DayBreaks for 3/24/20 – Hallway Through the Sea #4: Out of the Depths

DayBreaks for 3/24/20: The Hallway Through the Sea #4 – Out of the Depths

From Christianity Today and Tim Dalrymple, 3/23/20:

For today’s musical pairing, something different: this acoustic version of Stay and Wait by Hillsong UNITED. See the video below.

“Moses answered the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.’”
Exodus 14:13–14

“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.”
Exodus 14:21–22

Day 4. 350,536 confirmed cases, 15,328 deaths globally.

In the Book of Exodus, a series of increasingly catastrophic plagues loosened Pharaoh’s grip just long enough for the Israelites to make their way into the wilderness. Pharaoh reversed course and pursued them. The Israelites faced a vastly superior army on one side and the Red Sea on the other. They were hemmed in. “The Lord will fight for you,” Moses tells them. “You need only to be still.”

Then followed one of the most renowned and spectacular of all the miracles in the Bible. God “divided” the waters and the Israelites passed through, “with a wall of water on their right and on their left.”

It must have been an awe-inspiring experience to walk that hallway through the sea. It must also have been terrifying. At any moment, those towering walls could have crashed in upon them. Instead, after the Israelites ascended onto the far shore, the hallway collapsed upon the army of Pharaoh and freed the people of God.

The number of confirmed cases of and deaths from the pandemic in the United States soared over the weekend. We know the numbers will continue their rapid climb as symptoms begin to manifest and testing catches up with reality.

We feel, O Lord, like those Israelites passing through the sea. We are exhausted and bewildered. A frightening enemy pursues us. Danger looms at every side. The only way is forward. We know there is hope on the far shore, but we have not yet begun our ascent.

To read the rest of this meditation, click this link: 

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/march-web-only/out-of-depths.html?fbclid=IwAR21Z_2oaNU3s0pX3_E3kdL9EpuKmFBntmIG_tnpaJ_v5PWVmb9IYSJx0N0

Link to Christianity Today’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CTMagazine/

PRAYER: Lord, as you led your people through the waters long ago, we trust in you to lead us through this perilous time.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Link to video with facts, symptoms and prevention tips about coronavirus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AITtaAAAdYc

Copyright by 2020 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

 

DayBreaks for 3/20/20 – The Hallway Through the Sea #1 – The Shepherd in the Dark

We are in uncharted territory as a nation and world…at least uncharted as far as those of us who are alive today are concerned. The world has seen pandemics in the past but we’ve not seen it in our times. Many, even Christians, are fearful and greatly concerned. In recognition of that, my son Tim Dalrymple at Christianity Today, is starting to publish a daily devotion to help us navigate this journey. 

Starting today, I’ll be republishing them (a portion each day) with a link to that days’ full post on Christianity Today’s Facebook page. I feel confident you’ll be blessed.

From Christianity Today, The Hallway Through The Sea: The Shepherd in the Dark, 3/19/20:

“Editor’s note: We confront a public health challenge unlike any we have experienced in our lifetimes. Yet we believe there is beauty even in times of trial. Beginning today and each weekday hereafter, for however long, CT will publish a meditation from our president and CEO. We will pair it with a work of art or music to inspire and bring beauty through the darkness of this season.

Today we pair the meditation below with Verses by Ólafur Arnalds & Alice Sara Ott. Also see this dance choreographed by Robert Bandara to the same piece. (Song embedded below.)

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Psalm 23:4 (ESV)

Day 1. 211,853 confirmed cases and 8,724 deaths.

Onward it comes. The world slows to a still. We hold our breath. We listen. We watch. And the affliction stretches swiftly across the land like a darkening tide.

We feel, again, the long fingers of fear scratching at our lungs. Fear of loss. Fear of death. Fear of the chaos held at the gate.

We are lost in a trackless forest of information. We grasp for the apple of knowledge in the hope it will bring us peace, and yet fear lies coiled liked a worm within the apple. We consume the apple; the worm consumes us. The food we hoped would satisfy only makes our hunger more painful. No amount of knowledge will take our fear away.

