Eye of a Whale

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Being a lover of the natural world, I follow Natgeo (National Geographic) on Instagram. A couple of days ago a photo of a gray whale taken by Florian Schulz in a Baja lagoon froze my scrolling.

Photo by Florian Schulz.

Florian is a professional photographer specializing in wildlife and conservation photojournalism. This was his Instagram post:

“I was so touched by this whale mother. She moved so close that I could reach her. She looked directly at me, and I felt we had a silent conversation. No words, just observing each other. It gave me chills…there was so much wisdom radiating from her gentle look….”

Several things struck me as I read his post and studied the photo. The first arresting statement was that the whale approached him and moved so close that he could touch her. These whales actually seek human interaction and seem to enjoy it. Then she set her gaze on him and lingered there. His reaction to peering into the deep eye of this massive creature looking back at him was a profoundly moving experience. He was awestruck by the wisdom and gentleness radiating in her look and it gave him chills. Lastly, there was a silent conversation between them – a communication of knowing beyond the language of sound. No words, just beholding each other.

Such an obvious segue to the God who reveals His divine nature in the natural world:

The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry. Psalm 34:15

We have a very attentive God who desires an up-close-and-personal relationship with us and seeks it relentlessly. He sets His gaze on us, leans toward us and yearns to interact with us. He is always looking into our eyes, always listening to our voice, and always thinking of us. We are never out of His thoughts, out of His sight or beyond His hearing. Nothing distracts His persistent presence from us.  

Charles Spurgeon wrote, “He observes them with approval and tender consideration; they are so dear to him that he cannot take his eyes off them; he watches each one of them as carefully and intently as if they were only that one creature in the universe.” [1]

Selah – pause a moment and ponder the implications of that. Read it again and linger over it. This both astounds me and humbles me when I reflect on my sporadic attention to Him.

A personal encounter with the Living God, looking at Him looking back at me, is profoundly moving. This massive Being desires our companionship beyond what our intellect can grasp. But the knowing of the heart – the very heart of spiritual knowing – is living so close to Him that you can reach out and touch Him. Most of the time, there are no words exchanged.

This transformative knowing requires that we step out of ourselves and our preoccupations with the crises and demands of these shadowlands and soak our souls in the quiet depths of His unfailing everlasting love. When you drop the barriers in naked vulnerability and slip into His love, it will give you chills of the best kind and will utterly transform you from the inside out.

This knowing of God through a genuine living encounter with Him comes from “sitting at the feet of Jesus, gazing into his face and listening to his assurances of love for me. It comes from letting God’s love wash over me, not simply trying to believe it. It comes from soaking in the scriptural assurances of such love, not simply reading them and trying to remember or believe them. It comes from spending time with God, observing how he looks at me. It comes from watching his watchfulness over me and listening to his protestations of love for me.”[2]

Spend some time, some days, soaking in the assurances of Psalm 139 and just behold Him.

Looking into the all-seeing eyes of the Holy God looking into the soul of me, I anticipate reaction. But His eyes don’t widen in shock or His brow furrow in disapproval, nor does He turn away in disappointment. Incredibly, His heart melts in compassion and His eyes glisten with tenderness. I am undone by unfailing, unflinching, unhesitating love and sink into the eternal depths of the eyes of the Living God.

[1] Spurgeon, Charles H. (1988). The Treasury of David, Volume 1. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

[2] Benner, David G. (2015). Surrender To Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Rekindled

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Journal entry: 11/19/2018
As I write this, a small flame from a little clay oil lamp on my
desk undulates in rhythm with the slight currents of air. If I
squint, it throws a golden beam at my heart.
Every morning when I rise, I light it and watch its flame dance
and sit with God. A while back, the flame grew smaller and smaller
then silently extinguished leaving a thin wisp of smoke that
quickly dissipated. I hadn’t been paying attention to the level
of oil and had neglected its filling.
I am the clay container filled with the sacred oil of the presence
of Jehovah. There is a small flame in my heart that is a piece of
His holy fire. It dances in rhythm with the breath of His Spirit.
My soul needs continual filling and refilling every day to keep
the flame burning and radiating its light and warmth. My neglect
will quench and extinguish the flame of His Spirit.


