Jer 39.17: But I will deliver you on that day, says the Lord, and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid.

What is the thing you most fear and most earnestly pray about, the thing that you most dread?  If you love your Lord and yet know your own weakness, it is that something may happen to sweep you off your feet, or that your strength may be drained and you may yield and fall, and fail Him at the end.  The lives of many are shadowed by this fear.

But take comfort.  The God who knew the heart of His servant Ebed-melech knows our heart too.  He knows who the men are (what the forces of trial are) of whom we are afraid.  And He assures us and reassures us.  The Bible is full of “Fear nots.”  You shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid.  (Amy Carmichael)

The Voice

I am afraid of silence.  I am afraid
Of my own soul.  I am afraid of hearing
A voice–one voice above all voices–made
Clear in the silence.  I shall grow old fearing
This silence that goes with me wherever I go.
I cannot keep it in or bar it out.
Always within, around, above, below,
It beats upon me.  I am hedged about
Most utterly.  Surrounded.  Yet I raise
Even now a futile barrier of sound
Against the voice in silence I dispraise,
Against the voice I dread that hems me round;
To which, did I but listen, I should be
Afraid of nothing.  Nothing could frighten me.

Sr. Maris Stella

The reason why singing is such a splendid shield against the fiery darts of the devil is that it greatly helps us to forget him, and he cannot endure being forgotten.  He likes us to be occupied with him, what he is doing (our temptations), with his victories (our falls), with anything but our glorious Lord.  So sing.  Never be afraid of singing too much.  We are much more likely to sing too little.  (Amy Carmichael)

The Hebrew word for faith (emúnah) derives from the stem emeth, faithfulness, one of God’s greatest attributes.  God is merciful and faithful (hesed we’ emeth, Gen 24.27).  We might as well say, tender and tough.  For emeth evokes the image of a rock on which we can lean or build.  God will not move; we can always count on him.  Our faith is the act of leaning on the toughness or ‘sturdiness’ of God.  The liturgical word ‘Amen’ has the same stem.  To say ‘Amen’ is above all to believe; it is the act of affirming the sturdiness of God as it comes through to us from his Word or from the person of Jesus.  The Apocalypse of John says of Jesus that he is at once amen and pistos–faithful (Rev. 3.14).  He is faithful in two directions.  It is his privilege boundlessly and, as it were, recklessly to lean against his Father, because he as no other may count on his Father’s power and ‘sturdiness.’  Similarly in his relation to us he becomes the eminently sturdy and powerful one against whom we on our part may lean just as recklessly and boundlessly.  (André Louf, Tuning Into Grace)

Mark 6.39  And He commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass.

Psalm 23.2  He makes me lie down in green pastures.

Those who do most in the day and who always have time for one thing more are those who know what it is to sit down on the green grass.  It is not the bustling, chattery people who do most for others.  It is those who know most of the quietness.

Before our Lord Jesus could feed the people, He had to make them sit down.  Before He can feed us we too must sit down.  David sat before the Lord; he was quiet before his God.  Even if we have not a long time to spend in the morning with our God, much can be received in a very few minutes if only we are quiet.  Sometimes it takes a little while to gather our scattered thoughts and quiet our soul.  Even so, don’t hurry; make it sit down on the green grass.

Gather my thoughts, good Lord, they fitful roam,
Like children bent on foolish wandering,
Or vanity of fruitless wayfaring;
O call them home.

The Grit on the Track

The ground is always there witnessing
how you walk.  You need light to travel
a dark path, and you need to travel light.
Otherwise the shadow that turns out to be
a boulder or a root will trip you,
and your heavy pack will bear you down
into the hard anguish of gravel
that is more than your knees can bear.
Even roadside dust clings to your heels as if
God is in every crystal of sand.

Gravity and the possibility of falling
will keep you aware.  In the twilight you
come home from walking the dog in the woods
with the walk still clinging to you–twigs
and the stain of berries on your soles.
Each clot of sludge from the forest floor
answers back–another footfall.  This is all
my handwork, he is saying.  Stay with this mud,
this humus.  Every next mile you walk
will be a revelation.

It may happen that for a certain time a man is illumined and refreshed by God’s grace, and then this grace is withdrawn.  This makes him inwardly confused and he starts to grumble; instead of seeking through steadfast prayer to recover his assurance of salvation, he loses patience and gives up.  He is like a beggar who receives alms from the palace, and feels put out because he is not asked inside to dine with the king.  “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20.29).  Blessed also are those who, when grace is withdrawn, find no consolation in themselves, but only continuing tribulation and thick darkness, and yet do not despair; but, strengthened by faith, they endure courageously, convinced that they do indeed see him who is invisible.  (St. John of Karpathos)

The first is A Grace Disguised, how the soul grows through loss, by Jerry Sittser.  As many of you know, I have gone through a lot of loss in my own life.  Consequently I am cautious about recommending books about loss.  I am only half way through Jerry’s book, but I can highly recommend what I’ve read so far.  He lost his wife, his mother, and his four-year-old daughter within minutes of a head on car crash caused by a drunk driver.  Some excerpts:

“All people suffer loss.  Being alive means suffering loss.”

“I question whether experiences of severe loss can be quantified and compared.  Loss is loss, whatever the circumstances.  All losses are bad, only bad in different ways.  No two losses are ever the same.  Each loss stands on its own and inflicts a unique kind of pain.  What makes each loss so catastrophic is its devastating, cumulative, and irreversible nature.”

“Sudden and tragic loss leads to terrible darkness.  It is as inescapable as nightmares during a high fever.  The darkness comes, no matter how hard we try to hold it off.  However threatening, we must face it, and we must face it alone.
“Darkness descended on me shortly after the accident . . . .”

“Loss forces us to see the dominant role our environment plays in determining our happiness.  Loss strips us of the props we rely on for our well-being.  It knocks us off our feet and puts us on our backs.  In the experience of loss, we come to the end of ourselves.
“But coming to the end of ourselves, we can also come to the beginning of a vital relationship with God.  Our failures can lead us to grace and to a profound spiritual awakening.  This process occurs frequently with those who suffer loss. . . .”

I’ll talk about the second book tomorrow.