Tag: bible

Alongside to Comfort

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Just folks, Music, Photography9 Comments

comfort girls bw IMG_4357

 

Can I be honest? This has not been an easy year.

I sat down this week to write a simple blog entry meant to comfort and encourage others. Twelve hours later I had pages of notes, a list of bigger questions and the certainty I didn’t know what I was talking about. In my spirit, yes, but deep down in my soul where mind, will, and emotions are squabbling with each other? Not really. I understand what the psalmist meant when he wrote “Unite my heart to fear your name.”

I’m the one who has needed comfort and encouragement lately. If I stop to look at the measurable, quantifiable, reproducible, evidence-based facts as recorded by physical senses I begin to panic. It wouldn’t take much of a straw to bring me to child-like tears today.

But as usual, if I stop catastrophizing long enough to listen and acknowledge the greater reality of Spirit and Truth, I know the Holy Spirit is whispering comfort in my ear.

He sends songs in the night.

For two nights this week two lines from different songs have been playing on repeat in my dreams. The first line is from an old 70’s song, Feel the Love, by Lovesong:

Feel the love the Son of God can bring/ By believing… by receiving Him./ Feel the love.

The second is from It’s Going to Be All Right by Sara Groves:

I have not come here to offer you clichés.

He sends friends who have walked this road before.

Wonderful friends share their failures and victories and questions with me. Some have overcome cancer more than once. Some have been through natural disasters and reconstruction. Some have known the pain of feeling like they don’t fit in anywhere. Some have known the pain of betrayal or promises yet unfulfilled. All have known the sorrow of disappointment with oneself. Some are still in the middle of giant unsettled messes right now, and yet they take time to share the comfort they have known.

He sends family and neighbours.

Some traveled miles on horrid winter roads to bring cheer and a vegetable juicer. Some phone late at night when they know I will still be up to check on me or invite me for coffee. Some set the little grandkids up on the cell phone so I can share in their excitement over new dolls and video games and silly faces. The older grandkids text to talk about music and school projects and hopes and dreams or to share photos. My adopted family help by offering coolers when the fridge quits working, jugs of water when the pipes freeze, tools when the digital piano goes silent, patient expertise when the computer freezes, wood for the fireplace, shovels when the car gets stuck and the sidewalks disappear in the snow, and muscles and engineering skills when the retaining wall crashes on the driveway.

He sends podcasts and random Facebook posts. 

Oh, how I appreciate the banquet of good teaching and music shared by people who make an effort to reach out beyond the four walls of their gatherings or dining rooms or vans. I love encouraging posts by sincere blogging and Facebook and Twitter friends. I love reading their insights, visions, and dreams  — and even jokes. Especially the jokes.

Most of all he sends a more sure word recorded in the Bible.

I read these words given through Paul who was honest about the hardships of his journey. It was not an easy road for him.

All praises belong to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he is the Father of tender mercy and the God of endless comfort. 

He always comes alongside us to comfort us in every suffering so that we can come alongside those who are in any painful trial. We can bring them this same comfort that God has poured out upon us.

And just as we experience the abundance of Christ’s own sufferings, even more of God’s comfort will cascade upon us through our union with Christ.

If troubles weigh us down, that just means that we will receive even more comfort to pass on to you for your deliverance! For the comfort pouring into us empowers us to bring comfort to you. And with this comfort upholding you, you can endure victoriously the same suffering that we experience.

Now our hope for you is unshakable, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings you will also share in God’s comforting strength.

(2 Corinthians 1:3-7 The Passion Translation)

 

If I’m not posting a lot lately it’s because I’m resting and soaking up comfort I need right now.

I’ll share with you later. I will get there.

Talk to you soon.

 

I Am Telling You the Truth!

On By Charis PsalloIn Man made, Photography, Uncategorized, Winter5 Comments

waldron-ranch-road-winter-rockies-img_6720

I’m home now, resting after major surgery in another city. I can’t bend over to pick up anything I’ve dropped or lift anything heavier than a jug of milk for the next few weeks. Sitting for more than the length of a quick meal is still uncomfortable, but couch time with a pile of good books and a remote in hand is actually a guilty pleasure – with a built-in excuse.

It’s raining. The streets are glare ice and our home and garden are still under several feet of saturated snow after the heaviest snowfall in decades. I don’t plan to go anywhere and thus far the house remains mostly dry inside.The storm of the last week is over. My husband is back at work and there is time to think.snow-day-cars-img_6641

Before we left, on the one day the roads were in good condition before the second storm hit, someone asked the question, “In your reading of Jesus’ words lately what stands out the most?”

