Between the Two Ponds
One passage. One idea. A few quiet minutes. Short devotional readings for people being formed by grace, written from a small chair beside still water in Falcon, Colorado.
Pull one up. Read slowly. There is no hurry here.
Have You Reached Yet
There is a preacher who imagined the hosts of heaven leaning over the rail of glory, watching the Son of God face down in the dirt of Gethsemane, sweating like a man bleeding, and asking one another a single question.
"Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done." (Luke 22:42)
One preacher imagined the hosts of heaven leaning over the rail of glory, watching the Son of God face down in the dirt of Gethsemane, sweating as though he were bleeding, and asking one another a single question. Has he reached yet, yet? Because everything hung on that one word.
Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me. That is the prayer, and it is honest, the prayer of a man who does not want to do what he is about to do. And then, nevertheless. Yet. Not my will, but yours. There is a kind of faith that only believes God exists and is good, and it is real, but it is the beginning. And there is a deeper faith, a desperate faith, that honors him, holds nothing back, and wants his glory known in the world more than it wants to be comfortable. In the moment Jesus said that one word, his heart caught fire again for his Father's glory, and the garden became the doorway to the cross.
So here is the question to leave standing in front of you. Have you reached the point of yet, yet? You may still be at the cup, and there is no shame in the cup; he was there too. But do not mistake the cup for the whole prayer. The prayer is not finished until it can say yet, and mean it, and go.
Exceeded, Not Answered
He did not come, and their brother died, and they buried him, and by the time Jesus finally walked up the road there had been four days of it. Four days of a house full of mourners. Four days of the smell.
"This sickness will not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." (John 11:4)
Mary and Martha asked Jesus to come and heal their brother. He did not come. Their brother died, and they buried him, and by the time Jesus finally walked up the road there had been four days of it. Four days of a house full of mourners, four days of the sealed tomb, four days ending in the sentence Martha says to his face: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
Their prayer was not answered. Their prayer was exceeded, and it nearly killed them to get there. Say that carefully, without tying a bow on grief, because four days is four days. She meant what she said to him, and he did not correct her for saying it. But he had told them at the very start what he was doing. This is for the glory of God. This is so the Son may be glorified through it. They simply could not hear it over the sound of the funeral.
That is the part we keep having to learn. The answer had already been spoken before the grief began; it just did not arrive on their timeline. It arrived on the fourth day, larger than the thing they had asked for. So when what you begged for does not come, do not assume the silence is a no. Sometimes it is a larger yes still on its way, and the reason you cannot hear the promise is that the funeral is louder than the word.
Feeding on Ashes
A man cuts a tree, burns half of it to warm himself and bake his bread, then bows to what is left and says, deliver me. The strange part is not that he worships. The strange part is that he watched himself make it.
"He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray." (Isaiah 44:20)
Isaiah watches a man walk out to the woods and cut down a tree. He carries it home. Half of it he burns; he warms himself at the fire and says, ah, I am warm. He bakes his bread over it and eats until he is full. Then he takes what is left of the same tree, and he shapes it, and he bows down to it, and he says, deliver me, for you are my god. The strange part is not that he worships. The strange part is that he watched himself make it.
You will not be tempted by a wooden idol. But you will be tempted by something you built with your own hands and then knelt to. A reputation you assembled. A political certainty you carved. A family you love so much that you have quietly begun asking it to save you. A retirement account. A rightness. A routine. You watched yourself make it. You remember the labor. And still you find yourself asking it for deliverance.
Isaiah says the man feeds on ashes, and that is the exact accounting. An idol does not starve you all at once. It feeds you. It gives you something real. Ash has substance, it fills the mouth, and you can go a long way on it before you notice that nothing in it is keeping you alive. But here is the line that should stop you where you stand. No one stops to think. No one has the discernment to say, half of it I burned in the fire. He does not ask the question, not because he could not answer it, but because he never asks it. So ask it. What is the thing you are asking to deliver you? And do you remember making it?