“The true follower of Christ will not ask, “If I embrace this truth, what will it cost me?” Rather he will say, “This is truth. God help me to walk in it, let come what may!”
-A. W. Tozer
Have I not commanded you?
Be strong and courageous.
Do not be frightened,
and do not be dismayed,
for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
(Joshua 1:9)
Wow! The little counter over on the left says this is my 500th blog entry. And I was worried I would have nothing to say after the first month.
I never knew, when I dared to overcome my technophobia to find an outlet for my poems, paintings, photos and musings, that God would have so much more to teach me than overcoming fear of computerese. I sometimes questioned the wisdom of writing about events of this annus horibilis before there was any evidence of it becoming annus mirabilis. And who knew it was going to be an annus horibilis anyway?
What if things don’t work out? What if I die of ovarian cancer? What if the depression comes back? What if our miracle grandbaby doesn’t make it to term? What if our son-in-love dies of necrotizing fasciitis? What if our son and his family never recover losses from the flood? Maybe I should wait before I write about them, to make sure God answers our prayers.
Then it occurred to me that I am not in charge of God’s P.R.. This is what it is like to walk in faith, not knowing how the cliff-hanger ends. (And honestly I did not make this stuff up. It has been a horrible time -and a miraculous time.) I have also noted that my anxious questions starting with “what if” seldom come in God’s tender voice.
So to celebrate 500 posts I have chosen not the five most popular blogs but five with the most meaning to me -some of them written in blood and some of them written in tears of joy. Five, because the number 5 is symbolic of grace, and Charis, my chosen name, means grace in Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament. (Psallo means song, and since I have lived a life full of songs it seemed appropriate.)
Right off the bat I’m going to cheat on my own rules because these two posts are part of one story that cannot be separated (and I can do that -my blog, my rules, and my bending of rules) This is about how God took something utterly horrible and turned it into something miraculously wonderful. These were written during the time many excellent doctors expected our son-in-love to die from multiple overwhelming complications after contracting an extremely severe case of flesh-eating disease. He has been restored to full health and the story is just too too too good not to tell over and over -so it goes first. Love is Louder and Love is Louder part II
For the second I am going back into history. After spending decades drowning in soul-crushing depressive mental illness, I was raised up out of the depths. Bluer than Blue
One of the hardest parts in co-operating with Jesus’ healing work and recovering from the prison of the past is the struggle with forgiveness. Letting Go is a poem about stepping away from practised anger and entrenched bitterness.
Red Button, Yellow Button is one of my favourites because the older I get the more I appreciate the insightful wisdom of children before we educate it out of them.
Finally, Night Vision, because Jesus Christ is the Lover of my soul and my greatest desire is to know him and live in his presence.
So now the beautiful, sorrowful, joyful, frustrating, exhilarating journey continues.
To borrow from The Proclaimers I would like to make a proclamation of my own:
But I would write 500 blogs
And I would write 500 more
Just to be the one who wrote 1000 blogs
To tell you God is good.
And yes, He will restore.
Anyone who has spent time with a toddler knows about free will. One of the first words nearly all of us learn to say is NO.
Someone pointed out to me this morning that Jesus never preached about grace. It’s as if, for him, grace was a given. He demonstrated grace and lived the Father’s love, but his verbal message to us over and over was “You must have faith. Faith is your part.”
Faith is what engages grace.
I wanted to give my little granddaughter a frozen strawberry yogurt on a stick as a treat. She loves strawberry yogurt. It was very hot and I knew she would enjoy what I had prepared for her.
But she is 18 months old. She has free will. A parent learns quickly that you can pick up a child and take them where they do not want to go, but you cannot make them eat, or sleep, or use the potty or give grandma a hug. You can cajole, entice, plead, reward, punish and otherwise manipulate them, but you cannot make them do any one of these things – nor do it for them. They have a will.
Love does not permit me to shove a treat down her throat.
