by Elizabeth | Jun 7, 2012 | Learning Story
12 “As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”
I Kings 17:7-24
When my season of pain, which began almost exactly two years ago now, stretched from somewhat-normal and barely-tolerable to declaratively-bizarre and beyond-barely-tolerable, a dear friend who has suffered such sent me a dear book by Amy Carmichael, a strong, independent woman who had experienced the loss of her physicality and lived with stabbing, dulling, chronic pain that is hard to describe to anyone who has not experienced it. Amy was a missionary in India and persevered in doing great works there despite a debilitating injury to her back which literally left her flattened many days at a time. One of her greatest gifts among the varied kingdom seeds she sowed is a book written by one in pain for those in pain. (As I struggle through typing this short entry because my dictation program isn’t working but I’m determined to get this down, I awe even more at her ability to write while she suffered so. Thank you, Lord, for allowing her that privilege!).
What prompts me to share a brief portion of this wonderful work is an email I received from a dear friend who is experiencing as an onlooker and caretaker the overwhelming, beyond-belief agony of a beloved family member. Because I have been where I’ve been, I believe I really can know and understand her pain. But for those who may not have experienced these days, I want to share Amy’s writing, because it gives you a tiny bathroom window view into some days of suffering. I know you care, but it can be bewildering to understand. This particular entry by Amy, which is based on the story above in I Kings 17, speaks so well to what happens to people as the days of grief get long. As you read this, think of someone you know who has or is suffering loss, and go to your knees and beg God to show up — it is such a kind mercy to give…
Amy writes,
“I do not think we reach the place where we have ‘not anything in the house’ until he whom men call Pain has raided us more than once or twice. The hardest days of the trouble that follows accident or illness are not the first days. They are the days later on, when a new assault of that strangely dreadful power finds us, as it were, at his feet defenseless.
On such days we are like the sailors of the psalm who do business in great waters: they mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble. And as the pretty songs of the Pippas of the earth ripple past us, we are only moved to a weary negation of their easy assertion. For though the lark’s on the wing, the snails on the thorn, and though well our hearts know that God’s in His heaven, all’s not right with the world….
But we have a God whose love is courageous. He trusts us to trust Him through the blind hours before we find our pot of oil, which indeed is always in the house. ‘Some of Love’s secrets reveal others, and therefore between lovers there is recognition,” so it is written in Ramon Lull’s Book of the Lover and the Beloved. And it is one of the dearest secrets of love, that the lover can recognize as by some heavenly instinct the Presence of his Beloved, although he does not see Him. ‘Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, ye rejoice” — thank God for the secrets of love.” Amy Carmichael, “Not Anything in the House,” Rose from Brier
I have left out so much of what Amy wrote — I do recommend strongly you find a copy of this book and read the entirety. Many blessings and much gratitude to all of you who care so deeply for someone who sees only a handful of flour and a little olive oil in their jug today.
by Elizabeth | Jun 5, 2012 | Learning Story
This morning, in preparing for a story feast on summer stories, I opened Genesis 1 and 2 in Eugene Peterson’s The Message.
In this translation, Genesis 1:31 says,
“God looked over everything he had made;
it was so good, so very good!
It was evening, it was morning–
Day Six.”
Genesis 2:2-4 says,
“By the 7th day
God had finished his work.
On the 7th day
he rested from all his work.
God blessed the 7th day.
He made it a holy day
because on that day
he rested from his work,
all the creating God had done.”
About the same of rest, rhythm, and time, Eugene Peterson says:
“We were created to live rhythmically in the rhythms of creation…
The understanding and honoring of time is fundamental to the realization of who we are and how we live.Violations of sacred time become desecrations of our most intimate relationships with God and one another hours and days, weeks and months and years are the very stuff of holiness.
Time is the medium in which we do all living. When time is desecrated, life is desecrated. The most conspicuous evidences of this desecration are hurry and procrastination. Hurry turns away from the gift of time in a compulsive grasping for abstractions that it can possess and control. Procrastination is distracted from the gift of time and a lazy inattentiveness to the life of obedience and adoration by which we enter ‘the fullness of the time’ (Gal. 4:4). Whether by a hurried grasping or a procrastinating inattention, the holiness of time is violated.” Conversations: The Message Bible with Its Translator.
As a formerly “hurried-woman,” these words hit me hard. After three shoulder surgeries in two years, I am living in a season of imposed rest. The question for me is,”Will I called this rest good?” what about you? What time struggle are you currently living? Let’s take a few moments now to ask God to reveal himself intimately to us in this place. And let’s listen for his answer.
by Elizabeth | May 24, 2012 | Learning Story
“Toxic,” he calls it, as he digs the little hoe tool
deeper in to the crevices of my shoulder,
rooting out the vicious crunchy crud intruders.
I picture them as vile, greenish-black clods, hardened chunks crumbling and cracking under pressure.
Toxic blocks disintegrating,
Rich, vibrant, lubricating fluid, undammed, runs freely.
The soft tissue surrounding, soothed by the smooth flow, relaxes, loosening like a ballerina limbering at the barre.
Then, set loose, softly, surprisingly,
tissue joins hands with muscle and bone,
And all rise to dance again in the sway of life,
gentle, graceful and strong.
I wrote the poem above about a new and helpful procedure my physical therapist, Ken Byrd, at Select PT (gotta give my ‘son’ a shout-out), but then it made me think of Ezekiel and the great dry- bones passage.
“Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause kbreath2 to enter you, and you shall live. 6 lAnd I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, mand you shall know that I am the Lord.”
by Elizabeth | May 22, 2012 | Learning Story
Today’s post is part two in a series begun yesterday, so you might want to check that out first.
To name some characters who were agents of hope in my life, I reflected on the question,
“How did I come to know Christ?”
My brother and I were not raised in a Christian home, but through a series of circumstances, we ended up attending a Christian school when I was an 8th grader and he was a 10th grader. My brother met Christians who invited him to Young Life and told him about confirmation. He decided that he and I should be confirmed in the Episcopal church (where we had attended occasionally), even though we were both older than most of the communicants. Then he began to take me to Young Life meetings. At Young Life meetings I met older high school students who were attractive and compelling because they were kind to an underclassman. I met three leaders, Judy, Millie, and Susan, who took an interest in my life. One weekend at Windy Gap a very handsome man (in the eyes of a 15-yr-old girl) spoke to us about Christ. I didn’t decide to become a Christian only because I had a schoolgirl crush on the speaker. I did say to God, “I want what these people have!” As I think of how God led me to himself, I have a long list of names and faces that I remember: Bob, Martha, Anne, Judy, Steve, and many more.
We should think about the names of the characters in our stories, beginning with our own. We can begin by considering simply the names we are called, for often those carry a story. I am “Elizabeth,” named after Queen Elizabeth, because my father was a Shakespeare professor who taught people about “Elizabethan England.” Do you know why you are called what you are called? Many of us have nicknames, and some of us have been renamed. The Bible gives precedent for the significance of given names and renaming: Abram renamed Abraham (avram – “exalted father” to aviraham – “father of a multitude”); Ishmael (“God has heard”); Saul renamed Paul after his conversion. Names of all sorts give clues to unique characteristics and to ways we are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus.
Think about it: What are some of the names of people who have been agents of hope in your story? How were they involved in the plot of your life?
by Elizabeth | May 21, 2012 | Learning Story
In any story, well-developed, complex characters drive the plotline. But our stories are unique because they bear the mark of God. In one of my favorite books, Restoring Broken Things,Scotty Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman write,
“God is telling an authentic, non-spin story of selfish, broken people, who are in the process of being made new by Jesus. That’s why Jesus has the lead role in God’s Story. But He’s not the only character. He’s making us characters too. We are carriers of God’s Story – targets for hope who’ll serve as agents of hope, and candidates of mercy who’ll live as conduits of mercy. Jesus is bringing restoration to broken individuals as a means of bringing healing to other individuals, families, communities, and ultimately, to the whole universe.” (Restoring Broken Things)
Because God has made us characters who are carriers of His story, we must carefully consider the people and relationships in our stories. No person, no interaction with a person, can be random – each one, whether an apparently good or evil influence, has been written there by God to further His purposes. Think of a question people commonly ask you – “How did you…end up in Pensacola, Florida?….know you wanted to be a carpenter when you grew up? ….meet your best friend?” The answers to these questions involve story, but they also involve characters.
Be sure to check back tomorrow when I’ll share a story to show you what this might look like.
by Elizabeth | May 15, 2012 | Learning Story
A search for a quotation reference today hooked me back into the best book I ever read on emotions and God. My copy of Cry of the Soul, by Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III, which I first purchased at a conference in 1997, bears the tattering and teeth marks left by a chocolate lab named Gracie. Somehow that seems appropriate for a work that invites us to take the tears and tears of our soul to the Lord and shows us how that’s exactly what many of the Psalmists do. Listen to this small portion on fear:
“The Psalms, and the Bible generally, extol a type of fear that God greatly desires to instill in us. It is the fear of the Lord. ‘The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in nothing but his unfailing love” (Psalm 147:11).
What are some Psalms you turn to to express emotion or when you are dealing with fear?
Fear distorts our perception of ourselves so that we seem weaker than we really are. It distorts the size of our problems so that they seem huge and undefeatable. But perhaps most significantly, fear distorts our picture of God. God seems weak, uninvolved, or uncaring in the midst of our troubles. After all, we think, if he were strong and concerned, he would not leave us in this mess.
Fear reverses reality by making evil seem all-conquering, and God impotent. But God is not impotent. The psalms bombard us with images of his power. He is a king (Psalm 47), a warrior (18:7–15), a rock (31:2), and a fortress (46:7, 11). They also fill our minds with pictures of his goodness, compassion, and mercy. He is the shepherd (Psalm 23) and a loving mother (Psalm 131).
