Good morning and welcome to the May 21st Musing.

A great building must begin with the immeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasured. ~ Louis Kahn

Speaking of buildings…

What is the tallest building in the world?

    The library…it has the most stories

Did you hear the joke about the roof?

    Never mind, it’s over your head

I was going to provide a third building joke…

    But I am still working on it.

… 

I’ve been thinking about beautiful edifices lately, particularly of churches and chapels, a muse fueled by photos from friends who visited a stunning chapel on a college campus.

Though I don’t know much about that particular chapel, I am reminded, and saddened, of so many beautiful buildings of “worship” where the beauty and splendor go no further than the senses.   Many places, particularly chapels, have become all-inclusive, to the extent of inviting all faiths to worship, or no faith at all.   Plenty for the eyes…really nothing for the heart.

Indeed, beauty of architecture, without God and His Word, is so very empty.    A meaningless waxed fruit…so delightful to the eye, so utterly worthless to the nutrition of the soul.

But is there not a personal examination to be made here?    

Paul, in addressing the church at Corinth penned…

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?”  And “… do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?”  1 Corinthians 6:15a, 19

Just as society at large looks on a beautiful church building with praise, totally indifferent to whether truth is being proclaimed inside, many people are also prone to focus on the physical body without checking under the hood for a heart of worship.

Has this not been the from of old?   Did not the Lord say to the judge and prophet Samuel regarding King Saul, “… ‘Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’”?   1 Samuel 16:7

Man looks at the outward appearance.   Of buildings…and of people.    If we lament a beautiful building empty of heart, let us also lament bodies empty as well.

Paul has fitting closing words for us.   “For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”   1 Corinthians 6:20

On this morning of our Lord’s Day worship, let not the edifice we visit for worship, dazzling in beauty or simply functional in structure, be bereft of our hearts of worship.    Let us humbly give our measured worship to our immeasurable God.

Rod

S.D.G. – 11

Good morning and welcome to the April 14th Musing.

I was once a trash man.   You know, the guys (and gals, but mostly guys) that ride on the trash trucks through the neighborhoods picking up the curbside-deposited waste on those designated days.

But I had an optimistic view of it, for things were always picking up.

Speaking of trash…

Why didn’t the buzzard have any luggage on the airplane?

Because he ate his carrion.

…

Well, Rod…what is with the pivot to buzzards, and just what is carrion?   Well, according to Merriam-Webster, carrion is ”dead and putrefying flesh”.   

We joke about buzzards and we look on squeamishly at the slightly macabre scene when we see them picking away at roadkill.  See…you are a tad bit unsettled now just thinking about it. But what we are watching is the work of God’s natural “trash men.”

Yes, this scene is by design.

In Proverbs we are reminded that…

The Lord has made everything for its own purpose.
Proverbs 16:4a

And in Nehemiah…

“You alone are the Lord.
You have made the heavens,
The heaven of heavens with all their host,
The earth and all that is on it,
The seas and all that is in them.
You give life to all of them
And the heavenly host bows down before You.
Nehemiah 9:6

Yes, the Lord made buzzards on purpose and for a purpose.   He made the earth and all the buzzards on it.

We can give thanks to the God of such care and attention to detail.

So the next time you are driving and you see a buzzard or two working on that less than fortunate animal, instead of being like, “Oh, gross!”, give them a friendly wave.   Even though it may be unsightly to watch them do their work, imagine how unsightly the world would be if they did not.

Yes, Lord, we thank you for the buzzards.

Rod

S.D.G. – 9

P.S.  I really did make a living hauling trash.   Well, a “living” is a bit strong.  Let us just say I made a few dollars while sorting the mid-span trajectory of my school and career decisions.  And yes…things did pick up.  🙂

Good morning, and welcome to the April 7th Musing.

“Well…this is an odd place for a cemetery.”

I had driven to a business lunch in an unfamiliar part of the city.   My less-than-direct GPS took me weaving among the retail and office buildings.   I turned a corner and there I saw it, fenced in, nestled in, among the buildings…a cemetery.

I have been interested in cemeteries for most of my life.  Growing up in a multigenerational funeral directing family in rural Kansas, I spent a good deal of my youth helping in and around our funeral home and also in local graveyards. 

Now for many, a cemetery Is not a favored place.   And for a number of years, it was not mine.  But after coming to faith in Christ in my late teens, my fear of death was replaced by a love for the One who overcame the grave.  Indeed ,“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”* rang true for me.

Yes, the eeriness of a cemetery had lost its hold.  The image of the cemetery as a place “for the haunted” was replaced with the reality, as one author put it, “…the graveyards of man become the seed plots of resurrection. And the cemeteries of the people of God become, through the heavenly dew, the resurrection fields of the promised perfection.”

