Water is Most Refreshing When You’ve Been Parched.

The oppressiveness of life can drape heavy, like a blanket over our backs. Not a blanket of comfort and warmth, but one weighing us down, like twenty pounds of despair covering our shoulders. Maybe you’ve been here and cried as if you were being flipped inside out...on the floor, heaving in a panic, fear ripping holes in your chest and tears flowing on and off for weeks, unexpected and uncontrollable. The nauseation from loss, desires unmet, disappointment that squeezes out your breath or grief settling in to find a home in our bodies leave us pressed down. These are the dark nights of the soul and they come unleashing havoc on us like a swarm of bees, attacking. Sometimes we sit in it and wonder if a light will ever dawn.

Little do we know, here lies the prelude to songs of gratitude. Pain is often the set up for a thankful heart. Though we know in our minds it’s not true, we wonder if that acute ache will trap us for the rest of our lives. Severe anguish blinds us to hope and deafens us to the whispers of God.

But oftentimes without warning, a small spoonful of grace is served up when we least expect it, right in the middle of the torment. Little did we know that the lack we have been mourning, the pain we have been wanting to escape, or the distress that has left us with such sorrow have prepped us to treasure the smallest gifts as though they were the size of the moon. A little water goes a long way for the thirsty.

Most often, though we wish it were not so, songs birth most beautifully from a place of suffering. We simply do not know the value of walking until we can’t walk. We don’t know the value of friendship until we have gone without it. We don’t know the value of a peaceful day until we have been wrecked with anxiety. We don’t know the value of health until we have endured chronic pain. We don’t know the value of laughter until we have been lost in depression. Genuine gratitude and hardship are not mutually exclusive.

What is most glorious is how by this same recipe God works worship into our numb hearts. I am sure, like me, you have seen your sin leave its wake across the lives of those you most love. In a state of panic we break knowing we can’t fix it, we can’t undo it and we can’t erase it from our souls. This is when forgiveness takes it’s full effect. When I see my sin for what it is, I am more thunderstruck by His mercy. This mercy, that is new every morning, leads me inevitably to personal stanzas of praise to God. How can I have one without the other?

So sit in the pain, feel the weight of your sin and when He comes to you with healing and forgiveness, you will rejoice as if you had been rescued. Because you have. 

Elisabeth Elliot, a life worth considering.

My sister was scrolling through her phone and made a comment that has left my thoughts full, “Elisabeth Elliot died today.” I knew she was near the end of life and battling alzheimer’s disease. In the back of my mind I knew I would hear this news soon. Ironically, I got a push notification the other day on my phone from a news app that informed me that Jeb Bush, a presidential candidate, considers himself “an introvert.” I guess that would be considered critical to announce? But sadly I saw nothing on a newsfeed to inform me of the death of a hero. Kim and I sat as she read me a summary of Elisabeth’s life. All I could think about was how fixed she was on this one cause: “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” From a young age it was modeled out by her missionary parents, “We will live and breathe for the cause of Christ.” The fire was lit inside of her and continued to grow in power and heat all through her life. The telltale sign that informs me of this, though not ever knowing this woman personally, is that her life was that of sacrifice, risk, and purpose. Like a sower scattering seed in an open field, her life was driven to make things grow all over the planet. Elisabeth Elliott took seriously the Great Commission and without hesitation, churned with this motive up until her dying day.

I began reading an article in Psychology Today about reinventing ourselves in the later years of our lives. The author spoke of the need to evaluate and reshape ourselves as our lives move forward in time. I am quite sure Elisabeth had the same primary goal, but after being battered by loss and a catalyst for change to a primitive people, her life took a different shape as the years went on. What hit me from this article was something rather simple. If we don’t have a purpose to our lives, higher than our own comfort and ease, we will atrophy. One comment stood out to me from Art Markman a professor of psychology from University of Texas at Austin, “If you don’t have a long-term goals you run the risk of doing lots of little things every day--cleaning the house, sending emails, catching up on TV--without ever making a contribution to your future.” This becomes a feeling of purposelessness. Translated for those of us who are believers, if we don’t contribute to the cause we are called to be a part of, we will shrink our lives down to nothing important. Our time will waste away on Youtube, Facebook and online shopping. Hours and hours that add up to days and days

Our goals should not just be about what the article titles “our future,” as that can be as self-serving as our present laziness and distraction. For those of us who believe that Jesus was really the Son of God, we must see ourselves as agents of bringing heaven to earth. Elisabeth Elliot wasn’t perfect with this call. Nor is anyone. Each morning we must call out to the Spirit of God to develop a beatitudes lifestyle, to make us people who love our enemies and our family, to give us freedom from self-absorption, to wrap us in the humility of Christ, to want the same things that Jesus wanted and to hate the same things He hated. This surrender is essential to growth. It is sadly true that we can know the Lord’s salvation, understand the problem of sin, get that the cross of Christ is our means to salvation, and live never truly embracing it as it was meant to be. We could die and go to heaven and yet never have lived the life on earth we were called to live. most of us check our email more than we read Scripture, too many times we watch youtube more than we pray. An atrophied life.

