Category Archives: hope

my non-best seller

This month I am going to do something different than highlighting my two-dimensional work and instead am celebrating the 5^th anniversary of my non-best seller book: “Markers”. Yes, I can say I am a legitimate author, but I sure hope this is the only book I will ever write! Book publishing is not a simple proposition. Book marketing is even more arduous. So, I will spare you the promotion and instead just insert the reviews of a couple commentators who turned up on my Amazon book page.

“Are you weary of watching the news and seeing one more devastating event that has occurred? Do you long for a different kind of world? I recommend MARKERS to the person who is dissatisfied with the notion that “this is just the way things are.” There is a reason that we are in this mess and the author helps us find a path to learning why and living differently. If you’re able to be honest about your doubts, then you are heading in the right direction. Honesty takes humility and that is the first marker.”

And from another…

“I have to admit that it is different from most books I read. I think like an engineer – to the point, concrete, linear. The artistic sense of the book was different for me. Yet, the careful use of words in a unique way was captivating. An “Eve pivot” or “We are finite, but the inventor of forever is not.” Words and phrases like this sent my mind into a wonderful journey that was refreshing. The presentation of strong Gospel themes in ways that were different and fresh felt creative yet warm. The stories of Julie and Anne were powerful. I could go on and on but know that the labor poured into this work resulted in something both beautiful and powerful.”

I appreciate these words from people I don’t even know! And by the way, comments are worth their weight, even negative ones. If you find something in my book that you want to take issue with, have at it. I’ll see it and so will others. I’m prepared. My book may not be a best seller according to some hot list, but it is changing some perspectives. Happy non-best seller anniversary to us!

the Artisan will perform it / sign of the almond rod

I am currently using my monthly blog to highlight some older important work. These selected pieces are from my personal past but poignantly each is relevant (I believe) to our global present. And each is a handmade sign toward the future. If you are a regular reader here, you may’ve already recognized that TIME and its sightless flow is a really interesting concept to me. Time is both linear and rhythmic with repeated echoes. Time in this sense, is like light energy which is both particle as well as wave. Time flows and it cannot be encapsulated. It impacts every one of us who live within its circuit whether we want to acknowledge it or not. Time can easily go on without us.

Time is more interesting and emblematic than any single one of us musers who sit in our own period on a timeline can grasp. A most published cosmologist admits “Scientists in every discipline are now far, far removed from the reality they claim to explain.” (1) This writer goes on to detail how we just don’t really understand 95% of what hints to us of existence “out there”.

Such is the ineffability of many big and important things as well as this mysterious entity we live in called time. Any pondering of things not understood ought to humble us? Plato said “For every one, as I think, must see that astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.” (2)

But back to time: it is going somewhere, it leads in one direction: Past/Present/Future. And in its wholeness, time is revelatory of a much grander story: with a beginning, a middle and an end. This whole process is superintended by an Artisan (if you’ll allow an even bigger IDEA) who exists beyond time in eternity. Would you be willing to handle that possibility if even for one of your moments?

What prompts me this month is the pregnant report of one spokesman for this Artisan, the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah. I have slipped back into his record to glean what he might say to my own time, my own nation’s experience of decline. Jeremiah lived through the last gasps of a once grand culture in the 6^th c. BCE. He is appointed to speak into that history, and he is given hint that this won’t be easy. In the very first chapter of his tome, Jeremiah describes an exploratory dialogue he is graced with. The Artisan and Creator who formed the prophet from his mother’s womb, says this: “What do you see Jeremiah?” Jeremiah looks, identifies an object in front of them and replies. “I see a rod (branch) of an almond tree” The LORD then takes that common thing and makes it a lesson: “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.”

Huh? ok start with the given basics here: The rod is real. It is tangible, it is alive for a time, like a cut flower; but it is only a rod. It will bud however, for God says He will watch over it to perform it. He said this, not me, not Jeremiah, we are just witnesses to the edge of a very big thing.

Any historically alert Hebrew, hearing Jeremiah, would’ve hearkened back to an earlier rod of Aaron’s, some 8 centuries prior. That rod budded, and then produced whole almonds! That fruit producing rod was kept as a holy symbol of God’s miraculous ability in spite of the people’s rebellion. Jeremiah would not have missed the hope embedded in this given simple verbal sign. From their past into his present and assured by God for a future, Jeremiah had something to fasten onto in his heart: God said He would do it in spite of them. God would watch over every promise He had made through time to accomplish it. His words then are where we best be watching with expectation. Herein is lasting hope. Give Him an honest try. His words aren’t hard to find.