I had a yogurtsicle (and a warm wash cloth to help with the consequences of her inexperience). I also had a lot of love and hugs for her, which she did not earn, that I wanted to lavish on her, but in order to receive it she had to turn and respond to me.
I think this is a picture of our relationship with God. He has infinite grace and love to offer us, and we have the ability to say no. If we did not have the ability to say no, we would not have the ability to say yes.
I want a relationship with my granddaughter. I love her simply because she is my granddaughter. She doesn’t need to do anything to earn that love. I will love her even if she doesn’t turn around, but she will miss everything I have for her if she doesn’t make the choice to come to me.
God has so much love, so much grace, so much goodness waiting for us. He only wants us to respond to him. Trusting him enough to turn around from our ability to say no and acting upon our ability to say yes is called faith. It’s essential. Love does not permit him to shove his goodness down our throats. It is written, And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)
It’s all about relationship. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. (James 4:8)
Perhaps the reason we see so few essays on the benefits of close enough is that those writers who understand that the wide-spread application of excellence burns entirely too many calories and occupies more than it’s fair share of active brain space have already moved on to more interesting topics -because they can.
Some things need perfection: open-heart surgery, bridgework (both dental and municipal) pouring foundations, keeping books, inspecting nuclear power plants, maintaining aircraft. Some things don’t: tossing out ideas, telling stories, breaking traditions, playing T-ball, making beds, smoothing ruffled feathers and serving pretty good American-style coffee in the Middle East.
Teachers sometimes struggle with resisting the temptation to hang one more suggestion on a student’s performance or project. Of course, everything can be improved, but sometimes close enough is good enough for now. We all need to extend ourselves enough grace to simply enjoy what we have accomplished so far. Not everything needs the albatross of potential hanging around its neck.
Sign it. Stick it on the fridge and let’s go for coffee.
Charis
Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior,
who daily bears our burdens.
Our God is a God who saves;
from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death.
Surely God will crush the heads of his enemies,
the hairy crowns of those who go on in their sins.
Your procession, God, has come into view,
the procession of my God and King into the sanctuary.
In front are the singers, after them the musicians. (Psalm 68:19-21, 24-25)
(Elisha said) But now bring me a musician.” And when the musician played, the hand of the Lord came upon him. And he said, “Thus says the Lord, ‘I will make this dry stream bed full of pools.’ (2 Kings 3:15-16)
Who would place musicians at the front of an army? Who would react to a national threat with the command, “Bring me a musician?”
We were walking from the Mount of Olives, past the Garden of Gethsemane, down through the valley of tombs and back up the hill toward the other side where Caiaphas’ house has been recently excavated and inside the walls where the Roman pavement of the soldiers quarters still exists below a convent. It was very hot -at least to a Canadian who had been driving through a snow storm only a week before.
At the bottom, in the shade of an ancient tomb surrounded by hundreds of graves, literally in the valley of the shadow of death, this young man sat and played his instrument. The others in our group went on to explore more tombs, but I stopped and sat on a low stool by his feet and listened. The music was foreign to my ears. I didn’t understand the structure or the harmony, but it soothed my soul.
I had a dream in which a hotel we were preparing was inundated with new guests. At the front of the crowd, looking for a place to stay, were musicians of every sort. Some of them brought guitars and we put the instruments in gun cabinets while they rested. To me this spoke of the power of music in fighting the evil one.
When our son-in-love was walking through his own valley of the shadow of death on Good Friday, when doctors doubted he would survive, his faithful friends brought their guitars and sat in the waiting room quietly strumming and singing songs of praise to the great healer. Singing seems like an odd activity at such a time, but they understood the importance of warring with their instruments and with their songs.
There is something about music that by-passes our personal defence systems. It can get by the heart/brain barrier.
