Looking for a way out of another winter that suffocates?
A pika was lost in a snowstorm.
She looks around her. Which direction to turn? She is cold, alone, afraid and doesn’t have much time before the cold winter chills her to the bone. Death arrives quickly out in nature.
And that pika is me.
(You, too?)
Why a pika? Because who knows what a pika is? (And how known do you feel?)
We look around us, seeking a direction to follow or something solid to hold onto.
The days of our lives are thrown in the garbage can like the pages on our daily calendars. There goes another day, week, decade.
We find our first and then our 100th gray hair. Do we continue to pull these hairs out? At what point are we defeating ourselves, even harming ourselves, by pretending that the clock of time isn’t ravaging us?
What do we hold onto?
What direction do we travel next?
Who can lead us?
Do we hunker down, curl into the fetal position for warmth, and hope for spring?
Will the joy in our souls remain at the end of this winter?
Where is the warming hut, the cup of hot chocolate, and the friend with the listening ear?
I have been giving him treats for “staying” and lying down in one position for more than a minute or two.
One ear cocked to the side, yawning sometimes – the dog’s instinctual response to say, “I’m trying to understand you here!” – sometimes excitedly getting it.
But most of the time, he stares at me, wondering how to get more treats.
And this is a perfect example of what we are like as we come before God.
He has something to give to us. The analogy breaks down here because God doesn’t simply tempt us with crumbs but has the full banqueting table to offer. But you get the point.
My dog sometimes forgets about me and my rewards and lies down distractedly.
And then I give him a treat.
And doesn’t that happen to us too? We forget about God, go about our business, and then we hear His heart whispering. He offers us food when we least expect it.
Well done, God comforted me, excitedly offering me a food reward. Huh? “What the . . .” I had just woken up. In my heart, I looked up at God, my head cocked to the side, confused.
He comforted me in His love, in His presence.
What was I doing right? I stumbled to the coffee machine, trying to put the puzzle together. The machine brewed, and God poured delight into my heart as the coffee machine poured delight into my cup. I scratched my head, trying to figure out why God was pleased with me.
I listened to HIS cues.
I responded to HIS call to obey.
The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.
He had been asking me to wake early, to write, to offer this page of food to you, dear reader.
And I obeyed.
That’s it.
Regardless of outcomes as defined by our culture, in God’s eyes, this writing is a success because it is motivated by obedience. Like a child with a crooked, smudged, stick-figure drawing, the parent is pleased with her art. God, the parent, is pleased with our crooked efforts at responding to His whispers.
And what you are seeing is the actor on the stage, the polished version of me for you to read about.
God says write.
I write.
Applause.
End of show.
But behind the scenes, there is chaos. An entire repertoire of people, those on lights and sound, and the director helped me look polished for you. They cried tears, remade the costumes, and helped me fit into my new identity.
I offer credit where credit is due:
1. Thank you to our friend who scared back the monsters intimidating me and offered me his hand. “Stand,” he said. And he prayed passionately that day in our kitchen, “She is about the King’s business!” he declared.
And I believed him. And I exchanged another piece of my old heart, the one linked to how people judge my life, for a princess robe. And I danced in joy.
And You danced with me, Jesus. Keep dancing, you whispered. Keep following Me where I lead child, regardless of what they say.
And I’m still dancing.
2. Thank you to my husband, the giant man. When I was in the metaphorical hide out, the place I shouldn’t have been, God led him to find me. He ducked to half his height to enter the place that held me captive.
When he entered, the evil shapes fled. He is not scared of the same things I am. His lack of fear terrifies them.
“Come, friend,” he offered, holding out his hand. “Don’t be afraid.” And he held me in his arms and comforted me as I wept. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
And there wasn’t. Because he regularly prays I will dance in freedom, in that grassy place. And so I do.
3. And I say thank you to so many of my friends. You prayed for me. And you told me what you thought God was saying to me, though you didn’t always understand.
And I took those pieces, precious as each one was, and I thought and considered and prayed and placed them into the puzzle of my life. Thank you. I honor you.
4.And I thank you for the eagle you sent, Jesus, who swooped down and woke me and fed me. “Get up.” She nudged me, and I rolled over, trying to go back to sleep.
But she was persistent, unphased by my life’s lack of spiritual success.“Try this food,” she suggested. I tossed that aside, too. I wasn’t used to the taste.
She tried milk, and I drank it with relish. I was thirsty. Later on, my stomach could hold a bite or two of meat. I was growing up.
