hebrews says "Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can take new courage, for we can hold on to his promise with confidence.  This confidence is like a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain of heaven into God’s inner sanctuary.  Jesus has already gone in there for us.  He has become our eternal High Priest."  Hebrews 6.18-20


Last week was a pretty special Easter for the Cruse family.  We were thankful for the grand privilege of celebrating the resurrection together, and thankful that all the adults have Christ in common.  


Mike and I sense that the crazy weather is just one factor pointing to the hastening day of Christ.  While some may call it "global warming", we continue to watch for the next prophetic puzzle piece from God's timetable as it falls into place.  When Israel builds her third temple and begins again the sacrificial system...things will heat up.


Keep looking above!

TRIUMPHAL ENTRY

Ever wonder why the Lord's ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was called the Triumphal Entry?  In just a few days, some in this crowd may have migrated over to the crowd clamoring for Barabbas.  Talk about turning on a dime!  I've often trembled to think which crowd I would have been a part of...had I been there.

King Jesus didn't ride into town like the other nation's kings.  A king would have been seated on a majestic horse in a processional.  My Burden-bearer sat humbly on a small beast of burden.  Kings would not likely have touched a leper or washed men's feet or (in honor of April 15th) eaten with a tax collector.  This king was unique.  The One who came to seek and save also came to serve.

Not everyone came out to see Jesus although His message is available to everyone.  I like this picture because Jesus is painted in the center as the focal point.  Just off to the right, you see evidence of people calling out to Him and praising Him.  They "get it".  Just as today, Jesus is calling out to those who know they need a way back to God.

The doves are in the picture to remind us that without a sacrifice, there is no entry into God's presence.  When Passover worshippers came to Jerusalem, they were required to bring a sacrifice.  Some of them came a long distance, so they found it easier to buy a lamb after they arrived at the temple.  That is how the worship tenor morphed into free enterprise.  Livestock and doves were marked up and sold; foreign money was exchanged into Judean currency for profit.  If the common man was too poor to buy a lamb, the dove was in their price range.

This picture speaks humility to me.  The illustrator gave Jesus eyes that are cast down amidst the adulation.  To the left, the worshipper is in a penitent position.

"The sacrifices God desires are a humble spirit – O God, a humble and repentant heart you will not reject."  Psalm 51.17
   
The precious older man on the right has probably been looking for the Messiah all his life.  Now when he sees Jesus, he raises his hands to heaven in thanks.  The Book says that good gifts are from above.

 I love the way the mother is introducing her child to Jesus.  From the youngest to the oldest, Jesus is the Way.

In this third picture, there is much enthusiasm for Jesus.  Look at the faces of the crowd as they revel in His presence.  The green lushness is prominent and suggests new life.  The people lay their clothes down before Him as though they are rolling out the red carpet for the Lord.  They wave their branches and shout "Hosanna!" (meaning "save us").  People who know they need salvation are blessed by the joy of weightlessness.

The Messiah was described in the Old Testament in two different ways.  Some verses pictured the powerful Lion of Judah, while other verses talked of Messiah being a suffering Servant.  This crowd did not have our advantage of looking back over the timeline to realize the Messiah would come twice.  They were just looking for relief from the heavy hand of Rome...and that made the Lion of Judah very appealing.  But when they realized they had gotten the Lamb, not everyone was pleased.  I have been known to argue with God's plan, too.

Yet through it all, God's plan would end in unshakeable triumph.  Reaching out to mankind in kindness, God sent both His Son and His Spirit.  It was the power of God the Holy Spirit that brought the Son into the world (Matthew 1.18).  It was the power of God the Holy Spirit who filled Jesus and led Him into the wilderness to stand against the devil (Luke 4.1).  Then it was power of God the Holy Spirit who gave the Son confidence to trust the Father and bear the steep hill ahead of Him.  Jesus believed the Holy Spirit would accomplish His resurrection...so as the Lamb of God, He could lay His life down as THE sin sacrifice.

Now with accessibility (access ability), I can boldly go directly into God's throne room.  No more doves.  No more lambs.  And His once-for-ever sacrifice also accomplished my adoption.  Listen to Max Lucado explain Ephesians 1.5...

"God adopted you simply because he wanted to. You were in his good will and pleasure. Knowing full well the trouble you would be and the price he would pay, he signed his name next to yours and changed your name to his and took you home. Your Abba adopted you and became your Father."


In the kingdom of this world, a legal adoption does not happen without a petition to the court.  Similarly, we spiritually petition the final Judge that He would cleanse us and assume our guardianship.  And the hinge on that petition?  He waits for us to admit, submit, and commit.


Triumphal entry.

SEEING RED

Once upon a time, there was a man named John Smith who headed a family with financial woes.  In the red and under a pile of credit card bills, John stepped up to the bat and began to take financial responsibility.

He told his wife that they were going to have to tighten the belt and make some changes.  She knew it had to happen, but inwardly she began making a mental list of all the things she hoped weren't part of those new changes.

