We left Zechariah yesterday just stepping up to the Altar of Incense.
I like to put myself in the story and imagine him slightly trembling at this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to creep closer than all but a handful of Israelites to the Holy Presence of God Almighty.
Perhaps he was already a little afraid.
Read the rest here: Advent: Surprised By God’s Answer
Today’s verses may seem an odd choice as a stand-alone source for an Advent devotional.
But when you dig a little deeper, they are a beautiful affirmation of how God used ordinary people to bring about His extraordinary purposes.
Zechariah and Elizabeth were two humble and obedient Jews living their lives according to the Law. As a priest, Zechariah was responsible to serve in the Temple two weeks of every year. He’d been faithfully doing his duty for years. Elizabeth had done hers too.
But they were fruitless. Elizabeth was barren. And barren women (in those days) were considered cursed.
And then something amazing happened.
Read the rest here: Advent: Positioned For Blessing
If you woke this morning feeling more broken than blessed, I see you.
If you could care less about the bounty on the table and can only feel the barrenness in your heart, I know how you feel.
Today doesn’t have to be any special way, my friend. Give yourself grace. Give yourself permission to feel what you feel and do what you do and not do what you can’t do.
❤ Melanie
Father God,
We live in a world that isn’t always (or even often) what we hope for, pray for and long for.
But here we are.
Two hands open and waiting for the blessing You have promised in our brokenness.
I am oh, so thankful for the many ways You have blessed me, continue to bless me and uphold me with Your righteous right arm. I know, know, know that if You were not walking with me in this Valley, I would have given up and given in long ago.
I am not ungrateful. I am blessed.
But I am also broken.
My heart longs desperately for what it cannot have. I am forced to walk forward but I want to turn back time. I’m grateful for every face around my table but always thinking about the one that will never sit there again.
I miss those I love who have run ahead to joyous celebration in Heaven. I long for just a taste of divine joy as I wait my turn to join them.
Thanksgiving big and loud just isn’t in my playlist anymore. Quiet gratitude that makes space for sorrowful reflection is more my style.
Make me truly thankful for the promise that no matter how often circumstances change or how dreadful those changes may be, You are the same-yesterday, today and forever!
Your steadfast love holds us fast. I rest in that truth.
Help me hold onto hope. Help me hold onto every good and perfect gift You still give me as I wait. Grease the wheels of every relationship with grace.
Greet me this morning with new mercies and fresh strength.
Give me the strength to endure, the grace to participate, the breath to speak love and the confidence that you see every tear I shed when no one is looking.
Amen
When I was a little girl, I struggled mightily being afraid of the dark.
Sometimes I could barely close my eyes because I was scared something terrible would happen between going to sleep and waking up.
I outgrew that as I grew into my faith.
But after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven, I found myself again afraid to go to sleep.
Read the rest here: Between Sleep and Wake: Speaking Peace To My Heart
It took me awhile to “feel” God again after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven.
I would journal my thoughts/prayers/questions and answer myself with Scripture.
My heart was still so very shattered that the words often slid right off.
Read the rest here: What If There’s Silence From Heaven?
If yesterday’s verses were Paul’s closing arguments, these verses are his hallelujah!
When I am weak and weary and overwhelmed by the daily trudging uphill along the path of grief, my heart comes here.
Because truth is, over and over and over God has said in His Word, demonstrated by His actions and proved by His promises that love endures.
It was love that sought Adam and Eve in the garden.
Love that spoke to Noah and gave him strength to build the ark.
Love that drew Abram from the land of idolators, set him apart and made him father of nations.
Love that rescued the Israelites from Egypt.
Love that overwhelmed a young virgin and made her mother of Jesus the Christ.
And Love Incarnate that chose obedience unto death-even death on the cross-so that our sin debt was satisfied and the gates of Heaven opened wide to all who believe.
Love will not be denied.
Love wins.
Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble, pain or persecution? Can lack of clothes and food, danger to life and limb, the threat of force of arms? Indeed some of us know the truth of the ancient text: ‘For your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter’.
37 No, in all these things we win an overwhelming victory through him who has proved his love for us.
38-39 I have become absolutely convinced that neither death nor life, neither messenger of Heaven nor monarch of earth, neither what happens today nor what may happen tomorrow, neither a power from on high nor a power from below, nor anything else in God’s whole world has any power to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord!Romans 8: 35-39 PHILLIPS
There is nothing that can separate me from the love of God.
Nothing!
I am not powerful enough to do it.
Death is not powerful enough to do it.
Love reached down and resurrected Jesus.
Love will reach down and resurrect my son.
On my hardest days, my darkest days I remember this: as fierce as my mother love may be, it can’t hold a candle to the ferocious, eternal, unquenchable, undefeatable, reckless, perfect love of God.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc6SSHuZvQE
QUESTIONS:
PRAYER:
Father God,
Your love endures forever. Help me remember that. Open my eyes, Lord, that I may comprehend the depth, the width and the height of Your love. If I could grasp even a fraction of that, I’d never be afraid for a second that anything could get between You and me. Your love is relentless, reckless, pursuing and almighty. Nothing in creation can stop Your eternal, redeeming love.