Good Friday, when Jesus was laid in the tomb.    Easter Sunday, when the Resurrection of Resurrections commenced, Christ’s being the basis and pathway for our own.

The cemetery before me, was there long before the buildings were.    And my meeting with it was a timely reminder of the hope of resurrection for me and all who hope in Christ.

Perhaps this isn’t an odd place for a cemetery after all.

Rod

S.D.G. – 8

*1 Corinthians 15:55 (NASB95)

“Seed plot” quote from author Erich Sauer.

Good morning and welcome to the March 21st Musing.

“Meeting Declined”

My heart sank a little as a hoped-for meeting with my boss to discuss a new project, and specifically how it relates to me, vanished.    My boss was a busy man, temporarily my boss, as he filled in for a vacancy while continuing to fulfill his “real” role.    He was also based in London, thus 5 hours ahead of me on the clock.    Getting on his calendar could be a challenge.

Speaking of calendars…

The government just banned the fifth month of the calendar year.

Everyone was dismayed.

And how about Invisible calendars…

… that’s something you don’t see every day.

Why are calendar puns so bad?

Because they are always so week and dated

…

It was first thing in the morning when I saw the meeting declination, turned down during the London a.m. while I was still asleep.  Disappointed, I turned to the Lord to discuss it.   And as I knelt, I realized that I have not ever had a meeting with my Lord declined.  I’ve never even had to schedule a time to try to get on His calendar.    He, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, is eager to meet with me, hear from me.    And I was eager to share with Him.

Do the Scriptures not trumpet this great reality?!

The author of Hebrews proclaims this…

Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, 
so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Hebrews 4:16 (NASB95)

and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our heart
sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Hebrews 10:21-22 (NASB95)

David understood this…

I have called upon You, for You will answer me, O God;
Incline Your ear to me, hear my speech.
Psalm 17:6 (NASB95)

In the morning, O Lord, You will hear my voice;
In the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch.
Psalm 5:3 (NASB95)

So may we boldly and confidently approach our Lord, our Creator.   Yes, “let us draw near.”   His ear is always toward those who are humbly His, and He never responds with a “meeting declined.”

Rod

S.D.G. – 7

Good afternoon and welcome to the March 4th Musing.

My house faces spot on Northwest.

Speaking of compass points…

What do you call an alligator with a map and compass?

A navigator

What do you call a compass made of potatoes?

An orientater

I thought about telling a joke about a broken compass…

But I didn’t know where I was going with it.

…

My house faces due Northwest.     For most, that would not be an issue.

Perhaps it is the Kansas boy in me, with all rural roads running north-south, east-west.    Or the pilot in me, spending hours flying by the compass.     But whatever the reason, my mind naturally needs to orient everything I see by what direction I am looking.

Thus my seventeen-year difficulty.    

My house faces precisely northwest.   And my mind will not accept it.    Usually when I look out the front my mind says “west”.   But when I am in the backyard looking over the house my mind says “north.”     

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that this quandary is paralyzing, but it does take effort for me to reorient my mind to the true direction, northwest.    I have to preach to myself, so to speak, and use the resources available in order to make my mind think rightly.   The nearby power lines running north and south are a nice reference during the day.    The flight path of the airlines flying north and south during approach to DFW also a visual reminder.   And at night, the faithful Polaris, that North Star, dutifully in place to help orient me.    

And though once successfully reorientated, I inevitably have to do it all again the next time I am out.    For whatever reason, the resting place for my mind is never correct.   It is a continual conscious effort to think rightly about the direction my house faces.    My mind never drifts toward Northwest.

“Now thanks for sharing Rod, but why tell us this?”

It seems to me that as followers of Christ, we too face the same “directionally challenged” dilemma.     Though we know the Word of God, are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, yet we still tend to see life and the world around us in distorted ways.  Worldly ways.   Nearly everything around us shouts counter to how we should think.  And these surroundings can make things seem fuzzy, blurred.  And our minds tend to gravitate toward this distortion.  As one theologian has said, “No one drifts toward holiness.”

And just as I have to force myself to think rightly on direction, we all too must make a conscious effort to think rightly about the world around us.   To think as Christians with a Biblical worldview.   To think God’s thoughts after Him as revealed in His Word.   This takes effort.   And as my own mind needs discipline and references to think correctly directionally, we all too need references to think rightly as we interact with our surroundings.    We must continue to orient our minds through reading the bible, meditating on scripture, prayer, worship, evangelism, fellowship of fellow believers, etc.   And we must continually preach to ourselves the Truth we hold dear.     

