Category Archives: Firmly Rooted

From the Mouths of Babes

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Lately God keeps talking to me about faith– not how to live it out in words and actions, but how to live it on the inside, because learning to step out and do the right thing is good, but learning to “Be still and know that [He] is God” (Psalm 46:10) is important too. The word the Singer used for being still is rapha, meaning to surrender… allow yourself to let go. His song has more to do with remembering Who is in control than with ceasing of noise and energy– the surrendering is linked to the knowing.

Surrender is kind of a scary concept, and I’m all for it, but I think I’d prefer it to stay within reasonable limits. It’s like my faith ping-pongs somewhere between the innocent trust of a child who says “I don’t think Jesus wants it to rain on us” and the world-toughened rationalism of an adult who is a little hesitant to trust God for anything too big for fear He might not come through for us when we pray, and how do we explain that, or reconcile that with our faith? Looking around, I think I am not the only one, either. Most of us have this fragile balancing act going on between fear and faith, and often it is only the prevailing circumstances that make the difference.

Sometimes God does the big miracles and we laugh amazed with outstretched arms like children, and sometimes it rains and we mop up the chaos and try to hang onto faith in spite of the mess…so that after awhile some of us actually become pretty fair spiritual jugglers, resigned to handling faith and disappointment-with-God as natural parts of the same show. And even though we admire the childlike faith that can expect great things and live unafraid, we have the uneasy feeling that it is only for a special few– and maybe as long as the fear is kept busy and distracted with faith flying around, it will be okay, because we are after all, only human.

But Amy Carmichael’s words keep pulling at me: “…we trust all that the love of God does; all He gives, and all He does not give; all He says, and all He does not say.” Innocent faith of a child receiving whatever comes from the Father’s hands, whether good or bad– and there’s the catch, because if it flows out of His love and He says He is working all things out for my growth and good, then how do I even know where to hang those labels of good and bad? In the words of that brave missionary to India, “The more we understand His love, the more we trust.” Maybe our crisis is not one of faith so much as one of understanding, of accepting love.

I’m starting to accept the notion that I really don’t understand what is best in any situation. Spending the night in a big city airport because we missed our connecting flight? Sleeping in the food court with the homeless people taking shelter from the same storm that messed up our flight schedule? Missing the seminar that we had come for and already paid for? Bad, really bad. Except that the night passed and we were calm; we did sleep a bit, propped up on our luggage, discovered a resilience we did not know we had. And a new heart-awareness of the people who sleep in airports because they want to, who are sturdy survivors and well-prepared for storms because they expect difficulty. Not to mention a reminder that needs are not the same thing as comfort and preference. Maybe good after all?

So then the next time it rains and chaos ensues, with over-turned schedules and masses of people awaiting split-second decisions that should be nothing but bad and stressful, there is this supernatural Stillness in the center of the whirlwind, and I realize that I don’t even know if this is going to be good or bad, I just know His heart. He loves us and He is good, and whatever happens He will help us with it. Like a child who trusts the One who loves him. Oddly finding nothing to juggle any more because He is holding it all. Allowing ourselves to let go, become weak, so that we can recognize the Master of the Universe in His rightful place on the throne.

And the next day the four-year-old says, “Maybe it will rain today and maybe it won’t. Who knows?” Maybe childlike faith expects great things and lives unafraid only because it knows storms will come, and we will stand strong and survive because Someone bigger than the storm loves us. Maybe the rational adult can just choose to lay down his juggling act, admit that it is only a mask for fear and the desire to control, “be still and know [He] is God.”

Not sure yet what surrender fully means, how to live out faith on the inside and on the outside in all circumstances, but I think it may be the lesson we are all learning, in every one of our days from start to finish.  Help me Lord, on this day, to sing with the children in their simple trust: “What are you worried about now– Trying to figure it out now? God knows right where you are now– You know it’s all in His hands now. Give all your worries and your cares to God, For He cares about you…”

 

 

 

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.” (Psalm 46:1-3)

 

 

“…I need You to open my eyes,
To see that You’re shaping my life.
All I am, I surrender.
Give me faith to trust what You say:
That You’re good, and Your love is great.”

(Give Me Faith, Elevation Worship)

 

 

Drawing a Picture of God

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It’s sad, really, how we let the circumstances shape our view of God. As if He had not already spent thousands of years revealing Himself in a myriad of tiny details and grand sweeping plans, breathing Words into the hearts of men to speak to us in our own language, even wrapping Himself in flesh to walk among us– all so we could know Him.

