A repost about being in God's hands

I wrote the post below at a time when we were in a sort of limbo, in the middle of a circumstance which I hoped would rectify a tragedy.  It was a couple of weeks before the winter solstice, and even as the days shortened to their briefest length, I had hope.

Things did not unfold as I had hoped, and yet God has not abandoned me.  The journey of life is harder and more heartbreaking than I ever imagined, and yet peace and joy continue wherever the Spirit of the Lord dwells.

Here we are just a week after the summer solstice, and we find ourselves in the middle of a different circumstance.  This circumstance also has the potential to bring about much longed-for healing and great relief.  I could prepare myself for the worst, the worst possible outcome, the worst possible news.  Or I could hope for the best, the new start, the relief, the healing. I will endeavor to simply keep my eyes on Jesus, and trust in His mercy and kindness, neither demanding nor doubting, simply trusting and knowing that He has good plans for us, plans to prosper and not to harm, plans to give us hope and a future.  Yes, the future is ultimately glory in the presence of God for all eternity.  Either we get to serve Him for awhile here, before we get there, or we go early.

Ultimately, healing is the presence of God.

The presence of God.

"I will never leave you, nor forsake you," He promises.  "I will be with you wherever you go."  He is present.

"How much more will the Father from heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?" Jesus promises.  This is a specific promise, straight from the mouth of the Lord.  If we ask Him, He will give Himself to us.  He bestows His glorious presence on us; all we have to do is ask.  He will come. Indeed, He is already here.  He will awaken our awareness of His presence.

Enough.  I've already written a whole extra post, before the repost...

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A Prayer for December

from 12/6/2017

Dear Lord God,

I can't remember a December so filled with bright blue and gold as this one.  You shine from beyond the cerulean sky, illuminating dried leaves and grasses so they move in the wind like living lights.  Without you they would be mere straw and chaff, but under your presence they appear as precious metals.

You are the God of all Hope.  Thank you for all the words you have given us about hope.

May the God of hope fill you with all peace and joy, because you trust in Him.  Then you will overflow with confident hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  (Romans 15:13)

Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.  (Psalm 31:24)

May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.  (Psalm 33:22)

You answer us with awesome deeds of righteousness, O God our Savior, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas.  (Psalm 65:5)

It is right to hope in you, Lord.  It is right for us to believe that you are good, and that you have good plans of salvation for the men of earth.

The angel said, "I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people!"  (Luke 2:10)

Jesus has come.  You have come.

You are the Light of the World, illuminating truth and driving away the dark of doubt, the dark of despair, the dark of the devil's deceiving schemes.  Your glory utterly undoes the darkness, shining in clear revelation.

You are the Living Water, reviving and refreshing parched, weary souls.

You are the Bread of Life, filling and nourishing those who hunger.

You are the Good Shepherd, leading us by quiet waters, making us lie down in green pastures, restoring our souls, and guiding us in paths of righteousness for Your name's sake (Psalm 23).  You gather us like little lambs in your arms and carry us close to your heart (Isaiah 40:11).

You love us with an everlasting love, and draw us to yourself with cords of lovingkindness (Jeremiah 31:3).  Thank you, Lord Jesus, thank you for your great love.

Thank you for your mighty power, which will never be overcome.  You yourself are the Overcomer.  You have even overcome death itself, and the sin that begets death.  I praise you, Lord Almighty.  I praise you because you died and rose again, so that we could be redeemed for eternal life in your presence.  The victory is yours, and ours, too, because of your unfathomable grace.

You are King of kings and Lord of lords.

Thank you for your sovereign, faithful power over all creation.  You tell us that you know the end from the beginning.   Your purpose will stand.  You will do all that you please.  (Isaiah 46:10)

No power can stop you, Lord.  Thank you.  You are worthy of all praise.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your providence and for your miracles.  I've read a little bit about these things, and from what I can tell, although theologians go to great lengths to distinguish between the two, the only difference is that your providence is the miracles we are used to, because you do them most every day and wire them into the way the universe works, while "miracles" are the unusual events you bring about, surpassing the boundaries of nature and only happening at rare intervals in our lives.  It is all your work, all from you.  I am thankful that you are with us all the time, and every sunrise is as much a gift as an unexplainable healing.  Thank you that you both provide for us and do miracles for us.  Thank you that your hands are always at work around us, feeding, healing, comforting and protecting.

Oh Lord God, how I love your hands.

You formed the world with your hands. 

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place... (Psalm 8:3)

The heavens declare your glory, and the skies proclaim the work of your hands (Psalm 19:1).

You are the one who made the earth and created mankind upon it, stretching out the heavens by your own hands and marshaling their starry hosts (Isaiah 45:12).

