Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning,
that without listening speaking no longer heals,
that without distance closeness cannot cure.
– Henri Nouwen
Tag: hope
Reach
I was out for a walk in the first snow one fall day when I saw these apples. The branch hung over the fence in the back lane. The owner picks the fruit on lower branches on his garden side. These are more difficult to reach, so they remain unplucked year after year.
In my last post I described my dream about Esther in Ephesians. It was bracketed by two dream scenes. In the first, people were at a banquet, hosted by the evangelist. He paid for the meal. The tables were laden with food like the luxurious feasts on cruise ships. I noticed most of them were filling their plates with desserts and sugary confections. Garbage cans overflowed with healthy entrees that had been sampled and tossed.
In the last scene (after the Esther part) the banquet hall was nearly empty. I asked someone where I could get breakfast and they pointed to plates on a very high shelf. With effort I could just reach the edge of a plate and slowly slide it toward the edge until it tipped and I could catch it. It wasn’t possible to see what was up there so there was no picking and choosing. A couple of other folk managed to stretch up and coax plates down. They also held nutritious organic fruits and vegetables and bread.
There are seasons of ebb and flow in this life. Graham Cooke calls them times of “Hiddeness and Manifestation.” Sometimes there is such a strong sense of the Holy Spirit’s active engagement in our lives we can’t take it all in. Sometimes there are seasons of questions when answers seem to be sparse, when we have to stretch (move in faith) and fill up on solid basic principles about who God is and who we are in Him. These are seasons of preparation.
Razzle dazzle days are wonderful and God loves to party with his kids. That’s when the crowds show up. But sometimes he holds back to see who will be there when understanding doesn’t come as easily, when the entertainment factor is missing, when they need to ask for their daily bread, when they need solid nutritious food.
I found something to stand on then reached up and picked one of those apples. It was crisp and cold and sweet with just the right amount of tartness. Best apple I’ve ever tasted.
Share this:
Olive Lake
Just because creation gives God great delight, we cannot say that He is worshipping it; rather, He is worshipping Himself as He sees His goodness bringing such blessing to people that they give their heartfelt thanks and praise to Him for the benefits He imparts.
– Daniel Fuller
Share this:
Looking Forward
The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ~
I grew up with a bleak view of the future. I was told by men with charts and diagrams and TV shows that the world would become worse and worse, and then God would get totally fed up, beam up the ones who had said the right prayer, remove his Holy Spirit from the earth and expect those left behind to figure it out for themselves before the whole thing went up in a giant fireball. The process involved increased earthquakes, more wars, rebellious children and the inability to trust any miracles or signs and wonders out of the ordinary – or anyone associated with them – because many would be deceived by false prophets.
Then there was the anti-Christ. This horrible dictator was re-identified every few years but had surely already been born and was practising his evil skills on the unsuspecting public somewhere. He was probably a Democrat. Or a Russian. Or a Pope. Or a Jew. In any event, he spoke with an accent. His side-kick, The Beast, was probably the head of the World Council of Churches, or maybe a giant computer in Brussels or something.
I knew people who sold all their worldly goods and moved to communes to await the great zap, when they would all be rescued from this horrid place.
Then they ran out of money. They hadn’t planned on the great zap taking so long. They had to move back into town and get jobs. They hadn’t saved for their kids’ college tuition or made any retirement plans. It’s hard to plan for the future when you think you don’t have one.
I love reading about revivals and great moves of God throughout history when entire cultures changed, addictions decreased, prisons closed, families reunited, and people were inspired to pray continuously. They rose up to take the good news to the ends of the earth – places that now have a higher percentage of followers of Christ than the countries missionaries came from. I began to be curious about why these wonderful events slowed down or ended. Why did some of them go off the rails completely? Why did some become cultish groups who hid behind walls and stored up arms like the people of Munster under the leadership of Jan of Leiden, who called himself the new King David (an incident freakily repeated in history in Waco, Texas under the leadership of a man who called himself David Koresh)?
I’ve noticed something they have in common. They nearly all believed that the end was near, that extreme persecution was imminent, and that these extenuating circumstances justified the neglect of investment in their grandchildren’s future. They began to be motivated by fear and to pour their descendants’ inheritance into their own self-defence. They began to see the world in terms of “them” and “us.”
I began to wonder, since this seems to have been a method that has been successfully used many times by the enemy of our souls to shut us down, shut us in, and shut us up, if my own reading of scripture had been tainted by fear of the future. I prayed to have my eyes and heart opened. Since then the message of hope glistens on every page of the Bible. Yes, there are warnings of consequences of sin, but it’s not the convoluted dismal projection I grew up with. There are many promises that give us a future and a hope, for ourselves and for our great grandchildren.
