“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” -Jesus
(John 16:33)
Tag: photography
Behold Thou Art Fair
Behold thou art fair, my love.
Behold thou art fair.
(Song of Solomon 1:15)
When I look in a mirror I see the toll the years have taken. Like the woman in the Song of Solomon I have spent seasons toiling in the sun, and when I was young the only sun screen we had was baby oil and mother’s cautions to wear a hat. My cousins inherited glorious red hair; I just got the red head’s complexion, and spent many a summer’s night nursing a sunburn with a cold wet cloth. When I look in a mirror I don’t see fair.
I watched a professional photographer edit photos a while ago. I had seen her enhance lighting and subdue blushes on blushing brides before.
“People want to remember their wedding,” she said. “They don’t want to remember the giant zit that showed up on the end of their nose that morning. The zit was temporary. The love is permanent. The zit is not who they are. The zit goes,” and with one click it vanished.
This particular day she was processing a photo for her fiance’s professional biography. I watched from a distance to see if she would go photoshop crazy to idealize this man. She didn’t. She has much better equipment than I have, including a huge computer screen that will reveal the tiniest detail. She kept enlarging the photo until his eyes shone from one side of her screen to the other. Then she just stopped and stared.
“Look,” she said after a while.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“I see me,” she smiled.
I looked more closely and realized that bright spot was not a highlight. It was her own perfect image reflected in his eyes. She was concentrating on him when she took the photo, but the whole time all he saw was her, and in his eyes she was beautiful. She was the light in his eyes.
When we look at ourselves we see our flaws. We see the stupid zits in our character that may have vanished twenty years ago, but remain in our memory as freshly as if they were were still there. But when we look closely into the eyes of the Lover of our souls, the one who gave everything to show how much He loves us, the one who has promised to never leave us and who is incapable of lying or breaking a promise, we see ourselves as He sees us.
And He says, “Behold thou art fair, my love. Behold thou art fair.”
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The Sunshine of Forgiveness
We tend to drag up our old sins, we tend to live under a vague sense of guilt…we are not nearly as vigorous in appropriating God’s forgiveness as He is in extending it. Consequently, instead of living in the sunshine of God’s forgiveness through Christ, we tend to live under an overcast sky of guilt most of the time. -Jerry Bridges
We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins. (Colossians 1:11-14)
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Pressing On
I’m pressing on the upward way,
New heights I’m gaining every day;
Still praying as I’m onward bound,
“Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”
Lord, lift me up and let me stand,
By faith, on Heaven’s tableland,
A higher plane than I have found;
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.
My heart has no desire to stay
Where doubts arise and fears dismay;
Though some may dwell where those abound,
My prayer, my aim, is higher ground.
I want to live above the world,
Though Satan’s darts at me are hurled;
For faith has caught the joyful sound,
The song of saints on higher ground.
I want to scale the utmost height
And catch a gleam of glory bright;
But still I’ll pray till heaven I’ve found,
“Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”
Lord, lift me up and let me stand,
By faith, on Heaven’s tableland,
A higher plane than I have found;
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.
-Johnson Oatman
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The Light of Your Face
Bring us back to You, God.
Turn the light of Your face upon us so that we will be rescued from this sea of darkness.
(Psalm 80:3)
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Like an Ever-flowing Stream
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
(Amos 5:23-24)
To worship is “to attribute worth”. To worship is to honour.
Many of us have received birthday or Christmas gifts from people who sacrificed to give presents they really wanted themselves. I didn’t have the heart to tell my mom, after she worked a lot of overtime and sacrificed to buy a high school graduation gown for me, that I didn’t like the one she chose. She had never had such a luxury herself, and she wanted to give me something special, but it was her taste, not mine.
I felt horrible for being a wretched ungrateful daughter so I never said anything. It wasn’t until years later that I could admit to myself that the real pain of the event was that although she sacrificed and went to a lot of trouble to buy me a prom dress, it never occurred to her that my desires and tastes might be different than hers. She was too busy working to actually sit down and talk to me. I realized I had some forgiving to do, and now I can bless my mom for doing her best in difficult circumstances.
I had a dream that a group of people who did church together in a building decided to put on a concert to the glory of God. Even though they were not trained singers they decided to learn Vivaldi’s Gloria. When the time came for the performance they crowded into the foyer (or narthex) of the church building and the pastor began to lead the orchestra and choir. We were all singing along when we realized the pipe organ in the sanctuary was not in time. The pastor opened the door and signaled to a man on the platform, who was conducting an empty room, except for the organist. The pastor showed the conductor what he thought the tempo should be by waving his baton, then shut the door.
Then a young woman got up to sing Domine Deus, “Lord God, King of Heaven, Father God omnipotent.” She sang from the heart and she sang beautifully, but the pastor/leader didn’t like her tempo either and stopped her and made her do it much more slowly. She looked bewildered, lost the flow of the song and kept running out of breath.
When the concert was done the pastor opened the door and asked the conductor if he liked the performance, saying it had been for him. The conductor just looked sad. The pastor closed the door and everyone congratulated themselves on how hard they had worked. Then they served refreshments.
To me the dream was about my own tendency to want to do something great for God -something requiring sacrifice and effort- without entering into the holy place (sanctuary) or paying attention to the conductor (Holy Spirit). It reminded me I had also done the equivalent of scraping and scrimping to buy an expensive prom dress without asking the wearer if that is what she wanted. In the dream it involved the effort of putting on a musical production without asking God (the Master Conductor) if that is what He wanted.
