Not So Light Lenten Reflections

Week 7

The LONG Trust

When I first started gardening years ago, I read somewhere that seeds kept in a closed container in the refrigerator would last a long time. Ever the frugal gardener, and much to the chagrin of the seed companies, I would faithfully buy a seed packet, use only as many seeds as I thought I needed, and store the rest in the refrigerator container for another year. This container went from refrigerator to refrigerator, house to house as we moved, never with any thinning out of packets. This spring, when I went through my collection of seeds, I decided to sow some Tiny Tims, a small tomato plant with lots of cherry-sized fruit. I hadn't grown them in many years, and the date on the seed packet was 1986. I only wanted a plant or two, and assuming the germination rate would be poor at best, I planted nine seeds. Eight of them came up. Similarly, I have way too many thyme and majoram plants, again from seeds I bought in the 1980s. These were all seeds that had traveled through three states and four houses and their corresponding refrigerators, seeds a year younger than my middle child and two years older than my youngest child. I didn't have much hope that they would germinate, but the seeds themselves didn't seem to have any problem with sitting in a plastic box for 39 years waiting for their moment in the sun...literally.

If this story sounds vaguely familiar, I wrote a similar post* when I first started this blog back in 2013 when those seeds were only 27 years old. The theme of that post was about how old seeds can provide fresh harvests no matter how long the seeds have been sitting dormant. In the case of spiritual seeds, it's only a matter of God's timing, His decision that the seed He has planted, perhaps decades ago, can now germinate, grow and finally become fruitful. This present post is less about God's timing – that's a given – and more about our attitude of trust regarding His timing. How deep is our trust when we have to wait a long, long, longgggg time to see the fulfillment of what we hope for? Maybe I can trust God for something that needs to be resolved in the next week, the next month (like selling a house with a twelve foot hole in the front lawn). But can I trust God with the LONG trust, the one that I may never live to see the fulfillment of? Many of us are no strangers to praying for a loved one or a situation or a relationship that has seemingly been going on unchanged for years, and we see no progress anywhere in the near future. Do we still trust that God is there, that He sees what we see and that He is working even if we don't see any present indications of His working? Do we have the faith and stamina for the LONG trust?

Our son, the middle child, reached second grade with the reading skills of a preschooler. Testing by the district psychologist showed him to be gifted in math but learning disabled in all of the skill areas necessary for reading. School had been, and continued to be, very difficult for him. I was a reading specialist by training and he had been read to since before he could talk. His sisters would be avid readers, as was his dad, and he was always surrounded by books. He prayed, we prayed that he would be able to read better. Reading and writing was a slow painful process for him and he avoided them as much as he was able. One day, in 8^th grade, he came home with a book that his teacher had lent him, a historical novel he said he thought looked interesting. It was the first time I saw him pick up a book that wasn't a mandatory school assignment. I had been praying for God to do something is this area with him and this is the first glimpse I had of God working. I think, again, I may have been in my resigned/submitted/compliant/acquiescent mode, but there was a certain amount of weak trust that God was forming the man He wanted our son to be even if he never become an avid reader. High school found my son in basic English classes which he surprisingly liked and did well in. He still balked at writing assignments, often making creative movies as alternate projects for all subject areas, surprising his math teachers with math movies that fulfilled assignment requirements.

We sent our son off to college with some fear and trepidation. As a student athlete, he had ample access to academic help, but he seemed to do OK on his own. He finished reading assignments and started to read and acquire books he didn't actually need. He frequently visited thrift stores and library discard rooms, even went dumpster diving in an alley where students threw away books they no longer wanted. Fast forward to the present day: there are at least a dozen boxes of books in our basement we are storing for him. He's just come in from his third trip to the library this week where he reads newspapers and checks out books, reading sections of them aloud to us because he finds so many things so interesting that he just can't help himself.

I relate this story because it's the closest I've come to being able to understand the LONG trust, of praying and asking God for something that was so long and slow and often painful in coming, something that was easy to doubt would ever happen. And, yet, God proved faithful. Old dormant seeds and non-reading second graders can both be transformed to bear fruit in God's time. There may be other things we will not see come to fruition in our life time, but it doesn't mean that God is not working. Isaiah says His understanding is unsearchable.** I take this to mean that we may never know or fully understand God's way of making things happen nor His timing. But we are not called to understand God's way and time. We are only called to the trust Him with the LONG trust.

