All The Things We Did Not Need

Unlike my husband who shops only from a list, I regularly find impulse items appearing in my grocery cart.  It is not that they won't be consumed, but they were neither planned nor considered needful at the time.

Once long ago, on a hot summer day in Memphis at Aldi's grocery store, the watermelons looked particularly good and so inexpensive that I purchased two.  Even as I was loading my car, I questioned myself, "What were you thinking?" One watermelon is a lot for just two people, but we definitely didn't need an extra one.

After I returned home, I took a meal I had prepared for a family in our church who were caring for a child who was chronically ill.   I pulled into their driveway and walked up to their front porch, carrying the meal. As the mom opened the door, I realized that I had forgotten to unload the watermelons at home with the rest of my groceries.  They were still sitting in the car, like toddlers strapped in their car seats.

I handed my friend an aluminum pan of "piggies in a blanket," ready to stick in the oven at suppertime for her hungry tribe of kids. Her son who was not feeling well was standing by her side with a forlorn look on his face. 

On a whim flying through my thoughts, I said. "Oh, I have something else, if you are interested."  I walked back to the car, the hot humid summer air already covering us like a wet woolen blanket.  Still fresh from the air-conditioned market, the hard green skin of the melon felt cool in my hands.

As I returned, I could see her son's eyes light up. "How did she know?" he asked his mom with the sheer glee of a four year old.  For a brief moment, my friend could not speak.

"Our son has not been eating much, just not feeling well, due to his medications.  Earlier this morning, he had told me that what he wanted more than anything today was a watermelon.  I told him that I was sorry that I didn't have any, or the way to get one today."

"And then, here you come with exactly what we needed. How did you know?"

God equips each of us with abilities, resources we didn't know we have, gifts that seem unnecessary or superfluous at the time, and sometimes the muscle memory to heft a heavy load someone is carrying.  God even embeds tiny hidden details that sneak into our thoughts to sway our decisions, directions, and prayers.  God provides what we need.  But sometimes He provides all the things we think we do not need.  Because someone else might need them. Am I paying attention?  On that particular day, what I thought I didn't need was exactly as God intended.

And it's never just about a watermelon.

I was totally unaware of what God was doing. I did not comprehend at the time how buying two melons would bless the life of a little boy.  I did not audibly hear God saying, "Buy two!" But He covers all of us with His faithfulness and grace. God is good, even when we don't understand and even when life is hard. 

Praise God for how He intervenes in our lives.  He whispers, "Trust Me in this."  May He forgive us for us seeing our mistakes as an interruption.  God does not guide in mysterious ways. God redeems according to His intricate designs.  His redeeming stretches over past, present and future tense. Why are we so surprised?

Are we listening? Are we following Him into this day? We cannot help but be changed by it.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace,

that we may receive mercy 

and find grace to help in time of need.

                      Hebrews 4. 16

 

Put A Prayer On That

Sometimes we just pray.  Sometimes we really need to pray. 

Sometimes we can't pray fast enough, slow enough, or not long enough.  Sometimes too many words trip over each other.

Sometimes we want to pray but our hearts are not in it. We are slammed, the wind is knocked out of us. We face an unexpected collision, lights are extinguished, and food tastes like ash in our mouths. We are shocked, drained, or sucker-punched. Out of the depths I cry to You, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Psalm 130. 1 We don't know how to respond, and no words come at all.

But then we remember God hears, God listens, and God is still with us. And He knows what to do.  In many occasions, words have very little to do with it.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  Romans 8. 26  He understands the ancient language of groaning and turns our pain into prayers. Because some things are quite radically too deep for words.

We pray to God,

pray for,

pray over,

pray through,

pray to get going,

pray to shelter in place,

and pray in sequential laps over and over.

We pray for a covering, for sutures, a shield snapped in place, a way through the thicket, come alongside others, take His hand or grip someone else's, nourish, cultivate, abide, listen, bring healing, touch the bottom of a really deep pool, stand our ground, or just be grounded. 

Put a prayer on that.

And as a response, God does not show up. God shows us how to be filled, how to fill another, stand in the gap, pull someone out, realize our own need for grace and extend it to another, learn how to love someone, figure out how to spell forgiveness in tangible ways, realize that He is God, and that He is still God, even in this really hard appointment.

...a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God. Hebrews 7. 19

We come before God with anxieties, fears and weariness.  And when we seek Him in the midst of the chaos, we always leave aware of even more:  His Word, His strength, and His Presence.  He shows us the way through and often with unexpected blessings of legendary size that come strangely.

