Prairie Pines & Posies

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Can God Trust You to Live By Faith?

It's not every day that your sweetheart brings you a luscious bouquet home!

A bouquet with a gorgeous red rose right in the heart of it!

And it's not every day that God gives you special tokens of His love,

His redemption, His salvation, His sanctification, His wisdom,

or His favor.

It's not every day that you feel like you are God's special child,

sitting on His lap

or being patted on the back

or crooned over with love songs.

Recently I was in a home where the husband kept saying from time to time to his wife or child,

"I love you!"

and then before long, was turning around and saying, "Do you love me?"

like he wasn't certain and needed to be reassured over and over again.

Do we treat God the same way?

Do we have to keep asking Him if He loves us,

if His blood is still applied to our hearts,

if we are still in His favor and keeping?

Am I really more valuable than the sparrows--

or was that just wishful thinking?

Can God trust us to live by faith?

Because as days go by and we are inundated with the drudgery of life,

the cooking and cleaning and schooling and laundry and organizing and managing and office work

and training children and overseeing a large household,

the excitement of our salvation can wane.

The warm, fuzzy feelings quickly evaporate when you are constantly on call to provide work and play and responsibilities and adventure and fun for your kids,

guide them through myriad household chores and tasks while doing your own,

manage several school children needing help all at once,

work through the constant squabbles between kids whose totally opposite personalities drive each other batty,

oversee scheduling of violin lessons and working for neighbors and youth groups and pizza parties

and having people to your home,

while shoveling snow, seeing that hay is bought and put away, and maybe some shopping fit in somewhere with Valentines Day coming up and your Sunday coat looking rather shabby.

No, you don't constantly experience the amazing joy you felt the day you were first saved,

or the afternoon or evening when you consecrated your complete obedience to the Lord

and asked for the Holy Spirit and found Him suddenly real to you.

No, sometimes you sense that you are in the furnace of testing,

or under the rod of chastening,

or just in a place of being expected to live by faith alone

with no feelings attached.

You may often feel crushed by griefs or pain or circumstances beyond your control

or the regrets of having made mistakes under pressure and in confusion,

or the struggles of getting through different seasons of life without totally losing your sense of dignity and worth.

Can God trust you to live by faith alone

when you have gone to your prayer closet or trysting place or bedroom

to read your Bible and pray

and haven't felt a thing for a long time?

Felt nothing except that you must be cracked, and broken, and mangled.

But "the just shall live by faith," Habakkuk wrote, (2:4) and Paul reiterated (Romans 1:17).

And sometimes, that faith does result in feeling.

Feelings that are all the more precious because of the lack of them so often.

Feelings like what I felt last Sunday evening when my littlest daughter came to my bedside where I was reading my Bible and praying.

She whimpered that she could not sleep because she kept thinking about ghosts and nightmares..

And I was annoyed by the interruption.

After all, I wanted to seek God's face--and this almost always happens when I do.

But I asked her if she'd like me to come sit by her, and I went to her room and sat down nearby in the darkness, and she cuddled up peacefully under her covers.

And right there in her room, in the darkness,

in the middle of this interruption,

I felt some feelings I hadn't felt in a long time.

Feelings of warmth and peace.

Feelings of assurance.

Just between me and Him.

Having brought everything once again to His blood that keeps haunting and weighing on me
along with my confusions and burdens,

and also others and what they have done to contribute to all the pain,

bringing those to His blood, too.

Because sometimes it is others and their attitudes (at least our perception of them) who hinder us.

Sometimes we have to bring those, too, to His blood,

releasing those people from our own judgments about them and the situations,

like Job who had to pray for his condemning friends who were so sure they were right and he was wrong

before God released him from his suffering.

Yes, the just shall live by faith.

But we rejoice for those times when we discern a sense of joy, peace, assurance

and hope,

something the world can neither give nor take away,
something they cannot know,

but what God's children--howsoever imperfect we may be--

know and have beyond a shadow of a doubt.

When There's No Other Way But Through

"At the Place of the Sea"

by Annie Johnson Flint

"Have you come to the Red Sea place in your life,

Where in spite of all you can do,

There is no way out, there is no way back,

There is no other way but--through?

"Then wait on the Lord with a trust serene

Till the night of your fear is gone;

He will send the wind, He will heap the floods,

When He says to your soul, "Go on."

"And His hand will lead you through--clear through--

Ere the watery walls roll down,

No foe can reach you, no wave can touch,

No mightiest sea can drown;

"The tossing billows may rear their crests,

Their foam at your feet may break,

But over their bed you shall walk dry shod

In the path that your Lord will make.

"In the morning watch, 'neath the lifted cloud,

You shall see but the Lord alone,

When He leads you on from the place of the sea

To land that you have not known;

"And your fears shall pass as your foes have passed,

You shall be no more afraid;

You shall sing His praise in a better place,

A place that His hand has made."

Monday, February 8, 2016

For Moms on Monday Mornings

Are there words for moms on Monday mornings?

Monday mornings when you wake up still exhausted,
and there is that recurring aching pain in your back (or shoulder or neck or ankle) from something out of kilter--
and suddenly yesterday's pains stare you in the face, too,
in ways they don't when you feel well, strong, and refreshed.

And you find yourself needing something besides an electric heating pad,
sunshine,
sparrows,
or even hugs.

You need words.
Because all you can think is a prayer.
A one-word prayer.
"Grace."
Lord, I need grace.

I need grace when pain won't go away.
There isn't any way to run away from the pain of the present,
and the pain of the past,
and the pain of the looming future.
You can't run away from it, so there is only one thing to do.

You have to get through it.
And to get through it, you have to put yesterday and today and tomorrow
in their proper place--with all the pain of them.

"Put yesterday in its place,
behind you where it belongs," says a good book I found at the library called "101 Things You Should Do Before Going to Heaven."
"Yesterday is too heavy a load. It has already consumed enough of your time, energy, and emotions
the first time around. Why let it steal any of the resources you have at your disposal today?"

Resources for today.
Resources like sunshine and exercise.

Like peaceful scenes.

Like the warmth of the clothes you pull out of the dryer--
and the sudden surge of thankfulness you feel for that warmth.

Tomorrow's pain has to stay with tomorrow.

It's just today you have to deal with.

It's just today's grace that you need to trust God for when you are overwhelmed with life's tangles.

There are indeed words for moms on Monday mornings--or perhaps Monday afternoons when you find yourself sitting on the porch swing in winter, reading your Bible.
A Bible with words.
Words that say, "His compassions fail not. They are new every morning--"
even Monday mornings.