The fire of God’s presence is always in me and with me, but I’m not always present with Him. Sometimes I slip into relying less on Him and more on me to deal with life’s difficulties and demands. I can go a day then another and another neglecting a fresh filling of His Spirit. In time, my flame grows smaller and smaller then silently extinguishes leaving a thin trail of smoke. My insides grow cold and dark, and I grope for a way out of the emptiness.
Over the past 15+ years, I have had numerous conversations with women at various retreats and events who were overwhelmed by life, losing their grip on hope and simply going through the motions. Woven into their stories was a thread of longing for rekindling.  We were made to experience the reality of the living Christ in our sorrows, struggles, dryness, and exhaustion. And so we long for it. But life tramples hope, shreds our hearts, drains our joy and leaves us spent, frayed and empty clinging to the broken pieces. I have lived seasons in all of these places.
We are containers by divine design, made to be filled with God Himself. We were meant to be aflame with all the fullness of His life, and receive grace upon grace in every situation and every struggle. Sometimes I let circumstances distract and drain me, but as soon as I look to Him in humble submission and faith, the flow of His life and power is unleashed again and He astounds me with grace upon grace upon more grace and still more grace.
Lord, I am humbled by your unrelenting grace even when, and especially when, I get lost in the struggle and neglect You. My heart burns to know You more and to be inflamed by Your presence. I am Yours, Lord. I need You in every moment of every day. Throw a golden beam of Your fire into my heart, and fill me with all of Your fullness.
 

Bottle of Tears

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Two weeks after my last blog, God lifted my mom from the confinement of a deteriorated painful body and took her home to paradise. So, I’m walking through the grieving process and redefining myself without her and all that went with caring and advocating for her. My grief is an odd mixture of relief and joy and a painful vacancy. I know many of you have walked through the same emotions.
Loss takes many forms – the death of someone very close to us, the death of a relationship, betrayals, the loss of ourselves to circumstances and mistakes, the loss of health, financial loss, years lost to unhealed brokenness, loss of spiritual vitality to the devouring demands of life, or the loss of innocence.
I’ve walked through grief a number of times over the course of my life, but there was a season that was especially devastating and life-altering. In the darkness of that valley, Jesus sat with me and grieved with me as a Wounded Healer. It was His tender compassion that knitted the shattered pieces of my life into a new thing. A vision of the compassion of the Living God is absolutely transforming.
In all their suffering he also suffered, and he personally rescued them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them. He lifted them up and carried them through all the years. Isaiah 63:9 NLT
The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust.                   Psalm 103:13-14 NLT
You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.                                                                      Psalm 56:8 NLT
So compassionate is God toward us that He is deeply moved by our sorrows and feels them with us. He pens them in His book with scarlet ink issuing from His great heart. His tender compassions toward us never fail, never grow thin or exhausted. They are fresh and new at the first light of each day.
So attentive is He to us that He sits with us in our grief and so close that He collects every tear in His bottle of remembrance. Our tears are precious to Him – not one falls to the ground to be forgotten. They are bottled with the tears of Jesus and sealed among His treasures.
Sometimes our tears spill from shame and repentance. These tears open heaven and literally transform us into the image of Christ.
One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.                Luke 7:36-38 NLT
The immoral woman was on the floor behind Jesus in her guilt and shame, unable to meet His eyes. She held His feet and wept, then wiped them with her long hair, dripped perfume on them and more and more tears. It wasn’t the expensive perfume, but tears spilling onto His feet that filled His senses and stirred His heart.
I imagine she left with new tears brimming in her eyes – tears of worship and deep joy. Among all the fragrances of worship, it’s the sacrifice of praise from a heart ravished by His compassion that rises as the sweetest.
 
