Nearer My God To Thee...

“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” ~Jeremiah 29:13-14.

The hymn, Nearer My God to Thee, plays as I begin this post. This hymn echoes the cry of my heart tonight. The strains of the violin call to my heart, pulling it heavenward. The ache for more intimacy grows and deepens. An ache, a longing that will not be filled on this earth, cries and beckons. My hands are raised Heavenward but cannot reach. Humanity is mine.

Oh, that deepest of desires, that deepest of wishes…to know the Father, to hear Him call me blessed daughter, to bask in His love. I feel so far and yet so close. Many deaths I have died and many more are to be died before that day comes when I die my final death and find myself standing before Him, surrounded by those who, in this life, I have loved deeply. What a glorious reunion it will be…mother, grandparents, brothers, sisters, old friends…all of us there, finally restored and dead to sin, our identity finally know.

And there, through the crowd He will come…Christ, with His scars showing the price He paid in His love for us, and finally, finally my heart will jump for I will be with my love. As I run to Him, filled with reverence and awe and fall into His arms, which have so often held me in moments of pain and doubt, the tears of joy that will run down my face will be beautiful indeed. Rest will finally be mine and I will finally be with my best of friends…and surrounded by all those who encouraged and guided me on this path to Him.

Tonight, I long for this reunion. My earthly desires and longings are known for what they are…replacements for the longing of this moment. Tonight, I desire heaven. I desire rest. I desire love. I desire my Savior.

My heart cries to be nearer. Nearer only to my God. Humanity holds me back. This mortal body and this blessed life that I have been given restrain me. I do not wish to hurry the day for I know that far too many blessings await me in the days ahead. I will walk them…each and every appointed day I will serve…but I know that which I seek. Heavenly rest and peace. A Savior’s embrace.

"Hold me!” This is my heart’s cry as I beg my lover to return to me. I feel Him, I know He is there but the wall that stands between us is one made of my own failings and sins. To myself, I die. Realizing that there is nothing I can do but to surrender I fall to my knees and sacrifice my heart…it is all I have. It is all I can give.

He says you will find Him when you seek Him with your whole heart. I seek and find but space and distance remain. Am I to be allowed the intimacy I crave? Will He show me His heart?

As a woman whose heart cries for her lover’s return, or even to know if he will come, my heart cries tonight. The answer to this is the same as to my waiting for the earthly love.

“Wait. Hold fast to that which I have promised. I am with you. I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Remember me. Seek me. Call to me. I will come. You will find me when your heart is ready. Do not despair. Only trust me. Be still. Know that I am God. Wait for me!”

My heart cries. It’s loneliness and ache call heavenward. My call echoes the cry of those who have gone before. I echo the heart cries of those who have walked this path of denied desire. Denied desire that we may be strengthened before Him. Denied that we may be made perfect. He denies because He loves.

The lover comes…as He found the bride in His song of songs so too will He find me. I have been broken. I have given up. I lay here…all my earthly loves shattered and surrounding me as I see them broken. I am unable to bring them to myself. My arranging, letting go, control, and desire of them have not brought them to me. No, I cannot arrange for my heaven here. I must wait for it. It lies ahead, in the time appointed. Today, I wait, looking at my earthly desire knowing that it will only be given if it is God’s best. I send it away, uncertain of the outcome, knowing that the Father holds my heart in His hand.

I have given up. I only want my lover of lovers to find me. Nothing I have done has saved me. The death was died and life was granted. I accept this life. One of waiting, joy, trials, happiness, pain, blessings, death, and resurrection; will He come to me? In time, in His way He will. I cannot force His love anymore than I can force my earthly lover to love me. I raise my eyes heavenward and ask for Him. I wait for Him. I hold my hand out to touch Him.

Where is He? Still silent. May this death and separation be soon complete and may He come, the lover of my soul, and may he resurrect me. May I know the fullness of life that only He can give. May I love Him with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. May He come to me…

“I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell Him I am sick with love.” ~Song of Solomon 5:8.

Blessings…

~Christine

A Foundation of Sapphires...