I recently watched the film “The Gospel of John” which uses the scripture as the entire dialogue of the screenplay. What I heard Jesus say over and over again was this: I’m telling you the truth. In the olde King James version I grew up with he said, “Verily, verily.” In the original language of the Bible he said “Amen, Amen…” When amen was said at the end of a statement it meant “I agree.” When Amen prefaced a statement it meant, “I’m about to say something important.” When a word was repeated it meant “I am about to say something truly important. I’m serious here, folks.”

In the gospel of John alone Jesus says amen amen before a statement at least twenty times. I asked myself why.

This week I discovered what it is like not to be taken seriously about an issue that was important to me. Two days after being released from the hospital after major abdominal surgery I suddenly doubled over in severe pain. I’ve had this kind of pain before. It felt like I was passing a kidney stone. I was staying in a small town about an hour out of the city resting up for the next part of the trip home. I slowly crawled up the stairs on hands and knees and asked to be driven to the hospital emergency room since our host could get me there faster than an ambulance.

Kidney stones hurt. When your belly has just been cut open, things moved and removed, and then sewn back up, kidney stones really, really hurt. The power words I have been saving up for moments of high drama seemed inadequate. And “Verily, verily, I hurteth,” was not going to cut it.

I told my driver to move her car out of the ambulance bay to a parking spot because I thought I would be okay walking to the triage desk myself.

Wrong. I clung to a wall trying not to pass out from pain. The lady behind the desk ignored me. Another patient in the waiting room ran and brought a wheelchair, but then I just sat there in the middle of the hallway unable to propel myself. Eventually my driver came back and pushed me up to the glass door in front of the triage desk. After waiting a period of time, which probably felt longer than it actually was, a person took my information.

“On a scale of one to ten with ten being the worst pain you…

“Ten!!!” I gasped.

“Take this paper to the desk [way over there] with your health insurance card, fill out the admissions form, and have a seat in the waiting room. We’ll call you,” she said.

I had just come from one of the finest surgical centers in the country. I had a team of nurses and technicians who cared for me around the clock, helped me breathe, helped me sit up, put on my slippers and helped me go to the bathroom. They even flushed for me. Now I sat in a hard plastic chair, squirming, shaking and sweating, wondering if lying on the floor would be a better option. They didn’t call me for nearly two hours. (Thank God prayer was more efficient and the pain level had lowered by then.)

They didn’t believe me.

When drug addicts become known at the larger city hospitals they start hitting the smaller outlying health services seeking relief from withdrawal. The people at this hospital didn’t know me. Perhaps they thought I was drug-seeking. They had seen it before. Perhaps they didn’t believe me because they didn’t know me or my character.

It wasn’t until late in the evening, when the pain subsided and after my family helped me back into bed at home, that the emergency room doctor called and said the x-rays proved I was telling the truth. That’s when he asked if I needed pain medication.

Now my news was not good news. Unlike Jesus I was not there for anyone’s benefit but my own. But in that experience I felt what it was like not to be believed despite the best evidence I could produce.

Today I watched the film again. In this part (midway through this scene) Jesus tells them who he is. He reminds them of the witness of John the Baptist.

They do not believe him.

They shrug as if saying, “Yeah. We’ve seen people with selfish motives before. We’ve heard lies before. We’ve been deceived and disappointed before.”

Jesus says over and over “I am telling you the truth!” Then he says something which cuts to the heart of their disbelief.

“I’m telling you the truth! I can only do what my Father tells me. You don’t know me because you don’t know my Father!”

These were the religious experts, the ones who told everyone else who God was and what he wanted. What a politically incorrect, offensive statement in that place, at the heart of religious government!

cards-img_6814I have a drawer full of greeting cards ready to send in polite acknowledgement of special occasions. People also send them to me. Some are carefully chosen after reading dozens in the store display, but sometimes they just come from a box bought at the dollar store because you need to stick a card (that a kid will never read) on a birthday gift. Sometimes I read the gospels and skim over the verily, verily passages like I am reading a stack of birthday or get well cards full of sentiments written by card designers who don’t have a clue who I am. Thank you. That’s nice, Jesus.

But do I really hear him? He looks me in the face and asserts with a strong tone:

I am telling you the truth,” Jesus replied. “Before Abraham was born, ‘I Am’.”

I am telling you the truth: those who hear my words and believe in him who sent me have eternal life. They will not be judged, but have already passed from death to life.

I am telling you the truth: I am the gate for the sheep. All others who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Those who come in by me will be saved; they will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only in order to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come in order that you might have life—life in all its fullness.

I am telling you the truth: those who believe in me will do what I do—yes, they will do even greater things, because I am going to the Father.

