octolilly [through the years]

Waiting, and listening
Hoping and missing all of our time left alone
I’m the one cutting the rope
Frostbite in winter,
‘Cause like a splinter
You come and follow me down
I’m the one cutting the rope

In the early moments of the New Year, I find myself curled up in bed, with a large glass of water by the bed. The heat is on and my electric blanket is starting to be a little smothersome. I am playing Evergreen by Switchfoot and the words are powerful. Tonight wasn’t everything that New Years normally is. I don’t know if it was so much about miscommunication or if it was about mislead expectations. But it has left me wide-eyed and quiet. Pondering, even.

And I think, perhaps, this is a good way to find one’s self at the beginning of a new year. It’s a new chapter, a new song, a new chorus – and these places should be taken serious. This New Year can be the start of Something Grand or the beginning of a Great Downfall. Each of my steps really does matter.

Remembering the steps and pitfalls of 2005 brings a sharp pain and I hesitate when thinking that those places were worth the lesson I learned. But as Carlyle once said, “All thought worth thinking is conceived in the furnace of suffering.” The deepest wounds have the ability to transform my heart into being more like Him. It is simply what I do with the pain that matters. Joy is sorrow inside out. Joy is sorrow overcome.

In Mountains of Spices by Hannah Hurnard, Grace and Glory and the King walk around the mountain slopes while he explains to her the nature of the camphire bushes with produce the fruit of joy. In an amazing and very tender scene, he recites the story of how they are stripped bare and go through a night of sorrow before they can produce sweet perfume. It all becomes worth it when the season changes and oil is ready to be extracted. It is then called the morning of joy. The King and Grace and Glory stand side by side as they listen to the birds begin a lovely song.

Hark to love’s triumphant shout!
Joy is born from pain,
Joy is sorrow inside out,
Grief remade again.

Broken hearts look up and see
This is love’s own victory.

Here marred things are made anew,
Filth is here made clean,
Here are robes, not rags, for you,
Mirth where tears have been.
Where sin’s dreadful power was found,
Grace doth now much more abound.

Hark! such songs of jubilation!
Every creature sings,
Great the joy of every nation,
Love is King of kings.
See, ye blind ones! shout, ye dumb!
Joy is sorrow overcome.

Like Jeremiah said, all of these hard places are things I’ll never forget. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. If is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.

So, I sit here on this New Year morning and hope and pray that I won’t cut the ropes to my source. It is easy to say the right words, easy to live the pretend life but at night when I close my eyes – You know if my heart is ever true. You are all that matters. When I lack joy, when I lack victory and when I lack love, challenge me to find my satisfaction in You alone. Understand me before I speak, and teach me what really matters.

The sun will rise soon and tackle the moon
Chasing it still in the sky
All that I’ve got is tonight
Excuses and reasons,
And now tis the season
For all that I never got right
All that I’ve got is tonight

The night is a crow saying, “Come hold me”
All that I know is I’ve been so lonely for you
All that I knew, and all that I know found itself under Your reign
I want to be evergreen

Holiday end,
I’m here once again,
And I’m left alone on the bus with my
Head on the ground,
In hopes that I’m found by you
This time around
I want to be evergreen,
I want to live all year round

If all the valleys and all the missteps give me but one chance, then may I offer that moment to You. May my feet trod lightly through the world I live in and may I learn to be rich in spirit. I want to be as the evergreen tree, living all year round. And I want to be like the birds, wheeling about in a boundless sky – spelling out a message of a higher life, on a higher plane. A winged life in the high places, where all the loveliest of songs are sung.

I just attended the midnight advance screening of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. It was lovely – even more than what I had thought possible.

On the ride home, Daniel and I were discussing whether one should look at The Chronicles of Narnia as solely a great piece of fiction or whether to admit to the symbolism and imagery that mirrors strong truths of our Christian faith.

I’m not sure that we reached a decision or even a strong opinion because we were half-asleep and much more concerned with not running off the road. But I do know that Edmund’s selfish hunger for Turkish Delight (to the point that he betrayed those he loved best) was an accurate picture of our depraved souls.

While rounding the curvy roads in the thick fog tonight, and pondering everything I saw tonight – I flipped the radio to a station that I rarely listen to. My aunt Judy was singing and I couldn’t keep the tears back as she sang.

Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb
Redeemed through His infinite mercy,
His Child and forever I am.

Watching Aslan give himself to save poor Edmund was powerful. Of course, Edmund had no idea of the cost of his actions and to be quite honest – his ungodly hunger for Turkish Delights probably didn’t go away with Aslan’s redemption.

But remembering redemption is a powerful thing.

In a new chapter, learning a new song. That has been my heartbeat for the past few weeks. After a long and tiresome fight with past wounds, it feels as though I have been brought full circle. I sought wise counsel on a few issues and in so doing; I was reminded of the indelible grace of our Lord.

