Picture This

So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear!   (James 1:21-24 MSG)

Don't you just love the phrasing here? The word-pictures are stunning to my mind's eye. I can imagine coming to recognize a life lived less than desirably and then coming to grips with it. The action of scooping up the spoiled virtue and cancerous evil and dumping it into the garbage can. 

Lastly, slapping your hands together as though wiping them clean of the past mistakes, turning abruptly and walking in the opposite direction. Once the new life is begun and the fresh start is before you, things are different...eventually. We all must learn how to live out this new life.
This is where other Christians come into the picture. They can build relationships with us, mentor us and teach us how to live a life as Jesus would have us live. We learn how to love and care for each other. We practice real listening - to our mentors and then to each other as we share life.

And we do all this face-to-face. Not on social media, not in an impersonal text or email, but within touching distance. That is the only way to touch each other's lives. It is the one true way to cultivate real empathy.

I close today with verse 25 of The Message version of this text is completed by these vivid words: But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.

James 1:21-25

Face to Face

How do you communicate with others?

When I went away to college in 1968 my Dad told me that he expected me to write a letter every week. I must have complied because he was paying the bills.

Communication is vastly different today than it was 45 years ago. It started with the US mail and evolved into the Internet. Today you can fax, twitter, text, call on your smart phone while you check the Internet, or email from your phone, iPod or computer.

A friend of mine has a ministry called Face to Face. If you get a chance check it out on the web. It is a sports ministry that started with him interviewing Christian athletes. He would sit down with them, face to face.

So much of our communication today is dependent on technology. It is not personal. It is not face to face. And as much as we humans desire and need deep personal relationships, we seem to prefer the technology.

In the movie "Fiddler on the Roof", Tevye is a milkman that spends his days delivering milk from house to house as he walks along with his old lame horse. Spending most of his time alone, he talks with God constantly, face to face. He doesn’t text or tweet or talk on his cell phone or listen to his iPad.

That’s what Psalm 19 is about, making time for God.
He speaks to us through His world. "The heavens declare the glory of God".He speaks to us through His word. "The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul".
For me, the meaning behind this Psalm is that God is a personal God. He desires to have an intimate relationship with us. He wants us to spend time with Him. He wants us to talk to Him. He wants us to listen to Him through His world and through His Word.

Let’s be sure to get face to face to "our Rock and our Redeemer".


http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2019&version=NIV;MSG
http://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/niv/Ps.19