Dividing lines Luke 23

And they cast lots, dividing up His garmens among themselves. Luke 23:34

Continuing on the theme...here is the passage that fulfills the prophecy of Psalm 22 we studied yesterday. David sees Jesus, torn and battered, forsaken by God, suffering immensely, and the added insult of taking the one thing he had, his clothes, and shooting craps to divide them up. I don't know why they would have wanted them. Were they a keepsake of the biggest day in history? I imagine they were blood-stained themselves if they made it up to the crucifixion site. Who would want bloody clothes even if they were unique and valuable? Blood doesn't really wash out very well unless they had some sort of peroxide that would take it out that I don't know about. Or if they were taken off and taken to the hill with him, was it a reward for the soldiers to get the victims' possessions? I'm not that historically knowledgeable, but there had to be something to be gained from owning them.

But the clothes were not the only thing being divided that day. For there were other divisions. The disciples and Jesus' mother and other women stood weeping while the rulers mocked him. His followers were sharply divided from His condemners. Then there were the soldiers, who also became divided...they started by mocking, but after the earthquake, one declared that He was a righteous man and knew this was wrong. It said the people looked on. Some were convinced that He deserved this for declaring Himself God, and other convinced that He was the Messiah and that this made no sense.

And then there were the criminals. They were divided, one on his right and one on his left. Matthew 27:44 says they were both insulting Him, saying He should save Himself. But Luke gives a different story. Is this a contradiction in scripture? No, I don't think so...because all of scripture is true. So let's work this out...

Jesus was on the cross for 3 hours. Many things happened over this time. Jesus forgave verbally. He talked to God out loud, crying out using Old Testament scripture. He took care of His mother. They had posted a sign above Him charging Him with being the Kings of the Jews. And in this time I do believe that the heart of one robber, as the Matthew text called him, melted. Even in the unrighteous death of Christ, He was not unrighteous. Even though blameless, He did not blame. He took this whole thing with an air about Him that showed that this was a mission, not a mistake. And the robber saw and realized that Jesus had done nothing to deserve the death that He was dying. And I never noticed before that he asked Jesus to remember him when He comes into His kingdom. What was Jesus charged with? Being the King of the Jews. We don't know if this robber was a Jew or not, but he realized that Jesus was THE KING, and that His kingdom was not of this world. That was the sort of kingdom, that of righteousness, sacrifice, love, caring, peace, and purpose, that he wanted to be a part of. He was begging not to suffer eternally for his sins. He realized that the earthly suffering he had brought on himself, and his eternal condition was not looking a whole lot better. But Jesus...He could and would do something about it, and when Jesus said he would be with Him that very day in paradise, well, that poor man could die in peace. Jesus divided the criminals. One looked only at the external, mortal, and selfish condition and scorned the one who would take his sin, and the other knew his pitiful state, his need to be saved from more than a mortal death, and looked to the one He knew had the power and authority to let him into the kingdom. Jesus divides people today into those same camps. There are the scorners and there are the followers, the accusers and the confessors, those who blame everything on someone else, and those who take responsibility for their errors and ask for forgiveness and new life.

So which side of the cross are you on? Or is your own heart divided? Are you not sure what to think of the cross, the men on it, or the reason He would suffer for you? Pick up a Bible. Read the New Testament first...you don't have to read it in order. Start with John, then Luke, then Matthew or Mark. Then move to Acts, read a few of the smaller letters, and then Corinthians. Save Revelation til you understand who this Jesus is...and then take on the first few chapters to see that He deals with the church before He deals with the rest of the sinful world, and then recreates everything so that sin will no longer have an effect on the universe.

Jesus calls you, He sets the example for you, and He tells you who He is, how much He loves you, and how that love is played out in a person's life when the Spirit comes and takes residence in your life. Don't skip any of it, or just turn to a preacher or church to figure these things out. Spend time with the One who calls you. We are called the Bride of Christ, which implies an intimate relationship, not just a king and His subjects. We are brides, brothers, priests, friends, and children, and all that those titles imply. Draw near, marvel like the thief did, and come to the same point he did. You won't regret it.