What if we prayed?

What if we didn't?

The unknown is just unfamiliar territory to us. But God is already here working His wonders.  His triumphs over our Goliaths may not be what we expect.  But praying gets us to the point of trusting Him in both the ordinary and the extraordinary.  And we find not an answer, but The LORD is there (Ezekiel 48.35)

Have I even considered asking God about this situation?

In this broken world, it has been said that we are six inches from a spider and twenty feet from the next cavernous pothole. That alone is enough to stop us in our tracks. But God instructs us to pivot in our hard and scary stuff with a new heart and thereby respond differently.

Pray without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5. 17  In all things, about all things, through all things.  Doing something everyday for a long time makes it really hard not to do it.

If we do not pray on the ordinary days, will we even know how to pray through the crisis?

Praying trains our hearts for what is now and what is ahead, one difficulty and then the next.  Ask any long-distance runner: endurance does not just arrive with a two hour Amazon delivery. Praying is not a daily exercise, but an ongoing experience through which God changes and strengthens us.

"If we do not do the running steadily in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis." --Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, September 11. 

How can we handle this impossible situation before us?  Put a prayer on that.

Even Dropping The R

 

A couple months ago, I wrote about how God brings us through. But as we pray about our situations, we can drop the R.  Because God does not just carry us through. God carries us even though.

The word through implies movement in time, space or experience, from one definable point to another. The word though seems like we are stuck with what we didn't expect or want, or that something did not happen at all. 

Sometimes we are holding too tight to our own ideas about what should happen, gripping an idol, or (gasp) telling God what to do, when and how. But all along when we confront a rather jarring though, God is not restricting us, but radically enlarging our circumstances, our abilities, or our hearts.  God is using us for something deeper in His purposes.

After my first several years in journalism, at a weekly editorial meeting, the staff all knew that a promotion was going to be announced that morning.  I had been working hard and seemingly the next in line to move up a notch on the masthead. Then without warning, an associate's name was announced. And he received the honor. I was devastated.  I cried all the way home.

But little did I realize at that moment how profoundly God was ingrained in what looked to me as being bypassed for promotion.  Because God was making my path straight in a different direction.  In the next couple of years, God opened an even bigger door that I didn't see coming.  Not getting that promotion made it easier to leave the company when our family was relocating out-of-state.  And then, I was asked to write and produce projects as a freelance writer, ironically for the same boss.  Suddenly finding myself with three babies at the time in a remote location (and one more daughter to come), I was making more money working part-time at home than I did as a full-time editor.

Even though, because that, nevertheless, while in order to, so even..... Though is not an end in itself, as I discovered, but relates to a situation backwards and forwards.  As I learned in this circumstance, and numerous others in life:  "but little did I realize."

We are standing in the middle of the meanwhiles.  The story is not over yet.  The reality of God's Presence is not contingent on how we happen to feel that day.  Or what appears before us.  Even in what looks like is standing in our way.

Because we forget that God redeems the most impossible, inconceivable, unbelievable situations for our good and the well-being of countless others.  Not just redeeming sometime in the future, but in present tense. And not just about ourselves. When the outcome is not what we expect, God still redeems in one way or a million.  No matter what we see, no matter what unfolds, no matter if we understand or not, we can trust Him even though.

God sees us.  God hears us.  God is carrying us.

Though is a word of trust. No matter what.

Though is a promise of hope. God is redeeming. 

Though is a word of commitment.  I can stake my life on Him, even in this.

God is bringing greater good, even in what we see, even in what is completed far beyond our lifetimes.

Though is a word of Presence. "Do not fear. I am with you still."

God is with us. God is working. God loves us, despite the forecast, even so, nevertheless, and in spite of everything.

As we pray through our experiences, we can drop the R. God is true and faithful in bringing us through, but also in the thoughs of life.

In the through and in the though, we are changed by God, not defeated or lost or paralyzed, but stronger in unexpected ways and in uncharted territory.  We are not just enduring confusion or pain. God has not abandoned us. But God is binding ourselves to Himself, even more, even in this.

Though the fig tree should not blossom, 

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail,

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold, 

and there be no herd in the stalls,

     yet I will rejoice in the LORD. 

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.  

God, the Lord, is my strength. 

He makes my feet like the deer's. 

He makes me tread on my high places. 

                            Habakkuk 3. 17-19

 
Even though. And all the way through.