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Blogging… hmmmm… I remember blogs. My favorite two things about blogging are:
- To read my faraway (and nearer) friends’ blogs and feel that closeness and day to day journey again – something you just can’t have when you have four states in between you (or more) – and I really do miss you guys, just so you know… and that day to day glimpse into each other’s hearts and lives something that is even hard in the world of night and day prayer (even though we’re in the same city) for moms with little ones trying to spin so many plates at once in a world where nothing stops (24 hours a day, 7 days a week)
- I love writing and I love looking back and remembering what Noah did that day or how the Lord touched my heart during that particular time
Yet, sometimes, like the last however many months, you just don’t feel like blogging or at least I don’t. Anyone know what I mean? (Especially when you are an introvert like me — an INFJ for all you Meyers Briggs fans). I have to FEEL it to express it and I have to be a bit out of my cave. So what brought me out of my cave of late?
Simple. 10 YEARS of night and day prayer. I’m just a mess over it : )
Ten years… night and day and day and night, no matter the hour… or as my much more eloquent husband says in a yet-to-be-released publication (that he might not be so thrilled about me posting on the world wide web), “If you happened to wander in at 3am on a Sunday or 5pm on a Wednesday you would discover a room longer than it is wide, large enough to hold only several hundred grey chairs. At the front is a small platform where roughly ten souls, most of whom haven’t yet reached twenty-five years, play instruments and lift their voices in a flowing dance of structure and spontaneity mingled with interjections of spoken prayers. Before them an assembly of people that ebbs and flows in size sits not looking at them but beyond them, offering supplication and praise to the One who alone is worthy of this incessant attention.”
And the reason for this phenomenon? Well, I can tell you this… it’s not about a cool ministry or cool music (cuz ahem… we’re not that cool, people, trust me). It’s not about the right marketing strategy or big conferences (cuz um, well, I won’t say anything about that). Night and day prayer is about Heaven. It’s about wanting things on earth as they are in Heaven. And Heaven is a real place that is utterly centered around one Triune Person… the living God. Our beloved Jesus Christ, the Worthy One, preeminent and supreme in all things for all time, in Whom we live and breath and have our being, by Whom and for Whom all things that were made were made, He is before all things and in Him, all things hold together. “Night and day prayer is not a testimony to human dedication but rather to the power of the majesty of Jesus to ensnare weak hearts and hold them fast in unending preoccupation.” (Stephen Venable)
This is where my heart has been feasting these last few weeks… in not just Kansas City, but the many expressions and witnesses God has risen up all over the earth to declare one thing, “Jesus Christ is worthy.” More worthy than our wealth, more worthy than all the opportunities to ignore Him, more worthy than our ministries, more worthy than our egos, more worthy than the rulers of the earth… worthy, worthy, worthy is the Lamb, the One that was and is and is to come.
On September 19th, here in Kansas City, we celebrated 10 years of unceasing worship and prayer in our community. Of which, I have been blessed to be a part of 8 1/2 of them. I so remember first coming here… which is a crazy story that I won’t go into. But I came from a VERY nice church and let’s face it in Texas, we just do things… well, BIG. So I came with a certain “assumption” of what the International House of Prayer would look like. And well, let’s just say it was not what I expected. It was the “stable” as some like to call it… it was – well, it was a trailer. That’s it. I think I was like the 30-something’th person on staff. And now, ten years later, we are bursting at the seams (in thousands) with I don’t even know how many properties – all with crazy God stories as to why we even have them (like Harry Truman’s land that was sold to us by a Jewish man) and crazy stories like that. So much has changed in 10 years. But what brought me to tears as we celebrated these last 10 years were not all the changes and all the testimonies of how far God has brought us over a decade… but the flame. The fire in men and women and children’s hearts that brings them day after day after night after night back to the place of prayer and of worship… the testimony of Christ that is whispered in the walls of that building over on Red Bridge and the fragrance that rises toward Heaven… His gaze peering back at us, weak and broken and striving human beings that we are, yet He sees and knows and loves. That mighty flame… loving and being loved by God Himself… prayers offered by the saints in accordance with His will… it remains. That is simply stunning to me. Everything around us might be changing, but the reality that binds us together is unchanging, eternal, unfailing… Jesus Christ is worthy… He is supreme.
