Category: Art

Strive to Enter His Rest

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Water14 Comments

St Mary's Falls acrylic ch

I did it again. I fretted. Loudly. Emotionally.

“We’ve got to do something!” I told my husband. He sat there calmly and said, “I am doing something. I am praying for a miracle and resting in the Lord.”

Now my problem is I can’t tell his resting in the Lord face from his avoiding a discussion by playing solitaire on the iPad face. All I want to know is if he is taking this crisis-de-jour seriously or am I going to have to do all the pre-trusting-in-the-Lord wet hen flap dancing all by myself?

Well, yes, I am. He doesn’t flap. He’s unflappable. He knows it’s pointless. So do I, but I do it anyway, not as often as I used to, but still often enough to have to apologize to the Lord later for my lack of faith. It’s my over-developed sense of responsibility again. I know I need to pray from a place of rest and trust in the Lord, believing that he has made a provision for every problem, but… but…but…

I also need to know that somebody cares. To me that means investing in some emotional expression. I want some compassionate tears or groans or something. A little sympathy pill. Failing that it means doing something, anything — making a list, googling for information, shopping for extra batteries — some indication of extending oneself. That’s how I show caring. But not everyone communicates the same way. I know that.

There’s another trap that I have fallen into far too often. In the absence of the proper person for the job I have the bad habit of rushing into somebody’s-got-to-do-it mode, jumping in without checking with the Lord whether this is helping or enabling or just plain meddling. It’s time to change that.

I have been reading in the book of Hebrews about the importance of rest. “…whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.” (Hebrews 4:10-11 ESV)

Now I have to tell you the instruction to “strive to enter God’s rest” has always seemed a little crazy-making to me. It feels like one of those damned if you do/damned if you don’t scenarios played out with frustrating bosses or elderly relatives who cannot be pleased.  Are not “strive” and “rest” words carrying opposite meanings? What do you mean by that, Lord? Do you want me to strive or rest? Pick one. It’s another thing that has made me sputter in frustration. But this week I think I may be able to understand this passage and its importance a little better.

I was down at the Falls. I watched autumn leaves float down from the tall trees overhanging the water. Some fell into the water and were carried by the churning stream around and around the eddies then picked up by the torrents and whisked over a series of small waterfalls until they disappeared over the cliff with the big waterfall. Some of the pretty coloured foliage fell on rocks and rested there. Being inanimate objects they didn’t have the option of throwing themselves into the drama and chaos of the river and then, when they were emotionally spent, crawling back out to a resting place. They were still or they were not.

We, on the other hand, need to concentrate — strive — to remain in a place where God is our total sufficiency. It’s so easy to slide off the rock and join in the words of complaint or dismal predictions. It takes effort to stay in a place of rest.

I’m afraid I still get sucked into not only my own drama, but the drama of people around me. I think I’m showing compassion, but maybe I am just riding the currents of fear, swept away with emotion.

It’s exhausting.

I asked some people who are father along on this journey than me what they do when they genuinely care, but want to remain in a place of rest where they can hear our heavenly Father’s heart for his children. Some said they just withdraw and refuse to respond to panic. Some said they explain that they do care, and they are praying, but they believe God is good so they don’t need to verbally rehearse how bad the situation looks. He knows. They want to hear how Jesus is interceding so they can join him, and for that they need to cease from offering their own solutions and reactions and seek the Lord.

As Graham Cooke said, “We need to learn to pray as brides and not as widows.” We are not alone or abandoned to our own devices to solve a problem. If we lack wisdom we can ask, simply because he loves us.

Rest is not passivity or fatalism. It’s connecting with God first, and trusting him. It’s realizing that we can quit relying on our own efforts to save ourselves or others, and let God be God. He has a plan, and it’s a good one.

