There is always, always something to be thankful for.
This weekend is the time Canadians make an effort to be thankful together.
When we go beyond mutual disgruntlements, push past disappointment, drown out the voice of despair with the song of hope – then we find the gold.
It’s right there. You’re surrounded by it. You’re soaking in it. Can you see it?
Thank You.
Thank You, Lord.
Thank You.
You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
(Isaiah 55:12 NIV)
“The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.”
— Oswald Chambers
“Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he is thinking.”
— Oswald Chambers
I’ve met lovely, honest people who tell me that they wish they could believe in a loving God of grace, but it is a struggle for them. I’ve also met people who believe in God but are not sure that Jesus Christ is the only way to make contact with him. I’ve met people who believe that Jesus is real and He was willing to lay down his life for them, but they don’t want to get close to an angry Father God. Others think God is great but they have trouble with the whole history of “Christian” behaviour thing.
Others believe in Christ and do all the expected life-style things, but are skeptical that he talks to people today or heals them or miraculously intervenes in their lives because, after 40 years of doing church, they have never seen it.
Some of us journey on this road doing the best we can with the doubts that make us feel too small for the task. When we read expressions like “man or woman of God” or “giants of the faith” we know that it is not referring to us.
Sometimes it’s a matter of needing our hearts healed or enlarged until we can receive. A child whose birth dad left on her second birthday is going to find it hard to believe that a heavenly father promises to stay involved in her life. A boy whose parents were impossible to please will likewise assume that God is angry and disappointed in him. A person who was betrayed by a so-called Christian, especially an older brother, or worse a clergyman, will wonder where this so-called loving self-sacrificing Jesus disappeared to when the going got rough, and if this a set-up to be used again. A person who has been lied to will not buy every story they are told, and if believing every ancient account of events in the Bible is a requirement for a relationship with God they have a large fence to climb.
Here’s the thing. Walking by faith does not require truckloads of faith. Faith is exercised; that’s how it grows. It starts with baby steps. As we take risks and find that God is not like authority figures who berated, beguiled and betrayed, we can take another step. When we give up trying to appease an angry God, and he doesn’t smite us, we take another step. When we see an important lesson in one of Jesus’ stories we take another step. When we dare to pray to him to find lost car keys and have a picture in our minds of them lying under a shrub by the back door, and there they are, we take another step. When we trust another person on this road and are nakedly open about our own scarred story of pain and they treat it like a precious privilege to be protected, we take another step. We are healed inside bit by bit and enlarge our capacity to think and feel differently.
Paul, the guy who distrusted the stories about this Jesus of Nazareth character so much that he had his followers dragged off to prison, later wrote that his prayer was that people, who were like he once was and who have huge doubts, would be strengthened with Jesus’ power in their inner being enough to have the capacity to be able to start to be able to comprehend his love. Our wounds have left holes in our hearts that love just pours through. We all need him to move first. So he did.
Jesus understands and is relentlessly kind. He is not shocked by our doubts, and understands the barriers religious people have left in the way in attempts to protect themselves from their own doubts.
If all you have is one tiny little speck of faith it’s all you need to start this journey. Eventually it will move mountains.
I can’t hear normally right now. A nasty cold has tormented my sinuses for almost a month and has now taken up residence in my ears. For several days my left ear has not been giving my brain the usual messages. Voices on the phone sound like they are coming through a kazoo on the other side of a heavy door. I can’t hear the sound of my feet on the trail, or the wind in the trees. At the same time normal noises are painfully loud. I avoid nerve-jarring distorted noise at the level of normal conversation, and run from loud sounds that feel like a slap to the ears, yet I strain to hear the quiet things, like the little ping that tells me I have a message on my cell phone. I feel like I am shut up inside my own head (where the sound of chewing my breakfast crunchies is like giant aliens devouring some hapless metropolis in a sci-fi flick.)
What an odd and uncomfortable feeling – especially for someone whose lifestyle has focused on hearing the fine nuances of music for so many years. It’s taking its sweet time clearing up, this wretched infection, but in the meantime maybe there is something to be learned (or un-learned) even in this.
I thought about Elijah’s still small voice experience again today. After a tremendous victory on Mount Carmel in which the Lord rained down fire, and sent the rains at his request, he ran from the ugly threatening voice of the King’s wife. He ran all the way back to the place where Moses has his trumpet blast and fire on the mountain experience.
There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”
And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.”
And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire the sound of a low whisper [or a sound, a thin silence]
And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.(1 Kings 19, 11 -13 ESV)
I think it was straining to hear a soft voice today that reminded me of the story. When I looked up the Hebrew words describing this “still, small voice” I found it was stiller and smaller than I thought. It was still like a calm sea after a storm. It was small like a particle of dust, less than a hair’s breadth, barely perceptible — except to a prophet who recognized it.
