Sometimes God’s miracles are as quiet as kind words and willing hearts. No show or noise, or mighty rushing power. Just the gentle whisper that says He hears me and will provide. Not abundance maybe, but enough for the day. It is enough. Like an old friend used to say, “Some days the miracle is to walk and not faint.”
“…but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)
Find You
You’d think I would have learned by now that pushing things under doesn’t erase them, just makes it easier to keep going for the time being. But that undercurrent has a way of finding an outlet somehow, pressure building till it has enough force to break through any crack into broad daylight, break any heart with the weight of it all. Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall, and it may just have been the least little breath that eventually pushed him over into all those pieces.
And when the heart cracks wide open, it’s easy enough to look back and see the griefs pushed under, the problems with no solutions, the unexpected that pours in like rain, late nights and daily nuisances, and not near enough laughter. Easy too to name the things you have used to mute the sound of your soul, the outlets (most of them good) for that energy… did I really think it would all dissipate with time? Think I could carry all this brokenness around inside myself without running headlong to the Burden-Bearer, the Healer of my soul? At the time it felt like survival, but looking back it seems more like blind Self-sufficiency, a base-line assumption that I have to keep going and carrying it all because there isn’t any alternative. Or maybe just a giving up– resignation that this is all there is so you may as well get used to it. Really? I do know better than this, and I sorrow again at how easy it is to lose sight of what is True.
It’s part of the fog of this world, the blindness that we breathe in, look through, hear every day…the spiritual grime that blankets creation like the worst kind of pollution. I need to be reminded often and strongly that Jesus is at work here, re-creating everything, making beautiful things out of all this dust. That He really is growing us to look like Himself… wiping our eyes clear of the muck so we can see Light and opening up ears to hear His quiet whispers… changing willful hearts to obey, strengthening weak bodies to serve. I need to take time to tell Him everything and to listen to what He tells me, because it takes time for Truth to sink down deep and do its healing work.
Help me see You. Help me find You with all these pieces.
“All this earth–
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come up from this
Ground at all?
All around,
Hope is springing up from this old ground;
Out of chaos life is being
Found in You.
You make beautiful things…”
(Beautiful Things, Gungor)
Find Me
On a day when I feel lost, playing hide-and-seek with Truth and wondering who I am, the words to the simple song we sang on Sunday come to mind: “Oh the gravity of You, brings my soul unto its knees; I will never be the same– I am lost and found in You…” (Alabaster, Rend Collective Experiment). That’s what I need, to be grounded in Someone infinitely strong and certain; I feel it more some days than others, because circumstances can take you off course without a moment’s notice and emotions can blow and batter worse than a storm. Gravity is what I need exactly, in every sense of the word, to keep my heart in one piece. The giant almighty Center holding everything in its place. The awesome silent solemnity of being in God’s presence. Let me lose my Self in You… find who I am in You.
I love Francis Thompson’s classic poem The Hound of Heaven, the way he pictures God chasing him relentlessly through all the days of his life, Love never giving up until his soul gave up running and was Home and safe. A much-needed message came to my inbox yesterday, a sister-writer reminding me that God does not only run after the fleeing, but He also runs after the floundering. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me”— chasing me, pursuing me, hunting me– “all the days of my life,” because I belong to the Good Shepherd.
So on days like this, when I can’t see anything clearly, if all I have is the faintest whisper… “find me”…that is enough of a prayer, because the One who leads me on, who is the Beginning and the End of all things, will never stop hunting me down with His goodness. Pursue me with mercy…find me…draw me to Yourself and set my feet on solid ground.
“When I said, ‘My foot is slipping,’ your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.
When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy.” (Psalm 94:18-19)
“All which I took from thee, I did’st but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in my arms.
All which thy child’s mistake fancies as lost,
I have stored for thee at Home.” (The Hound of Heaven, Francis Thompson)
All My Needs
“And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:19) It was the favorite verse of every impoverished college student, and we repeated it to one another encouragingly as we worked our campus jobs, and prayed over bills, and looked for lists of secondhand textbooks on the board in the Campus Center, checked our post office boxes for letters from home in hopes of a check. Lessons in faith well-learned in those years and often leaned upon. But somehow financial needs are the most straightforward place to trust and I have been struggling ever since to know where else to pin it.
