I want to make sense of the senseless.
I want to draw boundary lines around tragedy so I know what precautions can keep it far away from me.
But God is in control. Not me.
How Job’s comforters got it wrong…
Category: faith
Monday Musings: What is Required?
I am a strong proponent of reading ALL of the Bible, considering Scripture in context, studying entire books and digging deep to mine the truth contained therein.
But I think sometimes I am so enamored of finding something new I forget what I’ve already learned.
It’s easy to remain in pursuit of truth and yet dismiss the truth that I’ve apprehended.
I can fool my heart into thinking that learning is the same thing as living.
But it’s not.
Someone said that if believers in Christ put into practice a tiny fraction of what they already know, it would change the world.
And that’s exactly what happened in the first three centuries after Jesus walked the earth.
Christ followers lived such radical lives that even though they were tortured, killed and forced to flee, the Gospel spread like wildfire throughout the known world and beyond. Seeds were planted that continue to bear fruit, even today.
Rome was just as corrupt, just as sensual, just as political as our country today. And Christians weren’t just mocked, they were killed.
But something happened when the church became a close companion of culture.
Gospel teaching began to lose its tranformative power when the powers that be tried to use the power of God to further political agendas.
We aren’t the first generation to look around dismayed by the impotence of the church to impact our world.
Like Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun.”
God hasn’t changed.
The Gospel is still Good News. The power of His Word to open eyes, embolden hearts and transform lives is as effective now as it ever has been.
But I must DO what is required. I cannot read the Word and walk away.
I cannot check off a daily devotion and live my daily life unchanged.
When my walk matches my talk, I become a faithful witness to the life-changing power of grace.
The Old Testament prophet Micah created a short list:
He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you Except to be just, and to love [and to diligently practice] kindness (compassion), And to walk humbly with your God [setting aside any overblown sense of importance or self-righteousness]?
Micah 6:8 AMPC
I’m committed to start right here: Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with my God.
Prayers I Still Pray, Last Installment
Months ago, in my first post about prayer, I spoke to the difficulty of praying while experiencing great pain. In Praying Through the Pain I wrote:
I am thankful that before Dominic died I had a habit of praying and reading Scripture. I am thankful for the many verses that are so ingrained in my thoughts that they come, unbidden to my mind.
So I have continued to pray each morning, opening my journal and my Bible.
Even when I cannot feel the connection, I know God is there.
Today’s post is the final in a short series where I am sharing the prayers I still find easy to pray even after burying a child.
If you comb through the New Testament looking for prayers, you find that they don’t look like the ones we hear most often in church-most New Testament prayers focused on expanding a believer’s knowledge of who they are in Christ and Who Jesus is to them.
Based on Scripture, I can ask in faith, speaking God’s words back to Him.
THESE are prayers I can still pray, I hope they are helpful for others in similar circumstances.
II Thessalonians 1: 11-12
God, I pray
- that You will count____worthy of Your calling,
- that by Your power You may fulfill every good purpose in ___’s life and every act prommpted by their faith.
- I pray this so that the name of our Lord may be glorified in ___and they in You, acccording to Your grace.
I Thessalonian 1:2-9
I always thank You, Father, for ___, as I bring them to You in prayer,
Continue to stir up in them
- work produced by faith,
- labor prompted by love, and
- endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Cause ____to know that they are loved by You and especially chosen of You.
Cause the gospel to take root in their lives and go forth from them
- not in words only,
- but also with power,
- with the Holy Spirit, and
- with deep conviction.
Cause___
- to keep their eyes on the Lord Jesus and become imitators of Him,
- to have joy as only the Holy Spirit can given, and
- to model Christ with their lives to a wathcing world, that their faith in You might become known to the ends of the earth.
Keep ____actively serving only You, the living and true God. Keep ___’s heart turned to You so that they will recognize the snare of idols and conciously choose to have noting in their lives that rivals You.
Prayers I Still Pray, Part II
As I mentioned yesterday, prayer after loss is complicated for me. I wrote a post months ago The Problem of [Un]Answered Prayer that addressed this.
But I AM able to pray Scripture-especially the prayers of Paul, which are centered on asking God to strengthen others and to expand their understanding of His love, compassion, power and grace.
