My Times Are In Your Hands

I have this collection of watches.  I'm not sure why I keep them.  It's not like I will use them.  It's not like I can even wear them.  Any watch I've ever worn that has hands eventually stops working way before it should.  Never happens with digital watches, only the other kind.  It is a mystery.

I can tell you the precise time when each one stopped, even if I cannot say what day or year it was.  The moments stack up:  2:05, 10:30, 3:10, 1:11, 2:32.  I wonder what was occurring as each time signature came to rest.  What season was I in?  Was I happy?  Sad?  Hopeful?  Depressed?  The time signatures remain, but those forgotten moments are long gone.  I can hold those frozen watches in my hands, but the moments they represent have long since slipped through my fingers.

I am comforted by the thought that they have slipped into God's hands instead.  Those memories are held by the Almighty, the Alpha and Omega, the One who is and was and will come again.  Really, they never were out of His hands to begin with.  I might have lived each one of those moments, but He was holding them all along.

It's a truth hard to grasp at times.  My memories swim in and out of consciousness, some of them forever out of range, some too close for comfort.  But I see how it all turned out.  I am comforted by the imprint of Divine Love touching each one.  It doesn't matter that I couldn't see Grace unfolding in the awfulness of disappointment.  Grace was there anyway, mending and minding the tenuous threads of well-being that I thought were permanently broken.  When I couldn't hold on, God was already holding me.

Okay, here's the truth:  I found the verse before I found the watches.  Okay, even truer:  the verse found me.  I lay in bed the other night, my head swimming with uncertainties, the open-endedness of my life laughing at me.  I just wanted to let my insecurities pass into the night, to be covered by darkness, unseen and invisible to my heart and mind weary from trying to figure life out.  And then the words came.  From somewhere inside, a reminder that I was not alone in the confusion:

My times are in your hands  (Psalm 31:15). 

Why is it that I can so easily accept God holding all my past moments, even the excruciating ones, yet have so much difficulty grasping that God holds this present one too?

This moment, unfolding itself in my confusion and struggle. 

I love how the Holy Spirit works.  As I laid in the darkness my husband offered a nightly prayer for our family, our growing boys, and our work, our loved ones, and then mentioning me by name:  "Help Sami to know You are with her in the struggle." 

I begin to change my thinking.  Because back then, in all those moments of past tense, it was hard for me to see God's hand at work, holding me in the middle of  holding time.  It was hard for me to imagine that there was greater Purpose aligning what I couldn't understand with all kinds of wonderful that would eventually come clear.  But I see it now--I celebrate now Providence's plan lovingly arranged and arrayed in a past that is beautiful to me on this side of it.  If I can see my yesterday's with that kind of clarity, is it possible to look upon my now moments with that same kind of clarity as well, exercising the faith that knows in a future moment all this confusion will be okay too?

With the discovery came the determination to find all those watches--to put hands upon them, to gather them into one place in full view of my spiritual eye.  Those times and these times are sacred.  And they are Held.  Not even my incomprehension changes that.  They are Held. 

So am I.

Resilience

Sunday morning was a perfect morning for a run--about 35°, no wind, sun shine gentle on my face.  To run in weather like that is bliss: not too hot, not too cold, but just the perfect balance of everything.  Even if my body is not cooperating, I enjoy myself.  And I find my heart and mind open in footfall rhythm; more of me is available to notice what most needs noticing.

On Sunday morning it was the song of birds.  I noticed birds singing, their chirpy refrain a reveille to my early morning grogginess.  It seems they had something to say.  Something important.  "Hey, we are here, silly woman running.  We are awake and welcoming this new day!  Be awake with us and welcome it too!"

I heard it.  And then I understood it.  They were still singing, even after the crazy weather of the previous week, they were still singing.  I see them perched up high, resting blithely on tender branches.  And even though they are so small I wonder that they can be held by something so tenuous looking.  But they greet me still.

The weather last week had become frighteningly cold.  Bitter.  Frigid.  We stayed inside the warmth, shielded from the frozen air and ground and wind.  I wondered about survival in such extreme conditions.  The news even spoke of caring for large land animals.  Without proper care, exposure could mean certain death.

This is the wonder of it all--little beings so fragile, without human hand to shield them from the biting cold, live to sing about it.  They sing, as tiny reminders of life's strength.  My assumptions of life's frailty were wrong; I hear the error in their song.

We too go through the extremes, don't we?  We are so involved in trying to just. get. through. that we sometimes fail to see how those seconds and minutes and hours add up.  We lose perspective because there is no time to not strive; each moment we give ourselves wholly to the surviving of the thing, slipping silently into a better place, an easier place.  And we hardly even notice it because we are still straining against our adversities just tying to make it another day.

I wonder when we will look back at the journey that has been, and pinch ourselves when we realize what we've come through?  When will we realize we are tougher than we gave ourselves credit for?  Which day will we wake up singing and know that the thing we had to come through did not have the power to take our song?