Family expenses were laid out on the table.  They had to eat (check), pay the mortgage (check), and there were some pay downs and monthlies that clamored to the top of the list.  What was left?

They had to decide about giving God a portion of their income.  There were school expenses....and they had to decide their basic needs for eating out/entertainment/gifts.  They needed a whole column for gas.  Where could they prioritize?  They looked for slack everywhere.

Mr. Smith decided the beginning place was to frame a budget. He got his children involved and his heart melted as he listened to how his kids wanted to help.  Mrs. Smith took comfort.  Although times were a challenge, her husband was protecting his family and they were pulling the load together.  What is a massage or getting her nails done...compared to that?  Larry Burkett says that being debt-free is the new BMW.

On a larger scale, the President is our leader, in charge of a DEEP debt hole (14.3 trillion) that has the potential to destroy our country without a shot.  Americans put the economic issue as second only to the issue of keeping us safe from terrorism.

WWtSD (What Would the Smith's Do?)  Think they'd spend their way out of the red?  What if the Smith's plan to cut spending was to just freeze their current uber-spending level?  Would that help?  That was the budget proposal the President offered back in February.  But that just plays games with columns of future figures.  The proposed budget didn't do one single thing that his "governing by committee" Debt Commission suggested.  Printing more money can't be counted as a real plan.  It is morally abject for America to continue to spend above what we have...and further hock ourselves to the Chinese.

The President SAYS the economy is important, but what does he DO?  The budget was "business not attended to" while his party was the majority from 2007 until last fall.  Why?  Claire McCaskill (Senator, Missouri) said in an interview that they didn't have the numbers.  The majority...short on numbers?  Translation:  WE can't even commit to what we wrote.   

If you are saying that Congress writes the budget and not the President, that's right.  But it is the President's job to cast the vision and herd the cats.  Now the Republicans have come up with a budget, so the President is working on a totally different one.  He is scheduled to tell us about it tomorrow night.  Well, good.  We need one.

But it will be interesting.  The man who made the excess debt is now in a position to have to cut his own doing.   Cut, baby, cut!

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."   Thomas Jefferson

A PURE HEART

The newspaper reports that a man with child pornography creatively chose an autism defense.  Huh?  He's saying his autism made him do it?  Now THERE are some bodacious fig leaves.  Apparently his defense worked because our whomper-jawed justice system gave the man a suspended sentence.  Man's justice has spoken, but there is another justice system coming that understands a pure heart.

Just what would that pure heart look like?  I think of my sweet grandmother, Bessie Clough.  "Miss Bessie" was born and lived her whole life in Des Arc, a tiny Arkansas town beside the White River.  In it's heyday, Des Arc numbered  2,000 folks; now the number is pushing 1,600.


"Over the river and through the woods" were the GPS coordinates for getting to our Grandmother's house.  My younger brother Tim and I always dreaded going over Des Arc's famous swinging suspension bridge (1940-1970).  It was unsettling to meet another vehicle and sway with that old bridge.  
Born in 1889, my grandmother was the mother of three surviving children.  She never owned a car and walked everywhere she went.  She graduated from high school at 16 and was teaching school at 21.  The most amazing thing about her was that she NEVER said a bad word about anyone.  I actively (and perversely) tried her on this "never a bad word" trait.  Miss Bessie had a widowed sister-in-law who lived next door that could be...well...irritating.  The minute our car pulled up in front of Grandmother's, we would time Aunt Annie and place bets on how long it would take her to arrive.  Grandmother always just said "well, she's lonesome".  See what I mean?

If you know the personality types, Grandmother was phlegmatic.  Ask a phlegmatic if they would rather have coffee or tea, and they answer "whatever you have the most of".  It wasn't that she didn't have opinions or preferences.  She just didn't want to be a bother and most things WERE all right with her.  She had two daughters who lovingly served as her managers.  My mother Sue and her sister Margaret were 17 months apart in age and they pretty much double-teamed Grandmother.  They relieved her of her favorite tattered chenille robe.  They monitored her underwear drawer, removing worn britches and adding "good" underwear.  They might bring her new furniture and rearrange her living room.  She just let them...and then after they left, she moved it back.

Grandmother's last name was "Clough" and that rhymes with "rough" and "tough".  Bessie wasn't the least bit rough, but she WAS tough in the way a yellow crocus survives a cold March wind.  She weathered life circumstances that would have crushed a lesser faith.

Ransom Clough was Bessie's husband.  He crossed the White River in a boat one day to hunt squirrels in the bottoms on the other side.  On the way back, his boat capsized and his hip boots filled up and he was seen to call out for help before he went under water.

Grandmother waited as the men in town searched for her husband and it wasn't until the next morning that the river gave up his body.  Bessie later expressed her appreciation in the White River Journal for the townspeople's outpouring of love.  She wrote "...especially to those who worked so faithfully and so untiringly during the long hours of that never-to-be-forgotten night and day of our Gethsemane, while we prayed and waited...we truly thank you."

