My Psalm of Lament

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Where are you, Lord, in our affliction?
Why do you hide your face in times of trouble?
Where is your saving arm, your strong right hand
In the face of this microscopic enemy?
I am imprisoned in my own home,
Unable to escape from my children for even a moment.
I snap and yell, I stomp and fuss,
And then I know my guilt, for others
Are facing much worse now and in days to come.
Where are you, O Lord?
Why do you not rise up and stop this virus?
For the sake of your glory, for the sake of your name,
Make this vanish with a word, like the mist before the morning sun.
I am worried about my parents, my in-laws,
All those in my parents’ generation who raised me in their love.
I am anxious about friends who already struggle with their health.
I see people losing jobs and refugees losing even what small place they had,
I see the sick with no room at the hospitals and the lonely and depressed sinking lower.
This disease is coming, coming, coming, and none can stop it but you.
Why do you not come?
You of great love and great power, you alone have the means to deliver us.
Why have you removed your saving hand?
Where are you, Lord, in our darkness?
I see the answer when I gaze at the cross.
You are here.
Our tears are your tears. Our pain is your pain.
Our grief is your grief. Our suffering is your suffering.
You who have every right to the glory of heaven
Have chosen to be with us in all of our sorrow.
I see your presence in the face of my girls,
In the hands of my husband,
In the eyes of my neighbor.
I see your presence in the coming together,
In the surrounding each other,
In the laying down of what we once held dear.
Teach us, O Lord, what is most important.
Teach us to treasure what your heart treasures.
Help us to slow down and give up,
To give each other our time and full attention,
To be still and quiet with you.
Teach us to know that you are God.
We are your people, your very own sheep.
Help us to open our hands and let go
Of that which we have grasped too tightly.
Help us to rearrange our hearts and priorities until
They more closely align with yours.
Help us not to waste these days but
To use them to more fully love you,
To more fully love each other,
To more fully love those who don’t yet know you.
We trust your heart toward us.
With your strength, we will use this time wisely,
To number our days and gain wisdom.
We will give rather than hoard.
We will serve rather than weep.
We will search for you in the small bits of beauty
You have scattered all around us.
We will praise you and give thanks
In this as in the most perfect of times,
For you are our God and have promised to never forsake us.
You have promised that a day is coming when all of this pain will fade,
When all of this sorrow will disappear
Like the morning dew when the heat of the sun arrives.
We trust in your promise and will wait patiently for you.
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

You Still Have a Choice, Even in This Crisis

Despite this strange new normal in which we find ourselves, we are still in the season of Lent.
lent
The Church continues on with her year, regardless of what is happening around her.
Lent is a season of giving up, of denying yourself for the purpose of becoming more unified with the Spirit of Christ.
Most of us, no matter where in the world we live, find ourselves being forced to give up.
Give up freedoms, give up financial stability, give up plans and dreams for the next few months.
As with any time of suffering, I do not mean to imply that God caused this. We live in a broken world.
But He did allow it.
broken world
And, as with any time of suffering, He is asking us what we are going to do with it.
It is vitally important for our life-with-God to be still before Him. We must spend much time gazing at Jesus and being filled up by His Spirit through silence and solitude, among other things.
When we do this, we have His peace and His joy deep within us. We are sheltered in our Home, and we emerge safely on the other side of whatever grief and pain may come our way, though perhaps a bit battered and wind-torn.
Jesus spoke of suffering that is used by God.
In the parable of the vine, He said that every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
Andrew Murray writes that we should be moved by our abiding in Christ
to hear in each affliction the voice of a messenger that comes to call them to abide still more closely. Yes, believer, most specially in times of trial, abide in Christ…abide in Christ in times of affliction and you shall bring forth more fruit.
James, the brother of Jesus, also speaks of suffering that is used by God. He makes so bold as to instruct us to count suffering as pure joy.
What could there be, what could there possibly be in the valley of the deepest dark that could be counted as joy?
James does not leave us sinking into despair.
He answers with the answer we have been aiming towards from the beginning: our suffering, when we choose to continue to abide in Christ in the middle of it, leads to nothing less than being made perfect and complete.
What will be your choice?
We can choose.
We can choose in our pain to more fully make our home in Jesus or to step outside of Him. The way we choose to respond to suffering matters.
Over and over, Scripture tells us that the choices we make in this life ripple forward into the next.
What we do with the ebbs and flows in our lives matter. From interruptions to worries, from marriage to loss, every choice we make in response to our circumstances is changing us.
Changing the very essence of ourselves into something different than what we are now.
C. S. Lewis said it best.
Taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself.
Choosing to live out Holy Habits, daily activities like Scripture reading and prayer, solitude and silence, are how God the Holy Spirit transforms us into people of His Kingdom.
People who, by obedience and love, are helping the Kingdom, God’s rule, to break through here and now.
People who are at home in Jesus.
Choose time with Jesus
So may I make a suggestion?
We have all been required to give up most of our normal activities. By all means, fill up some of that time with books and movies, but perhaps take some of that time to just sit in silence with God.
This can be a frightening thing to do, especially in our particular circumstances. Sitting quietly with your thoughts and emotions can feel hard.
Yet God has promised to always be with us, to give us a peace and a joy that goes beyond any circumstance. But we must trust Him enough to give Him those thoughts and emotions, trust Him enough to be still before Him.
We do not need to pretend in our times with Him. We do not need to act as though everything were okay, as though we were okay, as though anything in our entire world were okay.
It is good to lament before the Lord.
We need to lament to Him when all around us feels as though it were falling apart.
Scripture is full of lament.
We are at a loss what to do, hence our eyes are turned toward you. (2 Chronicles 20:12)
My soul, too, is utterly terrified; but you, O Lord, how long…? (Psalm 6:4).
Why, O Lord, do you stand aloof? Why hide in times of distress? (Psalm 10:1)
In the next couple of days, will you find some time to go hide in a bedroom or take a walk alone outside? Just be still before God and try to be silent. Take a name of God that is meaningful to you or a phrase such as “Lord, have mercy” to use when you need to bring your thoughts back under control.
Try to make this a regular part of your routine.
Will you also write your own Psalm of Lament over all that you are experiencing right now?
It is an act of faith to pour out our fear and hurt to God.
If you want to share it with someone, I would love to read it. You can email me at Elizabeth@MadeSacred.com
This can also be just between you and God.
May God grant you His incomprehensible peace and His deep, abiding joy even in the middle of all that we are experiencing right now.
May He grant you what you need more than anything else – a real sense of His own presence.
May He grant you Himself.
Let God give you Himself
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