Divided we fall Psalm 22

They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. Psalm 22:18

If you say, “You covered this verse before!,” you are right. It is quoted in the New Testament among the verses of the crucifixion. But Psalm 22 gives us the back story, more insight into the thoughts and feelings of Jesus while on the cross. The dividing of the garments was the fulfillment of this passage of scripture, one more proof that Jesus was the Messiah long foretold. How David saw this...what kind of vision, what kind of experience lead him to write this, we don't know. But he nailed it, literally.

The words of Christ on the cross start this Psalm. From the beginning we are caught up in the agony, despair, and torture of the One crying out. If you can envision Jesus on the cross, whipped into a pulpy mess, crown of thorns tearing at his face, people jeering and taunting while others look on in despair, it is hard not to weep with Him. This whole passage, when read parallel to the gospels points out even to their taunts of if He is the Son of God, why doesn't God bring Him down and save Him. They didn't realize that He was saving THEM, not needing saving Himself.

By verse 15, He is dying, with more accounts to follow of actions taken at His feet, one of which was the dividing of the only things He could call His own, His clothes. He was delivered from the sword, as it was only used on Him after He died. Even though God had turned His face away, God still heard the cries, which were not cries of pain and agony, but cries to forgive those who were torturing Him. Cries to be taken back into God's eternal favor.

And then vs. 25! The eternal celebration of the resurrection! Nothing, dead or alive, will be able to keep from bowing the knee and praising God for the awesome ransom He paid for the sinners who would come to Him, who would seek Him out! The tale of His amazing grace would be told to the dead and the dying, to the living and to those who would come after them, including you and me. The story would never die, the celebration would never end, and the glory of God would be available to those who do not resist His drawing love! No kingdom could ever raise up that would stand before Him, no family, great or small, would be freed from the impulse to worship Him when they eventually see Him as He is, great and mighty and seated at the right hand of the Father for His obedient walk on the earth, going to reclaim them from Satan's deception. Only those who choose to remain deluded will be, and even then EVERY KNEE WILL BOW AND EVERY TONGUE CONFESS THAT JESUS CHRIST IS LORD TO THE GLORY OF GOD THE FATHER. NO ONE IN ALL OF THE EARTH WILL ESCAPE THAT CONFESSION! That is the amazing part of what Christ did. Though stripped of everything, clothes included, He will never be stripped of any glory ever again. Those who deny him here will not have the luxury of denying Him forever. So, if you will confess Him as Lord someday, why not now? That confession on the Last Day will be made at the crossroads...some joining Him in His kingdom, and the rest on their way to eternal doom. If you have to do it anyway, you might as well give in now. The seriously amazing thing about giving in to God now is that it leads to blessing! We have been deceived by Satan into thinking that giving in to God, confessing our need for a Savior, and giving our lives to Him is somehow a BAD thing. It is a bad emotion for a period of time, like the crucifixion was a bad emotion and experience for a few horrible hours. Like childbirth. Ouch. But once on the other side of confession, of seeing who you are and who Christ is, the results, like childbirth, are amazing. There is new life! A new, amazing, conscience clearing, God-guided, Jesus as big brother life! It is not something we can conjure up...we can't make ourselves at peace with God. Only He can do that...and if Christ would have died just to save you, isn't it worth it to take the hand of someone who would love you that much. HE IS LORD. Like the president, he is the ruler of the country whether you voted for him or not, whether you agree with him or not. You can't deny who He is. So it is a choice of whether you trust Him or not. Believe He loves you or not. Believe that He died for you or not. You can deny it now, but that does not make Him less than He is.

And He is GOOD. Good to all. He calls us to His side, spanks us at times to get our attention focused back on Him. But He does it BECAUSE He loves us. He wants us. He calls us. He reckons us righteous when we know we are wretched. And we WILL proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord. Do it now so that when the Day comes, you will be doing it again with JOY and not terror. With extreme gratitude and not regret. You won't regret it in this life or the life to come.