“O afflicted one, storm tossed and not comforted, behold, I will set your stones in antimony, and lay your foundation with sapphires.” ~Isaiah 54:11

"You will see the faithfulness of God’s promises to you."

This thought springs to mind as I sit, windows open, the warm, humid breeze wafting through my apartment. Somehow promises and foundations seem to be trains of thought for the day. This week has been so odd and the trend continues. Emotional exhaustion overwhelms me. Multiple times today I have gone back to bed to try and rest but sleep escapes me. My thoughts are muddled with no clarity. There is no train.

But the sapphires caught me. What does it mean to have a foundation of sapphires? In thinking of those beautiful blue stones I think it must have something to do with strength and beauty. Rare, resilient, and glorious they shine and sparkle. As do the hearts of those who trust in the Savior.

Our pasts haunt us. In everyone’s life there is sin, pain, and death. It is so easy to dwell upon that which has been taken and lost. Childhood memories float around in our minds sometimes coming forward in crystalline clarity. For me, I find that I remember those days and often wish to go back and cherish them again for what they were now that they are gone. Reality is, I cannot. Those days are gone forever. Forever, they will live on in my memory but that is where they must stay.

There is a fine line between remembering and holding on. Life has seasons that often bleed into each other without well-defined lines. People come and go without reason or explanation. Then there are times when a clean cut must be made and people must walk away hurt. There comes a time in life when you learn the need to set boundaries. All of this comes in different ways for different people.

With remembering there is an ease. The memory comes and there is no pain felt at the mental image. For a moment the visions of what once was play upon your memory. Then it is forgotten again until the day comes for it to be remembered again. It is not dwelt upon. There is no clinging.

In holding-on we create an idol. We will find ourselves trying to recreate those days and force the days and people in front of us to conform to the image of the past. There is stress, there is strain….there is no peace.

This lesson comes to me today as I pray and ask God what it is that I must give up. This week I have been called to let go of an old friend, to give up a desire, and to learn to say no. All of it is self-death. All of it hurts and causes a death to my self-image. One more death to what I think and one more realization of who it is that Christ created me to be.

A year ago, I began a journey marked by pain. Now, it represents mercy, grace, and life. What was once one of the greatest pains has become one of the greatest blessings. In this year I have processed and placed behind me much. How much more is to come I cannot say but I do know that there is a well-laid foundation. I know that my foundation is sapphire…for He has told me that it is. This foundation, which was built with pain, loss, and humility, has now turned to beauty and will stand the test of time and all that Satan and his demons can throw at it.

Exhausted from the battle I sit here, calm in my heart but knowing that there is a tear behind my eye. There is a grief coming. There is a tearing away of an idol coming and I know it. But I do not run. I prepare. I make my heart willing to let go. I pray that I will be willing to forget that which I have held dear. There is no fear, only anticipation as I realize what comes on the wind. The clouds gather, symbolic on this Good Friday.

“Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” ~Philippians 3:13.

“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life.” ~Deuteronomy 4:9

These two verses seem to contradict, but truly they do not. It has to do with submission to God’s will. We are to remember the blessings and His faithfulness. We are to remember the journey our heart has gone upon. What we are to forget is the pain and we are to allow the past to become the past. It is the foundation. It is the cutting of the sapphires. It will become the setting of our heart and the frame of our lives.

Remember His blessings. Remember His faithfulness. Lose you life to find it. Death is not the end…it is the beginning. Deaths must be died so that we may find life. Suffering is a part of life, guaranteed to us by the life of our Savior who bore it all without complaint or fear. There will be a cross and there will be resurrection. This is why we keep the church calendar to remind us, every year, of the sacrifice that was made for us and the sacrifice that will be required of us.

“Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” ~Matthew 16:24-25.

Blessings…

~Christine

Bearing That Cross...

“And as they led Him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus.” ~Luke 23:26

“Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him.” ~John 13:5

It is Maundy Thursday, the day that commemorates that last supper which has become so symbolic in my own life of headship, submission, nourishment, and life. This day remembers the last fellowship of Christ with His disciples prior to His sacrificial death. The day before He bore the cross.