My child may have made a foolish or even a sinful choice in his or her last moments on earth, but even that is not enough to separate him or her from You if they made a genuine profession of faith in Christ. How arrogant are we humans to think we can somehow undo the great redemptive work of the cross!
Thank You for this beautiful reminder in Paul’s words. Let them sink deeply into my spirit and bring life to my bones.
Hallelujah!
Amen.
We’ve all waited for something.
For those of us who carried a tiny life inside as it grew larger and larger and thought we might just burst open before he or she made an exit from the womb into the wide world, we know exactly how hard waiting can be.
We also know how fast waiting goes from “I’m not sure just when” to “it’s happening RIGHT NOW”.
Some of the most painful waiting is the hours of intense labor.
Before the blessed culmination, it hurts! A lot!
And then the beautiful fruit of all that pain, struggle and patience is in our arms.
Paul says that the whole creation (every single thing on the planet) is waiting in much the same way. Waiting, waiting, waiting for God’s perfect plan to reach fullness and be revealed in all its excellent glory.
It is plain to anyone with eyes to see that at the present time all created life groans in a sort of universal travail. And it is plain, too, that we who have a foretaste of the Spirit are in a state of painful tension, while we wait for that redemption of our bodies which will mean that at last we have realised our full sonship in him. We were saved by this hope, but in our moments of impatience let us remember that hope always means waiting for something that we haven’t yet got. But if we hope for something we cannot see, then we must settle down to wait for it in patience.
Romans 8: 22-25 PHILLIPS
Just as a pregnant mama feels first the tiny flutter and then full-forced kicks of the baby in her womb, our spirits feel the promise of life as it should be. The closer we walk with Jesus, the more we fill our hearts and minds with His living word, the more our lives diverge from the world we see and long for the one we haven’t yet laid eyes on.
Yearning is the word.
It can make my heart impatient.
Sending one of the precious lives I’ve carried inside me on to Heaven makes me even more impatient for the perfect promise to be made perfect reality.
Paul is right-knowing and tasting is both a blessing and a challenge.
I know, know, know that this life is not all there is. I am utterly and irrevocably convinced that one day the broken world I live in will be recreated into the perfect world God intends it to be. So I hold onto hope with both hands like the lifeline it is.
Sometimes I get tired of holding on.
Sometimes I want to let go and just say, “What difference does it make?”
But I don’t.
Because at the moment of my weakness, the Spirit speaks courage to my spirit. Jesus whispers, “You can do it” to my heart. The Father sings sweet consolation over my soul.
So I tighten my grip and wait. ❤
QUESTIONS
PRAYER
Lord,
Waiting is hard. No way around it. And waiting in painful anticipation of blessed relief is even harder. So, so many things are not right in this world. Death is everywhere. How I long for the Day when death is a totally defeated foe! How I long for the Day when all things are made right!
Thank You for the witness of the Spirit who continues to speak courage to my own spirit. Thank You for your word which breathes life into my soul. Thank You that no matter how hard it is to hold onto hope, You will give me the strength not to let go.
You have not abandoned me or the world You created. Your plans are sure. I will wait with hope because I know You never fail.
Amen
Aspen trees.
Truly glorious.
I was blessed to live several years in Colorado and it never got old to head off in the mountains, round a curve and come upon a grove of trembling golden aspen. They demanded I step outside the car and drink them in.
Photographs don’t do them justice.
You have to be there, see them, hear their leaves make music in the wind and smell the cool, clear air of the mountains to understand.
When Paul says that the sufferings in this life are incomparable to the glories of the next, I think he had something like this in mind-Heavenly experience is so far outside mortal language and understanding, it’s simply impossible to describe.
Through that prayer, God’s Spirit confirms in our spirits that we are His children. 17 If we are God’s children, that means we are His heirs along with the Anointed, set to inherit everything that is His. If we share His sufferings, we know that we will ultimately share in His glory.
18 Now I’m sure of this: the sufferings we endure now are not even worth comparing to the glory that is coming and will be revealed in us.Romans 8: 16-18 VOICE
It’s no accident Paul tags this assurance on the end of declaring the fullness of my relationship to God the Father through Jesus His Son. If I, like Christ, am a child of God, then I, like Christ, am an heir to the promises.
It’s a fact, not a theory.
God doesn’t lie. He will do every thing He says He will do.
I can rest assured in that truth.
We endure many hard things for a guaranteed earthly return on our time, money, energy, strength and tears.
How much more sure are the promises of God?
The glory to come must be some kind of wonderful it if makes the pain of child loss so small there’s no comparison.
Am I willing to trust Him even here, even now?
QUESTIONS:
PRAYER:
Father God,
I am thankful I can call You Father. I am thankful my position in Your family is secured by the blood of Christ. Thank You for the gift of salvation through His sacrifice. Thank You that the Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am Yours.
It’s hard to suffer well sometimes. It’s hard to hold onto hope when pain is so very real and Heaven is somewhere I can’t really picture well. I’m trying to lean into the promises here and throughout Your word.
