I’m unduly fond of the little crocus flower with its white fuzz showing up like the tiny hairs on Grandma’s chin in the sun. When I was a child I brought Grandma a fistful of prairie crocus blooms as soon as they poked through last season’s dead leaves of grass. Grandpa would say, “Well, we made it through another winter, Ma. There’s your proof.”
We made it through.
Thank you, Lord.
Thank you.
Don’t worry over anything whatever;
tell God every detail of your needs in earnest and thankful prayer,
and the peace of God which transcends human understanding,
will keep constant guard over your hearts
and minds
as they rest in Christ Jesus.
(Philippians 4:6,7 Phillips)
“Watching and waiting,
looking above,
echoes of mercy,
whispers of love.”
(from Blessed Assurance by Fanny Crosby)
My husband said, “Let’s go!” So we went.
I wasn’t expecting it at all, but he said he could take a few days off and unseasonably warm weather on the left half of the continent made a road trip in February feasible. We looked at a map and determined the closest place with sandal-worthy temperatures was Northern California.
The first thing I saw when we got out of the car after two and a half days of driving was a tree in bloom.
A few days before we left I kept hearing and seeing the word “adapt” in a dream. Frankly, I started bracing myself for another challenge. What now, I thought. I realized instead, as I was looking for sandals and summer clothes to quickly toss in a suitcase, that “adapt” this time meant adapting to a pleasant surprise.
We’re home now, after a wonderful ten days in a different world with sun and palm trees and spring flowers. There is ice on the sidewalk here and work piles up again. It will be another three months before my plum tree is in bloom, but I feel like I had a foretaste of what is to come.
He does that, my Abba God. It’s a kind of now and not yet gift. He allows us to experience a taste of what He has planned, a remembrance of the future. And it gives us hope.
Hope is vision-led endurance.
Thank you, Lord.
Thank you.
Do you remember the story of the ant and the grasshopper? It’s a fable by Aesop about an ant who worked hard storing up provision for the winter and a grasshopper who danced the summer away. It is a tale meant to teach a moral, and it does. Don’t waste the good times because hard times are a-coming. I wonder if we can say the same about not wasting hard times?
My husband pointed out that today is mid-winter, halfway point between winter solstice and the vernal equinox. (I’ve never heard of a play titled “A Mid-winter Night’s Dream” have you?) Obviously the hay is not growing much in these fields near our home and the snow is a bit deep for dancing. Since I am not fond of winter sports and in my lifetime have broken three bones slipping on the ice, I have to work on my attitude toward winter.
The blue-tinged snow and mountains are pretty, I’ll grant you that. In an effort to be always thankful I have also noticed that winter also tends to be the most productive time in my life as far as getting caught up with paperwork, writing, studying, sewing, mending, and inside house repairs are concerned. It’s a time for planning gardens and perusing seed catalogues. It’s a time of waiting and preparing for prosperity. Apparently the Hebrew word for waiting has at its root a picture of braiding a rope. Farmers, fishermen, artisans, and folk festival musicians all need time to get their acts together. Sitting by the fire braiding rope is a good picture of this.
We have been taught to think that we must use good times to prepare for hard times, but I wonder if hard times are not there to help us prepare for good times. Prosperity can be even more difficult to manage well than want. Some, like the ant, live in fear and cannot allow themselves to dance when the evenings are warm. Others, like the grasshopper, accomplish nothing more with their abundance than spending it on their own pleasure. Very few who find themselves with abundance in the form of power know how to handle it wisely — thus the expression, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I believe the Lord prepares his most trustworthy servants with long seasons of harsh winter to get them to the place where they don’t need sunshine and flowers to live in a place of contented joy. They will not be dependent on ideal circumstances to allay their fears or give them freedom to dance.
For those trained by adversity to trust in God, every day is a beautiful day.
Music that soothes both my spirit and my ears. Heaven and earth shall praise Your name. Gloria tua.
And bless you for writing this, Ola Gjeilo!
Erupt with thanks to the Eternal, for He is good
and His loyal love lasts forever.
Let all those redeemed by the Eternal—
those rescued from times of deep trouble—join in giving thanks.
(Psalm 107:1,2)
Shortly after our son-in-law was miraculously healed from a disease that seemed would certainly end in death (story told here) another man was in the ICU in our town in a similar state. My daughter asked me to pray for him and I became friends with his wife on Facebook. What a remarkable woman of faith. Her steadfastness and willingness to trust God through set-back after set-back, and to be transparently honest about their journey was deeply inspiring. Their story is amazing. Their answer took longer in arriving than ours and he faced death more than once. At one point the doctors told him he probably had six days at most to live.
But God…!