Clothed with the slain Isaiah 14:19

But you have been cast out of your tomb like a rejected branch, Clothed with the slain who are pierced with a sword. Isaiah 14:19

OK, so we know by now that not all references to clothing in scripture is pretty...and this is one of those ugly ones. We are talking about the king of Babylon here, a wicked, ruthless man who let a wicked, ruthless nation. I think the New Living Translation gives us the picture, although it doesn't use the clothing word. “But you will be thrown out of your grave like a worthless branch. Like a corpse trampled underfoot, you will be dumped into a mass grave with those killed in battle.”

Proper burial was very important in ancient days. Seriously. Look at the pyramids, the references to Abraham buying Sarah's burial tomb, and Joseph's body being carried out of Egypt. Where you were buried and how spoke of who you were, how important, and what you believed spiritually. Here is the big shot of the world whose end was kind of like that of a mummy's tomb being raided for the treasures . The mummies themselves aren't worth much, or weren't to tomb-robbers. The mummies were dumped out of their gold sarcaphagi and left as trash. In this case, the king's body would be dumped with the rest of the common soldiers whose defeat came, and all would be tossed into a large hole. His covering would be the bodies of those who fell by the sword. He would be one of the first thrown in, a truly humiliating position for the ruler of the peoples.

We tend to look at God as a giant softie. He is good and merciful and forgiving. Yes, this is true, but that is half of who He is. He is also a raging fire and hater of evil. He doesn't mess around with the wicked. Look at the whole of Isaiah and see the God who pleads, punishes, reaching out and casts out, gives instruction and punishes those who refuse to obey. To those who call evil good and good evil, He shows Himself Righteous and True. There is no middle ground. He never gives up on people for the sake of His name and His promise to Abraham that there would be a remnant forever, and to the world that He would send the ultimate Redeemer, that those who would trust in Him would never suffer the consequences of their sins.

Yes, we all sin. We do. No matter how hard we try not to. No matter whether we want to or not. It is in our nature. It is who we are. We are born in sin...selfish and self-motivated, having our own opinions of what we think is right and wrong, acceptable and not. We, like Satan himself, want to show God who is boss. And that is our problem. We set ourselves up as the king of Babylon. We want to divide and conquer, reign on our thrones. “Wretched man that I am. Who can deliver me from this body of death?” asks the Apostle Paul. Here is the man God called to take the gospel to the Gentile world, and he ponders his own sinful state at the end of Romans 7. And THAT is the question, WHO. We cannot rescue ourselves. But we need to want to be rescued. We have to agree that God is God, and we are not, and shouldn't be. Face it, we all have the “if I ruled the world, things would be better” syndrome. We think if we impose our rules on others that the world would be a utopia. If the God of the universe chose to give us free will to defy Him, then we need to figure out that He is good to give us the chance to realize our sinfulness and look to Him for redemption.

And that He provided in the man Jesus, the God Jesus, the Spirit Jesus. The trinitarian Godhead reaches out, offers itself up as a sacrifice, and fills us with the ability to come to Him and become one of His. We have to agree that we are sinful, that Jesus takes that sin away if we ask in humility, not demand it as our right. There is no room for self-centered salvation. It is a gift from a tender, loving God. But rejecting that will send us to the bottom of the grave, covered with the rest of those who reject the tender mercies of the Lord. Accept or reject. Not do or don't do something to save ourselves. We can't. Not find or not find the answers. The answer is there. It is Jesus. We accept Him or reject Him. We believe that we need to be forgiven, understand that He is the payment, and accept the payment. If you can't pay the mortgage and someone offers to pay it for you, you can accept or reject the payment. You give up more than just the offer if you refuse. You lose it all. The house goes to the bank and you are homeless, all because you are too prideful to let someone else pay the bill, even though you have to way to pay it. Foolish, isn't it. When offered the way out of sin, to reject it is even more foolish. To choose evil over good isn't just foolish, it is willful suicide. Don't be a victim of your own pride. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up out of that mass grave and let you live an eternal life of beauty with Him. Hallelujah!

Clothed in clouds and rainbows Revelation 10

I saw another strong angel coming down out of the heaven, clothed with a cloud, and the rainbow was upon his head, and his face was like the sun, and his feet like pilllars of fire. Rev. 10:1

Wow. Now from the very start I will tell you that I am not a scholar when it comes to the book of Revelation, and I will not try to give you a theological view of this verse. I will be digesting it from the point of view of a true novice and from the “under the sun” view of things.