 
 

Heart Throb

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The throb of the heart of God is that we would know and experience Him more fully, more intimately, more powerfully in our redeemed humanity. And that we would know the limitless dimensions of His passion for us.
To that end He came.
To that end He died.
To that end He calls us each day as we rise to be flooded and overwhelmed with all the abundant fullness of His life and love.
My heart throbs to know and experience Him more fully, more intimately, more powerfully in my redeemed humanity. And to be overwhelmed by His unshakeable, unspeakable, tender love for me.
To that end I rise each day.
To that end I lay down my life, let go of my idols, and give Him my heart.
To that end I walk and live in Him so that He can walk and live unfettered in me.
 
 

Healing Garden

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Last week was difficult. As Americans we celebrated our independence, but, as a fragile human, I was deeply reminded of my utter dependence on Christ and of His absolute control of the details of my life. That’s a good thing.
On Monday, my mom was transported to ER and admitted to the hospital. This has been an annual or biannual event for the past few years. However, this time they discovered other problems and on Thursday she was put on hospice care. Shocking. Lots to absorb and process. But God’s orchestration and His gentle blessing has become so evident. He really does direct our paths and each step along the way.
When life is humming along at the usual speed and the journey is smooth, I sometimes forget He is near…very near. I actually think I’m in control, and actually try to be. Somewhere inside of my fallen humanity I think that because I’m not paying attention to Him, He’s not paying attention to me. How ostrich-like. How ridiculous. How sad that I would think so little of Him.
That surprising Thursday, I found my way to the Healing Garden and sat and turned my thoughts toward my loving Lord. As I pondered Him and listened to Him, He spoke into my heart and I penciled this in a little pocket journal:

July 5, 2018
Good Samaritan Hospital, Corvallis
Healing Garden
Live life with Me.
Let me live My life in you.
Free My Spirit by trusting Me.
Yield to My Sovereignty.
Stay connected.
Stay close.
Show up and spend private time with Me.
Walk with Me as with a comfortable friend.
You long for this deep in your bones
Because I long for it more deeply than you can fathom.

 
 

Hallelu Jah!

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I recently listened to the song, Hallelujah, by Casting Crowns and was struck by the artistic weaving of hallelujah into the unfolding story of God from creation, to redemption, and His second coming. The word literally means, Praise you Jehovah (Hallelu Jah).
Hallelujah was in the first ray of light exploding the darkness and in the first heartbeat of humanity. It was the song the morning stars sang together, and the shout of angels.
From a vantage point 2000 years removed, I can’t comprehend a depth of mental anguish that sweats blood or the horrific brutality of the scourging and crucifixion of Jesus. But a quiet hallelujah issued from the drops of redeeming blood and wells up in my heart ravished by such unfathomable love. Praise you Jehovah.
Hallelujah echoed off the walls of the empty tomb and in the trembling hand of Thomas touching the scars of the risen Christ. It burned in the hearts of two men on the road to Emmaus and spills from the redeemed.
One day the trumpet will sound and every eye of the living and the dead, even those who pierced him, will see him.  He will come riding on the clouds shining more brilliant than the sun.  All the people over all the earth from Alaska to South Africa will see him and will fall on their faces. On that day, the feet of Jesus Christ will stand again on the Mount of Olives, and the mount will split it in two from east to west. Heaven will roar in mighty peals of hallelujah thunder for our Lord God Omnipotent reigns! Hallelu Jah!

Praise the Lord. (Hallelu Yah)

Praise God in his sanctuary;

Praise him in his mighty heavens.

Praise him for his acts of power;

Praise him for his surpassing greatness.

Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,

Praise him with the harp and lyre,

Praise him with timbrel and dancing,

Praise him with the strings and pipe,

Praise him with the clash of cymbals,

Praise him with resounding cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord. (Hallelu Yah)

Psalm 150

 
Take 5 minutes and 19 seconds to enter the hallelujah. Click Skip Ad, turn up the volume, feel the rhythm and flow of the story, and get caught up in HALLELU JAH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fORhnYILTSo