DayBreaks for the Week of 3/18/24 – Living in the Resurrection

From the DayBreaks archive, 2015:

John 11:17-25 – When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he was told that Lazarus had already been in his grave for four days. Bethany was only a few miles down the road from Jerusalem, and many of the people had come to pay their respects and console Martha and Mary on their loss. When Martha got word that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.”  Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.”  “Yes,” Martha said, “when everyone else rises, on resurrection day.”  Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again.”

This past week was not a really good one for several members of our church.  Two families lost loved ones from their extended family.  The cold, bony fingers of death were a little too close to home this past week.  I pray that they’ll be gone for some period of time.  Both deaths were rather sudden, and relatively unexpected.  But, when the Lord decides that our time is up, we must answer and we must go – no matter whether we are male or female, young or old, rich or poor, happy or sad – believer or unbeliever alike. 

I think that John 11 is my favorite chapter in the Bible.  The theological truths are profound, the human drama unrivaled, the full gamut of human experience, from life, to death, to resurrection, and the surprise of new life are on display.  Jesus’ compassion and his fury at death are equally visceral.  Jesus had already raised other people from the dead by the time the story of Lazarus takes place.  But Martha, bless her heart, still somewhat rebukes the Lord for dilly-dallying around instead of coming at first word of Lazarus’ illness, and then she confesses, when asked, that she believes he will rise again in the resurrection.  Was she being coy – perhaps hoping that Jesus would raise him?  I don’t think so.  I think she had no such expectation.  When confronted with death we are forced to become realists.  Death is as real as real as it gets.  That is, unless Jesus is there.

Jesus tells her an amazing truth: I AM the resurrection and the life….  He doesn’t say, “I will be responsible for bringing the resurrection someday.”  No, He’s far more than the power behind the resurrection.  He IS the resurrection.  The Resurrection was standing in their midst, eating with them, laughing with them, weeping with them, teaching them, living for them, dying for them, and then living again.

F. B. Maurice said that this story made him very sad.  How sad it is, he observed, that after 2000 years, the church has gotten most Christians only to the point to which the Pharisees got Martha: resurrection in the future, resurrection a week from some Tuesday.  Only a handful have ever gotten past that point and made the leap of faith that Jesus got Martha to make: the leap to resurrection now – to resurrection as the fundamental mystery of creation finally manifest in his own flesh.

Will we live in the resurrected body in the future?  Yes.  All, Jesus says, who believe in him, will live again.  But will we live in the power of the resurrection NOW?  Will we continue to be afraid, fearful and timid creatures with no power, or will we live in Jesus now?  (It’s the same as living in the Resurrection, since He is the resurrection!)  Jesus had no fear – he feared nothing and no one because He knew what it meant to be the Resurrection.  Nothing could hold him, nothing could stop him, nothing can ever diminish him.  May we learn the secret of living in the resurrection each day for the rest of our lives!

PRAYER: Fill us, Lord, with Your glorious resurrection power today and every day throughout eternity!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 11/06/23: Where God Resurrects Dead Things

From the DayBreaks archive: Once again, confession time.  But first, a caveat: I’m going to tell you about something I’ve not done for a long, long time.  Are you ready?  I used to read Stephen King’s books.  I was a fan of his writing.  I loved the suspense and strange twists that he’d bring into play.  I also loved the cartoon strip, “The Far Side” and “Calvin and Hobbs”, and I still love “Dilbert”.  They are all a bit off the wall, and helped to take me to unexpected places – some of which were healthier than others.  But one of my all-time favorite Stephen King books was “Pet Sematary” (yes, that’s how it was spelled).  It was about a strange place out in a twisted wood behind a farm where dead things would come back to life once they were buried there – in a little pet cemetery.  I very seldom read any book more than once – but I did that one.  Of course, in true Stephen King style, the pets that came back weren’t quite like they had been previously – they were changed, and not for the better.  I won’t tell you the rest of the story…let your imagination work on it, if you wish.  

But the concept was intriguing.  As many of you know, it’s been just over 10 months since my dog, Ramses, died.  How I wish that there were a real pet cemetery where we could have taken him and gotten him back in a few hours – breathing, twisting, wagging, and playing as he had before.  But I don’t know of a pet cemetery like that.  Just last night as I was on a retreat, I told a fellow pastor about my father’s passing over 6 years ago – and I cried.  I miss him.

