A Daddy’s Love

Photo by Heather Lockridge

This little baby is helpless.  She can do nothing to please her father.  Instead she often awakens him in the middle of the night, requires his help to eat, poops in her diaper forcing him to clean up the smelly mess, and sometimes spits up curdled milk all over herself after she has just been given a bath!  When he wants to read his paper or relax after work, she is there demanding attention with her loud wails.

Never-the-less, her father loves her dearly.  Why?  Because she is irresistibly cute?  Sometimes she is, but never when she is crying in the middle of the night.

Her Daddy loves her because she is his–his own flesh and blood.  She belongs to Him!  Nothing can change that.  It is love based on relationship–a life-long relationship.

Human fathers often demonstrate the kind of love that Father God has for us, His children.  This love, too is based on relationship, the unchanging, eternal relationship that we have with Him.  How blessed we are, that we don’t have to earn His love.  Instead, it is there when we least deserve it but need it the most.

When we are at our worst, His love can still reach, clean, calm, and feed us, supplying our every deep emotional and spiritual need as only He can.  He loves us, because He is love!

Thanks, Lord, for your endless, boundless, unmerited, immutable LOVE!

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A Hint of What is to Come?

Photo by Shawn Lockridge

“About 50,000 years ago a giant fireball streaked across the North American sky.  At its core was a meteorite–a chunk of nickel iron about 150 feet wide.

The meteorite weighed 300,000 tons and traveled at a speed of 26,000 miles per hour (12 kilometers per second). When it struck the earth in what is now northern Arizona, it exploded with the force of 2 ½ million tons of TNT, or about 150 times the force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

Most of the meteorite was melted by the force of the impact, and spread across the landscape in a very fine, nearly atomized mist of molten metal. Millions of tons of limestone and sandstone were blasted out of the crater, covering the ground for a mile in every direction with a blanket of shattered, pulverized and partially melted rock mixed with fragments of meteoritic iron.

When the dust settled, what remained was a crater three-quarters of a mile (about 1 kilometer) wide and 750 feet deep.  The impact occurred during the last ice age, a time when the Arizona landscape was cooler and wetter than it is today. The plain around it was covered with a forest, where mammoths, mastodons and giant ground sloths grazed. The force of the impact would have leveled the forest for miles around, hurling the mammoths across the plain and killing or severely injuring any animals unfortunate enough to be nearby.”1

That’s me enjoying this amazing site.  Photo by Shawn Lockridge 

We were fortunate to visit the site of this meteor impact in August of this year.  It’s size is amazing–big enough to accommodate 20 football fields on its floor.  Later, contemplating the huge “impact” of this small-relatively speaking- chunk of nickel iron, we were struck with the amount of devastation that would accompany the impacts described in Revelation chapters 8 and 9.

The second angel blew his trumpet and something like a great mountain burning with fire, was thrown into the sea and a third of the sea became blood.  A third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.  Rev. 8:8,9 ESV

The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.  Rev. 8:10  ESV

I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth.  Rev. 9:1 ESV

These certainly sound like meteor impacts to me.  Whatever they describe, they will certainly happen.  They are promised in God’s Word, and the scripture cannot be broken.  John 10:35 ESV

(1)The Barringer Meteor Crater;  http://www.barringercrater.com/

My Rock

Four views of the same mountain, the same rock!

On a recent trip to Canada, our resort window offered a beautiful view of a majestic mountain top–a huge rock face sculpted by the forces of erosion.

As we watched this spectacular mountain during the four days of our stay, we were amazed by its many moods, and the changeable nature of the view.  Sometimes the irregularities on the mountain face were illuminated.  Or a passing rain storm hid the irregularities.  Sometimes blue sky topped the view.  At other times clouds obscured the sky and mountain top.  In early morning the light gave a pinkish glow to the scene.  Later in the day the rock took on a somber, grey tone.

Meditating on this, I was struck with the thought that the view of this mountain is much like my faith as I travel through life.  When, years ago, I began this walk with Christ, a beautiful glow fell on my Christian experience.  On good days, my view of the Rock of my salvation was detailed and sharp.  At other times, the struggles of life partially obscured my view of my Rock.  However, my Rock, Himself, did not change.  During the trials and testings that I experienced, He was always there, and He remained the same.  It was only my view of Him that changed.

That is so like our Jesus–the same yesterday, today, and forever.  Immovable like a mountain, He is always there for you and for me!

“The Rock his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice.  A God of faithfulness and without iniquity just and  upright is He.” Deuteronomy 32:4

“There is no Rock like our God.”  I Samuel 2:2b

He said “The Lord is my Rock and my fortress and my deliver, my God, my Rock, in whom I take refuge.”  2 Samuel 22:2,3;  Psalm 18:2

“For who is God, but the Lord?  And who is a Rock, except our God?”  2 Samuel 22:32

The Lord lives, and blessed be my Rock, and exalted be my God, the Rock of my salvation.  2 Samuel 23:3

“…the Rock was CHRIST.”  I Corinthians 10:4