Monday, March 26, 2007

It Will Rain All Day


What was incurable, desperate blindness
Has been bound up from all sides with lovingkindness
Comfort for sorrow
Rivers for dryness
Come and drink, you who have no money.

And it will rain all day
It will rain all day
It will rain all day with the bounty of new wine.


This song makes my heart smile with peace as I listen. I imagine being the only one in a field as a summer rain pours down. As I think of what it looks like, what it feels like, what it smells like, I am reminded of how it feels to experience God's peace in the midst of a painful time. It makes you just want to lie down in that field and rest there for however long, closing and opening your eyes as water drops against your skin and gray clouds swirl by. Lord, surround me with your lovingkindness and peace in the midst of what I so often feel is incurable.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Truth: The Difference Between Despair and Hope

How can I describe what it feels like to despair? Despair always comes suddenly, disorienting you, blinding you, and making you forget the truth of your circumstances. Two days ago I was hit with a sudden wave of despair as I returned to my ship after some time off. All that morning I was overwhelmed with thoughts of leaving for six months and how was I ever going to make it through. It got to the point where it hurt just to think, much less to walk around and be talking to people. I was sitting at lunch with some friends and was forced to talk and make conversation while inside I just wanted to cry out to them!

After lunch, I went back to my room on the ship and crawled into my bunk. I just lay there crying into my pillow like I did when I was a child. It seemed like the more I cried though, the more my heart ached. I tried to pray, I tried to recite verses to myself, but all I could do was cry. I realize that this sounds pitiful especially for a 22-year-old but this is how I felt. I know I wasn't remembering the truth, much less believing it. I know I was being silly in light of all God has done and the finished work of Christ on the cross. I wish so badly I could have done something to change my heart but all I felt like I could do was cry and feel sorry for myself. Time loomed so large over me that even the hours of the afternoon seemed like they would never pass, not to mention six months out at sea.

I couldn't keep lying there like this so finally I got up from my bed and when I checked my email, there was a message from a kind friend from my church who I had emailed earlier that morning. I began reading the first few lines and I couldn't help but close my eyes as the sweet overflow of tears spilled down my cheeks. I smile with joy as I remember this because what I had read was truth and what I felt was release. I read the rest of the email, crying more every few lines. The words were so full of truth and this truth was like a sun burning away the fog that had enshrouded my heart. Through my sobbing, I could hear my heart's cry of "Thank you, thank you, thank you! How could I have been so blind?" My eyes tear up even now as I recall how gracious God was to speak to me through a friend like this.

The truth is so beautiful and so precious when contrasted with the despair that comes with believed lies and half-truths. I realize now that I need to surround myself more with truth, to use it to fight for my own heart and to guard it, and also to open my life up to my friends more so that they can speak truth into my life. Lord, let me always cry out for wisdom and truth in my life. As I seek you in times of despair and times of hope, humble my heart that I might find rest in You.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Drawing Faces


I'm home visiting and little did I know I would find encouragement from something on television. I walked in to just sit on the couch and Berenstain Bears was on. I remember having one of the books when I was little and it was one of my favorites. So I started watching and of course got wrapped up in the story. The boy bear in the family started taking art lessons cause he wanted to learn how to draw faces. He starts taking the lessons and he gets frustrated cause the teacher is making everyone in the class draw circles and ovals at first. Brother Bear just wants to draw faces, not circles and ovals! The next lesson, the teacher makes them all draw three dimensional shapes but Brother Bear doesn't understand how this is going to help him draw faces. Then there is a scene later where Brother Bear is helping a younger bear swing a baseball bat and the younger bear just wants to hit the ball. Brother Bear gets frustrated with him and has to teach him things first to help him like his grip on the bat and his stance. Then he hears himself using the same words his teacher used and has an epiphany where he realizes that maybe all this silly shape-drawing really will help him draw faces.

I know this seems like such a simple lesson but it's something I really needed to hear. I was the same way when I was little. I didn't understand that playing scales really helps you learn to play actual songs on the piano and I just wanted to quit my lessons and learn to play songs on my own. I think I have been getting frustrated in this way in my spiritual life. I want to be able to encourage people, to not get distracted so easily from pursuing God whole-heartedly, to hear from God more clearly. And yet my heart doesn't understand all the time how lengths of time in prayer and the Word and meditating on the truths of the Gospel is going to help me prepare to experience God's gifts.

Thank you Lord for being gracious to speak to me in such an unexpected way. Please give me grace to obey you even when I don't understand and I get impatient!

Thursday, March 15, 2007

The Earth From Up Above

As I left for this trip I was really distracted from Christ and the cross. As I tried to refocus myself on it, my mind would keep wandering. I was staring out the window of the airplane and at one point we were low before landing and I could see neighborhoods of individual houses with their cars parked out front. I thought of individual people in all these houses, all of them consumed with the importance of their own thoughts and lives. Their cars all out in front of their houses. Countless possessions decorating them inside. And yet so many of these spread over the landscape that lay before me. It was like seeing the earth as it really is for the first time. One question came to my mind.

Am I just going to be another person consumed with himself?

I know that I am. And Lord, you know that I am. But I don't want to be!

This trip has been good because overall it is having the effect of being able to look down on my life back home objectively. I can see it laid out before me on a landscape where trivialities get lost in the whole story that is taking place. As a result, God so graciously is speaking clarity and peace where before I only felt confusion and unrest. It almost felt supernatural as I read about the cross, listened to music about the cross, and meditated on how it applied to my present situation. What I thought was immovable had been moved by the power of the Gospel. My faith is now increased that when I am in such a situation again that the power of the Gospel will conquer whatever is distracting me.

Lord, help me believe in the power of your Gospel! Help me believe that you will always be faithful to conquer my daily distractions!

Monday, March 12, 2007

Sunday Thoughts

"When thine eye is single, thy whole body is full of light."
Luke 11:34

How true are these words and how readily they are experienced. I was really distracted recently and this verse came alive in my mind. I began to apply it, making my eye single towards God, and felt the light of Christ flooding my thoughts and leaving me wondering how could I ever want to gaze on anything else. As I was worshipping today I had an image of an eye fixed on God in singleness and as light flooded into the eye, it began lighting up so many beautiful things. What a beautiful image of the truth that it is not our job to light up the dark and unknown places in our lives. Our only duty is to keep our eyes fixed on God and He will do the work of lighting up our lives.

Brett was talking in his message Sunday about the High Priest going in to the temple once a year to atone for people's sins and the fact that God tore the curtain top to bottom means that when can approach whenever we want! As I thought about this though, I realized that the problem is that I begin taking it for granted. After becoming accustomed to approaching God's presence, I find myself not feeling the weight of what I'm doing. I begin walking into His presence with eyes that wander instead of those that are fixed with reverence on the lasting beauty of my Savior.

There is so much beauty out there that captivates me! What is so precious about Christ's beauty is that it is lasting. One of the verses from the message today that came alive to me was from Hebrews 10:34.

"...you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one."

An abiding possession. There are so many possessions, material and sometimes even friends, that I clasp to tightly to my chest. In Christ though, I have a possession that I can clasp as tightly as I want and never let go! Then I can look at all the beauty in the world and all its possessions and say with the hymn writer, Jesus is fairer! Jesus is purer! Who makes the woeful heart to sing!

Lord, keep my eyes fixed on you. Let me never relax my embrace from you as my abiding possession. Thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown.