Our Song in the Night

We've had much heavy rain here in Florida lately.  The ditches in my rural, wetland area have at times been more like a creek gone wild, raging through the subdivision.  Standing on top of the huge double culvert at the end of my drive, listening to the water rushing through less than an inch below the ends of my feet, I was shocked to see an alligator come through the culvert and emerge right under my feet.  Even though the gator (swiftly jerkng his head back toward me) seemed as shocked to see me as I was him, it definitely seemed appropriate to immediately and swiftly vacate the area.

I was not expecting danger under my feet when I stepped onto that culvert.  In the same way, we don't expect tragedy in our lives when we step into a new day.  But sometimes it hits with a vengeance - like the second a TBI slammed into our lives and instantly changed everything forever.  Like that gator, it was unsolicited, unexpected, unwanted.

And sometimes it's not the big things that seem to be ready to eat us alive; rather, it's an accumulation of the little, day-to-day irritations and problems and hurts and struggles that try to take us down.  I was there last week - food poisoning, while at the same time dealing with mangled AC condenser blades and fire starting in an electrical wire (because a bird got caught in the blades after a storm took the protective grate off), preceded by two weeks in Illinois dealing with an extremely difficult tenant situation with nasty repercussions.  I was in pain and feeling beaten down, exhausted, alone, and discouraged, until words of a song by Mark Condon, from a DVD I had turned on, penetrated.... "Peace of God cover me, cover me, cover me.  Peace of God cover me, through the storm, cover me....."

It brought back that dark night 24 years ago when I had awakened from a coma to realize that (1)Steven was severely brain injured and may never come out of a coma and probably would be extremely injured if he did, (2)the accident was possibly my fault, and I could be sued for everything we had, and (3)my injuries were bad enough that I wasn't sure of walking or anything else. 

I remembered how peace came down over me like a blanket in the middle of that bleak night, when God took me to Psalm 62:2, "He alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, I shall not be greatly shaken."  And I remembered....He was there in possibly the worst night of my life. 

But that wasn't all.  Turning the pages of my Bible, I saw note after note written in the margins, all dated, each telling about some troubled time, but each written beside a part of His Word that He had used to bring me peace during that specific time.  To quote a few of the verses God used........

"He hushes the storm to a calm, to a gentle whisper, so that the waves of the sea are still. "
Psalm 107:29

"I remember You upon my bed and meditate on You in the night watches, for You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings will I rejoice."  Psalm 63:6-7

"Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abides and stands fast forever.  As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from this time forth and forever."  Psalm 125:1-2

"Fear not, for I am with you; do not look around you in terror and be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen and harden you to difficulties, yes, I will help you.  Yes, I will hold you up and retain you with my right hand of rightness and justice...For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand.  I am the Lord, Who says to you: Fear not; I will help you."  Isaiah 40:10, 13

"When you pass through the water, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you."  Isaiah 43:2a

"For we walk by faith, not by sight."  II Corinthians 5:7

As many of you already know, my husband, Steven, wrote a "letter to God" after he read the Word each day.  In addition, as he started a new journal, Steven would sometimes write a short statement in the beginning of that journal.  Here is what Steven wrote in the beginning of one of the journals shortly before his TBI....

  "A new blank book.
   Who knows what will happen in the future?
   How the arrangement of joys and sorrows, excitement and the valleys of life will be.
   But every step of my walk of faith will be taken with You by my side, Lord.
   You know the way.
   You know that the pathway is possible.
   You know when I should rest and toil.
   You know me.
   As I write in these pages, I will know You better -
   Your love, faithfulness, loving discipline, and your holiness, justice and mercy for me!
   So I need not fear what these pages will hold. 
   They will be only a record of our walk together - toward home."

Looking through His Word and through the pages of my journals and Steven's, I see so clearly how..... "Your statutes have been my song in the house of my pilgrimage" (Psalm 119:54),  
for.... "They cry to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivers them out of their distresses.  He sends forth His Word and heals them and rescues them from the pit and destruction"  
(Psalm 107:19, 20).

Lord, thank you that You constantly carry us through and give us peace, and that Your Word is there to always be our Song in the Night.