Believing is Seeing, Michael Guillen, Tyndale Refresh, September 7, 2021, p.97
The Republic, trans.B Jowett, Project Gutenberg, June 22, 2016, Book VII

the times require

(Not prose, but urgent poems -mine and His- with an image from my icons “Among the Lampstands”)

Among the lampstands walks a man with fire in His face

And seven starry messengers are held up by His grace.

He involves us in this vision. He gave us words to SEE:

The things that are, the things that were, the things still yet to be.

He walks among the lampstands. He wants my heart to know.

He’s not seated casually – so far from all below.

He once walked in a garden (one walks when not at rest)

He’s up and looking, searching. His heart is on the quest.

Genesis 3: 8, Revelation 1:20, and 2:1

These are piercing eyes that see the show of every deed I know.

And those undone and those dismissed which stained my vaunted soul.

He says “wake up” He softly calls. Then runs off from my door!

“There are things yet uncompleted! Take my blood-soaked cloak as cover

And run with me my love.”

“Don’t slumber now, ‘stead heed my promise and I will give you more.”
“Have you forgotten, you who stand there pondering the storm?”
“I’ve loved you long before. I have more for us together! Oh, turn and let’s explore.”

Song of Solomon 2:8-14, Revelation 22:2

His were first words ever spoken. His will be the last.

And though He knows we “now have sorrows” -Time will make this past.

He assures me with His middle words He sealed them sure and fast

And so my present tense is traveling, held by Jacob’s mast.

Genesis 28:12-13, John 16:22-27 and Revelation 1:5 and 8

“After these things I looked and behold…” There’s a linear time jump to future we’re told.

Quantum cycles repeated ‘til the story was old.

But then lifted out come we, no longer on hold.

I’m so caught by wonder, I drink from again.

“To Him who’s released me” My soul on the mend!

Revelation 1:5b and 4:1

There is a city coming. Beyond this hour of trials,

Established by the builder, who says “a little while”

A new name and an old name Gives the One traversing time.

And you who hold fast what you have. Will not be left behind.

Isaiah 26:20, Mark 6:31, John 16:16-22, Hebrews 11:8-10 and Revelation 3:12, and 6:11

what’s in motion?

“While the earth remains…” assured its founder, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man…” Instead, according to Creator’s worded promise “seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter and day and night shall not cease.” We’ve all taken this for granted, this gentle cycling of life on earth. Like children in comfortable homes, we think it is our due that things should stay as nice as they are. We’ve even assumed we had something to do with all this. It’s ours. Men and women of every nation and time have regularly assumed too much.

Long ago rhythms were set in place and we live within them. Light itself has a pulsing rhythm of particles inside waves. Sound has vibration cycles. Waters have rising and falling tides, responding to a moon which waxes and wanes. Nations rise and fall throughout time. And even our individual beating hearts carry a charted rhythm throughout our waking and sleeping. We can track, even influence modulations in pulse, but none of us constructed nor originated our heart function. When this pattern goes flatlined, we are already gone. Rhythms are embedded, they are a given, a sustaining gift for a time. I consider them all a marker of big-picture reality, and if the Creator’s words are heeded, a sign of hope.

Here is a detail of what I am talking about placed in a collage entitled “In Entropy” which currently hangs in a Gallery show titled “Post Urban”. I don’t know what attracted the jurors to include my pieces. But I know what I intended with inset patterns into a piece which otherwise looks entirely chaotic. There are rhythms, varying cyclings. It is a given thing in both the microcosm and the macrocosm.

As I type today, troops and ships and missiles are moving in positions. For a number of years now I have sensed the waning in my own proud nation. I even felt the earth shake subtly one afternoon, and when I saw the hummingbird feeder moving like a metronome, I knew we were entering the beginning of birthing pangs. Now, many are bewildered at the rapid increases of change, “what’s happening?!” is their wide-eyed cry. The word “unprecedented” is used so often now by talking heads that it (and they) are loosing any meaning.