It is interesting that many times in scripture, we find things that were dead coming back to life.  It may have been hope that died, faith that died, trust that died, or it may have been someone that died.  Several times in the Bible, when something dies and it is going to be brought back to life, a cave is involved.  Elijah, after his trust and faith died, ran to the cave on Mt. Horeb where his hope was reborn.  David, running from Saul in fear, feeling like a failure after having been anointed, only to be chased for years by Saul who still sat on the throne, spent years in a cave regaining his hope and having God grow his trust.  Lazarus went into the cave.  Jesus went into the cave.  But none of them stayed there.  Why?  Because caves are the place where God resurrects dead things.

Not every cave is made out of rock.  Some are made out of the shambles of our hollowed-out spirits, marriages, families, and collapsed dreams.  Some are made of the demons of guilt, shame, or abuse.  Sometimes it seems as if the entry to the cave through which we entered has been sealed off by all the debris of our lives, and that we will die – alone and cold – in the hard, rocky darkness.  But then something happens.  A voice from the other side of the cave or the other side of the collapsed tangle of trees calls out to us, “Galen!  Come forth!”  And that which was dead breathes again by the grace and miraculous power of God. 

Life can, and is, a very, very long, hard, cold cave.  I know people who have lived in a cave of some kind of suffering and despair virtually every minute of their lives.  I don’t know how they do it.  But I do know that God spoke to Elijah in a cave, He led David out of the cave to the throne of Israel, He called Lazarus out of the clammy darkness, and He brought Jesus forth gloriously – never to die again. 

If you’re in a cave right now, rejoice.  You may be about to see and hear God speak life into you again.  And you’re in VERY good company.

John 11:38-44 – Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”  So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”  When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’”

PRAYER: I am so grateful that you are a God who does amazing, impossible things – even in the darkest of times in our lives!  Glory to You now and forever! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 10/22/23 – The Detour IS the Road

Life certainly has some strange twists and turns. I never expected to be doing what I am now, nor to do the things in life that I have done. I never expected to see so much of the world. I never expected to live in as many places as we have.

When I was younger, I thought I had my life figured out, or at least knew how I’d spend my life. How foolish!

In hindsight, my life reminds me somewhat of the story of Joseph. As a young man who, rightly or wrongly, fancied himself as the favorite and heir apparent to the power in the family, one day looked up to find himself cast into a pit, sold into slavery, hauled off to a hot, desert country where he languished in servitude and even prison. I wonder how many times as he sat in the dungeon he pondered his life and said, “God, this isn’t how it is supposed to work out. Go back and read the playbook for my life again!”

I’ve had those thoughts sometimes. But the adventures of Joseph aren’t supposed to be entertaining per se, but to be instructive for us. And there’s a lesson here: sometimes the unexpected detours of life is precisely the map for our life that God has decreed.

We may not understand it, we can ask “Why?” all day and night, and we typically won’t get a direct answer. It is only in hindsight, I believe, as Joseph sat on the throne that he understood when he declared to his brothers that what they intended for evil, God intended for good.

I believe with all my heart that God still works that way. We may not see it, we certainly may not like or even appreciate it, but what others in our lives meant for evil, God intends for good. The detours that seemed to delay us or stand between us and our future are a part of God’s plan for us. They aren’t the destination, but they prepare us for the next step in the journey. If you can believe in God’s goodness and omniscience, it will help you keep from frustration at your circumstances. Yes, we need to keep forging onward to what we believe God is calling us to, but we’d be wrong to get too impatient. God knows what He’s doing!

PRAYER: Thank you Jesus for the incredible power than can make all things, even detours, work together for our good!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the week of 7/30/23: Life in Two Worlds

If you could take someone from the middle ages in Europe and bring them into the modern world, or take a modern human and plop them into the middle of medieval Europe, what kinds of differences do you think would be most noticeable?  Surely the speed of life would be different, the hardships different in nature, travel would be different, and communication would be radically different (no TV/internet, etc.). 

Philip Yancey, in Rumors of Another World, posed this question and came up with a fascinating insight from which we can learn much: “A peasant in medieval Europe oriented life around two worlds.  Although the world around him contained much hardship – poverty, disease, crime, near-constant warfare – he took solace in the images of another world portrayed in his place of worship.  The scenes painted in the Sistine Chapel, or on the walls of his village church, he accepted as literal truth.  He understood life on this physical planet as one small slice of eternity and sought to make the connection with the spiritual world he could not see.  He believed that God has revealed how we ought to live and will one day hold us accountable.