To be human is to stand suspended over a chasm. To be human is to be vulnerable.

But when have we ever not been vulnerable? We have never been more than one week, one day, or even one moment away from losing the things we love in this world.

O Lord, we have always been in your hands. At your mercy. Why should that frighten us now?

The shadow of death is an old enemy and a wise friend. Memento mori, it whispers. Remember your days are numbered. Remember your days have always been numbered since before the first day dawned. Remember each day is a gift. And remember you have never been anything other than wholly and frightfully and wonderfully dependent on your God.

To read the rest of the article, click this link:

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/march-web-only/covid-19-devotional-shepherd-dark-coronavirus-pandemic.html?fbclid=IwAR1BOMR_kHCzI1u8d89bFQI8epYDeDrf96QnLrbDlRasdcvWlKuOZ7rXfJk

Link to Christianity Today’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CTMagazine/

PRAYER: Lord, you hold the whole world in your hands. Remind us often that there’s no better place for us to be than in your care!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Link to video with facts, symptoms and prevention tips about coronavirus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AITtaAAAdYc

Copyright by 2020 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

 

DayBreaks for 3/11/20 – A Lesson From COVID-19

COVID-19 (referred to simply as coronavirus by the media) is all over the news…and virtually all over the world and spreading. While it could be much more deadly than it has been, it is still a very serious issue especially for the elderly with underlying medical issues. It seems the world is learning as it goes on this.

As I was thinking about COVID-19, I was impressed yet again with several things:

1. How precarious life is – we read stories about disasters, about meteors that pass by the earth rather than colliding with it, about war and injustice. All these things can serve as reminders to us that our reunion with you could be just around to corner for any of us and we need to be ready to take that journey at any time;
2. How dangerous things can be that you can’t even see with your eyes – the coronavirus is tiny – as are all viruses – and yet it has caused the death of hundreds, made over 100 thousand sick, disrupted businesses and economic systems in ways that nothing has during my life. While we may fear the hulking menace in the dark of the night – fearing we may awaken some night with them presence in our rooms – we need to understand that not all dangerous things are big.

All this caused me to think that sin is much like coronavirus. You can’t see the seed of it in the human heart, but it’s there and just waiting to break out. The things that could make us sick or us spiritually don’t usually present themselves as huge or life-shattering decisions. They start small and are maybe not even recognized in the beginning, but once the infection gets into our hearts and minds it begins to multiply – and it can be deadly. Small, seemingly innocent interactions can lead to serious issues!

Psalm 51:10 (ESV) – Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

PRAYER: Jesus, help us be aware of how insidious Satan and sin can be so we don’t fall into his snare. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2020 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

 

DayBreaks for 2/18/20 – Finding Family

From the DayBreaks archive, February 2010:

For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory. – Romans 8:29-30

“They worked together every day at the furniture delivery company and didn’t know. Gary would lift one end of the couch and Randy the other. People said they looked alike, but they chalked that up to coincidence.

“Randy had been researching his family history. He was an adopted son, and a new law in Maine allowed him to finally see his birth certificate. He learned that both his parents had died but that they had another son, born June 10, 1974. Then, on a furniture delivery run, it happened again. A customer commented on how much Randy looked like Gary. Randy started nonchalantly asking Gary some more personal questions—like when his birthday is. “As soon as he said his birthday, I knew,” Randy said later. Gary is his brother.

“Here they had grown up in neighboring towns and attended rival schools—only a year apart in age—and never known about each other. It was a shock to both of them. “Phenomenal,” said Gary. “I still can’t wrap my head around it.” A co-worker, Greg Berry, said, “There’s nothing like family, especially when you don’t have one. Now they’ve got it.”

