My Thanksgiving Psalm

O Lord, I am beset by weaknesses and You know them all.

My mind is so cluttered with unanswered questions that I cannot see my way forward. I grope about in the darkness trying to find my way.

And yet, this one thing I do know with a knowing that runs deep and true.

You love me, and I belong to You.

It seems to me that my prayers have little effect and I am tempted to give up.

And yet, this one thing I do know with a knowing that runs deep and true.

You love me, and I belong to You.

Weariness threatens to overwhelm my defences so that I begin to doubt my choices.

And yet, this one thing I do know with a knowing that runs deep and true.

You love me, and I belong to You.

Though I cannot see the end from the beginning and at times I cannot see anything at all, I will remember the one thing I do know with a knowing that runs deep and true and I will not fear.

I will remember, and so, the peace that sprouts from remembering will rise up once again to calm my unsettled mind and strengthen my doubting heart.

 For in this moment and in every moment You are with me.

You love me, and I belong to You, and your love never fails.

 I will leave the “seeing” to You

And I will sing of your love in the darkness.
For I am beginning to understand that the song sung in the darkness is the sweetest song of all.

Thank You!

All Thumbs

It has been a number of years since I travelled anywhere by train. A couple of weeks ago I made the trip from Guelph to Ottawa that way. It was comfortable and a great deal less stressful than driving on my own would have been. It had all the conveniences. You could purchase food and drink without ever leaving your seat in the event you hadn’t brought anything along with you. Wireless internet was available for those with laptops in their hand luggage. The attendants were pleasant and helpful and the whole trip went without a glitch.

I did discover that I am one of those people who find it impossible to read in a moving vehicle without suffering almost immediately from motion sickness. That meant that using my computer was also out of the question. I was left with very few options for occupying the hours stretching ahead of me. I could have slept I suppose but I wasn’t particularly tired. My seatmate showed little inclination for conversation and in fact, dozed off almost immediately. I glanced around at my fellow travellers and was struck by the fact that although every seat in the car was occupied there was not a single word being spoken anywhere. Each person seemed to be wrapped in his or her own personal cone of silence.

Everywhere I looked I saw gazes locked onto books or computer screens and ears stopped up with headphones attached to iPods or other devices. No one made eye contact at all with those seated right next to them. Every few minutes someone would pull out a blackberry or smart phone to check for messages and thumbs would fly over miniature keyboards as they responded or formulated text messages of their own. It always amazes me that anyone can type at such speeds using only their thumbs when I can hardly see the letters on the tiny keys without straining my eyes. We used to say that someone who was all thumbs was clumsy but that hardly holds true these days. It was fascinating to witness the silent activity going on all around me but it was also a little sad.

With all the ways that are available these days to get connected socially through electronics we’ve lost the art of connecting face to face. It’s possible to have a list of ‘friends’ numbering in the hundreds or thousands on social networking sites but I suspect it is a lot like an ocean that is only an inch or two deep. People who are very active on those sites often confess to feeling isolated and lonely. There is some value in tools like Facebook. The problem comes when they take the place of real interpersonal contact. We need the chance to look into each other’s eyes and share a hug from time to time. Human contact that involves more than our thumbs is essential to our mental and emotional health.

I don’t believe we were designed to walk alone. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to dispense with the handheld devices and lose the headphones from time to time to focus on the person next to us. If we’re not careful we’ll forget how.

Embracing the Seasons

October’s vibrant colors have given way to November’s somber grays and browns and we’ve greeted the morning once or twice to find snow dusting the grass like icing sugar. My brother, Dave, has reluctantly parked his motorcycle for another year and we are all beginning to think of the coming of winter’s short days and shoveling driveways. Until recently Dave has looked on winter as a time to hunker down and wait with patient endurance for spring to arrive so he could start living again. Last year he decided on a radical change of attitude. Instead of hibernating, he would embrace the season.

He bought himself a pair of snowshoes and a toboggan and began to accumulate some warm winter gear. He made a plan to travel to Northern Ontario where he would undertake a 10 kilometer hike across the ice of the North Channel to a tiny island in Lake Huron. There he would build himself some sort of shelter in the snow and camp for a couple of nights before making his way back. The trip took considerable planning as he tried to anticipate the problems he might face and sort out the minimum of what he would need to survive. He really didn’t want to pull any more weight than absolutely necessary. Finally, he came to our place to practice tramping around the yard in his new snowshoes pulling the loaded toboggan on the end of a rope that he tied to a belt around his waist. He thought he ought to be able to do 10 kilometers even if he’d never done it before.

