Standing still and listening

Some of my prayers have not amounted to much more than the polite "Good mornings," I say to neighbors. In our neighborhood most people nod in my general direction and keep walking. Eye contact is not on the menu of appropriate greetings here. To make eye contact and speak we would have to slow down. People are busy and have things to do and places to go. When we communicate with God that way we lose the sense of His Presence and reduce Him to another interruption to our pace of achievement-oriented living.

While meeting with Habakkuk, I discovered a facet of the good prophet’s life worthy of copying. He was still reeling from the unwanted message about Babylon that God had deposited in his spirit. Holy Spirit to human spirit communication tends to leave one stunned, sometimes disoriented. My friend "Hab" decided, "I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint." (Habakkuk 2:1 NIV) In short, Hab said, "I won’t rush it!"


Standing still is difficult. Pacing helps time pass more quickly and makes waiting more tolerable. I am convinced that doing something, anything, is easier than standing. I observe the phenomenon when I take Pat shopping. Other men stand about shifting their weight from leg to leg like nervous whooping cranes – standing, waiting for the two guys sitting on two old chairs to move on. The pecking order among shopping husbands is well defined. There is little hope that it will happen anytime soon. Each wife took seven, eight or more pieces of clothing into the little rooms dedicated for the serious business of "trying on." Habakkuk stood attentively, expectantly, waiting for the Lord to reveal something that would clear the air of the heavy fog of national chaos and spiritual collapse.

Friend Hab stood in full view, "on the ramparts." His patience could be measured and those who hurried below could easily count the hours, days, weeks, months . . . Hab waited. The bright digital billboards across the street from the ramparts flashed political solutions, media evangelists rented space for their promises (supported by Scriptures taken from out of context), and pharmaceutical manufacturers’ models smiled down with assurances that their brand would turn back the clock and youthful vigor would soon seep from every pore. People think nothing of waiting overnight in the rain for the newest smart phone, but standing in prayer, even in the safe and friendly environs of the church altar is an unacceptable hardship.

And, last (for today at least), Hab reminded me that when one waits, one can hear God say something so distinctly, so easy to understand, so powerfully important, that it is worth the wait! While we sipped our Starbucks bold this morning, Hab said, "Otto, ‘Then the LORD replied: "Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it lingers, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.’" (Habakkuk 2:2-3 NIV) I have had those moments when God spoke to me like He did to Hab, but there would have been more of them if I had stood still more often?

My pastor ended last Sunday morning’s service with Charles A. Miles 100 year-old song. One verse and chorus strongly reinforce the need for hyperactive people like me to stand still and listen to what the Lord is saying. Miles changed the image from rampart to garden, but the imbedded truth remains the same.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.
Refrain:
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

There are mornings when I chafe, sprint mentally and pace physically. I look for a place. I want a project, an agenda . . . something to do, something to accomplish. The friendly prophet reminds that I may want activity but I need to stand still and listen. God will speak and what He says will be so clear it ought to be written and spread everywhere! (2:3) It is embarrassing to admit to hyperactivity at my age. I am wired for action. Working, doing, going, and coming are all fun for the hyperactive.

Excuse me, I need to get away from this keyboard, climb a little higher, then stand and listen. Those around me may need to hear words of consolation, promises of healing, and reasons for hope. Assuring words and redemptive, helpful actions come to us when we climb to a place, stand and listen.

Let us try praying together and begin with, "Good morning God. I am here to listen."

Why does God keep hitting foul balls?

While preparing for an activity-filled day, I quieted myself, meditating on a truth too complex and far-reaching. Most of the time I am certain that God is good, powerful and all-knowing, But occasionally I am confused with how an all-wise God acts as He does. For instance, I think that God could arrange one day each week when there is nothing but good news to report, a kind of Sabbath rest from the grimy and grizzly gore of gratuitous evil. Wouldn’t you love to open a newspaper and read about how neighbors rallied around the noble causes of the community’s non-profits and fully funded each of the charities for the next three months? I would!

In my musing moments Habakkuk visited as he has done recently, early in the morning. Over a cup of Starbucks medium house blend the prophet and I considered the perplexing questions, "How long . . . must I call for help?" and, "Why do you make me look . . . ?" "Hab," my nickname for my prophet friend, asked the questions almost 3000 years ago. People like me, Evangelicals, believe that Hab’s questions were inserted into the Bible by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God Himself! Since God allowed Habakkuk to meander and muse over the imponderables, I thought that He would be patient with me too!

