Month: July 2007

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Candle in the Dark

 Amy Carmichael is for me a hero of the faith.  Elisabeth Amy CarmichaelElliot wrote a wonderful biography of this woman entitled “A Chance to Die”.  She was serving as a missionary in India rescuing young girls from being sold as temple prostitutes when she suffered a terrible fall.   That fall left her confined to her room for the last twenty years of her life.  She was in constant pain and yet her letters and devotional writings composed during that season of pain continue to strengthen believer’s hearts and reveal the riches of a life whose roots are sunk deep in Christ.  I awoke with some melancholy this morning and immediately thought of this friend who sought a candle in the dark.

“All the paths of the LORD are lovingkindness.”  Psalm 25:10 RVcandle

All does not mean “all but the paths we are in now” or “nearly all, but perhaps not just this specially difficult painful one”.  All must mean all.

So your path with its unexplained sorrow, and mine with its unexplained sharp flints and briers, and both with their unexplained perplexity of guidance, their sheer mystery, are just lovingkindness, nothing less. 

I am resting my heart on that word.  It bears one up on eagle’s wings; it gives courage and song and sweetness too, that sweetness of spirit which it is death to lose even for one half hour.  God bless you and utterly satisfy your heart with Himself.  I remember in old days almost desperately repeating to myself these lines from Tersteegen; 

 “Am I not enough, Mine own?  Enough Mine own for thee?… Am I not enough Mine own?  I forever and alone, I, needing thee?” 

It was a long time before I could say honestly “Yes” to that question.  I remember the turmoil of soul as if it were yesterday, but at last, oh the rest, “for in acceptance lies peace”.  

Amy Carmichael, “A Candle in the Dark“, p. 46 

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Quote of the Day

Learning to Lament

imagecrying My friend Carolyn Dewhirst died yesterday–my heart hurts as I consider this loss. I long for words that give voice to the heartache that comes with death.  My spirit seems to know that I need a channel of expression for this ache and not just to push it down inside and act like nothing significant has happened.  With those thoughts swirling around I began preparation for Sunday School by studying 2 Samuel 1-5.  In those passages David had just gotten news of Saul and Jonathan’s death and he pours his heart out in lament.  Eugene Peterson’s thoughts answered my heart need as he commented on these chapters.  My eyes lingered over one particular phrase.  “A failure to lament is a failure to connect”.  He reminds me that our culture really has become a pain rejecting and death denying culture and yet our living constantly confronts us with the reality of pain and loss.

“Denial and distraction are the standard over-the counter prescriptions of our culture for dealing with loss; in combination they’ve virtually destroyed the spiritual health of our culture…If we’re not taught to lament…we’ll grow up believing that our immediate feelings determine our fate.  We’ll deny every rejection and thereby be controlled by rejection.  We’ll avoid every frustration and thereby be diminished by frustration.  Year by year, as we deny and avoid the pains and losses, the rejections and frustrations, we’ll become less and less, trivial and trivializing, empty shells with smiley faces painted on them…Learn to lament. Teach one another how to take seriously these cadences of pain, some coming from hate, some coming from love, so that we’re not diminished but deepened by them–find God in them, and beauty.  Put form and rhythm and song to them.  Pain isn’t the worst thing.  Being hated isn’t the worst thing.  Being separated from the one you love isn’t the worst thing.  Death isn’t the worst thing.  The worst thing is failing to deal with reality and becoming disconnected from what is actual.  The worst thing is trivializing the honorable, desecrating the sacred.  What I do with my grief affects the way you handle your grief; together we form a community that deals with death and other loss in the context of God’s sovereignty, which is expressed finally in resurrection.”            Eugene H. Peterson, Leap Over A Wall, p. 120.

Today, I am freed up to weep and wail and to express and to take seriously the deep connection that I shared with sister Carolyn.

