When life comes at us sideways and we are upended, often if we are blessed with good people around us, we will hear “Let me know if there is anything I can do to help” or “How can I help?” The challenge we face at that point is that we often don’t know how to answer or what we most need at any given point. In that case we may say “I’ll let you know if I think of anything”. But how often do we call them back?

When we are trying to reorient ourselves to something unexpected or difficult we may not truly know how to answer that despite our awareness of the sincerity of the person asking. Our minds are in overdrive or totally numb or we are in so much pain that making it from one moment to the next uses most of our energy. Our world feels very small and cramped and we aren’t sure if the person asking can imagine our struggle to answer the question.

It happens routinely in the midst of loss when those around us feel a sense of helplessness of how to help ease the pain of someone. It’s even harder when we don’t even recognize the loss and there is a sense of being disenfranchised. That is so true when someone experiences a miscarriage that others may not even see or know or when someone loses a lifelong friend.

Sometimes what we may most need is not something done for us (even though there may be things that can help, and we appreciate it). And how do we articulate that what we most need is someone to “be” with us versus “do” for us. Being or feeling alone in the midst of upheaval can be overwhelming for the best of us – especially if the cause is not easily resolved. That has happened to far too many people around the globe during the pandemic because even if we wanted to “be there”, we were not allowed to be.

Perhaps we most need a listening heart even more than a listening ear. And those are rare finds indeed.

A listening heart not only seeks to “tune in” to us but also is listening to the nudge of the Lord. A person who has you come to mind and senses a nudge to call you, fix a meal, send you flowers, write you a note, or pray is someone with a listening heart. Such a person is not so engaged in their own busy lives that they are unable to “hear” that nudge and are empathic to consider what he or she most needs perhaps if the situation was reversed. They may likely do something you ask, but they have taken relationship to another level (both vertically and horizontally).

A few of us are truly gifted in this, but many of us are not very good at it. That can be because we are far more self-focused than we realize or would care to admit, or our vertical relationship spiritually is not really an ongoing daily connection with the Lord. It can also be true that we have been doing for so many that we are burned out and have lost that once possible tuning into a nudge to touch someone (even if it isn’t in person). If our lives are flowing along, we can get caught up in the stream and be going through life on automatic. It can happen to us all if we are honest.

It is often someone who has walked through a time when life came at them sideways who has developed a “listening heart” and responds to us with unusual sensitivity. That person has suffered something, so they “get” suffering as few others do. It’s beauty coming out of ashes.

Sometimes we can be tempted to believe or feel that no one out there “gets” us, no one is listening or even cares. That very often happens during the long nights when the rest of the world seems to be asleep, and we are left alone with our pain, loss, and thoughts that can come unraveled and cause us to lose perspective and hope. It can happen also when we expect a response from someone close to us and it doesn’t happen, or it happens in a way that shows us they have no clue about where or how we are at that point in time.

But that isn’t accurate. There is someone who “gets” us and understands all manner of suffering. He has the BEST listening heart ever.

“The world is a mob of everyone talking at once and no one is willing or able to listen. But God listens. He not only speaks to us, he listens to us. His listening to us is an even greater marvel than his speaking to us. It is rare to find anyone who listens carefully and thoroughly. It is rare to find our stammering understood, our clumsy speech deciphered, our garbled syntax unraveled, sorted out and heard – every syllable attended to, every nuance comprehended. Our minds are taken seriously. Our feelings are taken seriously. When it happens, we know that what we say and feel are immensely important. We acquire dignity. We never know how well we think or speak until we find someone who listens to us.

True speaking is made possible when there is true listening. What good are words without a listener?”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

We may be tempted to feel or believe He is not listening at all because the answer we so much need has not happened or at least not yet. It is then we most need to rest in the assurance of his love for us and that it is unfailing and everlasting.

“Important things are being done while we wait. The action on earth, seen from the heavenly place is a drama of victorious redemption.

Prayer orients us to God’s design.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

The Little Maiden is a first-time release by a new author, Regina Myers, that recently came to my attention. This work of historical fiction is set in the time of Ben-Hadad II who was king of Aram, Damascus, from 865 to 842 BC when Ahab was king in Samaria. War between these two states had been ongoing since before Ben-Hadad I. The Arameans hated the Hebrew peoples and even when major battles were not raging, a prosperous slave trade flourished as men filled with rage and greed kidnapped Jewish children from villages across the countryside for profit. Many of these children were under 12 years of age.

In the small village of Yazith, Meira, age 12, awakened from a nightmare to the sounds of her family’s household already at work with early morning chores. Meira’s nightmare had left her trembling from her attempt to escape a large strong man chasing her and then grabbing her by the arm as he looked down on her with an angry face. She moved slowly as she went to help with her chores but was unable to shake the fear and foreboding the nightmare had created. Her brothers were off to work in the fields while her older sister helped her mother in the kitchen with meals. They had all been up earlier than she as she made her way into the kitchen.

