Listen to internet radio with middayconversations on Blog Talk Radio

ROAR

Time to get a tattoo!

Memphis zoo. Gorgeous spring day. Trees budding, flowers blooming, sun shining, temps in the 70s, mild breeze.

Everywhere I walked, I saw animals awake and active: One polar bear could not talk the other into getting into the water. So she climbed ashore – and pushed him in. The Three Bears (grizzlies) romped and sparred. Sea lions strutted their stuff. Penguins dove and swam. A mother ostrich chased a curious gazelle away from enormous eggs. Red river hogs, so ugly they were cute, ran amuck. A rhino paced slowly – down to the water, up to the shade, etc., etc. Two hippos practiced synchronized skinny dipping: Both awoke from their naps, stood at the same time, walked side by side, in step, toward the water – and plunked in. We watched from the rear.

Most amazing of all: The cats. Usually they sleep during the day. Not that day.

Immediately on entering the park, I saw a lioness taming a huge red plastic spool. Then, mistakenly entering the exit of the Cat Country exhibit and thus walking against the current, I saw them all – most, on the move. The ocelot couple bantered, climbed the rocks, descended and climbed again. The male Bengali tiger paced between the two females, one of which roared him away. He finally lay down halfway between the two. The cat with super-pointy black ears and a strange name I can’t recall paced incessantly. The black leopard walked and roared. I ended at the beginning: at the lion’s den. The male lion lay against the glass through which we looked, just inches away. The female now rested nearby, having conquered her prey. The male turned his head in that stately lion way and stared me in the eye.

I enjoyed all the animals. But the cats, and especially the lions, stirred something in me, something deep. So, at the days’ end, I stood in a line of kids – and got my first tattoo. Airbrushed in purple, high on my right arm: the head of a roaring lion.

After all, the Hebrew month of Nissan was starting, the first month of spring, the month associated with the tribe of Judah. In Genesis 49:9-10, Jacob blessed Judah this way:

You are a lion’s cub, Judah; you return from the prey, my son.

Like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness – who dares to rouse him?

The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,

until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations be his.

Revelation 5:5 identifies Jesus Christ as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” – Jesus, who died and rose again in the first month of spring, the month Nissan.

The roaring lion on my upper arm also reminded me of Aslan, the lion in the Chronicles of Narnia. Author C. S. Lewis created Aslan as a type of Christ. Home again, I located the first book of the Narnia series and picked it up. It fell open to this passage:

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,

At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,

When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death

And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

Ah, yes. We shall have spring again. The prophet Amos weighed in ahead of time (as prophets often do), announcing centuries before Christ’s birth:

The lion has roared—who will not fear?

The Sovereign Lord has spoken—who can but prophesy? (Amos 3:8)

Definitely. Time to get my first tattoo.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis (New York: Collier Books, 1950, 1970), pp. 74-75.

“The Diamond Turns”

This week, I visited a friend. As we talked, Christian music played in the background. When I commented how much I was enjoying the music, my friend got up, crossed the room and came back with a CD she especially likes. She handed the CD to me, backside up.

I stared. The photo before me captured a night scene an ocean away from where I live – a night scene I had witnessed. “I was there!” I cried.

October 2, 2009, I arrived in Israel with a team of about 25 others. After landing in Tel Aviv, we boarded a bus that drove us through Jerusalem and down, down, down into the southern desert, to Ein Gedi on the banks of the Dead Sea. There in the open air, we would participate with 4,000 other Christians from some 75 nations in the opening celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles.

A large, well-lit stage faced west, away from the sea. In front of the stage, another sea moved – a sea of people from all around the world, gathering to worship God together. As dusk fell and our group scattered, looking for places to sit, I opted to stay back behind the rows of folding chairs. Instead, I sat on the ground, leaning against a palm tree. For two hours, I listened to and sang with the worship music that would be released a year later on Paul Wilbur’s CD, Desert Rain. In front of the stage, dancers danced. Through the crowd, wove a line of people holding banners high. Near me sat a group from Africa, another group from Germany and yet another from Korea. For two hours, I looked up from the lowest place on earth at the magnificent night sky. I marveled at the God who had made it all – had made us all – and had brought me there to experience it.

Three days ago, I saw the scene again – on a CD cover and in my mind. Today marks the two-year anniversary of that night, my first night in Israel. May I take you in your imagination to a palm tree that stands between a lifeless desert and a Dead Sea, to a night the nations gathered to worship the living God under the stars? Would you join the worship too? We sang many songs that night. This one is called, “The Diamond Turns.”