I had a singing student whose relationship had just broken up. She assured me, quite calmly, that she was fine, that it was a logical time to end it and she was ready to move on. We happened to be working on the song, “On My Own” from Les Miserables. She didn’t make it two lines into the song before the floodgates of tears opened. Music therapy works on the theory that words delivered via music can get past our intellectual defences and help us heal.
There is something about music that allows us to hear more than just the music. On that day in Jerusalem I felt jostled by crowds, harassed by vendors, impatiently tolerated by folk in religious garbs of many types, rushed by tour guides, dismayed by the lack of respect warring factions showed for each other and my feet and sun-burned neck hurt. Although our tour director carefully planned our itinerary to avoid the worst crowds there was no getting around this one if we wanted to see where Jesus spent so many critical hours. It was in the shade of a tomb, in the valley of the shadow of death, away from the crowds as I listened to a simple instrument played by a nameless man, that I heard my heavenly Father. He said simply, “Cease striving and know that I am God. It is finished. Rest in my love.”
The psalmist, David, understood. We war from a position of rest, in the valley of the shadow of death. That is where the feast is kept.
It’s a commandment.
While we were in Israel I was very aware of the presence of guns and the need to be vigilant against sudden violence. In the place where we live a lot of people own hunting rifles which are kept carefully locked up outside of hunting season, but I don’t know anyone who carries a weapon designed to shoot people, other than police. We don’t see many soldiers in these parts, and certainly we don’t see teenagers in shorts and flip-flops patrolling the community with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders like we saw at a kibbutz.
I don’t live in a place with concrete walls and barbed wire or big red signs in three languages that forbid other ethnicities from entering an area with threats to their lives if they use that road. I don’t know what it’s like to find out, like our guide did the day before he showed us around the site of the temple where Samuel was a boy, that my teenage daughter was standing next to a neighbour at the bus stop when someone passing by suddenly turned and stabbed him to death. The unarmed thirty-year old father of five died in front of her simply for his ethnicity. She was seeing a counselor at school the next day while some websites extolled the killer as a hero. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Christian living in Bethlehem, like another one of our guides, caught in the crossfire between warring factions and being worried about how to feed and protect my family. I don’t know what it is like to stand in the hot sun for hours waiting for someone to give approval that will allow me to simply go to my job. I don’t pretend to have any comprehension of the depth of the complexities of the conflict.
All I know is that I am told to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. So I do.
So many people say there is no solution. So few are asking God for His solution -and I do believe He has one. His ways are not our ways and our ways are not His ways. When we come to the end of our own efforts and humbly pray I do believe He will answer. He has a plan for eternal peace. He has a plan to heal the land.
The dream began when my grandmother gave me a sparkly star pin. She brought it back from Bethlehem when I was a teenager and every Christmas when I took it out of my jewelry box I remembered how she talked about her trip to Israel and how much it meant to her. I wanted to go too.
There are so many needs in the world. Frankly, I tend to be the over-responsible big sister type who feels the need to rescue and fix. I also grew up with a fear of not having enough. I justified my ability to pinch a penny so hard it screamed for mercy by giving my reserved squashed coins to charity -widow’s mite and all that.
A couple of years ago someone encouraged a group of us to remember dreams we had relinquished, thinking they were not practical, or were meant for people who needed them more. I realized I had not asked my good heavenly Father for things because I thought, that like my earthly father, he was on a tight budget, and that his resources were limited and had to be carefully meted out to fulfill the great commission of making disciples of all men. It felt selfish to ask Abba if he would give me a trip to Israel like the one my grandmother took. Maybe for someone else, but not for me.
But I dared to ask. And he answered.
The whole time we were in Israel for the past two weeks this song ran through my head:
Jesus, I am resting, resting
in the joy of what Thou art.
I am finding out the goodness
of Thy loving heart.
I know the word in the old hymn is “greatness” and not “goodness”, but that’s the word that kept showing up in that half-sleep time while dawn lightened the skies.