Welcome New Year

I didn't realize until I was well into my adult years that hospitality is one of my core values.  Mostly because I never envisioned myself as the domestic type, and I always assumed that to be any good at offering hospitality a girl had to do it like Martha Stewart.  I mean how can someone as unkempt as me offer anything that could ever put another at ease?

And then I began to understand that unkemptness is gift too, offering something valuable to the weary soul tired of pretending life is perfect.  I am glad to welcome friends into my unkempt life, to provide a safe place to let down their hair, to listen to stories still in the middle, to laugh together at the way God weaves His humor in and out of our imperfect lives.  Having it all together is completely over-rated.  It leaves no room for anything more.  And I have found that God is always ready to surprise us with His More-ness.

More has a way of walking in and setting up shop in the realm of unkempt.

This is my hope for the year ahead.  I would love to say that I have a carefully thought out plan of what I want to do with my life, who I want to be when I grow up.  Yesterday I read a web-page that offered advice on how to systemize one's blog.  You mean there are people out there who have a system for this "I've got to write it so my soul will know it's alive" kind of thing?  Totally blows me away.  My system is pretty simple:  "Write at least once a week whether you want to or not; writing is good for you."  And it is.  I know where my soul is because it peaks out at me in the words.  Without the words it tends to get lost in my unkemptness.  The writing helps me give some order to this mess that I am.  And it opens my eyes to the More of God.

On Sunday I sat in church listening to the preacher talk about making covenants with God for the new year.  I sit in the tension of opposing desires within.  On the one hand I want to make big promises to God, to dream big, to honor God with dreams so big only He can fulfill them.  But I get overwhelmed with the pressure to decide exactly which dream I should dream.  Instead I think of Mary, mom of Jesus.  She never had big dreams.  But God had big dreams for her.  Her response was simple, profound--"Let it be with me, just as You have said."

Honestly, I'm not big enough, or smart enough, or clever enough to figure out what More should look like in my life.  But oh sweet Jesus I yearn for it--I'm hungry for only the More that He can bring.  I love Mary's words, her invitation to God as response to God's invitation to her--"Let it be with me . . . ."

I believe that this kind of response has a radical nature all its own.  Without demanding it welcomes Holy Initiative.  What if we spent our whole lives welcoming the very thing God wanted to do most?  What would our world look like?  And isn't that hospitality?  Doesn't God need a bit of hospitality too?

Our preacher continues to talk about covenant.  He compares it to marriage.  I think of marriage and covenants and how we bind ourselves to one another in a way that reshapes who we are.  God binds Himself to us in love, through the cross.  Jesus even in resurrection shows the marks of binding Himself to us--we are written on His hands.  Our preacher says that in the binding, God takes the greater portion of promise.  His promise holds our own when our promises perish.  God's takes on the burden of promise when He binds Himself to the broken, those who break promises because of their own brokenness.

I am turning this metaphor over and over in my mind.  I think of my own husband and our marriage and how the years bind us together. We are learning still how to love each other, yet there is a rich depth that marks our lives because of our loving.  I am comforted to know that perfect Love already holds us both.

The scripture comes to mind--Ephesians 5:25-27:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind--yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.

This word washes over me and I realize--I am part of the Bride that Christ loves so much; I too am one whom He is making splendid with His love; I too am one who will be holy and without blemish.  And my radical hospitality, those few and simple words of "Let this be", participate in making this possible.

I go throughout the ordinary parts of my day and another wave of realization washes over me:  He desires to do the More.  He wants to and longs to and watches with anticipation as my life is unfolding, waiting with giddy excitement to do the More.  It is not just an obligation of covenant for this precious Bridegroom; it is His deepest joy.  It's not that He has to.  He wants to.

And when I try to protest because my messy unkemptness will get in the way, He just laughs and asks me who do I think made me this way?

Welcome new year.

Welcome friends.

Welcome Bridegroom.

Welcome love.

Pa-Rum-Pa-Pum-Pum: My Hope for the New Year

Early in December my youngest son and I found ourselves quietly alone in the house.  The big boys were off somewhere with their Daddy, and this little one and I had an evening to ourselves.  We powered up the DVD player and watched "The Little Drummer Boy."  

It seems silly, but the story rekindled in me a yearning I had forgotten.  During my last Christmas as a campus minister I showed the video to my college students.  Before the evening was over I gave each one of them a glitter-covered glass drum ornament, a reminder to give the stuff of who they are to Jesus.  Fast forward three years later to my living room.  I sat holding my little one, watching in wonder as another little boy who had neither gold, frankincense, or myrrh to offer the King of kings simply began playing his drum.  His drumming was the gift.

Tears rolling, heart lurching, mind running, I sat there trying to remember where my ornament was.  After tucking my son into his bed I made my way upstairs to the attic.  The search was on.

I took me a couple of days to find it, but soon it was hanging on my tree with all the other memories each ornament represented.

