bible – Page 23 – thelifeididntchoose

Prayers I Still Pray

Prayer has been difficult for me since burying a child-I’ve written about that struggle in a previous post.

I have yet to find a comprehensible way to think about both the sovereignty of God and His goodness, free will and predestination.

So I find myself incapable of praying for things like safety for my children, freedom from disease or specific outcomes in difficult circumstances.

Instead I pray the prayers of Paul, straight from Scripture-prayers that focus on expanding a person’s understanding of Who God is, how much he or she is loved by God and the development of godly fruit in his or her life.

THESE are prayers I can still pray, I hope they are helpful for others in similar circumstances.

Ephesians 1:17-23

Glorious Father, I thank you for_______, and I bless them. I ask You to give _____the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that ______may know You better. Enlighten the eyes of ______’s heart, so that they may know

the hope to which You have called them,
the riches of Your glorious inheritance in the saints,
And Your incomparably great power for them because they believe, the power of the resurrection and the ascension which seated Jesus at Your right hand where He is above all rule and authority, and power and dominion in this world, and all things are under His feet.

Fill ____with all the fullness of Jesus in every way today.

Ephesians 3:15-20

I call You Father, and I pray

that from Your glorious riches You will strengthen______with power through Your Spirit in their inner being,
that Christ may dwell in ______’s heart through faith,
that ____will be rooted and established in love,
that____may have power, with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,
that ____will know this love that surpasses knowledge,
that___will be filled to the measure of the fullness of God.

I give You all the glory, for You are able to do immeasurably more than all I ask or imagine, according to Your power that is working within us.

Who Needs Hope Unless They are Broken?

The gospels don’t hide the fact that Jesus came to a broken world.

Religious leaders who were supposed to be guarding and guiding God’s people were instead protecting positions of power and leading others astray.

The masses were beaten down-helpless under the burden of Roman occupation and hopeless that they could ever “measure up” under the system of customs and laws that had been imposed by the Pharisees.

Jesus spoke truth to this reality, He didn’t deny it.

Jesus looked brokenness in the face and promised redemption and restoration.

But He admitted that in THIS world, the one we walked on, there would be tribulation. He didn’t promise a pain-free existence, He promised His Presence in the midst of pain.

And that is the power of the cross-that an instrument of torture became a symbol of hope.

What the enemy meant for evil, God used for good.

When we try to soft-pedal the struggles of life, when we try to shape our stories into victorious narratives with tidy endings, when we deny the presence of pain, we diminish the power of the cross.

Adjusting to the Darkness

A precious friend sent a small book through the mail just after we buried Dominic. Lament for a Son-the title was enough to draw me in-and the pages ministered to my soul.

Here was someone who, like me, was wailing for what was lost.

Someone who was declaring out loud what my heart harbored in secret: that the darkness of child loss is unrelenting and horrible.

Will my eyes adjust to this darkness? Will I find you in the dark – not in the streaks of light which remain, but in the darkness? Has anyone ever found you there? Did they love what they saw? Did they see love? And are there songs for singing when the light has gone dim? Or in the dark, is it best to wait in silence?
Noon has darkened. As fast as they could say, ‘He’s dead,’ the light dimmed. And where are you in the darkness? I learned to spy you in the light. Here in this darkness, I cannot find you. If I had never looked for you, or looked but never found, I would not feel this pain of your absence. Or is not your absence in which I dwell, but your elusive troubling presence?

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

I comprehend Wolterstorff’s question-“Will I find you [God] in the dark-not in the streaks of light which remain, but in the darkness?”

I had long followed the light of Christ. Walked boldly even when the light was very dim. Trusted the smallest flicker of a tiny candle of hope when night closed in and began to speak fear to my heart.

But this-this unrelenting, palpable darkness that swallowed any light and even the promise of light-this was new to me.

I understood David’s cry:

“How long, O Eternal One? How long will You forget me? Forever?
How long will You look the other way?

How long must I agonize,
grieving Your absence in my heart every day?”

Psalm 13:1-2a VOICE

But time is helping my eyes adjust to the darkness.

I am learning to feel my way around in this new room, to navigate days that feel more like night.

I know in my heart that this night will not last forever.

I will be able to say:

“But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.”

Psalm 13:5-6 ESV

God has promised that Jesus is the Light and even this darkness cannot overcome Him.

In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was already with God in the beginning. Everything came into existence through him. Not one thing that exists was made without him. He was the source of life, and that life was the light for humanity. 5The light shines in the dark, and the dark has never extinguished it.

John 1:1-5 GWT

Resurrection Power

I’m uncomfortable here in this world.

This world where children die and people hurt one another and justice is denied and babies go hungry.

