Tag: prayer

Hearts open wide

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers7 Comments

Photo: bleeding hearts in my garden

Yesterday, in the wee hours, I was rushed to the hospital with a medical crisis. The hospital staff was wonderful and within minutes an I.V. dripped relief into my arm. I won’t deny that I was in a lot of pain -excruciating pain. I was moaning and writhing and praying but I wasn’t afraid. I knew what caused the pain. I had experienced this scenario before and since capable people moved quickly to help and I knew we wouldn’t be hit with a big medical  bill (oh God, thank you for Canadian healthcare!) I could patiently (or semi-patiently) endure.

By evening I was home and still a little stoned on morphine, but doing quite all right. I debated about whether I really needed to swallow the pain meds I was given before I went to bed, but I decided it wouldn’t hurt to get some sleep, so I did.

When I awoke I had a horrendous headache, my hands and face and throat were swollen and I felt like I couldn’t get enough oxygen.

I was afraid.

It’s one thing to trust and patiently endure pain when you are fairly certain of a positive outcome eventually. It’s another when you have no idea what’s happening. This is not the time to introduce yourself to God or to re-new acquaintances. This is a moment when all you can do is squeeze out a “HELP!!” kind of prayer.

Obviously I’m OK now. I’m sitting here listening to Fernando Ortega, drinking Earl Grey tea, and posting a photo I took this afternoon of some of some bleeding heart flowers by my window. Their hearts open wide to sing his praise. God is good.

And if I had been sitting in heaven drinking tea with Jesus instead, he would still be good. My heart opens wide to sing his praise. Allelu.

Let us who are afraid find refuge in Christ and redemption assured in His name.

By day and by night we delight in His love and forever His words will remain.

Sing allelu, we rejoice in Your love Most High…

Fernando Ortega sings “Allelu” from The Odes Project -from the oldest collection of  hymns of the early church set to new music:

Rise up!

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Mountains1 Comment

Photos:  Balsamorhiza saitatta (Click on photos for larger images)In the mountains spring is a vertical event.

As the snow melts the flowers suddenly appear on the hillsides climbing higher every day.

I wait all winter for the sunflowers to appear on Eager Hill. I’ve been out of town helping to care for a grandchild who had surgery last week (he’s fine, thank you) and I was afraid I had missed it. Last evening I was able to grab my camera and hike up the hill. The sunflowers had waited for me. Spring is rising!

Sometimes we wait in the dark and cold and pray and pray –then suddenly God answers. It’s a season of suddenlies.

Thank you Lord! You are so good!

Arise, shine, for your light has come,

and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

Isaiah 60:1

Outflow

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized, Water3 Comments

Photo: Marysville Falls

I pray that according to the riches of His glory he may grant you to be strengthened in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith -that you being rooted and grounded in love, may have the stength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Eph 3:16-19

Where were you?

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Poetry, Sky, Uncategorized3 Comments

Mourning

I cry, Oh God! Oh Christ! Oh Jesus!

Where are you when the ones who say
they speak for you –those who squeeze us,
press in on every side, demand
that we respect authority,
obey their rules, come (cash in hand)
to hear their words, as only they
have got the regulations straight at last?
Where are you when the weak are hurt,
aggrieved and stumbled in your name?

Don’t you see what they have passed?

I sit entangled with the chords
of bitterness around my feet.
A plant blows over on the boards
that fence me off from outside world.
The petals scatter on the grass
and now the gust of wind that swirled
their frail wings in electric air
becomes a greater blast of rage
that showers ashes in my hair.

Flash tears the sky –breath rent apart,
and splits the veil of one who mourns,
with lightning striking to the heart.
Deep groaning rolls across the vale
from craggy peak to worn down ridge
and rains pours down –beats down in hail.

The sun withdraws beneath a cloud.
and saplings hang their weeping heads
as thunder rails against the proud,
who dare to claim the earth their own,
–and in the woods from hill to hill
creation echoes back the moan.

My tears obscure the sky from view.
Oh God! I cry. God! Where are you?

My child, I hear.  I weep with you.

(written during the struggle)

Therefore I remember

On By Charis PsalloIn Sky11 Comments

Someone asked me recently, “What is the difference between heartache and depression?” Having known both I could answer, “Heartache causes you to cry out, in your pain, to the God of hope; depression causes you to lose sight of hope.”

I do not believe that humankind faces any greater pain than the loss of hope. I’ve had a lot of painful physical problems in my life, but none so bad that I wanted to die just so the pain would stop. Depression made me want to die.

I was familiar with the sense that the dark clouds were again descending and feeling helpless to stop the storm that sucked all the colour out of my life. If you understand what I mean by this, I urge you to keep your eyes on the sliver of light on the horizon, and when it disappears, to cling by faith to the memory and certain hope that light is indeed still there and will again arise in the dark. And if that fails, cling to someone who can carry faith for you.