I find myself singing the song, rum-pum-pumming everywhere.  All this pa-rum-pa-pum-pumming has me thinking about what exactly I have that is of any value to the King of kings.  Even as this year closes the song echoes in me, until even my cells seem to be humming and strumming and singing along.  What can I give that has worth?  What can I offer Jesus?

And my heart keeps beating.  Drumming.  Humming.  Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum, rum-pa-pum-pum, rum-pa-pum-puming.

What I like about the new year is that it gives each one of us a new start, a new opportunity to get something right.  A chance to try again.  I feel like I need that more than anything right now.  I need more than anything to know that my life has meaning beyond myself, that I am a part of God making a difference.

This desire was awakened within me early in December with startling clarity.  I was visiting the elementary school where my husband is principal.  Together we were handing out small gifts for those who worked there.  As we passed through the cafeteria I saw a woman helping a little boy about six years old with his shoes.  She held his sneaker in her hands.  Then I saw his foot resting on the floor while he waited, sock-less.  The image stayed with me, always in the back of my mind, niggling, keeping me awake at night.

What began keeping me awake even more were the memories that image evoked.  Times when I was about six years old, struggling in school, having some needs that others met, other needs that were invisible to the outside world.  My heart woke up to a long buried ache and a deep need to heal it by somehow making a difference for these little ones.

Christmas day has come and is now past.  I am writing this post on New Year's Eve eve.  Tomorrow we will begin the countdown to a new year.  With the ticking my heart keeps pumping, drumming, humming.  I am offering its beating as gift.  I am hoping that God can do something with it, that God can move it and in doing so move me into His purpose, His plan for my life.  I realize I need it to keep beat with a Song beyond me, to make music that heals the brokenness, comforts the loneliness, restores hope to hopelessness, and brings joy to the weary.

My new year's resolution:  to make my heart available to Christ, to offer it as a vessel for Christ to fill however He sees fit.  This isn't so much about giving Jesus my heart so He can take me to Heaven as much as it is about giving Jesus my heart so He can pour out some Heaven on earth.  I feel so limited in what I can do for the King.  I look at the things others are doing, knowing I don't have that kind of thing in my pocket right now.  And so I listen to the song playing in my heart and offer it with the hope that it is enough to make Him smile too.

Happy New Year!

Emmanuel Coming

I am in an Advent kind of mood.  Sorry.  Christmas is lost on me this year.  I don’t feel merry and bright.  I can’t really even explain it, except to say that my heart hurts.  It has been living too long in the tension of what should be and what is.  I ache with the disparity and my own inability to reconcile the difference.

 This Christmas season, unlike any other, I am aware that there are children who will go to bed tonight cold, hungry, feeling very much alone.  The needs are real.  They are intense.  For some children it is not even the physical needs that are so bad, but the sting of being left alone by those who are supposed to love them the most, the emotional abandonment that comes because other things in life are more important.  What can ever be more important than caring for one’s own children?  But here it is, the evidence revealing itself in surprising ways, in surprising places.

It stings because I sit in my warm home, surrounded by my family.  My boys are so deeply loved.  They are surrounded by a network of family that holds them, a safety net that is always there, resting gently beneath the love my husband and I hold for them.  I see the way Tim cares for them, the time he takes, the surprises he plans for them, especially when work keeps him away.  It warms my heart.  I know my life is blessed.  Even in this imperfect life, I know we are so, so blessed.

It breaks my heart when I think of children in other homes, not having what is so easily taken for granted in ours.  And I want to do something.  I have responded to the needs lodged in my chest to the capacity that I can.  And I know it still isn’t enough.

I hate it.  I hate that I have so much passion inside of me to make a difference and I can’t.  And I will say, I’m a little mad at God.  Because I’m stuck in circumstances beyond my control.  I can only do so much.  I can only leverage my gifts and abilities so far.  And the gap between what I want to do and what I can do at this moment is tearing me up inside.  So my Christmas spirit is shot.

But Advent is fitting.  Advent is that season that anticipates the coming of the anointed One.  It is living in the dark place, while leaning into Promise.  The darkness can feel so pervasive.  In Advent one lives quietly with darkness, but holding fast the hope for light in one's heart.  It is the staunch refusal to allow the darkness to pervade everything, even if the corner of hope left is small.  The One we wait for is the anointed One. the Christ, the Messiah, the One filled with Spirit for the purpose of eradicating the darkness.  His awaited Presence touches need, perfectly answering, filling, punctuating, satiating.  He is all we desire.  This waiting intensifies our need, clarifies it, distills it.  Even if we cannot name it, it names us, affecting all that we do, the choices we make, the way we make our way in the world.

The ancient Hebrew people waited for the Holy One in the silence of 400 years, without one word from the prophets.  Even words of reprimand would have been welcome when you wait in silence that long.  They waited as they passed from one hand of domination to another, eventually subdued by Roman rule.  Their waiting was a groaning, a yearning, a longing, stretching into centuries that looked desperately for relief. 