I am telling you the truth: the Father will give you whatever you ask of him in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your happiness may be complete.

Do we truly believe Jesus is who he says he is? Do we treat his statements like nice sayings in a greeting card? Do we truly believe he is telling the truth?

There is More to the Song Than Lyrics

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Flowers7 Comments

Okanagan roses impasto_daguerrotype

Sometimes my young friends like to post snippets of lyrics to songs in the status box on Facebook. My first reaction is often, “Are you OK, honey?” Then I figure it out – a song has spoken to their heart.

But it has not spoken to mine, and out of context it sounds, well, a little weird. Since I don’t know the song and have no emotional connection to it, the words are often just an interesting record of something that means something to somebody else. Thanks for sharing.

Photos can be like that too. I have my grandmother’s photos here, black and white records of her unnamed friends standing in front of grey rose bushes long since scattered in the wind. I can appreciate that they had deeper meaning to her than they do to me, and I suppose I kept them around out of respect for the things that were important to her, but now I’m paring them down and storing the more interesting ones in waterproof boxes.

For many years I was surrounded by people who told me about the wonderful things God has said. The Bible records them. I read them for myself. But for many years when someone quoted a verse of scripture it felt like reading lyrics to somebody elses favourite song.

Then I heard the Singer.  I heard the Song.

The difference between studying the Bible and hearing the Voice of the Lord for oneself is like the difference between reading the lyrics and hearing the song.

John, the disciple who rested his head on Jesus’ chest, understood. Jesus came, not as more lyrics, but as the song. He told the religious people who studied the puzzling snippets of lyrics they had, that they were about Him, and that there was more to a song than written words. But they had to let go of their “expertise” to hear -and for many that was troubling.

There is more, so much more, to this relationship with God. The difference between reading about the King of the Universe and going for a walk with him is like the difference between looking at photo of the memory of grey roses and actually touching and smelling colourful living roses.

John understood the lyrics when he heard the Voice sing the song:

Before time itself was measured, the Voice was speaking.

    The Voice was and is God.
 This celestial Word remained ever present with the Creator;
     His speech shaped the entire cosmos.
Immersed in the practice of creating,
    all things that exist were birthed in Him.
 His breath filled all things
    with a living, breathing light—
 A light that thrives in the depths of darkness,
    blazes through murky bottoms.
It cannot and will not be quenched.

(The good news of John, chapter one, The Voice)

The Bible is a divinely inspired record of wonderful lyrics. But lyrics alone are not the Song our hearts long to hear. What is He singing over you?

 

Okanagan roses impasto_bak ch

Colla voce. Follow the Voice.

Punching through

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Uncategorized, Water3 Comments

Photo: the tunnel

(click for larger version)

Punching through

I’ve done a lot of things I am not qualified to do –at least not on paper. People who live in isolated parts of this vast country are less concerned with how many hoops you have jumped through to obtain a stamp of approval from institutions with stamps of approval from other institutions, than they are with whether you are available, willing to step into a gap, and know something they don’t, or are at least willing to learn.

I heard a story of some highly-paid expert consultant-types, some of them engineers, who were trapped in a burning building. While they waited for outside response to frantic cell-phone calls it was the cleaning guy with an intimate knowledge of the building and his collection of mop and broom handles who punched through the wall and led them to safety. He was instantly promoted to leader.

An expert is anyone with access to pertinent knowledge and the right tools –and in an emergency the “proper” gender, educational accomplishments, political affiliations, physical fitness and impressive resumes can be like cell phones in an area without service.

Someone from another part of the world was trying to convince me to drive to meetings on a weekly basis in Vancouver. She had looked at a map and assumed we were close. Well, by freeway-traversed flatland standards, yes, perhaps, but darling, there are a few mountains in the way here. It takes a while to go around them (like twelve hours if there is no snow or avalanches or construction delays). I sometimes wonder how long it took First Nations peoples to discover the passes on foot.

I was driving home from Alberta recently, hurtling down the highway at a 100 clicks, toward what looked like a solid wall of rock. Logic said there’s a road here, so it’s got to go through somewhere, but I wonder if I had been alone on foot before the road was built if I would have succumbed to fear and despair. It would have looked overwhelming.

Trust doesn’t come easily to me. Fear is always hiding behind a bush or a rock ready to sneak up and tell me I am not competent to handle this situation, that there are too many unknowns, too many factors I can’t control, that I’ve failed before and will probably fail again, that I am not qualified. Fear is such a nag. Sometimes I want to give in just so it will shut up.

I read something interesting lately. God agrees. I am not qualified.