The trumpets have sounded, vials poured, seals broken...all kinds of chaos are poured out upon the earth. Judgments are being poured out upon the earth, and here comes another angel, dressed in a cloud, shining brightly with a rainbow like a crown or halo. This makes sense. Rainbows come from rain clouds with light shining through them. The rainbow was the symbol immediately after the flood given to Noah and his crew offered their sacrifice upon stepping on the earth again, the sign that God would not destroy the world with water again. It doesn't represent God never judging the world again at all, just not by water.

This time, we are told, it would be by fire.

So this beautiful angel in cloud and rainbow comes and stands on the earth and on the water, but the storm is not over. Think about it. When do you see a rainbow? It is after the storm has passed. He roars and says something, but John is not allowed to tell us what is said. Doesn't that make you curious? What did he reveal to John that God would not want us to know before the time? But he does continue to speak, and this we do hear. He “lifted his right hand to heaven and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, WHO CREATED HEAVEN AND THE THINGS IN IT, AND THE EARTH AND THE THINGS IN IT, AND THE SEA AND THE THINGS IN IT,that there will be delay no longer, but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then the mystery of God is finished, as He preached to His servants the prophets. Rev 10:5-7

That's it, he says. God created all of this and it is over. It's out with the old, and in with the new. The promise of the flood is over, and we are starting over. New heaven, new earth, and no more sea. The only lake will be the lake of fire.

A cloud is made of water, and this is what the angel is dressed in. The water of the air. I read of smoke filling the heavens around the throne, and there is thunder and lightning coming from the throne of God. Rev. 4 gives us this image. Voices of the angels thunder throughout heaven during the breaking of the seals and other actions taken in heaven and earth. Maybe these cease when the rainbow-clad angel comes to earth? The wrath of God will no longer shake heaven? Maybe God is done with that stuff and is moving on to another means of judgment? Like I said, I am no prophetic interpreter, but we are given images we can understand to some extent, and this would make sense to me. But then I read on and in chapter 17 there is more thunder and lightning...more smoke of the glory of God, so what do I know. I know that God has a symbol of rainbow, currently stolen by a group that is taunting God, believing their sin is not judgeable, but acceptable and needing to be accepted by the world. I know that He will not be taunted and that His patience does have an end. Over and over He delayed judgments on nations. Their iniquity was not “full”. They start out evil and get past the point of no return, and then He sent destroyers to clean up the mess. Every generation accepts a little evil, thinking it is harmless, and before they know it, the consequences come. The sin produces problems, the problems create actions that multiply the consequences, and the people who sin believe that more sins are acceptable. When we are so full of sin that righteousness looks foolish, there is nothing left for God to do but step in. The only way to cure cancer is to cut it out, chemo it to hit where it has spread, and radiate the immediate area where the cancer was concentrated to make sure it is all gone and doesn't take root again. It is a harrowing process. Sickness, burns, pain, and agony. But when it is said and done, there is remission, and in some cases, healing. Our rainbow-clad angel is telling us that this particular cancer has spread so far that it cannot be cured. The treatment to kill off the cancer cells will kill the patient. But it cannot be allowed to live any longer. It's a sad deal, but the clean-up of the universe is going to be put into action.

There is much to learn from our rainbow-clad friend. He points to God, the creator, and says that He did create all of this, and it is His to do with as He pleases, including destroy it all for rebelling. He tells John and the time to end all of evil has come. This is terrifying, but will result in those of the kingdom seeing the Blessed Hope coming and all going back to pre-rebellion. New heaven is coming, new earth, and a wedding. With all that is happening in the world, the tension is mounting. Who can do something about the mess we are getting ourselves into? God will deal with it, so when the rainbow-clad angel comes, know that it will be resolved quickly. Then we will be able to rest and rejoice. Until that time, keep looking up.