I love the way the hymns of Advent answer this need, this pervasive darkness—

O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.  Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

God answers the world’s deep need by piercing the night with the squalling peals of a newborn.  His answer for a need so huge is a baby.  Israel was looking for something more. 

If I am honest, I am too.  I want the hurting to stop.  I want the ache in my heart to go away.  I want the passionate need in my chest to be quieted by the living out of purpose, to know that I’m spending myself in a way that alleviates the needs I can’t not notice.  To know that I am participating in God’s redemption of the brokenness I see.

I think the thing that the Hebrew people missed, the ones who couldn’t accept Jesus, was that they missed the meaning of His name.  He is called Emmanuel—God with us.

God is with us. 

In the darkness.  In the silence.  In the disparity.  In the paradox.  In the long night that feels 400 years old.

God is with us.  He hasn’t left us.  He hasn’t gone blind.  He knows and He sees and He loves and He is answering the deep, deep needs we cannot even articulate with His Own Self.

I don’t know why God doesn’t just make the earth shake.  I don’t know why God doesn’t just snap Divine Fingers and solve these needs.  But here is what faith is telling me—

God has touched my heart in a special way in this Holy season, not so that I will be forever lost in a chasm that I cannot bridge.  God has given my heart eyes to see a need, the grace to feel it deeply, so that when He changes my circumstances from lack to abundance I will be ready to serve.  And I will be absolutely clear about how I should do it.

The 400 years of silence was really a gift; it created a hunger perfectly matched to the Salvation God wanted to send.  I believe God does the same thing for us; He stirs in us desires that He is already prepared to fill.  Our waiting just shows us how big the  Gift really is.

Can one timidly rejoice?  The words of the song hit me fresh.  This is my exile, my longing and hoping and yearning.  I feel so deeply the need that only God can satisfy.  I know that He is going to have to move some mountains around for this to be alright.  And the faith part of me says that even though I can't be sure exactly how He will do it, I can rejoice because Emmanuel shall come to me too.  Emmanuel comes for all of us who are weary of living in the darkness and longing for the light:

O come, thou Wisdom from on high, and order all things far and nigh; to us the path of knowledge show and cause us in her ways to go.  Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Does the Baby Need a Blanket?

My youngest son will be in his first concert tomorrow!  The three year olds at his preschool are doing a Christmas program for the parents.  Jeremiah told me, with all seriousness, "If you're bad you can't come see me sing."  Apparently there is a good behavior requirement for attendance!  My friend who subs in his class told me she was there the other day for their practice.  She said he looked so much like me, with his expressiveness and enthusiasm pouring out.  Our third son must be something of a ham.  We will soon see for ourselves!

One of the songs his class will sing is a simple chorus that repeats a question over and over, finally giving the answer--

Does the baby need a blanket to keep him warm?

Does the baby need a blanket to keep him warm?

Does the baby need a blanket to keep him warm?

I’ve got a blanket I’ll share!

It helps the story of Jesus' birth come alive for little imaginations--a stable is not a warm place to be in the winter time.  How will a new born baby stay warm?

I'm sure God figured out all those details on the night Jesus was born.

But I've been singing that song over and over in my mind, and the question will not leave me alone.   Baby Jesus is still cold.  He still needs someone to share what they have.  The details of Christ's need still need to be figured out.

As I reflect on this I realize that my boys have not been exposed to much of the deep need so many live with every day.  They attend a new school, filled with kids from experiences much like our own.  The basic needs are met, and often there is more than enough to go around.  It is not a community categorized by lack.  I am struggling with how to help them see the needs of the world, when the world they live in doesn't seem to have any.

Especially as I realize that as a child, I lived in the need they haven't been exposed to. 

My mom tells me of the Christmas we were so poor that all they could afford was a tree and one present each for my brother and me.  The tree was a bit of a miracle.  The young guy at the tree lot mistakenly sold it to them for the lowest price, not realizing it was the best one they had.  My mom's old photographs show a regal pine--tall and stately, perfectly shaped.  Tucked beneath its branches on Christmas morning was a bride doll and robot.

I remember the bride doll, not the lack.  I remember the gift, not the need.  Because every time the need was felt, God worked out the details of meeting it.  When my mom was figuring out how to buy groceries, God had a choir member give her a $20 before leaving church.  When I needed a winter coat and shoes, God moved the hearts of an older couple to buy them.  When my brother and I needed someone to help raise us, God sent Joe into my mom's heart and our lives.  I've always felt a special kinship with Jesus over that.  We both got great step-dads.

So I find myself living in the question that the song asks--does the Baby in the manger need something I can share?  What is it I have that can help?  How am I supposed to share it?  And even when there doesn't seem to be a lot of extra, is there something within my means that God can use to bless another child? 

Is Jesus cold this Christmas? 

 

How Hope is Born in Dark Places

Just days ago we celebrated my youngest son's fourth birthday.  He is a delight and a treasure and a sweet surprise of Grace that blesses us each day.  I thank God for him often, especially when he presses himself to me in a big embrace for that last hug before we walk out the door.  He is a tangible and sweet expression of God's Goodness in my life.  This truth is not lost on me.  It is the one I make my home in each day.

