Morning Symphony

This morning I am sitting at a table outside of a cabin in the foothills of the Chilean Andes Mountains. We have come here for a little rest and fun before I leave Chile to return home. From where I sit I can look out over a deep valley and up to the tall hills on the other side. I can hear the river roar far below carrying tons of water – spring run-off from the mountains. The trees around me are Eucalyptus and give off a very distinct aroma. There are crickets everywhere, birds chirping, and roosters crowing. There is a slight breeze blowing which rattles the brittle Eucalyptus leaves and brings a little relief to the already 85 degree day. I can hear people playing in the distance. There is the cackle of some kind of turkey-looking bird that I’ve never seen before. A minute ago a gecko ran across my table and was not at all interested in my attempts to befriend him (the one in the commercial is much more sociable).

Everything is alive. Everything seems to have this perfect rhythm to it. It’s all doing what it’s supposed to be doing. There is a strange kind symphonic beauty to it all lead by a conductor who cannot be seen but whose presence is clearly obvious.

But I feel out of place here. There is a disconnect for me. Everything seems to be alive and have their specific function (except for the flies. I’ve yet to figure out their function or beauty). And yet sitting here in the middle of life and beauty I feel like I am the one thing that is out of place. I’m not sure what part to play in this symphony. I feel like I’ve been given an instrument but have no idea how to play it. Life seems to come naturally to the things around me but I don’t feel that same life inside of me. It’s not that death lives in me (if it’s even possible for death to live), it’s more an awareness of the absence of life.

I would love to enter into the symphony of life that fills this valley. But until the music overwhelms me once again and magically draws me into participation with it I am left to making a willful, conscious choice to join in. Psalm 63 begins with the present, unshakable reality that the psalmist is experiencing. “My soul thirsts for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” That is his current reality. But he doesn’t allow himself to stay there. He reflects back on his past experience with God. “I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.” Present reality leads to past reflection which then opens the way to a conscious choice for the future. “Because you are my help, I WILL sing in the shadow of your wings.”

The present reality of the psalmist hasn’t changed. He is still in, “a dry and weary land where there is no water.” What has changed is his decision to enter into life anyway. So I guess I will try and open my mouth and sing. It’s hard to compete with crickets and birds and wind and rivers, but I will try. Maybe the conductor won’t notice my feeble attempts to blend in. But then again, maybe he is the one who is inviting me to join them.

Pits and Rocks

I wish that life was such that we never had to go through difficult times more than once. I think that everyone should have to go through hard times once in their life. It creates strength of character and substance of soul. But I wish that we all only had to go through one of these per lifetime. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Learn your lessons, grab some maturity, and move on. Unfortunately for most of us it seems like life is a series of hard times. Once we go through one and are ready to get back into life as it should be we find ourselves dealing with something else.

There is a psalm that I have kept coming back to for many years.

“I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.” (Psalm 40)

Over the years this psalm has spoken to me in one of two ways. Sometimes it is literally my testimony. God has taken me through a rough time and now I see it behind me. He has lifted me out of the pit and now I stand firmly on solid ground singing my heart out in praise to Him. But there are other times when this psalm becomes more a cry of desperate hope. It becomes an intense plea that one day (and it better be soon) I will find myself rising out of the pit and watching all of the mud and mire disappear while I am placed on strong, solid ground. Then I will be able to sing a new song and move on in obedience to Him.

If you read this entire psalm carefully it is really a story of both places. Being in the pit and being on the rock. The psalmist is not saying, “You know, once I was in a pit and now I am out. Maybe you too will someday be out of your pit.” After verses 1-3 give testimony to being lifted out of the slimy pit he goes on in the psalm to say,

• “Do not withhold your mercy from me, O Lord” (v. 11)
• “Troubles without number surround me; my sins have overtaken me and I cannot see” (v. 12)
• “Be pleased to save me, O Lord, come quickly to help me (v. 13)
• “Yet I am poor and needy” (v. 17)

So which is it for this psalm writer? It is both. Life often takes us back and forth between spending time in the mud and mire, and spending time on a rock. It sometimes feels like just when we have learned the 4th verse to that new song while standing on the rock our feet begin to slip and we find ourselves standing in mud looking up at the slimy sides of the pit once again. This back and forth journey of pit to rock, rock to pit is an unsettling way to live and we sometimes go from sighs of relief to sighs of desperation.

This psalm, however, is not just a way of saying, “Sometimes life is great, and sometimes life stinks!” It goes much deeper than this. The point of this psalm is not the rescue from the pit to the rock, or slipping from the rock back into a pit. The point is found in verse 4, “Blessed is the man who makes the Lord His trust.” And the song that we sing, whether from the pit or from the rock, has only one verse and it says, “I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.” (v. 8) It’s a song of surrender and submission.

So even though the song may be new when you are standing on the rock, the words are still the same. That’s what ties the pit and the rock together. They are not 2 distinct places from each other. They are simply 2 different places from where we can sing the same song.

Hidden Mountains

The city of Santiago, Chile sits at the base of the Andes Mountains. These mountains loom over the city and appear almost as a kind of guardian or protector. Normally the house where I stay when I come here has a great view of the Andes. In the past I have been able to sit and look up at these magnificent examples of God’s power in creation. But this time it’s a little different. One of the first things I noticed when I arrived here was that a new apartment building has been built exactly where I used to be able to see the Andes. Now, instead of majestic, snow peaked mountains, you look up at a 15 story high rise. It’s an attractive building, but come on, no matter how creative man is he really can’t compete with the Andes Mountains.

Psalm 121 says, “I lift my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” Mountains don’t offer us safety and security but they remind us of what does. Our help and hope and strength don’t come from the hills or the ocean or anything in nature. It doesn’t come from the relationships that, in desperation, we sometimes think will save us. It doesn’t come from our jobs or being in touch with our inner whatever. Our help comes from the Lord who made all of these things and can use them to create His masterpiece within us.