Royal robes John 19

 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and put a purple robe on Him. John 19:2 Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. vs. 5

It has been a few weeks since Easter, Good Friday, etc. but the message of the crucifiction is never out of date. It is the essence of Christianity. If you really look at the story of Jesus getting bounced from one ruler to another during the trials before His condemnation, you will see that the issue they had was His kingship. Pilate directly pointed this out...”Shall I crucify your king?” was his question to the Jews, and the sign he placed over His head on the cross convicted Him of being KING OF THE JEWS. The Jewish rulers convened and said they would rather have Rome ruling over them than let Jesus stir things up. It was all a matter of whether Jesus was their King or not.

King:dictionary.reference.com/browse/king

• a male sovereign or monarch; a man who holds by life tenure, and usually by hereditary right, the chief authority over a country and people.

This is the definition of a king. It's a guy who inherits the right to rule.

And Jesus in their mind didn't qualify, but it was not because He didn't tell them He did. He told them over and over that God was His Father, and if that were true, that would make Him the inheritant of world authority. He should have been respected, listened to, and obeyed, though He didn't ask much of most people. Most were taught, a few were asked to do basic things to show they had faith, like washing their eyes or heading toward the synagogue, at which time they were healed. A few that wanted to walk close were asked to give things up and follow Him. But He never asked them to join an army, pay Him taxes or teaching fees, or to do anything He didn't do or set the example for them to copy. He was King, but He didn't exalt Himself. If He would have tried, they may have said worse things about Him. The people wanted to make Him king. He was nice, He healed people, met their physical needs, had compassion and cried with them. He was everything they thought a good leader should be. But He turned down the earthly kingship for an eternal one.

Did you ever think of what would have happened if He had let His power go to His head? He told them He could have called 10,000 angels to save Him. He could have taken over the temple at any point by force, but He let the Pharasees keep it. He could have wiped out the Romans, but He let them rule and told people not to bother fighting them. If He had not died, we would still be in our sin. We would be hopeless.

There have been a lot of things in life lately that make me feel a little on the hopeless side. Physical, psychological, financial...all sorts of things can grab a hold of the heart and wring the hope right out of it. And then I think of Christ. The worst thing that happened to Him was the best thing that happened to me (and you, if you accept it), and we are reassured that this world is not “It.” This isn't all there is. People will let us down, sin against us, die, cheat us, fire us, talk about us behind our backs...you get the drift.

But Jesus is King. He came out in the purple robe as a broken man because that is how the world sees Him. That's not how I see Him, for He is no longer broken. He is all powerful, all loving and kind, and He is the ruler of my life and of those who join the kingdom. He is benevolent to His own. Like Peter, we can be assured that Satan has permission to sift us like wheat, but He can't take our souls. Any pain of this world is a temporary thing. Any persecution will just make Glory all the better. We are a part of the eternal army that one day will someday put evil to eternal silence. He has promised, written the decree, and knows the beginning from the end. The older I get, the more I realize that the days slip away quickly, and carrying the burdens of them wearies the bones, greys the hair, and zaps our joy.

But when things get bleak, we hear a gentle voice calling us into the throne room. We are reminded whose we are, see a glimpse of the castle we will get to live in, and hear the songs of the angels in our hearts. The doubts slowly melt away, replaced by the peace that passes understanding. We will walk on water even in the midst of the storm. The King will wear the proper royal robes, and if He wants them to be purple or scarlet or changes them frequently during His eternal reign for our enjoyment, He will. We will reign with Him, so I guess our robes will be royal ones, too. He doesn't force His kingship on us...He lets us decide which kingdom we will serve. As much as we like to think we run our own lives, we don't. We will always have a ruler, and we get to choose who that is. I choose Christ. I choose to enter the throneroom for direction and comfort and peace of mind and heart. Won't you join me there?