While Hab and I slowly and silently sipped away at the morning joe, I heard the voice of the One who speaks in silence, the One who probes and promises with awe-inspiring answers. Habakkuk, a preacher who was intrusted with knowledge about the future, heard Him in the silence and wrote, "Look at the nations and watch-- and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." (Habakkuk 1:5 NIV) Yea God! You are going to hit a home run and I will be talking about it for at least 50 years! Just a minute, give me a few minutes to gather my friends to watch you work!

I immediately believe that God will prompt a rich person to donate enough millions to fund important ministries I embrace passionately and I will rest peaceably squandering time reading air head novels and using my Social Security check to buy some toys pictured in woodworking magazines. If God hits the home run my friend Marvin will not die of Lou Gehrig’s disease Have you ever thought like that? Most have! That is why television preachers promise to share spiritual secrets in their latest book or DVD. (They are almost always free, for a gift of $20 or more.) Sure, I’d rather be the head than the tail! Instinctively, from deep within the core of my original greediness, I begin to celebrate the divine home run! God is coming through! It’s so good I won’t be able to believe it!

And then, the prophet continues his recollection of what God said to him in the silence, "I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own." (1:6) What kind of home run is that? It seems a lot more like "Casey at the Bat!" There will be no joy in Mudville tonight!¹

But understanding isn’t a requirement when musing with the Eternal God who made all, knows all, is present always, and is forever loving and redemptive. The legacy of Babylon continues to hold sway over the whole of creation. Babylonian rashness, rudeness, riotousness and ruination are still known and documented. CNN, ABC, CBC, NBC, FOX and others all send convoys of cameras. Investigative reporters drop into chaotic scenes. Experts on social pathology gather in studios to explain what happened and why. You see, it keeps happening! God is at work but because we prefer home runs to foul balls, we lament. But, the Eternal One is employing the mischief of Babylon to His own purposes.

As I mused with Hab this morning I was comforted with the knowledge that God never wastes time. He is the epitome of efficiency, always making everything work out for good – always has, always will. (Reading all of Romans 8 helps one come to that conclusion.)

I believe God’s purpose in turning the Babylonian spirit loose in the world ought to remind us to look up. Look for the fulfillment of His eternal plans and purposes. Be bold and expect the promise. Serious followers of Jesus read the Revelation and wonder about images, sequences and meanings. We are also convinced that the Spirit is delivering good news! Great news! While some argue about fine points and remote inferences my pulse quickens when I hear the New Testament prophet, John. Babylon is there, acting up, acting up throughout history. In the middle of all the chaos John comforts Habakkuk and me with a powerful promise, "Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, and said: "With such violence the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again." (Revelation 18:21 NIV) I don’t need to know the name of the angel or the symbolism of the boulder. I need to remember that my God knows how to handle Babylon!

Wait! God is batting with a three and two count!

After making almost 70 hurried revolutions around the sun I have concluded that I was born in a hurry and have never recovered. When Pat and I window shop on the quaint streets of our hometown or enjoy an evening on the ocean boardwalk Pat must hold on or we are each walking alone. It has always been hard for me to move slowly, though newly-discovered balky joints and achy parts have sent a different series of messages about my movements.

Have you ever noticed how many times in baseball the count on a batter goes to three and two? People born in a hurry notice things like that! Miguel Cabrera often runs the count to three and two, especially if the bases are loaded with two outs and the game is tied. When that happens the opposing team sends out for sandwiches and their manager begins writing out his lineup card for the next game. A "W" is about to be entered in the Tigers’ win column, but not for another 20 minutes! The triple-crown winner will foul off eight, nine or more pitches waiting for the pitch to be in his sweet spot!

Ashamedly wearing the crown of "Mr. Impatient," when Cabrera is batting and the count reaches three and two, I leave the room, get a dish of ice cream and mosey back to my seat awaiting the inevitable triumph of my beloved Tigers. The three-two count is too painfully slow for me to watch. Ball after ball being sprayed in every direction except where it will do some good is a delay I never have appreciated.

When I met with my friend Habakkuk this morning, "Hab" for short, he and I admitted our tendency to being in a hurry. In a newer version, Hab acknowledged, "How long, O Lord, must I call for help?"¹ There is a little of the Hab trait in all of us. "Come on God, how long are going to keep me waiting?" Is it far-fetched to accuse God of fouling off too many pitches when it is in His power to satisfy our time line? Have you ever felt like saying, "I know you will do the right thing God, so, just do it?" I have come close. No, I’ve done it! (Telling the truth feels better.)

Waiting isn’t so bad when the outcomes are of little consequence, like the outcome of a ball game. But, Habakkuk and I have agreed that unresolved violence, unfairness, and injustice are worthy of calls for God to hurry up! Sin and misery ought not be taken lightly. Street fighting and endless arguments wear one down and chip away at the morale of communities. I know. I lived in Philadelphia where the whole traffic court system is being dismantled by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania because of blatant corruption and flagrant injustice.