Is that verse for grandparents who are raising a grandchild and finding it takes more energy than they have to give? Will God supply for the parents who are moving a college grad back home because he can’t find a job, knowing full well that student loans are looming? Does that verse belong to the ministry leader who keeps pleading for more workers, and often grows weary? Does God’s promise of provision cover the heart-sore mother on another holiday, who just wishes her family could be together? So many needs, and they color our lives with desperation for a solution, because they make us feel helpless and afraid. We need a Provider, and doesn’t this well-known verse say that God will supply all our needs…?
It strikes me, all these years later, that maybe it wasn’t really meant to be applied to many other things. Just before the missionary Paul made this sweeping claim for the Philippian church who had given generously to him in spite of their own hardship, he confided to them that he had learned the secret of contentment through trial and error….in all the pressing and shifting circumstances of his journeys, he had found this one thing to be constant: the God who had called him was with him always and gave him strength to meet every situation. In joyful abundance… it was Christ who enabled Paul to live well in the midst of it. And in hunger and need… it was Christ who enabled Paul to live well in the midst of it. It was a secret, a treasure he had found hidden in life’s ups and downs, the kind you only find by living through them. Clearly then, his statement to the Philippian church was no promise that God would supply everything lacking in their lives, nor was it a promise that they would never go without in the future.
Indeed, because the secret of contentment is a treasure worth sharing with his readers, Paul implies that both abundance and need are only a means to an end. To his way of thinking it is good for our souls to experience both (and probably repeatedly, given how slow we are to learn) so that we may find the treasure of knowing Jesus Christ. Clearly going without was not something Paul feared, not something he would be quick to promise away for his readers. And yet a few paragraphs later he says God will supply all their needs, and it makes me think that maybe his idea of need is something different than mine. And maybe it’s just that their generosity is something God notices and rewards.
We believe that Christ’s riches are big enough to cover, and we would like God to supply all our needs as concretely as money in a bag, but I think Paul’s real point is about that deeper issue: the secret of knowing God and living in His presence, whether you have the tangible things you need or not. Because the truth is, the assurance of His presence and being content there is what I need most of all. As I look for verses about God’s provision this week I see Him promising forgiveness, mercy, peace, justice, Presence, strength to do what is in front of me….these are the intangibles He thinks I need in life. The other stuff is just the extra details, the context. Like Jesus said, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)
It is culture shock, this head-long collision between normal human perspective and the spiritual reality, like trying to get my brain around a foreign concept. Show me what I really need, Lord, in each situation, and help me focus there, rather than on the needs most obvious. Help me discover the secret of being “content in whatever circumstances I am.”
It would be frightening to depend on a God who cared more about my spiritual growth than my situation, except that I know His heart. I know He cares about me as a person. Verse after verse piles up overwhelmingly in my favor. He loves me and He is good. I can trust Him in this.
“He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)
“It is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself.” (These Strange Ashes, Elizabeth Elliot)
Relentless Love
We sing this song like always, the words on the screen… “You won’t relent until You have it all…my heart is Yours.” Funny how we can sing without really listening to what we are saying. And I can hear Him whisper in my spirit, “Do you mean it? Can I have your children? Your health? Your marriage?” A bit frightening to know the truth: God is not nearly as tolerant as we’d like to think He is, and His kind of love is more like an inexorable force of nature, as wild and overwhelming as any tidal wave, and quite determined to have every last bit of our hearts. So much of what we label as life’s stresses and difficulties are really His shaking us loose from life altogether, so that our hearts will be His alone. “For there is a love that is as strong as death, jealousy demanding as the grave…”
Something in us longs for that kind of exclusive intensity in love– the media industry thrives on it–but we feel more comfortable with it in the physical world, where we can experience it with the senses. What if all that is only a shadow of the spiritual world and the total surrender our hearts long for is meant for Someone much bigger?
The author of Hebrews said it this way: “Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe. For our God is a devouring fire.” (Hebrews 12:28-29) We don’t like to talk about that much, maybe because it sounds contradictory, the thankful worship and the fear of fire… but when the world is shaken loose from its moorings it should come to mind readily: everything here can be shaken loose– must be shaken loose– so that we have our hands and hearts free to grasp the Kingdom that cannot ever be shaken, and God’s holy fire is quite willing to burn it all, in order to leave you with what matters most. He loves you, but He is Wind and Earthquake and Fire and Lion, and we would do well not to forget it. “…and many waters cannot quench this love….” Relentless. Be careful what you sing, because the truth you know in your head must needs be worked out in your heart and your life, if it is going to last forever.
