October 2020

devotional image
Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Matthew 6:10


Vertigo Anyone?

Have you ever experienced vertigo where it feels like the room is spinning around you? I have. It's no fun at all. Your equilibrium is thrown off and you're in danger of falling. Nausea is part of the equation, too. In my case, it was a result of crystals in my inner ear breaking loose and floating around where they weren't supposed to be. When you have vertigo, it feels like the world is spinning out of control.

Remind you of anything? 2020, perhaps?

In the case of my vertigo, the non-invasive, self-administered Epley maneuver set things to rights in there again in short order, thank goodness. In the case of 2020? Well, I'm afraid there's no easy fix. Our world has been turned upside down in so many ways, including in our personal relationships. The disruptions and divisions in friend and family groups due to covid and politics has been dizzying to say the least. As my six-year-old granddaughter, Avery, is fond of saying about unexpected developments, "I didn't see that one coming!" It's funny when she says it . . . .

On a positive note, I have to say that these dizzying disruptions to normal life have caused me to look more deeply into who I really am as a Christian. At the core, what do I really believe?

I believe God is sovereign over the affairs of humankind.

The One who called the shepherd boy, David in from tending his sheep on the hills and elevated him to the rank of king, is the same One who announced the birth of the Messiah, the rightful heir to David's throne, first to a group of shepherds on a hill. Think of that. The continuity of it. The beauty of it.

“Come to me with your ears wide open.
    Listen, and you will find life.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you.
    I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David.

 See how I used him to display my power among the peoples.
    I made him a leader among the nations.
 Isaiah 55: 3 - 4

Have you heard the Rich Mullins' song, "Creed"? The song originally came out in 1986, but most of its lyrics are taken directly from the Apostles' Creed which is centuries old. According to an article written by Elliot Ritzema (with John D. Barry) for the Lexham Bible Dictionary,  "The earliest written form of this creed is found in a letter that Marcellus of Ancyra wrote in Greek to Julius, the bishop of Rome, about AD 341. About 50 years later, Tyrannius Rufinus wrote a commentary on this creed in Latin (Commentarius in symbolum apostolorum). In it, he recounted the viewpoint that the apostles wrote the creed together after Pentecost, before leaving Jerusalem to preach" (Symb. 2).

So again, continuity. The beauty of that. I pulled up the song on YouTube and listened to Rich Mullins sing "Creed" several times the other evening. It brought me great joy and comfort. "I did not make it, but it is making me. It's the very truth of God, not the invention of any man," Mullins sings. Yes!

Seek the Lord while you can find him.
    Call on him now while he is near.
 Let the wicked change their ways
    and banish the very thought of doing wrong.
Let them turn to the Lord that he may have mercy on them.
    Yes, turn to our God, for he will forgive generously.

 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
    “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so my ways are higher than your ways
    and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.  Isaiah 55: 6 - 9

God has a plan and He will see it through whether we can see the thread now or not. "Thy will be done" is still the best, most effective prayer to bring peace to our hearts and minds during these dizzying, unsettling times. God's got this. All of it.

 Daye Phillippo

October 2020

P.S. The following version of "Creed" includes a clip of Mullins introducing the song and his hopes for it and for himself as a Christian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTiPg7p2FxU