The painting I highlight at the top of my post this month is in my icons collection on this website. This image is a simple small thing, made of alcohol inks on coated paper. Obviously a landscape, but for me the undulating hills are a symbol of the rising and the falling that happens in all things. All around on the ground, where any one of us stands, are bigger things working, way bigger and especially above. And to give anyone a greater sense of it, Jesus said to his pretty clueless followers basically to “look up”.

It would be valuable to see the whole chapter of warnings He said this in. He didn’t give them a candy-coated pep talk, but rather a gentle pointed wake-up call, and then finally: “He told them a story. ‘Look at a fig tree. Any tree for that matter. When the leaves begin to show, one look tells you that summer is right around the corner. The same here—when you see these things happen, you know God’s kingdom is about here. Don’t brush this off: I’m not just saying this for some future generation, but for this one, too—these things will happen. Sky and earth will wear out; my words won’t wear out.’ “

Luke 21 in the Message Translation

Thickets Repeat

There’s something deeply set in the fabric of all material things, though every generation resists it. But it’s real, it’s frustrating, and we live with it every day. This was predicted in fact: that out of the broken ground we til, that thorns and thistles would accompany the healthy produce we each need for sustenance. More than that, this ground, which blooms both good and ill, will also receive us back. Like gravity: it’s a baked in thing and no workaround can cancel it. “All the days of your life” there will be a confounding coming up of thorns. And with both downward gravitation, as well as with upward tangles, we only hurt ourselves when we don’t navigate with some creative measure of humility about things that complicate our ambition. Elon Musk (ambitious himself) said: “I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.”

To bear in your mind something true is half the battle.

For me early on, a wake-up call about what I could transcend and what I could not, refitted my idealism. So, it stuns me when there is so much hubris being thrust forward as if all natural laws are changeable, and that this present generation is finally going to rule and reign into super humans. Proud pronouncements from posers of any stripe make me wince. For thickets repeat. They multiply even. C.S. Lewis called every single generation’s ahistorical cockiness as simply “chronological snobbery”.

The oil painting I am highlighting this month is not just about that downside. There’s more in the human story; and it is hinted, whispering through the chaos of any mounting morass. I sold this to some friends and they have this painting hanging in their living room where they can talk about the broader hope and even the peeks of beauty which are embedded in life on our ground, as symbolized here. One has to look however. Hungering to see something beyond your own mess is not a weakness of the wretched, but actually their first step through.

The texture and the scratching-in here is pervasive. It’s as if I am digging with a trowel. There’s lots of natural broken line, but colors got revealed along this way. It’s a quiet persistence, a determined expectation based on things which are truer than assumptions. We all live on roads where thistles are. We can curse them and stay stuck in them. We can deny them and get cornered by them. But the real subject of this painting is the light, dancing through the bits, and without that light we can’t see at all.

You can live on any ground where thickets are if you will just start studying that light.

“El Olam”

The title of this work is a little-known Hebrew name of God I discovered when reading through Abraham’s journey in the book of Genesis. In 50 years of my own journeying, I have never heard anyone talk on this, but it is rather simple, and it hit me between my eyes one day as I was (then and continue to be) impressed with how Abraham learned more and more about the character of this unseen God he aimed to follow — step after dusty step. It takes time to learn important things.

You can see for yourself how Abraham identifies this new description of God in Genesis chapter 21 right after he’s made an agreement with a man who could have been an enemy (the back story is recorded there, starting in ch. 20). Abraham messes up. God protects and leads, then God even blesses him (kind of a main theme in the Bible). And the philistine takes notice and comes forward. Both this foreign leader and Abraham have something they need to settle out. And so, they make a treaty, a solemn covenant. That’s the short of it.

But the long of it, is that Abraham already knew about the value of covenant by the time he gets to ch.21. And he already knows some things about the character of the God who’d solemnly promised (alone and uninitiated) by making a covenant with this father of the Jews. (see further back story in Genesis 15). So that once things settle out so wonderfully with Abraham’s on-the-ground issue, he is given to see so much more deeply how God has been everlastingly in charge of the entire journey. El Olam can be translated as “continually eternal” “without end” or even literally “the vanishing point”. Abraham voices this realization on his own, and in worship after the philistine has left the scene satisfied. Abraham sees where and how and with whom this is ALL going to settle out. Abraham’s El Olam can be trusted.

