Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
– Hannah More
Note to self: And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:2,3)
My Daddy could sing. His voice was as warm and comforting as the man who sang this song on the record we played at Christmas time. Daddy never sang a solo anywhere that I recall. His concerts were just for the family.
Soft as the voice of an angel,
Breathing a lesson unheard,
Hope with a gentle persuasion
Whispers her comforting word:
Wait till the darkness is over,
Wait till the tempest is done,
Hope for the sunshine tomorrow,
After the shower is gone.
If you looked at a map, and if there were prairie-style gridded roads crisscrossing British Columbia, you could see that Dutch Harbour on Kootenay Lake should be less than an hour’s drive from where we live.
But there are mountains in the way.
The drive actually takes several hours on a winding road favoured by motorcyclists, pokey trailer units and a few intimidated RV drivers from Manitoba looking for a place to turn around.
I wish it were closer. I love this place -the wind in the tall trees, the sound of the loons, the freshness of the cedar-scented air rushing down with the creek to the lake, the fish jumping in the early morning reflections of the glacier on the lake, the song my paddle sings…
I really shouldn’t complain, I know. In my grandparents’ day the trip could have taken weeks and would have provided enough raw material for the story-tellers to go on for months. Still, sometimes I wish I could just fly over these mountains, as beautiful as they are.
I hear promises spoken about the future, and they are wonderful, but sometimes the journey seems so counter-intuitive and there are so many things in the way. The road seems to take such a circuitous route that I wonder if I heard right. Like my grandchildren I want want to ask, “Are we there yet? Where is this place?”
I just want to get there, you know.
Today the old song, “Love Lift Us Up,” played in my head. I stopped to pay attention. When we spend time in God’s presence He is the one who lifts us up, who restores our youth like the eagle, who teaches us to soar over earth-bound things. Hope is vision-led endurance. Without a vision the people perish. With it they keep moving forward, one step at a time.
Lord, show us your glory. Father, lift us up.
Love Lift Us Up
Who knows what tomorrow brings
In a world few hearts survive
All I know is the way I feel
When it’s real, I keep it alive
The road is long
There are mountains in our way
But we climb a step every day
Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the world below
Up where the clear winds blow…
-Will Jennings, Jack Nitzsche, & Buffy Stainte-Marie
God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry
chafe our shoulders and weigh us down;
when the road seems dreary and endless,
the skies grey and threatening;
when our lives have no music in them,
and our hearts are lonely,
and our souls have lost their courage.
Flood the path with light,
run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise;
tune our hearts to brave music;
give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age;
and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage
the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life,
to Your honour and glory.
-Augustine of Hippo
Or three -or four -or five.
Just after I posted my last blog about steeping in God’s reality I looked through other photos I took this week. The significance of this simple photo of a grandfather carrying his grandson on his shoulders suddenly hit me.
Five and a half years ago we had a tough week full of bad news:
-Our daughter learned that damage from the disease that had already given her so much pain was more advanced than the specialist had thought and it was highly unlikely she could conceive a child.
-My husband learned he had a serious degenerative bone disease that affected his spine so severely that the strange malformation was threatening his spinal cord. He had to give up all sports and stressful physical activity immediately.
-A business coming out of a research project he had dedicated years to was pronounced dead, done, and defunct.
That week I had a bizarre experience when I heard a voice that said, “Follow 228, Ban our tyres,” that led to an understanding of the definition of hope I believe the Lord gave me. I wrote about it here:
https://charispsallo.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/hope-vision-led-endurance-2/
Hope: vision-led endurance
I had a vision of babies for my daughter, health for my husband, as well as a satisfying post-retirement business for him. It seemed like an impossible hope at the time, but I felt the Lord was asking us to be patient while he worked things out.
This is a photo of one of the children born to that infertile mother, conceived, like his sisters, without medical intervention.
This is a photo of his grandfather, not only able to walk and have full use of his hands, but able to carry the weight of that child on his back without pain despite missing a vertebra. (It’s been replaced by some sort of vascular tissue growing there now which doesn’t pinch his spinal cord.)
This is a photo of a visit brought about by God-coincidence. As for the business, he has been able to apply his expertise to a new venture -and he and son-in-law sat together working on it this week beside this beautiful lawn.
This is a photo taken by a photographer who was smiling so much that day, her face hurt.
Our son-in-law (miracle # 4 in this story) survived a bout of flesh-eating disease which took him as close to death’s door as his doctors had ever seen someone come and still be restored to full health, with all his limbs, organs and brain intact and fully functional.
“You know it’s a miracle that guy is still alive,” one of them told his colleague.
“What? That guy should be f…. dead!” exclaimed another of the first specialists to treat him, upon hearing reports of “John’s” recovery after he returned from a long trip.
Their generous friend gave our daughter and son-in-love the gift of a week at a time share in Montana to celebrate. Now we have only been to that part of the world two, maybe three times in the past 20 years, but my husband just happened to have an appointment in the same area this very same week so we joined them for a couple of days.
Miracle # 5? The golf course closed for the season just before we arrived, but it was open to guests to stroll around on the green, green grass, beside still waters and brilliant autumn-coloured trees in warm sunshine (60 degrees F in late October is warm to Canadians!) without having to take turns hitting or chasing or losing those silly little balls. In fact our grandchildren made a profit selling 27 found balls to their Daddy.
I’m looking at the photo and steeping in the reality of God’s goodness.
Wow. Thank you, Lord! Thank you!
I love you.
“Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope.” That is the order. You cannot put patience and experience into a parenthesis, and, omitting them, bring hope out of tribulation.
– Alexander MacLaren (1826 -1910)
I heard somewhere that if you can worry, you can meditate. The difference between worry and meditation is just the subject matter. To the believer in Christ meditation is not an emptying, but a filling.
When we worry we reflect upon the evidence of things seen. We ponder it, we turn it over in our minds, we obsess about not having a workable solution, about how “It cannot be done.” Worry leads to unbelief.
When we meditate we reflect upon the substance of hope, the evidence of things unseen. When we reflect on the promises of God and bring back to memory the times when He has demonstrated his faithfulness we are filled with faith and hope.
When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches,
For You have been my help,
And in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to You;
Your right hand upholds me.
(Psalms 63:6-8)
Related post: Substantial Unbelief https://charispsallo.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/substantial-unbelief/
“We need a baptism of clear seeing. We desperately need seers who can see through the mist–Christian leaders with prophetic vision. Unless they come soon it will be too late for this generation. And if they do come we will no doubt crucify a few of them in the name of our worldly orthodoxy.” -A.W. Tozer
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
(Isaiah 44:3)
Our son and his wife and their two children moved into temporary housing this week. They now have a place of their own after being homeless all summer when their house (along with thousands of others) was flooded in Alberta. It’s a cramped two room trailer in a new neighbourhood of identical cramped trailers and a far cry from what they had, but they are thankful.
The children are back to school. Our granddaughter’s school yard is full of portable classrooms as it is also accommodating students who no longer have their own school buildings. One of those buildings was the beautiful new Catholic school, Holy Spirit Academy.
“We have to make room for Holy Spirit now,” she told me.
Indeed we do, sweetheart.
Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:10-14)
Charis: Subject to Change 