Hope for Life Blog

The call went out and he answered it right away, without knowing any of the details. “Send me” were his words. Then he found out what he was to do, tell everyone in the geographic area that calamity and destruction were coming. He then asked how long did he have to do that? Until it all happened!

From a modern perspective, that job description left a lot to be desired. For Isaiah, the Old Testament seer of vision and preacher of woe took years to complete his task. His writings cover 66 chapters almost all focusing on one theme: God is God.

Over and over through Isaiah’s pen Jehovah says: “I am the Lord, that is my Name!” (42:8); “… says the Lord that I am God” (43:12). Declarative statements of power and authority. Foundational basis for the coming of His son Jesus. That may be why Isaiah is the most quoted Old Testament prophet in the New Testament and Jesus himself quotes Isaiah extensively.

The importance and value of knowing that God is God are also in the words of Isaiah:

But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary
They shall walk and not faint (40:31).

So, do you believe God is God? Why? What specific things can you point to or that you have experienced prove to you that God is God?

How many times did he sit after a grueling day and wonder how he got into this mess?

His instructions were clear—lead this group to a specific place. While he delegated tasks to different teams, the responsibility was always his. He set security, dealt with health issues, even made sure there was enough to eat and drink.

And always he took the instructions he was given and led the way.

Many times his teams thought they knew better, presented different plans of action, wanted to change directions, even wanted to reinterpret the instructions he’d been given. And how many times did they ask “are we there yet?”

Things got so bad that more than once the power that be wanted to terminate the whole organization and create a new group. Even his own brother, chosen for a unique function, had failed miserably. And so he would beg and plead that one be eliminated.

And every day, he was responsible, he was the one who had to get them there.

It takes the whole books of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy to tell of his getting there. Moses leading his rag tag motley group of humanity as they purpose to enter the promised land.

“Then the Lord said to me, ‘Arise, begin your journey before the people, that they may go in and possess the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. And now, Israel, what does the lord your God require of you, but to fear the lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good?’”
Deut. 10:11-13

Those ancient words are the same that we ask our people to embrace as we move to our own promised land—Heaven. All who claim Jesus as our Savior must accept the responsibility of helping get our people to Heaven. It cannot be abdicated. The instructions we’ve been given, the God breathed scripture we believe, cannot be reinterpreted to match the demands of our culture.

We, too, must impress the words of God upon the hearts of our rag-tag, motley, sinful portion of humanity.

So the questions remain: Have you abdicated your responsibility to help get people to Heaven? Have the demands of our culture redirected your attention and interests? Should you care?

What do you think?

She sits in a straight backed desk chair, dressed in a festive shirt and sweater, slowly and carefully unwrapping each item, running her fingers over the surface as if to absorb the impression contained within. Then she carefully hangs the treasure on just the right branch somehow knowing the place had been reserved for it only. Her white hair gleams, the result of the decision to cease the hair coloring addiction and go a la natural a year or so earlier. Her eyes dart from the item to its assigned place and a smile curves her lips, as images of years past flood her mind.

To my wife of 40 years, Christmas is wondrous time and decorating the tree may be the single best part of the season. It’s not the ornaments, but the memories they evoke that bring her so much joy. Each ornament has a story; the parachuting Santa Clause when both of our sons jumped out of a perfectly functioning airplane, the flannel Beefeaters from Harrods’s when we visited England, the ornaments purchased to commemorate the births of our 3 grandchildren, the handmade wreath with our middle son’s picture from first grade. These are Christmas ornaments some decades old, chronicling our life’s events, big and small. When the grandchildren help decorate the tree, she has told them the stories so often that they now say, “and this little ferryboat was when you and Papa went to some island, isn’t it Nana?” and then she tells about our brief visit to Martha’s Vineyard some 15 years ago.

The scene takes place every December and every year new memories are added to the tree. Every year she unwraps them, and remembers. I am envious of her gift and am thankful that she freely tells all who listen, the memories of our family.

In our family, the green artificial pine tree with its multicolored lights and ornaments is the Brant Family Memory Tree.

So this holiday season as you gather around the Thanksgiving table and sit by the Yule Tree also remember the words of the doctor as he described that night long ago:

“Then the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.
For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord and this will be the sign to you; you will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men.”

So what are your favorite memories of the Thanksgiving and Christmas?
Do God and Jesus have a part in your families celebration of those days?
Has the reason for the season been forgotten?
What does “and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men” look like to you?