Easter is the perfect time to explore the LONG trust. The time from Christ's death on Good Friday to his resurrection on Easter Sunday was only three days, though for his disciples it probably felt interminable. Easter, though, is the culmination of the greatest LONG trust, the salvation story, God's plan for a Savior, promised to Adam and Eve, worked out through the ages through Abraham and his descendants, through Moses and the Hebrew people, through kings such as David and Solomon, and faithful prophets. Despite Egyptian slavery and Babylonian captivity, despite fleshly human failures by all the major players and some truly rotten kings, God comes through with His perfect Son in His perfect timing. Jesus' death and resurrection is the fulfillment of that great LONG trust. So worth the wait...

*https://marynapier.blogspot.com/2013/05/p-margin-bottom-0_3.html

**Isaiah 40:28b

 

Not So Light Lenten Reflections

Week 6

The Rungs of Trust

So, how do we grow in trust? How did I grow in trust? This week, I thought I'd leave the door of my prayer closet ajar and allow a glimpse of a spiritual practice that has helped me over the past few years to better understand and grasp what true trust in God is in my life. In my post on pet trusts, I likened those trusts to foot holds on climbing walls and rungs on monkey bars, giving me something to cling to to help me maneuver over those scary places as I was learning to trust. But the true foot holds and rungs of trust are the ones God provides in His Book. I've come to see the Bible as an owner's manual for being human and the best notebook for this human to bring along on her trust journey.

I am of the age where memorization no longer comes easy, if at all. I decided a few years back that I would not sweat it if I could not memorize scripture like I used to. I still try to commit some verses to memory, but I'm more likely now to spend my time taking deep dives into the words of scripture, soaking myself and immersing myself into passages by slowly reading and rereading and meditating on the words, consulting with the Author frequently, a sort of personalized Lectio Divina.* For my trust adventure, I used an online concordance to make a list of trust scriptures and then printed them into a document that I kept in my Bible to use during my prayer times. Below are some of those scriptures and some of my musings during my time delving into them.

* * *

Psalm 20:7

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

Oh, Lord, what are my “chariots” and “horses” and the things I rely on instead of you? Chariots and horses seem like “strong” things but not necessarily bad things. What are the strong things in my life that I trust in instead of you? And what does it mean to trust in Your name? Is it different than trusting in You? When I call on you by name – Lord, Father, Adonai – does that count as trust in Your eyes?

Psalm 56:3,4

When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?

Ah, I can really get into these verses! I'm afraid about lots of things and struggle with all those other “fear not” scriptures, because I do fear. But this one says “When I am afraid...” acknowledging that, yes, it does happen. At those times, can I put my trust in You? If I say this enough times to myself, will I come to believe it, Lord? I think I will. Can I say, “In You I trust – I shall not be afraid”? Maybe.  That flesh part, though...flesh seems to be able to do a lot to me, especially as I grow older.  A lot of my fears are "flesh" related. Can I trust You with my aging body, Lord?

Proverbs 3:5

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

One of the first scriptures I ever memorized, yet I think it's taken me years to even begin to grasp the depths of it. I think I trusted in You with a portion of my heart, but never all of it. Or, more likely, I resigned, submitted, complied and acquiesced with all my heart, just never quite truly trusted. And leaning on my own understanding seems to be a default setting with me. I need to repeat to myself daily, “I will trust in you, Lord, with all my heart and I will not lean on my own understanding” with emphasis on those underlined words...

Psalm 125:1

Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever.

I want to be like Mount Zion – strong, stable, unmovable in the good sense, abiding forever in You. I want that kind of trust.

Isaiah 26:3

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

“Perfect peace” is a hard thing to wrap my mind around. I'd settle for a healthy dose of imperfect peace, but You promise me perfect peace if my mind is stayed on You. “Stayed on You”...I have to learn what that fully means. Am I thinking of You all the time? Am I willing to let You into every minute of my daily life, even when I'm not actively thinking of You? Lord, teach me what it means to truly have my mind stayed on you, because somehow, that is the key to fully trusting in You.

Psalm 37:3-5

Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.