“Come be the fire inside of me, come be the flame upon my heart…until You and I are one.” When you find the pearl of great value, would you not spend everything you have to gain it, as the merchant did in Jesus’ story? To be honest, it terrifies me sometimes, but as Peter said “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) It is so worth it.
“Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.” (The Problem of Pain, CS Lewis)
“Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:25-26)
When You Are Tired of Doing The Right Thing
The heartbreaking thing is that even when you know what is right to do and apply yourself to it with God’s strength, it may not change your situation for the better. Obedience is not a magic key that unlocks doors, and right choices do not always smooth the paths you walk. The results are more often in my own heart, but that’s hard to take when I know the struggle it took to get this far, and if such heart-upheaval can’t produce tangible effects in the world then why am I even trying?
We have this sense that right choices, right words, right actions should work out righteousness in the world around us. We’re not too far wrong– that knowledge was built into us from the Beginning: a foundation laid into this creation of action and reaction, cause and effect, and God the First Cause: “By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.” (Hebrews 11:3) God created worlds with His divine will, divine words– His perfection and beauty reflected in tangible form in a way never before seen. And man was made steward of what God spoke into being, given authority over creation to act and choose good for all He had made. I wonder if Adam understood just how big that choice was; he could not have known how the world would groan and labor under the working out of his actions, turning everything “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Man’s relationship to God was reflected in tangible form in creation’s response to him, for good or for ill.
Maybe that’s the mercy of choices now, that our power is so much limited, reigning in our ability to destroy. The desire and the knowledge may linger, but the only real power we are left with is to change our own hearts. And maybe that’s where it matters most, because that is where the battle for power is being fought. When the Beloved One chose good for us, because we could not for ourselves, He was again acting as First Cause, wrestling with Darkness on our behalf to work out righteousness in the world. His choices, His words, His actions making all things new, to regain His rightful rule one heart at a time.
And He says to us now that it does matter what we do, how we respond to His re-creation, and wrestling to make the right choices does change the world, even if the evidence is unseen and only He knows. Because if He rules in us, His righteousness will be worked out there, and His beauty and power will be demonstrated in our lives, small seeds that will grow to fill the earth. Jesus told us that His kingdom would begin in the small silent places: “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed…because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Luke 17:20-21)
We get frustrated because we can’t change hunger and poverty, stop violence, heal marriages, rescue children, build a society that lasts… but God goes right to the heart of the matter and transforms the world from the inside out, starting where it matters most– in the dead hidden places of the heart that need to be made alive. So that our choices, words, actions can be for good again, reflect His nature and His righteousness. Because He is building a kingdom that will last forever, and we are the living stones. Be patient and keep on doing the right thing, because only the Builder knows exactly what He is building. “…let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.” (Galatians 6:9)
“I need You to soften my heart
To break me apart;
I need You to pierce through the dark,
And cleanse every part of me.
I may be weak,
But Your Spirit’s strong in me.
My flesh may fail,
But my God,You never will.” (Give Me Faith, Elevation Worship)
“You are the light of the world…let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14, 16)
Enough
In all the days that I am Not Enough
I hear You say I AM…
“From the ends of the earth I call to You, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” (Psalm 61:2)
“Every attribute of God, every revelation of His character, every proof of His undying love, every declaration of His watchful care, every assertion of His purposes of tender mercy, every manifestation of His loving kindness– all are the filling out of this unfinished ‘I am.’…I believe it includes everything the human heart longs for and needs.” (The God of All Comfort, Hannah Whitall Smith)
What Do You See in the Ordinary?
It’s the ordinary days that make it hardest to persevere, sometimes. The day-in, day-out unending of a burden that erodes faith a grain at a time, wears away the edges of what you know and who you are, until the least upheaval could topple you right over. Maybe it’s the way we are wired, as humans, to rally in a crisis, and be ready to resolve it quickly– it’s the ongoing little stresses that often get the better of us. It takes focus to keep walking in faith through the mundane, the unresolvable, and every small choice that confounds us.
