Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your flesh
and refreshment to your bones.
(Proverbs 3:5-8)
She sang to us. She really did.
That first day, as we settled into our new desks, Miss Cheney sang “Getting to Know You.” The other grade four kids snickered, and I probably went along, but this teacher fascinated me. That was the day I met the woman who taught me the survival skills I would need in a confusing world where any display of emotion was castigated as an annoying weakness at best or punishable disloyalty at worst.
She was a little over the top, our Miss Cheney. She wore pretty flower-pink lipstick and wide swinging skirts and colourful scarves over soft low-cut sweaters that managed to just graze our strict principal’s nerves. She taught us arithmetic with music, poetry with music and gym with music.
I was the kind of kid who tended to disappear in a classroom. My parents once went to a parent/teacher interview with a teacher who insisted I wasn’t in his class. I was. My main coping skill up to that point was knowing how not to make an impression. But Miss Cheney noticed.
She noticed I was sad. She noticed I could sing. She never asked me to tell her why I was sad. Perhaps she knew I couldn’t. Instead she took me aside and explained to me that when it wasn’t safe to cry or tell people how I felt because they would be angry or disappointed, I could take my sadness and put it in a song and people would say it was beautiful.
She taught me “Come Unto Him” from the Messiah. She taught me “I Wonder As I Wander” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” She taught me “Whispering Hope.”
People said it was beautiful. Then they cried. I no longer needed to.
I learned music was a safe place for sorrow, for joy, for anger — for all the tumultuous emotions that later pummeled me in adolescence.
I learned music was a safe way to express my prayers when I had no words.
Someone mentioned recently that when people quote the famous verse in Romans 8, “All things work together for good…,” it is usually quoted without the previous verses.
“Go back and check them out,” they said, “It may change how you understand that verse.”
This is The Message paraphrase by Eugene Peterson:
“All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” (Romans 8:22-28)
I know deep in my heart there is more than this. Not all communication with Abba Father needs to be in words. (Neither English nor any other spoken tongues are his first language.) When we groan in pain beyond words he intercedes, translating our sighs into even deeper expressions of longing. We work together for good. Together we pray for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
This is what Miss Cheney was trying to tell me, and the day when I could sing Rachmaninoff’s wordless Vocalise, lost in prayer, I knew she had been a messenger of grace in my life
God bless you, dear Miss Cheney, wherever you are.
I no longer have the voice I once had, (I now use art and photography to try to say what I cannot) but this song still expresses the unexpressable in my heart. In this recording Anna Moffo sings the Rachmaninoff Vocalise No. 14.
The sun sets early in the winter in this country. I fondly recall summer evenings when we can safely go out for a hike after the supper dishes are done. Now we trudge home before the table is set.
Too soon! Too soon! There is still work to be done, and fun to be had!
But the sky says it’s time to go home. I hear my Lord’s voice calling, “Come to me , all you who have been working hard and carrying loads too heavy for you. Come to me and I will give you rest. Walk in partnership with me and I will carry the bulk of it. I will make the task easy and your burden light.”
This is a season of rest. I may not choose the timing, but there is much to be learned in rest.
Heading home now.
For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel,
“In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”
(Isaiah 30:15)
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.”
Sing to the Lord, all you godly ones!
Praise his holy name.
For his anger lasts only a moment,
but his favor lasts a lifetime!
Weeping may last through the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
(Psalm 30:4,5)
Unto the hills around do I lift up
my longing eyes:
oh whence for me shall my salvation come,
from whence arise?
From God the Lord doth come my certain aid,
from God the Lord who heaven and earth hath made.
-Charles Purday
(Rhyming poetry is not my usual style, but my thoughts came out in rhyme this time, so here you go.)
Breakout
There are no bars, but I am a prisoner,
held by the fear that loving brings pain,
afraid to break free from the guards of my feelings,
afraid to love others, afraid to attain.
Lord, I want to love them the way that you love me.
Teach me to care the same way that you do.
Open my soul to the gift of sweet sorrow,
that I might love in a way that is true.
I want to know You and Your risen power-
to know what’s it like to be held in Your heart,
to truly know love in the depths of my being
to love them with Your love –to know how to start.
Break my heart free from the prison of comfort.
Help me to press on to Your upward call,
giving up all that lies back there behind me.
Teach me to love, Lord, for You can do all.
A great post written to prisoners to be found here. (Language warning)
http://disciplegideon.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/waking-up-from-the-nightmare/trackback/
God is good.
God is love.
I am loveable.
Sometimes I feel like the Lord throws pebbles at my window to catch my attention. When I respond he whispers, “Come! I have something to show you!”