Hmmm...There seems to be something transactional about these verses. Is that OK, Lord, or am I reading something into this that isn't really there? If I trust in You and do good and delight in You, You will give me the desires of my heart. But I guess if I do those three things, my heart will be more like Your heart than mine, and those desires would be Your desires for me, so I guess that it OK. And what is the connection between committing and trusting in You? Is committing my way to You the same as trusting? Maybe. And do I believe – really believe – that You will act on my behalf with Your righteousness and justice? That's a great promise...

* * *

Well, I'll leave it at that. You get the idea. Below are some more trust scriptures to make some rungs of your own if you feel so inclined.

Psalm 28:7

The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.

Psalm 31:14

But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, “You are my God.

Psalm 62:8

Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us

Psalm 71:5

For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.

Psalm 91:2

I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

Psalm 143:8

Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

Isaiah 12:2

“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.”

Isaiah 26:4

Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

Isaiah 30:15

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” But you were unwilling,

Isaiah 32:17

And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.

Jeremiah 17:7

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.

Jeremiah 39:18

For I will surely save you, and you shall not fall by the sword, but you shall have your life as a prize of war, because you have put your trust in me, declares the Lord.’”

Daniel 6:23

Then the king was exceedingly glad, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.

*Lectio Divina is an ancient practice of meditating on passages of scripture by repeated readings and interacting with God during those readings. My meditations on the above scriptures is more of a Lectio Divina Lite, rather than a true Lectio Divina. That said, there are lots of variations on how to “do” it. Look them up online. Below is the outline I use. I choose a short passage of scripture, four to six verses, though I think shorter is better. I then go through the following steps as I read the passage. Each reading can be done silently or aloud but each should be done slowly:

Preparation (Silencio) – Relax, become aware of God's presence. "Come, Lord Jesus." "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."

Reading 1: Read (Lectio) – Read silently or aloud. Listen for the word or the phrase addressed to you, catches your attention. Repeat word or phrase.

Reading 2: Reflect (Meditatio) – How is my life touched by this word? What is it in my life right now that needs to hear this word? (Where am I in this scene/what words addressed specifically to me/what connects with my life experience?)

Reading 3: Respond (Oratio) – What is my response to God based on what I have read and encountered? Enter into personal dialogue with God. Share feelings in complete honesty. How might God be wanting me to respond?

Reading 4: Rest (Contemplatio) – Rest in the Word of God. Waiting and resting in God's presence, total yieldedness and abandon, like a weaned child with its mother (Psalm 131:2)

Resolve (Incarnatio) – Incarnate (live out) the Word of God. Resolve to carry this word and live it out in daily life. Choose image or picture as a reminder.

Acceptance of God’s will does not mean submission or resignation to “whatever will be will be.” Rather, we actively wait for the Spirit to move and prompt, and then discern what we are to do next. When we see ourselves in a relationship of love with God, there is always something of a lover’s dilemma, a struggle to give and receive, to trust and obey the call. - Henri Nouwen

 

Not So Light Lenten Reflections

Week 5

Daniel and All the Trusts

Daniel has always been my favorite book in the Bible. Yes, I do love Psalms and Acts, but Daniel usually comes out on the top of my list. Sandwiched between the major prophets and the minor prophets, I've jokingly called Daniel the middling prophet, a concise twelve chapters, the last six heavily into prophetic visions, the first six more biographical. It's the first six I want to talk about today. It's in those early chapters that Daniel models the ability to live faithfully following God in a culture that would seem to be at odds with anyone attempting to live a godly life. Trust in God is woven in and out of those chapters, all the trusts – pet trusts, trust for a mouth, and the BIG Trust.

Daniel is one of several young men taken into captivity during the Babylonian exile. The best and the brightest of the Hebrew youth were to be trained in the Babylonian culture. Daniel and three of his friends decide to go through this on God's terms and not be dictated to by the surrounding culture. When presented with the king's food, a rich diet of meat and wine, not in keeping with the dietary laws of the Hebrew people, Daniel asks if they instead could be given vegetables and water to eat and drink. He suggests a ten day trial eating period and at the end of that time, Daniel and his three friends appear fatter and healthier that those youth who ate the king's food. They would be allowed to continue eating in a way that would be honoring to God. I speculate as to whether he had “settled in his mind not to meditate beforehand” and trusted God for the words to negotiate the new diet. It took a certain amount of trust to step out and suggest what Daniel did, as well as trusting God to give him “a mouth and wisdom” to hammer out the deal.