The idea of a vanishing point made me curious even as a young one looking at how the parallel corn rows seemed to squish together further out in the field. This was visually mysterious to me, for I knew that walking down any row would never lead me to that point. But then in college I gained some skill at understanding how to translate depth onto a 2 D surface in a perspective drawing class. This old sketch is from that class. There’s a hidden vanishing point in pencil on the back horizon which is the key to getting everything else correctly in place. If you look closely, you’ll see how I messed up too. But the joining point is there.

Later when I saw that this abstract idea was voiced by Abraham as another name for God I was ‘blown away’, or maybe blown further into the mystery: to the point of that recognition.

I made the complex landscape highlighted at the top of this post in 2006. It was inked up and pulled onto paper through an etching press, then I collaged graph paper onto the image and finally a layer of encaustic wax was floated over the center to give it some translucence. This result is one of my favorites for the conceptual reasons above. I have submitted it to a juried committee for a possible showing in Cincinnati in 2022. If it makes it in, I will note that on my news and reviews page. But for now, I am just content to rest this year, and to rest all of my years in the able hands of El Olam.

when heaven and earth shuddered

It happened on the ground we inhabit. It was the darkest of days. And all the ugliest of sins, the sorrows of every other day humans have ever suffered fell into the heart and onto the scourged back and the thorn-crowned head of the King of glory. David’s promised son, Job’s Redeemer, Abraham’s expected Seed, Daniel’s foreseen “son of man” and “Messiah the Prince” took on not only our common flesh but also our death sentence. He took it in full. He said “it is finished”.

The burial cave could not hold Him, the forces of evil around and above could not defeat Him. He beat them clear through their own gruesome strategy. Meekness has a way which hits the Serpent sideways and rises unscathed.

Don’t miss what happened here in history. It still is a stake in your ground. But like a prince dressed as a pauper you wont see Him unless you are are looking with hungry eyes yourself. What God bought here is priceless, and it is still being offered. Some see while the madding crowds around walk on by. Listen to how an old man recognized Jesus when he was only 8 days old: “God, you can now release your servant; release me in peace as you have promised. With my own eyes I have seen your salvation. It’s now out in the open for everyone to see: a God-revealing light to the non-Jewish nations, and of glory for your people Israel.” (Luke 2:29-32)

Later in Revelation, the victoriously risen Jesus said to the quasi-concerned: “I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may become rich, and white garments, that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes that you may see.” (Revelation 3:18, mirroring Isaiah 55:1-2).

This painting I recently finished, is not yet visible elsewhere on my site. “Stake in the Ground” is currently hanging in Jonesborough, TN at a show, but it will be taken down next week. I don’t claim sight or skill better than others. But I feel an urgency to use my hands to express His matchless offer, given at great cost. Read the reliable accounts for yourself, learn of Jesus, who says He holds the keys. He’s the One to listen to, and He makes it simply clear.

among the lampstands

Today I am highlighting this ink monotype, which I pulled onto homemade paper several years ago. I have it in my “icons” collection on this website because the image, and the idea behind it, serve as a simple reminder into a most auspicious visitation: Jesus. He spoke urgently and at length about things to come in the book of Revelation, the very last book in the Bible. The Greek word in the first sentence is apokalupsis, which means “the disclosure” or literally “to take off the cover” “the appearing of Jesus Christ” as the sentence and then entire book continues.

Most people I know are afraid of this book. It is daunting, no question. But there is much that is beautiful in how Jesus prepares any willing reader to understand, to even be blessed and to be prepared. It is clear in the 1^st chapter that Jesus, “the alpha and the omega” “the living One” “who holds the keys” is the giver of the words that his last remaining disciple scribes. John sees and details Jesus as He now is, with the cover off.

Jesus walks among the churches, in the beginning chapters with knowledge, with “eyes of fire” and gives them words: some of comfort, much of challenge with very specified warnings.

The 7 lampstands, as depicted in my image, were historical churches, each different, some are soon to loose their standing (and did). Jesus knew and He gives direction before all hell breaks loose, for any who would simply take heed. In aiming to understand better these churches and the particular warnings given them, I recently did a series of 7 paintings that correspond, attempting to simplify and to symbolize what I read in chapters 2 and 3. My collection of paintings will be opened tonight at a local arts center. You can see a preview here. My hope is that any viewer of the work will find themselves curious enough to look into the words that have moved me for themselves. Jesus spoke, John wrote and I painted so that some would have the willingness to pay attention.