David wrote that the voice of the Lord thunders. Sometimes we can hear Him loud and clear. Moses and the children of Israel certainly did, and it scared most of them half to death. But sometimes his voice can only be heard in thin silence.
In thin silence there are no other sounds competing for attention. No other voices playing anything-you-can-preach-I-can-preach-louder – and which then add electronic amplification.
In thin silence we are forced to lean in closer, to wait for a particle of sound, the Voice that speaks in stillness.
“God is Light.” “God is Love.” That which professes to be light yet lacks love, is not of God; while that which calls itself love, but is not according to light is equally not of God.
– J. Charleton Steen
The place where my family vacationed when I was a child is the place where I now live. I remember being amazed by the mountains and tall fir and pine tress with their wonderful scent, but I had seen those before. This is the first place where I remember seeing a weeping willow tree. They don’t grow on the prairies in Canada.
One hot July day, many years ago, while Mom fried potatoes and bacon on the little green Coleman camp stove, and Dad set up the tent, I cooled my feet in the brook that runs through the campground in the center of town. I watched the breeze play with the long trailing branches of the willow trees. They dripped down to the earth like luxuriant overflowing green fountains. On a hot day their shade was satisfying to my soul. I remember declaring out loud, “Someday I am going to live here.”
And now I do.
And I still love weeping willow trees. They remind me of the goodness of God.
For I will pour water on him who is thirsty,
And floods on the dry ground;
I will pour My Spirit on your descendants,
And My blessing on your offspring;
They will spring up among the grass
Like willows by the watercourses.
(Isaiah 44:3,4)
Lord, I will lift my eyes to the hills
Knowing my help is coming from You
Your peace You give me in time of the storm
You are the source of my strength
You are the strength of my life
I lift my hands in total praise to You
You are the source of my strength
You are the strength of my life
I lift my hands in total praise to You
Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen
Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen
-Richard Smallwood
You never know what lies around the bend.
James, the guy who came to believe that Jesus, his older brother, was God (and brothers have ample opportunity to observe character) wrote this: Just a moment, now, you who say, “We are going to such-and-such a city today or tomorrow. We shall stay there a year doing business and make a profit”! How do you know what will happen even tomorrow? What, after all, is your life? It is like a puff of smoke visible for a little while and then dissolving into thin air. Your remarks should be prefaced with, “If it is the Lord’s will, we shall be alive and will do so-and-so.”
We just learned that our friend, who has spent months preparing for a move to Western Africa and was about to depart in a few days, died suddenly during minor surgery. We are stunned, but trusting God to turn even this situation into something better than we hoped.
Here’s the thing: Trust is built on character. Proven character.
Come election time (which seems to be perpetual in some places) a great deal of money is thrown around trying to convince the public that this person they have never met is of exemplary character and actually cares deeply about your personal needs, Mrs. What-did you-say-your-name-was? We’ve all seen that game played long enough to know trust may be bought temporarily, but the truth will out. We’ve seen false promotion, but we’ve seen slander and spins and false accusations of opponents as well.
Jesus Christ was falsely accused and executed on the basis of those kind of accusations. Religious presumption has always said, “If you are really God and really in charge you will show your love in a way I would do it. If I were God people could indulge their cravings and fight to be on top without consequence to others or the environment. If I were the one who was all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful I would give unlimited freedom and intervene miraculously to save people from the repercussions of listening to the father of lies if only to save my own reputation. If you are love, this is how you will show it.”
For many people abused by religious presumption on God’s grace (which ironically morphs into a legalistic portrayal of a vengeful God without grace) trust is difficult. It is difficult because they do not know him or his character because they have only heard about him from people with agendas. They have never met him personally.
Our friend’s wife has. In the midst of grief and turmoil and upset plans she can still say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And our friend? To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. For a man who loved the Lord with his whole heart what could possibly be better?
I keep remembering the night when the Lord spoke kindly to me in a dream and said, “Those who are afraid to pray ‘Thy will be done’ do not fully comprehend my love.”
Was our friend a casualty of the clash between two kingdoms or was this Gods’ timing for his life? I don’t know. All I know is God is God and I am not. But he has proven his loving character to me over and over through Jesus Christ who loved me so much he said he’d rather die than live without me –and so he did. And then he conquered death so that we could be together forever. I trust that kind of love.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life,
neither angels nor demons,
neither the present nor the future,
nor any powers,
neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8:34-39)
Charis: Subject to Change 