David took up this lament concerning Saul and his son Jonathan, and ordered that the men of Judah be taught this lament…  2 Samuel 1:17

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The Best Question

This week I had a conversation with a friend regarding a recent sermon on submission.  The sermon stirred up troubling, even resentful feelings in some members of the congregation.   That conversation caused me to think through the reality and the powerful hold that feelings have over our lives.  More specifically, I pondered what role they should play in our spiritual formation.feelings  The temptation we face when our feelings are doing an “emotional squirm” as we listen to a message from Scripture is to reject the uncomfortable message.  At that moment, I think we began to ask ourselves the wrong question–we ask ourselves, “How do I feel about this?”.  If the answer is,  “I feel guilty or uncomfortable or ashamed” we are tempted to reject the message that incited those feelings.  I wonder if we would be better served to ask “What does God want me to believe about this in spite of my feelings?”  In Living the Cross Centered B6210-00-11_MLife,  C. J. Mahaney addressed this issue by quoting D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.  Jones warned “Avoid the mistake of concentrating overmuch upon your feelings.  Above all, avoid the terrible error of making them central” He adds, that  those who make their feelings the focus are “doomed to be unhappy…what we have in the Bible is Truth; it is not an emotional stimulus…and it is as we apprehend and submit ourselves to the truth that the feelings follow.”   Mahaney goes on to clarify why this is so important to consider, “Knowing and believing the truth will always bring you, in time, to a trustworthy experience of truth.  But if you trust your feelings first and foremost, if you exalt your feelings, if you invest your feelings with final authority—they’ll deposit you on the emotional roller coaster which so often characterizes our lives.”  The only thing I can guarantee about my feelings is that they will change–they shift like beach grass in the wind and cannot be relied on.  Today, I want to offer up my feelings to the Lord and trade them for His laser-beam, solid, unchanging truth!  Remember–Feelings are always real but they are not always True!

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The Gospel

“For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes, Jews first and also Gentiles. This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”     Romans 1:16-17 NLT

If someone asks you about the Gospel, do you know why it is powerful?  Can you communicate what it is, but more importantly, what it isn’t?  Take time to look over The Gospel Page and clarify in your mind once again how God makes us right in His sight!  Settle once and for all why the Gospel is glorious and religion is defeating!

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A Visit to Gobbler’s Knob

Afton It had been too long since I had taken the trip up 64 to 81 over Afton to visit with Mom and Dad.  Both had been sick with summer colds that had sapped  their strength and their good spirits. 

Casey and I piled in the car and made a couple of stops for snacks for us and groceries for my parents.  Casey had the idea of giving them a concert to lift their spirits so we practiced a few hymns as I drove us up the road. 

Yesterday was unusually clear and the humidity had disappeared overnight leaving a temperature that begged you to come out of doors!  When we arrived at Mom’s we climbed up on her front porch and rocked and caught up on the news–how many rabbits are around, the arrival of a snowball white stray cat who is feeding on scraps out back, the racoon who has broken branches in the crepe myrtle tree as he seeks to get access to the bird feeder and who has passed on to glory from the congregation of people at Calvary Brethren church. 

We relished each other’s company and before we knew it we had a visitor — my Aunt Daisy drove up on her lawn mower from her home down the hill.  She had been in the berry patch gathering blackberries but was weary from her labor and wary of the snakes that might be hiding out and gave up to come visit with us. DSC02933

It was then that Casey and I broke into song–her sweet soprano led out on “Holy, Holy, Holy”, “My Faith has found a Resting Place”, “Give Me Jesus’,  the African version of “What a Friend we Have in Jesus” and by special request “How great Thou Art”. 

It thrills my soul to wrap an alto line around her melody thread and that she sings willing without being begged to these days!  Later, Casey and I went off to gather a few berries of our own.  Dad directed us where to pick and before we knew it he was right there beside us picking as well!  Dad made a comment that reminded me of the “Walking By Faith” study as we were picking. 

He said, “Casey, these berries are pretty sour this year due to lack of rain but that sour taste makes it all the sweeter when you happen on a good ripe one!”  The difficult gifts of life taste initially sour but that taste makes the sweet gifts all the sweeter!  That day with Mom and Dad was a sweet gift made all the sweeter by the sour circumstance of their aging.

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The Goal of the Gospel

Until the gospel events of Good Friday and Easter and the gospel Gospelpromises of justification and eternal life lead you to behold and embrace God himself as your highest joy, you have not embraced the gospel of God. You have embraced some of his gifts. You have rejoiced over some of his rewards. You have marveled at some of his miracles.  But you have not yet been awakened to why the gifts, the rewards, and the miracles have come. They have come for one great reason: that you might behold forever the glory of God in Christ, and by beholding become the kind of person who delights in God above all things, and by delighting display his supreme beauty and worth with ever-increasing brightness and bliss forever. 

John Piper, God is the Gospel, p. 38