NEVERTHELESS

Friday was my granddaughter Rachel's wedding.  After days of non-stop craziness and finishing up at the very last minute, everything turned out beautiful.  Five vases of wispy greens (intermingled among white candles and tiny white string lights) meandered down each of the thirty-five long black-clad tables set up for both wedding and reception.   An arbor covered with white tulle and graced by five elegant lanterns stood as sentinel on the stage over the lifetime vows of two awesome people committed to loving the Lord with all their hearts while spending a lifetime together doing the work of the Kingdom.  Everything progressed wonderfully, and, at the end of the night, generously considerate guests choosing to join in  cleanup shortened what would have been an all-night job to a few hours.  And the wedding day was over... well thought out by my precious granddaughter and new son-in-law, and well executed.

However... (there's always a "however", eventually, to all of life here before Christ returns...) the next morning I was feeling kind of down, thinking (of all things) how my outfit for the wedding compared quite unfavorably to all of the other elegant ones flitting about the room.  It was actually an old dress and jacket resurrected from a daughter's long-ago wedding (!!) - because hours of shopping had not produced an acceptable outfit, and time simply ran out.

But God...  in His great love and patience with me...  took me that morning to Psalm 73:21-28 [Amplified].  For my heart was grieved, embittered, and in a state of ferment...  Wow, He hit it right-on!  So foolish, stupid, and brutish was I, and ignorant.  I was like a beast before You.  And now we're talking about the reality of what we not only WERE but, really, still ARE, compared to our Lord, so consistently gentle and considerate with us. 

NEVERTHELESS...  I am continually with You.  You do hold my right hand.  Always, through every kind of day, our Best Friend not only walks with us, but actually holds our hand - intimate, personal relationship.  You will guide me with Your counsel..  Oh, what a blessing, to be guided by the Ancient of Days, each minute, in each problem situation, in each bit of life - if we but ask; the reality of who we really are beneath all the cover-up does not stop His forever-love!  And afterward You receive me to honor and glory.  No matter that we are foolish, stupid, brutish, ignorant, decades out of style, so broken in so many ways ... He lays honor on our head.

Whom have I in heaven but You?  I have no delight or desire on earth beside You.  That is where our Lord wants us - where everything else pales and falls flat beside our relationship with Him and with Who He is!  All else eventually "blows away in the wind,"  for what seems good and desirable is here today and gone - in a moment - EXCEPT THE LOVER OF OUR SOULS!  My flesh and my heart may fail (our bodies don't look or act the way they used to), but GOD IS the Rock and Firm Strength of my heart and my portion... FOREVER!  No one else's opinions, nothing, really matters - only our Lord.  And He will never fail us.  We will let people down.  Others will let us down. But He will never fail us.  It is good for me to draw near to God;  I have put my trust in the Lord God, and made HIM my refuge (not in "what people think of us", what we can do, our financial security, our health, the success of a surgery or business, our accomplishments, the achievement of our goals), that I may tell of all Your works.  As we fellowship with Him each day, listen to Him, and lay our trust in Him for that day and what the future holds, we are then able to glorify Him with that specific day. 

Lord, place our focus on trusting You and Your way for our lives, on loving You with all our heart, mind, and soul.  In those times or seasons or even lifetimes, of tough, tough days, may we nevertheless glorify You as we do the work You've laid out for each of us... until, as Your bride, we see You face to face - the Lover of our Souls Who laid down Your life to dress us in the wedding gown of Your Own righteousness.    

"Fear not, for I am with you; do not look around you in terror and be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen and harden you to difficulties; yes, I will help you!  Yes, I will hold you up and retain you with my right hand of rightness and justice."  Isaiah 41:10

These are the words the Lord gently reminded me of the Sunday morning shortly before Hurricane Irma made landfall on the west coast of FL.  Having evacuated to Alabama Saturday morning at 3:00 a.m. with two cars full of little ones (because we were in the direct path of this Category 4 Hurricane), it seemed I was having a bit of a teary "Jacob" struggle (Genesis 32:24) with God that morning.  I was not only stressed over the safety of so many but also struggling to be at peace with whatever havoc Irma would wreak that day.  Before we had left that Saturday morning, I had bagged pictures and journals and put them in tubs for protection and then decided that my Bible with all the dated notes in the margins - records of His faithfulness - was definitely going with, along with all important documents.  When family asked if there was anything else that it would really be hard to have destroyed, believe it or not, I said, "my floor."  Go ahead and laugh if you want at the idea of trying to pack a floor on top of the minivan...... but I could hardly handle the thought of my floor being destroyed for the third time in a few years, along with all the mess and expense.  I kept thinking about those 9 windows and 8 French doors still uncovered, with hundreds of huge oak trees and 200 ft. tall pines on the property.  The wild thing was, this was the same verse that the Lord brought to me the first time I had to jackhammer out the floor.  And it was 11 months after this first tear out that the Lord began to really teach me how He would "harden me to difficulties" (as I realized that the next floor would also have to be torn out, in addition to dealing with a ton of other seemingly nasty situations).     

