The Only Seeing Eyes

Guest post today from our daughter...

 

It's been more than two weeks now since I returned from Cambodia.  It's surreal to realize that I've been halfway across the world and now I'm back.  I feel as if I’ve internalized more since I've been home than I did while I was there.  While we were there things were busy, we were driving, stopping in villages, carrying on conversations, joking about Cambodian customs, trying weird food, etc.  It was a new, entirely different place that I was experiencing for the first time, and there wasn’t much opportunity for peace and quiet till the last day. 

Busyness makes it hard to focus, hard to be quiet in my soul--hard to live in an attitude of worship, and it didn't help that with the time change and the early departure times each morning I didn't do my Bible reading or have my prayer time for the first couple days.  Well, I’ve learned my lesson--God’s Word is the only seeing eyes, and time with Him, in the presence of my King is the only way to stay fully awake every minute of every day, to be an open channel to His grace that changes me. 

I want to be changed, I want this sick, weak mind of mine to be conformed to His, I want my boundaries to be broken so that I can love like He has loved me, see the beauty in others that He sees, so that I can be awakened to this world as it really is.  There's so much we ignore on a daily basis, so much we walk right by without a thought.  I do it all the time.  But we are the minority on this globe. 

That is one thing I was struck by while I was over there: this poverty all around me, this limited life—this is how most of the world lives.  And maybe we are the ones limited, maybe we're the ones in the bubble, and across the world are men being tortured and imprisoned, mothers who struggle to feed their children and go hungry themselves, monks who live the lie of a false religion and never dream of a God who walked their earth and died for them. 

Somehow I think it is more likely that Jesus walked streets like those in Cambodia, rather than Seattle streets, and I’ve always known that, but it didn’t sink in till I went across the world.  Anyhow, Cambodia fits the picture the Bible paints more accurately than any place I've ever been--there's dust, grimy children, poor widows, and great faith.  There's all the rawness of life exposed unapologetically, out in the open for all to see, like the woman with the tumor on her arm.  They know they’re poor, they live with the realities of poverty every day, and this is how people approach a doctor, acknowledging their need, their lack of means or ability of any sort.

Yes, this is right, and Jesus earthly ministry makes more sense after being in Cambodia.  I think it is because I can see these people thronging.  Can you see Americans thronging to hear Jesus?  I can see people coming to Him to heal them--because they have no doctors.  I can see a father pleading for the life of his child, because she is half his life—and because he has no money.  I can see a crowd of children collecting around this Man--because technology has not twisted their view of relationship, and He holds out the highest, most fulfilling relationship any of them have ever dreamed of; they actually care about relationships, these children.

In America we care too much about what other people think to throng; we are afraid to acknowledge our neediness by going to Someone who can help us.  We are consumed with what we will eat, what we will drink, and what we will wear, and we of all people have the least need to be worrying about these things.  We are the most infected people because pride is the most invasive of all diseases, and it hardens the heart-arteries.   

Life is real in a place like Cambodia.  It’s not inhibited by expectations of things we think we deserve, of who we think we are.  It’s a place where people are the centerpiece, because nothing else is worth much. 

Oh that we would begin to see things through this lens—not rejecting the blessings our good God has provided, but seeing past them to His face.  Because it’s only when we live in an attitude of worship, when we are moved by His Spirit and abandoned to His will, that we ever place enough stock in people.  As C.S. Lewis wrote in his famous sermon, The Weight of Glory, “There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”

SLS

April 18, 2013

Choosing to Diminish or Increase

A bird flies across their path and it is taken as an evil omen: they must not go out to work that day, they must go home and stay in their home…the first and best stalks of wheat must be offered to their gods…this tribe picks each individual stalk of wheat by hand to harvest, and that after a growing process that has taken an entire year.  They do not eat the good fish in their river because they are slippery, and eating that which is slippery will cause their crops and necessities for life to slip away… 

Modern life in a tribe remote in the hills of the Philippines...

I’ve had something troubling me for a long while now,  and all of a sudden it makes sense in a new way.  Why has it seemed in these times like that which is good, is constantly running up against roadblocks, against diminishing forces?  It can be everything from the beauty of raising godly generations to something as earthy as the mass destruction of bees that provide far more for our well-being than honey; the polluting of our food,  to the conflict between spouses.  Always, that which diminishes those things that are pure, lovely, good, satisfying, and --productive.

 The evil one is a destroyer, the missionary to that tribe said.  Anything that can be done to steal away productive lives, to diminish their work, to prevent them from providing for their families and from the community functioning with increase…the presence of evil always  robs, steals, destroys.  Their superstitions bind them.

With the coming of the gospel, all this has gone.  No longer do they lose days of work, and scrabble together meager produce off the land.  The gospel  brings life in more than just our salvation and the glorious hope of our eternity with God; it causes us to live differently in the everyday tasks, the work of our hands.

I do believe we are today in one of the epic battles of history.  Paganism, sensuality, unbelief, and every evil practice is sweeping our land.  The skirmishes are daily and sometimes hourly and sometimes threaten to overwhelm us.  In airport small talk, someone asked the pastor who preached to us yesterday, “What is happening to us?”  following the tragedies of the last week.  We do not go home from the fields when the bird crosses our path; but we do retreat when evil triumphs in our home path.