Listen to how the old man John was moved. Here is his dedication in the 1^st chapter: “to Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood.” John died holding onto this dedication.

Even if you consider this just ancient literature, can you give me one good reason why you would hide in ignorance from such a diligent last accounting?

look up

My very first remembrance of a sense of hope was when I looked up. Somehow, without knowing much else, this was a reflexive wonderment at where the changing light was coming from. Later, at a camp in Ontario, I remember the vast, punctuated mysteries in the dark skies. One particular night, this was even a rather private worshipful reckoning. What was going on? This camp was not religious at all; and no one prompted my looking up, but there I was grappling with the idea of something I sensed but could not see further. Later someone read Psalm 8 out-loud and the question posed there made deep sense to me: “When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers…what is man that You (God) take thought of him/me?!”

Years have passed and I still marvel at that question, and the sense of knowing that came from simply pondering upward.

What is man…and isn’t his/my value all the more significant placed in context under such displays above?

In a different and desperate time similar to ours, midst the company of ubiquitous liars, the ancient writer of Psalm 120 detailed his private agony under the sun. He cast out a prayer, but his focus was downward evidenced in all his words. However, in the very next Psalm 121, the writer looks up, past all that is material and into the trust of a bigger keeper or guardian. He names and describes that Keeper. This is his turning point. It is no small thing.

But this small thing is not an easy thing for us; for not only are there contradictions on the outside, but also within our own hearts. God self-describes as Holy; and we are not. Our default is independent, even haughty and so we must fear or even just refuse any true thought of Him. How is this ever resolved? In another Psalm, the writer despairs; then the same voice later says “when will you come to me?” (Psalm 101)

He did.

In Jesus, Creator came; and this was the crux in human history. Your maker came gently dressed in a pauper’s robe, and purposefully took the full hit for every single one of us. Take this in. “…for the son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” The Maker of the cosmos above and the wonders below came and entered into our sorry space to finish the problem, and set the access between His holiness and our great need, between justice and mercy. And obviously there is some clean-up action yet to be done down here. He’s got the plan for that. He set the beginning and the end. In between, the time you yet have to consider this is mercy for you. So, look up meaningfully toward Him. You can do that on your own, and if you do, He will see it.

Jesus said, “when you see all these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads for your redemption is drawing near.”

an added note after watching much present “news”: We have reason for despair. We must therefore realize greater reason for looking beyond the ground. To look up is not denial, but rather an informed and necessary choice, and once you do that, there are others who need your earnest prayers.

in entropy

en·tro·py (ĕn-trə-pē) n.

1. Symbol S For a closed thermodynamic system, a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work.

2. A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.

3. A measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message.

4. The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.

5. The deterioration of a system or society, especially when it seems inevitable: city activists who fought entropy by organizing neighborhood groups.

[German Entropie : Greek en-, in; + Greek tropē, transformation; see trep- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.]

(cited from the American Heritage Dictionary: https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=entropy&submit.x=48&submit.y=13)

Entropy is an important concept to understand for it describes the very time in which we’re living. I offer not only basic definition here but also some explanation through my own work, for I think it informs our moment.

I learned the meaning of “entropy” in a physics class; it marked me immediately as a truth. Not “my truth” (oh, please don’t bore us!) but universally recognized reality.

Entropy is a thermodynamic law, the Second Law, in fact. This means it is intrinsically true for all and has been observably tested through time. You can’t get away from it anywhere on earth. Entropically all material things degenerate. Bouncing balls left alone return to lower and lower heights, metal corrodes, soil depletes, smiles fade. As a high-schooler I had seen enough to know that things weren’t right, that breakdown and disappointment of outcomes was plaguing each and every one. I am not a philosopher, but as a chronic melancholic, learning there was a stated “law“ for this was actually a huge relief! Someone had identified and spoken the Truth out loud. Admitting this, it seemed to me then, at least maybe we could get somewhere meaningfully even in the midst of such harsh goings on.

That recognition was before I even cared about spiritual things, but I do think it was an important beginning point. One has to admit the universally bad news before any transcendent good news is even relevant!