Sometimes I answer, “But I have work to do –blank forms, sticky floors, unmailed parcels.”
“Come!” he says.
The attention grabber this time was freshly fallen snow on mountain ash berries outside my window. I grabbed my camera and went out to look. Then I followed the light and the mountain ash trees down the block to the creek. An hour later I was back at my desk with rosy cheeks and renewed joy in the goodness of Daddy God. He knows I love colour and the red berries covered with delicate pure white snow were like a sign of his goodness to me.
It is his goodness, his kindness, that makes me want to change.
Like a lot of people, I grew up with a God I was afraid of. I know I’m not the only one who picked up that message or the phrase the TV character, Maude, used, “God is gonna get you for that,” would not have connected with so many people.
In my culture the best thing that could happen to a person was to be “used” by God. That was an entrenched lie that took some considerable spiritual explosives to dislodge. Well, I had been “used” by humans and that was not something I looked forward to happening again, thank you very much. I understand now that the best thing that can happen is to grasp the solid bedrock granite concept that I am loved by God. Only then can I risk change.
One days, years ago, I called the children to supper. Two adorable little kids had recently joined our family as foster children. They did not come when I called. I found them hiding in the basement.
“Why didn’t you come when I called?” I asked.
The little girl said, “You put the bottle on the table.”
“What bottle?”
“That one!” she answered, pointing to a bottle of soy sauce I bought in Chinatown.
“You don’t like soy sauce?”
“When Grandpa puts a bottle like that on the table bad things happen!”
She covered her eyes and cried. That’s when I realized the bottle had the same size and shape as a whiskey bottle.
At first I made the mistake of trying to correct kids who experienced hurtful things the same way as we disciplined our own children. It didn’t work because they didn’t understand that they were loved. They didn’t know that if I sent them to their rooms that they wouldn’t be locked in there for days without food. They didn’t know what safe meant.
I picked up one of our little foster guys to take him out of a public place because he was disturbing others who wanted to enjoy the show. When I reached the aisle he grabbed the last seat and hollered, “Don’t beat me!!!” (I was probably reported.) I had never beaten him nor did I have any intention of ever beating him, but he didn’t know that.
God forgive me, but my prayers for years were don’t-beat-me prayers. It must have broken his heart.
I “asked Jesus into my heart” during the Cuban missile crisis in the 60’s because I was afraid of going to hell if a nuclear bomb fell near our house, or of being “left behind” if all the people with an in with God got zapped off the planet. I didn’t need anyone to tell me how disappointing I was, how far short of the mark I fell. I certainly didn’t need a preacher telling me week after week that I needed to repent and change my ways. I needed someone to tell me how –or rather Who.
Like our foster children I needed to learn that God was good, that he would provide my needs just because he was good. I did not understand that I didn’t need to earn nurturing care by making myself useful in the church, and thus indispensable. Yes, sometimes we had to set down firm boundaries for the kids at the start for the sake of safety (You may not stab your sister, nor yourself with a fork. You may not play on the road. We respect gravity here, and like gravity the natural consequence of defiance is consistent.) Eventually the children learned to trust that we had their interest at heart. Usually. The analogy breaks down when you are talking about sleep-deprived, nerve-jangled, insecure parents who also need to change, but most of the time we spent nights rocking them and days feeding and clothing and nursing them back to health –and playing.
So often people hear the message of Jesus Christ as “Change –or God will get you for that!” There are those who worry that if we speak of the good news, if his goodness is poured out in healing and encounters with a loving Daddy God who says it’s ok to leave work behind and go play in the snow, that we are offering a “greasy grace” that lets folks get away with unacceptable behaviour. “You’re just asking them if they want to come meet the One who just met their need. Where’s the repentance? Where’s the obedience?” they say.
Well, a lifetime of people telling me how disappointed God was with my behaviour led to my responding to correction with the same attitude I saw in a child who said, “I can’t do anything right! You think I’m just a pile of poo! I hate you! You’re not my mother and you can’t tell me what to do!” Like her, I went off and hid myself in depression and wallowed in my pooey-ness. It was the unexpected kindness of God that demonstrated he was not the same god I grew up with. He held out his hand to me.
Change happens when we see ourselves as God sees us –loveable and worthy of his care. When we trust that fact that he is, indeed, loving and has our interest at heart we can see his discipline as disciple-making, as empowering us to become who we are meant to be. His judgment is a daily assessment of what is progressing well and what needs to be worked on next. It is not meant to be vengeful punishment and condemnation.
God is good. Very good.
Charis: Subject to Change 