All photographs copyright Made Sacred 2020

To Carry the Cross for the Love of Christ

Why do you follow Jesus?
spiritual disciplines
Why do you practice spiritual disciplines, face your sin, deny yourself?
Why do you choose to take up your cross and follow Him?
Is it for the comfort you might receive from Him?
Is it for the healing He might do in you?
Is it for the transformation, for the beautiful creation He might make of your life?
cross
Many desire to join Christ in His kingdom, but few care to join Him on His cross.
Many are willing to share in His glory, but few wish to suffer anything for Him.
Many will follow Him as far as the breaking of bread, but few will remain to drink from His passion. Thomas à Kempis
It is easy to praise and bless Jesus as long as we are receiving some comfort from Him.
What if you knew that you would receive no benefit from Him here on this earth? What if you knew that you would not move closer to Him nor be transformed more into His image until you saw Him face to face?
Would you still spend the time and do the work, simply out of love and obedience? Robert Mulholland asks in his book, Shaped by the Word, whether we would still be willing to offer our spiritual practices to God even if God does nothing with it.
When Jesus hides Himself, which will happen at times throughout your life, will you start complaining and give up in despair?
You cannot escape the cross.
cross
At times you will be forsaken by God, at times troubled by those about you and, what is worse, you will often grow weary of yourself…For he wishes you to learn to bear trial without consolation, to submit yourself wholly to him that you may become more humble through suffering. Thomas à Kempis
Will you love Jesus for His own sake and not for any comfort He might bring to you?
Will you praise Him in your anguish of heart as well as in the joy of His support?
What power there is in a pure love for Jesus – love that is free from all self-interest and self-love! Thomas à Kempis
I am, I confess, far from this kind of love.
Yet I long for it.
If you are like me and struggle to love Jesus with a pure love, will you join me in praying for a heart that is capable of loving in this way? Make no mistake – this kind of love can only be a gift from God.
If you are farther along on this journey towards a love that is free from self-interest, will you pray for me?
We must be willing to bear the cross of Jesus.
There is no other way to life and to true inward peace than the way and discipline of the cross. Thomas à Kempis
carry the cross
Yet here is the beauty of this so very difficult truth: when you are willing to carry your cross, it will end up carrying you.
When you choose to pick up your cross and follow Jesus, that cross will take you to a place where all suffering comes to an end.
May God grant us this gift of being able to come to Him for love of Him rather than for love of what He can do for us.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

All photographs copyright Made Sacred. 2020

Thinking About Death

I am thinking about death in this season of Lent.
death
I still miss my Gram and Papa so much it physically hurts sometimes.
I see my friends who just lost their young daughter struggle to do the next thing.
I hear a friend who lost her husband say that she has trouble getting out of bed in the morning.
Death is ugly.
death
I am thinking about Jesus’ last Passover meal.
Last Passover
He, too, was thinking about death. He knew what was coming.
He looked around at his beloved disciples and knew the curse they were living under.
The curse we all were living under.
The curse begun by Eve when she took, ate, and gave that fruit.
Jesus looked around at his disciples and knew that what he was about to do would rescue them from exile from God, that what he was about to suffer would break that curse for all time.
He wanted them to always remember his rescue, and so he took, gave, and ate the bread and the fruit of the vine.
Take Eat Give
And then he broke that curse.
He broke the curse so that death would no longer have the last word.
He broke that curse and gave us hope.
And hope remains.
After his wife dies, there is hope.
After her child dies, there is hope.
After her innocence dies, there is hope.
After his heart dies, there is hope.
After all that we know dies, there is is hope.
Hope for the end of our exile.
Hope for our rescue.
Hope for heaven and earth to become one and for God to dwell with his people.
Hope for Jesus to take, and give, and eat once more, in celebration this time, with the fruit of the vine at the wedding feast.
I’m thinking about death in this season of Lent.
Death Defeated
Death defeated.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

 

Art Credit: The Last Supper from Master of the Dresden Prayer Book