When King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and challenges his wise men to tell him the dream and then interpret it, they fail and the king decides to kill all the wise men, Daniel and his friends being included in the group. Daniel, speaking with “prudence and discretion,” asks to speak with the king. When the king asks him if he can make known the dream and its interpretation, Daniel replies,

No wise men, enchanters, magicians or astrologers can show the king the mystery that the king has asked, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries and he has made know to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.

Daniel sidesteps his own ideas about the king's dream and relies solely on God to give him “a mouth and wisdom” to interpret it and acknowledges as much to Nebuchadnezzar. A lot of trust there. Nebuchadnezzar pays homage to God as a result, but as impressed as he is with Daniel and Daniel's God, Neb is a slow learner...a very slow learner. It doesn't take him long to make a golden image that he commands every one must worship or be throw into a fiery furnace. Daniel himself is missing from this little drama, but his three friends refuse to bow in worship to the golden image and find themselves on the way to the incinerator. When questioned about their obstinance, they replied,

O, Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.

What a great picture of the three friends grappling with the BIG Trust. In the face of almost certain death, they acknowledge that they trust in a God who may save them...or may not. Either way, their God is worthy of their trust, their BIG Trust. He not only saves the three friends from the fiery furnace, but He allows Nebuchadnezzar himself to see their salvation and to see a mysterious fourth companion in the furnace, someone whose appearance “is like a son of the gods.” This causes the king to have another moment of worship of the God of the three friends.

Nebuchadnezzar has another dream, and Daniel, again, is the only one who can interpret it. While the king's first dream was about the future of his kingdom, this dream is about the king's personal future. Daniel “was dismayed for awhile, and his thoughts alarmed him.” Again, Daniel had trusted God for the interpretation, but now he had to trust God for the delivery of the interpretation. How do you tell the king that he is going to “be driven from among men”...” to eat grass like an ox” because of his pride? Nebuchadnezzar receives the interpretation, it comes to pass, and when God restores the king, he praises and extols the King of heaven...one...more...time.

After Nebuchadnezzar's death, his son has a baffling experience. Words appear on the wall during a banquet. Daniel again is called to interpret their meaning. He is promised to be clothed in purple, to have a chain of gold around his neck and be the third ruler of the kingdom. Daniel delivers the interpretation, God's judgment against the new king and a prediction of his imminent death. Despite the dire warning, the king immediate bestows on Daniel what he has promised. That very night, the new king is killed.

Now at this point in Daniel's story he seems to have collected some pet trusts. One could say that surviving and thriving in exile in the Babylonian culture has become a pet trust bordering on a superpower. Daniel found favor in altering the food menu for he and his friends. He had saved himself and his friends by trusting God to use him to know and interpret Nebuchadnezzar's first dream. He somehow completely missed getting throw into the fiery furnace. He successfully delivered an unpleasant interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's second dream. A more disturbing interpretation to Neb's son gave him robes of royalty, gold and a powerful position. I can't pretend to know how Daniel felt about these events, but it would appear that his trusting of God blessed him in exile time and again. But the BIG Trust was waiting for him around the corner.

Daniel's success in Babylon was not without its critics. Because Daniel “became distinguished above all”, his enemies were jealous and sought a way to destroy him. Because “no error or fault was found in him,” they knew that to bring him down would somehow have to involve a “connection with the law of his God.” Through some legal wrangling, an irrevocable law was put into effect that stated only the king, Darius, could be worshiped. The penalty for breaking the law was to be thrown into the lions' den. Daniel, of course, did what he had always done, getting down on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks before the God he trusted, much to Darius' dismay. Powerless to change the law, Darius, seeing Daniel off to the lions' den, can only say, “May your God, whom you serve continually deliver you!” Of course, God does. After spending a sleepless night, Darius hurries to see Daniel's fate the next morning. Daniel is alive and well and in one piece much to the king's relief. God had sent his angel and shut the lions' mouth. The scripture continues,

So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.

“...because he had trusted in his God...”