The date of his departure arrived and it looked like the weather would be cold and fine for the weekend. We thought of him often during the course of those next few days, wondering how he was getting along and waiting eagerly to hear all about it. The trip went well all things considered. He managed the trek across the ice safely in spite of climbing over an ice ridge to set his boot down in water on the other side. A headlong sprint to solid footing saved him from a soaking. Unfortunately, the toboggan trailing on the end of the rope behind him got caught on the ridge and he was yanked to a sudden stop that landed him flat on his keester. He picked himself up and once he’d stopped hyperventilating, he managed to work the toboggan free. The rest of the crossing was accomplished without a hitch. Once he reached the island he searched out a flat spot in front of a rock face that would allow him to build a shelter and have a fire inside. There was plenty of dead wood around for fuel and he managed to gather enough to get him through that first night. He discovered just how much work it took to survive in the wilderness in winter. Every waking moment was devoted to the endeavor. He made improvements to his camp the next day and was able to pass the second night in almost comfort. At the end of his stay he left his isolated hideaway with the satisfaction of knowing that he’d achieved all he set out to do. In a small way he’d pitted himself against nature and won. There was nothing easy or fun about it but he came home feeling immensely pleased with himself. He could say without reservation that it was good.

There is no doubt that some seasons are tougher than others. I can hunker down and wait for better days before I start living again or I can decide, like Dave, to embrace each season as it comes. Embracing the seasons of my life will look different for me than it will for someone else. We’re all individuals after all. Perhaps this winter I’ll practice by trying something new of my own. I may even discover something about myself in the process. Whether it turns out to be fun or just plain difficult I’ll be able to say without reservation that it was good.

Sabbath Rest

We’ve been having a series of teachings at church on the Anchors of Our Faith, one of which is Sabbath Rest. That particular message is still to come but I was recently chatting with the woman who will be teaching it and she was talking about how God has built a Sabbath into all of nature.

I look out my window and see evidence of that. The leaves have fallen from all the Maples in the yard. The last of the corn has been harvested and the fields lie dormant. Some of those fields will eventually be left to lie fallow for a season so that the soil has a chance to replenish itself. Animals designed to hibernate are doing their last fattening up before their long winter sleep.

God knew what we needed when He made it a commandment to remember the Sabbath. Unfortunately, many of us no longer make much of a distinction between one day of the week and another. People often have no choice but to work on Sundays and even for those blessed with having it a day off from regular work find themselves using that day to catch up on all the chores they were unable to get to during the week. I don’t find attending church particularly restful as Bev and I generally find ourselves serving in some capacity on most Sundays. There are those who do try to take what remains of the day for a bit of relaxation and I suppose that I fall into that category. We might use the time for visiting, or curling up with a good book, or perhaps going for a drive in the country. I’m not sure that is enough.

Over the course of my Christian life there have been seasons where I’ve felt like I have nothing left to give and I end up disengaging from just about everything, sometimes for a year or more. I know that I am by no means the only one to have experienced this. I somehow think we may be missing some of what God meant by Sabbath Rest and why it needs to happen on a weekly basis. Perhaps that’s why we end up feeling so weary and burnt out from time to time.

I am looking forward to hearing the message on this subject. I suspect I have something to learn

Love Messages Gone Astray

My husband, Bev, and I celebrated our 30th anniversary this week. What a journey it has been! I think marriage is the wheel that God, the Master Potter, uses to build and shape us into the work of art He intends us to be. Merging two lives into one is never easy. We’ve had to learn a lot of lessons along the way, some of them more difficult than others.

We’d been married about 10 years and we were going through an unsettled time. We weren’t dealing with conflict but there was an ongoing sense of frustration, discontent and just plain unhappiness in our marriage. When we finally got around to talking about it we discovered that both of us were feeling like we were the only one putting any effort into the relationship. We felt unloved, unappreciated, and worst of all, that we were somehow a disappointment to one another. The initial conversation was extremely difficult. I am an emotional being and I reacted to the whole thing with a lot of fear, pain, and anger…not exactly productive. Bless Bev for being willing to try again after we’d had a chance to process things with God.

Someone loaned us a copy of “The 5 Love Languages” by Gary Chapman and it was a revelation. The premise is that every person is unique in how they give and receive love. They speak their own love language and it may or may not be the same language that you speak. He talks about five different ways that people express and recognize love. They are quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.