The second verse the Lord took me to that Sunday morning was Psalm 84:  "Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.  Passing through the Valley of Weeping, they make it a place of springs....They go from strength to strength....".  I assumed the Lord was telling me there would be a time of weeping, but that I needed to come out of it praising the Lord, pulling my strength from Him.  And the praising needed to start right then, that Sunday morning.

Sitting there in Alabama watching pictures on the news of what Irma was doing along the coast with the storm surge gave an unbelievable visual for Exodus 14:21-31, where God stretched out His hand and pulled the Red Sea back for the Israelites to cross on dry ground and then let it come crashing back to drown the Egyptians in a mad deluge of fury.  What awesome, unbelievable power our God has - and how tiny our understanding of the true reality of that power! 

Heading home Monday afternoon (without mothers and children, who had to fly back later), we saw the power of Irma unleashed.  I held onto Isaiah 41:10 and Psalm 84 as we fought the wind trying to skirt Irma's current path while in AL and then traversed FL back roads to avoid flooded, closed, and backed up interstate - while keeping an eagle eye out for downed trees across the road and flooded roadways.  It was weird going through towns and cities that were completely dark, having a group of around 100 policemen pass us at one time, and going by station after station with no gas......almost like we were walking through the pages of Revelation.  Usually when we did see an open station, it was guarded by policemen, with no access to the typical motorist.

I arrived home Tuesday morning at 3:00 a.m. to no worse than downed fences (thankfully!!) and tree branches covering the ground like a carpet, with power, postal service, and perishable supplies not available until a few days later.  This time, my "Valley of Weeping" had been mostly in the mountain of "What If?"  Others, however, had a much bigger, ongoing "valley of weeping", both in FL and Texas.  Maybe you are one of those.  Or maybe you are just beginning to deal with a new TBI or some other kind of extreme stress. 

As the world spins down further and further and weather continues to escalate, we will possibly all find ourselves in some additional terrifying situations - until that day the Lord calls His own up to Him, away from the trauma.  Two things.....  

(1) Like God commanded the Israelites, we need to constantly remember what God's faithfulness has been to us in the past.  For Steven and I, the most memorable time would be the song of His faithfulness throughout the dark night of 18 years of severe TBI (so incomparably harder than "floor" problems).  I'm sure you all have your own dark nights of His faithfulness stored in memory boxes that need to be kept open. 

And (2), Scriptures like Isaiah 41:10 and Psalm 84 need to be written on our hearts, bringing assurance in times ahead that no matter what the future brings, God will be with us, He will actually use what we are going through to strengthen us and draw us closer to Him, and He will bring us into a "place of springs" - where we can praise Him in the midst of it all.

Lord, prepare us for whatever each of our futures hold.  Teach us, one by one, to draw our strength from You and to continue to praise You, no matter our circumstances.

A. Holy Spirit

From the day Adam was created thousands of years ago, God has had a personal relationship with specific men and women.  Adam & Eve, Job, Abraham, Isaac & Rebekah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David (even as a shepherd boy in the fields), and the prophets are some examples recorded in Scripture of men and women actually talking back and forth with God!

In Judges, God began something a little different, starting with Gideon (Judges 3:10) and continuing with Jephthah (Judges 11:29), Samson (Judges 13:25; 14;19; 14:6; 15:14), King Saul (1 Samuel 10:10; 11:6), King David (1 Samuel 16:13), and others.  In each of the above Scriptures, God's Word tells us:  The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and sometimes it adds "mightily" upon.  However, this special Holy Spirit indwelling was different from how the Holy Spirit indwells believers today.  Then, it was for a very specific work, and usually wasn't permanent (except with David), coming with each need and then departing.  With Saul, it was taken away forever when he continued to disobey God.    