People of the Flame

On By Charis PsalloIn Art4 Comments

torch flame ch IMG_5528

Someone asked me recently why I don’t take a stronger stand against evil. “All that’s needed for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing,” they said. “If you keep talking about grace without warning about compromise with sin you can be held responsible for the consequences.”

Lately I’ve been hearing from a lot of folks who are sure we are about to be judged for the sins of our countries. “We’ve gone too far,” they say.

We do reap what we sow. If our pleasure or comfort comes at the expense of someone else (or even our future selves) eventually somebody’s going to get hurt. I watched the escalation of the squirt gun wars amongst my grandchildren this summer. If you squirt someone with water they have the right to shoot you back. You have set a precedent. How long do you think the fun lasted until there were tears and Grandma had to confiscate the toys? I can tell you the scenario was repeated often enough to establish the character of human nature. (Bless their hearts.)

The escalation of conflict in the world goes way beyond squirting each other with cold water. It’s a dark, ugly, scary place sometimes where even a child in his momma’s womb is not safe.

Sometimes I get the feeling some people think our countries are working on some sort of group project that is about to be judged by God’s big red pencil. The “achievers” are really ticked off with the “slackers.” The ones who feel responsible for doing everything right are running around yelling, “Now we’re all gonna fail! Aaaargh!” What if the test is not about a good mark on a paper about blood moons and calendars and court rulings and not being passively complicit in giving approval to sin? What if the assignment is all about learning to love?

I had to ask the Lord, “Am I a slacker? Have I compromised on speaking out about the consequence of defying Your orders for the way things are meant to be done in Your creation?

As I prayed I was reminded of a vision I had a few years ago. A picture flashed in my mind’s eye. A runner on a dark road in the night carrying a torch like we saw during the winter Olympics in Canada. It was a like a detailed short video and lasted only a moment, but it looked very real.

“Was that from you, Lord?” I asked.

“I miss the people of the flame.” I recognized His voice.

“What people? What flame? What happened?”

“It was buried under the bridge of compromise,” He said.

That was it. That’s all I heard. I pondered this event for some time wondering who the people were and what the flame represented. I couldn’t understand. Was this about having more fervency, more zeal? But I know plenty of amazing people striving to make the world a better place so who are these flame carriers you are missing? It didn’t make sense to me so I left it on the shelf for a while.

This week, as the memory of the vision came up again in the context of taking a public stand against sinful practices, I continued to talk to the Lord about it. I remembered a verse I learned as a child, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” (Psalm 119:105)

Pointing to the darkness and saying “This ought not to be!” is like being the kind of doctor who can diagnose a complicated case, and may be able to treat some symptoms, but offers no cure. It’s like a physician who says “Those spots indicate a serious disease process. If you didn’t have those spots you wouldn’t be sick!” We walk away thinking about how to get rid of the spots instead of how to treat the root cause.

I wonder if a type of disappointment has been growing in our communities. Like yeast that fills a lump of dough I’ve noticed a pervasive cynicism has crept in. I see so many who have experienced disappointment in the ability of hard work, religious observance, law-abiding life-styles or the false charm of political promises to make lasting deep heart-change. I wonder if disappointment is an indication that we have replaced God’s priorities with our own. We are still working hard but it’s not going the way we envisioned. We have been striving to remove the spots in ourselves and in others in the hope it will lead to a healing of the heart. But the more we try the worse the spots get.

I wonder if the flame in the vision is about true hope. Perhaps the lamp, “the Word,” does not refer to more Biblical injunctions to quit sinning. The Bible tells us that the Word is Jesus Christ Himself.

Today I asked the Lord again if I have been in error by not standing up against sin more publicly. Have I been lazy, avoiding conflict, compromising? His answer to my heart: The people of the flame carried the light. They carried hope, they carried good news. They ran into the darkness, unafraid, because they carried the flame.

