He Lost His Head

By Cynthia Ruchti –

“I promise it won’t hurt.”

“I’ll be there on time. I promise.”

I heard it again the other day. A dad promised his young son something not within his power to control. “I promise we’ll find your bike.”

He can promise they’ll try as hard as they can to find it. But no dad can truthfully promise the bike will be found.

King Herod feared John the Baptist. He was confused and convicted by John’s teaching, but the Bible tells us the king liked to listen to him.

John the Baptist was a truth-teller who plainly told Herod he was in an adulterous affair with Herodius, his brother’s wife. Herod had John arrested but gave him preferential treatment because he understood John was a righteous, holy man.

But Herod made a foolish promise for a foolish reason. He liked the way Herodius’ daughter danced. He promised her anything she wanted.

The girl, egged on by her hateful mother, asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. “The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her.” (Mark 6:26 NIV)

Herod knew the right thing to do. But he caved to the wrong thing because he’d made a rash, unwise promise. And John the Baptist lost his head because of it.

What kind of trouble can parents cause when they promise something to please a child, but can’t deliver on the promise? We can promise we’ll do our best. We can promise the pain is survivable and temporary. We can promise we’ll try. But only God’s promises are unfailingly reliable, because He has the power to control the outcome.

PRAYER: Lord, keep me from making ridiculous promises, and keep me faithful to my Christ-created promises to You.

“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘yes’ in Christ.”( II Corinthians 1:20 NIV)

That’s Going to Leave a Mark

By Cynthia Ruchti –

I remember more than once hearing my mother comment on some childish prank with the words, “Be careful. That’s going to leave a mark.”

She may have been talking about slipping the old fashioned kind of clothespins—someone does remember clothespins, right?—over our noses. Or she may have been referring to the practice of grabbing a sibling’s wrist with both hands and twisting in opposite directions. “Snake bite!” Followed by hysterical laughter and a chase scene.

“Be careful. That’s going to leave a mark.”

One of my sons, who shall remain anonymous, stuck a suction cup to his forehead the day before school pictures. Left a mark.

I wonder how many moms peer through a tattoo parlor window at their teen son or daughter and think that thought.

The phrase resonates today in a different way for me. What if I focused even more attention this year on making my life one of worship, worshiping the Lord every chance I get, in every circumstance, no matter the situation or how difficult it is, and for even the smallest moment of joy? What if…?

What if I determined to weave worship into every life experience in a more intentional way than I already do? What if I gave voice to the praise in my heart more often?

That’s going to leave a mark.

It’s bound to leave a mark on my life.

What a beautiful, invisible tattoo it would be if this new year were marked as a year of worship, if my life were one continuous stream of ceaseless praise to the God who made me, the God who planned out my days, the God who already knows what this year will hold, the One who sustains me through it all!

Ceaseless praise. That’s going to leave a mark.

PRAYER: Even though I know others will be watching, Lord, this is really between You and me. Hold me to this course, I pray! Hold me to the commitment to make worship a re-MARK-able part of this new year.

“He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise for our God. Many people will learn of this and be amazed; they will trust the Lord” (Psalm 40:3 CEB).

Faithful

By Cynthia Ruchti –

Have you noticed that when you go through a season of difficulty, certain words take on new meaning in the lyrics you sing in church or the song carried in your heart even while you sleep? Have you been startled, as I have, to find a word popping up far more frequently in the Bible than you realized when that’s the very word you crave? Like hope, joy, endurance…?

The year someone close to our family had a heart transplant—someone who had long resisted admitting his need for God—the word heart seemed to be peppered throughout the Word of God. When he went into surgery, we handed him a Bible we’d gone through by hand to underline the word heart. We hoped the hundreds of references would quietly speak to him about a God who cares about the human heart, even broken hearts, sick hearts, damaged hearts, and desperately ill hearts.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3 KJV).

“Give me an undivided heart, that I might honor You” (Psalm 86:11 NIV/NLT).

“My flesh and heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26 NIV).

As this year draws to a close, I’m now seeing another word threaded throughout Scripture—faithfulness. How is it I never noticed the frequency of that word? I knew, of course, that faithfulness is important to God. But I now see it as part of the very underpinnings of a life lived for Him.

In Daniel 6:4, we read that this was said about God’s servant, Daniel. “They (his enemies) could find no occasion or fault, for he (Daniel) was faithful.” He was faithful. Faithful.

Christ’s birth itself proves God’s own faithfulness, that no matter how many years had passed since the first stirrings of the promise, He would be faithful to provide a Messiah, faithful to rescue.

