For Those Who Do Not Know

The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place,

and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, 

for those who do not know about God.

Disregard the study of God,

and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life

blindfold, as it were, with no sense of direction,

and no understanding of what surrounds you.

This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.

- J.I. Packer, in Knowing God (p.15)

Image via Pixabay

How Does the Musician Read the Rest?

I'm slowed down for awhile. I could feel it coming on for about a month and finally decided last weekend that I should go to the ER for the pain in my leg. Confirmed blood clot. The good news is that with a newer medication, I'm not as immobilized as I was ten years ago when I had a clot. The bad news is that we can't meet up and get our grands for a 10-day stay that we were all looking forward to next week. Bummer. :-(

None of us are exempt from trials and tribulations. My mother is having radiation treatment for a cancer on her ankle. Three appointments per week for six weeks. And a friend just had cancer surgery on her hand. If I took a few moments to think about it, I could go through the pews of our church and name many more friends who have toil and trouble in one form or another. Adam's Fall has brought suffering to us all.

As I was writing a card this morning to my friend who just had surgery, I tucked a little tract written by Elisabeth Elliot into the card. A long-time friend back home had sent it to me many moons ago, and God used it to speak encouragement into my heart. So much so that I had ordered a hundred copies to tuck into cards over the years.

I'd like to share its thought with you in hopes that God may use it to encourage you today as well. Elisabeth quotes the painter John Ruskin:

There is no music in a rest, but there is making of music in it. In our whole life-melody, the music is broken off here and there by 'rests,' and we foolishly think we have come to the end of time. God sends a time of forced leisure—sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts—and makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives and we lament that our voices must be silent, and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the Creator. How does the musician read the rest? See him beat time with unvarying count and catch up the next note true and steady, as if no breaking place had come between. Not without design does God write the music of our lives. But be it ours to learn the time and not be dismayed at the 'rests.' They are not to be slurred over, nor to be omitted, nor to destroy the melody, nor to change the keynote. If we look up, God Himself will beat time for us. With the eye on Him we shall strike the next note full and clear.

Disappointed, yes. Dismayed, no.
My music measure for now is a 'rest,' and the Master Musician will catch up the next note true and steady.

Image ~ Mrs. Meigs at the Piano Organ

Chase William Merritt, 1849-1916

public domain via WikiMedia Commons

Keep Silence, O My Soul

If I cannot keep silence over a disappointing soul 

(unless for the sake of that soul's good 

or for the good of others it be necessary to speak), 

then I know nothing of Calvary love.

~ Amy Carmichael

(from her little book If, based on her meditations on 1 Corinthians 13)

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

Try me and know my anxious thoughts;

And see if there be any hurtful way in me,

And lead me in the everlasting way.

~ Psalm 139:23-24

The Pain of Grace

Winter is Upon Us ~ J. Vanderbrink

Praying for friends this afternoon and evening, parents with huge disappointments and loss and questions about how to make things better with and for their almost-out-of-the-nest child. I wonder how many of us haven't walked that path at one time or another.  We did all we knew to do, but what is unfolding is very different than what we'd planned. Dreams didn't come true. 

The harvest is not what we expected, but what we must understand is that God is the Great Gardener. He has new seeds that He wants us to plant and then allow Him to give the increase. This was a great lesson to me as I read what was probably my most significant read in 2010--Lost in the Middle/ Midlife and the Grace of God by Paul David Tripp. It's about how we begin to look back on life's experiences and disappointments with regret and discouragement. It's about letting the pain of regret instead be the pain of grace--growing pains, if you will. Anytime in life. Anytime there's regret and deep disappointment, or grieving over a lost dream. 

There's much encouragement to be found if we can turn from our mourning. Let me share a bit with you as Tripp helps us to understand.  

 "In midlife God calls you to turn from mourning over your previous harvest to planting new and better seeds. Maybe you mourn about the harvest of your parenting. Plant new seeds. Maybe that means working to restore distant or broken relationships with your adult children. Or it could mean being a wise and godly grandparent, sowing spiritual seeds in the souls of the next generation. Perhaps you mourn that your life was controlled by your career. Take advantage of the time and economic freedom that midlife affords and plant new seeds. Work less and invest in family and ministry more. Perhaps you mourn the fact that you did not study Scripture more diligently in your youth. There are many opportunities to increase your knowledge of God's word and your potential for ministry. Perhaps you mourn over a selfish life, where all you earned was spent on a more comfortable life for you. Commit to finding specific ways that you can give and serve. Ask yourself: which of my gifts, experiences, resources, and wisdom can I use to serve others?

"You're now in the autumn of your life, and you're quite aware that the leaves are off the trees. You're standing in a pile of the leaves of your marriage, your parenting, your extended family, your friendships, your work, and your ministry. These leaves of the past have grown wrinkled and dry, and you know you cannot put them back on the tree. It's tempting to sit down in the pile and examine leaf after leaf and wish you were holding a new bud from a new sapling, but you aren't. The harvest has come in, and it is what it is. Yet in all of this there is hope because our Lord is the Lord of new seasons. With the new season comes the freedom to plant new and better seeds. With the new season comes the expectation of a new harvest of new fruit.

"Stand up and walk away from your pile of yesterday's leaves. Take the seeds of a new way into your hands, press them into the soil of your life, and thank God that you will live to see a better harvest."

 

 Click to go to Paul David Tripp Ministries