After Jesus died the people who had expectations that he would deliver them from the oppressors felt profound disappointment. “But we had hoped that he was the one…” said the two followers as they walked dejectedly to Emmaus, not recognizing the person who joined them was the resurrected Jesus. They did not understand that God had much bigger plans than improving their living conditions. These were the same people who, after the Holy Spirit came with wind and tongues of flame at Pentecost, abounded in hope in the worst possible circumstances, under severe persecution. They were not concerned with “preserving their way of life.” They did not point to encroaching darkness and announce God’s judgment on a place, nor did they sit down awaiting rescue from the planet. They did not deny the darkness. They picked up their torches and ran right into the darkness. The message they carried changed the world.

They carried hope. They carried the light. The light of the world is Jesus Christ.

We each face challenges of Olympic proportion. Will circumstances become more difficult in the future? I don’t know. All I know is that in my own small way, right where I am in this little corner of the world I can run into the darkness carrying the light.

I pray that God, the source of all hope, will infuse your lives with an abundance of joy and peace in the midst of your faith so that your hope will overflow through the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

Dinosaurs of the Plasticine Era

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Black and white, Man made, PhotographyLeave a comment

plasticine era ch IMG_4854

A new Facebook friend made a comment this week about how she, as a sensitive person, cannot watch horror movies. I can’t either.

I liked it better when the dinosaurs looked like they were from the Plasticine Era. This CGI stuff is just getting too real. Horror movies with their detailed scales and teeth, gallons of fake blood, strings of artificial mucous, creepy music and over-the-shoulder shots are abhorrent enough, but what really unsettles me is psychological thrillers. The grandmother/therapist/best-friend/baby did it? You can’t trust anybody! Paranoia on a stick. Why would anybody feed themselves this stuff?

Well, I did, or used to. My brother and I snuck out of our rooms after our parents were asleep to watch “The Outer Limits” or “The Twilight Zone.” We kept the volume on the TV so low we had to lean in to hear. The buzz of the old set added to the flickering light ambiance of tension — and the fear of being caught. After the show I would tiptoe back to bed and lie awake all night, planning what I would do if aliens landed in the backyard. For months I ran past lamp posts or neon signs that made that same buzzing noise, fearing I was being followed by something equipped with a death ray.

tv 1968 time

Nowadays, if the boys ask me to watch a horror or action flick with them I usually turn them down. I think even chick-flicks should come with emotional content warnings. My empathic tendencies have been traumatized by too many.

You see, I’ve discovered prayer doesn’t work in a movie (except to mercifully let the thing end or break the projector or something.) If I was running from a monster, scaled or coifed, I would be praying, “HELP!” or at the very least “OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod…” (How do people cope without being able to call on him?)

But God doesn’t respond to lies. He’s not afraid of computer-generated dinosaurs. He never falls for clay or cartoon creatures. He knows the hunter never shot Bambi’s mother because Bambi’s mother was never in danger. She was not real. Bambi was not real. Godzilla is no threat to Bambi either. Asking God to respond and save us from imminent hypothetical danger is like my two-year old granddaughter hiding behind my legs and squealing that her brother is going to gobble her up – with a plasticine monster.

“You’re okay honey,” I assure her. “It’s only a pretend monster.”

This got me thinking about how the Holy Spirit responds to fears that have us quivering behind locked doors as we read scary predictions in the media, both broadcast and social.

He doesn’t.

Sometimes I cry out for deliverance and there is silence. Sometimes, when I join Chicken Little’s persuasive campaign and yell, “The sky is falling,” the Lord hands me an umbrella.

“Will this protect me from the falling sky?” I ask.

“No. But there will be rain later – the same kind of rain that has been falling off and on for centuries. Get a grip, girl.”

I have noticed that Jesus never allowed himself to be caught up in hypothetical questions. “What if…” His answer? “I will never leave you.”