In addition, during this ten-year celebration, the Lord put on the hearts of the leadership team that this the time to start 24/7 works of Justice. Justice being outreach of all sorts – from simple evangelism to a Women’s Life Center to rescue, support and help victims of the sex-trafficking trade to Orphan Justice and adoption to an inner city mission center and prayer room as well as many other ministries flowing out of the place of night and day supplication for the mercy of God. The center and heartbeat of the International House of Prayer will always, always be night and day prayer and worship. All other realities flow out of that singular calling the Lord has put at the heart of this ministry. Yet, I so feel the answer and kindness of the Lord to us in this season to grow even deeper in the place of prayer and in the 1st commandment by diving deeper into the 2nd commandment. My heart has been really stirred by compassion and service flowing from the reality of night and day prayer… something I hope to write about a little more in the weeks ahead if I can find time. Aslan is on the move… : )
Here are a few fun videos remembering the last 10 years that were showed during the celebration services:
Mourning makes us poor; it powerfully reminds us of our smallness. But it is precisely here, in that pain or poverty or awkwardness, that the Dancer invites us to rise up and take the first steps. For in our suffering, not apart from it, Jesus enters our sadness, takes us by the hand, pulls us gently up to stand, and invites us to dance. We find the way to pray, as the psalmist did, “You have turned my mourning into dancing” (Ps. 30:11), because at the center of our grief, we find the grace of God. (Henri Nouwen)
Never before has the reality of our life as a vapor (James 4) or a fading flower (Isa 40) been so tangibly real in my own life as it has in the last month or so… yet simultaneously, it is as if I am living in slow motion right now, where every breath seems to come to me just as slow as it leaves me, where every joy stuns and overwhelms me as it slowly washes over me and every sorrow wounds me as it steadily penetrates all my pretentious defenses. Some days I feel like I’m the person in that climactic scene that we’ve all seen in the movies where the slow ballad plays and the main character is taking stock of his or her life through one slow motion glimpse or memory after another. It’s amazing how even in the small things… like a lily opening up her ’soul’ to the sun after a sweet spring rain OR the innocent delight of my little Noah as he runs from one side of the room to the other while turning his cute smiling face to find Mommy’s delight in him as he passes me by… in these little, slow-moving moments, my eyes seem to open to Something, or Someone, more alive than life itself.
The days have been indescribably slow, yet indelibly transforming. In the same chapter by Henri Nouwen quoted above, he says:
“I once saw a stonecutter remove great pieces from a huge rock on which he was working. In my imagination I thought, That rock must be hurting terribly. Why does this man wound the rock so much? But as I looked longer, I saw the figure of a graceful dancer emerge gradually from the stone, looking at me in my mind’s eye and saying, “You foolish man, didn’t you know that I had to suffer and thus enter into my glory?”
Mourning, loss, suffering, pain… all of these have an unwavering power to reveal our humanity – our smallness in the scheme of things – as well as our deep disdain for said weakness. In the best of circumstances, it is easy to sing the old song, “I Surrender All…” but when push comes to shove, those words do not fall from our lips quite as freely. Or maybe they do, but the weight of them upon our souls is absolutely crushing if we are truly ‘drinking the cup.’
I have been ”enjoying” that place of crushing these last few months. I find that I am utterly helpless in this experience of physical pain. I can take the medicines that are available to me and I can go through a short list of things that might help, but at the end of the day, all I can really do is endure. And even enduring has taken on an entirely new meaning. It’s hard to explain, but quite honestly, I have never experienced this kind of pain before and it has been a trial by fire unlike anything I have ever known. Have you ever felt something, whether physically or emotionally, that you really (in all honesty, with no drama or exaggeration) thought that there was no way you could take one more second of… that it was too much and in its absolute desolation, you were left reeling as you tried to figure out a way to stop it, get out of it, or just do absolutely anything so you didn’t have to experience one more minute of it??
A friend of mine, D, had one of those labor and deliveries that we all pray will never happen to us. Her baby’s head was turned and literally ”stuck” in the birth canal after hours and hours of labor. The epidural that she was given to help alleviate the excruciating pain had somehow come unplugged, so she was left to experience every second of it. Afterwards she recalled reaching a point in the midst of it where she just knew, “This is it. I cannot go on any longer.” And when she was describing just how bad it was and how she had reached that place where she knew she couldn’t take it anymore… I remember another friend, who we will call MB, responding (in a way that only he could get away with), “What does that mean? What was the alternative?” Meaning, what other option did she have?
And that, my friends, is the crushing blow. There are no options. It might get better, it might stay the same, or it may even get worse, but time will still keep moving and there is no other way around what lies ahead… the only way is THROUGH it. And it is in our journey through that we find this profound invitation from the Lord.