Yet on his birthday a sadness pressed in on me that kind of took my breath away.  It could be that time is falling away from us, and with it his little-ness.  Soon he will be like his brothers, a big boy out and about in his own world where I cannot follow.  While he will always be my baby, already he gives me a look when I call him my baby.  It is clear to him that he is growing up.  He welcomes it.  I am fitting myself into all this growing up with eyes and heart wide open, so that I don't miss these moments.  I don't want to miss a one.

A deeper truth has been seeking attention though.  The day this sweet angel boy was born was so hard.  And the days following were hard.  His birth demanded something from me that I didn't know I had it within me to give.  The giving of it leveled me in a way that had not happened previously, nor since.  I am hesitant to speak of this. 

My body could kind of tell the story.  It is a reflection of what my soul felt like.  The incision they made to remove him stretched up toward my navel.  What lay beneath the flesh was a mess of scar tissue.  The healing process for such cutting was long, and for a long time looked real ugly.  I guess when God delivers something New into our lives, sometimes the process of  delivery feels anything but life-giving. 

When my baby was so new, I entered an aloneness no one around me could comprehend, an isolation no one could penetrate.  Its dimensions were physical, spiritual, and emotional.  Its walls so high I could not climb out.   I want to say this was not depression.  I've been there before too, and it has its own struggles.  This was not something that originated from within me and impacted things outside of me.  This was something that beset me from circumstances beyond my control, rendering me down to nothing.  I could not fight what I found myself in.  I could not invite anyone to share the burden.  I could not escape the sadness that came with the isolation I felt.

The irony is that this struggle came in the heart of Christmas, my boy being born on December 1st.  During one of the most joyful times of the year, I was trapped in a darkness I could not see my way out of.  Eventually I figured out how badly anger was working to alleviate my heartache.  Eventually I could see that this aloneness was not going to end because I willed it to.  I began to understand that the mess I found myself in was asking me for something that I had not thought to give--relinquishment.

I am not speaking of giving up.  I am speaking of giving over.  To allow this isolation to be changed into something holy.  An offering for God to use however God could use something as broken and empty as that.

I discovered in my surrender that God has a special love for our empty places.  While I was baffled with my abyss, God knew just what to do with it.

I would love to say that everything was instantly better when I began seeking God within my emptiness instead of trying to fight the emptiness.  I would love to say that the darkness I felt within  immediately radiated with light.  But I'm not going to lie to you.  I will speak truth.

At first the measures of peace I felt were incremental.  For a moment here and a moment there, the aloneness didn't matter so much.  Slowly I came to recognize this Quiet, that would settle within me, a gentle Contentment resting gingerly within my soul.  If I tried too hard it would leave.  If I demanded its presence it would vanish.  I had to relinquish my expectations of what healed looked like, accepting instead the healing God would bring.  I found I even had to let go of the isolation itself, choosing to let my heart dwell not so much on the realities only I could know, but to join others where they were, in places where I also could relate.

I had to stop looking at others with the silent demand, "Make this better for me--"  Instead I recognized it was something God alone could do.  When I began resting my need in God's Goodness, this Goodness showed me resiliency within that I had not known was there.  I began to believe in my ability to endure.  And I eventually began to believe that there was once more life outside of my brokenness.

Light came into the darkness, and I found God there.  Not blinding me with Radience, but Holding me until I was brave enough to open my eyes.  I found Grace that allowed my vision to adjust to something beside the blackness I felt. 

Here is my inner dialogue with God at the moment:

"Why would You want me to write about this?!"

"Why, when I have made peace with it, and the blessings of that time are now so evident?!"

"Why should I risk this kind of exposure and the opening of old wounds that have healed?!"

Quite honestly, I rarely think about that time.  There is still pain etched in the memory.  But it pushed itself into my awareness.  Not asking my permission.  And I have looked at it blankly and asked, "Why are you here?"

But the Spirit has been whispering in my heart--

There are some who are sitting right now in that same dark place.  The circumstances are different, but it is that same, dark, isolated place.  They not only feel completely alone, they are completely cut off from human comfort and companionship.   When they say, "no one understands," they are telling the truth.  They are having to walk a road that no one can accompany them on.  They need to know they are not walking alone.

Where human companionship is lacking, the Spirit is able to order their steps.  Where the ache is piercing, the Balm of God's Comfort is close at hand.  There is a genuine need to know that darkness cannot obscure the Light.  And the Power of the Almighty can use this experience to train our eyes to see His Presence no matter where we are.

And when we walk with the Light of God's Presence, everything in the world changes.