Strengthen me by Your word and with Your strength. When my heart is overwhelmed, calm me with Your songs of deliverance. When my grip is weak, wrap Your arms around me and help me hold on.
Amen
It was a harsh sentence: Forty years of wandering in the desert for not putting their faith and trust in the God who had delivered them from bondage.
But wandering wasn’t the half of it.
Death surrounded them. All those adults who gave in to fear were doomed to die before the forty years were finished.
Can you imagine how many graves were dug in the wilderness? How many tears were shed? How many fists raised to the sky or hands to hearts begging, begging, begging for the sojourn of sadness to end?
So it was no accident that the Lord commanded Israel to set her camp with the Tent of Meeting at the center. He wanted them always to be aware of His enabling, powerful, holy Presence.
Even in the midst of judgement, death and sorrow. He was there.
And God is here with me in the midst of my mourning too. I am thankful for His Presence.
But the most beautiful promise is that there will be a Day when He will wipe away all the tears. He will redeem all the pain. He will undo all the damage death has wrought.
Joy will once again be untainted by sorrow.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.Revelation 21:3-4 KJV
I make seasonal wreaths for Dominic’s resting place. I include these verses every time.
Because I believe them with my whole heart.
I love the way The Jesus Storybook by Sally Lloyd-Jones renders them:
And the King says, “Look! God and his children are together again. No more running away. Or hiding. No more crying or being lonely or afraid. No more being sick or dying. Because all those things are gone. Yes, they’re gone forever. Everything sad has come untrue. And see – I have wiped away every tear from every eye!“
Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones
“Everything sad has come untrue.”
Heaven will not simply be rest after a long life’s struggle.
It will be restoration, redemption, recreation and resurrection.
Every thing stolen will be restored. Every thing bartered away by sin will be redeemed. Every thing destroyed by carelessness, hatefulness and cruelty will be recreated in perfection. And every thing dead and buried will be resurrected to life everlasting.
I can’t wait. ❤
QUESTIONS:
PRAYER:
Lord,
I’ll admit that sometimes future hope is not much to hold onto when sorrow and longing and despair overwhelm my heart. I need to feel Your Presence here and now. I’m not asking for a burning bush, but give me assurance that You have not abandoned me.
Fill my heart with hope and help me hold onto the promise that one day all this pain will be redeemed. Give me an eternal perspective.
Amen
I realize not every parent enters child loss with the same reverence for Scripture and trust in the promises of God that I had when Dominic left us.
So it may be hard for your heart to believe the words we’ve been reading and studying this month. It may be near impossible for you to feel that God is a good Father, that He has not abandoned you and that He has a purpose and plan for your life, even here in this awful Valley.
If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that while I still have faith, it’s a tested faith. I have dragged every single thing I believed before Dominic ran ahead to Heaven, held it up and scrutinized it in the cold light of loss.
Some things I don’t clutch so tightly anymore. Many things I wouldn’t spend five minutes defending anymore. But there are absolute, rock-solid, foundational truths that I will declare with my dying breath.
The character of God is flawless. His ways are holy and good. He will not allow the enemy of my soul to have the last word. Death is (ultimately) defeated and victory is sure.
When I was on my face in mourning, when dust was my food and bitter tears were my drink, these are the promises that breathed life back into my broken heart.
Remember [always] the word and promise to Your servant,
In which You have made me hope.
50
This is my comfort in my affliction,
That Your word has revived me and given me life.Psalm 119: 49-50 AMP
When people in the Bible asked God to “remember” it wasn’t that they thought He forgot. It was a way of reciting truth to their own hearts and praying God’s words back to Him.
So when I was just on the other side of the awful news but past Dom’s service and all the people and activities surrounding it, I began most days in my journal with something similar.
I would write out a verse confirming God’s promises to me and my family. I would make it personal-put our names in it- and pray it back to Him. The more I did that, the more my spirit was revived. The more my spirit came back to life, the more I was able to listen to and hear from Him.
It’s a slow, slow process.
The blow is sudden, severe and debilitating (no matter how your child left this earth).
Recovery cannot be rushed along.
I feel most days like I’m still receiving hope and life in drips and dribbles.
But the more I focus my mind’s attention and my heart’s affection on God’s sure promises, the more alive I feel.
And one day I’ll be fully alive-as Dominic is right now- dancing, laughing, singing to the tune of millions of rejoicing voices.
Until then, I’ll keep pointing my heart in the right direction.
My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world into some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise. ~ReepicheepC.S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader
QUESTIONS:
PRAYER:
Lord,
Truth is that all life comes from You. There is nowhere else to turn but to Your face, Your hand, Your heart. Part of me wants to give up and give in. I want to be rid of this pain, this heartache, this sorrow and unrelenting despair. But I know You have a purpose and plan for me even here, even now.
Help me choose to make space for Your word and Your love to penetrate my heart. Help me offer up my broken bits to You and wait patiently for You to weave them back together into something beautiful.
When I have nothing left, touch me. When I give up, encourage me. When I can’t see the light for the darkness, shine on me.
Amen
thelifeididntchoose 