Because you see, He too went through and not around. Jesus, though being in very nature God Himself, made Himself nothing, humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a Cross. He suffered more than any man, before or since. He was beaten and scourged so much so that He was unrecognizable as a man. Yet He was God… unlike us, He had a choice to go above or around or any other way He wanted, but He chose to go through… Jesus chose the Cross.
Now if God went through and not around, where does that leave us?
Well… first and foremost, it means we are not alone. There is no pain too horrific, no loss too unimaginable, no depth too dark and impenetrable that Love hasn’t travelled the road before us. Love went to the abyss and death didn’t win… even the grave could not contain Him. He united Himself to us forever when He took on flesh and He invites us to know something of Himself even (and especially) as we travel down the terrifyingly dark alleyways life brings us. God chose to reveal the passion of His own heart in the way of the Cross, and the way to the Resurrection will always be through, never around, the Cross.
We also find each other at the foot of the Cross. We are bound one to another in our “human-ness.” Though our roads may look a bit different, we are all in the same boat. We’re not so different from each other… we’re all utterly human and vulnerable to the storms that rage around us. But that’s a different post…
His way also reveals the ‘other side.’ The joy that comes on Easter morning. There is a promise, a living Hope, set before us in that Day. Though we die a thousand deaths, death has forever lost its sting. Oh glorious Day… how I long for the rising of the Son and the end of this long night. But the darkest hour comes just before the dawn. The way from Palm Sunday to Easter is the way of suffering.
And so, it came in a dream – the answer to my reachings for the Lord in the midst of this crazy hard season. One night last week, I had a dream where I was in this desert and it was pitch black. I was laying with my face in the dirt (appropriately). And as I laid there, I started to hear the sound of these deep African drums and dark wind instruments. The music got louder and louder and I heard what sounded like a children’s choir singing “dance, dance, dancing in the dirge” until their voices seemed to lift me out of the dirt onto my feet. And just as I took my first step into a dance, I woke up. I woke up with a new understanding…
Somewhere in this rubble and mass of stone, there lives a dancer. Though right now, it is hard to see… maybe no one knows except the Sculptor that she’s even there… but what He sees is all that matters. The path toward freedom comes as I surrender myself to the Hands of the Master. I have before me this incredible invitation to travel with Him through the way of Love that I would not miss its heights and depths. And what I am discovering is that the Dancer dances even now. Here in the midst of mourning is where I find my first steps… it is here in the dirge that I am learning the foundations of the dance as I surrender to His perfect leadership in each movement and with every breath.
Yet I must confess that even as I took my first steps, I found myself asking Him with fear in my heart… are You sure this is the way??
But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.”
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:9-10)
Happy Week After Resurrection Day!
more about “Video of I Have Seen the Lord” :: Des…“, posted with vodpod
Tonight Stephen is preaching on the Cross at the House of Prayer’s (Good) Friday Night Encounter God Service. You can watch or listen to the message LIVE AT THIS WEBSITE (for free). Look for the menu that says LIVE WEBCAST WITH WORSHIP AND TEACHING and click on Watch or Listen (whichever you prefer) next to the Friday Night 6pm session. The message starts around 7:30pm CST.
You can get the notes for the message above at this link. Look for the menu titled Most Recent Notes and Stephen’s will be at the top or near the top. You can also get a copy of a Harmony of the Crucifixion Accounts from the Gospels here.
Today we celebrate the most unimaginable day in the history of all things… the day God was wounded for our transgressions and chastised for our iniquities. God Himself bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. He did not look away from the ocean of pain and depraved ugliness in the human heart, yet we despised Him, rejected Him and assumed Him to be smitten by God (though He was God). Jesus was the Man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief… oppressed and afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, yet He said nothing, did nothing to stop it. He could have turned the world on its axis and called all of Heaven’s angels to His side. No one actually had the power to take His life… it was Jesus who laid it down by His own accord.
Today, on Good Friday, may our hearts come before a Love so Radical, a Passion so Holy, and a Desire so Unthinkable that even death was not too far to reach for the King of Kings and Lord or Lords.
Take this to heart and doubt not that you are the one who killed Christ. Your sins certainly did, and when you see the nails driven through his hands, be sure that you are pounding, and when the thorns pierce his brow, know that they are your evil thoughts. Consider that if one thorn pierced Christ you deserve one hundred thousand.
The whole value of the meditation of the suffering of Christ lies in this, that man should come to the knowledge of himself and sink and tremble. If you are so hardened that you do not tremble, then you have reason to tremble. Pray to God that he may soften your heart and make fruitful your meditation upon the suffering of Christ, for we ourselves are incapable of proper reflection unless God instills it.