Mr. Impatient here wonders, "How many more men will plead guilty to a crime they didn’t do in order to avoid a longer sentence for another crime they also didn‘t do?" Too often bribes and trickery rule the day.² If one can afford an expensive lawyer, penalties are seldom more than a slap on the wrist. Some court-appointed attorneys have been known to appear in court unprepared, indifferent and eager to settle a case quickly in order to collect fees and recover costs. The urge is to scream, "UNFAIR!" But, no one is listening!

Have you prayed for a resolution to a problem, the salvation of a lost friend or child for what seems like an eternity? Are you held captive in a cave of ambiguity, in a place of hopelessness? Is God fouling off balls on a three-two count when He could just as easily hit one out of the park for us? Habakkuk dared to write it down first. I’m a mimic. I told my friend Hab this morning, "Thank you for saying it first." The next time Hab and I meet, I’ll ask the timeless prophet to share how he coped with late-inning delays.³

　

　

Morning coffee with my friend Hab

Joanna, our younger daughter, plans to arrive here this morning with her four children. They are hoping for one last Summer-like day at a Delaware Beach before frosty Fall weather roars in. Our youngest grandchild, Lila, is a curly-headed four-year-old who bounces about on the balls of her feet, and is blessed with an extra measure of the Wegner gene. Lila is the early riser of the clan.

On a visit last year, when she was still three years-old, Lila came into my study while Mom and siblings were asleep and with eyes flashing with excitement asked, "Well, how are you big guy?" No one knows where Lila learned the term, or why she applied it to me, but it is the cause for frequent laughter.

I have recently been reading Habakkuk, a prophet, counselor and poet in Judah. After reading, and re-reading the condensation of Habakkuk’s body of work, I would like to look him up and ask, "Hey, ‘big guy,’ do you have time for a cup of coffee?" It is sheer fantasy, but I would like to believe we would become very good friends. I have already nicknamed him "Hab." Habakkuk’s body of work as a temple prophet is reduced to only three chapters, or 56 verses. What we have bound into our Bibles is a sample of a lifetime of a ministry as resident temple prophet, writer, counselor and worship leader. Consider a temple prophet’s responsibility included listening to temple worshipers’ questions as they pondered why bad things were happening to good people. Prayer had to consume a major segment of Habakkuk’s time because he was expected to announce why injustices were rampant in Judah.

Hab and I would have a good time at Starbucks. Before our cups were emptied, I would ask, "Tell me, honestly now, what do you tell people when God doesn’t give you a clue?" Wouldn’t you like to be sitting at the next table listening in when I asked, "What was going on in Judah the day the Spirit said, ‘The just live by faith?’" Barbara Walters interviews Presidents and Morey Safer is assigned to converse with princes and Middle Eastern potentates, but I want an hour with Habakkuk.

I hope you don’t condemn me for sacrilege. (I didn’t take offense at Lila calling me "big guy!") In the next few essays I hope to record a few insights Hab shared with me in confidence during a few early morning meetings we had. He was more comfortable with meeting in my study than at Starbucks. (His sense of justice and concern for the oppressed makes Starbucks a poor fit for Hab.) We found early mornings, usually before dawn, the best time to meet without interruptions. I brewed a pot of Eight O’clock brand coffee. He came to our back door and knocked softly so that he wouldn’t awaken Pat with the sound of the doorbell.

It may be next week before I write again. I am sure that for grandchildren ages four through eight will love to meet Hab someday. But, they are not concerned with difficult issues of justice and ruthlessness yet.

Singing songs, making intercession in noisy places

Man-made noises, clamor, cacophonous sounds fill our lives. The inane sounds of morning television magazine programing set my teeth on edge! Our nation is about to go to war while 100,000 screaming visitors in Manhattan egg on a boy band with shrill screams. The sound threatens to peel the skin off people like me who fail to appreciate the expenditure of emotion and energy, especially in light of looming war clouds.

I am listening for the voice of intercessors, a call for a call to prayer, a plea for wisdom and a spirit of restraint on those who carry the weight of decision making. In an arena where decisions are made that are too heavy and too complicated for mere mortals, must we be content with the voices of political operatives arguing for a single, often self-serving, point of view? Is there a voice of reason that can be heard above the screams of power brokers?