“In contrast, the average citizen of modern Europe perceives only one world, the here and now.  She assumes that rational people make society’s rules based on a common good…at the moment of physical death, existence ends, and there is no God to hold us accountable.

“Which view of the world, the medieval or the modern, more closely resembles that articulated by Jesus?  “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul?” – if Jesus was in fact visiting this planet from another dimension, he could not have asked a more penetrating question.  Apparently, to him, a connection with the spiritual world had more value than all the material goods put together…Jesus bluntly rejected a one-world outlook on life.”

What world do you think of the most?  What world do you truly value? In which world do you try to live?

We may feel lucky to live in the modern world for a variety of reasons: better medicine and longer lives, being able to communicate with loved ones who live far away, less hard physical labor, etc., but I’m not sure we’ve got the better end of the deal.  While we may be grateful that we didn’t live in medieval times, I tend to think that what the modern world has lost, the sense of wonder and amazement and solid belief in another world where a God awaits to hold us accountable, is far more valuable than all the modern conveniences and medicines combined.  May we weep for what we’ve lost. God does.

Psalm 96:10 (NLT) – Tell all the nations that the Lord is king.  The world is firmly established and cannot be shaken.  He will judge all peoples fairly.

PRAYER: Father, correct our thinking and beliefs and make them in harmony with Yours!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple, ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 2/11/22 – The Real Life

Luke 6:17-19 (NLT) – When they came down from the mountain, the disciples stood with Jesus on a large, level area, surrounded by many of his followers and by the crowds. There were people from all over Judea and from Jerusalem and from as far north as the seacoasts of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and Jesus also cast out many evil spirits. Everyone tried to touch him, because healing power went out from him, and he healed everyone.

I don’t know about you, but interruptions can really bug me at times.  If I’m doing something that I am really into, that I dearly love, or if I’m concentrating really hard in thought, I don’t like interruptions.  Perhaps that’s because I’m getting old enough now that I can easily forget what I was doing or thinking when the interruption came barreling down on me! 

Some time ago and over a period of years, I spent my quiet time in what I can “The Jesus Exploration”.  I worked my way through all four gospels, a tiny bit at a time, expressly for the purpose of trying to get to know Jesus and his heartbeat better.  You know one thing that has consistently jumped out at me over and over again?  Here it is: it’s the way he always had time for people – for interruptions.  It might have been little children gamboling around his feet; a rich young man who came to learn what he needed to do to inherit eternal life; a Pharisee named Nicodemus who was full of questions; a large crowd of sick and broken people; a Roman centurion who had a sick servant; a funeral procession along the road out of Nain; or even religious leaders who Jesus knew were plotting his demise.  It didn’t matter who they were – or even what they wanted – He spent time with them.

I think about how often I give short-shrift to the clamoring of those round about me.  I pretend not to hear sometimes.  I pretend not to see.  I don’t want the interruption. 

But is that really the problem?  Is it really that I don’t want the interruption or that I don’t want to have to get involved with other people – especially if they seem to have a problem and I won’t want to get sucked into it?  I fear that it is far more often that I don’t want to get involved.  I want to live my own life in my own way – choosing the interruptions I want to honor and those I want to ignore. 

Jesus didn’t give himself that luxury, apparently.  Should we give it to ourselves?  What we often think of as interruptions may in fact be the very reason for us being in a given place at a given time.  Consider this bit of wisdom from C. S. Lewis: “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’, or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination.” – C.S. Lewis, from a letter to Arthur Greeves, 20 December 1943 

Perhaps we have been mis-lead about what constitutes our “real life”.

PRAYER: Lord, help us to see interruptions as possible Divine interventions to shake us out of our self-life into the life You intend us to live!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2022 by Galen C. Dalrymple. ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 11/16/21 – The Life Preserved

Psalm 121:7-8 – The LORD shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore.”  

This is such a precious passage of scripture, so full of comfort and encouragement. It offers us the hope – and promise – of being preserved from not just some evil – but ALL evil. He promises to protect our “going out and your coming in” – an old fashioned way to say all that you do day by day. Isn’t it great to know that God has that kind of interest in your protection and preservation?

But there is something else in this verse that isn’t really clear based on our English translations. The little phrase, “He shall preserve your soul” is special.  As David Jeremiah wrote in The Bend in the Road, “As our pilgrim narrator reassures us that God will keep our souls from all harm, he uses a particular word for soul. Hebrew writings usually reach for this word when the meaning is life. In other words, God is going to keep your life. It doesn’t end when you breathe your last breath. There is much more to the idea of life than the womb-to-tomb understanding to which we limit ourselves.”