But if one does meditate rightly on the suffering of Christ for a day, an hour, or even a quarter of an hour, this we may confidently say is better than a whole year of fasting, days of psalm singing, yes, than even one hundred masses, because this reflection changes the whole man and makes him new… (Martin Luther)
To those present that day the Cross was a scene unforgettable in its horror and yet somehow unthinkably beautiful. Memories of skin torn asunder, heaving sweat, dripping blood, and tear-stained eyes filled their minds. Through the testimony of Scripture and the ministry of the Holy Spirit we, no less than they, should also know the feeling of this graphic scene bearing down upon our souls until our hearts are crushed. When you join John at the foot of the Cross and behold the chest you leaned upon the night before now covered in blood and straining to be filled with breath, indifference is not plausible. If you kneel beside Mary and look up to see the One who entered your womb by the Holy Spirit, the One who grew before your eyes through the passing years, the One promised to sit upon the throne of David, now marred and reviled, your heart is flung into a torrent of emotion. (Stephen Venable)
…That is why the saints have always taken up meditation on the sorrows of Jesus Christ: it was by this means that Saint Francis of Assisi became a seraph. One day a gentleman found him weeping and crying out with a loud voice. On being asked why he did so, he answered, “I weep for the sorrows and ignominies of my Lord: and what makes me weep the most is that we, for whom he suffered so much, live in forgetfulness of Him.” And on saying this he redoubled his tears, so that this man too began to weep. Whenever the saint heard the bleating of a lamb, or saw anything else that reawakened the memory of Jesus’ Passion, he immediately fell aweeping. Another time, when he was sick, someone told him that he should have a book of devotion read to him. “My book,” he replied, “is Jesus crucified.” Hence he did nothing but exhort his brethren to think of the Passion of Jesus Christ at all times. (St. Alphonsus Liguori)
Great thief of hearts, the strength of your love has broken even our hard hearts. You inflamed the whole world with your love. Wisest Lord, inebriate our hearts with this wine, burn them with this fire, pierce them with this arrow of your love. This, your cross, is indeed a crossbow that pierces hearts. Let the whole world know that my heart is stricken. Sweetest love, what have you done? You have come to heal me, and you have wounded me. You have come to teach me, and you have made me like someone mad. O wisest madness, may I never live without you. Lord, everything that I see on the cross invites me to love: the wood, the form, the wounds in your body; and above all, your love invites me to love you and never forget you. (John of Avila)
Today is Maundy Thursday, aka Holy Thursday, aka Great and Holy Thursday, aka Sheer Thursday (sheer meaning ‘clean’ or ‘bright’)… in simple terms, it is the Thursday before Easter commemorating the Last Supper, the washing of the disciples’ feet, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the betrayal of Christ. Before we had Noah, we would go to one of the Episcopal churches in downtown Kansas City for their Maundy Thursday service. We haven’t done it in Noah’s infant or toddler years, but we hope to renew that tradition next year. If you haven’t been to a liturgical Maundy Thursday service or Good Friday service, they are so rich (if you can find a good church) and I recommend it. The typical Maundy Thursday service begins in celebration of the Last Supper and the commandment given by the Lord (Maundy actually means “command”) to “love one another as I have loved you.” It then usually goes through the breaking of the bread and drinking of the cup at the Last Supper as well as the washing of the feet (some churches even have a footwashing ceremony.) But the end… oh, the end is my favorite part.
In a nutshell, there are seven candles lit before the service and one larger candle representing Christ… and at the end, there is a reading for each of the seven candles before they are extinguished one by one:
1) Shadow of Betrayal – Matthew 26:20-25, 2) Shadow of Inner Agony – Luke 22:40-44, 3) Shadow of Loneliness – Matthew 26-40-45, 4) Shadow of Desertion – Matthew 26:47-50,55,56, 5) Shadow of Accusation – Matthew 26:59-67, 6) Shadow of Mockery – Mark 15:12-20, 7) Shadow of Death – Luke 23:33-46
After each passage is read and each candle is extinguished, the reader says, “Lord, have mercy,” and the church responds, “Christ, have mercy.”
Finally there is only one candle lit in the room. No other lights to be seen but the light of Christ represented by the singular flame. And these words are spoken:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4 )
The light has come into the world, but people love the shadows rather than the light.
The Christ candle is extinguished.
The church is in complete darkness.
