Sometimes suffering casts a heavy shadow over my faith and I wonder if God is still there and still cares. Sometimes it seems like He’s on vacation sipping ice tea in some remote corner of the galaxy and has forgotten about my struggles in the miniscule corner of the planet I occupy.
My humanity doubts when things are hard. Tied by the invisible bonds of gravity to the ground, I’m unable to see what lies beyond in the boundless dimension of eternity. Life is hard, people suffer, I experience loss and it seems like God has gone missing when I need Him most.
Asaph felt the same way when he penned Psalm 77. He cried out to God in a time of great distress and reached for Him in his despair only to find Him absent.
When I was in deep trouble, I searched for the Lord. All night long I prayed, with hands lifted toward heaven, but my soul was not comforted. I think of God, and I moan, overwhelmed with longing for his help. Psalm 77:2-3, NLT
The melody of Asaph’s mournful lament is familiar today – Have You rejected me, God? Has Your unfailing love finally failed? Have You forgotten Your promise to remember me? Have You given up on me? Have I finally worn out Your compassion and exhausted Your love? In a secret corner of our hearts, the same questions haunt us.
Then Asaph inserted a selah in the music – a silent pause to reflect and listen. As his overwhelmed spirit sighed in the pause, he picked up a quiet refrain issuing from the heart of God like the deep sustaining tones of a cello. Then lifted on the undercurrent of those rich tones, he began to recall the greatness of Jehovah.
But then I recall all you have done, O Lord; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago. They are constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works. O God, your ways are holy. Is there any god as mighty as you? You are the God of great wonders! You demonstrate your awesome power among the nations. Psalm 77:11-14, NLT
Asaph’s circumstances didn’t change, but the song of his soul shifted from lament to hope and joy when he remembered the faithfulness of his God.
Jeremiah’s lament echoes the same despair turned to hope: The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words. I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” Lamentations 3:19-24, NLT
In our days of difficulty and distress, when we think God has left us to sort it out on our own, He waits for us to pause and remember. Then, in the selah, we pick up the rich sustaining tones of His greatness and power. The warm resonance of those great strings sing of His goodness and love. This love is unaffected by our failures and doubts. His attention and affection do not ebb and flow with our circumstances, our needs or even our response or lack of response to Him. His compassions never fail, and His loving embrace never loosens. From His song, lament turns to hope and hope to joy. Perhaps the deepest joy follows the deepest lament.
Unspeakable Majesty
Oh, ancient mystery, unspeakable majesty, overwhelm me with Your unfathomable Presence.
Holy fire, set Your flame into the marrow of my bones and consume me.
Cry Your Spirit words until “Abba, Father” wells up and overflows my heart with exquisite glory!
Anneli Anderson, original acrylic, 2013
2016 Reflections
The last couple of days I’ve spent a little time looking back at 2016 and rereading my journal. I don’t journal every day or every week, but I periodically pencil my prayers and thoughts and God-words. As I browsed the pages, I felt again the heartbeat of my prayers and felt the pulse of His behind it.
The page dated 1/1/16 begins with this prayer: “This year, Lord, I want to go deeper with You, abide more fully in Your love and taken into Your secrets and into rare intimacy with you. How my heart yearns for You, but quakes before my weakness and failures….Oh, wondrous love that accepts me as I am then fills me and lifts me to infinitely more than I deserve, more than I can conceive…and all that You desire. So, breathe in me a yearning for more of You. Stir the embers of my heart into a fiery love for You, and take me deeper and deeper into the secret place of rare intimacy with you, O God.”
This yearning for a deeper relationship and for rare intimacy with God continued pouring onto the pages of 2016. My inclination now is to judge how well I did in that pursuit and whether I achieved my goal, but there is a fatal flaw in that thread of thinking. Tug on it a bit, and my life unravels.
The intimacy and depth I long for isn’t something God awards to high achievers and do-gooders. It can’t be achieved by even the most spiritual or the rest of us in our more spiritual moments. If it could, then my relationship with God would be performance-based and not grace-based. If my faith rests on my faithfulness in the pursuit, then I am doomed and will surely fail…I have failed.