Now a 42 year-old widow with three children, Bessie concluded by saying..."I will bow humbly to the One who does all things well".  This sweet woman's acceptance of God's sovereignty set the trust bar for me.

 Life can be bumpy and Grandmother had already experienced the loss of one child to whooping cough and had made room for her blind mother to live with them.  But times got really hard in 1932 because she lost Ransom AND her Mama within months.

With her children to support, Miss Bessie went back to teaching school.  When she retired, she had taught the second grade for 32 years in the same room.  All those years she also taught Sunday School at her church.  So if you were from Des Arc, my grandmother probably taught you something.






This is a picture of the Prairie County courthouse, built in Des Arc in 1912.  Out behind this wonderful old building is the jail where Grandmother once was summoned.  One of her former students was a guest of the county and had asked to see his second grade teacher.

Each year Miss Bessie required her class to memorize a poem about the Ten Commandments.  As Grandmother visited with this man in jail, tears ran down his face as he recited the poem and said "Mrs. Clough, I sure wish I had paid better attention to what you taught us."

No gods before Me shalt thou own; 

Place not an idol on My throne

Speak not God's name in careless way;

Remember, keep God's holy day

Honor and heed thy parent's will;

Bear this in mind, thou shalt not kill
In all thy words and ways be clean,
For all things by God are seen.

Tell not a lie or act untrue,

And want no more than God gives you.

Tim and I had cousins named Rick and Chris who were about our age.  We all were carted to Des Arc for each holiday.  As teens, we thought it was a boring place with its one teeny-weeny Dairy Bar.  But when we were little, Grandmother spiced things up by paying us a penny for each bumble bee we swatted out on her honeysuckle vines.  That kept us busy and motivated, and the pace was fast for those three boys.  Each Christmas we had the same thing under the tree.  Bessie sat and picked out pecans during the fall, and we got a quart jar of pecan halves with a five dollar bill on top.  We were happy.  

A widowed schoolteacher with three children needed to watch her pennies.  So when Miss Bessie's firstborn son was 18, he left home to lighten her load and to be able to earn money to send back home.  My uncle went far from home in more than one sense.  He lived in Colorado as a bartender, imprisoned in an addiction.  Grandmother never seemed bitter about "losing" that son although I know it broke her heart.  His visits were few, but she always received him warmly.  And again, I never heard her say a critical word about her son.

When I see Grandmother, I want to ask her why she never remarried.  I can remember Sue and Margaret teasing their Mama about a tall man who was sweet on Bessie for a long time.  He was a gentle man who for years faithfully gave Grandmother a ride to church.  When I asked Mother about why Miss Bessie remained single, Mother sheepishly replied "because Margaret and I really didn't want her to marry".  Mother was embarrassed about that, but she and her sister had to get older to realize the full impact on their mother after they left home and Grandmother was all alone.  Sometimes you just have to live life to understand things.





Miss Bessie lived to be 86 and ovarian cancer was her final foe.  My regret was that when Grandmother needed spiritual encouragement, I did not know Christ and I had nothing to offer.  One night as she faced cancer surgery the next morning, I went into her room to kiss her goodnight.  Uncharacteristically, Miss Bessie confessed "I'm afraid!" and big tears came to her eyes.  I was embarrassed to not know what to say.  Probably I just meaninglessly said "oh, it'll be OK, Grandmother".  How I wish I had given her a Scripture or reminded her of a way that the Lord had supported me.  That would have pointed her upward and helped to calm her spirit.


From my vantage point, Bessie Clough lived on history's timeline when it seemed easier to maintain a pure heart.  Des Arc was like Mayberry!   I would venture a guess that she never was tempted by pornography and she wouldn't have the slightest idea what a snuff movie or a copycat murder was.  How could she begin to conceive of what drugs would free people to do?  Or in her worst nightmare, could she imagine that Islamofascists would be lopping off people's heads in their modern-day quest to take over the world?


The knowledge of evil takes up valuable space in a mind.  It takes away room for wholesome, edifying thoughts.  The knowledge of evil puts disobedience on a low, convenient shelf.  Wish Eve had passed on that garden Fuji.  


Of course, Miss Bessie didn't get her ticket to heaven because she was a sweet lady who thought good thoughts.  Everyone sins, and even the sin of a sheltered second grade school teacher would have separated her from God.  Grandmother's pure heart came when she said YES to Christ and God viewed her heart as covered.  


Matthew 5.8 says there's a reward for the pure in heart...they will see God.  I get a lot of comfort in thinking about Miss Bessie enjoying the Lord's presence now.  For all those years, He was her Savior and she served Him faithfully and pointed others to Him.  For her forty-four years as a widow, He was her Husband and she leaned back into His ability to protect her.  When she drew her last breath, she got to see His face.  


Now Grandmother is in my "cloud of witnesses" who encourage my walk.  I thank the Lord for the way He still uses her example of a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.