Imbibe

To my emails, I have been attaching a thought I had the other day, "When we talk, we have to take a breath to utter words. When we read scripture, we pray to imbibe His word."

Someone just asked me about "imbibe."  Imbibe means to drink, take in, absorb. And thus to receive nourishment....  In a social  sense, when we're talking with a friend it feeds our soul to have our soul connect or touch his.  Giving and taking information, feelings, and dreams we learn more of the other and receive something back for our lives when we connect with that friend.  It helps us to move forward another day when we can make sense of what we're feeling and why that failed relationship so many years ago still hurts so much or why my relationship with my wife is so amazingly fresh after 13 years.  It is in those patterns of relationship that we learn more about ourselves and develop hopes and dreams for the future.

Prayer is one of those lost arts which we need to help us make sense of our spiritual lives.  And really not only of our spiritual lives but of the rest of our lives as well.  It is in prayer that breathe out and in of God's Spirit and come to know him better.  Ultimately, however, we learn about God through reading his word.  When we read God's word we must read it with a prayer on our lips so that our soul touches His.  In this connection we reframe our lives in terms of his and learn about ourselves in the process.  Yes, we learn we're failures and fall short.  Yes, we learn we're not all that we once were.  But we also learn of God's grace and his power to bring us from a position of stagnation to a place of movement toward eternity.  I wonder if one component of our sin is a human attempt to bring movement to a stagnated soul?  If we would but wait on God, we would learn that this is not stagnation.  God will provide for us a release that will propel us toward the ultimate focus of our souls: life in God.

So we drink deeply of God through breathing his word in and out of our soul: imbibe and live.

Snapshots and Movies

Identify these famous movie lines:

• Luke, I am your father.
• Rosebud.
• I won’t think about that today. I will think about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day!
• The one ring to rule them all.
• Play it once, Sam. For old times' sake.
• And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!

Answers:

• Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi
• Citizen Kane
• Gone with the Wind
• The Lord of the Rings I
• Casablanca
• Braveheart

Did your church or school ever rent movies and show them in the gymnasium? Our church would do that sometimes. Of course this was in the days of the dinosaur when you actually needed a 35mm projector. The movies came in the big reels and someone would drape a large bed sheet on one end of the wall. The movie was loaded and threaded, popcorn was popped, lights were dimmed, the projector clicked away, and cinema heaven began.

Once while Herbie Rides Again was playing, the project motor stopped and the light on the film kept going. This was a bad thing because the heat from the bulb burned through the movie film. Celluloid freakishly burned on the bed sheet and then it would fall or pull away. It was really weird to watch Herbie burn into a rainbow of colors right before your eyes!

Funny how we remember images like that isn’t it? Life is like that. When something bad happens, an image is burned onto our subconscious so that the smell of the burning celluloid, the image of the looks on worried faces, and the collective “ohh man” from the crowd forever clings to your little gray cells in your brain.

We tend to carry around these snapshots of ourselves and others to further cement those memories into our lives. The unthinkable happens – your spouse divorces you, the kids rebel, your boss turns on you, and suddenly the film stops and the image of that moment is burned into the minds of yourself and those around you.

Some of us never work on repairing that film. We carry around snapshots to remind us of “the good ol’ days” before our trauma (and of the trauma itself) and try to relive the memories of by-gone movies, popcorn, and a life that seemed oh so much better.

But God – remember those words – but God – does not carry around snapshots. He is the grand Movie Director who will come back and tape back together the movie and restart the film. Yes, there is permanently a scar on the reel. Yes, there is a blip in the movie and the scenes are somewhat disjointedly arranged. But the movie plays on.

Read what our brother Paul said about these things in Ephesians 2:4-10

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved
us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with
Christ- by grace you have been saved- and raised us up with him and seated us
with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he
might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ
Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not
your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may
boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Do you see that? We are His workmanship. The movie is complete. God has already prepared it and we are made for good works to walk in Him.

Put away the pictures and get some help to tape together the film. Restart your life’s “projector” by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is not finished with you….