Just recently I was pulling older work out of my flat files and re-discovered this large mixed media piece: “In Entropy”. I have entered it into my Icons gallery here, for its timeless significance. I accomplished this in 2006, and it was included in my MFA (graduate work final) show. This is a large collage pasted together from science text snippets, a photograph I took in Asia, and some hand-inked brayings onto good printmaking paper. I then layered in encaustic wax overlays.

What moved me here, and still moves me, is that in the midst of all the deconstruction going on all around, there are sure hints of pattern observable in forms and waves, in repeats and cycles. Pattern reveals a plan and a planner for those who are hungry to look into the back story. Scratchy lines (seen in so much contemporary work) are a symbol, as are sine charts which suggests process in time. We are all heading somewhere even in the dim.

I made this visual as a statement: that ultimate plan is bigger than breakdown, that hope has reason outside our narrow system, that beauty is a sign even in the dissipation, and that the Maker, the ultimate Planner is not at all perturbed. The prophets all spoke of when and how He will intervene in the mounting chaos. The time is His. Listen to Habakkuk quoting God’s words in his second report (2:3) “For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal, and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay.” Jeremiah a couple decades later describes his own crushing trauma in Lamentations, but then he also grapples with the only One who could intervene into his particular pit “and therefore I have hope…“

Slice through or tear apart what is and what will be any way you wish. But if you dare to care, you may notice hints of promise shining through the fragments of ruin, for what Creator started, He will certainly also bring to resolution.

And though I am weighted (each day now) by the gravity pulling us all, my hands and my heart exult (every day) in the One who is truly coming as He promised. What He made He cares about, He sees how things are being handled. He will set right what concerns Him. Wait for it.

finishing the ascent

Since July of this CoVid year, I have been posting a reflection on each of the 15 psalms in a sub-collection out of the ancient Psalm book called the “Psalms of Ascent”. These Psalms: 120-134, have fascinated me for a long time as a pattern for spiritual progress. Like Jacob’s ladder, these ascend meaningfully. Like the Hebrew walk up to Jerusalem these get more complex in time and in history referencing that land. And like King Hezekiah’s answered prayer these are an emblem of 15 movements on steps arranged by the only One who controls time and who responds so mysteriously through our requests to Him.

We live in linear time. We start somewhere, we end somewhere; but time moves for us in only one direction. We also live under the limitations of life in all its complexities. Gravity, hardened ground, hardened hearts, decay, illnesses of many kinds, warring nations, suspicions and patterns of mistrust put us all on watch. It does not matter on which continent you live, what language you speak, or what century your life has passaged through, this has been true for you: life is hard, and time only goes forward. None of us can move back in time to our earlier days, we can only step some way ahead into days we’re not sure of. My best advice? Don’t go it alone. Go with the One who is over time and nations, and who has echoed through His whole book about a plan and a purpose for those who are hungry to know.

Abraham was shown the stars, given words about offspring (he didn’t have) a settled land (he couldn’t see) and a blessing beyond his ability to measure. Abraham simply believed the intervening voice of a God he was choosing to follow. What is evidenced in this last Psalm in the Ascent collection is a prophetic view of that coming blessing. It’s a short burst of praise; and like the last two responses in this final triplet it’s a corporate response. Many now are believing, beholding, praising and responding. But we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

I started this series after a lot of study, then some sketching of the patterns I thought I could see. I’ve mentioned often in earlier posts about the triplet pattern evident: every three Psalms in this set of 15 shows a rhythm that gets repeated through the whole. But there is also a pattern of fives that reflect the 3 promises earlier given to Abraham about the land he was walking toward, the seed which would come from him and the blessing God was not only promising but would guarantee (Gen.12, ratified in ch.15).

The Psalm writers were all descendants of Abraham. The prophets were also; and what they saw ahead was mysteriously sure and echoed often in both their own times but also pointing toward a final fuller FINISH. We’re almost there. I can hear the cheering in the stadium. I have motivation and great confidence, like Abraham did, because of the One who spoke these promises. I can trust (not what I see now but rather) these words because God not only spoke His promises again and again, but He also guaranteed that He would get it done some day in fullest human history.

A song of ascents.

134 Attention! Praise the Lord,
all you servants of the Lord,
who serve in the Lord’s temple during the night.
²Lift your hands toward the sanctuary
and praise the Lord.
³May the Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth,
bless you from Zion.

Mary Barton Nees

Conceptual Landscape