Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
(Psalm 130:1-6)
‘Anah Adonai
There I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor [troubling]
to be for her a door of hope and expectation.
And she shall sing there and respond as in the days of her youth
and as at the time when she came up out of the land of Egypt.
(Hosea 2: 15 Amplified)
When God speaks about the metaphorical woman in the book of Hosea, the one who has been running to everyone but the one who can save her from a self-destructive lifestyle, he says there will come a time when she will sing to him as in the days of her youth.
The word translated “sing” in the New American Standard Bible is written as “respond” in others. The Amplified uses both terms. It is the Hebrew word ‘anah.
This same word is used 38 times in the Psalms alone, usually as a cry to God to save us from some sort of trouble –or even ourselves. ‘Anah Adonai! Hoshi a na! Hear and answer, Lord! Save us!
Sometimes, when it is translated answer, it describes God’s response:
I cried. He answered.
I called. He answered
I sought. He answered
I prayed. He answered
I pleaded. He answered.
Near the end of the book of Psalms (147: 7) one phrase directs the answering/responding/singing to God. Sing [‘anah] to the Lord with thanksgiving. (NASB)
I’ve been thinking about singing as our response to God –and about him singing to us. He also cries, calls, seeks, and pleads to us to answer him, not to rescue, but to recognize who he is, that he might be able to lavish his love on us. Is it possible that God’s call is like a prayer to those with ears to hear?
I have learned, the hard way, that sometimes the Lord didn’t answer my prayers and left me in a very uncomfortable place (called the Valley of Achor or Valley of Trouble in Hosea), not because he didn’t want to give me good things, but because he wanted me to be desperate enough to pursue him and find out who he really was. I needed to let go of the image I had of him and move toward deeper relationship. My image of him was made up of a compilation of authority figures I had known -and he was none of these.
He’s not a father who created us and then moved out, or a cruel task master, or even Santa Claus. God is not a lot of things we project onto him. God is holy, which means completely set apart, totally unique and different from anyone or anything we have ever known -but definitely worth getting to know.
I’m still learning as each new lesson and accompanying practical exam reveals more of his character.
A relationship with God can start with a cry for help, but it can move on to something much more mature.
After years of “saying my prayers” and giving him my daily laundry list of requests, I am learning prayer is more about finding out what he wants than telling him what I want.
When we pray and agree with his plans we see answers, but first we have to find out who is really is and what is on his heart. Prayer is about spending time with him, listening, studying His plans, examining them, being inspired by them and receiving a vision for the future that includes our participation.
What he desires to do is greater and so much better than anything we have ever imagined -but we need to respond to him and move toward him to be part of it. When we ask according to what is on his heart we see answers, but first we have to find out what is on his heart.
And that requires turning around from our own self-designed blue prints and responding to him. He delights in his beloved bride and responds to the things on her heart as well.
There is something about Armenian/Canadian soprano, Isabel Bayrakdarian’s voice in this video, recognizing who God is that carries my own heart’s song. Holy, holy, holy are you, Lord!
Father Holy
Son Holy
Spirit Holy
I bless you now and forever.
Reblogged from October 31, 2012.
Can you hear it?
Photo: dead tree
“In my opinion whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has planned for us. The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own. The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope. And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God!
It is plain to anyone with eyes to see that at the present time all created life groans in a sort of universal travail. And it is plain, too, that…
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God can do amazing things when his church comes together to pray in faith.
Southern Alberta is under water! 100 000 Calgarians displaced, High River is completely evacuated, and Canmore is being washed off the mountain! At work we are participating in a one year program with Alberta Health Services called In Roads which looks at addiction. This week we looked at resiliency which seems timely as Alberta has become, as in all disasters, a case study of this. The way people pull together is amazing and fascinating to watch. Two people who can’t stand each other now stand side by side to protect and save others. In this dark and broken world there are glimpses of light.
In times like this people tend to post prayers for the disaster to stop or that prayer is a useless waste of time. Prayer is more than a petition for what we want, and it is more than something meaningless. Yes, we must pray for…
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Sometimes standing up means standing out.
Humility is not the same thing as shyness.
Humility is knowing who you are and who you are becoming.
The humble have no need to seek attention because they know God loves them
and that’s enough;
for the same reason they have no need to hide.
I hear the people calling, “We want more of you, God!”
I hear God whispering, “I want more of you, people.”
Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults.
Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins;
Let them not rule over me..
(Psalm 119:12,13a)
Presumptuous sin: Calling on God to fulfill our plans instead of our being willing to lay down all we have to fulfill His.
I love traveling. Since I have been living out of a suitcase most of the time for the past few months, that’s probably a good thing. Where some people find routine and familiarity most conducive to creativity, I find it stifling. My husband will tell you that I seldom come back the same way I went. I know that good habits free us from the tyranny of having to waste brain-time on detail, and I really am trying to put my keys, shoes and purse in the same place every time, but for me creative ideas first flutter by in my peripheral vision. If I don’t turn my eyes from routine, I could miss them.