Our President promises to make a series of appearances today at which he will explain some of his rationale for threats and retaliation. Tomorrow night he will address us on national television, presumably to inform us why we will initiate another war. Syrian leaders likewise counter with arguments in support of their sovereignty and denial of heinous acts which has exterminated political adversaries – as well as innocent women and children. Are you like me? Do you find it impossible to know whose word is trustworthy? Can we be sure that any world leader is not as Thomas Carlyle describes as "spectacles behind which there is no eye?"¹

David’s song of ascent, Psalm 121, begins with a question, "I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from?" The scene evoked by David’s question is strikingly akin to today’s genuine Christian Americans. Psalm 121 was penned as a song of ascent, a song sung by people on pilgrimage toward Jerusalem, devoted worshipers en route to worship. As the crowd builds with citizens from villages converging into a crowd of 1000's, the worship leader calls out, "Psalm 121!" Worshipers look at the hills laden with Baal shrines. Sex-trade religious leaders had built images and sacristies into the hillsides. Each holy place celebrated a distortion of the true God’s intentions and creation. The hills were littered with moral debris as unsightly as the burned and rotting housing carcasses lining Detroit’s streets today. There was no help in the hills . . . and there was none of the horizon.

As we go to worship the blaring sounds of human reason, anthems of human triumph blare, butting into the air as a mean-spirited goat. The spiritually astute, God listeners, hear the sounds of the hills, the sounds of irreverence, the cacophony of what Eugene Peterson call "no-gods."² The air is filled with human reason without reverence, without awareness of the Holy, the Omniscient or the Omnipresent One.

The song goes on, the people continue the rhythmic chant, the volume builds as pilgrims to the Holy Place join in the procession and convictions about the True God are rehearsed in song. Ah, listen, one can hear the eternal truth above shrill screams of mere human reason. A song, an eternal melody is piercing the wet blankets of man’s stubbornness and human ignorance.
My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip-- he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD watches over you – the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all harm -- he will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.
Join in the song! Be refreshed with the eternal truth! Carry the melody to the place of prayer and appeal to the One who never slumbers or sleeps!

　

Amos is still preaching!

D. Elton Trueblood¹ remains one of my favorite authors. Trueblood oils ones mental gears and stimulates make-believe on themes of ultimate importance. A leading twentieth century thinker, Trueblood, a Quaker, called for adult education in the local church at a level considerably higher than a typical Sunday School class.

In Your Other Vocation² Trueblood presented an argument for beginning Bible study with the Book of Amos. After recently re-reading Your Other Vocation, I began a discipline of reading Amos in as many versions as I have on hand. After the fifth or sixth reading I am moving toward agreement with my favorite Quaker!

Trueblood was persuaded that the prophets speak to every generation. Since Amos is chronologically among the earliest to speak to Israel while she flagrantly embraced national sin, Trueblood suggests, "Start there!" Amos was entrusted with defining the issues. Other prophets followed, reporting the responses of the people and the heroic exploits of men like Daniel and his companions.

Amos took on the establishment, those protecting the religious, economic and political status quo, to maintain the personal comfort of the establishment in the face of the hopeless discomfort of the disenfranchised. Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change its motion, including a change in direction. Israel was there! She said, "Amos, we are happy as we are! Keep quiet! Prophets who soothe us and ignore our sins are all we need."

The sins of the establishment become the ethic of the community. The poor of Amos’ era were ground down to a nub at the hands of the religious, economic and political rich. At the outset of the book Amos’ words – Holy Spirit words, prophetic words – divide between thought and intent words, sharp as razor words cut through the world of make-believe. Amos speaks on behalf of the Almighty to the arrogant elite. God, through Amos, repeatedly announces, "Israel has sinned again and again," (New Living Translation). Israel simply refused to learn from her history and continued headlong toward God’s judgment.

Near the center of the prophecy, Amos trumpets God’s Word with clarity. The judgment warnings Amos announces employ powerful figures, locusts, fire, a plumb line and baskets of ripe fruit. The contest between Amos and Amaziah is too simple and understandable for anyone to overlook or misunderstand God’s intentions. The contest between good and bad, holy and filthy, compassion and arrogance are woven into the fabric of the text.

And then the compassion and perseverance of Israel’s God, and our God, is uncovered in wonderful language of promise and power. If she will repent, Israel will be restored. Crops will grow faster than they can be harvested. Exiled people will return from captivity. The people will be planted and never be uprooted again.

I have omitted lengthy quotes, details and scripture references on purpose. Reading Amos with an open heart and the anointing of the Holy Spirit is far better than reading my comments. Because of her sins Israel reached the threshold of exile, a passage into another Egypt from which they had been miraculously delivered. Those who will read Amos will be reminded why God judged His favored people. I believe we will see our nation in the reflecting pool of God declared dissatisfaction with Israel. If we will, we can learn and repent. God is longsuffering, but He is also just. Many of our national religious, economic and political leaders embrace the spirit of Amaziah. But, we desperately need to heed the voice of Amos!

Please let me know that you read, hear and respond to Amos’ Holy Spirit call from antiquity into the present!