For some wonderful reason, probably because I’m thinking of our son who is in Florence with the youth choir singing this – this tune is playing in my heart this morning. So good to start the week thinking of how we love because he first loved us. I encourage you to read and pray these lyrics as you listen to the lovely rendering by Red Mountain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0dAOR2ljk8&feature=youtube_gdata_playerMy Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine;
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign;
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
I love Thee because Thou hast first loved me,
And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree;
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
I’ll love Thee in life, I will love Thee in death,
And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath;
And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow,
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
In mansions of glory and endless delight,
I’ll ever adore Thee in heaven so bright;
I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow,
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
Having experienced some of these losses in the past few months, I’d love to write and write about my response to this article about “losing your voice,”, but since I don’t have that much writing stamina right now, I’ll just suggest you read this article and imagine how someone who thinks about our constant struggle with performance idolatry someone who sees grief as a holy emotion might view this challenge. Losing Voice( If you aren’t aware, Christopher Hitchens is a great writer and perhaps one of the world’s better-known atheists, author of the book, God Is Not Good.)
Getting excited about next week’s Gospel Coalition for women, I’ve been reading blogs from various speakers. I really liked this one by Noel Piper, who stayed at our house with her husband and two children almost 17 years ago during a hurricane, though that’s another story:-). I hope to get to reconnect with her at the conference. That’s Not Fair
In the just plain fascinating category – Monday Dots on a website devoted to helping create great presentations: Garr Reynolds and Jeff Monday
Because we all need cookies sometimes. And these are the.best.ever. Reina Cookies
So yesterday, in a sun-break during the worst deluge in 80-something Pensacola years, a funny thing happened. I had to drop our son off for choir rehearsal at 8:30 a.m., and then since I had 30 minutes to kill before they sang, I decided to drive the short mile to the bay park downtown to see if they had yet reopened the restaurant where we had been scheduled to celebrate my daughter’s 19th birthday the previous evening. Right around this time, some blue sky shoved its way in between a few moving clouds, and it was so beautiful I decided to park and take a moment to watch the powerful water. Just as I was trying to recall the words of Psalm 46 that I’ve been trying to memorize (“Therefore we will not fear though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam…” (I looked it up:-)) — a large wave crashed against the sea wall, and the spray from the wave shot up and rained down — heavier than being caught in a sprinkler but not quite like a bucket of water tossed — on me. I tried to take a self-pic to show how wet I was, but it doesn’t quite capture the moment. Anyway, driving back to church (and trying to decide if I would actually enter in my slightly sodden state), my Ipod landed on this song by All Songs and Daughters. I laughed — indeed, “we’ve been soaked in all the grace that we’ve been given.” (Which brings to mind the thought that grace doesn’t always look like we think it should, but that’s fodder for another day:).
This is a call to all the dead and disappointed
The ones who feel like they are done
This is a word to all the ones who feel forgotten
But you are not
Oh you are not
We’re alive, alive, alive we’re singing
We’re alive, alive, alive and we’re shaken
We’re alive, alive, alive, alive in You
We are soaked in all the grace that we’ve been given
Unchained from all that we have done
Your mercy’s rising like the sun on the horizon
We’re coming home
We’re alive, alive, alive we’re singing
We’re alive, alive, alive and we’re shaken
We’re alive, alive, alive, alive in You
12 “As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.” I Kings 17:7-24
When my season of pain, which began almost exactly two years ago now, stretched from somewhat-normal and barely-tolerable to declaratively-bizarre and beyond-barely-tolerable, a dear friend who has suffered such sent me a dear book by Amy Carmichael, a strong, independent woman who had experienced the loss of her physicality and lived with stabbing, dulling, chronic pain that is hard to describe to anyone who has not experienced it. Amy was a missionary in India and persevered in doing great works there despite a debilitating injury to her back which literally left her flattened many days at a time. One of her greatest gifts among the varied kingdom seeds she sowed is a book written by one in pain for those in pain. (As I struggle through typing this short entry because my dictation program isn’t working but I’m determined to get this down, I awe even more at her ability to write while she suffered so. Thank you, Lord, for allowing her that privilege!).