You bless and feed us with your hands.

All of creation looks to you for food, which you give at the proper time for us to gather up.  When you open your hand, we are satisfied with good things (Psalm 104:27-28).

You fill me with joy in your presence and eternal pleasures at your right hand (Psalm 16:11).

You comfort and protect us with your hands.

When I take refuge in you from the foe, you save me by your right hand because of your great love, keeping me as the apple of your eye, and hiding me in the shadow of your wings (Psalm 17:7-8).

I cling to you, your right hand upholds me (Psalm 63:8).

You deliver your people by your hand, and your mighty outstretched arm (Exodus 3:19-20, 6:6, 13:16, 15:12).

You heal with the touch of your hand.  Your hand has healed lepers, blind people, deaf people, lame people, and people with broken hearts and malignant souls.  Your hand continues to heal, every day.

You reach out with your hand to pull us up out of the miry clay, out of the raging waters.  You grasp us with your strong hand when we are too weak to hold on by ourselves, and you lift us up to safety and restoration.  You lovingly chide, "Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14:31)

You saved us when you stretched out your hands at the cross, allowing them to be pierced for our sins, your precious, nail-pierced hands.

You have thus engraved us on your hands, written our names on the palms of your hands (Isaiah 49:16).

I am yours.  Thank you, Lord Jesus.

O Jesus, help me trust you.  Help me to be better able to perceive your goodness and your love.  Help me to walk in your Spirit, filled with your Spirit, conscious of your Spirit.  Please radiate the beauty, peace and joy of your Spirit out through me.  Let me carry your presence wherever I go.

Thank you for your promises.  Thank you that you hear and answer prayer.

Thank you that you are always with me.  You go before me, leading, forging the path.  You come behind me, protecting my back, shielding my blindside.  You cover me with your feathers, shelter me with your wings, protect me with the armor of your faithful promises (Psalm 91:4).  Thank you that you never leave me nor forsake me.

Thank you that you promise that I will bear fruit as I abide in you, that joy comes in the morning, that your plans are good and certain to come to pass.

Thank you, Jesus.  Help me Jesus.  I praise you, Jesus.

Amen

Missed May

This blog is almost dead,

like the sixth of my six marigold seedlings, the tiniest and hardest bit by our two very late frosts.

Almost dead, but still a sprout of life hangs on with stubborn perseverance, not dying, not living, just surviving.  I have come to see this tiny piece of flora as a microcosm of myself presently.  Hanging on.

I used to use a subscriber service to email my blog to roughly 20 subscribers.  Awhile back, this service sent me a message telling me to get myself a record of my subscriber list, because the service will be discontinued.  I was at a point of ennui and despairing overwhelm at the time, and didn't bother.  So now I have no service to send out my blog anymore, and no record of who used to receive it, even though it was a short enough list that I probably ought to know it by heart.

It's okay.  I do not blog to make money, and truthfully, I don't think my blogging is worthy of being read most of the time.  Now I can ponder and muse in peace, without the pressure of writing for an audience.

I'm sick to the point of migraines and nausea of the way things change.  It's all about money.  Jonathan was the one who told me that, as he walked away from our faith, but he was right.  Everything people do in this world is for money, from the clothes they wear to the friends they choose, and the jobs they do, the strategies they adopt, the way they spend their time and structure their days.  My point is that people are all trying to make money, and so they change things, which forces other people to keeping buying and upgrading, and one upgrade leads to the need for ten more, or fifty.  They rub their greedy hands together with glee and collect, collect, collect, like sharks in a game where they slyly drew all the wild cards early on, and left me with a worthless hand.  "Upgrade" does not mean any increase in quality; it actually means a decrease in quality and an increase in cost.  The upgrade only belongs to the seller, who has me pinned in his vice like a live frog on a dissection board.  But he'll give me some free services if it means he can commandeer my personal information, because that is a commodity he can both use and sell.

As I've come to understand the truth of this statement of Jonathan's--"It's all about money"--two threads have spun from my mind.  

First, I am grateful for Jesus, who was uniquely not about money.  Jesus did not come to take from us, but to give to us, to do for us, to serve and to save.  "I do not give to you as the world gives," He said (John 14:27).  The world gives away a little in order to get back, to gain, to exploit--an email service in order to spy on all your correspondence, or a GPS service in order to track your location.  In the world, there is no such thing as a free lunch, but Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never be hungry again.  Whoever believes in me with never be thirsty," (John 6:35).  Jesus gives freely, for our benefit, because He loves us and wants us to find freedom from this oppressive world system.  Jesus longs for us to accept His gifts of peace, abundant joy, and fellowship with the Creator of the Universe.  He made us to dwell in paradise with Him, and that's what He wants for us, that we would experience the perfection of living according to His perfect, all-wise plan, to enter into an ever increasing cycle of blessing, praise, thanksgiving and joy.