Turning a fresh leaf (or learning a new song) seems like an impossible task in so many ways, but I’m reminding myself that I am not alone. God does this through me. My task is to submit my life to Him and be an example of what His power and love can do.

While sitting on the swing at my parent’s house last night (in the bitter cold!), Daniel and I were pondering on how does one really give up your dreams and expectations and simply let Christ work in you? We speculate on the high divorce rates and mutter that we, as Christians, would never get that far. But it is a serious thing to realize that you are just two sinners (who have selfish natures) trying to become one. It is only when we connect intimately with Him that our deepest needs of love, acceptance and significance are met.

God deals with impossibilities. It is never too late for Him to do so, when the impossible is brought to Him, in full faith, by the one in whose life and circumstances the impossible must be accomplished if God is to be glorified. If in our own life there have been rebellion, unbelief, sin, and disaster, it is never too late for God to deal triumphantly with these tragic facts if brought to Him in full surrender and trust. It has often been said, and with truth, that Christianity is the only religion that can deal with man’s past. God can “restore the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25); and He will do this when we put the whole situation and ourselves unreservedly and believingly into His hands. Not because of what we are but because of what He is. God forgives and heals and restores. He is “the God of all grace.” Let us praise Him and trust Him. [Streams]

“We have a God who delights in impossibilities.” – Andrew Murray

He sat by a fire of seven-fold heat,
As He watched by the precious ore,
And closer He bent with a searching gaze
As He heated it more and more.
He knew He had ore that could stand the test,
And He wanted the finest gold
To mould as a crown for the King to wear,
Set with gems with a price untold.
So He laid our gold in the burning fire,
Tho’ we fain would have said Him ‘Nay,’
And He watched the dross that we had not seen,
And it melted and passed away.
And the gold grew brighter and yet more bright,
But our eyes were so dim with tears,
We saw but the fire–not the Master’s hand,
And questioned with anxious fears.
Yet our gold shone out with a richer glow,
As it mirrored a Form above,
That bent o’er the fire, tho’ unseen by us,
With a look of ineffable love.
Can we think that it pleases His loving heart
To cause us a moment’s pain?
Ah, no! but He saw through the present cross
The bliss of eternal gain.
So He waited there with a watchful eye,
With a love that is strong and sure,
And His gold did not suffer a bit more heat,
Than was needed to make it pure.

– Streams in the Desert

God in seeking his glory seeks the good of his creatures, because the emanation of his glory . . . implies the . . . happiness of his creatures. And in communicating his fullness for them, he does it for himself, because their good, which he seeks, is so much in union and communion with himself. God is their good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing but the emanation and expression of God’s glory. God, in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks himself, and in seeking himself, i.e. himself diffused . . . he seeks their glory and happiness.

Thus it is easy to conceive how God should seek the good of the creature . . . even his happiness, from a supreme regard to himself; as his happiness arises from . . . the creature’s exercising a supreme regard to God . . . in beholding God’s glory, in esteeming and loving it, and rejoicing in it.

God’s respect to the creature’s good, and his respect to himself, is not a divided respect; but both are united in one, as the happiness of the creature aimed at is happiness in union with himself.
– Jonathan Edwards

15 Implications by John Piper

1. God’s passion for his own glory and his passion for my joy in him are not at odds.

2. Therefore, God is as committed to my eternal and ever-increasing joy in him as he is to his own glory.

3. The love of God for sinners is not his making much of them, but his graciously freeing and empowering them to enjoy making much of him.

4. All true virtue among human beings must aim at bringing people to rejoice in the glory of God.

5. It also follows that sin is the suicidal exchange of the glory of God for the broken cisterns of created things.

6. Heaven will be a never-ending, ever-increasing discovery of more and more of God’s glory with greater and ever-greater joy in him.

7. Hell is unspeakably real, conscious, horrible and eternal – the experience in which God vindicates the worth of his glory in holy wrath on those who would not delight in what is infinitely glorious.

8. Evangelism means depicting the beauty of Christ and his saving work with a heartfelt urgency of love that labors to help people find their satisfaction in him.

9. Similarly Christian preaching, as part of the corporate worship of Christ’s church, is an expository exultation over the glories of God in his word, designed to lure God’s people from the fleeting pleasures of sin into the sacrificial path of obedient satisfaction in him.

10. The essence of authentic, corporate worship is the collective experience of heartfelt satisfaction in the glory of God, or a trembling that we do not have it and a great longing for it.

11. World missions is a declaration of the glories of God among all the unreached peoples, with a view to gathering worshippers who magnify God through the gladness of radically obedient lives.

12. Prayer is calling on God for help so it is plain that he is gloriously resourceful and we are humbly and happily in need of grace.

13. The task of Christian scholarship is to study reality as a manifestation of God’s glory, to speak about it with accuracy, and to savor the beauty of God in it.

14. The way to magnify God in death is by meeting death as gain.

15. “It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can.”
(C. S. Lewis)