Lifted Skirts Nahum 3

“Behold, I am against you,” declares the Lord of hosts; “And I will lift up your skirts over your face, and show to the nations your nakedness and to the kingdoms your disgrace.” Nahum 3:5

No one likes to be humiliated. I personally have faced public humiliation a few times, and it is HORRIBLE. A couple of times I probably earned it, but many times, I was innocent, or at the least, clueless. There is nothing like having all of your faults put on parade to a watching public. It is mortifying. You want to crawl under a rock and never come out. You fear showing your face for years to come. Going home to my five year class reunion was a step of faith way back in the day, and when people actually APOLOGIZED for how they treated me, I was stunned...and relieved. It wasn't ALL me. As I have aged and learned and looked back, I am embarassed at my actions and attitudes that at the time seemed perfectly justifiable to me. But others did not see me that way. I was not being honest with myself, and their being honest with me was not kind. But truth is revealed eventually. And with God, all truth of motive, action, pride, humility...all will be shown for the truth of what it is...there will be no faking it, no justifying it. All will be uncovered. We usually do not admire those who uncover people's weaknesses and humiliate them. So where does God get off talking like this? So who are we talking about here? Who does God want to humiliate? Why would a loving God say such a thing, the watching world would ask?

Well, this passage is about Nineveh...described in verse one here as “bloody, completely full of lies and pillage, swords, spears, corpses, sorceries and harlots.” These were not nice people, folks. This is the city that Jonah ran from God over. I have heard stories of skulls stacked feet high around the city as a warning to others to keep away, as trophies of their military prowess. They were not nice to enemies, and were morally corrupt toward one another. It and Babylon are both symbols of total evil and depravity in scripture. They thought they were something, but God was going to humble them, showing that under that skirt of war and victory, they were naked, vulnerable, and disgraceful losers. They would not be able to intimidate the Lord God of the Universe into thinking they were undefeatable. They were filthy animals of human beings. Along with harlotries came diseases...and those would also be shown by their nakedness. They could never cover their sin forever...they would be shown for what they really were, just men.

So there we have it. It says in Hebrews that all things will be laid bare before the one to whom we must give account...we have touched on this before. We can dress up and play Christian, good girl, and honorable person, but God knows if we are or not. And some day the whole world will know. We will be shown for what we are. Are we a child of God, or are we faking it? Are our skirts beautiful, or full of the blood of the innocents? In either case, what are the skirts covering? Is there disease, uncleanness, and filth? The filth of our bodies comes out of us in these places, and some of us are not very good at using the tp to clean it up. We are full of filth...it is a part of who we are, and eventually it has to come out of us or it will kill us from the inside. If we are not nurturing life, other filth comes out, and the skirts also covered that. There is little that is pleasant under the skirt. The Lord cleans us up like a baby needs to be cleansed of its filth. But the enemies of God continue in their evil ways, the filth accumulating day after day. Every once in a while, we can clean ourselves up, but the filth still continues to come out day after day, year after year, event after ugly event.

Are we threatening people with our masquerade? Do they fear the person behind the mask of horror like the phantom of the opera? Is the person behind that mask really a threat, or merely acting out, thrashing against the God who made them? Do we fear the God who would cleanse us instead of fearing the flesh-eating filth that we choose to live in day after day?

So to make this a little more uplifting, let's look at the other end of this thing. The skirts may be lifted to humiliate the enemies of God, but the children of God will be dressed by Him, handed their clothing of white. It will reflect the pure, clean nature of the one distributing them. They will be exalted, lifted up to reign with Him over heaven and earth. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess Jesus as Lord, even the enemies, but after that, we will be separated from them. That confession will be made in one of 2 ways...one set of people will bow in worship and adoration and joy, and the others will be forced to see God for who He is, realize they rejected the one that would have lovingly taken them in and cleaned them up, and state to their own condemnation that Jesus is the Lord that they willingly refused over all the years of their lives. It is after that day that we will never experience humiliation again. There will be no more sin, no more filth, and no more exposure of our weaknesses, for we will not have any. It will be heaven. Literally.

So are you fighting the God who wants to clean you up like a baby thrashing on a changing table, or are you grateful for the God who will clean you, clothe you, and present you to the world as His? Your choice! But the cleansing comes through the fountain of the blood of Christ. He paid for the bath, the clothes, and the ceremony of adoption, and the wedding feast...who would turn that down for a skirt-raising with the Ninevites? Not me!