It’s not that bad stuff never happens to good people. The devil still prowls around messing things up. You still reap what you sow. Corrie Ten Boom told the story of how, as a child, her father never burdened her with the responsibility of carrying a train ticket until it was time to get on the train. I think grace for trials is like that. The Lord will hand us our grace ticket when we need it. There is no provision in advance for “what if” questions because there doesn’t need to be. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, but there is no provision of supernatural intervention in a situation that we created in our own fear-based mind.

“Lord! Help me! I am under attack! The devil’s got me in his sights! What’s that strange buzzing sound?”

“You’re okay, honey. Shut the TV off and go back to bed. And quit watching that junk. It’s time to rest.”

dinaosaur fashion

A Gift of Chard

On By Charis PsalloIn ArtLeave a comment

chard red gouache

“The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.”

– Henri Nouwen

A Way Through the Desert

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Photography, Water4 Comments

St marys Falls gouache 4

Eternal One: Don’t revel only in the past,
        or spend all your time recounting the victories of days gone by.
  

Watch closely: I am preparing something new; it’s happening now, even as I speak,
        and you’re about to see it.

I am preparing a way through the desert;
    Waters will flow where there had been none.
   Wild animals in the fields will honor Me;
        the wild dogs and surly birds will join in.
    

There will be water enough for My chosen people,
        trickling springs and clear streams running through the desert.

(Isaiah 43:18-20 The Voice)

God makes a way –through the desert, through the valley, through the floods, through the fire, through depression.

Don’t stop now. Look for His way.

From Heaven

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Music, Sky, Water5 Comments

sunset angelfire acrylic ch june

“Let all of God’s angels worship him.”

Regarding the angels, God says,
“He sends his angels like the winds,
his servants like flames of fire.”
(from Hebrews 1)

Other thirteen-year olds asked for the new Beatles album for their coming of age birthday gift. I asked for a recording of opera singer Joan Sutherland’s greatest hits. I’m sure it caused a few eye rolls in my country and gospel music loving family, but Grandma bought it for me anyway. I thought the singer’s voice was “angelic” although I’d never actually heard an angel sing. I could only play the record when no one else was around but I still managed to almost wear it out. Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim became one of my favourites.

Let the bright seraphim in burning row, their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow. Let the cherubic host in tuneful choirs touch their immortals harps with golden wires.

I could imagine myriads upon myriads of fiery angels singing and blowing brilliant trumpets that sent their sound spinning through the galaxies.

I am on a quest to understand worship. I don’t think I understand it yet. Okay, I know I don’t understand exactly what it is or the nature of its expression yet. It is going on non-stop in heaven as the angels and the elders and the creatures, overwhelmed with God’s majesty spontaneously bow before the Great Throne. What must it be like?

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels,

numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!”
(From Revelation 5)

One of the jobs of angels is to help us to worship. Somehow our worship is connected to theirs even though we can’t hear it all yet. It starts in the throne room in heaven.

I remember the chorus of a song my mother sang:

Holy, holy, is what the angels sing,
And I expect to help them make the courts of Heaven ring;
But when I sing redemption’s story, they will fold their wings,
For angels never felt the joys that our salvation brings.

I hit a milestone today. My 1001st blog post. I could thank my readers and post links to most popular past blogs, or discuss the experience of blog writing, but as I sit here at the end of a beautiful summer’s day preparing a post for the morning I find I have nothing profound to say. All I want to do is thank God for his goodness and for the hope that does not disappoint. I thank him for a blog on which to express praise that can be flung into cyberspace, if not the galaxies. Today I all I want to do is sing redemption’s story.

God is good. For some reason I will never understand, He loves me — and you. Any other thing I could celebrate pales in comparison.

Praise the Lord from the heavens;
praise him in the heights above.

Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his heavenly hosts.

Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars.

Praise him, you highest heavens
and you waters above the skies…
(From Psalm 148)

Worthy is the Lamb.