And all you hear is a solemn voice say these piercing words from the darkness…
”My God, My God why have you forsaken me?”
That is how you leave the service… in the dark. So powerful. The first time I ever went to a Maundy Thursday service, I left in tears and wept all the way home.
I love liturgy – there is something so beautiful about it… because it is His Word. Sometimes, especially around Easter and Christmas when there is SO MUCH to be spoken from the Scriptures, I feel like the church, in all its efforts to be palatable and relevant, has long left the Word behind and traded it for feel-good sentimentalities that feed our flesh and not our souls. And ironically, that only makes the church less relevant, but that’s another story.
This afternoon I read this post by Angie (Bring the Rain)and cried all the way through it. (If you have never read her blog before, this link will give context to the significance of April 7th and what the post above is about. Prepare to cry a lot.) As I read Angie’s words (I love that she quotes people like Nouwen and Guyon in her posts), I was reminded by all that Jesus had to say in those final days before He went to the Cross. Think about it… the words, like in John 13-17, are the words GOD in the flesh saved for those last moments with His disciples… the words that would be recorded forever in Scripture before those great and glorious Days that follow and changed history and our lives forever. All the words of God are vastly relevant and important to our lives, but these words, the ones spoken in His last days and with His very last breaths on the earth before the Cross, how much more weight should we give them?
Anyway, all of this also made me think again about how I want to build traditions for our family especially around Christmas and Easter that serve as a remembrance and celebration of the One we love. I want Noah to grow up knowing Jesus and loving His appearing more than some imaginary bunny or man in a red suit. And around that time, I got an email from my “bff” (smile) and they are doing something so cool with Maddie and David this year. We’re going to steal their idea, which is actually Noel Piper’s idea. Here are some pictures from Dana (hopefully she won’t care that I’m posting them here):
Jesus is alive! : )
Here’s the basic recipe for doing this (taken from the Desiring God blog), but you can get more specifics at the Desiring God Blog OR in Noel Piper’s book, Treasuring God in our Traditions.
Ingredients for playdough:
- 4 c. of flour
- 1.5 c. salt
- 1.5 c. water
- 1 Tbs. oil
(Increase or decrease depending on how big you want your mountain to be.)
Other items you’ll need:
- several pipe cleaners (Dana used their Bible figures instead, which I like better too)
- 2 twigs
- 1 small aluminum can
Making the Mountain
- Mix playdough ingredients and knead. Add small amounts of water as needed until the texture is right.
- Separate a small lump of dough and form a disc-shaped “stone” to cover the entry to the “tomb.” (The can will be the tomb, so the stone needs to be a little bigger around than the can.)
- Shape the rest of the dough into a mound. Embed the can into one side, open side out, to create a cave.
- Press the cross into the top of the mountain to form a hole deep enough to stand the cross in. Make the hole a bit larger than the stick because the hole will get smaller when the mountain bakes.
- Press a fork randomly around into the hill to make “footholds” for the stick people.
- Bake the “mountain” and the “stone” 4-5 hours at 250 degrees.
- When cooled, color with paint or markers.
Using Your Playdough Mountain
You can play with the figures all week reenacting different scenes of the passion week to build up to Good Friday. With your kids on Friday, you can reenact the story of Jesus’ death-putting him on the cross, burying him in the cave, and rolling the stone in front of it. They will feel the waiting, small as it is – it builds in a little heart more than we realize, on Saturday when Jesus is hidden in the mountain and it is set aside.
On Easter, before your little ones are awake, take him out of the tomb and put him somewhere for them to find. First they’ll notice the tomb is empty; then they’ll see that he’s alive.
The simple joy of a child over a plastic figure (or pipe cleaner figure) of Jesus alive is a reminder of where our hearts should be this weekend… because He is a real man and He is God and this is how we know His glory.
Thought all my mommy and daddy friends might enjoy that : ) for this weekend.
Finally, I just have to point this out because I loved it… but you should also check out this video on the Desiring God Blog of an old friend, Matt Chandler, talking about the true Gospel of the Cross. SO good. Jesus wants the rose. Arms wide open, Heart exposed. We are that rose.
Just a disclaimer… kind of in a whirlwind right now and typing is difficult, so this post may be choppy and my train of thought may not make any sense at all, so don’t feel obligated to read it. Writing is sometimes just my remembrance of His faithfulness.