I believe this is the true miracle of Christmas.  It's not about tinsel or parades or discounts.  It's about something as sturdy as Hope showing up in unlikely and unwieldy circumstances.  It is the story of how God sees our depravity, our endless uselessness in trying to change things, and how He enters in to lift us up, giving of His Strength to transform the darkness we live in.  The true miracle of Christmas is the story of a Baby born in darkness to reveal to us the Light of the world.  His name is Emmanuel, God With Us:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness--on them light has shined. . . .  For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.  He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore.  The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.  Isaiah 9:2, 6-7

The Filigreed Heart

A friend once
had a name for me--
"Little Water Buckets,"
my life watered
with tears falling
at the most
inconvenient times.
Another friend said
I was blessed
to be a pretty crier--
good fortune for one
who wept often.
I could not understand
what good could come
from beautiful weeping.
My tears did not hold
beauty for me--
I saw them as my shame.
I could not keep them from falling
nor keep my heart from feeling
EVERYTHING.

This tender heart
pierced through with pain
embarrassed me.
I could not contain
its hurt,
so it spilled out
in barely controlled
torrents.
I remember my prayer
to Jesus,
wiping my tears with
nail-pierced Hands.
"There are too many!"
I exclaimed.
"There are never too many
for Me to wipe away."
He explained.
I did not like His answer
because He didn't stop
the piercing and
my brokenness remained.

I have since learned
to honor the heart
He gave me.
To feel deeply is not shame,
but something else entirely:
It is gift--
enabling me
to step into a room
and to know
what is felt within.
This exquisite pain
has pierced me through
so that feeling flows
freely--
First it is a sharing,
and then it becomes bearing,
as I bring what others feel
to the Throne of Grace.
Jesus meets me there,
anointing each hurt
with Tender Love.

My Sweet Jesus
illuminated the
Truth I could not see--
Every pain, every tear,
every piercing trouble,
prepared my heart to be
something beautiful,
a sacred chamber
that He steeps in Love
and pours out with
the healing balm of
Comfort.

To be a filigreed beauty
in His courts
is not a bad thing.
For out of the gore
of piercing pain,
He has arranged
GLORY
to shine forth
in ways I never
imagined.

 



Harvest and Thanksgiving Joy

I have been reflecting on this season, as we draw closer to Thanksgiving.  Tim and I have talked about going ahead and decorating for Christmas since Thanksgiving falls so late this year, but with the craziness of our schedules, it just hasn't happened.  I am grateful in a way.  There is something Holy about this Autumn time that I am reluctant to let go of.  As wonderful as Christmas is, I hate to miss the quiet gift of trees wrapped in color releasing their leaves to the wind:  a radient transformation morphing into deepening solitude as fall yields itself to winter.  There is something Holy about being a witness to this relinquishment.  There is blessing in waiting . . . and watching the last of the harvest unfold.

In these days, busy with the ordinary, my heart is happy just watching nature's life quietly enfolding my hustle and bustle.  Most of the leaves are down now.  But still I am surprised and delighted by the late-comers, their gloriously colored leaves splendidly pronounced against the grays and browns of decaying foliage.  I wonder if I put up the Christmas decorations if my eyes would be so full of the tinsel that I would forget to see this simple beauty.  It is the beauty of endings, the kind that gather up all that has been, the clearing that ultimately makes one ready for the birth of something new.

Thanksgiving is really a celebration of Harvest.   It is gratitude poured out of  the sowing-weary soul who sees that hope has been answered--the endless labor of cultivation worked.  God granted the growth and brought forth bounty.  The fruits of our labors are never guaranteed, so when they come, we must offer our thanks.  I think of those first Pilgrims gathered around the celebration table, hand in hand with their new Native American friends, together offering thanks for the harvest that would sustain them.  How could they not be overcome with joy?  This Thanksgiving was more than a remembrance of  blessings.  They, who had come so close to perishing, were looking upon the bounty of life stretching out before them.

In honor of Harvest I have spent some time sitting with the story of Pentecost.  In the Old Testament this was one of three highly sacred feasts to be observed by faithful Jews.  Also known as the Festival of Harvest or the Festival of Weeks, its name comes from the 50 days following  Passover, where the first fruits of the harvest were presented to the Lord.  Like most of the Church, I traditionally read the story found in the second chapter of Acts during spring time, following Easter, when we celebrate the birth of the Church, the giving of the Holy Spirit.  This is the first time I have realized its close connections to the season of harvest, which, at least for us today, is not a spring time event at all. 

We know the story--Jesus was crucified, laid in the tomb, and on the third day, He came to life.  The Bible tells us of the ways he encountered His disciples, encouraging them, showing them the truth of His resurrection, rearranging what they thought they knew into something new and incomprehensible.  And shortly before He ascends into heaven, He tells them to stay put:  wait in the place where they are for God's promise.  Acts picks up the story of their waiting:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.  And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.  (Acts 2:1-4)

 What happens next is that the Holy Spirit enables them to share the Good News of Jesus with others in a supernatural way.  God displays His power to draw others to Himself in a way that only He can through whomever He chooses.  And those whom He chooses are those who have given themselves over to a reality that has turned their world upside down.  They met Jesus.  They followed Him  for three years while He healed people, fed them, forgave them.  Then they hid while He was beaten and crucified.  They rejoiced and believed when He rose again.  They could have gone back to their once familiar lives.  Instead they chose to wait for God's Promise.  Ultimately when they met Jesus they allowed Him the freedom to up-end everything known and trustworthy in their lives.  And finally they see outcome of such foolishness:  Harvest beyond anything they can imagine.