“But that’s not all. After their story appeared in the local paper, “a teary-eyed woman showed up at the brothers’ workplace clutching a birth certificate.” She was their half-sister, born five or six years before the two men to the same mother. “After all these years,” she said in an interview with a reporter, “here I am 41, and now I finally found my brothers.” – Bangor Daily News

What a wonderful picture of what the church is to be!  Veritable strangers come together inside a building – perhaps they know someone and perhaps they are all total strangers to one another.  But if they stay for any period of time, they find that they are really brothers and sisters – that those who are part of this particular family of God all have a striking family resemblance as well as a deep bond that can’t be explained in mere human terms.  Those who are alone and lonely can find (in a church that beats with the heartbeat of the Master), the family they never knew they had.

As believers, we all have a responsibility and privilege of bearing the image of our Lord.  Let’s make sure that we keep His image clean and pure and that we welcome those who are seeking a place where they belong.  

PRAYER: May we be true brothers and sisters – far beyond any physical ties – that those outside will see in Your church the family they desperately long for!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2020 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

 

DayBreaks for 1/28/20 – When Legends Die

I have been a Los Angeles Lakers fan since I was a kid in fifth grade and we lived in southern California, so when the news broke yesterday about the death of basketball legend, Kobe Bryant (along with his 13-year old daughter and 7 other people in a helicopter crash), I was stunned and saddened. Kobe was only 41, but 4 years removed from hanging up his sneakers. Many seemed immobilized by grief. Reactions came pouring in from every walk of life and corner of the globe in this day of instant, world-wide communications. It seems like such a tragic waste.

Alexa tells me that every day there are approximately 156,021 persons who die around the globe. Most of those are the nameless, faceless masses of humanity – people we have never met or even heard of. They lived and died in obscurity.

I couldn’t help but think today about a craftsman from a small village in Israel – fewer than 500 probably lived there – who died one day in a tiny backwater of the Roman world. His life was mostly lived in obscurity and ended in obscurity to those alive at the time. Only a small handful seemed to weep at his death. When he died, there was no mass communication and if people heard of it, it was slow in spreading and few there were who found it to be of interest.

Why didn’t Jesus give his life in the 21^st century so everyone could hear about him like Kobe? I’ve heard the explanations but it confounds human wisdom for Jesus to have lived and died when he did – especially if the goal is to have the world come to know him and what he did for them.

I don’t know Kobe’s eternal destiny. I don’t know if he came to believe in the craftsman who died on the cross. I can only hope he did. But I do know this: for all his fame, wealth and glory, Kobe’s death couldn’t and didn’t save even a single human soul. And his fame couldn’t keep the helicopter in the air in order to save the lives of those nine aboard.  And all his world championships, MVP’s, Olympic gold medals and the hundreds of millions of dollars he made putting a ball through a hoop don’t matter at all to God. Kobe has faced the ultimate question: Who do you believe Jesus is? I can only hope and pray he knew the answer. 

Yet, the one who died two thousand years ago saved souls by the millions through his death. And yesterday, while the news filled the airwaves with news of Kobe’s passing, I didn’t see one story on the news about the king of heaven and what he’d done. It is not God’s way to be flashy, but to be humble and work invisibly.

How many of the 156,021 who died today went to heaven because of Kobe? None. Not one. How many went because of Jesus? I don’t know, but if they didn’t, it isn’t Jesus’ fault, but it could be partly mine. You see, like most of us, I was eager yesterday and today to talk about Kobe’s passing with my friends – far more eager to talk about that than I am to tell others about Jesus’ death for them. May God have mercy on my soul. 

One more thing as I contemplate the death of a legend. One very famous man and his daughter died yesterday that I know of, but the vast bulk of the remaining 156,019 died obscure deaths as far as the news is concerned. But with God no one dies in obscurity because Jesus tells us that God even knows when a tiny sparrow dies and we are of much greater worth than a tiny bird. We are known to him, he counts the hairs on our head and knows our name and he longs for us all to be with him. And he is counting on us to tell those around us that he loves them so that the 156,021 who will die tomorrow will live in His Presence forever.