Still and all, having said that, there is something about the familiarity of home that is freeing as well. Where else can you sing with full voice in the shower or sit until noon in a ratty bathrobe? There is a certain comfort in being able to step over a newspaper on the floor for three days without worrying about what anybody thinks. Even the job list on the fridge, the one that lists things that never bore a check mark and won’t now because now the season has changed, posts a sort of poetic pleasure.
Clean the fireplace,
Mend grey sweater,
Sand the sidewalk,
Buy new gloves
Tonight, driving home after a picnic with dear folk I haven’t seen in months, the clouds that broke out in sporadic showers all around us finally snagged on the Rockies on their way east. The mountains are beautiful even when they are playing hide-and-seek in the clouds, because I know what they look like. These are my mountains. This is my home.
For what we proclaim is not ourselves,
but Jesus Christ as Lord,
with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,”
has shone in our hearts
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
(2 Corinthians 4:5,6)
I stood outside the door of our son-in-love’s room and listened to the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard yesterday.
“Look at me, Daddy! Look at me!”
“I love you, Daddy!”
“Tickle me again, Daddy!”
Then laughter and fake groaning and the sounds of a daddy and his little ones wrestling.
Later I watched as all three little ones cuddled their daddy and watched a movie. The baby was smiling in his lap, the two-year old flopped over daddy’s shoulders and the four-year old leaned her blonde head on his chest and asked her hundreds of why questions.
I watched mommy and daddy and the three little ones share a dinner of steak and chocolate -except for baby, of course.
I sat and talked with “John” about the journey we have been through since March 23. When I told him the stories of how people who had never prayed much were woken in the night with a burden to pray, of how people who had never seen God heal were following every report on Facebook, of how some were hearing the voice of God for the first time, of how a student’s mother told my daughter-in-law that she was receiving prayer updates from her mother in Vegreville who was receiving them from someone up there who knew the mother-in-law of this guy, of how friends stood by his bed and filled the waiting room day and night , of how his mother and I took turns holding each other up, of how his wonderful, quiet father was a bulwark of faith who said in his delightful German accent, “We will have no negative words here. We will only speak truth,”, of how his father-in-law wept as he cried out to God, of how his wife gave thanks in the middle of the worst days of her life and was a beacon of hope to everyone else herself, of how hospital staff from other wards found excuses to come by ICU to see what was happening, of how my friend told me she had renewed faith to pray for her own sons, of how the church is waking to come together, to pray together for healing of this land….
He cried. He cried tears of sorrow for what his family and friends endured and of joy for the kindness of strangers and for what God has done.
He said, “He didn’t have to do it. I could have died, and I would have been okay to go to be with him, but God healed me. He has given more years to be with my wife and my children. I have always loved Jesus, but now there is something much deeper.”
“Do you know how much of your effort, how many of your outstanding natural talents and abilities God used to do this thing?” I asked him. “Nothing! None. Not a thing. Boy, you were the most helpless a man could be. You couldn’t even breathe on your own. You had no blood pressure without a constant drip of medication. You had no kidney function without a big machine to clean your blood. You couldn’t move without a nurse doing it for you. You couldn’t say one charming, intelligent thing. You couldn’t move a single athletic muscle. You even needed other people to give up their own blood to replace yours. And let me tell you, the handsome thing wasn’t working for you much in those days either -and when you finally opened your eyes they weren’t even going the same direction. God used other people in the process, but none of this came about by a single effort of yours. Not one.”
He cried some more. “There is something much, much deeper about God’s love that I know now that I just can’t explain,” he said softly.
Then we received a text message from someone who had been speaking to the physician who headed the large skilled team of specialists who treated “John.”
“You know it’s only by a miracle that guy survived,” he told him candidly. Another physician dropped the f bomb and said, “That guy should be dead.”
We know.
So this is love. This is what a miracle feels like. He still has rehab work to do, but in the meantime, we laugh, we cry, we praise God. Mommy and Daddy and the kids cuddle together and we pass the popcorn while we watch a movie.
The words of an old song taken from Isaiah come to me as I write this in the early morning hours before the baby wakes up:
He has surely borne our sorrow
He has taken the sin debt away
He was bruised for our iniquities
And by His stripes we are healed today.
Love is louder.
Related post:
https://charispsallo.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/love-is-louder/
Wakey, wakey!
I saw these guys on my walk in the woods yesterday.
Crocus flowers, or pasque flowers as they are sometimes called, fascinate me. As forerunners they are the first to demonstrate the change in season by the prophetic act of blooming before any of the other wild flowers in the Rockies.
I read this recently: Hope is hearing the music of the future; faith is being able to dance to it today.
The crocus reveals, as it folds back its furry purple robes, a heart of gold. It’s mere presence between patches of dust-weary snow in the mountain meadows sings to me songs of stepping into destiny by faith.
Come out of your caves! Don’t let your past define who you are today!
Open to the light! Let it dispel all the dark fear that keeps you from letting anyone see your heart! You are beautiful!
Wakey! Wakey! Even Solomon…
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Charis: Subject to Change 