Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Lucy in the sky with diamonds...a little drawing the late John Lennon's child brought home from school that became a Lennon/MacCartney hit and which religious spirits interpreted as the LSD drug anthem! From and innocent picture to a banned substance! How proposterous.
Yesterday I returned home from a lovely holiday with friends at Eersterivier, felt rested, and ready to face the new year, when I opened the emails and found messages such as ' Barbara passed away in Portland...' and Stephen Stills is being operated on for prostate cancer on his birthday'...on today the 03 of January 08.
Emails have opened up a whole new world of communications. The IT world is ever expanding like the universe, so in a sense it is writing in the sky again...
Here's an amazing picture, which my friend Jako in Houston sent me: while the Aussies were frantically celeberating the New Year (they get it first because it is the most Eastern country) a skywriter was scribbling the letters J-E-S-U-S across the dawnlit sky.
Luke Skywalker became Luke Skywriter! The Gospel of Luke was actually written for the audience of one man! One man! All that trouble! Who on earth would do a thing like that? Luke did. And he was a physician and an historian. He wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts to Theophilus, a dear friend!
Would you show your love to a friend like that? To take on the task of researching the life of an amazing man until you can write a book about it, but not try to make any money out of your effort, but simply dedicate it to your friend? Luke never thought his work would be taken up in the volume called the Bible! He had no materialistic goals set for his serious task. He simply did it for a friend.
Yet, today, 2000 years later we are still reading it...Now that is famous is ever there was any fame attached to a letter to a friend! And so many kids around the world are called 'Luke' - even in Star Wars they chose the name Luke Skywalker!
There is something in the sky that makes you look up, not down. When you are downcast, look up, and suddenly you feel so much better! Hills and Mountains have a way to draw your eyes ever upward!
Aje's school song at Kenton Primary in Alberton had the logo: 'Ever Upward!' It stayed with me since that time. (I was on that school committee, you know, and helped with coaching cricket...somethings I did at most schools my kids attended, except of course Herschel the girls school Yvette went to).
So Lucy in the Sky, Luke Skywalker, and the Skywriter in Sydney all have something in common: they make you look up...into the blue yonder, into the future, into the possibilities of the year that lie ahead.
Jesus is the lifter of your head...in the Jerusalem days, people with debts they could not pay would sit at the entrance to the city with their heads bowed their eyes downcast, because they could not look anyone in the eye, because of their debt! Then if a beneficiary would approach them that decided to pay their debt, he would touch their chin with his walking stick or rod and lift up their heads to look him in the eye. That was his way of saying, your debt is my debt now, you are a free man! You can rise up and look people in the eye again!
This act of kindness was rare, but it did happen frequently enough to make the Psalmist write about it that his Lord is the lifter of his head!
Today the Lord Jesus Christ is willing to touch you and say, 'I have paid your debt of sin on Calvary! You no longer have to be bowed over and downcast: you can look people straight in the eye again! Your self-worth is worth something again! I give you your dignity back again! You are debt free and you may go on from here! Your debt has been cleared! Look up! I am your Saviour!'
Here is a tone of victory, a tone of hope, a tone of glorious forgiveness and joy of salvation! To all who would respond, it becomes a reality! Accept him now and say a prayer for healing for Stephen Stills on his birthday that his operation will be a success and that there will be a speedy recovery. He has blessed the world with such beautiful songs and music. And say a prayer for the comfort of those in Portland who will miss Barabara...
Help to pay the debt of someone else, a son, a daughter, a friend or associate, you will lift their heads and improve their self-worth tremendously! Jesus did it for us. Lets do it for others.