It reminds me of a saying I heard once that “the devil is in the details,” meaning that the details that you ignore are the ones that will make the whole project go up in flames in the end. True in business and event planning, and true in life as well. Sometimes the most important details are quite small and ordinary, and could escape notice entirely. It is what our Enemy, the devil, is counting on, so that in the end a whole life could blow away like smoke before you realize. Ironically enough, it is also in the everyday wearing-down details that you can find the devil whispering that you are stuck here, that you aren’t good-enough strong-enough smart-enough, that there is no purpose to this endless maze, that you may as well give up because it’s just too hard to keep trying. And so Peter warns in his letter, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)
However, the saying is relatively new in society, and for a hundred years before, the original phrase also spoke truth to people’s hearts: “God is in the detail.” Pay attention to the details because there is significance and beauty and meaning there that you won’t want to miss. The God who made the billions of stars and hangs them in their places, calls them by name…the God who made the billions of fish in the sea, all colors and shapes and some of them so deep that they are never seen…the God who knows when every wild animal is about to give birth…the God who weaves together each of us and knows all our days before we are even born….Yes, of course we can see Him in the details, because He made all the details, down to the last atom. And here in the details of my day it makes all the difference to know that He is present and active– nothing too small and mundane for Him to care about. If I could just keep my eyes on that, how would it transform the ordinary into something More?
Knowing what to look at is truly the secret of persevering. Like the letter writers of the New Testament said over and over again to the early believers suffering persecution: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18) Keep looking at the glory to come and keep on walking each day in obedience, not just through times of crisis, but through all the little aggravations of ordinary life and the unresolved burdens we wake up with day after day. Pay attention to the big picture and it changes the way you see the ordinary details. Pay attention to the ordinary details and do them well, and the big picture falls into place. God is in the detail.
And it’s odd, but when you learn to fix your heart’s eyes on what is unseen, you begin to see all kinds of details you never noticed before, in the world around you, as if spiritual sight and physical sight were connected– and maybe it is supposed to be that way. Even the most ordinary details are woven through with threads of glory, glimmers of the One who made them, and an undercurrent of spiritual cause and effect running beneath all we do, the movement of the Spirit affecting the ordinary in remarkable ways that are easy to miss if you are not looking.
So I look for God in the details, ask for opened eyes-of-the-heart to see His face and hear His voice in the ordinary days. Devotional writer Sarah Young expresses it well when she talks about how to keep from falling in a world of fast-changing circumstances: “The only way to keep your balance is to fix your eyes on [Him], the One who never changes. If you gaze too long at your circumstances, you will become dizzy and confused. Look to [Him], refreshing yourself in [His] Presence, and your steps will be steady and sure.” (Jesus Calling) Not only stability is in that focus, but joy, peace, thankfulness, hope– all that overflows from being conscious of His constant presence and help. That’s where strength comes from. That’s how we persevere through another ordinary day.
“The dawning of each new day is a gift from Me, not to be taken for granted. The earth is vibrantly alive with My blessings, giving vivid testimony to My Presence. If you slow down your pace of life, you can find Me anywhere.” (Jesus Calling, Sarah Young)
“I am thankful for right now. God, I AM is present in this moment, and in His presence is fullness of joy.” (Ann VosKamp)
Keep on Walking
An oil painting hangs in my living room, in a heavy gold frame. The foreground is dark forest, with tall trees obscuring the sky, but there is a path winding away into distant light that streams through the branches. An older friend who was a painter showed up in my kitchen with it, years ago, and gave it to me, said she called it Walk Toward The Light. The painting has hung on my wall ever since, a visual representation of Hope. It is one of my favorite possessions.
I can see how that particular theme of perseverance and following the light has threaded its way through the years, become part of me and shaped my perspectives. At the time, my friend was struggling with a difficult marriage to an unbelieving husband… I was struggling with the pressures of ministry and preschoolers, fighting depression…together we leaned on Jesus and encouraged one another to keep on going. And that one thought took up residence through the years, an anchor for the heart: Don’t focus on the dark trees of despair, but on the light of His love….You don’t need to understand these circumstances, just walk in the light of His guidance, one step at a time…. In the midst of pain hold onto the strength of the One who is Mighty to save….Wait for the Lord, wait for Him to act, and put your hope in Him, because He is faithful….When other voices confuse and batter at your heart, look for God’s Truth shining clear. Keep walking toward the Light.