I wrote on June 12 that God doesn’t dangle something in front of me and ask me to attain it. Instead, He offers freely what only He can give and what I could never attain. He doesn’t demand that I muster up more doing power and greater faithfulness. I am called in my weakness to entrust my unfaithful self to the Mighty One who will do in me all that He wants of me and from me.
Deepening intimacy is the fruit and power of redeeming love, indeed, it is the aim of redemption…that I may be filled with all the fullness of God and enjoy a deepening experience of His nearness until the perfect image of Christ is formed in my soul.
So, I think it’s summed up like this: My part is to yield all I am and trust all He is. To just be who I am in Him and let Him be all He is in me.
It’s not just a 2016 or 2017 pursuit, it’s a calling to a lifetime journey. It’s yielding my time and my focus to sit every day at the feet of the Living God lost in wonder, love and praise.
Stir the embers of my heart into a fiery love for You, and take me deeper and deeper into the secret place of rare intimacy with you, O God.
Society of the Burning Heart
…His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. Jeremiah 20:9
God has been stirring up a fire in my soul to know Him more deeply. I want more than an ordinary experience, I yearn for rare intimacy with Him. I want to be filled to the measure with all of His fullness, walk in the power of His Spirit and have the image of Christ more fully formed in me. However, it requires death to self, and that’s not an easy path.
There has been a growing sentiment in Christianity that God exists for us and for our comfort. Some are cramming Him into a magic lamp to be roused by our wishes. There has been a gradual shift away from God-centered Truth to self-centered truth. We’re losing our moorings to the solid Rock and are drifting into individualized reality. It’s a much easier path, but not the one I will take.
I don’t need a therapy God who only empathizes with me and affirms me and makes me feel good about myself. I don’t need a Concierge who will pander me, prosper me and grant my every wish. I don’t need a God invented and reinvented in the fickle winds of culture.
I need the real God in my real world. One who calls me to a higher path, to be more than I am and all He has designed me to be. I need a God bigger than I am and bigger than my world.
I need the only One who can free me from myself and my bondage to sin. I need a God who calls me to repentance and obedience, then gives me the will and strength to obey and who will do in me the very thing He asks of me.
I don’t need a God who will keep me from the storm or from suffering but a God who controls it and walks with me through it to deeper places of His heart. I need a God who will purge and refine me until He is the very center and pulse of my soul.
I want to be undone and my heart set ablaze by the consuming fire of His fierce love and holiness. I need the one True God, the immutable Eternal God, who reigns in Sovereign power and is clothed with splendor and majesty.
So it is with those in the Society of the Burning Heart.
Secrets of Psalm 139
To hear it: Secrets of Psalm 139
Lord, You have searched me and you know me.
You till and sift the soil of my soul,
And peer into the innermost secrets of my heart.
You know the raw me, and you still love me.
You know when I sit down and when I stand up;
You perceive my thoughts from afar
You know my thoughts before they occur to me;
You’ve known them from antiquity.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
You are intimately familiar with all my ways.
You see me rise in the morning and lay my head down at night
Throughout my day, even if I leave your path,
You will never leave mine
For where I am, you are.
You are closer than my skin for I am in You and You in me.
Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.
Before I utter a sound, you’ve already heard it.
You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
You surround every inch of all that’s me.
You go before me with grace and behind me with mercy.
You guide me toward your heart and you redeem my past.
Such knowledge is wonderfully incomprehensible!
It’s too lofty for me to attain;
Too massive to wrap my mind around.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens and into the very birthplace of the stars, you are there;
If I make my bed in the utter depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, and settle on the far side of the sea,
Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast
And will never ever let go.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
If a deep darkness of despair, fear and loneliness swallows my light,
Even that darkness will not be dark to you;
The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you,
And it flees from your holy light.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb –
Weaving soul and spirit, bone and muscle, according to your perfect design for me
You sparked the beating of my heart and I am Your image bearer.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
When I was made in the secret place,
When I was woven together in the depths of the womb.