Second, I am sensitized to the places where so-called-Christians are all about the money.  When the biggest icon on a church's website is the "GIVE" button, I cringe and navigate away.  This type of publicity is not seemly.  This is not reflective of the face of our beloved Savior.  But it isn't only churches asking for tithes and offerings.  It is a whole aspect of competition between and among ministries.  Who held the biggest event, who sold the most tickets, or the most books, or the most albums?  So many so-called ministries are really businesses, cashing in on the glory of God and the beauty of Christ for personal gain.  I see it most clearly in the Christian music industry, where, just like all the worthless-no-good-upgrades rolling out for computers month after month, "Christian musicians" churn out hundreds of tunes every year, like so much sickly-sweet soft-serve ice cream, like milkshakes produced from chemicals in plastic bags, dropped into a vat  and drawn hurriedly from a machine with a spout, consumed from plastic cups with plastic straws which are then cast into the ocean to strangle God's creation in the secret depths.  Yes, I am mixing metaphors, but it is all apt.  When Jesus came upon the religious leaders in the temple, cashing in on God's sacred system of sacrifices, He took action, scandalous action. He found cords to use as whips, and drove the money changers right out of His Father's house.  

There is one reason to go to church: to meet with God.  Money is the great enemy, the great imposter, the great temptation.  In our human weakness, we look to money for security, provision, comfort and joy, but all these things are truly only God's to give.  God's people should be beacons to show the way to the Father, who is the perfect source of all the goodness we long for.  When "God's people" use "church" to make names and fortunes for themselves, it is an atrocity against the greatest force in the Universe, and it cannot come to a good end.  We expect that the world would serve money, and material gain.  This is neither surprising nor even particularly unfitting.  The broken and unredeemed seek self; this is the crux of what it is to be cursed, a tragic misfortune but not a gross misappropriation.  However, when those who have been redeemed by the God of Heaven and Earth, the One who gave up His majesty in order to die on their behalf, to pay the price for their brokenness so that they could be made whole, when people who claim to have received this gift and live in this privilege then go on to pursue selfish gain and self-interest as they cloud and obfuscate the glory and all-surpassing worth of the Father and His Only Begotten Son, this is a perversion that cannot be allowed to continue.  We must not presume that God, whose purpose is to save humanity from the curse of sin--from selfishness and from being blind to what is truly beautiful and desirable--would long continue to allow people to march forth in His name, under His banner, while they actually raise up material prosperity, earthly riches and human desire as more to be sought than He who is Lord over all.  The children of God must be different.  The children of God are different; if they are not, they simply cannot be His children.

When I sat down to write today, all I wanted to do was tell a story.  

A couple of weeks ago, Shawn and I took Duffy to walk at the park.  The park where we walk is in Chapel Hill, and we park next to a dog park.  We do not take Duffy into the dog park, because he is small and foolish, and would be quickly trampled.  Nevertheless, we park next to it, and thus begin our walk, about 1.67 miles up to a small bridge and then back again.

On the particular day we arrived at the park, the world was just opening up after a long winter of Covid isolation, and the park was packed.  The parking lot was packed, too.  We entered it at one end, driving slowly as we looked for an empty space.  In front of us, a huge, gaudy van maneuvered clumsily around.  It was bright orange and blue, with two huge siren horns stretching from front to back across the top.  Music blared from speakers mounted somewhere in its recesses.  Duffy was agitated, prancing and scratching in my lap, whining and barking in a high pitched tone.  Although distracted by Duffy's behavior, I noticed that the bulky van had large letters spelling out THUNDER BUS across its side.  An attractive young man and young woman, both wearing sleek fitting jeans and bright shirts that matched their vehicle, hopped out and tried to direct the driver into his too-small parking spot. 

I awkwardly climbed out my own cramped car door, while Duffy shrieked and scrabbled and tried to jump to the ground and run, as he simultaneously squirmed to maintain his position in my arms where he felt secure.

The young man from the THUNDER BUS ran excitedly over to Shawn and me as we attempted to get set for our walk.  "Hello!"  He called in an eager, friendly voice.  "Is your dog anxious?"

There I stood, car door ajar, my dog literally melting down in my arms.  I was dumbfounded, but before I gathered my wits enough to respond, Shawn said firmly, from the other side of the car, "No."

And that was that.  The young man slunk away like a dog with his tail between his legs.  I set Duffy down, and we dragged him, whining and fussing, off to the trail we regularly walk.