Dealing with the fireworks! by Linden Malki

Love is a great experience--except when it isn't. I've seen the excitement of the butterflies in the tummy--even had it happen once in awhile. I've had a couple of good friends who didn't understand that there is more to "love" than floating around a few inches off the ground, and when the butterflies die off you think it's over and you can walk away. Or even lose interest when somebody you've been watching from a distance shows an interest--and that takes all the fun out of it. One of my friends who had a habit of losing interest began to stalk one guy who she had dumped--after he got a new girlfriend. The thing to learn about "eros" is that you don't learn what you need to know unless you learn what's actually happening.  Yes, there are times when you can fall hard for someone who turns out to be a good match, and you recognize that the excitement always wears off--usually in six months to a year--but if you have kept your eyes open, made a point of praying for the wisdom you need, know what you want and don't want, there's a good chance that it will grow into a blessed and lasting relationship.   

All the different kinds of love have things in common--one is that they require something from us. Healthy families, healthy friendships, and even a healthy relationship with God require effort, watchfulness, an understanding of what a good relationship involves. If we always put ourselves first, this usually doesn't work well. Being a doormat doesn't work well either; it can become a distraction that makes it easy to miss out on things we really should be doing, and it doesn't usually help others either.  Again, applying good sense to a situation helps; recognizing when you are asking too much or too little from someone; interfering with their best interest, making a pest of yourself with other people (or even God).

Another thing that can be tough to wrap our minds around is the footnote to the commandments to love--that we need to have a proper understanding of how we fit into this. It can be easy to get into the habit of ignoring or belittling our own needs, or also to not clearly understand what we are responsible for, and what we are not. I've had instances of answers to prayer tell me to stop fussing and let God deal with it (and the person who triggered the problem eventually unsnarled it); I've been told to use the brain I was given to deal with an issue, and I've been told that I was worrying about the wrong thing and to concentrate on what I was actually called and expected to do. Love should be an important part of our relationships and our walk with God; and His teaching and His Word are the best ways to make it the best part of our lives.

Are We Listening? by Linden Malki

When God created the universe, and the world, He said that it was Good. When He created man, He put the man in a garden to take care of it, and He told the man that he could eat anything except the fruit of one tree: the one that was in the center of the Garden.  The man heard the instruction from God, and it gave him a choice, the choice to obey. We know what happened: they listened, but they made the choice to disobey.

We live with this choice: we can listen or not; and we make choices. God has always given us His words, and they come with the option of obedience. When mankind made too many bad choices, God told one man, one man that He knew would listen, and told him how to deal with the consequences that were coming. When God was ready to start over, He spoke to Noah and again, gave Noah instructions, and gave him the option of listening and obeying.  Again, some people listened, and some of them took God seriously and some did not. We have enough instructions, we don't need any more words, we know what God offers, and we know that it comes down to a choice.

Abraham listened; Jacob listened, Moses listened.  They knew what God wanted; and they offered their families the choices.  Sometimes people listened; sometimes they obeyed. God spoke through prophets; He spoke through events and consequences. Some people listened; some actually learned what God wanted of us. Two thousand years after Abraham, the records were there. People who listened, or read what had already been said, knew what God wanted them to hear. 

And then God spoke again; this time directly through a part of Himself. Most of what Jesus said wasn't new; it had been said before.  Jesus spoke, more people listened; this time what God was saying was spread throughout the world. We have no excuse: we have the recorded words God gave people over the centuries readily available. We have the privilege of being able to ask and to listen to Him personally; we just in many cases need to stop talking and listen. It's available; we don't need new words. We have witnesses, we have events, we have what we need. We just need to listen!

Unintended Consequences--by Linden Malki

The last picture we see of Lot is him fleeing into the mountains east of the Dead Sea Valley, thinking that the whole world is ending. His wife, about whom we know nothing, made the fatal mistake of looking back at an onrushing cloud of fire, brimstone, and toxic salts  and becoming herself a  

           

 geological specimen. Their daughters are convinced that they are  the last people left in the world, and decide to repopulate the planet themselves by seducing their father, whom they made drunk. They did accomplish part of their project; they each had a son who each became the founder of a tribe of people who lasted about 1500 years and caused their neighbors continuous trouble. They were both pagan tribes, who were at various times enemies, rivals and allies of Israel, and became part of the Assyrian empire in the 700BC's,until the Babylonians and Persians absorbed everybody.                                            

Moab was just east of the Dead Sea, in the hills and plains that the Israelites had to go through as they came back during the Exodus. The Moabites were terrified of the Isrealites who were migrating through their territory, and sent their women out to seduce the Israelites and involve them in their pagan worship. Later, we find Moab becoming a refuge for Israelites fleeing a famine at the time of Ruth, the Moabite ancestress of King David. He also sent his parents to Moab during the time that King Saul was threatening his life. 

The Ammonites were the next kingdom to the north, on the east side of the Jordan River, centered on the central part of what is now the Kingdom of Jordan--whose capital is the city of Amman, still on the site of the ancient capital  Rabbath-Ammon. This is where King  David's armies were fighting at the time of the Bathsheba incident; and they as well were involved in the invasions from the East that eventually ended the separate existence of most of the kingdoms of the Old Testament period. The memories of these kingdoms, who were both political rivals and religious threats, are found all the way through the prophetic books. It is sobering to realize that these tribes were the descendents of two panicked teenage girls, who grew up in a wicked, pagan city with apparently no real knowledge of God, who had their own answer to the destruction of their home--and whose legacy helped shape that whole part of the world. 

God Still Calls some of His people to new places! by Linden Malki

Reading about the call of God to Abraham's family made me aware that I have seen that happen in my own family. My grandmother's uncle, father, and another uncle and their families were banished from Sweden for preaching outside of the state church, and came to America over 150 years ago. My dad's father was kicked out by his father for joining one of the underground Baptist churches in Sweden, and came to Minnesota, married my grandmother and moved to the Seattle area.  My dad was offered a job promotion to move to Spokane, met my mom at church, and that's where I grew up. 

And then it happened to me. I had finished college, was turned down for a graduate fellowship I had applied for.  My dad's missionary brother was retiring from a Christian college in Taiwan, was planning to come home the long way around and spending some time in the Middle East with a missionary son and then going on to Sweden.  He invited Dad and I to join them in Beirut and travel with them through the Holy Land and then on to Sweden. Dad was retired, I was at loose ends, my mom had died five years earlier.

Dad and I took a Dutch freighter to Beirut, and on that boat was a Lebanese man with his mom, who was taking him back to the "old country" to find a wife. He had been living in California for about eight years at the time. His family was historic Christian; his father had grown up in a missionary school in Turkey, and he had a missionary brother who knew my missionary cousin in Lebanon. My aunt and uncle went on to Sweden, while Dad and I stayed in Beirut; dad's health was failing and he passed away that summer. I wound up getting married there. (Yes, Dad was happy about it, he told the family that he'd never met a man that he thought would take better care of me.) We spent the rest of the summer there, including more time in Jordan, which then included Jerusalem and the West Bank. When we came back to San Bernardino where John had been living, I discovered that the associate pastor of the church John was already attending had been the pastor of the church in Spokane I had grown up in, was one of Dad's best friends, had gone to college with Dad's sister, and had introduced my parents. God pulled a lot of strings to get me here, with a new family, a new church, and a business that was just what I actually could do well. God moved my great-grandparents from Sweden to Minnesota; my grandparents to Seattle, my parents to Spokane,  and then me to San Bernardino and a new life.