I am not qualified to listen to that voice. I no longer work for that boss. He’s a liar and a cheat and a thief set on destroying the people my heavenly Fathers loves (and then blaming Him for it) and definitely not trustworthy.

This is what God says, “I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the Lord, our Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, and you fear continually all the day because of the wrath of the oppressor, when he sets himself to destroy?” (Isaiah 51:12)

It’s like he is saying to me, “Who do you think you are that you can ignore what I just told you, to go off and listen to the guy who has publicly stated it is his goal to pull down everything I created? Do you not think I will back you up with all my resources if I have asked you to do something? No, you are not qualified to do this without my help, don’t even try, but if I didn’t think you were the person for the job I would have asked somebody else. Now quit taking your instructions from the wrong side.”

I am not an expert, but I have access to the source of all knowledge and wisdom and He has given me tools, simple though they may appear. As I go about my humble chores I gain experience that allows me to be available and step into the gap and get the job done when necessary.

I’ve been through this valley before. I know where there is a hole in the massive stone wall. I can say with confidence to you, than when his beloved children face impossible opposition, that God provides a way where it looks like there is no way.

Behold, I am doing a new thing;

    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

     and rivers in the desert.

(Isaiah 43:19)

God is good.

Mom’s treasure

On By Charis PsalloIn Neither animal nor vegetable6 Comments

I grieved my mother’s death ten years before she died. Like a lot of nurses her body gave out under the physical strain of caring for people. Pain forced her to leave her perfectly starched cap on the shelf and her white stockings in the drawer. She never gave up her duty shoes though. Years after she went on disability she would lean on Dad’s arm and hobble in to the same shop downtown to buy another pair.

We assumed it was the pain meds that clouded her once brilliant mind -that or the chronic lack of sleep. Even after the pain gave her an excuse to stay in bed she seldom slept more than four or five hours a night. She would bake bread and wash floors before her day shift when she still rushed into the oncology ward for report. I don’t think she knew how to sleep more than that. She was the hardest worker I ever knew. Sitting still was a sin. A dreamy bookish daughter was a totally alien creature to her.

The Alzheimer’s kind of snuck up on us. But she knew -and wrote final letters to her children and gave instructions for her funeral while she could still write. We found them stored in her security box.

My greatest grief came early in the disease process after we finally sat down for the heart-to-heart she had been promising for so many years. She finally listened.

An hour later she repeated a question that made me realize she had not retained a word of what I said.

I grieved for the conversation that would never happen. I drove home and stopped at a roadside rest area when I couldn’t stop the tears. I never cried like that again, even though I was aware, at every visit, of saying goodbye to another little part of her that was gone forever.

The disease progressed relatively slowly. Dad was heroic in his efforts to care for her by himself, but after he had a mild stroke and wouldn’t consider moving and none of us lived close enough to take over the 24 hour intensive care she required, there was no choice but to find a facility to look after her.

She was a lousy patient. This frail little lady who was too weak to lift a piece of sandwich to her mouth decked two nurses she considered to be incompetent.

Here’s the other embarrassing thing. Mom was never racist -well, perhaps mildly, but less than most people of her generation — but to her it was 1930 something in Saskatchewan and she was a young girl who had never seen a person of colour before. She was very frightened of the staff who were all, with the exception of one fiery no-nonsense Scottish woman, Asia or Jamaica born. She didn’t know what country she was in. She thought she had been abducted.

There was one night though, when she and I sang our way through a dozen hymns. She didn’t know who I was, but she knew all the words and even sang harmony. After she sang she told me about the Jesus she was singing about. She lit up, “Oh, he’s wonderful.”

Two minutes later she was crying out in agony. When a young patient was rolled through the hospital on a stretcher she thought it was her dear brother who been killed in a car accident. He died in that accident sixty years before, but her grief was as fresh as if she was hearing the news for the first time.

One afternoon while out for a hike I cried out to the Jesus she loved and asked him to please take her. I hated to see her suffer. She was so confused and no position the nurses put her in was comfortable.

Two hours after I prayed my brother called. Mom died –two hours ago.

I didn’t cry.

Dad said he was holding her hand as he read a book. She had been in a lot of pain that day. When he looked up again to check on her, her eyes were focussed on something on the other side of the room. He said she had a look of surprised delight on her face, as if she recognized someone she loved and had been waiting for. He tried to see who it was, but before he could ask Mom, he knew she was gone.

When I was sorting through my mother’s things in drawers and closets I found bits of rolled up paper with bible verses written on them. Promises. I knew that at one point she had memorized huge portions of scripture and quoted it at night when she couldn’t sleep. I took the verses and put them in a wooden box. They are my treasure.

Yes, I have a good inheritance.