And yet, serving gets difficult and we think “Maybe God doesn’t want me to do this any more.” Sickness hangs on and we say “God is punishing me for my sin.” Provision doesn’t come when we ask, and we wonder “Is God listening?…does He care about my need?” And before we realize it, we have looked at the circumstances and drawn our own outlines for who God is, framed Him in with the small scope of our emotions and everyday experience. When I think about it that way, I see the deception from the Garden being acted out all over again: setting how we feel and what we see up higher than what God says.

When serving gets difficult, God says, “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” (Colossians 3:17) When sickness lingers and prayers seem unanswered, God says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned…but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3) When needs pinch and fear rises, God replies, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” (Matthew 6:31)

We could blame our faulty arithmetic on a fallen world: two plus two equals four, and doing good should be easy, and what I can see and feel is clearly real…it’s a blind logic that ignores the weight of Divine evidence to the contrary. But how frightening to see my mind conforming to the pattern of this world and ignoring Grace. Devastating to see into even well-meaning hearts and find them fully planted in the center of the universe as if they had a right to be there. As if they had never read God’s own description of who He is, or at least had never let the words soak in deeper than skin.

God talks about that too, of course: “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” (Jeremiah 17:9) He sees into all the twists and turns of my emotions and motivations quite clearly, and will show it to me if I really want to know, really want to change. Times like this make me realize just how amazing Grace is, and how very deep and wide and long God’s love is.

 

“A thousand times I’ve failed–
Still your mercy remains,
And should I stumble again,
I’m caught in your grace.

Everlasting, Your light will shine when all else fades;
Never ending, Your glory goes beyond all fame;
And the cry of my heart is to bring You praise
From the inside out, O my soul cries out…”
(Inside Out, Hillsong)

Known

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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

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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

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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

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“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

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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)

Under God’s Big Sky

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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.

All of Us Are in This Together

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“He is an American citizen, but he wasn’t born here. He’s from some other country.” I was only half paying attention, but it was her tone that caught me. Dismissive. Contemptuous. As if that explained everything, the young man who came from Somewhere Else to wreak havoc and destruction, because our own young men would never do such a thing. As if we were made of different flesh and blood in this country.

And suddenly I wanted to say that he is made of exactly the same stuff as us– that at the core we are of the same genetic material handed down from our first father and mother, and citizens of the same realm of Darkness. This boy grew up here, was educated in our schools, won scholarships and dreamed of the future just like our own children, and is he not our own responsibility? How is he so very different from any of us, and how are our own sons and daughters immune from the string of seemingly trivial choices, mile-markers that shape who we are becoming even though we don’t have the eyes to see it?

It made me want to weep outright, never mind that we were in public, in a crowd, and I hardly knew her. That young man, younger than my own, with his dark serious eyes and thoughtful face, now certainly panicked and grieving– how did his heart get him here? What choices had he made, one step at a time, till there was no turning back and he was running for his life? “He won’t come out of this alive,” she went on decidedly…“they’ll hunt him down and kill him before this is all over.” And isn’t death waiting for us all, apart from God’s grace, because we all carry the same bent nature? It could so easily have been my children out there on the streets, deserving the anger and censure of others.

I wanted to tell her that the only thing that makes us different is being born into a new Family, the only citizenship that matters is the one in an unseen Kingdom, the eternal country that Abraham was looking for. And until we are safely Home there is no real safety. But it was not the place to say any of that, and she would not have understood anyway. So I pray tonight for the mothers of lost children, and the sons who walk in darkness, and the daughters who are making choices that will lead them on many hard roads…from every country on earth, because we are all the same under Heaven and all so in need of Grace.

I pray that this boy would live, and that he would find both healing and justice; I pray for second chances because none of us deserves one, but there is a Savior who keeps offering one.

 

 

“Everyone needs compassion. A love that’s never failing. Let mercy fall on me. Everyone needs forgiveness. The kindness of a Savior The hope of nations …” (Mighty to Save, Hillsong)

Approaching Sunday

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Here I am on Your doorstep,
With all my earthly belongings–
Nothing more than daily graces;
All I have is Yours,
And this my only home.
I’d rather stand on Your porch
Than go build a palace of stone:
I am dust to dust, clay to clay,
So I will stand before You,
Clutching grace
With both hands,
And be satisfied with Your presence.

 

 

“A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else! I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked.” (Psalm 84:10 NLT)