A little self analysis began to bring some clarity into what we were experiencing. I was expressing love to my husband every day through acts of service and yet he was feeling unloved. The message was getting lost in translation. He was attempting to express love through physical touch and I was interpreting it as need. What I really wanted was for him to bring me a cup of coffee from time to time. We weren’t speaking the same language. We had to learn to recognize and value the expressions of love that we’d been completely overlooking up to that point. We also had to commit to learning to express ourselves in new ways, ways that would have maximum meaning to the one receiving.

We learned to see each other’s hearts in the everyday exchanges in our lives. We learned to deeply appreciate the many various ways our love reveals itself, both the natural and the learned. It’s made an unbelievable difference. The distance that had been developing between us through misunderstanding disappeared. It takes work to speak in a language that doesn’t come naturally but that’s what commitment is all about. It may not be easy or even comfortable but the results are truly worth the effort.

Giving Thanks

We celebrated Thanksgiving this past weekend with a great dinner shared with family and friends. It was a time to remember the many ways we’ve been blessed throughout the year and to focus on what is good in our lives. I’m glad we have a holiday that is dedicated to giving thanks. On the other hand, thankfulness is an attitude of the heart that I need to practice year round rather than just on one special weekend in October.

There have been times in my life when I have felt overwhelmed by problems, both my own and those of others. Many times my prayers seemed an exercise in futility. I’d rattle off my petitions to the Almighty with no real sense that they were actually going anywhere. I pictured them bouncing around the ceiling like the bubble that bounces endlessly around the television screen when the DVD player is in sleep mode. Either that or I imagined them accumulating like cobwebs in the corners up there until it would get so crowded that they’d begin to drift down to settle on the floor under my feet. I couldn’t understand why my prayer life was so lifeless when the needs all around me were so great.

I was forgetting something important. In Philippians 4:6 it says “Do not be anxious for anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, WITH THANKSGIVING, present your requests to God…” Thanksgiving was the missing ingredient. It was not only missing from my prayers but it was missing in my heart. I began to discover that a thankful spirit is something that needs cultivation. When I practice thanksgiving on a daily basis my perspective undergoes a transformation. Rather than focusing on problems, I find myself focusing on God, on His love and His faithfulness. My faith comes to life and the ceiling that once seemed like such an impermeable obstacle simply disappears leaving an open heaven above me.

The next verse goes on to say that if we present our requests with thanksgiving then the peace of God which is beyond understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Prayer out of a thankful heart gets carried heavenward on wings of faith and the result is a peace like nothing this world can offer. It sounds like a good deal to me. I’d better pay attention to the words of an old chorus we used to sing in church years ago. It said to “Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your many blessings, see what God has done.”

A Light in Dark Places

Not so long ago I wrote about the heavens declaring the glory of God after viewing the starry night sky in Northern Ontario. The memory of that sight still lingers, an inspiration and a reminder of His presence in my life. This past Sunday during our worship service it occurred to me that not only do the heavens declare His glory. Because He dwells in the hearts of those who belong to Him, we carry that glory within us.

There is a scene in Lord of the Rings, a favourite movie of mine, where Galadriel gives a gift to Frodo, the ring-bearer. She hands him a crystal vial and tells him that contained within it is the light of the elves’ most beloved star. She expresses her hope that it will be a light to him in dark places. Indeed it proves to be just that when, later in the movie, Frodo finds himself alone in the dark facing a dreadful foe. At the last minute he remembers the gift and holds it high. The light flares to life in all its glory, pushing back the darkness and causing Frodo’s assailant to shrink away.

I am like that crystal vial, a vessel that contains the light of God’s glory. That light is meant to be displayed to the world just as the starry skies display His glory for all to see. It is meant to be a light to others in the dark places of the world. Am I transparent enough for others to see His hand at work in my life? Do I glow with the kind of peace and joy and strength that comes from knowing that He loves me? When others look at me, do they find their hearts inspired to worship the God who is the source of all that is good in me? I’d like to be as radiant as the stars adorning the night sky but all too often I think His glory in me is obscured, hidden by the hurts or fears or sorrows that remain undealt with in my life.

I find I very much want to be rid of the things that keep the light that is in me from shining out to a hurting world. It’s time to ask Him to show me those things He has been longing to heal and set me free from. It’s time to give Him permission to blow the clouds away. I want others to look at my life and know that there is hope. Like Galadriel’s gift to Frodo, I have the potential to be a light to those in dark places. Lord, let your glory shine in me.