Blessings in Disquise. . .

A dear friend shared this song with me recently and it struck deeply. There isn’t a day that goes by without hearing of another human’s pain. But God’s perspective is so much greater. . .

Blessings by Laura Story

We pray for blessings, we pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering

All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops?
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near?

What if trials of this life
Are Your mercies in disguise?

We pray for wisdom, Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough

And all the while You hear each desperate plea
And long that we’d have faith to believe

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears?
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near?

And what if trials of this life
Are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us, when darkness seems to win
We know the pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home
It’s not our home

Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears?
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near?

What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst
This world can’t satisfy?

And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise?

http://grooveshark.com/s/Blessings/3Fk3lN?src=5

Springing Eternal

I had a rough weekend.

Eyes on self and my “problems,” there was no sunlight in my world and no breath of fresh air. Not that friends didn’t try to help, but I didn’t FEEL anything but despair, hopelessness, and the utter pointlessness of walking another step in a seemingly endless monotony of useless days.

I know—drama.

“Have you lost hope?” my friends asked me. “Hope for what? Hope in what?” I was (am) confident of my salvation, but of any other bright spot in life, nothing. So what’s the point of continuing to breathe?

The World tends to take a very dim view of hope. Any person who’s had to interact with it for an extended period of time can tell you plainly that if you cherish dreams, and I mean, really believe them—dreams like today will be better, someday you’ll find true love, or you can make a difference in the world—you will be made fun of. There’s no room out there in the “real world” for naïve fantasies and Pollyanna smiles.

“Time to grow up kid. This is the real world.”

The World would have us believe that the more of life we experience, the more “reality” sets in, the clearer our vision for what is and must be. The best way, the World says, to protect yourself from being hurt is to have no hopes at all; only when armored with disillusionment and hiding behind a shield of cynicism, can you survive to fight another day.

But Scripture says otherwise in Romans 5:

“¹Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: “²By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in HOPE of the glory of God. ³And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; ⁴And patience, experience; and experience, HOPE: ⁵And HOPE maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” (Emphasis mine.)

What is Paul saying here? Because of Christ’s work, we have access to hope—we positively revel and rejoice—in the hope we have of one day being the perfect reflection of Himself that God intended us to be. We can also rejoice in the hard and painful things that happen here on earth, because it’s God’s loving hand teaching us patience. Patience, in turn, gives us experience—we know that what He has promised, He will do—and what does that experience give us? Cynicism? No! It gives us HOPE!

As Christians, our experiences of the World, when transformed by the Father’s hand, do not make us bitter, cynical, fearful, disillusioned, vindictive people, but beacons of hope. And the World may laugh at us, but what does verse five say? “Hope maketh not ashamed, because the Love of God is shed abroad in our hearts…” It’s not naïve to wake up with hope for the new day. Our hope “springs eternal” because it flows like a fountain from the work of God’s love in our lives.

Remember, there are two forms of the word hope (www.ninjawords.com). The verb form is what people tend to lump in with ridiculousness: “to want something to happen.” We all know that just because we want it to happen is far from guaranteeing that it will.

The noun form, however, is a bit different: “the belief or expectation that something wished for can or will happen.”

When we hope in God, we don’t simply have a “wanting” for something to happen. We are holding in our hearts a tangible reality—a belief or expectation that something wished for can and (not just or) WILL happen in His good time, according to His good plan, by His good will.

I close with another passage from Romans 8, “²⁴For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? ²⁵But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”

Hope gives strength to carry on, to finish that marathon, to carry that burden one more day, to try one more time.

My hope is in Christ. I am saved by hope.

Learning to Let Go

I watched My Sister’s Keeper last night.

 I grieved for all the friends I’ve known affected or taken by death.

 Sometimes we have relationships with friends and family members we love so much, that we ache at the thought of being away from them, let alone losing them to death. While that awareness that our time together is short can lead us to value what we have even more, it can also detract. Why waste our time with our family moping about the approaching time without them? Why be so distraught at the thought of parting that we poison our time together?

Over the years I have struggled with this a great deal. Part of me is in the moment, trying to capture every detail, every feeling so that I can carry it with me always. And the other part is grieving, trying not to fall apart at the thought of saying goodbye. But goodbye is part of our lives. We can’t escape it. We can only try to say it gracefully.

For the Christian, the grief of goodbye takes on another dimension. There is One who orchestrates our meetings and partings, and it becomes a question of Trust. “Lord willing, I will see this dear one again, if not on earth, than in heaven. But if I shouldn’t, I must trust there’s a reason.” But do we? Do we trust that He guides our small vessels on the ocean of Life? Or do we secretly think we truly are at the mercy of the waves?

Face-to-face with the prospect of another agonizing farewell, I again had to come to grips with this reality several months ago. The battle’s outcome took the form of this prayer. But for you, whoever you are that reads this, I hope for you. I hope you can learn to see His goodness and love—His providence—in the people He brings into and out of your life. It is all for His glory and your good, though the good may require pain. But as His children we look to a Day when—through His perfect, redeeming work on the Cross—we will never feel that pain again. May that Day come soon. Maranatha!