Never to fade 1 Peter

To obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through FAITH for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1:4-5

It has been a particularly hard week on this old body. It is weeks like this that I look forward to "imperishable" and "undefiled." I thank God for the time to reflect on His Word, to slow me down in mind as well as body. I fold down the corners of my Bible when I want to flag a verse for this blog. And the corner of this page was folded down. Hmmm...not a reference to be found. But then there was the word FADE.

I don't know about you, but fading has caused me to trash more than one piece of fabric or clothing. Long, long ago I bought a BUNCH of solid fat quarters, supposedly to make something Amish-looking,  I really am a tone-on-tone kind of girl. Those are fabrics that read a color, but consist of mottled or printed shades of the same color. They make the project look richer and make color matching a bit easier as well. So buying those solids was a leap of faith. I don't know how long those things sat out unused, but when the box of them surfaced at some point in a cleaning binge, I was glad that I never did use much of them. EVERY fold was faded. When the fabric was unfolded, the fading became more obvious. Well, cut around it, you might say. Nope...not this girl. Now you are reading the blog of the world's biggest cheapskate, but this cheapskate did not keep that fabric because I knew what would happen if that stuff was put into anything. Those dyes in that fabric were not stable, and the fading would continue, ruining the project that they were put into. If it faded that badly once, it would stay true to its nature and fade more when exposed to light. I was sad to toss it, but glad I hadn't gone ahead and invested time and effort into projects made with it. I now knew its nature and its future. I suppose there might have been ways to set the dye in the remaining hunks of fabric, but the risk was not worth it.

Other fabrics have faded due to direct sunlight. The lap quilt that I drape over the back of the sofa is another example. That thing is showing the effects of the sun to a lesser degree, even with UV resistant windows, but the light is still causing it to deteriorate, just more as a whole as opposed to the more obvious fading of a fold. Light just does that to fabrics. The more the light shines, the more the glory of earthly things fade.

It is like that with the Lord, too. He is light and He shines on us, and our glory, the things we have done or thought we had done that were “impressive” in any way fall apart. When compared with the Lord of Glory, our works are as filthy rags. We are called in Peter to be HOLY, and that Holiness can only come from God. We are instructed to conduct ourselves in fear during our stay on the earth, redeemed by the imperishable blood of Christ. The grass withers and the flowers fade. All of this earth and its glories are temporary, but the Word of the Lord and His love for us endures forever! We will be transformed, first in the renewal of our minds, then in our actions, and eventually, in our bodies. The worship we will bring to God will be whole and wholely acceptable. The glory of His light shining on us in THAT day will not fade us. The inheritance we receive will not wear out like money and the things it can buy. What does one pay to inherit something? Nothing. It is bestowed on a person by declaration of the giver. We have 3 times inherited little bits of things...once from parents, once from an uncle, and once from a long-lost relative somehow. The things that were paid off or purchased with that money...cars, sofas, house repairs...all have been either deteriorating or have been disposed of in some way. The car died, the sofa cushions are slightly torn from use, and the house is in continual need of repair. But the inheritance from the Lord will be the joy of His presence, the absence of the desire to sin and the consequences of the sins of our own or those of others, and the eternal crowns that we can present at His feet. The feasting will provide joy, not fill a hunger in our bodies and souls. The houses we will have will be used not to sleep and provide shelter, but to refresh our souls and provide private places for fellowship with the One who loves us. All these things will not fade, will not go out of fashion and be discarded like old clothes and rags. Everything will have eternal purpose, eternal beauty, and eternal praise for the Creator.

And our joy will not fade. It amazes me how I can celebrate the presence of His goodness one minute, and have it fade to doubt and worry the next. Oh, for the day when that joy does not fade, the trust does not fade, the peace and love do not fade. I am so thankful that God knows we are dust and that we are grass. We DO fade. We wither and shrivel and die inside and out, but reread that verse. We are protected by FAITH from even ourselves. We have a reservation...we have a glimpse of the inheritance, as we watch Jesus raised from the dead, He who was once not only faded in popularity, but snuffled out of life. But now He stands glowing brightly next to the Father. His light will never fade again, and neither will ours in that coming day. We will not be tossed out like faded cloth, but restored to the glory of His perfect creation. This is something only He can do...and we are blessed to be a part of it. AMEN!