Here are two more that I find helpful:
Philippians 1:9-11
I pray
- that ___’s love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
- that___may be able to discern what is best, and
- that____may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,
- that___will be filled with the fruit of righteousness through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God.
Colossians 1:9-12
Father, I pray
- that You will fill___with the knowledge of Your will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
- that___may live a life worthy of You, Lord,
- that____may please You in every way,
- that___will bear fruit in every good work,
- that___will grow in the knowledge of You,
- that___will be strengthened with all power according to Your glorious might,
- that___may have great endurance and patience,
- that___will joyfully give thanks to You, Father, who has qualiied them to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.
Today by Your Spirit make real all their inheritance in Christ Jesus.
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.
Read more here: denial
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
How Do You Breathe?
It was the question I asked the bereaved mother that came to my son’s funeral.
It was the question a mother asked me as we stood by her granddaughter’s casket, surrounded by family and flowers.
And it is the right question.
Because when the breath leaves the body of your child, and you look down at the shell that used to be the home of a vibrant, living soul, you simply can. not. breathe.
What should be an autonomic, automatic, don’t-even-think-about-it bodily function escapes you.
When your lungs finally scream for oxygen, your body takes over, against your will.
And even more than two years later, it’s where I still live-between the conscious world of aching loss that drains me of the will to go on and the unconcious biology of a body still functioning without my permission.
I live in a no-man’s-land with one foot in the HERE AND NOW and one foot in FOREVER.
But there are no bright flags to mark its borders, no crossing guards to give warning to the people I mingle with every day that they are over there- outside my world of hurt-and I am stuck in here.
And so they wave from across the way, cheerful and unburdened by the weight of sorrow I drag around. They give me odd looks now and then, vaguely unsettled by my inability to plunge unrestrained into their fun.
Memory escapes them-what happened? how long has it been? shouldn’t she be over that by now?
They can’t understand, and I’m thankful for that.
“How do you breathe?”
Only the ones who share the secret knowledge know the answer to that question.
You learn to will your heart to keep beating and your lungs to keep filling because there are others who depend on you and who need you to stay.
You can’t hold your breath forever, even if you want to.
You lean harder on the hope you have in Christ.
You recite verses and hymns and fill your mind with the promises of Jesus.
And you beg the Spirit of God to fill you to fullness with His breath, His life and His hope.
I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13 NLT
More Grieving Hearts-What Grieving Parents Want You to Know
Two weeks.
Two families added to the roll call of those who have lost a child-suddenly, without warning.
Two more sets of parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins plunged beneath the sea of sorrow.
And those are only the ones I know about-the ones whose lives touch my own.
Every day we are shoulder-to-shoulder with people carrying a load that threatens to undo them. If you haven’t experienced child loss you probably think you can imagine how it feels.
I know I did.
But I was wrong.
THIS is what it feels like: What Grieving Parents Want Others to Know
Faith
Part of our homeschooling routine was Bible reading.
I’ll never forget the first time I came to Hebrews chapter 11, often referred to as the “Hall of Faith”.
It begins:
Now faith means putting our full confidence in the things we hope for, it means being certain of things we cannot see. It was this kind of faith that won their reputation for the saints of old. And it is after all only by faith that our minds accept as fact that the whole scheme of time and space was created by God’s command—that the world which we can see has come into being through principles which are invisible.
Hebrews 11:1-3 PHILLIP
From there the writer lists those who followed God even when the path was dark, even when the promise was beyond sight and even when it cost them their lives.
I cried.
I remember thinking that maybe one day the children looking at me around that table might face a crisis of faith and I prayed that they would always choose to believe.
I never dreamed that it would be ME that had to wake up each morning and make that choice over and over again.
I’m not talking about the single, life-changing commitment to receive forgiveness through Christ’s blood.
But rather obedience to keep following His lead and strength to walk in His footsteps day after day regardless of how I feel or what I can or cannot see.
The choice I have to make is whether or not to turn my heart toward His, to open my ears to His voice, and to bend my will to accept whatever storms He allows in my life.
Suffering is NOT a choice, but faith is.
thelifeididntchoose 