The Prayer of Fellowship

Lord,

I thank You today for this moment in which to enjoy the fellowship of my companion—friend, loved one, co-laborer. I ask that You bless our interaction—that it may glorify You and reflect Your love for us in every respect. I know our time together—like every moment of time we have—is not a right, but a privilege, a gift that Your great goodness chooses to give and I will treasure it as such. Lord, please bless this dear one today as we go our separate ways. I place them in Your hands to mold, break, use or take as You see fit and as fits Your plan. Give me strength to trust Your love, wisdom, and Your good will for their life. I will not question Your work in them, only my perception of it. For now, I wholly thank You for this moment to spend with another creature made in Your likeness. Your goodness is evident in the giving. ~Amen

Store Doors and Other Musings…

I was caught in a bottleneck today.

No, not a literal one. A people clog while leaving a store. And while stuck behind some very slooooow shoppers I began to wonder.

What do people think when they see a large group of shoppers all leaving a store at once? Do they make wrong associations within the group? (No, that is NOT my boyfriend I’m walking next to!) Do they look for pleased expressions—no doubt a result of the happiness found in purchasing and “having?”

Or do they consider—as I did tonight—that those doors they walk through are very much like Death?

Regardless of social status, “deals” found, physical abilities, size of pocketbooks, or otherwise, everyone must walk through those doors to leave the building.

But unlike our exit through the doors of a store, when we really Leave we won’t be carrying anything with us to assure our future happiness on the other side. We Leave regardless of Who or What we think awaits us there. And no good deeds, trophies earned, or sizeable bank accounts can help us when we arrive.

It is simply the naked Self—devoid even of the shell-covering of our physical bodies and unable to hide behind a single excuse–that faces the Unknown.

And there won’t be the comfortable anonymity of cars and suburban homes awaiting us either. We take those “exit” steps into the presence of the Almighty, Self-Existant, Holy & Righteous One—the I AM on His eternal throne.

Do you know how my exit differs? I didn’t buy anything in that Store. I was Bought.

And now, my Purchaser, having paid with His own blood, awaits me in love just beyond these Doors.

Better or Best?

As we get older, Christian young people hear and talk a lot about “God’s will for life” and finding “His best.” And yet, in so many ways, it seems more like we’re shooting at a moving target, than seeking (and certain of finding) an absolute. We are unsure of what His “best” looks like and probably secretly fear that it’s something we won’t like—if for no other reason than He’s up there, we’re down here, and what’s “righteous” rarely equates with what’s “fun.”

But if God has a best plan for us, than by its very nature as “best,” it is concrete; It is something we can know and—with His help—reach. But how are we to know it when we find it?

The Bible has the answers. We’ve heard that time and again. But how does it apply to a young person who needs to know which college to attend, what mate to choose, or what financial decisions to make?

Believe it or not, the Bible does give us many examples of people acting on their perceptions of “best” versus God’s best. Jehoshaphat, Sarah, David, Samson, Adam, Peter, Abraham, Moses, and countless others all acted at one time or another on their “best” interests and/or on God’s best. But God Himself gives us the clearest, most poignant example of  what is truly “best.” God defined “best” for us when He sent Jesus Christ to earth.

 For Jesus, the temporal best would’ve kept Him comfortably in heaven. Why go to all the bother of coming down to earth to save people who don’t even care? To save people who would themselves bring about His death? But the best for God—a pure sacrifice to reconcile mankind to Him—was also Jesus’ ultimate best. Through His sacrifice, He glorified the Father and the Father in turn, glorified Him. When He put all of Himself into the Father’s service, there was nothing that the Father withheld from Christ.

God’s best—the best that we claim we’re looking for—will involve sacrifice. It will involve pain, growth, and death in some form or another. But God’s best will always glorify Him. We will never find a “best” without that objective. But in glorifying Him, we will fulfill our ultimate purpose and in so doing, find our greatest joy.

God’s best isn’t necessarily so hard to find—we just have to know what we’re looking for.

How Are You Connected?

“If you ask someone why they go where they go, it’s all about connections.”

My pastor offered this observation while sitting around my family’s dinner table discussing the possibilities of Sunday school. I had to agree with him. People will stay or leave a church in part–as my family has–based on their feelings of connection. “Does anyone even notice I’m here?” is a question that often passes through the mind of visitors on their first visit, but should it still be there on their fourth or fifth visit?

We’re lazy. It’s just a basic fact. And unfortunately, Christians, though cleansed of sin before God, are still works in progress. So while visitors walking into a church may expect entirely upstanding, honest, model examples of sanctification, the brutal reality is that these people are as much works in progress as any others–they are just headed in the right direction.

But if we expect to act as God’s hands and live His love, if we want to make a difference in the lives of those around us, and we intend to reach out to the bleeding hearts nearby, we must notice them. Purpose to look for the new faces at church. Start a conversation with the tired-looking person in line behind you at the supermarket. Take down your fences and be willing to listen. “Who is my neighbor?” the Pharisee challenged Jesus. Perhaps your neighbor just passed you on the sidewalk…