In 1855, at the age of 43, an English man penned the question: “ Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a Heaven for?”

Robert Browning, a major poet of the Victorian Age and husband of equally famous poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning and considered a “hottie” of the time, framed the query in his Andrea Del Sarto, “The Faultless Painter”. In dramatic style, the concept is formed that humans strive for things seemingly unattainable. Yet they still reach, struggle, stretch in hope of acquiring that which they desire.

One hundred and fifty five years later you and I are no different, except that we accept the flimsy instead of the real. We grasp for fame, fortune, wannabeism, fashions of the moment and chose not to aspire for the things that are eternally important and significant.

So what are you reaching for? Once you attain it, will it really be worthwhile? Where is God in your life or is He?

I know what they felt like:

I understand how Abraham felt when he said “I am a foreigner and a visitor among you” in Genesis 23:4.

I have experienced the loneliness that is expressed by Moses when he names his first born, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land” in Exodus 2:22.

I know what it’s like to travel to someplace for the first time, not speaking the language, not understanding the customs, not recognizing the sign for the bathrooms, being alone.

I have been a stranger in a foreign land.

I know those feelings, that dread, fear, because that’s how I felt when I went to Cuba for the first time two years ago.

Let me tell you about that first trip:

The flight was 3 hours late, arriving at 12:30 in the morning. After going through customs and immigration we stepped outside and saw Tony Fernandez, who had been Herald of Truth’s representative in that island nation for 14 years, waiting for us. I recognized him from pictures taken by my colleagues Tim Archer and Steve Ridgell on their previous visits.

After a very short night’s sleep in Havana, the trip to Matanzas, about two hours northeast, is somewhat of a blur only highlighted by the people we met: Ammiel Perez who is the minister of the Havana Church, some radio listeners who had learned about Jesus from Tim’s daily program, the men who were rebuilding an old city bus to be used to pick up members of the congregation living in the surrounding country side, the visit to the farm where food is grown to give to church members, and meeting Tony’s wife Liudmila and his young daughter Susana.

Then we went to the church building. I had seen it in pictures, but being there reminded me that a courtyard of a home with a corrugated sheet metal roof is just as holy as any building we have in the United States. Suddenly, I felt at home. I sat down and just thought about all that God had done there. And that tomorrow, Sunday, I would worship here.

I was both anxious and eager that Sunday morning as Tony drove us the 20 minutes from our hotel in Varadero back to Matanzas. The closer we got the more anxious and less eager I got. How would they greet me, an old white haired Yankee?

That morning I was the last of our group to enter. I, the stranger in a foreign land, was greeted with smiles, hugs, kisses; I was a distant relative returning home. It didn’t matter that all I could say was “halo”, “gracias”; it didn’t matter that I was different.

I had felt like Abraham and Moses, a stranger in a foreign land, but I was and am family.

It’s the same thing that the apostle Paul talks about in Ephesians 2:19-22.

Now, Therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

They and I are no longer strangers or foreigners. And while we live far apart, we are family! We are part of the household of God. We are brothers and sisters because of Jesus.

This last March I again traveled back to Matanzas and again worshipped with my Cuban church family. We were united physically and spiritually.

And I thanked them for welcoming me home.

So here is the question for you: Are you a stranger in a foreign land?

And another: Do you want to be part of a family and will always care about you?

And then: How do you think you’ll find it?

It was something that happened on a regular basis, at least from the image of the Hebrew language, the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

But this time it was different:

• Both the man and woman had disobeyed God

• They had hidden themselves from God

• God was walking alone

• God must have known why it was different because He is God

Then the question that could be heard throughout the garden, by all of God’s creatures “Where Are You?”

This is how Genesis 3:8-9 reads: “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him ‘where are you’.”

I am struck by the fact that immediately after they disobeyed Him, God still wants to know where they are. And while there are consequences to their action, it is God who makes them clothes (v 21) and even after they left the garden, the man and the woman acknowledge God as the one from who life comes. Gen. 4:1

God is always asking “where are you?”, even after you have sinned against Him.

How many times after the Jews leave Egypt did they say they would do what God has commanded, and didn’t?

How many times in the book of Judges does it say “and the Jews did what was right in their own eyes” and had to have God rescue them by sending judge after judge?

Saul, David and the prophets personally and representationally claimed to follow God and then disobeyed.

And still God called, wanting to know where they were.

It is in Luke 15:4-9, that Jesus tells about the Shepherd who searches until he finds the last sheep and rejoices. It was the Shepherd who did the looking.