The problem is that sometimes we can’t see this. Sometimes the things we so desperately long for (like hope and wisdom and encouragement) seem to be hidden from our view. Obstacles come. We get sick. Someone breaks our heart. A loved one dies. The economy falls apart. But, the thing that I can keep coming back to is that I have seen the mountains before. I’ve seen and experienced God’s grace and mercy many times and just because they may be hidden right now doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. When I got to the house here and looked up and couldn’t see the mountains I didn’t think, “Wow, someone moved the mountains.” I realized that the mountains were still there, but I just couldn’t see them right now.

I also know they are there because when I drive around the city, or even when I walk just a few blocks to the north or south of where I am, I can still see them. They’re still there. Which tells me that sometimes we just need a change of perspective to be reminded once again of the help that God offers to us. Sometimes moving, even just a little bit, from where we are is enough to show us once again the eternal, unchanging, magnificent strength of God.

A Springtime Reminder

As I write this entry I am in Chile. After 16 hours of travel I arrived in Santiago to the welcome embrace of close friends AND, sunshine. Since Santiago is almost as far south as we are north their seasons are reversed (they don't think so but they are. Who ever heard of 90 degree weather at Christmas time?). So I left the rainy, dark, cold fall of the Pacific Northwest and flew into springtime. It's easy to understand why the so-called snow birds fly south to Arizona and California in the winter time.

What a treat it was to sit out in the warm sunshine today and read and pray and think. As I sat there I tried to somehow will the sunshine into my soul and spirit because that is where I really need it. So with the sun above and the warm air all around me I picked up the book I am currently reading, Abba's Child, by Brennan Manning. I read a few pages and then I stopped cold (but not quite as cold as I would have a few days ago). These words jumped out at me, "The meaning of our lives emerges in the surrender of ourselves to an adventure of becoming who we are not yet." I thought for a few minutes about the trip I had just made from the dark and cold into the warm sunshine of Chile in the springtime. We often go through periods of having to wait for things to change, usually we are waiting for them to get better. Late fall and winter are like that. Things begin to hunker down. They go dormant. They lie in wait of another time when the warm sunshine will prompt within them the joy of new life.

"Who we are not yet" is the thing that gives us a reason to wait. It's what I am waiting for with great anticipation. I am tired of the hunkering down and dormancy of life right now. I am looking forward to the "not yet" that God has in store for me in His time and in His way. I hope that it is soon. Things seldom happen that quickly but I can still hope. But for now it was encouraging to hear these words that the meaning of my life emerges in the surrender of my life to the adventure of becoming. Sometimes I think I'd like to just skip the adventure and get right to the thing that I have been waiting to become. But the end result is not where "meaning" emerges. It comes out of surrender to the process of becoming that toward which God is drawing me. I deeply want to arrive at what God wants me to be. But I also deeply want my life to have meaning.

And so I yield once again to the process of getting there and am very grateful for a few minutes of springtime sun and warmth to remind me that though right now I am "not yet", I am on my way.

The Fourth Watch

"Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and
go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountain to pray. When
evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and He was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night He went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw Him walking on the lake, they thought He was a ghost. They cried out, because they all saw Him and were terrified. Immediately He spoke to
them and said: ' Take courage! It is I! Don't be afraid!' Then He climbed into the boat with them and the wind died down."

Mark 6:45-51

Normally I don't really like anyone calling me between 3:00 and 6:00 in the morning (the fourth watch of the night). Usually that means trouble. If the phone rings during that time I instantly get a pit in my stomach because that is just not the normal time you call someone, therefore, something must be wrong. One exception to this is when you are worried about one of your children and you get a call telling you that everything is OK. That is a welcome call. That's the kind of call you want to get in the middle of the night.

When Jesus came to His disciples during the fourth watch of the night they had been straining and fighting against the storm for some time. They were tired. They were afraid. They needed something from Jesus to help them and He gave it to them. They didn't need the assurance that the storm would be over soon. They didn't need a little humor to lighten the intensity of the situation. They didn't need a special word of prophecy or knowledge or wisdom that would help them put everything into perspective. What they needed was 3 simple phrases from their Lord: "Take courage! It is I! Don't be afraid!" When there is trouble in the middle of the night the only thing you really want and need is reassurance. That reassurance comes to us in the form of the presence of Jesus.

There are many times when I am straining like crazy at the oars of my boat, desperately trying to steer and control what is going on. I sometimes feel lost and lonely and confused. I feel like it I give up my straining I will give in to the storm and will be destoyed by it. I can sometimes get worried, fearful, and doubtful pretty easy these days. And no amount of straining at the oars seems to help. In fact, sometimes it takes away all my energy and strength which could be better placed in learning how to trust and listen to the voice of the One who comes to me in the fourth watch of the night and simply says, "Take courage! It is I! Don't be afraid!" In the end that is all I really need. The assurance of the presence of the Lord in the midst of my storm. I don't really need to know when the storm will end, or how we are going to get to the other shore (or IF we are going to get to the other shore). The most important thing I need in those moments is to hear the voice of Jesus assuring me that He is right there.

When our girls were little and were afraid or sick or unable to sleep we would rock them and sing softly to them. Eventually they would relax in our arms, not because all of their fears or illness or worries were gone, but simply because they knew someone was holding them who loved them and would never leave them in their distress.

So I for one would like more calls in the middle of the night. I would like more "fourth watch" experiences where I can simply hear the gentle, loving, reassuring voice of Jesus come to me when I am most afraid and most weary from my straining, and simply say, "Take courage! It is I! Don't be afraid!" Sometimes that's all I really need.