Even though David was given the Spirit permanently, he was still afraid, after he sinned with Bathsheba and Uriah (2 Samuel 11), that God would remove His Holy Spirit.  Listen to David's fear:  cast me not away from Your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me... (Psalm 51:11).    

Around 33 AD, everything changed when Genesis 3:15 was fulfilled.  At that time, Christ took ALL our penalty for ALL our sin - past, present, and future - so the Holy Spirit can now live inside us every day, every hour.   

Just recently, the Lord gave me a song about the above, part of which follows...

 2000* years ago, as You hung on a cross,
The Father gathered all my guilt, and You took it in.
And condemnation poured through holy veins that had known no sin.
The Father turned His back, and groaned in agony.
And it crushed You down to death, and they laid You in the tomb.
And hope died in Jerusalem, when they laid You in the tomb.

But then...  You.. ROSE AGAIN!
And LEFT MY GUILT IN THE GRAVE...  Forever...  Forever...  Forever."

Our Lord's death (for our sin) and resurrection, cleared the way for a permanent relationship with God ...  so that the Holy Spirit in believer's hearts would NEVER be taken away (1 John 14:16-17)!

Today,  when we're struggling or discouraged, tired, afraid, losing hope...  we don't have to wait for the Lord to "come down to the garden" to talk with us.  Nor do we have to be concerned that He will leave us, like Saul, because of "one more sin, that broke the bank of His grace".  Today, He walks with us all the time, inside of us, quietly, waiting for us to acknowledge His Presence, waiting for us let Him carry our pain.

The Journey

When God called Abraham (in Genesis 22:1-2), Abraham responded with Here I am.  The Hebrew meaning of this phrase indicates that Abraham was saying, "I am here and available to You, God."  To Abraham's shock and utter horror, God replied (Amplified):  Take now your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love...  & offer him... as a burnt offering.... 

So... This 113 yr old man rose early in the morning and, heart breaking, tears streaming down his face, started out with Isaac and two servants on a three day, soul-wrenching journey to Mt. Moriah.   When they reached the base of the mountain, Abraham dismissed the servants & laid the wood on Isaac's back.  Looking up, he could see in the distance the place where God had asked him to do the unthinkable - slay his beloved, long-waited-for son, Isaac.

When they reached their destination, Abraham bound his son, and Isaac, though he certainly could have overpowered this ancient man, submitted to his father.  Abraham, blinded by tears, then picked Isaac up and laid him on the altar, believing he was going to have to slay this precious son  and then watch him burn!

Then Abraham stretched forth his hand (can you imagine a terrible pause here?), and took hold of the  slaughtering knife to slay his son (Genesis 22:10, Amplified) .....

But God called out from heaven for Abraham to STOP!  And God provided a ram, caught in the bushes, for a replacement sacrifice.

Hebrews 11:17-19 tells us that Abraham, believing fully in the promise of descendants from Isaac, reasoned that God was able to bring Isaac back to life.  Nevertheless, the situation would have been unbelievably dreadful for both Abraham and Isaac!  But Abraham had come to the point of believing, "You are God.  I am not."  So he walked the pathway that God asked him to walk.

But God was not asking Abraham to do what He Himself had not done.  God the Father walked a like pathway with His Own Beloved Son, but much longer than three days....

·         from before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:20, Amplified),

·         to Adam's sin - you will lie in wait and bruise His heal (Genesis 3:15, Amplified),

·         to the manger 4000 years later - He will save His people from their sins (Math I:21, Amplified),

·         to Jesus' arrest and conviction 33 years after that,

·         and then the final journey from the Praetorium to Golgotha -    Pilate gave sentence... they led Him away... And when they came to the place that is called the Skull, there they crucified Him.... And Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:24-34, Amplified).

No ram was caught in a bush to take the place of the Lamb of God on that cross.  The Father had to watch His Son slowly die in torture, and the sight was so terrible that God shrouded it in darkness... and then turned His face away as He laid on His dying Son the guilt and iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6, Amplified).

All for the love of you and me.

For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He even gave up His only begotten Son... (John 3:16, Amplified.).