joy after pain

I delayed writing today until after work to see how God met me in my struggles there. Without going into detail, I will say that He worked in me, in others, and in the situation to bring me into greater freedom to be myself, to step out across the water and be real, and to put into perspective the things that have bothered me. When I find that happening, I can feel so full of joy that I can be quite funny and crazy in an entertaining way. At those moments the joy is so intense because the pain has been so deep. I have known that in various relationships and situations in my life. The deeper the pain and sorrow, the greater the joy. I am so glad that I learned that afresh today.

joy in growing awareness and seeking His presence

It is a muggy morning. I am heading off to work feeling tired and so aware of the slog of the job. It is a good occasion to reaffirm the timeless truth that our only true joy is in Jesus and in our relationship with Him. He is the source of all our joy, peace, etc. All our springs of joy are in Him. And I also need to reaffirm my weakness and dependence upon Him for everything: physical and emotional strength to do my job, protection from Him to withstand the spiritual warfare swirling around me all the time. I also reaffirm that life is lived in moments - that each moment is fresh and I want to live fully in that moment - in His presence.

joy in beginning to see dreams come true

Yesterday when I returned from a day at work I saw the first fruits of some dreams. My weekly post on the whateverhesays.blogspot.com website, the team devotional I write for, bore fruit in the life of an unknown reader who left a comment for me. She said that she didn't know who I was, but for that day my words were the "light in the darkness" for her. It was particularly the Brian Doerksen song I quoted that spoke to her and gave her hope. That was such a blessing for me. I am glad to get feedback from anyone, and it is great when those who know me enjoy what I write. But when someone out there in cyberspace just looking for hope finds it through the words I was led to write..that is the best answer of all.

I also got to walk down the first framework of the steps that my nephew is building under my husband's direction. These are steps down our steep slope to the lovely river at the bottom of our property. We cannot afford to get them professionally done, but through our joint insight, my husband's knowledge and planning, and my nephew's skill, strength, dedication and labour of love for little money, we are able to see this dream begin to come true.

God is so good. May He bless you today.

joy in developing and expressing ideas

There is such joy for me today as I publish this third post on the team devotional blog" http://www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com/. It is a challenge for me to think even more deeply about ideas that come to me, and develop them in ways that make sense and also touch and teach others, I hope. In this case, I took what I put in newjoysprings a few days ago, and worked with it some more. Here it is:

“Jesus, truth in each circumstance”.

This line is from a popular and powerful song by Brian Doerksen called “Hope of the Nations.” If you go to his website, http://www.briandoerksen.com/, you can read the story behind the song and see how much his composing of it came from God’s leading and in connection with events in history, most particularly Sept. 11th. It was written as a song of hope, and so it is.

Jesus, hope of the nations
Jesus, comfort for all who mourn
You are the source of heaven’s hope on earth

Jesus, light in the darkness
Jesus, truth in each circumstance
You are the source of heaven’s light on earth

In history, You lived and died,
You broke the chains, You rose to life

You are the hope, living in us
You are the Rock, in whom we trust
You are the light
Shining for all the world to see

You rose from the dead, conquering fear
Our Prince of Peace, drawing us near
Jesus our hope
Living for all who will receive
Lord we believe!

A real and living hope is based on Jesus and the reality of His life and death.

As I ponder the meaning behind this phrase that fascinates me most, “Jesus, truth in each circumstance”, the bottom line would be to say that Jesus is the source of truth in each circumstance, just as He is source of hope in those circumstances, and the source of light in the world, etc.

“For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. “(Colossians 1: 16-17)

Looking with the eyes of faith and discernment, with “spiritual eyes”, we can see circumstances from God’s perspective. We find the truth that Jesus reveals to us about those circumstances. Yes, I am sure this is true. But like so many words of scripture, when words are written with divine inspiration they can have many levels of meaning.

I cannot help but see more in these words. I see that the truth that we see in circumstances, even “human” truth, is God’s truth, a kind of incarnated truth, as Jesus is God incarnate. Jesus is truth: truth is Jesus. Can we say that the way we say that God is love, and those who dwell in love, dwell in God?. Can we say also that somehow those who dwell in truth, dwell in Jesus?

I appreciated teaching in my counselling course that helped us interface between psychology and theology, with the foundation being a belief that “all truth is God’s truth”. There are books written about this, and I won’t try to go into their arguments here or today. But I come with that conviction to this line in the song, as well as the sense deep within my spirit that there are many levels of truth in that line.

It seems to me that the truth we come to see in each circumstance is ultimately rooted in Jesus, and that coming to greater understanding of truth in every situation can lead us closer to Him. That would surely be God’s purpose, but of course the choice is ours.
If spiritual truth for us always has to be wrapped up in religious language then we may miss what God is trying to show us. I have found that my study of human truth by looking at reality through a counselling focused lens has brought me closer to God and made me more excited about His sovereignty and power.

Through this lens I speak of we can learn to see “what happens when what happens”. Instead of focusing on individual people and trying to figure them out in all their facets we can look at the spaces between them and others, really meaning we can look at the truth in their circumstances and through that come to greater understanding of the people themselves. As we contextualize and go bigger and bigger in our looking at situations and circumstances, we get more and more truth. Surely God is in that big context of truth.

This is just a taste of what is possible when we are open to all that God would like to show us. Let us always believe that Jesus, through the Holy Trinity creating the universe, author of all truth, can reveal truth in each and every circumstance to us.