I have come once again to the realization that our greatest tools and weapons are the simple things laid out so well for us in Scripture; and that tools are meant to wage war and till hard ground, depending on the moment, and that both are hard, hard work.  As women, finding our identity in Christ; maintaining a gentle and quiet spirit.  Loving our husbands, our children, keeping our homes, providing hospitality.  So basic.  So countercultural today.  What is in the way of this, for me, for today?  That is where my battle is.  The Proverbs 31 woman is not an anomaly, an ancient superwoman.  She is the woman who trusts God and lives in the Word, who understands the power of prayer, who moves forward in faith and confidence in what God is doing in her, in her husband, in her children, in her church.  Therefore, she flourishes in her work.  The ancient paths lead to victory.

Phit

Photos: Thistledown Card

He Knows His Own Design

I don’t believe a law or principle should be made out of verses which appear to answer something over which we are wrestling: a decision, an insight, a discernment, ought not to so lightly be determined by what seems a revelation in the moment.  Nonetheless God does use His Word to speak to us; it is, after all, a love letter meant to communicate.  

There once came a time when we teetered on the brink of a decision, consistent itself with Scriptural principles.  In the space of a day or so, confirmation came, then came mysteriously again, through the promise thus given, “Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will our Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”  We proceeded cautiously, optimistically.  

Some time later, when we were all but crushed by the boulder, then came the adder too.

That’s how it felt.  That’s how it appeared.  But now that yet another span of time has passed, my sight clears enough to realize, that’s not what God’s Word says.

It says that our Father will give good gifts to those who ask Him.

We asked. 

Therefore, what seemed so in the aftermath, was not all of God’s reality.

We do not know the end of this story. 

But we know God perfectly writes the intricacies and the simplicities of every beloved life He watched over, every adopted son and daughter He is perfecting in His artist’s studio.  

  

And what about the family who invested nine years of their lives to minister to a remote tribe in Indonesia, only at the very moment of settling in to be called back out in order to save their son’s life from the ravages of diabetes?  What about the woman who lovingly ministered among the Scots, hit by a truck and suffering now from MS symptoms?  What about the well-known stories of setbacks and loss, such as Elisabeth Elliott’s stolen suitcase containing her painstaking language translation work toward Indian Bibles?  The fires that destroyed William Carey’s work? 

We know no other truth than that the finale, the ending of the story, the full picture, will be Beautiful.  God-Beautiful.  As the sunrise, as the sunset, as the lavish display of His creation attests.  After all, what was His answer to Job?  You don’t need to know.  You just need to meditate on what My Creation reveals about My designs.

The gifts from the Father that Jesus had been describing prior to this verse are “those things necessary for disciples:  righteousness, sincerity, purity, humility, and wisdom”.  (footnote to Matthew 7:9-10, NKJ)

He knows His own design, and even as we are fearfully and wonderfully made, so it follows that the days of our lives ordained by God are fearfully and wonderfully designed for our good and for His glory.  There is no other truth, no other reality, no other pattern being woven.

God is good.  All the time.

  photos courtesy of Thistledown Cards

Better Than a Fairy Tale

“We all dream dreams and know very well that they don’t always work out.  Life is particularly hard on high expectations.  Things hardly ever fall together the way we would have scripted them.  The fact is, if we put our hope in a certain set of circumstances working out in a certain way at certain times, we’re bound to be disappointed because nothing in this life is certain.

 

“So what’s the solution?  To give up on dreams?

“No, it is for us to realize that if we belong to God, there are even bigger dreams for our lives than our own.  But in order to walk in those bigger dreams, we may face greater obstacles than we ever imagined and find ourselves compelled to rely on a much more powerful and magnificent God than we ever knew before…

“Some people might call it a fairy tale, but it’s really a miracle.  And a miracle is better than a fairy tale.”

--from Larry Libby’s foreword, A different Kind of Love Story   Joni Eareckson Tada and Ken’s new (transparent, riveting) book about their challenging love story. 

photo: Thistledown Cards

Faithfulness in a Little Thing, Today

“A little thing is a little thing, but faithfulness in a little thing is a great thing.”  --Hudson Taylor

"It has come home to me every forcibly of late that it matters little what the work is in which we are engaged, so long as God has put it into our hands.  The temptation I have often had to contend with is persistent in many forms.  ‘If only I were in such and such a position’, for example, ‘shouldn’t I be able to do a great work…it is all IF and WHEN.  I believe the devil is fond of thee conjunctions…the plain truth is that the Scriptures never teach us to wait for opportunities of service, but to serve in just the things that lie next to our hands…the Lord bids us work, watch, and pray; but Satan suggests, wait until a good opportunity for working, watching and praying presents itself—and needless to say, this opportunity is always in the future…since the things that lie in our immediate path have been ordered by God, who shall say that one kind of work is more important and sacred than another?"

--excerpt from Mountain Rain, Eileen Crossman

 photo from Thistledown Cards