The Psalmist David too must have had a similar challenge, his own heart and thoughts conflicted between the true and the false.  I love his words captured in Psalm 86:11

Teach me Your way, O Lord;
I will walk in Your truth;
Unite my heart to fear Your name.

Yes, Lord, may you unite our hearts, and continually redirect our minds, to fear Your name, and to walk thinking rightly in Your paths.

Rod Milton

S.D.G. – 6

Good morning and welcome to the February 10th Musing.

“It is amazing to think that this rain is the same water that flooded the earth.”

Speaking of water…

A friend dug a hole in the garden and filled it with water.

I think he meant well.

What did one ocean say to another?

Nothing, it just waved.

What keeps a dock floating above water?

Pier pressure.

This water hitting the car, H2O as old (and older) than Noah.   It is something my son and I had discussed before.   And we considered again while sitting in our Chevy HHR eating Triple Chocolate Concrete Yogurt, watching the rain run down the windshield.    

The earth…a contained unit.   Yes, not a drop of water has ever disappeared from this orb.     The hydrologic cycle keeping a continuous circulation of water going in our Earth-Atmosphere system. 

The saints of old understood this.   Speaking of God’s design of the water system, the Psalmist said…

He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth;
Psalm 135:7 (NASB95)

He waters the mountains from His upper chambers;
Psalm 104:13 (NASB95)

And Solomon added…

All the rivers flow into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full.
To the place where the rivers flow,
There they flow again.
Ecclesiastes 1:7 (NASB95)

It is staggering to consider how many times those raindrops dancing on the hood had been to the sea, evaporated back up to the clouds, only to be deposited again on the land’s expanse.    Indeed the sea is not full.    It continues to give up its water to the billowing masses to start the cycle again.

“Yes son, it is amazing!”

Rod Milton

S.D.G. – 5

Good morning and welcome to the January 28th Musing.

As I sat on my porch early one morning, having my own private version of coffee and commentary*, I noticed a hawk flying.    Love watching hawks.   Handsome birds.   Soaring birds.   Circling.

And do you know why hawks sit on church steeples?  

Because they are birds of pray.

And check out this conversation between two hawks…

“Look at that speed!” said one hawk to another as the jet fighter hurtled over their heads. 

“Hmph!” snorted the other. “You would fly fast too if your tail was on fire!”

Yeah, I agree…hawks don’t lend themselves to the strongest of jokes.   But turning off the humor for a moment I want to discuss these birds of prey.  Did you know hawks love chickens?   As in, love to attack chickens.    

I did watch that hawk that morning.     And our chickens were watching that hawk as well…from inside their coop.   But they hadn’t noticed the hawk until it landed on the fence next to their coop.    And boy DID they then notice!   And DID they squawk!     

And as I watched this drama from the porch…this “panic in the pen”, I thought, “there is really no safer place for the chickens to be than inside the coop”.    For no matter what the hawk did, while I kept the chickens inside, they were in absolutely no danger.   But they did not know it.   Chill chickens…just chill.   Pull up a chair, sip on a latte.    For while you are inside the coop, you have no worries.   Not while I’m here.

As I watched this scenario for a couple of minutes, it occurred to me that in many ways, we are not much different than these chickens.    Sovereignly in God’s will, with nothing allowed into our lives but what a good, wise, gracious Father brings, we could and should relax in the Father’s care.   But no…we squawk “look at that!!”   We scream “this is bad!!”   We worry and exclaim “why God?!”

Chill Rod…just chill.

Let us not be chickens in our course of life.   But simply…

Be joyful…
Be prayerful…
Be thankful…

How can I say this?    Well, Paul said it…

Rejoice always;
pray without ceasing;
in everything give thanks
1 Thessalonians 5:16–18 (NASB95)

Chickens do not have the capability to relax in an understanding of the care of the Father.   We do.   So while safely in our “coop of God’s sovereignty”, let us in our spirits pull up that chair and have that latte.    Rest brothers and sisters…our Lord knows the hawk is there…and sovereignly placed it so.

Rod Milton

S.D.G. – 4

* For a great devotional, I highly recommend William Varner’s study on the Psalms, Awake O Harp. 

Good morning and welcome to the January 14th Musing.

“Perfect!” said our server in relation to my choice of a beefsteak tomato salad.

Speaking of tomatoes…

What do tomatoes and potatoes have in common?

Toes.

If I were a farmer, how would I measure my height?

From my head, tomatoes.

What type of tomato smells best?

A Roma

I have digressed…

“Perfect.”   The word was repeated with each spoken selection that Leah and I made.    And I get it.     We would hardly expect our server to say “No, you really don’t want that.”    The recital of “perfect” helped us to feel good about our choices and to enhance our dining experience.   And it was indeed a very nice anniversary dinner.