May He do so for you, as you trust Him to lead and teach you today.

joy in spending time with me

A very important person in my life noted yesterday that it is so hard for me to spend time with me. I make time for all sorts of people and duties, but find it hard to take time with me. I agreed. This morning I unexpectedly woke forty minutes before the alarm was to ring at 6 a.m. It was a lovely cool morning. I lay in bed, savouring the feel of the bedclothes around me, the touch of the air on my cheeks, the feel of my hair on my head. I was enjoying being me, in my body, in my bed, in my time, a gift to me, a time out of time...I hadn't scheduled it. My schedule would begin at 6. I guess God did - He knew if He put that time in first before I got up and got on with the morning program, then I would savour that time for me. And so of course I praised Him for it, and it became a part of a deep sense of knowing God in the everyday reality of my life, my being, but in such a precious and private way. He had shown me a little of how to do what I find so hard to do. And so that enjoyment carried through my busy and stressful day. I carried that affirmation of myself from myself and from Him and it enabled me even more deeply to reach out and affirm others.

joy in Jesus the truth in each circumstance

I think of the line "Jesus, truth in each circumstance", which jumps out at me each time I hear Brian Doerksen sing "Jesus, Hope of the nations". I ponder its meaning again, and connect it with something which has just happened. Something in which I feel He showed me what is going on in a situation or a relationship and I thank Him for revealing it to me. I ponder again my gratitude for the stance taken in my counselling studies at a big Christian seminary, that "all truth is God's truth", and therefore we are not to be afraid of all that we learn "in the world" so to speak. And I am particularly grateful again for all that I learn about people and situations through my job. Not so much about learning whether things are negative or positive, or whether someone is truly a Christian or not...if I learn those things, then I learn more about how to pray for situations and people, and hopefully learn not to judge, but to love and extend grace, as well as drawing appropriate boundaries. But rather that God is a God of reality, as well as righteousness, and He wants us to be in touch with reality, to know how things happen, how people work, to see "what happens when what happens". as the saying goes in training to be a therapist, not to watch individuals so much as to see "the space between them". And of course that means the space in between me and others too. And most of all I need to remember to "build Him" out of every situation....I like what the famous poet Rainer M. Rilke said :

"As the bees bring in the honey, so do we fetch the sweetest out of everything and build Him. With the trivial even, with the insignificant (if it but happens out of love) we make a start, with work and with rest after it, with a silence or with a small solitary joy...."

joy in the "food unpriced"

This is an extra post I put on the team devotional blog http://www.whateverhesays.blogspot.com/:

The Food Unpriced

O Christ who holds the open gate,
O Christ who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ the plough, O Christ, the laughter
of holy white birds flying after;
Lo, all my heart's field red and torn,
and thou wilt bring the young green corn,
the young green corn divinely springing,
the young green corn forever singing;
and when the field is fresh and fair
thy blessed feet shall glitter there,
and we will walk the weeded field,
and tell the golden harvest's yield,
the corn that makes the holy bread
by which our hungering souls are fed,
the holy bread, the food unpriced,
thy everlasting mercy, Christ.

excerpt from the narrative poem "The Everlasting Mercy" by John Masefield (1878 -1967)

These words first spoke deeply to me in an emotional crisis in 1976 when a dear Christian cousin wrote it out for me on a card which I still have. When I began a deep intentional emotional and spiritual journey four years ago they spoke to my heart again. When I chose the hymns for my mother's funeral a few months ago I found them in the Anglican hymn book. I am not aware that my mother knew the hymn, but it touched people at the funeral because they asked about it, having never heard it before.

Yet this poet who was obscure to me was the Poet Laureate in Britain for many years. He is buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. A prolific poet and writer of other works, he lived a deep and faithful life, true to his faith, his wife who was the love of his life, and to the creative spirit within him.

I did not know all of that about him when those words spoke to me each time, even though I majored in English literature. I am ashamed to say that. I am grateful for the note at the bottom of the hymn that says that "'Corn' in North American parlance would be 'wheat'". I see notes on the internet citing the section of the poem as a commentary on the bread of Holy Communion. I am grateful that I know more about this humble man who looked like Hitler, was true to his creative passion, did humble work, sailed the world, read voraciously, and, through being himself, became a voice in the world. Yet he remained so humble that whenever he submitted his writing pieces to The Times, even as Poet Laureate, he sent stamped self-addressed envelopes in case they didn't like them.

But that is not what matters to me, or, I trust, to you as you read the words. I hope for you they provide an icon, a window, a picture that takes you somewhere, across fields of corn or wheat or whatever, into the presence of Christ. I hope that for you, as for me, there are words and lines that jump out at you, like words from scripture that say to you "This is for you! Remember this!" Maybe your heart's field is red and torn, as Masefield's was as he sat for a year at the side of his dying wife, twelve years his senior. Maybe you need to trust that it is Christ who indeed holds an open gate for you to somewhere you need to go. Maybe you need to be reminded that He, Christ, will "drive the furrow straight" for you. Maybe most of all, you, like I in those hard moments, need to hear that He will "bring the young green corn divinely springing; that the corn or wheat or whatever God is going to do in your life, as He can do in mine, will be "forever singing". For Christ is indeed the "laughter", and may you and I see Him bring "holy white birds flying after." Most of all, may you and I "walk the weeded field" of our hearts, our lives, whatever, with Christ, and with those He gives to us.

And may we always as we receive the holy bread remember that it is "food unpriced", and speaks forever of His "everlasting mercy".