Last night they threw a party to celebrate his healing. Staff in the hospitals are also calling him the “Miracle Man” — the same nickname the staff at the hospital that treated our son-in-law gave him. Along with many others who prayed for them I was invited to the celebration. It was the first time we met face to face, but I felt such joy for them and such praise for the goodness of God. There was feasting and music and dancing — clog dancing! Such happiness!
We are told that we overcome the enemy of our souls by the Blood of the Lamb and by the telling of our stories, and these wonderful people were doing just that.
Do you have a story worthy of a party to celebrate God? Do you have reason to be thankful? Tell me about it.
“...The Lord showed me the reason I didn’t think he answered my prayers. It was simply that I was not thankful when He did. Without an attitude of thanksgiving those memories were lost to me.” -Lara Merz
The new book While He Lay Dying is touching some sore spots for some people. I understand. The story hit a lot of mine as well -sore spots that God was putting pressure on, like a kind doctor who looked into my eyes while asking, “Does that hurt?”
The intent of the doctor is not to torment you, but to heal you, but first he needs to identify the source of the pain by having you acknowledge it.
I do believe that prayer is more about learning to listen to God than handing him my Christmas wish list, or a job description of my design with expectations I think he needs to meet. Still he invites us to come to him with all our cares and needs and with prayers and petitions – with thanksgiving – and present our requests. The thanksgiving is actually for our sakes, because being grateful for the things he has done for us already helps us remember and come in faith.
I met a woman a few years ago who, like I had been, was mired in chronic depression. Healing from depression can involve more than one avenue since this wretched condition affects every part of our lives – mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, relational. But one of the glimmers of light in that cave of darkness begins to shine when we are willing to be thankful for one thing. Thanking God for just one thing is like picking up the first crumb that leads to a trail of crumbs -more things to be thankful for. The trail leads to the exit of the dark cave. I asked her to tell God one thing she was thankful for. She refused. She could think of nothing -as she sat in a large warm house, in a free country, with a good meal, and all her expenses cared for by a generous family member, comforted by friends who constantly tried to reach out to her. “My life is too bitter,” she said.
Another person said, “Sure. God healed your son-in-law. How nice for you. But why be thankful? There is no guarantee he’ll be here next Christmas. He could be hit by a bus, or another tragedy could strike your family. It happens all the time. Where was God when this happened and that happened? Look at the news this week and what about the time I prayed and he didn’t give me the answer I wanted?”
Do you see how quickly we can lose the memory of a miraculous response to prayer and forget God’s goodness when we refuse to be grateful and choose to focus on disappointment? It was like turning away from the spot of light in a dark cave and saying, “So you saw something that might point to a light, or maybe even an exit of some sort. How nice for you. But my experience is that it is dark in this cave. Look at all the places where there is no light. Don’t remind me of my pain. There is no hope.”
Of course we all die. Miracles are not about having perfect circumstances and a care-free life. Signs point to something -or Someone. Signs are not the destination. Don’t park there. Keep moving.
A friend reminded me yesterday that those of us born in the 50’s have lived in two centuries and two millennium -and people we knew in our youth had been born in the 1800’s. He made me think. One of the most influential people in my life, my grandmother, was born in 1909. My granddaughter was born in 2009 -100 years later, and yet these two people are central in my memories. I am so thankful for them. I am especially thankful that my grandmother told me the stories of God’s provision, even through the most horrible experiences -from the death of her kitten as a wee girl to the death of her two children as a young mother. Yes, she found herself in dark places sometimes, but she always came out singing, because she remembered her answered prayers, and thankfulness pinned those memories down for her. She knew the God she appealed to, and the longer she knew him, the more she loved him. A few weeks before she died she told me, “Death holds no fear for me. It is a wide-open door to the light. And my dear Jesus is standing there, arms open, waiting to wipe away all my tears.”
I love the way little kids can’t wait for the day to begin. We had a family gathering last week and my little five year old grandson was amazed that I could still be asleep at 6:45 a.m. He and his buddy, Harvey the bull dog, jumped on me with an affectionate early morning enthusiasm I haven’t experienced for a few years. Harvey even gave my ears a good licking. It wasn’t long before the other kids were wrestling on my air mattress and in my sleeping bag because that’s what they were designed for, right?
The next morning I was helping two of the kids get ready for school when one of them noticed the brilliant rosy dawn out the window. I grabbed my phone and snapped a photo as a school bus went by, driving into the sunrise.
I’ve decided to adopt their attitude. It’s Monday! It’s morning! We can get up and sing Raffi’s brush-your-teeth song ch ch chch ch chchch ch! Or for my taste, Stuart Townend’s “Christ Be in My Waking.”
Thank you, Lord. It’s good to be alive!
Charis: Subject to Change 