The promise that David recorded in Psalm 121 wasn’t good only to ancient Israel. It is true for you and me today. It is true for your children and it will be true for your children’s children. You may have lost a believing son or daughter to death…and God’s promise is good for them – “He will keep your life”. Your spouse may have died, but if they are His, know this: “He will keep your life.” Perhaps you, yourself, are facing your last weeks or days due to a diagnosed illness. I would encourage you to memorize this passage and know that “He will keep your life.”

PRAYER: Thank you, Lord, for being our life preserver! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2021 by Galen C. Dalrymple. ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 9/23/21 – The Few, the Brave, the Courageous

Joshua 1:9 – I command you — be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.

Let’s face it: life isn’t for the weak of heart.  Life is a challenge – far more difficult and hard than we could ever imagine. 

We start out as children and life is like a game.  Then, we get a bit older and we find out that we can’t win every game, and that along with the game, come certain expectations and responsibilities.

We become young adults and find someone to love and marry – and for a while, we enjoy this thing called a “honeymoon” period of our relationship where all is peachy, but then we start to discover aspects of this person we married that we don’t care for very much.  And as the pressures of job, children and money mount, we become more disillusioned with this thing called life.

As young and middle-aged adults, we have probably settled into a relatively calm routine…and then we awaken one day to find that the routine is really a rut – a rut we don’t feel we can get out of and the walls start closing in and we feel desperately trapped.  The result: mid-life crises.

As age begins to descend upon us and our health starts to fail, we can get discouraged as we look back at our lives and wonder, “What if?”  We may often ask ourselves the very disturbing question: “Did I misunderstand what God wanted me to do?”  And we realize we don’t have time left to go back and undo what we may have misunderstood, to undertake what we might have been able to do when we were younger.

Life isn’t for the weak of heart.  It takes courage. 

“Whatever you do, you need courage.  Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.  There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.  To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs.  Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

You will face choices today that will take courage because life is like that.  Let the strength of the Lord be your strength, let his courage fill your spirit and may you make the right choices. In the modern time we live in, the Lord needs courageous men and women. Will you be one of them?

PRAYER: Life frightens us at nearly every corner, Lord.  We can’t see past the shadows and often, even though we know what we should do, we lack the courage it takes to win the victory.  Give us your courage today!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2021 by Galen C. Dalrymple. ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 9/07/21 – No Boundaries

Galen is out of the office until 9/13. DayBreaks from the archive will be featured until he returns.

Lazarus has died; Jesus goes to his house, and Lazarus’ sisters speak with him.  If you had been here, my brother would not have died, Mary said (John 11:32).  Mary has learned so much, and she shows great faith.  She affirms that Jesus Christ holds power over who is sick and who is healthy, over who is diseased and who is made whole.  She has seen Jesus heal before, and she knows that he could have healed her brother.  But she weeps, for her brother is dead and Jesus has come too late.

Martha has also spoken with Jesus, earlier and alone.  Like her sister, she says “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Martha shows faith in this, but her faith is greater still.  She continues, But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him (11:22). 

Mary knew that Jesus had the power to make the sick well.  She had seen it.  What she did not know, and what her sister believes, is that Jesus also has the power to make the dead live.  I believe there are two lessons that we can draw from this story:

FIRST: Our God specializes in the impossible.  We do not worship the God of rational possibility; we worship the God for whom ALL things are possible, who created the physical world and all of its laws and may work through or beyond those laws to do whatever He pleases.  Like Abraham, we worship the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist (Romans 4:17).  Therefore, we hope against hope (v.18).  We put aside all our petty notions of what is possible or conceivable, and we trust that all things are possible for God. 

SECOND: It is NEVER too late for God.  Don’t put time limits on He who holds time and everything in it in the palm of His hand.  If ever there was a hard-and-fast time limit, Mary had found it.  Her brother was dead.  What can possibly be more irreversible than death?  The clock was counting down, Jesus didn’t come…Lazarus was breathing his last breaths, Jesus didn’t come…his pulse was losing strength, Jesus didn’t come…his eyes glazed over and he was gone, Jesus never came, and it was over.  The tragedy, in Mary’s mind, was that Jesus came too late to save her brother.  But Mary underestimated God, who has power over life and death, who brought space and time into being and who infinitely transcends His creation.  There is no such thing as a boundary for God.  There is no horizon of impossibility for our Lord.  It is never too late for God to transform the situation in ways that we cannot imagine or comprehend.