I find that Simon always catches my attention. What were his thoughts as he was pulled from the crowd to lift up this heavy cross and bear it for our Savior? What fear was in his belly as he dragged it up the hill, the crowd around him laughing and jeering? Did he realize that he was representing what we must all do should we wish to follow Christ?

Michael Card sings a beautiful song entitled “The Basin and the Towel” which recounts the story of Christ washing the feet of the disciples. I fully recommend youtubing it should you have the time. The chorus is beautiful…

“And the call is to community,
The impoverished power that sets the soul free.
In humility, to take the vow,
that day after day we must take up the basin and the towel.”

That basin and towel is one that I know I often fail to take up. My self-centered nature doesn’t wish to die for anyone…much less for Christ and His will. My wants and my desires seem so important. How often do I forget the commandment given by our Savior to His disciples that night?

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” ~John 13:34

I am a sinner. So often I fall so short of any resemblance to Christ. I reach, I grasp, I plot, and I plan how to achieve what it is that I think is my best. This passion week I have been dying. Dying to my past and to my need to hold on to those in my life who God has called me to give up. I am scared to let them go for fear I may need them later. I have been dying to my desire to please and capitulate. But most of all I have been called to die to my own idols and visions of my dreams. I am called to sacrifice my Eden.

Tonight, I go to bed knowing that tomorrow will come and with it will come the last alone day of this passion week for me. Good Friday, the death of Christ, and the death, Lord willing, of all my sinful desires. May I die to my false self. May I see that to which I grasp and cling to. May I be willing to open my hands and to be willing to grant my heart to Him fully.

Death is hard. It hurts. I see it over and over again. In so many ways death touches and comes into my life. What I have come to know and believe however is that life truly does come from death. You really must lose your life to find it. You must allow God to take away the false self that you have built, to change you from the person that you thought, in all of your measly human wisdom, was who He made you to be. Death must be died before you can have life. You must suffer to die and it will be painful.

Five years ago I began a journey that changed my life. It started with falling in love with earthly things. I pray that this week that this chapter of the journey closes by me falling in love with Heavenly things more than ever before. I pray that my humanity and grasping would be slain on the alter and that I would be presented as a living sacrifice.

I pray that His will shall be done…I pray that I learn to bear my cross, taking up the basin and the towel, and that I am resurrected in His glory. I pray that my life may shine for Him and His will alone.

“Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?” ~Jeremiah 32:27.

Blessings,

~Christine

Suffering and Resurrection...

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.” ~Jeremiah 29:11

The reading for the Tuesday before Easter in The Common Book of Prayer contains this collect.

“O Lord God, whose blessed Son, our Savior, gave his back to the smiters and hid not his face from shame; Grant us grace to take joyfully the sufferings of the present time, in full assurance of the glory that shall be revealed; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

As I sat on my balcony and read these words aloud this evening, followed by the epistle and gospel readings for the day, I was caught by the reference to suffering. In my own life, I often have many moments of suffering amidst the many blessings that also are given to me. My response often leaves much to be desired. How often do I joyfully take up my sufferings? How often do I realize that these are what makes me Christ-like?

God has granted me a large portion of passion. My friends often laugh with me for my zest of life and the delight that I take in those things that I love. I throw myself in, often not thinking through to the end and I live the moment fully. Then comes those moments that bring pain and they are just as passionate as the moments of happiness. My tears come pouring down and my broken heart grieves for what was lost. The passion of joy and the passion of sorrow mirror each other.

You see, I know what I desire. In my humanity I often reach out of God’s timing and will, convinced that I know what it best, and try to take hold of that which is not given. The result, God must teach me to die to myself yet again.

Desire and death are two things that, thanks to the fall, must go hand in hand. Our hearts longs for heaven more than we know and we spend countless human hours trying to create that paradise for ourselves here on earth. And we fail. The desired object becomes the object of pain if taken out of God’s time. We cannot arrange for eternity here. Sin will not allow it.

Suffering comes as a part of the fall but it is also one of the tools used to bring us closer to heaven. It comes as a part of the life accepted when you chose Christ the King as your Lord. You become an enemy of the world. You are promised that you will suffer.