Meira was tasked with keeping an eye on her younger brother, 9, and sister,7, and to get water from the well nearby. Suddenly the peaceful morning shattered as she heard piercing cries and the sound of pounding hooves. Even though she could not see the riders she knew they were Aaramean raiders. In her fear she dropped her clay water jar as she scrambled to follow the crying sound. She soon recognized the cry was from her younger sister, Gila.

Meira knew the raiders were trying to kidnap her little sister and ran over the rocky hillside in her bare feet to try to rescue her from the raiders they all feared. She couldn’t wait on her father, brothers, or other men to hear the cries to come and help. Without thought she ran at the horse of the man she saw tossing her sister to another man and demanded he put her down. He laughed at her as they tossed her sister back and forth among the men. Then in that moment the man dropped her sister into the arms of their mother and he grabbed Meira instead as he recognized she could bring a better price than her little sister.

Helplessly her mother watched as Meira fought against these raiders, striking one of them with a shovel on his knee. But before she could strike again her arms were grabbed and held fast and she was thrown across the horse of one of the angry men as he galloped away with his men and the other children being taken (most under the age of 12).

Meira cried out to Jehovah to save her but it was no use, she was taken and helpless to escape. In moments she and the other kidnapped children were held fast by their captors bound for the slave market to see who could bring the highest price. Her fight had the leader of the group’s attention. Despite her slender frame, she was courageous in her fight to get free and he was aware this strong young slender girl was one he wanted for his very own household.

These opening scenes in The Little Maiden set the context for the story that unfolds of Meira’s captivity, the struggle to trust the God of her father who allowed this to happen while unaware of the unseen forces of good and evil at work in everything and everyone around her.

Despite the desperate situation we read in the beginning of the book, the author weaves a fascinating story of how Meira is confronted by trials that mean the faith and stories of her father must now become her own. Some of the characters such as Naaman, the Aram commander in Ben Haddad II’s army who had become a leper, and Elisha, the prophet, will be ones you may recognize. How the author connects these characters and how God uses all this in Meira’s life and the life of others who enter the story over her five-year separation from her family, caused me to keep the pages turning to discover what would happen next.

The uncommon names of men, women, children, towns, angels and demons are worth pushing through for this important story of faith in this writer’s first book that is currently available on Amazon. The author will leave you in suspense until the end of the story that will leave you cheering.

Can we really change history?

Yes, of course.

You may be thinking of ways that can happen by participating in governmental processes, voting, and a list of other things and those are true and have happened many times in the course of history in places around the world. But there is something more than that and it can defeat evil as none of these can in and of themselves.

It requires more of us. It will involve time, trust, and faith in each action, but it is what will help us stand in the face of evil. It is prayer that is the effective weapon we often leave gathering dust on the shelf.

“The real power of prayer in history is not a fusillade of praying units of whom Christ is the chief, but it is the corporate action of a Saviour-Intercessor and His community, a volume and energy of prayer organized in a Holy Spirit and in the Church the Spirit creates.”

P.T. Forsyth

Throughout history you hear the stories of prayer operating and moving in ways to sustain people and change history’s course. We know it and scripture tells us to do it, but often our prayers focus on the life we are living and asking for smaller things or urgent things of a crisis nature related to health or provisions versus the wider battle against evil operating.

“While conflicts raged between good and evil, prayers went up from devout bands of first century Christians all over the Roman empire. Massive engines of persecution and scorn were ranged against them. They had neither weapons nor votes. They had little money and no prestige. Why didn’t they have mental breakdowns? Why didn’t they cut and run? They prayed.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

History tells us much about what they suffered and endured during that time, but because of their faithfulness and testimony carved out of the hardships they endured Christianity was not stamped out and we enjoy the legacy of that today. It can be easy to not recognize had they not been so committed in this way that all of what we take for granted might have never been birthed.

Can we do any less now whether we live in a place where our faith can operate and be expressed freely or not? Are we willing to walk in their footsteps and change the course of the future?

We see that power played out in Revelation 8 as well as prayers appear to flow upward, and heaven is silent and then an angel appears with a golden censer and what happens?

“Out of the silence, action developed: an angel came before the altar of God with a censer. He mixed the prayers of the Christians with incense (which cleansed them from impurities) and combined them with fire (God’s spirit) from the altar. Then he put it all in a censer and threw it over heaven’s ramparts. The censer, plummeting through the air, landed on earth. On impact there were “peals of thunder, voices, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake” (Rev. 8:5). The prayers which had ascended, unremarked by the journalists of the day, returned with immense force – in George Herbert’s phrase, as “reversed thunder.” Prayer reenters history with incalculable effects. Our earth is shaken daily by it.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

Can you imagine?