Leah and I chuckled, but in reflection I ask…why do we use words in a way that takes the edge off of their precision?    

For instance, just as not everything that is called perfect is perfect, not everything that is called “awesome” inspires “awe.”  “The party was awesome”, “that song is awesome”…do these things really inspire “awe”, like that, according to Oxford Dictionary, brings “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder”?  (And just when did “awful” become a negative term?)

Not to belabor a point, or to try to change language usage, but I would like us to consider One for a moment for whom the words “perfect” and “awesome” so aptly, appropriately, and eternally fit.

“The Rock! His work is perfect,
For all His ways are just;
A God of faithfulness and without injustice,
Righteous and upright is He.
Deuteronomy 32:4 (NASB95)

And 

Let all the earth fear the Lord;
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
Psalm 33:8 (NASB95)

The Lord God, the Rock.

Musing on Him…”Perfect!”

Rod Milton

S.D.G. – 3

Good morning and welcome to the December 31st Musing.

It was just after sunset when I noticed it.    That light, hovering over the horizon.

Speaking of light…

What do you call a candle in armor?

A knight light

How do you arrest a beam of light?

You put it in a prism cell.

I have digressed… 

Having escaped the DFW metroplex for a trip to rural Texas, I was winding down a December evening’s hunt as the clock was squeezing the last light out of the sky.   

And then I noticed it…two fingers’ width above the western horizon, straining to be seen.    A star?    No, too bright, too early.

A google inquiry (yes, I hunt carrying my iPhone) told me it was the planet Venus.  It was just to the left and a little higher than the radio tower on the distant hill.  This tower, now alive, with its obligatory blinking light at its top and solid light halfway up its frame.

After a minute, or three, of packing up my hunting gear, I looked again…and now Venus has slid just below the highest light of the tower.

My eyes are now fixed.

Like watching the mercury fall on an old thermometer, or the ball atop Times Square on New Year’s Eve…ever so slowly Venus dropped, paralleling the straightedge made by the tower.

Now halfway between the tower lights…then even with the lower light… slipping to just above the distant vista… then…gone. 

Even more subtle, but perhaps more stark than the sunset, was this reminder that the earth’s rotation hosted this show.  And the earth, though a platform for the display, is really part of the display itself.   For it was then, that I looked up, and behind, to a chorus of stars trumpeting their arrival against an ever blackening ink cast sky.   

Similar to being fixated with a jeweler’s brilliant diamonds laid out on black velvet, I stare.

And as I continued my gaze, even having trouble finding the familiar constellations hiding among legions of stars that city lights never allow to be seen, I am overcome…

 And I am left with no thought but that of the Psalmist …

The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Psalm 19:1 (NASB95)

Yes, they are!

Rod Milton S.D.G. – 2

A life line, a rope, a connection…they became known as Berean Renditions.

Covid lockdown disrupted a number of things.    How we shopped, how we did school, and, for a time, how we did church.  In the early weeks, we were not meeting as a church and particularly not as a class.

As the emcee of the Bereans Sunday school, I historically would open the class with an announcement, a joke … or three, birthdays, anniversaries, sometimes words of wisdom.

But entering the second week of the shutdown, I felt that our connection as a class should continue, to help keep members up to date, to share humor, to speak Biblical truth, to encourage.

So I began to write emails to the class…and write regularly.   Weekly, for a period of months.  The weekly Rendition.  And connect we did, sharing a communion of words together through the challenges and uncertainties of the lockdown.

But over time, the need for the Renditions soon waned as normalcy returned to the nation.

But out of that period was born an awareness that I could write…and that most often, I had something worthwhile to say.

In the months since, I’ve missed producing the 2-4 minute read, the venue to post thoughts of what the Lord was teaching me, and applying Biblical truth to life’s situations.

Welcome then, to Musings of Milton.  I’ve pulled out the pen again, so to speak, to begin putting my thoughts and ruminations onto paper (or rather, Apple Pages).

I hope you find comfort, edification, and encouragement as you muse with me on the given thought of the moment.   I will confess, I am not ready to guarantee any kind of regular schedule for the appearance of the Musings, as life remains full with work, family and ongoing ministry within the local church.  Nor do I intend to respond to each thought/comment that my musing may draw.  For if I begin to do that, I’ll get pulled into the weeds and not attend to the priorities of my current life situation.

But as the seedlings of Musings continue to pile up on the note section of my iPhone as I have jotted thoughts as I walk with the Lord through life, look for the first Musing soon…

Rod Milton

S.D.G. – 1