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Toddling Toward Hope

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Just folks, Photography3 Comments

pretty in pink gouache sm ch

I love toddlers. Honestly, it may be my favourite age. Yes, I mean the tantrum-throwing, independent, illogical, ill-informed munchkins between walking and reasonable conversation age, the ones who cause their exhausted parents’ hearts to melt when they stand over their kid’s sleeping adorableness before they head out to clean up the day’s mess.

I love to watch them learn. They are voracious readers of everything and everyone. They crave knowledge and are driven to courageously expand their universe, but at the same time want to remain at the center of it.

As a baby a little girl learns that when she hollers Daddy or Mommy come to her. As a toddler she learns the hard lesson that when Mommy or Daddy call she is supposed to come to them.

It’s not an easy transition for anyone concerned. Toddlers are also discovering free will. Anyone who has tried knows you cannot make a toddler eat, sleep, sit still, keep their clothes on or pee where they are supposed to until they decide to do it themselves. You can cut down their options, you can try to pick them up (as they do the floppy noodle) before they dash for the road, but you can’t make them keep the water in the tub or kiss Auntie Bertha or stay out of the Tupperware drawer when company is coming if it is not on their agenda. They will let you know when they have lost patience with your interference.

But I love them. I love the mileage they get out of a few words. I love the excited laughter when they discover how to open, or flush, or unravel something all by themselves. I love the way they imitate older humans and want to be like them. I love them because they are headed somewhere and every day they change. I love them because they don’t stay toddlers.

It struck me the other day that as new believers in Christ we are like a baby who needs milk, shelter, warmth, affection and our heavenly Father obliges. He provides a baby with everything she needs. She calls; He comes. She knows how the system works.

Then one day he doesn’t come when she calls. He calls and holds out his hands for her to move toward him. After she chooses to toddle to his outstretched arms and she is rewarded with kisses and hugs he takes another step back – then another and another. He is becoming more distant. The next thing you know he is withholding her sippy cup until she sits in the chair nicely – wearing a bib that is not of her choice. What a shock!

The toddler Christian is accustomed to feeling that God is there to fulfill her agenda. Now it turns out he has an agenda of his own. Now there is this obedience issue to cope with. It’s a tough transition to make, and that is why many churches are filled with people who never grow beyond two or three years maturity level. It can be fun, but it can also be a wretchedly frustrating stage of growth because it means taking ourselves out of the center of the universe and putting God there.

The Bible says Jesus learned obedience. He grew in grace and in favour with God the Father and with people. When he laid down his Godhead privileges to experience everything we have he also learned as a human child that he had free will. As an adult he demonstrated that he was not doing the works he did because he was incapable of doing otherwise, but because he chose to. He listened to his Father’s plans. From his baptism, to his following the leading of Holy Spirit into the wilderness, to changing water into wine at his Father’s bidding – and definitely not his mother’s – to his battle with his free will in the Garden of Gethsemane he did nothing he did not choose to do. I believe he understands our struggle because he sweat drops of blood before he could say, “Not my will but Yours.” In the end laying down his life at the cross was his choice.

“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” (John 10:18)

I’ve heard it said that being part of the family of God means never being led into the wilderness (times away from his felt presence to discover and establish our identity as sons and daughters); it means never seeking God’s agenda but brazenly declaring our own want list; it means never being driven by frustration with our old habits to plumb the depths of his grace that changes us, but instead it presumes on our own definition of “grace” that enables stunted growth and self-centered living.

There is power and provision for a hope that does not disappoint, but this is not it. Of course God still loves to give good gifts to his children and to respond to them. Maturity means changing the way we think until we realize it’s not just about God answering us when and how we want him to; it’s also about us responding to him when he calls.

I love toddlers because unless something has gone horribly wrong, they are people in process. If we, as those growing up in faith, never get out of our strollers, demand ice cream for breakfast and holler every time events do not go according to our desired design and timetable, we will not be loved any less and our needs will still be met, but we will miss the joy of mature relationship with our Father God.

I love toddlers because they teach me to keep growing.

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