What do you need to hope for, beyond all reasonable hope?  What desire of your heart has come and gone, such that you think it is “too late,” even for God?  What God has promised, no matter how impossible it may appear, He will be faithful to provide.

PRAYER:  Jesus, as I fight my way through life and the struggles of each hour, I often despair and think that things are horrible and that they will never end well.  Help me remember you are the Lord of the Impossible, a God with no boundaries to what You can do!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by Galen C. Dalrymple, 2021. All rights reserved.

DayBreaks for 8/13/21 – Living in a Day-Tight Compartment

Over 80 years ago, Sir William Osler, a renowned man of medicine in Canada, was asked to give a speech to the students of Yale University.  He spoke on the topic, “A Way of Life” and related it to what he’d experienced while on board an ocean liner.  One day while visiting with the captain of the ship, an alarm sounded and he could hear grinding and crashing sounds going on below decks.  “Those are our watertight compartments closing,” explained the captain.  “It’s an important part of our safety drill.  In case of real trouble, water leaking into one compartment would not affect the rest of the ship.  Even if we should collide with an iceberg, as did the Titanic, water rushing in will fill only that particular ruptured compartment.  The ship, however, will still remain afloat.”

When speaking to the students at Yale, Osler applied the lesson this way: “Each one of you is certainly a much more marvelous organization than that great liner and bound on a far longer voyage.  What I urge is that you learn to master your life by living each day in a day-tight compartment and this will certainly ensure your safety throughout your entire journey of life.  Touch a button and hear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out the Past – the dead yesterdays.  Touch another and shut it off, with a metal curtain, the Future – the unborn tomorrows.  Then you are safe – safe for today.

“Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, but set earnestly at the little task near your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day; for surely our plain duty is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what clearly lies at hand.”

Matthew 6:34 in The Message translation puts it this way: “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

In a way, God’s message to us is that we need to seal off the days of our lives – dividing them into 3 compartments.  Two of them are to be sealed off – the past, and the future.  Our job is to live today in the right way.  The past is past and we can should only reflect back upon it to learn from it so we can live more wisely TODAY.  The future is not here and may never be here, so seal it off and let God open that door daily as He extends you the grace to be alive tomorrow. 

I have been asked by other believers for career advice and my advice is very simple from Proverbs 3:6: “…in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”  It isn’t my job, nor yours, to direct our paths.  Our job is to acknowledge Him, and when we do that, He will direct our footsteps to where He wants us to be.

PRAYER: Help us to live one day at a time, Father, and not live in either the past of the future, but find what you have for us this day!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2021, Galen C. Dalrymple. ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 6/28/21 – The Dead Listen

John 5:28-30 – Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out-those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.”

It’s interesting to look at the situations in which Jesus raised the dead.  Consider Jairus’ daughter.  Consider the widow’s son.  Consider Lazarus.  There is something common in all three of these resurrections miracles.  In all three cases, Jesus speaks to the dead person, and in all three instances, they hear.  In all three cases, not only do they hear, but they immediately obeyed the voice of the Lord. 

John 5 tells us that they will not be the only ones in history who hear the voice of the Lord.  In fact, all of us who die before the Lord’s return will hear his voice, and when we do, we will come out of the grave.  There will be some who obey the voice of the Lord because they love Him and it has been the pattern of their life to obey.  Then there will be the rest – those who hear his voice and come forth out of the tomb not because they want to, but because they have no other choice. I feel confident that on that day they’d rather stay hiding in their graves – but that will not be an option.

I find it interesting that the dead never fail to hear and obey the voice of the Lord, while the same cannot be said for the living.  Amazingly, it is not the dead that can’t hear, but those who are still alive.  Why should this be?  Perhaps because while we’re alive, we have a choice.  It doesn’t appear that the dead have a choice.  But I think that there may be another reason, a reason Jesus pointed out to Martha, when he told her, as recorded in Luke 10:41 – “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things…”  Doesn’t that describe what life is like?  There are so many things that yell for our attention, that distract us and which drown out the voice of the Lord. 

If you are too busy to hear the voice of the Lord while you are alive, rest assured that someday you will hear it whether you want to or not.    Luke 8:8 – “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

PRAYER: Oh, Lord, help us hear your voice today and tomorrow and every day thereafter!  May we come to know your voice as our Good Shepherd, and not only as our Judge!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.