“How is your time of worship?” she asked me again, and again, and again. Finally, I could answer her to say that I am learning to abide more frequently in Your presence. And the next time I danced, I held the sceptre you gave me, Holy Spirit.
And so thank you, Jesus, for the many, many actors behind the scenes of our lives.
Is it just me or does anyone else find this sign hilarious? If you look carefully at the background, the thought does come to my mind that perhaps this isn’t the best place to advertise for a lush lawn and consistent irrigation. And how is our our backyard measuring up, before we spout off to others the ways we can help?
When are we speaking confidently, forcefully, as if we know what we are talking about when we should be getting out our ears, polishing them up a little, turning up the volume and re-affixing them so that their input can reach our brains?
When do I take off my ears and loud mouth when I should be asking questions? This is the question that the photo above blares at me, as if through a loudspeaker.
Today, in the prayer meeting, she mentioned how we can have the equivalent of pebbles in our shoes. Little annoyances that after we have been walking for a long, long time without a reset, will significantly impede our journeys.
Is it time for a rest? Time to allow another to listen to us, to lean against them as we rest, to catch our balance, and to remove the rock from our shoe, so that we can walk straight again?
Is it time to stop figuring out how to carry another’s burdens, and to relieve our hearts to a trusted friend?
I took her up on her offer and prayed aloud the concern that had been nagging at my heart. Not an earth-shattering prayer, no. Nothing about world peace, or global reform. Just a little concern about someone I love that has been weighing me down.
A pebble in my shoe.
And she took care of it. Gave me some clean socks in her prayer that echoed my heart. A few tears were shed. She offered me some water from her canteen.
We continued our journeys, her and I, each one travelling our own way, down slightly different paths. Our paths will merge again, and reconnect, but perhaps not until the next prayer meeting.
But until next time, next week, I got a little rest.
I felt better somehow, as we joined our heads and hearts together to pray about our unwatered lawns and shabby-looking backyards. It’s ok. God is growing a garden there, and he wants to grow flowers in the gardens of the people that we encounter, as well, as we are honest with others about our desolate backyards.
And I was comforted to remember the way to fix a broken irrigation system, a dry or non-existent lawn. The solution is to grab hold of a friend’s hand and to pray together, over that dry spot. To keep holding on when she shows you a dry area in her lawn.
To stop and pray together for a while, that the rains will come before we travel our own paths.
Sure beats trying to hide the truth, which is obvious to all who look carefully at my life, anyway.
Jesus, while He was walking the earth as a human, said a LOT without speaking.
Consider the following example:
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance. She ran at once to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, gasping for breath. . . Peter and the other disciple left immediately for the tomb. . . Simon Peter . . .entered the tomb, observed the linen cloths lying there, and the kerchief used to cover his head not lying with the linen cloths but separate, neatly folded by itself.The Message
We scratch our heads. Our ears are lying on the floor. We can’t hear Jesus speaking through the bolded words above! You must be making stuff up!
And so we rub our eyes from our sleepy state, reluctantly receive the shovel He holds out to us, and try with one hand to hold up one ear to our head so it won’t fall off again. “What exactly are You trying to say?”, we ask, yawning, digging awkwardly with the other hand.
In Jewish culture in the time of Jesus, folding up a napkin (translated above as “kerchief”) after a meal was a way of saying “I am finished.”
We hold onto our ear, about to fall off again. “Uh-huh,” we murmur. Yes, it was finished at the resurrection. We know this.
HANG ON before your ears drop to the floor again and you go back to sleep.
Jesus said “It is finished” to His confused followers because they hadn’t seen the end of The Jesus Film yet. They didn’t know how things would pan out.
But He speaks to US through the folded napkin too, as we apply what He said many years ago to our lives today.
Don’t drop your ear yet!
He says:
I speak in ways that you don’t expect, without words, sometimes. Do you want to hear me? If so, get out your shovel, hold up one of your ears to your head, and dig, friend, dig.
Jesus, may we hold both ears up to our head, eventually, as we learn to listen and to dig into Your words. May you answer our every question. May we come to another with our questions, and may they help us to dig, or may they offer the gold they have already found from studying Your life.
May many, many more of us learn that we have wings.
As you listen to this song, consider holding one of your ears up to your head and asking Jesus to touch your heart with His love. May you receive exactly what you need to fully satisfy your soul, whether He speaks with or without words to you today. May your heart be filled with His love for you, we pray.
A way Jesus recently spoke without using words will be discussed in future posts.
According to Guinness World Records as of 1995, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time with an estimated 5 billion copies sold and distributed.
Have you read it?