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world… I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to the other country and to help others do the same. C. S. Lewis
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And Hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Whom He has given us. (Romans 5)
Hope does not disappoint. That phrase has been swimming in my mind all day today. I remember once hearing this woman’s story of hope in the face of unthinkable circumstances on a documentary about the Holocaust. As a young Jewish girl, she and her family were sent away to one of the worst concentration camps in Europe. Long before they were captured, the woman’s mother had sown diamonds into the seam of her skirt, believing that they might be able to use the diamonds to pay for food or even to negotiate their freedom. Of course upon arriving at the camp, they were ordered to take off their clothes and surrender all their valuables. The young girl in a desperate moment, not wanting to surrender the jewels that her mother had linked to their survival, made what may seem to us (as we sit here in our comfy chairs with our laptops in our 3bdrm, 2 bath houses) a hasty and somewhat irrational decision, to swallow the diamonds. Once inside the camp, however many days later, the diamonds were completely digested and left her body again. Let the reader understand…
At this point, she made another decision that may push the bounds of sanity for most of us – if in fact, she was living in a “sane” world, which she clearly was not — and that was to ingest the diamonds again. She actually did this again and again for the entire time she was in that camp… day after day in that mad and uncivilized world she had become a part of, she ingested those diamonds — which were utterly meaningless in that place (they wouldn’t get her food or freedom or even her humanity back), but to her, they meant everything. The diamonds were her only hope. And so she consumed her symbol of hope and hid them away, in a place where they would not be discovered nor taken from her. They were her secret, her hope of survival. In the documentary, as she told her story from her rocking chair, she wore the diamonds in a necklace in the shape of a tear drop.
Her story may be disturbing and even a little uncouth especially in the world most of us live in day to day, but the world she lived in was anything but civilized. The mask came off and the evil and chaos of this world was revealed in the most unimaginable ways and what she had to do was survive. And for her, the way to hold on was to cling to the only thing she could… hope (albeit, a lesser hope than I am referring to in this post).
Though I have never suffered anything close to what this young girl and so many millions like her endured in the Holocaust (and millions that are suffering from genocide, wars and famine still today)…. still in my personal journey through much smaller trials and lesser pains, her story very much resonates with me and points toward a greater Truth. I have become well-acquainted with the unmerciful adversary of Pain. The prison of sickness is an unforgiving and unrelenting experience. I think I underestimated its resolve at first, but I am learning the potency of suffering more and more each day. Upon entering its chambers, you are forced to surrender abilities, talents, plans, relationships, finances, comfort, and sometimes even your sanity to name a few (though nothing is off limits to be sure)… but I have a secret that even these walls cannot contain. The Lord was not kidding when He said that there are some things that can never be taken away from us.
Pain and trials have an uncanny ability to reveal all manner of secrets within and without… but none so important as what, or by the grace of God Who, has made a home in our souls. Believe me, when all our little comforts are removed, those grandiose plans, superior opinions or friendly old sentimentalities will do nothing to keep you or anyone you know cozy and warm at night. All the ’necessary’ possessions, enlightening information, and engaging entertainment, even our ministries - the host of lesser pleasures that we spend most of ourselves on will do nothing to abate the chasm God carved out for Him and Him alone within the human soul. And there is nothing like a little “suffering” to reveal the shadows we are so helplessly clinging to. So how can we rejoice then in all manner of trials and suffering as the New Testament writers all suggest in their epistles?
I have had people say things like, “It’s so good that you have your ‘religion’ or your ‘faith’ or your ‘hope’ to help you through this.” It kind of makes me cringe when I hear it now because I don’t take the words ‘hope’ or ’faith’ lightly. They are the mountains within… they are my Friends and my Life. They are far from a religious idea or some sort of nice sentimentality that calms my fears of things like death or pain. They aren’t just words on paper. I would be lost, utterly lost, without them. And you can’t fake ‘hope.’ You either have Hope or you don’t… because Hope – Hope is a Person. There is a real Person standing on the other side of that word and He’s God and He’s a Man. It’s Jesus who is the Hope that anchors our soul. And the crazy thing about Hope is that no matter how hard these prison walls try to crush us, Hope cannot be destroyed. In fact, the pressure only causes Hope (with Faith and Love) to abound still more and more.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (2 Corinthians 4)
And so tonight, my body may be weak and pain is all around, but I have Hope. And that Hope comes from the kindest and most faithful Person I have ever known. He is real. He is the King and His Kingdom is coming. I know this place is not my home – I am merely a pilgrim passing through. Jesus is my strength and my Portion forever. And so I curl up tonight with my faithful friends, Faith Hope and Love, and know they will not disappoint.
Because you see…
Hope, He is coming for me.