What prompts me to share a brief portion of this wonderful work is an email I received from a dear friend who is experiencing as an onlooker and caretaker the overwhelming, beyond-belief agony of a beloved family member. Because I have been where I’ve been, I believe I really can know and understand her pain. But for those who may not have experienced these days, I want to share Amy’s writing, because it gives you a tiny bathroom window view into some days of suffering. I know you care, but it can be bewildering to understand. This particular entry by Amy, which is based on the story above in I Kings 17, speaks so well to what happens to people as the days of grief get long. As you read this, think of someone you know who has or is suffering loss, and go to your knees and beg God to show up — it is such a kind mercy to give…
Amy writes,
“I do not think we reach the place where we have ‘not anything in the house’ until he whom men call Pain has raided us more than once or twice. The hardest days of the trouble that follows accident or illness are not the first days. They are the days later on, when a new assault of that strangely dreadful power finds us, as it were, at his feet defenseless.
On such days we are like the sailors of the psalm who do business in great waters: they mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble. And as the pretty songs of the Pippas of the earth ripple past us, we are only moved to a weary negation of their easy assertion. For though the lark’s on the wing, the snails on the thorn, and though well our hearts know that God’s in His heaven, all’s not right with the world….
But we have a God whose love is courageous. He trusts us to trust Him through the blind hours before we find our pot of oil, which indeed is always in the house. ‘Some of Love’s secrets reveal others, and therefore between lovers there is recognition,” so it is written in Ramon Lull’s Book of the Lover and the Beloved. And it is one of the dearest secrets of love, that the lover can recognize as by some heavenly instinct the Presence of his Beloved, although he does not see Him. ‘Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, ye rejoice” — thank God for the secrets of love.” Amy Carmichael, “Not Anything in the House,” Rose from Brier
I have left out so much of what Amy wrote — I do recommend strongly you find a copy of this book and read the entirety. Many blessings and much gratitude to all of you who care so deeply for someone who sees only a handful of flour and a little olive oil in their jug today.
This morning, in preparing for a story feast on summer stories, I opened Genesis 1 and 2 in Eugene Peterson’s The Message.
In this translation, Genesis 1:31 says,
“God looked over everything he had made;
it was so good, so very good!
It was evening, it was morning–
Day Six.” Genesis 2:2-4 says,
“By the 7th day
God had finished his work.
On the 7th day
he rested from all his work.
God blessed the 7th day.
He made it a holy day
because on that day
he rested from his work,
all the creating God had done.”
About the same of rest, rhythm, and time, Eugene Peterson says:
“We were created to live rhythmically in the rhythms of creation…
The understanding and honoring of time is fundamental to the realization of who we are and how we live.Violations of sacred time become desecrations of our most intimate relationships with God and one another hours and days, weeks and months and years are the very stuff of holiness.
Time is the medium in which we do all living. When time is desecrated, life is desecrated. The most conspicuous evidences of this desecration are hurry and procrastination. Hurry turns away from the gift of time in a compulsive grasping for abstractions that it can possess and control. Procrastination is distracted from the gift of time and a lazy inattentiveness to the life of obedience and adoration by which we enter ‘the fullness of the time’ (Gal. 4:4). Whether by a hurried grasping or a procrastinating inattention, the holiness of time is violated.” Conversations: The Message Bible with Its Translator.
As a formerly “hurried-woman,” these words hit me hard. After three shoulder surgeries in two years, I am living in a season of imposed rest. The question for me is,”Will I called this rest good?” what about you? What time struggle are you currently living? Let’s take a few moments now to ask God to reveal himself intimately to us in this place. And let’s listen for his answer.