It is God who sent His Son to allow us to live with Him (John 3:16) and then read verse 17. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that through Him might be saved.”

It is the final book of the Bible, Revelation, where this idea becomes complete, 3:20 “Behold I stand at the door and knock, if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to Him and dine with him and he with me.”

God, Jesus, take the initiative, they are at the door.

The action of God at the beginning of the world-calling to know where you are; knowing that you have disobeyed Him is the same at the end of the world as He stands at the door waiting for you to open it.

So when God asked you “where are you?” why haven’t you answered?

Do you feel unworthy to open the door?

If you have answered and opened the door, tell me what that felt like.

It would be impossible to calculate the thousands of miles they trudged, how often their feet and muscles ached from the journey or if they suffered from “Ship-lag” crossing seas. Yet, secular history tells of the “doubter” who went to India and maybe as far as China, the fisherman who brought his brother to the Messiah who traveled the Volga to what is now the Ukraine or the zealot who took the message to Egypt and then to Persia, modern day Iraq.

They, Paul, whose missionary journeys are detailed in the book of Acts, and many more fulfilled their mission. This mission given by Jesus to his disciples, and those who were called Apostles: and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the Earth. Acts 1:8

The importance of being a witness is reaffirmed throughout Acts 1:22, 2:32, 3:15, 5:32, 10:39-41.

Witness is to publicly attest that what was said or done actually happened because one has seen it.

History notes that Christians traveled the width and breadth of their world, turning it upside down, witnessing of the works and words of the Messiah.

We, the present day followers of Jesus, are the progeny of those men and women of the first century. The mission is now ours! With 2/3 of the 6.7 billion of the world’s population who don’t know Jesus, we have much to do.

We must fulfill the mission given them centuries ago and has been given us as well.

Are you a witness? Tell us how, where and when? Most importantly tell us WHY? If you are not then what keeps you from doing so?

The question is always blunt, direct, personal, and demanding. Once asked, it must be answered. The challenge, once made, requires a response validating your position. The question is not politically correct and the answer offers no public relations subtleties.

“How do you know?” How do you know God is real? How do you know there is a heaven or hell? And maybe the most important question of all, how do you know you’re going to heaven?

To answer those How do you know? questions, scripture says: “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed.” I Peter 3:15-16

This is one of those interesting human dilemmas that we feel trapped by. When we try to explain how we know, there is a fear that others will interrogate us as to why we made such a dreadfully poor decision. Yet look at the words. It says we are to give a reason for our faith. It’s not a debate to prove whose reasons are best; it’s not a dictate that everyone believes exactly the same on every subject; and it’s not collective wisdom. It’s why you, personally and individually, believe. How did you come to those conclusions?

When we stand before God Almighty at the final judgment, it will only be you and Jesus who have to answer for you. The opinions, beliefs and choices of others will not be admissible.

So, how DO YOU know? Tell me what you know and more importantly, how you know it……..

“Must, must, must – all of us get in our minds that this world is not our home, and that life, at best, is transitory.”

The email from a friend of forty years was prompted by his just finding out that another long time friend was diagnosed with cancer and the future was clouded at best. Things change when we realize our time is short. Oh, I know we cavalierly say that we’re all terminal, it’s just a matter of when we die not if. Yet, bravado usually is short lived when the real end is near.

As believers in an Almighty God we mentally, sometimes verbally, and even on rare occasions orally acknowledge the faith we confidently hope to see His face in heaven as promised in Revelation 22:4.

Yet we live our lives as if our earthly existence is the only place we’ll ever live. We are supposed to be in the world but not of the world. As followers of the Messiah, we are to be different, with our focus on heaven. Not on a car, a job, or a house in the “good” neighborhood.

I am reminded of the words Albert Brumley penned in 1937:

This world is not my home, I’m just passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

The images of being pilgrims, strangers, wanderers in this world are in both the Old and New Testaments. That the journey is not complete until we are with Jehovah Raffa as described in Revelation 21. So what about the here and now? How do we exist on this side of Heaven? The words of Jesus reverberate through the centuries: “I have given them Your Word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that You take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.” John 17: 14-15.

It seems most opportune that as a new year begins, we must recalibrate our perspectives and live as if we truly believe that “life, at best, is transitory” and being with God is where we want to live.

So how do we recalibrate? How do you prepare to be a pilgrim in a land that is not your home? What does that really mean? Yeah I got the questions, it’s the answers that keep me searching. Let me know what you think.