I see more writers, theologians, teachers, and prophets coming out of their caves to declare the good news. The light shines brighter and brighter.
I believe Jesus will return at the Father’s timing, but when he does will he find us faithfully planting vineyards for the future, or sitting huddled in an overgrown field with our suitcases wondering what took him so long?
Share this:
Make-sures
Those who know Your name will rely on You,
for You, O Eternal One,
have not abandoned those who search for You.
(Psalm 9:10)
The wind howls and ice crusts the puddles the little ones jumped into just a few days ago. It’s fuzzy socks and warm boot weather, not barefoot on the beach weather.
My little granddaughter told me she couldn’t sleep. She was scared. What if the wind blew so hard that a tornado came? I told her that tornadoes hardly every happen here because the mountains protect us. And we can pray that God will send angels to surround us.
“Does he know we are visiting Montana?” she asked.
“Yes. He always knows where we are. He never forgets us.”
“So God gives us make-sures?”
Make-sures. That sounds like a good word for promises.
“Yes, God gives us make-sures,” I said. “Things don’t always go the way we plan, but God has promised to care for us.”
“Okay.”
She went back to bed and quickly fell asleep. I pulled the blanket over her feet and remembered the day this past summer when she and her little sister, tuckered out with intense play, curled up on the beach blanket, covered themselves with towels and fell asleep. I felt the Lord telling me that resting in him in a storm takes no more effort than resting on a sunny beach.
I felt some anxiety myself when the lights flickered and power went out for the rest of the night. It didn’t come back on until noon the next day. A tree did fall across the road in front of a neighbouring house. I thought she would be upset when she saw it, instead she said, “Aren’t you glad God gives us make-sures, Nana?”
Yes. I am.
Thank you, Lord.
Share this:
Never the Same
“You can never be the same after the unveiling of a truth.”
– Oswald Chambers
I once met a couple who moved to this valley just after a mid-winter temperature inversion settled in and swathed the mountains in clouds for three long weeks. It looked no different from any other cold grey town in Canada. Then one crisp morning the sun cleared the peaks and clouds blew away like wisps of melancholy lacking any foothold in truth.
The couple were astonished that they had been surrounded by enormous snow-covered blue mountains the whole time. The mountains were no less real while they were still veiled, but up until the young man and his bride got a glimpse they wondered what people were talking about when they went on about how beautiful they were.
We can listen to people talk about the beauty and goodness of God, and nod politely. Perhaps we even believe that the love of Jesus Christ exists somewhere, even though we’ve never experienced it ourselves.
But when we see with our own eyes, we can never be the same.
Share this:
Still There
I heard the children talking.
“The sun has gone behind the clouds,” said one, disappointment in his voice.
“No. The clouds just got in front of it,” said the other. “The sun is still there. Even if we can’t see it, it’s still there, else everything would die.”
We do not mourn as those without hope. God is still there.
Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
and the cattle barns are empty,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
(Habakkuk 3:17,18)
Share this:
All Saints & All Souls
I’ll never forget a TV show I saw which asked the question, “What do people who live very long lives have in common?” The answer surprised me. It was not their diets, or their lifestyles. They knew how to grieve well and had a reason to get up in the morning.
The church should be the safest place in the world, and yet again I recently heard a person suggest that a grieving mother shouldn’t come back to the group until she had finished mourning. Grief is part of life and we need to demonstrate, in a loving community, how to grieve well — with real emotions and with a real sense of hope, surrounded by loving acceptance.
When I read this blog by Ryan Matchett on the heart of All Saints and All Souls Day when the Church acknowledged those who mourn, I knew he understood the season. A loving community can weep with those who weep, but also help encourage each other to find a reason to get up and keep going. This is a beautiful post. Thank you, Ryan.
When we lost our first child to miscarriage I was stunned. It was never something that I considered to even be in the realm of possibility. I remember just sitting there, watching as my wife wept, not knowing what to do or feel. Death had been just a theory and grief was a total stranger to me. By the time we buried our son (our fifth and only late term miscarriage), grief had become more like a winter rain; it was now in my bones.
It begin with what was supposed to be a romantic get away for just the two of us but, instead of romance it had this strange weight of dread over it. We didn’t know why until we returned home to discover that our unborn sons heart had stopped beating. Very quickly we found ourselves in the emergency room wrestling with the doctors recommendation that the baby…
View original post 1,978 more words
Charis: Subject to Change 