Good, And Great – February 16, 2023 (54/365) – JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter

I only noticed recently that I’m behind in my posts. Given present circumstances I guess there’s no better time than right now to play catch-up.

I remember I was in a similar situation last year, where an extreme bout of sickness put me down for an entire week. We were speculating that it was Dengue Fever – the symptoms were there, but the tests said otherwise for some insane reason. All I know is that the juice from papaya leaves was all it took for me to bound back quickly. It was, at the very least, an issue with the blood.

But yeah, after that, I was just churning out as many words as I could, as fast as possible, just to get out of the red and be back on track with my thousand words a day. I remember that the feeling, the yearning to just make up for all the lost time – well, that weighed heavier on me than the cringe I felt as I was writing to a point that it was mostly random, possibly irrelevant thoughts. And here’s where I’m reminded of one of my desires – that is, to go back to the stuff I wrote last year, and to eliminate all fillers and segues, to see how much literary value I actually produced out of each day.

I’ll be honest, if I haven’t already been – I was actually a bit gentle on myself by calling my site a personal brain defragmenter. Way I see it now, it’s more of a Recycle Bin – only, instead of its contents being all definitely trash, there’s need to weed through the murky waters, because something of value may yet be found.

…was that me being honest, or just being too hard on myself? And am I being hard on myself just to project that you don’t need to be hard on me?

Enough introspection.

Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.

I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”

Psalms 16:1-2

Well there it is. As always the Scriptures are present to serve, and in this moment, I am reminded. Maybe all the thinking shouldn’t be directed to myself. Or my words.

Maybe what I need to do is just to take a step back, and let God be who He is; Take a deep breath, and remind myself of who Christ is: Savior… King… Shepherd… Lord. Lord of Lords. Influence over all that has influence over me. Power over all that has power over me.

Around this time I’d also say He is also Control over all that has control over me – but with a proviso, or sorts. A clarification. I believe that it’s not that He has absolute autonomy over all my movements and actions. Nor do I think that He’s in a control room with all the bells and whistles, knobs and buttons that direct my movements, or any actions happening concerning me. No, I believe it’s control beyond my limited way of thinking; control in a scale far greater than my imagination could contain. His is influence far beyond merely saying He is the Influence of influences, power beyond merely saying He is the Power over all powers perceived and beyond human senses and reasoning.

There was a time I cringed at calling Christ my Lord, because of the implications of human religion – that it meant servitude and self-sacrifice, ‘dying to self’ and ‘more of Him and less of me’. But I suppose the longer you live in this reality, the more you realize that what it means to say ‘Jesus is Lord’ is definitely far more complicated, and also far more simple than we would think – it’s really us just saying that God is who He says He is.

He is the Creator of all things seen and unseen, beyond all we can theorize and conjure for ourselves. We’ve seen it through the miracles of Christ – breaking all observations of the human body until that point He walked with us in this reality. Up until now, we’re either brought to awe or ridiculing or denying how He healed leprosy, cast out demons and evil spirits, fed multitudes from such a pitiful supply; Physics, chemistry and logic all brought to question by this Son of a carpenter. Through Christ we’ve seen that God is who He said He is, and through Christ we see, God is great.

But it’s also in what I’m led to call the miracle of miracles that we see that not only is God great, but He is good. For it is through Christ and His finished work that we are also brought to awe, or ridiculing or denying how He was crucified and put to death, only to emerge resurrected on the third day. The constant of death was brought to question by this Man – this Man, whom Peter was brought to saying, and whom the religious and political leaders of the time have scorned His being the Son of the Living God.

He died to serve as a sacrifice in our place, becoming sin, taking the separation and dying the consequent death sin deserved. He rose again as proof that all the sin has been accounted for; it was His righteousness that prevailed, and in reconciliation He lived the everlasting Life righteousness deserved. And He did all that He could do… ‘for God so loved the world’. Through Christ we’ve seen that God is who He said He is, and through Christ we see, God is good.

This great God, He is for us. He loves us. And we know this and believe this, not out of our own merit; Not by our own name, nor of anyone else’s name – we know that God is good, and God is great, only through Christ, who demonstrated His Lordship in a salvation we are incapable of understanding, but only trusting and believing.

At this time, this is what it means for me to say the same thing that the Psalmist said – “You are my Lord.”

And I’d like to think, with everything that’s going on so far this year, and with all the revelations that have popped up, up to just last night – that I have my entire being, or all that is within me, saying precisely what the Psalmist wrote before that; In this crazy world with its twists and turns, and with frustrations and anxieties at an all-time high, I’m not just saying it, but I’m crying it out – Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.

Let me end here, for now.