5/22/24
There was a time back in the 70s to early 80s when there were more restaurants on one stretch of University Drive than in all of Birmingham! Darryl’s 1817, Steak & Ale, the Fogcutter . . . all celebration destinations . . . all big deals at the time . . . and all gone.
For decades, I always celebrated my birthday at Red Lobster, which was farther east on University Drive. I say “was” on purpose, because it, too, is gone! March, my birthday month (as if you could ever forget), is always “Lobster Fest,” and even if my family didn’t go out any other time of the year, we went to Red Lobster for my birthday. But when I went there this past March for my birthday, it was closed for remodeling. So they said.
Today I read that it’s closed permanently – along with the ones in Decatur, Auburn and Mobile. As part of an effort to avoid bankruptcy, the company is closing some 99 locations nationwide!
Reading that article, I thought about all the celebrations that we had at the Huntsville Red Lobster throughout the years. I even went on my first date to that Red Lobster. It was the summer between my seventh and eighth grade on a Sunday afternoon. Her name was Lora – she was going into her Freshman year . . . an older woman!
Dad dropped us off and picked us up later on. I ordered a shrimp cocktail and she thought that “cocktail” meant that it had alcohol! She was scandalized! We were much more innocent in those days. But it’s gone now. How weird.
To anyone who doesn’t like change, I have one suggestion: don’t get older!
I think women handle change better than men do. Men work hard for stability. For women, maybe it’s like Ma Joad ways in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath: “A man lives sorta – well, in jerks. Baby’s born or somebody dies, and that’s a jerk. He gets a farm or loses it, and that's a jerk. With a woman, it’s all in one flow, like a stream – little eddies and waterfalls – but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it thata way.” (Do women look at it “thata way”? Let me know!)
I don’t always deal with change very well. I want something I can depend on.
So, of course, when times are shaky and when they’re rock solid, either way, I keep my focus on the One in whom we can always trust: our Loving Father. I quoted an old hymn last week with the affirmation, “I will trust His love, for it e’er will last; It is rich and warm and free.” His love will always last.
In Exodus 34, the glory of God passes by Moses as he is sheltered in the cleft of a rock on Mt.Sinai, and the voice of God announces who God is and how God will relate to his people: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. . .” Notice God is not just faithful, but is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness!
This scene is in John’s mind when he writes about Jesus in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
All throughout the Psalms, these two characteristics of God, his “steadfast love and faithfulness,” go hand-in-hand. For example, Psalm 26:3, “For your steadfast love is before my eyes and I walk in your faithfulness.” And Psalm 36:4, “Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.” The next time you read through the Psalms, look for those words in close combination.
“Steadfast love” (other translations may use “mercy” or “lovingkindness”) translates the Hebrew word, chesed. Chesed love is loyal love, the sort of love that loves regardless of the response of the beloved. It isn’t a fickle love, but a tenacious fidelity in a relationship with a resolve to continue to be loyal to those to whom one is bound.
The Hebrew word for faithfulness is emet, a word that means complete trustworthiness and reliability. It’s also the word for true/truth.
And I find it interesting that all throughout the Old Testament, the focus is on God’s steadfast love and faithfulness more than any other attribute. The Hebrews knew all about unreliability and fickleness. They lived in a world where people worshiped many gods, and all of them were fickle, petty and were easily bribed.
But at the center of Israel’s worship was the God who abounded in steadfast love and faithfulness!
This means God is dependable.
Another thing I found interesting is that the Old Testament says almost nothing about the power of the Lord! Maybe the Israelites assumed the power of the Lord (after all, all gods would claim that) and certainly the omnipotence of God runs in the background of the Old Testament, but the attribute of God that Israel proclaimed and sang about the most is God’s complete trustworthiness. Maybe that’s because they found it to be the most amazing and unique characteristic of God,
I suppose the most famous and beloved verse about God’s faithfulness is found in Lamentations. The writer has lost everything. The holy city of Jerusalem in ruins, the temple has been burned to the ground. Looking out on the smoldering ruins, the writer laments their misfortune verse after depressing verse . . . but then he turns his eyes toward the God of steadfast love and faithfulness and sings, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 2:22-23).
In a world where fickleness and instability abound, where things change constantly, we can depend on God. When things seem out of control, I invite you to look at it “thata way.”
Blessings,
Pastor Terry