I long for the day prophesied in Isaiah when the lion will lie down with the lamb, swords will be ploughshares and death will be banished forever.

Paul wrote:

All I want is to know Christ and to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings and become like him in his death,in the hope that I myself will be raised from death to life.

Philippians 3:10-11 GNT

He wasn’t only talking about the final resurrection, when all in Christ shall rise and reign forever with their Savior.

He was also talking about the earthly resurrection-of life breathed into who we are and what we do by the Spirit of God living in us.

It’s exciting to think about the life of Christ residing in me. It’s not so exciting to consider the death of self that must precede that life.

But

Without death, there is no resurrection.

Without destruction, there is no restoration.

Without surrender, there is no victory.

My heart rebels against this.

I want life without death. I want resurrection power without the grave. I want to know Jesus more intimately without being stripped bare and standing naked before Him.

But that is impossible.

To be a follower of the Crucified means , sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss. The great symbol of Christianity means sacrifice and no one who calls himself a Christian can evade this stark fact.

Elisabeth Elliot

I realized very soon after the news of Dominic’s death reached my ears that the last vestige of pride had been ripped from my heart by force.

I was, and am, in the dust.

I cannot raise myself from this prostrate position. I cannot breathe life into this dead body. I cannot, by force of will, pick up and keep going.

I am fully reliant on the God Who made me to give me life.

But Thou, O Lord, art a shield for me, my glory and the lifter up of mine head.

Psalm 3:3 KJV21

This isn’t news to God, it’s always been true.

But He has opened my eyes.

Forced to face the darkness of the grave, I can more fully appreciate the light of His promise.

Monday Musings: Be Kind

I wrote and scheduled this post BEFORE the Nice terrorist attack and BEFORE the gunning down of police officers in Baton Rouge just yesterday morning.

But how very timely-as long as we divide the world into “us” and “them” we fuel hatred and acts of violence. As long as we choose rhetoric rather than reason we encourage a mindset that believes only radical action will spur change.

As I wrote over a week ago, My Heart Hurts. And I refuse to be part of the division that will only surely result in more death and destruction.

Instead I will choose to be radically kind.

This year has been filled with divisive politics, headlines and heartbreaking reminders of the many ways people can hurt one another.

I have my own opinions and positions on various issues and sometimes they are at odds with those of my friends or acquaintances.

But I am committed to speak, write and interact with everyone I meet in kindness-respecting our differences.

Because we are all image-bearers of the One True God.

James said, “With our tongues we praise our Lord and Father. Yet, with the same tongues we curse people, who were created in God’s likeness. Praise and curses come from the same mouth. My brothers and sisters, this should not happen!” (James 3:9-10 GW)

Jesus answered the question, “Who is my neighbor?” with a well-known parable that shocked His audience and challenged their preconceived ideas.

As soon as I ask, “Who is my neighbor?” I am trying to draw a circle around who I should and should not be obligated to treat with kindness and love.

I’m not going to do that.

Henri Nouwen writes:

Kindness is a beautiful human attribute. When we say, “She is a kind person” or “He surely was kind to me,” we express a very warm feeling. In our competitive and often violent world, kindness is not the most frequent response. But when we encounter it we know that we are blessed. Is it possible to grow in kindness, to become a kind person? Yes, but it requires discipline. To be kind means to treat another person as your “kin,” your intimate relative. We say, “We are kin” or “He is next of kin.” To be kind is to reach out to someone as being of “kindred” spirit.

Here is the great challenge: All people, whatever their color, religion, or sex, belong to humankind and are called to be kind to one another, treating one another as brothers and sisters. There is hardly a day in our lives in which we are not called to this.

I can purpose to listen even when I disagree.

God in a Box

Every idea of [God] we form, He must in mercy shatter. The most blessed result of prayer would be to rise thinking ‘But I never knew before. I never dreamed…’ I suppose it was at such a moment that Thomas Aquinas said of all his own theology, ‘It reminds me of straw.’

—Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964)

It’s possible that you haven’t thought of it this way, but if you are a believer in Christ and have yet to walk through faith-shattering trials, you may have placed God in a box.

I know I had.

I thought that after decades of walking with Jesus, reading and studying Scripture and wading through some fairly significant trials I had God pretty well figured out.

I could quote verses for every occasion, open my Bible to any book without looking in the Table of Contents, and had something sprirtual to say about everything.

But now, like Job, I cover my mouth.

C.S. Lewis shared his grief journey after losing his wife in the book, A Grief Observed.

What many may not know is that he was pressured to publish it under a pseudonym.

His publishers and some of his close friends didn’t want people to know that this giant of the Christian faith, this celebrated apologist for believing Christ was shaken to the core by the death of his beloved bride.

