My Hope Is Secure!

Normally, I can only vaguely sense the deep need that is on someone else’s heart, but sometimes prayer allows the near-impossible to happen.  Through prayer, I can enter into the need of another, allow my own heart to wrap itself around that need, and in turn, bring that need before God with a felt empathy, imploring the grace of His response.  Never is that more true than when a small group of women gather to pray aloud the written prayers of others in our congregation – prayers that resonate with the memories of a loved one who has died and the hope that death opens the door for that one to be fully and eternally alive.  On this side of that door, death seems so very final.  As a body is “laid to rest,” so too are dreams and hopes, only to be replaced with an anguished void.  As our small group of women prays, those temporal realities are felt and realized anew, and the sorrow that still lingers for others becomes ours as well.

Coming home though after praying together, the words of a song we sang as a choir a number of years ago in celebration of Christ’s resurrection, seemed to burst through my melancholy.  He is not here; He is risen!  Death’s final call, He would not obey.  Risen with power and with glory, He is alive today!  For the believer, Christ’s “disobedience” to death’s final call, brought not only a demonstration of His power over death for Himself, but also the security of a hope for every believer, that because Christ lives, we will also live.  Paul comforted the Thessalonians with the reminder that, yes, as believers we will grieve because temporarily our dreams and hopes are gone, but our grieving does not need to be a grief that embraces finality.  Peter tells us our hope comes because of the factual reality of Christ’s resurrection.  With the Corinthians, Paul goes so far to say that apart from the resurrection, our faith is useless and we are still guilty of our sins. And he says, “if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.”  The words of promise though that Paul concludes with, are given to every believer, “But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.  He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died.”

There will be other times I enter into the heartfelt needs of another, needs that have been imposed because of the side of the door we stand on.  There will be times when the need is my own, just as it has been before.  And there are times, when the need will be yours.  The truth is still ours and always will be.  He is not here; He is risen!  My hope is secure!
                                                                                           – Bev

(Related Bible reading: 1 Corinthians 15:12-20)

Thirst for Living Water

Psalm 63:1 “You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek You; I thirst for You, my whole being longs for You, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.”

This Psalm was written by David while he was wandering and hiding in the Judean desert wilderness during his flight from either Saul or Absalom. Even though he was far away from where he desired to be, in Jerusalem worshiping the Lord, his longing for and expression of intense love and desire for his God is articulately detailed in this vivid word picture. A desert is a barren area of land where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile to plant, animal and human life. Can you imagine trying to survive in a dry desert and you are so thirsty because there is no water, the land is parched, arid and hot, and the lack of vegetation has exposed the unprotected surface of the ground beneath your feet? The human body needs food and water to survive. Although it would be difficult, you can go three weeks without food, but water is a completely different story. If you do not have water to hydrate your body, within three days in this type of environment, you will perish. In his devotion, David longs for God’s presence and His nearness, just as much as he is wandering in the desert longing for water. I believe this is right where our Lord desires each and every one of us to be, longing for Him as we would a cup of cold water on a hot and dry summer day.

When we were in Israel, we hiked for an hour into an oasis located west of the Dead Sea in the Judean Desert where we found the majestic waterfalls of Ein Gedi where David found sanctuary and relief from the dry and parched land he had been traveling.  As we followed the hot and dry trails up into the canyon, I would look back and I would take pictures of the magnificent and spectacular view below of the Dead Sea with the Jordanian Edom mountains located on the horizon. Although the beginning of the hike was hot and uncomfortable, the farther we got into the canyon, the landscape began to change into a lush and rich greenery, and all of a sudden the creek opened up into a splendid waterfall with pools for swimming. It was definitely one of the most beautiful and magical places we encountered in Israel, but some of the people in our tour didn’t go on the hike, including my husband. And as I swam in the pools at the base of the waterfall, I thought, “oh how he missed out.” Sometimes on our journey of life we may look back nostalgically at a long-ago stage of our travels and yearn for something easier and less complicated or sometimes, we choose not to go on an adventure or trail because it looks difficult, but if we do not follow the path that He has set before us and press forward, we may miss the sanctuary and refreshment that the Lord has for us ahead.

Psalm 42:1-2 says, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for You, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God. When can I go and meet with God?” When was the last time your soul thirsted for the Living God? I think a better question would be, when did you last notice that your soul pants for the Lord? Each and every one of us has a hunger and a thirst within us for the Living God but we try to fill it with all kinds of other things. Just as our bodies will never be satisfied with just one drink of water, our souls will never be satisfied with what this world has to offer, but if we drink of the Living Water, we will never be thirsty again.