I’m singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” with renewed passion this year. In this, too, He leads the way. We the faithful come to adore Him because He is the Faithful One.

PRAYER: Lord, Your faithfulness completely overwhelms me. To a world that has lost its grip on faithfulness, You come and teach the meaning of the word. The meaning of the Word. Thank You.

“O Lord, You are my God; I will exalt You and praise Your name, for in perfect faithfulness You have done marvelous things, things planned long ago” (Isaiah 25:1 NIV).

Since When Did Laziness Become a Laughing Matter?

By Cynthia Ruchti –

You’ve noticed too, I’m sure. People joke about how lazy they are. They value “vegging,” the couch-potato kind, not the sweet potato kind. They brag about how long it’s been since they folded laundry, brushing lightly at the wrinkles in their shirt. It was pulled out of the tangle of clothes in the basket. Clean, right?

“Yeah, I didn’t get to the bank in time. Things came up.” They don’t clarify that the “things” were a nap, a snack, and a video game.

What keeps people from getting to their appointments on time? One of two things—doing too much or doing too little.

I lean more toward the “too much” end of the spectrum. I see a five minute window of buffer time and think of two important things I can get done in that window. That often makes me watch the second-hand of the wall clock as I rush up to the desk just before it ticks into place for my appointment time. Not good.

But neither is the world’s obsession with laziness, with doing the minimum necessary at work, at church, at home…just enough to get by.

One of the places where my husband worked developed an incentive program for employees who did their job exceptionally well—a gift card reward. “Great job. Here’s fifty dollars.” “Nice work on that. Here’s a hundred dollars.”

Grateful as we were for the extra money for the family budget, it always struck us as an oddity that “exceptionally well” and “excellent” and “nice work” weren’t expected. They were viewed as so rare as to deserve special recognition.

We don’t have to wonder what God would think of that. He told us. “Whatever you do,” He said through the Apostle Paul, “do it heartily, as unto the Lord.” (reference below)

As I write this, the table of people near me is discussing installing a toilet. “I put in that new toilet and she’s still complaining,” the man said. His friend asked, “How come?” “Oh, it wobbles some.”

I think even toilet installation has to be done heartily, don’t you?

PRAYER: No matter how popular it is, Lord, keep me from ever believing that laziness can be cute. It doesn’t mesh with Your plan for us. Show me where I might be making excuses for not putting my whole heart into something. Laziness is no laughing matter to You. Help me feel the same way.

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men,” Colossians 3:23, NIV.

Looks Like Granite

By Cynthia Ruchti –

Eavesdropping on conversations yields some of life’s most fascinating moments, and for writers, it’s not only acceptable, but a necessity. Character studies.

I remember walking through an airport a year ago; collecting snippets of conversation like corduroy pants collect lint.

“Okay, then,” a businessman said into his cell phone, “offer them fifty million, but that’s our final offer.”

I kept walking but would have loved to have heard the rest of that conversation.

A middle-aged woman told the younger woman sitting next to her in a boarding gate waiting area, “We’ll have to stop somewhere on the way to the church. I only packed my black tights. I forgot the pink pair. I can’t wear black.”

Funeral? No. Black would have been appropriate. Wedding? Maybe. Pink tights, huh?

The conversation I overheard the other day gave me pause, as they say.

“Looks like granite,” the elderly man said. “But it’s really yogurt.”

Now…

Yes! Me, too! I wondered what subject would have evoked that kind of observation. Looks like granite, but it’s really yogurt.

Before the day was over, I found a use for the phrase. A crisis hit, smacking me with the force of a block of granite.

Looks like granite. It seemed immovable. Impenetrable. A problem as heavy and crushing as granite.

But God, the true Rock, crushes “crushing” problems. To Him, they’re more like…yogurt.

Nothing threatens Him.

Does that comfort you like it comforts me? He can’t be intimidated much less overcome.
The next time I feel overwhelmed by something life’s catapult hurls at me, I’m going to rephrase my response. Instead of whining, “This is hard!” I’m going to straighten my posture, raise my eyebrows as I survey the scene, and say, “It might look like granite. But it’s really yogurt.”

PRAYER: Lord, give me the grace to see what You see when You look at the problems that seem so tough to me. Help me find hope in the truth that Your sovereignty trumps everything and turns crushing troubles into something no more threatening than a smoothie ingredient.

“Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you,” Jeremiah 32:17 NIV.

Faith step: When your need is great, tap into His limitless need-meeting ability.
—Cynthia Ruchti

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