Cling

You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him;

 and you shall keep His commandments, 
listen to His voice, 

serve Him and CLING to Him.

Deuteronomy 13:4

What a great word:  cling.  This word defines relationship in this verse.  If we were only commanded to follow, fear, keep, listen and serve, we would conclude that our relationship to God was one of subservience, as with a slave status. But the fact that the Lord commands that we cling to Him, this reveals the heart of a father, doesn't it?

No one has to instruct a child to cling to their parent.  It is instinctual.  Safety is in the arms of the parent.  Try to pull a nine-month-old from their mother's arms at the nursery door at church.  What you get is instant clinging.

Clinging indicates safety and clinging indicates love.  In a crisis, the one you cling to is the one you love.  I heard an interview recently of one of the shooting victims from the Washington D.C. baseball practice this past June.  His name was Zach Barth and he was a staffer for Rep. Roger Williams.  When the shooting began, he was in the outfield shagging fly balls.  People were yelling, "Shooter! Run!", so he ran to a corner of the outfield but then the gunman started aiming at him. He was shot in the leg and decided he had to run back to the infield, so he limped his way back to the dugout, where he found Williams and they clung to each other until the shooting was done.  This man was not secret service - he wasn't trained to protect his boss.  But he loved his boss and found him, and they held on to each other for safety until the ordeal was over.

God wants us to cling to Him and in order to do that we have to have more than a Creator/created relationship with Him, more than a Master/slave, Employer/employee, Coach/player or King/citizen relationship with Him. We have to embrace that He is a good, good Father, our Heavenly Father, who loves us and wants what's best for us.  We have to trust Him and know that the safest place is in His arms.  We have to be close to Him, know Him, see Him and love Him, and then we'll cling to Him.

What do you cling to?  What do you hold tightly to in times of distress?  What do you hang on to as your greatest possession?  Your wealth? Your home? Your children? Your spouse? Your parents? Your education? Your job? What about your phone? Your free time? Your hobbies or your looks?  What is the greatest help in your life?  

Friend, Jesus wants you to cling to Him.  We've had a bat issue in our house lately and I've got to admit, trying to fall asleep while my ears are acutely hearing every crack or movement in the house is not much fun.  I want to cling to David at those times but there are a few problems with that - he really just wants to sleep and hanging on to him, buried under my covers, plus the occasional hot flash makes my body temp about 2,000 degrees. Not a great recipe for sleep and then both of us are cranky in the morning.  

Here's a plan:  How about I cling to the Lord?  Instead of lying in bed, waiting to hear the flutter of wings, I have gone into long conversations with the Lord each night until I fall asleep in His arms.  I have a lot to talk with Him about and knowing that He is there, that He loves me and that He isn't trying to fall asleep as well, makes the conversation much easier.  I did wake up to a bat in the room a few nights ago, but I didn't freak out and we caught the bat in the morning. Such is life - bats will come and go, but my Savior will be with me always.

By the way, we've just about got our bat problem solved, so please don't send me any bat videos or pictures.  I know what they look like and we're working with the Bat Man (seriously) and so we're just about done extracting the few hundred bats from my attic...true story.