SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS

Tomorrow morning Nancy and I go in to St. Vincent's Hospitals to deliver our new baby, Charlotte Grace. We are so excited to introduce her to our family and the world. 

In order to slow down and enjoy my family during this next stage, I am pausing from posting on abrahambates.com for two weeks. I'll start back up at the end of July and will see you then.

In the meantime, read your Bible and maybe check out the OBEY series I posted a few weeks back. 

Let me leave you with one of my favorite benedictions:

May the LORD bless you and keep you;

May the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

May the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace,

Both now and forever more.

AB.

*written by Abraham Bates - Photography by Abraham Bates - Copyright AbrahamBates.com

THE TABLE - regularly

"And you shall set the bread of the Presence on the table before me regularly." Exodus 25:30

Think about your life? What you do? An average day? Where do you place your deepest connections with God? Do you have a regular time with God?

(pause for reflection)

I'm guessing many of you answer: I don't. I know I should, but I don't have a regular time with God. Most people I talk to say they want a more regular time with God and admit their lives are far from it. 

The good news is your not alone. The bad news is you can't stay this way. 

What is Regularly?

There are many ways we use the word regular. We drink regular coffee. We fill our tank with regular gas. We shop at the regular stores with the regular things for sale. This means the customary or the standard way of doing things. In addition, regular sometimes implies everything is in order: at the deli stand the sandwiches were place in a regularly order. The newspapers were in a regular stack.  

PSALM 90 | SUNDAY MORNING MEDITATION

"Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations." Psalm 90

This morning at River West we are looking at Psalm 90. I get to lead a quick word with our worship team before the service begins. Here's a few quick thoughts on this passage.

Refuge in the Wilderness

The weight of this passage begins with some historical context. This Psalm was originally spoken by Moses as he lead God's people through the wilderness. 

I've been walking through a few Exodus passages on abrahambates.com and let me tell you: the wilderness was an interesting place. It was both tremendously maturing and terrifyingly unsettling.

THE TABLE - in detail

"And you shall set the bread of the Presence on the table before me regularly." Exodus 25:30

Late at night. The swooshing of paint, scratching, dry brushes dipped in paint, only to become dry again. My life has been in a period of waiting, expectation. Each day a moment of pause till our little baby comes. In the evening I write and paint. Two lights point onto a canvas made from reclaimed wood, fractured, forgotten, left by the side of the road. I want to redeem them. I wait for my baby.

The Presence "On the Table"

This verse Exodus 25:30 says to set the bread of the Presence "on the table", like it's no big deal. The table I mean. It just assumes the table exists. Which it does, but not by shear luck or happenstance. It's a table made from pure ingenuity, detailed work. It's a table built with intention. 

Our lives with God, living in his presence, are to be the same: beauty in the details.

THE TABLE - presence

"And you shall set the bread of the Presence on the table before me regularly." Exodus 25:30

Do you remember your dinning room table growing up? It's where memories were made sitting there with your family? Some of my most memorable conversations happened at our dining room table. It's often where important decisions where made. Think about discipline and the shaping of your family? Many times it was at the table where our identities were formed.

The Dinner Table

I remember fork marks. That's what I remember from my table growing up. We had this huge (seven kids) thick brown wooden table. It had benches down the middle and two chairs on either end, one for my dad, the other for my mom. We'd sit stretched out between them two. In the spot where I usually sat there were fork marks stabbed into the table. I would run my fingers over them. I don't remember who put them there? I could have been me. Then again there were five brothers in my family, it could have been my twin brother benjamin or little brother daniel. I think I was about ten or eleven then, just old enough to know that fork marks were not appropriate where our family gathered together as a presence.

A PRAYER OF STRENGTH AND PERSEVERANCE

God, you are so good.

to make our hands nimble and strong,

to take our lives and create something new,

to allow us to produce, as you move through what we do.

Will you keep us strong in our efforts,

keep us on task to please you with our lives,

keep us producing with our hands,

show us how to continue to bring you glory in what we do.

OBEY | A LIFE OF FAITH

We're coming to the end of these "OBEY" posts. What we've discovered in Exodus 19:4-6 that God moves his people from a "rescued people" to a people called to be the "people of God". In the middle of this statement is the call to obey the commandments of God.

And yet this requires a great deal of faith.

You may think you have faith? You may be short on faith? But everyone of us will at some point will make the decision of whether or not we will take the leap, test the waters, and follow God to where he's called us.

Let me give you three reasons to enter a life of faith:

1. Doubt is not always a sign of unbelief.

Many believe; many doubt. Many doubt while believing. If we were required to access God's presence only by prefect belief we'd all be in a whole lot of trouble. Just the human condition alone (which has a hard time remembering our own cell phone number and internet pass codes) is enough to show that perfect belief is not possible.

OBEY | LIFE AND SEX

So now we come to the sex part. You've clicked the link. You're intrigued by the word sex. Aren't we all? You probably, like many others, have views on sex. These views are most deeply entrenched in who you are. They make up how you think? What you do? How you live? Where your heart goes on a rainy day?

Here's what I'm going to do; and what I'm not going to do. First, not. I'm not going to give you a lecture on sex - what's right, what's wrong, and tell you seven steps on how to move from what's wrong to what's right. I take a pretty conservative view of sex, but I also know there are millions of blogs, books, and podcasts ready and willing to give you a punch to the gut when it comes to sex. I don't feel the need to add to the stack.

Second, am. I am going to tell you how your life will change when you give your sexuality to God. This is the whole point of the Exodus passage we've been looking at. God tells us that we move from a 'rescued people' to a 'people of God' when we obey his commandments. The reason sex is a part of this process is because it's deeply embedded in who we are; in fact, as identities go, it's one of the strongest I've ever come across. If your human, you probably agree with me. 

OBEY | LIFE AND SUFFERING

"Only God knows my heart on the inside." 

These are the opening lyrics to my friend Aaron's new album
Dreaming of Eternity by Rend the Heavens. Here's my thought: if God knows my heart, then he knows I don't understand suffering.

C.S. Lewis calls this the impossibility. As humans we find it impossible to understand how a good God could allow suffering. "If God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished." The Problem of Pain

Suffering is one of the greatest painful elements of life, and hence one of the greatest tests we will go through as human beings. It's within these moments we often decide whether to stay as a people of God, or move to create our own identity.

Suffering comes in many forms: personal pain, gossip from a friend, physical discomfort, relational brokenness, loss of a loved one, financial disaster, incurable sickness, lack of something we need, painful self-inflicted choices, and ultimately death. There are many more. These are just a few. I want to explore suffering as an act of obedience in three categories:

OBEY | LIFE AS PRODUCERS

"Ah...the art of productivity."

I love this part of these blog posts. I love the word productivity. I love calling myself a producer. It implies as sense of activity that I seek with every breath. It's part of my being. I breath productivity; not because I'm amazing at it, but because I want to be.

And yet, let me be vulnerable. While I love the idea of being a producer, it's something I severely struggle with. There's a sense of striving, fighting for worth, acceptance, and longing in what I produce that's always been with me. I sleep very little, I work very hard, and it's a fight to put work down and play with my kids. On father's day Nancy ask the kids what dad's favorite thing to do was. Their response in unison: "work on the computer!" Ouch, I thought, is it that true? Out of the mouth of babes come my failure at productivity as much as my desire for success. 

My point is this: When we, as producers, place our skills before God he does two things: first, he grows our productivity; second, he grows us in how we handle our productivity.