My condolences to the Bryant family.

PRAYER: Jesus, thank you for living and dying for us. Help us to be eager to tell the world what you’ve done. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2020 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

 

DayBreaks for 1/22/20 – Top 10 Overblown Fears of the Decade

From the DayBreaks Archive, January 2010:

Here’s another of Newsweek’s lists that was compiled around the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010:

The Top 10 Overblown Fears of the Decade (1999-2009) – counting down from number 10 to 1, 1 being the most overblown:

10. Globalization
11. Anthrax
12. Teen Oral Sex Epidemic
13. Web Predators
14. SARS, Mad Cow, Bird Flu
15. Bloggers
16. Immigrants
17. Vaccines Causing Autism
18. Shoe Bombs
19. Y2K

I would have to agree that most of these fears are overblown and were inflated by the media in the worship of sensationalism.  Some of the fears were real fears, even though there wasn’t much of a basis for them, such as Y2K.  I worked in the computer world in 1999-2000 and remember the fears that all our computer systems that provided data and products for our customers might go “belly up.”  Pish-posh.  Didn’t happen – but that was partly due to all the advance warning we had and the hard work of a truly dedicated staff of developers led by one of my best friends. 

I thought #2 was interesting: shoe bombs.  Richard Reid was the cause of that fear – you remember him.  Little did Newsweek know when they put the list together that we’d have another “bomber” attempt lighting his underwear on fire at Christmas time.  Maybe that wasn’t such an overblown fear after all.

What should we fear?  Scripture advises us to be anxious (fearful) about nothing (Phil. 4:6; Lk. 12:22), that we should “Fear not!”.  But there is one exception: we are told to “Fear God and keep His commandments” (Eccl. 12:13) and to “Fear Him who, after killing the body, has power to throw you into hell.  Yes, I tell you, fear Him!” (Lk. 12:5)

Other than that, we’ve nothing to worry about and no need to worry about any of the items on Newsweek’s list or any other list!

PRAYER: May we fear You alone!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2020 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

 

DayBreaks for 1/21/20 – Top 10 Indispensible Things Since 1999

From the DayBreaks Archive, January 2010:

It’s been an interesting decade from 1999-2009, hasn’t it?  So much has happened in that short 10 years.  So many fears exist now that we’d never acknowledged before.  We’ve seen the birth of worldwide terrorism at a scale we’d never thought existed in the human heart.  We’ve had numerous epidemics (bird flu, swine flu, etc.).  We’ve witnessed devastation caused by nature on horrific scales: Katrina/Rita, the Asian tsunami, Haitian earthquake and so on.  We’ve witnessed masses of people dying in wars, global economic meltdowns.  It’s been quite a decade and it makes one wonder what the next 10 years might hold.

This is from Newsweek, who compiled several interesting lists toward the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010, and it was the “Top 10 Indispensible Things Since 1999”.  Check it out:

1. WikiPedia
2. YouTube
3. iTunes
4. DVR
5. Gardasil
6. Chipotle
7. TMZ
8. Red Bull
9. Free Credit Reports
10. Online Airline Check-in

All I can say is: WHAT?!?!?!?!?!  As I look at the list, I don’t need a single one of those things.  Not one of them would be on my “I can’t live without this” list – and isn’t that the definition of “indispensible”?  I mean, water and air are indispensible.  Sunlight is indispensible.  So’s sleep.  But there are even more important and indispensible things.

If those are the most indispensible things since 1999, we’re in sorry, sorry shape.  Where is God?  Where is love?  Where is social decency?  Where is integrity? Where is faith?  Where is mercy?  Where is grace?  Where is the family?  Where is the church?  Where is forgiveness?  Where’s the Word of God?  Where’s hope?

Those things have always been the most indispensible.  That will never change, no matter what decade it is.

PRAYER: Keep us from thinking that foolish things are indispensible and keep us from happiness and contentment if we have them so that we’ll look for what is truly indispensible to the human soul!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2020 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>