We all have our fiery furnaces, our lions' dens experiences, possibly not as dramatic or as deadly as in the Book of Daniel, but just as challenging. Can we build on the trust we have experienced in the little things to learn to lean upon God in the big things? Can we trust in God to give us a mouth and wisdom, to show us how to step aside and let God have His way with us? We can look at Daniel and see him as a model for a life of trust so when we have come through our fiery furnace or out of our lion's den, it will be seen that we trusted in our God.

 

Not So Light Lenten Reflections

Week 4

What a Mouth...

If you are a regular reader of the Bible, or, perhaps, have a favorite devotional you have read repeatedly over the years, you may have experienced the phenomenon I'm about to talk about. It's the strange thing that happens periodically, at least for me, when I'm suddenly confronted by a scripture verse or a sentence in a devotional that I know I must have read many times before but I feel like I'm seeing it for the first time. As absurd as I know it must be, when this occurs, I internally blurt out, “Where did that come from? Was that there before? I'm pretty sure it wasn't!” Of course, it was there before, but before that moment I probably wasn't ready to see/read/hear/understand it and, now for some reason, I am. The time is right.

My last “Where did that come from?” moment occurred recently when I came across Luke 21:14-15 in my time in scripture:

Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.

Jesus is talking to his disciples about the time coming when the temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed and persecution and imprisonment will follow. As sometimes happens in Jesus' teachings, he talks about two events at once. Here, he talks simultaneously about the temple, which would be destroyed in 70 A.D., and his second coming at the end of time. Both events would be difficult for his followers and would require huge amounts of trust in God to get through those times. Though the word “trust” is not in the above scripture, for some reason it shouted “Trust!” to me as I read this verse, seemingly for the first time.

Like many off-the-scale introverts, I'm very much an internal processor. Meditating beforehand is how I operate. Most of my conversations have been rehearsed multiple times before I open my mouth. In corporate settings, it has been suggested that supervisors supply questions for meetings ahead of time to all employees that are to attend the meeting. This allows those introverts, often deep thinkers with excellent ideas, to prepare what they might want to share at the meeting. If the questions are sprung cold on these introverts at the meeting, they are more likely to remain silent because they haven't had enough time to “meditate beforehand.”

But back to Luke...Of course I had read the verses before, but in my old NIV Bible where it says,

But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves...

The NIV allowed me to read these words as an emotional issue, worrying being something I have little control over. Easy, peasy, I could say. Just give it over to Jesus. Somehow, when I read the words in my ESV Bible, they had a much greater impact on me. Meditating, defined as to think deeply or carefully about something, to plan mentally or consider, seemed like something I was more responsible for. I was struck with some dismay at the wording of the verses, as though it was speaking directly to me. If it was, then I was being told to settle it in my mind not – NOT! – to do what I've always done, to rehearse, to plan mentally, to make sure I had all my words right before I opened my mouth. “Wait!” I wanted to shout, “Isn't thinking about what I want to say before I open my mouth a good thing?” Generally, yes, but in thinking on this scripture, I realized how much I was trusting myself and my intellect and deep thinking and my wording of things. I didn't leave any room for what God might want me to say in any given situation. Being somewhat new to this true trust thing*, was I willing to learn another way of speaking? The scripture in Luke says that Jesus himself with give me “a mouth and a wisdom”, which none of my adversaries would be able to withstand or contradict. A mouth! Like “She's got some mouth on her.” That sounded sassy and more than a little scary to me.

In contemplating these words, I became acutely aware how much of my communicative energy is tied up in wanting to say the right thing according to my definition of what that right thing might be. God was reminding me that He could be leaned upon, trusted totally to allow me to say what I am supposed to say, what He would want me to say, in any given situation. I might not be facing the adversaries of end times persecution in my verbal interactions, but for introverts like me, most conversations have an adversarial vibe to them. Social situations with friends, difficult conversations with family members, uncomfortable conflicts with neighbors, random incidents with complete strangers – they all require a communicative energy that if I have to muster up myself, I will always fall short. Did I believe that God could give me a mouth and wisdom for all these situations? Was I willing to ask for His words, given in His timing, in all my conversations instead of automatically defaulting to my internal processing? Could I trust Him with this part of my being? After all, He knows how He made this introvert. I guess I can trust Him to give me a mouth...

*See Week 1 for my “Oh, Sweetie, you've never trusted me...” epiphany.