If you have a copy, could dust be blown off the cover?
Yeah, mine had that problem too.
In fact, J.I. Packer, in Knowing God challenges us to admit it if we don’t love reading our bibles.
To not put our backs to our dusty bibles and to our vague feelings of guilt. “I SHOULD love reading this book but ACTUALLY,” we think…
I realized that even though I have been a Christian for decades, I hated reading the Bible.
(!)
This honesty, like all honesty, proved key to finding my true joy.
I asked for help from the older couple in the church.
You know the ones.
They have been sitting at the back of the church for decades. They attend the prayer meetings. They loved you the first day you arrived.
I asked them why they love to read their Bibles.
At their encouragement, they suggested that I read The Psalms and highlight words that seemed to stand out to me.
How do we read the Bible with Holy Spirit at our sides, nudging our elbows as we read? How does the Bible come alive in our hearts?
I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t handle them now. But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is.The Message
I diligently highlighted a mishmash assortment of odd words that seemed to be highlighted in my soul as I read: Deep. Water. Heart.
And I was still confused.
“God! If you are trying to speak to me, could you please be clear!!”
But [the disciples] didn’t get it, could make neither heads nor tails of what he was talking about.The Message
If the disciples were always confused when Jesus was speaking, why couldn’t I also expect confusion when Holy Spirit may be speaking to me?
But speaking He was.
When the guest speaker showed up at our church many months later singing a new song that she had created, with the theme of many of these words that I had highlighted in my Bible, I knew God was whispering to my heart.
He doesn’t want to bark a clear order to obey, but to pour a little rain into our parched souls, that awakens our hearts and gives a spring to our steps. His words refresh as His love sinks a little deeper into the soil of our hearts.
He clothes His words in love so that we have to come to Him again and again, asking for understanding. And a little of His love sticks each time we run back to Him.
And without our knowing it, as we allow the rain to sink deep, fruit is produced in our lives.
This fruit nourishes us and others.
And makes us run back to His word again and again.
We are hungry.
And we receive nutrients from His word.
Are you hungry? Do you also, like me, need to come off the baby’s diet of milk, and learn to eat?
You’re . . . capable of nothing much more than nursing at the breast. The Message
And when we learn to enjoy solid food, then reading the bible and prayer gets exciting.
Joy is coming. Do you feel it?
Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? The Message
1. Be still and listen. Expect him to speak. We expect the unexpected. What is on God’s heart as we come humbly to Him with our empty plates, our stomachs rumbling again? We learn to discern the words of God from the mumbo jumbo that our inexperienced ears hear by opening His Message to us, the Bible.
2. Love our bibles. How? I used to hate reading my bible, though I felt guilty as I had been a Christian for decades. Now, I love my Bible and treasure it more than any other thing. How to learn to love our Bibles will be discussed in a future post.
3. Worship and thanksgiving clean out our ears. Prayer does this too. Most of the gunk that weighs us down seems to rest in our ears. When we clean out the gunk, our whole selves can lift like a helium balloon up to the loving Father.
Treat my prayer as sweet incense rising; my raised hands are my evening prayers. The Message
Then we can simply open the door when Jesus knocks. We are in a state of rest, not striving
4. Remind Jesus what He has been saying and ask for more. What is on His heart as He tries to wake us, spiritually? These are the things that he has been saying to us. Similarly, we remind Him of our empty plates, our growling bellies, and of our need for Him to fill our plates with His promises.
5. Surrender to His plan for our life. What is God saying that we get to obey? What flower will grow on our plants as a result of this obedience, is the question of hope that keeps us running back to Him. Prayer brings life.
God, just like Froot Loops that don’t satisfy us two hours after we have eaten them (No offense Big Food but your food really stinks), God you have oatmeal for us to eat. The really good stuff. The stuff that keeps us satiated for hours. Change our taste, Lord. Help us to love to eat that which is good.
Teach us to pray.
May we seek and search until we have found that precious jewel that is You.
God’s kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field for years and then accidentally found by a trespasser. The finder is ecstatic—what a find!—and proceeds to sell everything he owns to raise money and buy that field. The Message
Help us to recognize the difference between junk food and healing food. We pray.
“But there is nothing more dreadfully unimpressive than extemporary prayer which leaps about on the surfaces of things, a disorderly dance of empty words, going we know not whither,–a mob of words carrying no blood, bearing no secret of the soul, a whirl of insignificant expressions, behind which there is no vital pulse, no silent cry from lone and desolate depths.”The Preacher His Life and Work
Restoring Life 