Light Houses Galore

lighthouses bible verses
What should I get my best friend for Christmas?

My best friend and I are both 17. She loves photography, drawing, movies, she plays the saxophone, she loves cello's and piano's, she listens to classical music (mozart, bach, ect.), her favorite band is The Foo Fighters, she loves tattoos though she doesn't have any, she likes bible verses, she loves scarfs, feathers and lighthouses.
I could go on forever but those are a few of the things she loves. Last year she got me a scrapbook of her and I and all the memories we had since we were little.
I really need some good ideas on what to get her. Please help!! Thanks everyone.

Build a little toothpick lighthouse, then go to the craft store and buy a huge bag of feathers. Put it all in a big box and when she opens it she'll be all like "AW MAI GAWD FEATHERS!" Then she sees the present you worked so hard to make and put so much thought into. :3

Standing in the Night Watches and psalm 134

Psalm 24 reads as follows from the New King James version of the Bible:

 1 Behold, bless the LORD,
         All you servants of the LORD,
         Who by night stand in the house of the LORD!
 2 Lift up your hands in the sanctuary,
         And bless the LORD.
         
 3 The LORD who made heaven and earth
         Bless you from Zion!

 Those called to the night watches in this psalm are maybe the priests or maybe sojourners who are stopping at the temple for the night watches,  but whoever they are we know they are called and they are heeding to the call.

The call itself is one that is real, as someone is never called to the unreal. It is a mystery that those standing in the night watches have so much influence in the realm of the both the natural and supernatural, but it is something that is real.

It is interesting that in this day and age, thanks to inventions such as the light bulb all the way to the internet age, it is possible to work round and clock or at least in the night on knowledge based or service based products and ideas. Society also at times tends to laud and value activities such as this.

There is a premium on the ideas of hard work and how extra efforts should yield extra results and that these efforts are potentially yielding unlimited results.

But the night brings us with stark confrontations with limits even now in the more advanced age of technology. There are limited views, limited resources of light only remedied then by lamps and now by electrical sources of light, developed means that only go so far and don’t reach into even a small minority of the landscapes of the night.

Here though there is the scene of people praying into the night, apparently with the probability or possibility of praying for others and also standing for them and this scene represents a sheltering presence from the foreboding nature of the night.

As the meaning and interpretation of this psalm evolves, it is depicting a scene that involves direct exchange with the Lord, they are blessing the Lord in prayer who is in return blessing them. There is closeness there, the relationship is not far reaching, where long bridges have to be traversed to get to the Lord, and this closeness with the Lord of those that are standing in the night watches, is a key to understanding greater meanings of this psalm. 

The interventions that are taking place, by these people possibly priests are done from the position of a close relationship with the Lord and their interventions emanate from this close prayer relationship with the Lord and the understanding of nearness to Him.

Those standing in the gap, in the night watches are doing this from a position of being close to the Lord and they themselves are not far ranging roamers who are just trying to break through with a plea to the Lord for them. It is their closeness to the Lord, in consultation with them that brings about positions of power and the ability to communicate and consult with the Lord in the manner of great and powerful intercessions. 

In terms of personal application, you yourself may not feel that you are close to the Lord, but if your prayers are being answered in a way that is witnessed to you by the Holy Spirit, these or this prayer was answered out of a position of being close to the Lord in that moment of prayer. Someone going into the night watches to stand in and seek the presence of the Lord, may  come into the presence of the Lord  and  have boundaries to their own thinking.  

The Lord may have something to say to you outside the boundaries of your thinking. And this is one key reason to get into the presence of the Lord, maybe by isolating some space such as in a quiet church and to then also listen to what the Lord may have to say to you, something that can indeed be outside of the boundaries of what you had been thinking. The nature of what the Lord may have to say to you is not bound by limits including the limits of your own thinking and you can bring an awareness of this to your prayers and mediations as you also listen. 

At the time this psalm was written, the presence of the night would really limit activities and the best that could be had in terms of light for say the Temple would be oil lamps or candles. But even today, with high technology and everything that brings about, the presence of the night looms large and this can be seen for those especially who travel to more remote regions and maybe they are hiking back to a lodge in the dark and it can be readily seen that once some of the modern day props are temporarily out of use, that the elements including the elements of the night more so take over and there is not all that much that can be done about that after certain point.

Even as technology exerts more and more influence, you could never transport things so that you would get a sun like presence of light at night. The night is still the hovering presence. 

The picture here is rather complete; those standing in the night watches reach heaven itself.  Then even now, everything would seem further away from being possible in the dark hours of the night. 

But this band of individuals standing in the night watches, held sway over much,  Their power was such that the very tides of time were affected by their stance. They were called by the Lord and stood in that call, in ways, that transcended time, space and even light as we know it. 

In James Chapter 4 verse 8 is admonishes the reader to draw close to the Lord who will in term draw close to them.

This psalm shows that the closeness to the Lord is part of standing in the presence of the Lord in the night watches.

Someone who is praying for example for a distant land, city or issue in powerful fashion, is doing that within and not without their own closeness to the Lord. They are not barely in the presence of the Lord or reaching for Him in the far distance, but in that place of closeness where they can proceed into powerful interventions by means of prayer for either themselves or more likely others that they are standing for. The ability to in fact do this effectively is evidence that the Lord considers the relationship close from His vantage point and he is granting answers in the realms of interventions through the prayers of those who are close to Him.

Whether the closeness was an achieved closeness or just as a result of the call, it was there in reality.  It could have been a stand alone situation but in this case those that were present were standing with others in the closeness of the presence of the Lord in the night watches.

The power is transcendent in that it is not dependent on anything other than the relationship of with the Lord  so the outer elements such as the lack of natural light provided by the presence of the sun, is not a superseding reason as to why this can not happen and nothing can override this, including a sheer dearth of light.

Those standing in the night watches then, would have as much prayer power as anyone would today, even though at the time they didn’t have anything near what is available today in terms of technological prowess and access.

Then, in those night watches, they could have prayed for and intervened for future eras and generations such as the present era.

It would be more likely that any and all would be stumbling through the night, with the lack of light and most other means. Those standing in the night watches are like those manning the lighthouse, that last beacon of light for potentially lost seafarers.

Even with the last flickers of light, there is still a remaining hope emanating from those who are standing in the night watches, those who can, in terms of the reach of the call and the reach of their prayers,  transcend the difficulties of these days and indeed of any forthcoming era as their voices in prayer can reach into the far future, as they stand in unison with the power of the creator of the universe in the night watches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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