It can be far easier to talk about what it is wrong in the world than to acknowledge we are caught up in a war between good and evil and as believers are called to play a part. Our absence of using the weapons Christ has afforded of us can change the present as well as the future for those who will come after us.

“Prayer is access to an environment in which God is the pivotal center of action. All other persons, events, or circumstances are third parties. Existence is illuminated in direct relationship to God himself. Neither bane nor blessing distracts from this center. Persons who pray are not misled by demons of size, influence, importance or power. They turn their backs on the gaudy pantheons of Canaan and Assyria, Greece and Rome, and give themselves to the personal intensities that become awe before God and in intimacy with God. And they change the world.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

If we consider the scene depicted in my last post (https://pamecrement.com/2021/03/15/evil-unmasked/) as the first four of seven seals are opened, we are aware that Eugene Peterson believes it is the conquering Christ on the white horse who takes the field to declare battle first. Who are the foes he will battle against on the red, black, and pale horses who represent judgment on the earth when John introduces them in Revelation 6 and 7? What do they represent?

Each represents a different form of evil that Christ is calling into account and using. They have been a part of the life of mankind for so long we tend to accept them as “just how it is.” Never has it been more important to be clear on evil and its role but even more importantly, we must recognize what our role is as we face it in its various forms.

“Each of these evils is common, but each is disguised so that we culturally accept its presence as something normal, even good. War is disguised as a higher standard of living. Sickness is disguised as technology. Evil introduces, by turns, conflict, greed, and deceit into social and personal existence and undoes creation, subverting its purposes and contradicting its design of redemption. These evils present such a benign appearance in their disguises that the world unthinkingly accepts them as the forces of history, to which Christ is a lovely but essentially ineffective minority protest.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

But as John begins to see who Christ has called out to face Him and his judgment the truth of who they are and have always been is exposed, masks are torn away and disguises of no use.

The red horse represents war and the bloody cruel reality that courses throughout every war ever fought at any point on the earth. Mankind goes to war for many different reasons and sometimes to seek to defeat evidence of evil that is beyond our tolerance. Other times it happens to gain land or power, riches or resources. Though we may sometimes lift up war, it always comes at a cost leaving lives, landscapes, and lineages destroyed. Winners and losers carry the scars of battle. It is still evil and when Christ calls forward the red horse and its rider, his purpose will be to once and for all to defeat this scourge on the earth.

It reminds me of the scenes in Star Wars where Luke, Hans Solo, Obi Wan, Chewbacca, and their friends go off to save the galaxy from the Death Star and the scourge of Darth Vadar and the other enemies arrayed against them seeing domination and subjection. This scene in Revelation will be far grander than any movie scene ever filmed.

Scripture tells us the black horse and its rider carries a balance in his hand. It represents famine where the barest starvation diet will cost a full day’s wages.

“What is necessary for minimal living is unavailable while the luxuries of life, oil and wine, are abundant. Greed does it. People exploit the earth, leaving it depleted and poor, in order to get rich.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

It reminds me of what happened during the great famine we read about in Genesis. Joseph was used by God to save the people of Israel after being sold into slavery in Egypt. There was no food in the fields but there was money to try to buy food. When his family back in Canaan ran out of food Jacob sent his brothers laden with “riches” to buy grain. It is a paradox that we can mix while reading the story – money to buy food, but no food growing in the soil of the land.

It gives fresh meaning to the words of The Lord’s Prayer that reads, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

The last horse John tells us about is described as a pale horse that represents pestilence and Eugene Peterson expands what all this can include:

“The rider on the pale horse represents pestilence – epidemic disease, the sickness unto death. The incidence of disease and sickness rises exponentially while, mockingly, the size of our hospitals increases, and medical technology becomes more and more refined.

Sickness is the condition in which our bodies are weakened or impaired, so they are no longer effective as temples of holiness shaping rituals of love and witness.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

As I consider Peterson’s words it is clear that these evils that will manifest themselves as John describes them are already here in a form we view as “normal” for life on the earth despite our challenges and sometimes hatred of them. Little wonder when they are increased in judgment that life will become nearly impossible for those who have yet to worship Christ.

It can be easy to wonder how anyone can stand as the days become eviler. Revelation 6 actually poses the question, “Who can stand?” It’s clear John is telling us the world has come to an end at that point. Of course, Christ stands and scripture points to the angels that did not participate in the rebellion with Lucifer before the beginning of mankind also stand. But Paul reminds us of another group that is called to stand.

^” Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us,  set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”

2 Corinthians 1:21-22 (NIV)

You and I (if we are believers) are called to stand as ones sealed with a seal of Christ as God’s ownership. The message Paul wrote so long ago during a time when the young churches then were struggling still stands for us today. Christ in us by the power of his Holy Spirit calls us to stand. And if He calls us to do so, surely, He provides us with what we need to do so and would train us to use the weapons He has provided for evil’s efforts to triumph.

“Evil is a fact. The Bible spends a good deal of space insisting that certain facts are evil, and not minor blemishes on the surface of existence. But the Bible does not provide an explanation of evil – rather, it defines a context: all evil takes place in an historical arena bounded by Christ and prayer. Evil is not explained but surrounded.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

We don’t like to talk about evil even though it was a word once more commonly used. We tend to prefer to call things that are evil something else, often by the result of evil instead of labeling it evil. Do we hesitate to use the word because we have been deceived into believing it is something else or are we in denial because we don’t know what to do with it?

How would you define evil?

The dictionary defines it this way: “profoundly immoral or wicked.” That definition might help unravel what has caused the word to seldom be used in recent years because what many in the culture label immoral or wicked has changed a great deal in recent decades. What was unthinkable on TV 20 years ago is now commonplace at all hours of the day. What we believed children should be protected from diminishes a bit more each year. When something in history points to evil, we now choose to rewrite or delete it instead of learning from it.

“History tumbles out a mass of data – wars, famines, murders, and accidents – along with sunrises and still waters, lilies of the field and green pastures. God’s people have been convinced that it is possible in prayer and praise, in listening and believing, to discern meaning in this apparent chaos and therefore to read good news in the daily life of history.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

Yes, there is meaning and good news in the midst of all these things, but it does not negate the existence of evil and how it operates in the midst of every aspect of the world and humankind. How easily we can be seduced by that one who perpetrates evil on mankind to minimize or ignore it while we only focus on one aspect of life. He would surely have us be lulled into a fantasy world because in his delusion he also hopes it will cause us to minimize God’s power and goodness, his truth and righteousness, his mercy and judgment, his grace and truth.

The source of all evil would rename it and have us believe that it is not what it seems and if perchance we believe it is that it is so powerful that not even God can conquer it. But he forgets an important truth:

“The devil is but God’s master fencer, to teach us to handle our weapons.”

Samuel Rutherford

Maybe that also points to part of the problem. We want to be peacemakers and peaceable, forgetting we are at war and if we do not pick up the weapons we have been given, we will have surrendered what has been entrusted to us.

Our movies often expose us to stories (both true and fictional) that have a theme of war. Perhaps we are drawn to them less because they depict violence and more because we want to see evil defeated. They may well be part of the popularity of The Lord of the Rings series.

If we want to see evil for what it is and see what its defeat will look like, Revelation 6 and 7 gives us a vivid clarification and reminds us what the end of the story truly will be. In these chapters we see four horses, each with a different role. Have you considered why horses are used to describe what will happen?

“The horse is the animal for battle: oxen for farming, donkeys for transportation, horses for battle. The basic nature of history is warfare. Persons who live by faith live in conflict. History is a long sequence of battles – the forces of good and evil in pitched conflict. Sensitive persons know this. Artists know this. Students of history bare the documenting sources. People of prayer are in the middle of it even when the guns are silent. The battle rages within the soul; it is fought out in family circles; it is contested between nations. War is the human condition. To be human is to be at war.

God may be in heaven but the devil runs history.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder

About now you may think this doesn’t sound very encouraging, but if you look closely at the passages in Revelation that are the theme of this post, do you see which horse appears first? It is a white horse and most of us know a white horse portends a hero sits upon it. He is here to do battle with the forces of evil represented by the other 3 horses. (Remember the great scenes of Shadowfax that Gandalf rides in The Lord of the Rings?) This white horse has on it a rider with a bow and crown who goes out to conquer and is all about conquering. It can belong to only Christ who is in history ruling and conquering the forces of death, darkness, and evil as Eugene Peterson describes in Reversed Thunder. We so often think of Him in other roles that seem meeker or gentler than one who is riding into battle. We can fall prey to sentimentalizing Christ.

The enemy loves that when we do, but if we do, we will miss a crucial understanding about how the story ends, who wins and why. You will miss there is a hero who cannot be defeated. He was not defeated on the cross and his return will bring us to the final battle against evil. We who believe will be with Him, and this depiction in the passage is the hero we will want to lead us on that day.

“The world is in conflict; our Christ is the first on the field of battle. High issues are decided every day. Christ is not only worshipped each Sunday, he is triumphant each week day. That, of course, is not the way the newspapers report it; that is not the way our own emotions respond to it; but that is what the preached revelation proclaims.”

Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thunder