So many things seemed to make the trip look impossible -and up until two days before departure we thought we would have to cancel, but my health improved, our son-in-love came out of his coma and encouraged us to go, and people stepped in to look after things I had assumed were my responsibility alone.
Every day was a gift from a good Father. I thought that nothing could top the feeling of standing on top of Mount Carmel and realizing this was the place where God showed up for Elijah and sent the prophets of the false god, Ba’al, who demanded appeasement, running in ignominy. I thought that would be the highlight, but it just got better.
“Rest,” He said. “Sit down and let others do the running for a while. Rest and let me love you.”
One day, in a lower room below the busy streets of Jerusalem, perhaps on the very pavement where Jesus stood, where the soldiers humiliated him and put a crown of thorns on his head, I sang. I sang with tears and a heart full of gratitude,
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow.
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus ’tis now.
When we came home a couple of days ago, we immediately went to see our son-in-love, who has been on his own journey in the valley of the shadow of death. He is out of ICU, and starting to walk and rebuild his strength in a rehab hospital. The hospital staff are calling him “Miracle Man.”
God is good. So very, very good.
Whom have I in heaven but You?
And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.
My flesh and my heart fail;
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
(Psalm 73:25,26)
Praise comes naturally to children who are accustomed to hearing it.
Yesterday I saw my little granddaughter running around my almost barren garden. Her arms were in the air and her face grinned at the sky.
“Thank you! Thank you, rain!” she said, “You made the little flowers open! Thank you, rain!”
She showed me that the two tiny crocuses we had seen beside the house in the morning were indeed opening.
“Spring is coming! Spring is coming!” she said, dancing her silly happy dance (and refusing to come in out of the rain.)
The day before we had driven to a town about half an hour away. She insisted on hearing “her” song -on repeat- the whole way there and back. Her mom told me that the night before when they arrived at our house she would not get out of the car, as excited as she was to visit Nana and Boppa’s house, until the song had finished.
I asked her why she liked it so much. She said, “Cuz it’s a song to Jesus.”
As part of their bedtime ritual her parents have a time of saying “nice words” to the children, in which they bless the kids by telling them the positive things they see in them – things like kindness, gentleness, enthusiasm, patience, beauty, intelligence, helpfulness, joyfulness. I wish I had known about the benefits of blessing with nice words when my children were growing. The difference in my grandchildren is that they also know how to bless and encourage others. It melts my heart when my little grandson cuddles up and says, “Thank you for the milk, Nana. You are kind and gentle.”
A lot of times when kids want songs to be repeated on the car sound system they are hard-on-the-nerves songs. The song “Daisy” wanted was very gentle. She told me it sounded a little sad at first, but it got happier. We talked about it and she made the connection to “nice words.”
“The song sings nice words to Jesus!” she said.
It thrilled my heart to be in such a holy atmosphere as we rode quietly and were led in worship by a child, not yet four years old, singing along with Misty in the back seat.
“Lord, you have my song…..I’m so in love with you, I’m so in love with you, Jeeeesus.”
They asked Jesus, “Do you hear what these children are saying?”
“Yes,” Jesus replied. “Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? For they say, ‘You have taught children and infants to give you praise.’” (Matthew 21:16)
Over several nights I had recurring dreams about being given various objects to carry, things like brown shoes, musical notation paper, a rose etc. I was told in the dreams that I would need these things later. None of this made sense to me and I remember asking (still in a dream) what I needed them for.
The answer came, “If I tell you where I am going with all this, it will remove the element of faith.”
I knew then it was the Lord.
I think sometimes Abba doesn’t give us a detailed itinerary for the journey ahead because it is the act of taking a risk that enables Him to demonstrate His faithfulness -and really, the element of faith is all about His faithfulness and not our own ability to drum up vast amounts of confidence in a desired outcome or “happy ending.”
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (active living rhema word). Sometimes that active, living word of God is simply, “Open the door.”
Charis: Subject to Change 