Secure Lot or Lot Secure

Tuesday 11/20/2012 7:19 AM

Last Friday Jaci and I met with our financial advisor to review our financial plan and see how things looked for retirement.  He made a presentation in which he projected our expenses and our income into the future and then compared them.  It appears that we should be able to live off of my pension to meet our daily expenses and then use our investment income to do some traveling, if we desire.  He said that, barring any major medical issues, we should be able to retire with few worries.  I have never worried at all about retirement but hearing the words from a neutral third party gave me some sense of relief.

This morning I read Psalm 16, my psalm for the week, and a short phrase at the end of verse 5 caught my attention.  It says, “…you (God) make my lot secure.”  The part that caught my attention was the order of the words.  It does not say that God gives me a secure lot; it says he makes my lot secure.  To me, a secure lot implies that everything is hunky dory, I have a comfortable job, a nice family, I live in a nice neighborhood, and so on.  The idea of God making my lot secure has a different connotation.  That implies that my lot may include losing my job, having a dysfunctional family, being homeless or living in an undesirable neighborhood, and so on, but God will enter those insecure circumstances and make me secure.

I remember when I quit my job at Valley Christian without having another job lined up.  I spent two months of my life without having the security of a new teaching contract.  At that time I was in very insecure circumstances but I felt more peace and security during those two months than at any other time in my life.  I knew I had been obedient to God in leaving my job at Valley Christian and I knew God would provide for me and for my family.  Even though I didn’t know how he would provide I knew he would do so.  My reading today also includes Luke 12:6-7, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?  Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.  Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”  If I believe that I have great worth to a loving God it is natural to have confidence that he will make my lot secure.

The Fly Away Life

Monday 11/12/2012 5:40 AM

My psalm for the week is Psalm 90.  Verse 10 caught my eye as I read this morning.  “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.”  I will celebrate my fifty-seventh birthday later this month and for some reason I realized that the seventy years referred to in Psalm 90:10 is only thirteen years away.  The last part of the verse that speaks of passing quickly and flying away certainly hit home to me this morning.

My thoughts began to swirl within my head and I thought about one of the songs I practiced with a men’s octet yesterday entitled I’ll Fly Away.  The implication of the song is that someday I will fly away to a home beyond where everything will be wonderful.  In the meantime, I simply hang on here and long for a better future.

Many Christians today have that same idea, we are simply pilgrims passing through a foreign land on our way to our true home.  Something about that way of thinking seems wrong to me.  If that were all there was to life why would God even bother putting us in this world?  Why not simply make us to be born in heaven where we could live in perfection from the get go?

When God created the world he placed man in the garden and walked with him and they lived together in community.  Man’s disobedience and his desire to be like God was what ruined that relationship and God is at work to reconcile mankind to himself.  God redeems me so that I can have relationship with him and to be an agent of reconciliation in the world, to show the world how life can be lived to the fullest.  God doesn’t want me to long for heaven on earth; he wants me to bring heaven to earth.  I can experience oneness with God and true community with my neighbor today, there is no need to wait for the sweet by and by.  I pray that I can be that kind of person, one who ushers the kingdom of God into this broken world.