Your eyes saw my unformed body when I was a microscopic ball of cells.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
You picked the day of my conception and You picked the day of my death
You are Sovereign over all the days between whether many or few.
How priceless are your thoughts toward me God! How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— On the shores of all the Seas and the deserts of all the continents.
You sing over me as I sleep;
When I awake, I am still with you and will always be with You
For you purchased me with your blood, and I belong to You.
If only You would slay the wicked and destroy evil in the world.
But search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is anything in me that offends You and degrades Your sacrifice.
Search out any idol I value more than You and place above You.
Wash away all my inquity, cleanse me from my sin and purge every idol.
I surrender all I am – my heart and mind and body to You – I am Yours.
Be Lord of my thoughts, my desires, my life.
Lead me along the everlasting path, and, in your grace,
Give me more faith to trust You and follow You in obedience.
just be
July 25, 2016. I’m floating in my red kayak at the inflow of the Great Spring into Clear Lake, the headwaters of the McKenzie River.
The spring of clear ice cold water rises to the surface, fills the lake, and starts its journey down the mountain to the sea.
Sunlight through soft ripples of the surface create turquois lace undulating on the sandy bottom at the inflow of the spring.
On the opposite side of the lake, an underwater forest of ancient trees rise from the dark depths to just a few feet below the surface. Gliding over them creates a magical sense of flying above the trees. They dance in rhythm with the gentle ripples of the surface, their straight trunks bending and swaying in the refracted light.
Clear Lake was formed 3,000 years ago when lava from Sand Mountain flowed across the river creating a lava dam and backing up the water. The submerged trees that were on the original riverbank now stand in 120 feet of water preserved by the extreme cold and purity of the water. The lake and the trees were formed when David was king of Israel. Amazing.
Floating here, it strikes me that for all the years I’ve come to the lake and for antiquity, the crystalline water continues to rise to the surface and pour into the lake. It also strikes me that the lake has nothing to do with the process of infilling other than openness to receive its unceasing abundance. The Great Spring fills the lake then spills down the mountain nourishing everything along its path to the sea.
I took a book by Brother Lawrence to the lake and read while drifting in a warm summer breeze. I was struck by what he wrote, particularly being surrounded by the stunning beauty and tranquility of the lake (no motorized boats allowed). In a letter to a Reverend Mother, he wrote this referring to himself:
“You can judge what contentment and satisfaction he enjoys. Continually feeling within himself so great a treasure that he is no longer worried or uneasy about finding it, he is no longer suffering the pain of searching for it. He is entirely open to it and free to partake of it as he wishes.”[1]
I spent many years in the pain of searching for the treasure but couldn’t quite lay hold of it no matter how hard I tried or how good I performed. I struggled thinking God was waiting for me to finally discover His secret so He could pour abundant life into me. I yearned for it, and had fleeting moments of discovery only to have it slip through my fingers again and again.
Floating and relaxing on a lake full and overflowing, God reminded me again of His grace and the great treasure that wells up within me. It is an unceasing outpouring of His grace, not a response to my doings. He wants me to simply receive it by faith and rest in it…to just be. Then His grace flows through me compelling me to love Him and serve Him and empowering me to do what He calls me to do. Doing always flows out of being. Attempting to reverse this process will end in failure every time. I know. I’m well practiced at it.
The key is being entirely open to the unceasing flow of the life of God. There is just one thing that blocks the flow – my sin. Like spiritual debris, it clogs the opening and my life begins to stagnate and stink. Peace and joy dry up leaving my heart empty. But in a moment, with a breath of confession and repentance, sins debris is swept away and I’m again flooded with overwhelming contentment and joy.
It strikes me that, like the lake, I have nothing to do with the process of infilling other than openness to receive God’s unceasing abundance. He fills my life then spills down the journey of my life nourishing everyone along my path to heaven.
[1] Edmonson, Robert J. (1985). The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence. Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press.