We have the same choice today

When we meet Jesus, we can allow Him total access.  We can give Him the freedom to up-end everything we know, everything we trust.  It seems a foolish proposition.  It feels foolish.  When He asks us to live our lives so differently from those around us, we can get so tired of looking like religious fanatics--freaks of faith.  There is a cost that comes, a cultivation of soul that requires toil, patience.  An investment of blood, sweat, and tears.  And there are no guarantees that any thing worthwhile (at least in the world's eyes) will ever come of our labors.  This soul-tending seems to be so foolish.  A wasted effort that feels fruitless.

In agriculture and soul-tending, the process is the same:  Someone has to break up the soil; someone has to sow the seeds; someone has to pull the weeds; someone has to fertilize the crops; someone has to irrigate the plants.  Ordinary folks labor over the fields of corn and fields of faith.  But ultimately God alone produces the growth.  And with patience we have to wait for it.  We can always do our part.   But we can never do His.

This is why Harvest is so amazing.  It is the miracle of seeing God do the thing that Only He can do.  Knowing that His Power revealed in our lives can sustain us and take us to places we have never even imagined. 

There is a joy that comes with this God rendering in our lives.  The onlookers of Pentecost, did not understand what they were seeing and hearing.  They could not comprehend what was taking place through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit through ordinary people.  It's hard to explain to onlookers what is happening within us and through us when God's power is revealed.  Lacking adequate categories of explanation, some just ridiculed:  "They are filled with new wine." 

Truer words could not have been spoken.  Truly these believers were filled with new wine--the new wine of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus had told them that new wine required new wineskins.  As wine ferments it expands.  An old wineskin has lost the elasticity needed to accommodate fermentation.  It cannot contain the new thing that expands within it.  It bursts, and all is lost.  But these disciples, these followers turned believers who have forsaken everything to participate God's Harvest, have relinquished old lives so that they might be created new.  They are the new wineskins, holding the New Wine of God's power and blessing, pouring it out on everyone they see.

This is what I am thinking about as I watch leaves silently falling to the ground.  The last of the crops in fields close to my home are being gathered in.  Harvest is almost complete.  In a week I will gather around a table with family and celebrate the blessing of bounty.  I will offer my gratitude to God for sustaining me and my family another year.  Together we will list each blessing we can think of, seeing if we can take our gratitude farther, deeper than the year before.  There is so much here, in our hands and in our hearts, that we cannot take credit for.  So much of God's faithfulness spilling out all around us.  How can we not say thanks?  How can we not be filled with joy?  How can we not recognize that we did not come so far on our efforts alone, but that God has been here, present always, working quietly along beside us?

I offer prayers of gratitude.  Because God's faithfulness has brought us bounty and goodness beyond what we can comprehend.  When we should have perished, He made a way and sustained us.  And I also look forward with hope.  Because I know there is more Harvest coming.  Just as He poured out His Holy Spirit at Pentecost so long ago, I believe He will again.  I believe that the blood, sweat, and tears of our soul-toiling and soul-sowing are coming to an end.  New Wine is coming to fill us again:

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.  Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, "The Lord has done great things for them."  The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.  Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.  May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.  Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.  (Psalm 126) 

Why Pushing Through Is Worth It

My spirit has been heavy lately.  I have tried to pinpoint the cause, but it seems a bit nebulous.  A bit beyond me, as if it is not really my own.  Rather I sense there is a deep intercession going on.  It is as if a good chunk of the Body of Christ is travailing a laborious path, and I feel in my own body the ache.  I pray for people.  This is how the Holy Spirit works in me.  Lately my prayers have taken on the characteristic of burden bearing.  But as I listen to friends and loved ones share their hearts, I am beginning to sense that this is a widespread experience of wilderness.  I understand now why the Spirit would ask me to pray for this:  it is a spiritual terrain I have experienced before.

Years ago in a moment of uncharacteristic boldness, I initiated a conversation with one of my favorite preachers who was the keynote speaker at a conference I was attending.  During our brief encounter, I asked him to pray for me.  His words went something like this—

“Been a long time in the wilderness, but You God are with us.  Give a faith that is deeper.  A strength that is stronger.  A hope that is . . . .”  I can’t quite place that last word.  Except that I came away knowing that hope on the other side of wilderness, is more than what it was going in.

His words have rung true in my life.  I have found that God is often the One who engineers my wilderness experiences, allowing circumstances beyond my control to bring me to a place of utter dependence upon Him.  At first I fight.  I try and scratch and claw my way out of the situation I find myself in.  Eventually weariness sets in; I begin to sense that God is asking me for a deeper response.  God is asking me for trust.  God is asking me to relinquish myself into His Hands for a purpose I cannot fathom.

