Orphan Heart

John 14:18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” This morning I asked Luke how he slept, and he replied that he had a really bad nightmare. “We were driving, and we stopped at a red light. Then to our right a bunch of orphans came out of the house and started shooting at our car. It was really scary.” It reminded me of a sharing I heard from our Senior Pastor about the orphan heart vs the heart of a son (which includes daughters). A ten year old conditioned to worry about his next meal will naturally operate from a place of scarcity. If he’s lacked the acceptance and affirmation of loving parents he will naturally strive to achieve from a place of insecurity. He will fear rejection and experience jealousy because staying ahead is a matter of survival. When we invite God into our lives, we are grafted into his family and become his children. Because our place in his house is secure, we can operate from a place of generosity and abundance, freely giving to others and enjoying their success. As I reflected on Luke’s dream, I couldn’t help but wonder if it represented the orphan heart trying to come against him and our family. Real world heroes like Nelson Mandela, Louis Armstrong, Babe Ruth, Ray Charles, and many others were orphans. The other day at dinner we noted that pretty much every superhero (Superman, Batman, Robin, Spiderman, The Flash, and Captain America etc..) seems to be orphans. Just because someone’s gifted and powerful doesn’t mean they’re not an orphan. But just because we were born with an orphan heart, doesn’t mean we’re not fully known and fully loved as children of God. Lord, thank you for calling me your son. I am your heir and co-heirs with Christ. That means I have access to everything in your house. I pray that you protect Luke, myself and any of us who are under attack from the orphan heart today. We are fully known, and fully loved. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Depressed at Night

Psalm 94:19 “In the multitude of my anxieties around me, your comforts delight my soul.” The other night when we came out of quarantine Kyan struggled to get to sleep. After some tossing and turning, he started to say things like “I can never fall asleep when I’m in this house” and “I always get depressed at night.” He started crying the sort of tears that pull at a parent’s heart strings. When we get down we tend to externalize and universalize our emotions. “I’m not feeling so great now” turns into “life is always so hard.” The norm for Kyan is to sleep in this house in a more-than-fine state of mind, so his statements about always getting depressed and never being able to sleep were a classic case of globalizing a local feeling. I knew that giving him some screen time would fix the issue at least temporarily, but instead I explained some of these concepts and tried to help him realize that life ain’t all that bad. Well this morning I read Psalm 94, and verse 19 popped out at me. I do know that in some instances God sends creature comforts to relieve my anxieties, but upon digging in I realized that the Hebrew word for “comfort” here is more a type of consolation than a creature comfort. It’s more of God trying to shift my perspective back towards his instead of changing my circumstances. It’s more telling me why it’s going to be ok instead of throwing screen time at the problem. Lord I have faith for changed circumstances, and I continue to pray for supernatural outcomes. But I know that you have work to do on the inside before you change what’s on the outside. I come into line with your perspective today, and thank you for being an awesome God, a loving Father, and a loyal friend. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Fiber Optics

John 1:5 “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God… The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” I’ll be preaching in a few weeks, and as I started to pray about what to share, I got an interesting picture today. Many of us have hit some dark moments especially over the past year and have struggled to make meaning of it. One of my friends told me that she can’t understand why bad things happen to good people, and sometimes she gets angry at God for the dark episodes in the lives of those around her. John 1 refers to Jesus as both the word and the light. It’s interesting that the infrastructure that is used to transport words from one place to another now uses light. When I type a what’s app message to my sister in New York, my phone encodes that into zeros and ones, then that is passed through fiber optic cable beneath the sea. A burst of light represents a one, while a period of darkness represents a zero. (This is a slight oversimplification but essentially the gist of it). A cable filled with constant light carries no meaning and no message besides “onnnnnnnne.” But a cable filled with moments of darkness and light can craft a word like “LOVE.” It can communicate the gospel message, that God values you so much that he sent his son to die for you. It can convey the depths of His heart through a love letter of thousands of pages called the Bible or a TV series like the Chosen. In the context of eternity, our dark moments will feel even shorter than the microscopic blips of darkness in those fiber optic cables. But while we live through them, we can take comfort that God uses them to craft a much greater message of his love. Lord, thank you for blessing me with meaning. Sometimes I wish dark moments would end, but I know that you use these for a much greater purpose. I pray for an eternal perspective today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.