The psalmist understood this pain.

As a deer longs for streams of water,

so I long for You, God.

 I thirst for God, the living God.

When can I come and appear before God?

 My tears have been my food day and night,

while all day long people say to me,

“Where is your God?”

 I remember this as I pour out my heart:

how I walked with many,

leading the festive procession to the house of God,

with joyful and thankful shouts.

 

 Why am I so depressed?

Why this turmoil within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him,

my Savior and my God.

 I am deeply depressed;

therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan

and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

 Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls;

all Your breakers and Your billows have swept over me.

 The LORD will send His faithful love by day;

His song will be with me in the night—

a prayer to the God of my life.

 

 I will say to God, my rock,

“Why have You forgotten me?

Why must I go about in sorrow

because of the enemy’s oppression?”

 My adversaries taunt me,

as if crushing my bones,

while all day long they say to me,

“Where is your God?”

 Why am I so depressed?

Why this turmoil within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him,

my Savior and my God. –Psalm 42

There is no pain or humiliation that Jesus does not understand.

There is hope! After 40 years of  seeing that darkness descend again and again I am finally free. I am so happy -yes happy- to be alive! The God of hope is faithful to his promises. He is so good!  He is so very, very good and I praise him with all my joyful heart!

Use your words

On By Charis PsalloIn Just folksLeave a comment

I heard a newborn baby crying in church. You know, it was a sweet sound. The mom had a difficult delivery and it was such a blessing to see both of them happy and healthy.

Some of the kids turned around to see what was wrong — or to see how long the baby was going to get away with this. I felt like explaining to them that crying is the only language babies have and it doesn’t always mean they are in pain, or even that something is wrong.

Then the Lord spoke to me in my spirit and said, “Sometimes people cry and whine because it’s the only language they have.”

This came up in the context of praying about how to respond to people I care about, but who cry and whine a lot. (OK, I’m one too). Sometimes I feel like a mom in the kitchen at 5 o’clock with a whimpering baby demanding to be picked up and a whiny toddler demanding immediate satisfaction and an older child groaning about being asked to set the table. I get frustrated and I am so tempted to snap at them using a less than kind tone myself.

If a child is never spoken to she will never learn to use words. If a child is only criticized he will never learn to speak positively. Children learn by hearing, or by watching in the case of sign language, and then by being given opportunities and encouragement to practise their new skills.

Sometimes, like my three toddler grandchildren, we need to be reminded to use the skills we are gaining. Frustration and whining decreased when they learned the signs for milk, please and thank you. Now they are starting to talk, and the oldest one is being actively taught to use kind words by her parents who have instituted a time of blessing every day. Even the 18 month old is learning to say, “Nice, smart, kind, strong.”

I wonder if some people cry and protest a lot because it is the only language they know. I wonder if we need to teach people how to gain new ways of expressing themselves. I wonder if we need to speak more kind words to them.

I wonder if my prayers would be more effective if my first response to Abba’s requests was not a groan. (Although admittedly there are sometimes in prayer when there are no words, and only a primal moan will do.)

I wonder if we need to be very understanding of those who only have the language of crying.

I wonder if we also need to seek the Lord for discernment and wisdom as they grow to recognize the time to start withholding gratification and to say, in as kind and patient a voice as we can manage, “Use your words.”

I wonder if God sometimes withholds gratification until we learn to communicate respectfully with an attitude of trust and appreciation –to help us mature. I hear him say, “Use your words, honey.”

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Phil 4:6

Seek, seek, seek the Lord

On By Charis PsalloIn MountainsLeave a comment

Perplexed.

I feel perplexed a lot.

I don’t have the answers to all of life’s problems, or even most of them. Ater I have tried the same old solutions that didn’t work last time (is that not the definition of insanity?) I keep coming back to the same plan of action that does:

Seek the Lord, seek the Lord, seek the Lord.

When will I learn to make this my starting point?

When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realise that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed, and you will find you have become men of mature character with the right sort of independence. And if, in the process, any of you does not know how to meet any particular problem he has only to ask God—who gives generously to all men without making them feel foolish or guilty—and he may be quite sure that the necessary wisdom will be given him. But he must ask in sincere faith without secret doubts as to whether he really wants God’s help or not. The man who trusts God, but with inward reservations, is like a wave of the sea, carried forward by the wind one moment and driven back the next. That sort of man cannot hope to receive anything from God, and the life of a man of divided loyalty will reveal instability at every turn. (James 1:2-8 Phillips translation)

Can you relate?

Lost Angeles

On By Charis PsalloIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

My grandson today: Grammie, how come the people in California can’t find their cities? Like there’s Lost Angeles and Lost Vegas and lots of other lost places….

I explained Los Angeles is how Americans pronounce Les Anges. He understood that. He has to correct my French all the time.

Just realized these grandkids have never been out of the country. We may have to remedy that.

But first we pray for the lost places.