Those times when I have given my assent to God, to His wilderness, and to the process He asked me to come through, I have seen emerge every time a faith that is deeper, a strength that is stronger.  A hope that is—hopier.

We often experience wilderness as a vast expanse of emptiness that seems to have elusive boundaries.  It is a season that never seems to change.  We feel stuck in a place where our human gifts and abilities are rendered useless while we become all too well acquainted with our inability to change our own circumstances.  Our efforts to transform our situation meet with limited success.  Progress comes grudgingly, if at all.  Eventually we must make peace with our surroundings, finding direction from there.

During one of my wilderness experiences I was meeting with my spiritual director, pouring out my heart, my frustration at the process.   Her words to me—“Listen for the water.”  I since recognize that in every desert, in every wilderness place, God causes springs of water to appear, the saving Grace in a dry and weary land.  The springs of that time came from songs that soothed my chafed soul—“Come thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing your grace.  Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise. . .  .”  The familiar hymn became the night-time lullaby that helped my child find rest, its words soothing my restless spirit too.  While God could not be cajoled into changing my circumstances, I found in Him boundless Mercy to sustain me within them.

 

Wilderness has a way of showing us to ourselves.  In that empty cavernous space our great big need grows huge in our eyes.  We cannot pretend anymore that our own resources are proficient to meet the challenges we face.  It’s as if each strength and natural talent begins to crumble before our eyes.  And God asks us to trade in our proficiency for His Sufficiency.  He asks us to relinquish our own strong arm so that our weakness can showcase His strength.  He wants to show us what perfect strength can look like.  So He takes us to the only place this is possible—to the heart of deeply felt poverty.   It is here that we must learn to be sustained by Grace, the power that might not pluck us from the fire, but which makes us hardy and resilient in the face of fire.  We have to gather it each day like manna, to stand each day in a place of trust, believing God will give us what we need, when we need it.  And we have to believe that this is not the destination but a waiting place, that the road leads to something wonderful and not just another bondage.  It is wilderness, after all is said and done, that finally frees us from bondages we never knew we had.

I offer my heart, these prayers, these words with the acute awareness that we cannot possibly know when wilderness will arrive or when it will end.  I recognize that many of those for whom I am praying are seasoned believers, they know the Lord deeply and love Him with everything.  They have been knowing and loving Him for a long time.  There is this sense in which I question this testing—“Why this?  Why them?  Why now?  After all they have come through, haven’t they been thoroughly tried by the fires of life already?”  The only answer I can discern is that God is doing a work, a polishing of sorts.  There is something for which He is preparing them, preparing us all, that needs sturdy believers.  We are never placed in the wilderness for our destruction, but only to be prepared for Glory.  Whatever awaits us on the other side is Glorious, filled with Greatness which is beyond our comprehension.  And when we get there, we will be so primed in the fires of adversity that our lives will hold God’s Glory with ease.

 
So then what is left for us to do? 

We are called to stand strong.  One of the biggest indicators of maturity (and sturdiness) is the ability to persevere, to stay with a commitment, to complete a task even when it is no longer as easily attainable as it once appeared.  To fulfill God's purpose for our lives even when it looks like life would be so much simpler if we didn't.

Whatever it is God has initiated in your life, stick with it.  Whatever progress you have made in your spiritual walk, do not be tempted to regress or stagnate.  Whatever new understanding or knowledge God has brought you to, sit with it, ruminate on it, make it so much a part of you that its truth cannot be dislodged.   Wherever and whenever you feel the nudge, the Holy suggestion, to do something, do it immediately and heartily.  It is God who is responsible for sustaining us in the gains He has accomplished within us and on our behalf.  Our part is to trust His work within us and cooperate with the work He wants to do.  So really the battle is already won.  We just have to stay close to the One who does the winning.

I feel the weariness in my bones, the longing for relief.  But I also know that God is with us, Strength we cannot grasp holding us steady in this place.   He is asking us to look for Him in the ordinary details of our lives, to expect to see Him looking for us.  He is asking us to hold His hand in this moment, to not run away from it but to face it, drawing strength from His presence and Grace with us.  There will come a time when we will realize what this season was all about—the hard-pressed days, the obstacles overcome, the strength developed because difficulty demanded it.  All of it a laboring that toward a new place, a birth process bringing forth something we could hardly even imagine.  We want so badly for it to just be done.  But the gift of hard-pressed days is learning to press on and push through.  The pressure tells us the new thing will be coming soon.

I realize at the end of this that I’ve been writing about what it is to give birth.  This travailing is not a bad thing.  It is truly good.  Problem is, nobody told us we were pregnant and now it is time to push.  There is no way out of the season we are in.  But we can recognize it, breathe deeply, hold tightly to God’s hand, bear down, and push through!  Be not frightened dear one.  God’s Promise is coming to you.