As I learn to place my desires before the throne of God, trusting Him with them and giving them to His timing, I must learn over and over again to not reach out to take them back. I must leave them at His feet and when I unknowingly take them up I must return them again with the proper repentance…and often along with that comes some form of pain and suffering.

In this, however, I have learned that the pain and suffering are not bad. I have learned to not run from the tears. I have learned to cast myself before His feet in humble repentance, to give my broken and hurting heart to Him for healing, and to confide the deepest fears that I only realize in the moment of brokenness to Him. You see, in my tears my walls fall down. I become honest with myself. I see my ugliness and sin for all that it is and this allows me to confess it. And with confession and the death required for repentance, a seed of life is planted. This seed begins to slowly grow and blossom, and when it is ready, in the fullness of time, the flower bursts forth and God’s beauty shines radiantly through me in the form of the smile and laughter that He so lovingly bestowed upon me.

If you desire life, be not afraid to take the path of suffering. Christ did and He obtained salvation for humanity. He obeyed and took upon Himself that which was not His to bear but that which no one else could bear. Suffering is the harder path. You will be confronted with much that you did not expect. You will see yourself in a new light…and then, finally, through the death and suffering will come the flower and the resurrection.

I promise…it is worth it.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” ~Matthew 5:6.

Blessings…

~Christine

Greater Love...

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13

It is Passion Week: a week that commemorates the betrayal and crucifixion of our Savior. For me, this year it comes with a pull on my heart from God. Today, while reading and praying, this verse was given to me. It has been a year for me since God called me to walk a different and difficult path; one that has torn me away from ideals that I cherished and clung to as false gods. In some ways, I have been playing chess with God…and the score currently rests with Christine 0, God “however many.”

Yesterday, I was asked to die to myself over something I cherished. Today, I mourned the death of a dream and turned heavenward for an answer to my pain. The answer came in the form of peace. I still do not know the end or the outcome but I know where I stand with God and that is all that matters. God answered a prayer that I prayer very specifically with the answer I did not want and while part of me still hopes that the answer may be wrong I know it is not. I die, I let go, and I turn heavenward in obedience to my baptism.

What does it mean to lay down your life for your friends? Does it mean standing in their place when they are dying justly or unjustly? Taking a bullet for them? Those endings make nice movies but in real life does it perhaps mean that we give up our desires and plans for what is God’s purpose for us in their lives? Does it mean doing everything for them or being willing to allow them to walk their own path? Being willing to hurt those that you care about when you know that it is for their own good. Do we save them from the pain that will only build them and make them stronger?

Tonight, the laying down of our life means to me to be self-death. Death to what I think is best for them and right. Death to what I want them to do. Death to my desire and being willing to accept the prescribed boundaries of the relationship. Being willing to be who God placed you there to be…be that the friend, the counselor, or the lover. It means being willing to let go of them when the time comes. To allow them to fade into the past if needed. It means you die to your comfort and hold those you love accountable to God’s law even if it does mean the death of the friendship. Being a friend means dying to yourself…over and over again.

God says that, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:14) He calls us to die as he died…to our desires, to our hopes, and to our dreams over and over again in the knowledge that all will be granted. ALL WILL BE GRANTED. Our human minds cannot grasp what that entails. The price of disobedience is too great. Obedience is shown to be the way of life over and over again. Obedience requires death.

But, from this death springs life, joy, and happiness. A life full and rich. A joy that does not fade. A happiness that overwhelms the deepest sorrow…but also allows us to still feel our pain and to grieve. Our God loves us. He chose us to be His children and calls us to the faith of a child. Is it that hard? Without Him, yes.

This is a week that we remember a sacrifice beyond all comparison to anything that we could ever be called to give. Christ, God incarnate, humbled Himself to take our place and laid down His life for us. His passion should be our passion. His obedience to the Father’s will should be our obedience.

Let us take up our cross and follow Him…knowing that as surely as He was brought back to life so to shall we. Our deaths are much smaller and our reward is beyond comparison.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these he will do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” ~John 14:12-15.

Blessings…

~Christine