This is why stories like Elisabeth Elliot’s should be told. We need something to aim for.

I Didn't Go to Church. Sometimes it's Exactly What We Need.

The poverty of my soul was palpable this morning. There was a warring tension between going to church, being around others, singing the songs I love and hearing the Word delivered to me, OR being silent and still with the Lord at home...I was completely stuck, and feeling really low.

“Be still and know that I am God.” Whispered through my thoughts.

So I stayed home.

I sat on my back porch where no one could see me, bundled in blankets with books of liturgy, scripture and reflections by Thomas Merton sitting on the floor around my feet. Birds filled the air with a peaceful sound and all the world around me had served my soul with His closeness. I didn’t know how much I needed Him.

Just Him.

Crowded schedules and a racing mind keep times like this so far out of reach. But the poverty of my soul had finally, completely arrested me; I felt I had no choice.

Charles Spurgeon led me here,

“There are several instructive features in our Savior’s prayer in his hour of trial. It was a lonely prayer. He withdrew even from His three favored disciples. Believer, be much in solitary prayer, especially in times of trial. Family prayer, social prayer, prayer in the Church, will not suffice, these are very precious, but the best beaten spice will smoke in your censer in your private devotions, where no ear hears but God’s.”

So I sat for a long time.

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8)...
His nearness comes by means of confession oftentimes. His nearness comes when I have exhausted all my own resources, when all my personal wisdom has failed again and again, when I no longer have a plan to fix what I have broken, when my sin has left me stuck and the ripple effect has made panic rise up in me. Caught in the storms of chaos with no answer and nothing left to try...He leads me to the prayer of desperation and confession. This moment won’t come during weeks on end of non-stop living. It can’t. Today I am still. I have stopped talking. I have stopped analyzing. I have stopped rushing to figure out how to fix things...I have stopped striving.

Instead I have sat still. I have been surrounded by the birds. I have felt the calm come through my body. I have found a clear mind and deep breaths. I know it has come because He has come near to my crushed spirit.

As I look at His creation all around me and the expanse of the sky above me, I become aware of how much He has and how full He is. A storehouse. A well the doesn’t run dry. All of everything in the whole universe is His and even so, He is bigger than all of that. My soul needs something that big. My dry spirit needs water that won’t stop rushing in. My sin-drenched appetite needs His forgiveness to keeps pouring over me like the tide...

I read about some storms in Scripture...about Jonah and the storm resulting from his resistance of God, about the storm raging in Psalm 107 leaving men afraid and taxed of strength, about the storm in Mark where the disciples were terrified while Jesus was asleep below...My own self feels like a ship at sea tossed and flipped on its side. How do I keep asking for mercy? How can I keep calling out to be rescued when I cause my own waves? How is it even fair to keep expecting Him to deliver and free me and cleanse me? But this is His nature. This is His way. He does not stop accepting, forgiving, loving, freeing, strengthening, giving, comforting, calming...He does not stop.  

One Celtic reading I read today quoted a woman by the name of Mary Lyon:

“Nine-tenths of our suffering is caused by others not thinking so much of us as we think they ought.”

Here is where the pride burrows deep. Like a thorn in my side, craving to find the fullness of God who is bigger than the universe from the smallness of people who are buffeted by their own chaotic seas.

But in this stillness, in this set aside quiet...

The love that exceeds the whole universe finds its way into my poverty.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will be filled..."



A hymn was sent to me this morning...the lyrics are pure nourishment. There are no songs today that match the beauty and power of the old hymns. My grandmother always used to say so...

God of grace and God of glory,
On Thy people pour Thy power.
Crown Thine ancient church’s story,
Bring her bud to glorious flower.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the facing of this hour,
For the facing of this hour.

Lo! the hosts of evil ’round us,
Scorn Thy Christ, assail His ways.
From the fears that long have bound us,
Free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the living of these days,
For the living of these days.

Cure Thy children’s warring madness,
Bend our pride to Thy control.
Shame our wanton selfish gladness,
Rich in things and poor in soul.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal.
Set our feet on lofty places,
Gird our lives that they may be,
Armored with all Christ-like graces,
In the fight to set men free.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
That we fail not man nor Thee,
That we fail not man nor Thee.

Save us from weak resignation,
To the evils we deplore.
Let the search for Thy salvation,
Be our glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Serving Thee Whom we adore,
Serving Thee Whom we adore.