Music is important to me, obviously. The Lord speaks to me through music and I “anah” (respond) by singing back to Him. The problem is not about music styles or quality of performance. The problem is that when our efforts at praise and worship are based on what we like, they are not responses to His voice. They are assumptions that He will like what we like -and that results in creating a god in our own image.
The greatest honour we can pay to our friends and family is to really listen to them, and act on the desires they express to us.
The greatest honour and worship we can offer to the Lover of our souls is to enter the sanctuary, the holy set-apart place in our hearts, and listen, really listen to the desires of His heart — then act on the things He has shared with us, like the need for justice, righteousness, goodness, and love. That, I believe, is the essence of worship.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another Helper,
to be with you forever,
even the Spirit of truth,
whom the world cannot receive,
because it neither sees him nor knows him.
You know him,
for he dwells with you and will be in you.
(John 14:15-17)
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Binky
The day Grampa Thomson came for Sunday dinner was a day of joy for our little girl. He was a kindly usher at the church we attended and bragged that he was not as old as God, but he may have been as old as dirt -and everybody called him Grampa. He was still an engaging storyteller and always had time for young children. “Lally” sat beside him at the dinner table and helped him count his peas and told him where the chocolate milk was hidden in the fridge. She was thrilled when he asked if he could have a little bit to go with his apple pie and ran to get him some.
“Put it in the Smurf cup, Mommy!”
“Oh, yes, Mom! I love Smurf cups!” he laughed.
When we moved to the living room to drink our tea (and chocolate milk) in more comfortable chairs, she didn’t run off with the other children, but sat on the floor by his feet playing with her doll, as she listened to every word he said. We hadn’t seen her quite so taken with another adult before. She was a child who made friends easily and there were other children amongst our guests that day, but she preferred Grampa Thomson’s attention.
We were laughing at one of our friend’s extremely large fish stories when I saw her get up quietly and go to her room. When she returned she brought Binky in her arms. Binky held the honour of being her most prized possession, and since Binky was so prized it was morphing into a worn tattered greying memory of the soft fuzzy blanket that once cocooned the wee baby I walked the floors with when they were both still new. Because she was now a big girl at three-years old (and because experience taught us that misplacing Binky meant a night of high anxiety for all concerned) she knew it needed to stay in her room.
She walked up to Grampa Thomson and plunked Binky on his lap.
“This is for you,” she said.
I felt embarrassed, but he acted as if the Queen of Sheba had just placed the wealth of Cush before him.
“I am honoured,” he said, taking the bedraggled (and somewhat smelly) cloth and draping it over his shoulders. She leaned against his knee and smiled adoringly at his face. After a while he lifted her up on his lap and offered to share a corner of Binky with her. She rubbed the dangling part of silky blanket binding against her cheek. Grampa Thomson assured us he was fine with her there. She fell asleep in his lap with her head on his chest as we talked. When it was time to go he wrapped her in the precious blanket and carried her to bed himself. He whispered a prayer and gently stroked her curls.
“You have a very precious gift from God in this little girl,” he said. We smiled proudly.
We waved to our guests as they departed into the ice fog and squeaky snow of a northern night and, when we had closed the door, asked each other what her unusual behaviour was all about.
The next Sunday we were in our usual seats, the kids with faces washed and socks matching (a major accomplishment in those days). They squirmed on and under the seats until they could be released for Sunday School. That’s when Grampa Thomson came down the aisle with an offering plate.
“Look, Mommy!” our little one said, “It’s God again!”
“That’s not God, honey,” I whispered.
“But teacher said this is God’s house, and look! There he is!” She stood on her chair and waved. Grampa Thomson waved back.
We had some explaining to do when we got home, about God not living in a building, but living in our hearts, and it turned into another Sunday afternoon discussion between adults on teaching theology to children. She misunderstood; Grampa Thomson was not God, but in truth the love of Jesus was in this dear man’s heart and the children knew it.
What made me tear up, when I thought about it later, was the response of a child who, although mistaken, believed God, in the form of a kind old man, had come to her house for dinner. She listened to him, talked to him, but more importantly gave him a gift of the most precious thing she owned, the blanket she depended on to relieve anxiety when the lights went out and she was alone in the dark.
It makes me wonder if I am willing to give Him a gift of the things that comfort me, as well.
She is a fine woman with children of her own now, and this trait of being willing to give God her heart and all of the things she values most is still part of who she is. She is a good mom and a lover of Jesus Christ, and I am still proud of her.
Yesterday her three-year old called me on Facetime. I showed him the new floor I was putting in the room where he slept last time he was here with his cousins. Then I told him his cousins were away on a trip because their Mommy’s Grandma died, but she was not related to him and she was very, very old. Tears welled up in his big brown eyes and his lip quivered.
“But I never got to meet her,” he said, his mouth pulling down at the corners, “So I never got to say goodbye.”
His tender heart made me cry too. I know he will be a fine man -probably long before he is grown up.
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And then it dawned on me…
I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart,
I will enter His courts with praise.
I will say, “This is the day that the Lord has made!”
I will rejoice, for He has made me glad.
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Vessels of Honour
We have a special role in His plan.
He calls us to life by His message of truth
so that we will show the rest of His creatures His goodness and love.
(James 1:18 The Voice)
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For the Joy Set Before Him
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)
Charis: Subject to Change 