Lewis resisted and I am so thankful.

It brings me great comfort to know that one who was much more equipped to face a faith crisis found himself floundering in the ocean called sorrow and grief.

He knew where the boat was.

But he, like me, wasn’t sure he wanted to climb back in.

Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Grief has forced me to reexamine every notion I had of God and how He works in the world. I’ve had to pull out all my theological assumptions and compare what I thought I knew to what is in the Bible and what I have experienced in life.

It is exhausting. And necessary.

Like Lewis, I’ve discovered that I had ideas about God, but that they were not necessarily true: “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.”

I had decided that God acted in certain ways, that prayers guaranteed certain results and that my life as a believer in Christ was destined to be one of favor and blessing because I was honoring Him.

My box for God included room for some pain and suffering-but definitely not enough space for Him to to allow the death of my child and plunge me into this abyss of grief and sorrow.

What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never even been to a dentist?”

C.S.Lewis

At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon prayed:

“But, God, will you really live here with us on the earth? The whole sky and the highest heaven cannot contain you. Certainly this house that I built cannot contain you either.”

2 Chronicles 6:18 ERV

God has broken out of my box–He was never really in it to begin with.

Only my ideas of Him could be contained in so small a space.

Beauty That Lasts

We spend so much time, money and effort trying to make our decaying frame look less like the temporary shelter it’s intended to be and more like an eternal monument to beauty.

But try as we might, we are impotent against the forces that will eventually drag us to the grave.

What if, instead, I worked as diligently to exercise my inner woman as I do my too-generous bottom?

What if I poured truth and strength into my soul through the Word of God like I force-feed my tummy with smoothies and vitamins?

What if I decided that these brief moments left to me were too precious to waste on things that are destined for dust and I used them to invest in things of eternal value?

I’m not advocating gluttony or lazy living, but I am arguing that most of my time should be spent cultivating a beautiful soul rather than a beautiful body.

I’m looking forward to my new, perfect body-the one Jesus will give me when He restores and redeems everything this broken world has taken from me. Until then, I’ll put up with this one, and work on my soul.

Fear

C. S. Lewis wrote:

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

A Grief Observed

It DOES feel like fear, and if I’m not diligent in resistance, that feeling can spread over my world like a dark blanket, blocking out the sun.

I have never been a fearful person-as a three year old, I climbed what seemed a countless number of steps up the high dive and plunged (belly first!) into the deep end of the pool.

A little older and I flew upside down in an open cockpit biplane next to the mountains in Colorado-fanny pack parachute strapped on just in case we needed to abandon the aircraft.

I have traveled to countries where I didn’t speak the language. Ridden less-than-cooperative horses, spoken in front of thousands and trudged through snakey woods-always confident that things would be OK.

But now I know by experience that things are not always OK.

Sometimes they are very, very bad.

And they are bad in ways that cannot be undone this side of Heaven.

So I must continually remind my heart of truth:

that my Father loves me,

that He is in control even when things feel out of control,

and that He will carry me when I cannot carry myself.

Inseparable!

In the first days and months after Dominic left us I copied this verse dozens of times-in my journal, on notecards, on posterboard to plaster across the refrigerator and stick on mirrors and doorposts.

I had to remind my heart that even death could not separate my son from Him.

That even the most wily schemes of the enemy could not rip me from the hand of my Savior and that even my own doubts or fears or questions were not stronger than God’s love through Christ to hem me in and keep me safe within the confines of His protection from eternal damnation.

God’s Word is living and active.

It is part of my inheritance in Christ Jesus and I can appropriate it for my own life. When I am afraid and when I doubt, I try to repeat truth until my heart can hear it:

“If God is for [Melanie and Dominic] who can be against us?

³²He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for [Melanie and Dominic]—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give [Melanie and Dominic] all things?

³³Who will bring any charge against [Melanie and Dominic] whom God has chosen?

It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

³⁵Who shall separate [Melanie or Dominic] from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

³⁷No, in all these things [Melanie and Dominic] are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

³⁸For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,³⁹neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate [Melanie or Dominic] from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 8: 31b-35,37-39 NIV

Rest

For the next few days I’m taking a break from creating lengthy new posts. So I’ll be posting some short notes of encouragement along with quotes I treasure and maybe re-posting the most popular old entries.

The summer heat is on here in Alabama and I think I need a little “refresh and renew” time.

I pray that each one reading this and carrying the heavy burden of missing a child of your heart will also be refreshed and renewed-that even in the midst of heartache and pain,

you will hear the Father’s voice,

you will know the Savior’s love and

you will receive fresh wind for the journey from the Spirit of God.

YOU. ARE. NOT. ALONE.

Love,

Melanie

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