We talked about persevering last night in small group, about the constant need to trust and keep walking– every time we meet pain or difficulty or disappointment it is a crossroads of decision, an opportunity to choose faith, to choose hope, to choose obedience. To keep walking into the Light of God, out of the-darkness-all-around and into new life, into a deeper relationship with Him. Every situation is a question: Can you trust Me with this? Do you believe that I AM WHO I AM and that I am the same yesterday and today and forever? Do you truly believe that I am Goodness itself and have your best interests in mind? Because you can’t keep walking in this life if you can’t plant your feet on something that solid– and until you take the first baby steps you can’t learn to run strong and proclaim to the watching world that your faith is real and there is a God who deserves all the glory. So start with the step in front of you and then keep on going.
One of my favorite old hymns is Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus (Helen Lemmel)– in a way it is the musical version of my painting: “O soul, are you weary and troubled? No light in the darkness you see? There’s light for a look at the Savior, and life more abundant and free.” That’s what enables us to find the lighted path through the forest: We focus on Jesus who persevered through this world and finished well, who promises to never leave us or forsake us, and tells us to lean on Him for strength. This is the one important lesson to learn if we are going to keep our faith strong through the upheavals and stresses of living.
It is no accident that the New Testament writers made perseverance a recurring theme, encouraged their readers to keep walking into the Light of Christ. They knew exactly how hard this world gets and how our minds and hearts can get turned around and overwhelmed in the dark, how easy it is to lose sight of Hope. And I read their letters and think again of the old refrain…“Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.” Keep walking toward His light, dear sisters, for in His presence there is joy, and hope that will not disappoint.
“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
“Child of My love, lean hard,
And let Me feel the pressure of thy care;
I know thy burden, child. I shaped it;
Poised it in Mine Own hand; made no proportion
In its weight to thine unaided strength
For even as I laid it on, I said,
‘I shall be near, and while she leans on Me,
This burden shall be Mine, not hers;
So shall I keep My child within the circling arms
Of My Own love.’ Here lay it down, nor fear
To impose it on a shoulder which upholds
The government of worlds. Yet closer come;
Thou art not near enough. I would embrace thy care;
So I might feel My child reposing on My breast.
Thou lovest Me? I knew it. Doubt not then;
But loving Me, lean hard.”
(Streams In the Desert, September 12th devotion)
Under God’s Big Sky
The sky is bigger out west, blazing blue and gold like a beacon. I wonder if it is what the shepherd who became a king saw, above the rocky hills of Judeah: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Something about the absence of the enclosing trees that lays bare the heart under His immensity. Similar maybe to the curving horizon of ocean waves when you stand small at its fraying hem and dig your toes into the sand to stay in place, letting the rhythm of the world wash away the jumble inside.
I thought I would go away and write, with more time and without the pull of everyday chores, but under that sky I found no words. Just space to breathe, to rest, to think…just to be, beneath His brilliant canvas. It is all a matter of perspective, against the sheer size of His creation; without a word you know that your thoughts and struggles will pass away and there is Something bigger at work. David sang it well…“Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”
I didn’t realize how much I needed that space and vast stillness, till I got there and found it soaking into my spirit, and now looking back, I wonder if maybe it was not just the large uncluttered physical space but the inside space that I needed. When my days get crowded with tasks and people and noise and needs, I end up chasing from one to the next without time to sit and look at Him, no way to be quiet and listen. And it’s all a matter of perspective, because what you are looking at is what will get bigger, as any child with a magnifying glass knows. Maybe as we grow up we forget that; it becomes a universal case of losing sight of the forest for the trees. “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul.” What a huge thing to lose sight of for the sake of cluttered countertops.
No wonder He gave us a Sabbath rest once a week, the gift of a whole day to stop and breathe… look at His creation, divine words made physical and concrete to spread out all around us…look at His law, divine words powerful to bring about His will in us…look at who He Is and rejoice in His blessings. “The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.”
I know from experience that the sense of that brilliant expanse of blue-gold will fade with time, and the expanse of peace from a vacation will gradually get gnawed away by the needs of Everyday. But I want to hang on, this time, to the reminder that it’s all a matter of perspective– that I can stop and breathe and look up into His sky any time, look into His Word and just be in His presence, let the jumble of life untangle. Because whatever I look at, that is what will be magnified in my life, and the best part is, I get to choose.
“The decrees of the Lord…are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb. By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward.”
**All Scripture taken from Psalm 19.