                                                                                      – Melody

Insurance

Insurance

We were traveling and chatting.  But I did happen to catch the words on the large billboard.  “It will never happen to us.”  The words were large and bold, but so too were the words underneath, “.... is NOT good insurance.”  Obviously, the words fit well for the ones offering health insurance, home insurance, car insurance, and probably some other insure-ers wanting to capture your rational thinking for just a moment.  Losing an infant to death in my mid-twenties was not something I had planned or prepared for.  My son never expected the Twin Towers to crumble when he stood in front of them on Monday, September 10, 2001.  Neither did you expect the child you loved and nurtured, to walk away from all you taught her.  Nor did you expect the divorce or the flagrant ugliness that followed.   Fires, tornadoes, earthquakes have stolen everything a family owns.  We don’t expect leadership to fail us.  Vacations have turned into horror stories – and the list could go on.  We weren’t ready, and in many ways, we can’t be fully ready.

There is another area too in which we can think, it will never happen.  But then it does.  We don’t plan to sin.  We don’t plan to go contrary to what God wants for us, contrary to what is best for us.  But, we do.  We forget what God has taught us.  We are drawn to things that seem easier, more appealing, less demanding.  We fail to influence others, and instead, we are influenced by the morals, practices, and beliefs, or lack of belief, of those around us.  God and His truth, His ways, become less and less important to us.  We make excuses, minimize, rationalize, fail to take responsibility.  We never intended to make those choices, but we did.  More and more, we give less and less, to God and to others.  And prayerfully, somewhere along the line, we ask ourselves, how did I get here?  Why did I do that?

And the answer to tragedy or to sin, is brokenness.  A brokenness before God that says, I can’t. God can. I will let Him.  A brokenness that faces the need, defines it before God, owns the emptiness and inadequacy, and lays it all at His feet.  We can think “it will never happen to me,” but life doesn’t hold that kind of guarantee, not even for the believer.  And brokenness in the need gives us an awareness of His presence and an outpouring of His grace and sufficiency.  And moment by moment, day by day, we stay with Him and draw from Him.  I love the verse where God speaks and says, “Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.”   But, can we be more ready before the tragedy crashes into our life?  Can we create within ourselves a stronger capacity to know and resist sin, to say “no” before we go contrary to what God wants for us?  And the answer for both is once again the same.  Get to know God more fully for who He truly is.  Get to know the truth of His ways and His promises.  Walk with Him.  Practice God-dependence and God-saturated days.  Every day.  Moment by moment.  It’s the best insurance possible.

                                                                                             – Bev

(Related Bible reading:  Psalm 81:10; Psalm 9:9,10)

Thoughts Under the Umbrella

Isaiah 26:3 You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.

When my husband and I would go through a rough time either from decisions we had made, or just because sometimes bad things do happen, he would say, “It is what it is!”  In other words it was what it was but now, it is what it is.  So how can we fix it?  Sometimes when we face troubles, we can find a way to make it better.  In some situations, there is absolutely nothing we can do to change our circumstances.  The death of a child is something that cannot be fixed. That nice little saying seemed too simple for what we were facing.  What I have come to realize is that there is a simple truth though in those five little words.  We could not change the death of our daughter.  We had to come to a place of surrender.  We could only control how we reacted to it.  Most of the pain I felt came from looking at all I had done wrong or regretting all that I didn’t do.  I also looked at how I was going to go into my future without my daughter.  How could life ever be good again?  In his book, GODISNOWHERE, Mickey Stonier writes about the peace of God and how we look at our lives.  He writes, “Have you ever noticed that sorrow, regret and guilt are birthed from looking back, that worry and anxiety come from looking ahead, that doubt and despair result from looking around at the circumstances, but it is faith that looks up.”

My dear sister-in-loss, are you looking back and feeling regret and guilt for things you might have done wrong or wish you had done differently?  Surrender them to our God who loves you and wishes better for you.  Don’t let these feelings get carried into your future. Tomorrow has enough worries for itself, so surrender your worries and anxiety over to God.  Don’t let those feelings rob you of the joy He wants for you this day. Our circumstances when we are in grief can look dark and hopeless.  When we doubt a future and a hope, we need to hold on tight to the promises He has given us.  We might feel like God is nowhere, but I guarantee you He is walking right beside you.  He is with you when it was what it was and He will walk beside you when it is what it is.  Look to the past to learn those valuable lessons.  Look forward for the purpose He has for you and look up for His peace to carry You.

                                                 – Michele