His grand chiseling

I headed into the park one morning last week for a little hike, pulling my car into my same old spot, intending to take my usual route, so familiar that I often just follow the ascents and curves without thinking or seeing, and with my brain firmly stuck on cruise control.

But something shifted inside of me. I turned suddenly from the familiar, and instead, traveled my daily terrain in a new direction.  I scaled the same hills and entered the forest, but I saw it with fresh eyes.

Repetition sometimes digs a rut.  But wonder transforms a daily task into a sacred liturgy.

One familiar loop I ignored entirely.  One trail I went down instead of up.  I ascended the top of the hill from the opposite direction.  And towards the end of my time,  I stumbled upon a breathtaking path I had never seen before -- "I wonder where that goes."  It was only after layer upon layer of beauty that I noticed that the path ran parallel to my usual asphalt surface, revealing an astonishing splendor not twenty feet from the ordinary. 

I did my usual thinking along the way and writing in my head.  Out of the shadows, thoughts suddenly flowed freely like a flash flood -- of course, when I don't have anything to write with. I tried to memorize my words like a script. But now on this day from time to time, I even stopped to preserve these fleeting impressions and evaporating ideas by tapping into my phone, frantically searching for adequate words for what I was observing for the first time --tiny details that I had overlooked and the grand scheme of things I had run swiftly past on a daily basis.

One huge tree, I never noticed before, stood defiantly in the middle of a well-trodden trail on a downward slope, alive and well, still rooting itself deeply, reaching up in praise for longer than I have been alive.  I had always just viewed it as being in my way, just one more thing to skirt around.

A thousand shades of deepest green surrounded me, more colors than Crayola has names for them.  A thick rich canopy hovered above me, swirling like a Van Gogh painting, a fellowship of trees which someone either intentionally planted, or just as mindfully allowed to grow into what is now a majestic sanctuary. God alters the landscape with the righteous deeds of those who came before us and far beyond my time on this planet.

The voice of the LORD
      makes the oaks to whirl,
and strips the forests bare;
and in His temple all cry
                        "Glory!"

                   Psalm 29. 9

I longed to take off my shoes on this holy ground, right in the middle of a public park, right in the middle of my "ordinary day."

Picking my way down a root-crossed, rocky and unfamiliar trail, I could have been anywhere in the wilderness, indeed anywhere in the world, but suddenly the intimacy of the woods opened up, and I saw a little footbridge, a directional sign, and some cars erratically parked on the side of the road.  I knew exactly where I was after all. 

We reside in tiny rooms with bare walls that blind us to what lies beyond.  God does not intend for us to decorate these spaces, as if this is all there is, but witness His grand chiseling.  His faithfulness breaks through, and light seeps through the cracks.  His beauty appears through newly formed and unexpected windows, increasing vision for some, and for others sheer hope in impossible situations, the invisible now visible, that which has been there all along.

I knew His splendor was there.  I just did not expect such intensity.  We rarely do.

It was the same woods, but a different way of seeing.  That is how God redeems, even the ordinary.

"We shall not cease from exploration,
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started,
and know the place for the first time."

                           T. S. Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/t_s_eliot_109032

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/t_s_eliot_109032

Nothing to eat, nothing to wear

When our four daughters were younger and all at home, I would often find them – particularly after cross country practice – standing in the glow of the opened refrigerator, cooling down the entire house with its chill, looking completely dumbfounded.  “What are you looking for?” I would inquire.  They would stare a bit longer into the cavern, and reply more often than not, “There’s nothing to eat.”

And on school mornings, particularly when the three oldest all traveled through the early darkness to high school in Cincinnati, two would be inevitably and impatiently waiting on a particular sister – the one with the fullest closet.  “Car leaving!” our oldest would call up from the kitchen.  And her sister would respond, “I have nothing to wear.”

In both scenarios, they were paralyzed into inaction by how much lay before them.

I felt that way in the middle of the darkness the other night, when my mind was traveling faster than the speed limit without headlights, and my body simultaneously crying “Just. Go. To. Sleep.”  I took apart the day I had just traveled through, every decision, every conversation, what I had done, and as we reply in our church’s corporate confession of sin:  “the things left undone.”  Those incomplete things are what keep my thoughts pacing the imaginary hallways of the night.

I had managed once again to waste a perfectly good day.  I knew I needed to get some writing done.  But it was obvious what I was avoiding when I started to clean the baseboards.  Our house is never cleaner than when a writing project is on the day's agenda.

It appeared I accomplished a lot, just not what God intended. My day was stuffed with nothing to wear, turning away from the fridge still hungry as if it were empty.

Has the LORD as great delight

in burnt offerings and sacrifices

        as in obeying the voice of the LORD?

Behold, to obey

                      is better than sacrifice.

                                      1 Samuel 15. 22

It is not too different than when I would ask our youngest daughter to clean her room.  I would re-enter the mess an hour later, and find her rearranging her bookcase alphabetically by genre, the bed unmade, clothes hanging like prayer flags around the room.  Her older sister once even went to the extent of creating a card catalog for her books, while completely oblivious to a week’s history of elementary fashion.  Remarkable achievements, indeed, but not paying attention to what was asked of them.

What is needful is simply responding to Him.  It is what the Bible calls "heeding His voice," "following," "abiding," or "obeying." Not focusing on how much I can cram into the day, not “look at all the really good stuff I have done,” and then wonder why there are still gaping holes that keep me awake at night.  I am the one who abandoned His divine design for the day on the side of the road..

Help me not just to see the needs, O LORD,

help me to not just hear Your voice, 

              but help me to respond to You.

We have all

“...been appointed duties in His service.”

                1 Chronicles 24. 3

Am I doing what

      God has designed and appointed me today?

Nothing is random

      or insignificant in His name,

                                     for His kingdom,

                                     for His glory,

even in what may appear irrelevant,

ridiculous,

           a waste of time and energy,

      or a slowness in its ripening.

"You want me to do what?"

Even in this,

He beckons me,

              "Follow Me deeper."

One act of responding to God

   leads me to the next step

                         in following Him,

sometimes to remain in the familiar,

sometimes in the unexpected,

but always journeying into the profoundly eternal,

and even in what

            I can't yet see from here.

Not always the fireworks

God's hand in our lives
                  is not always revealed
by a huge fireworks display
   of monumental Fourth of July proportions.
But by the sneakiness of His grace
              in the unexpected,
and the most extraordinary ways
                    on the most ordinary days.

The profoundly significant
           sometimes appears only as a whisper.
Even in adversity and mystery
    --why is this happening like this???--
                 God is glorified,
                 even by our response.
"Trust Me in this." 
God can use even what I messed up
                        --or think that I ruined --
          because that is what His redeeming looks like.

God delivers in many unexpected packages
            and inconceivable dimensions.
Where did this come from?
Whether a package on the doorstep
                       tied with a big bow,
     something that is just not going right,
or that which stops me in my tracks,
                      God is working still,
             God is using even this.

I was running through the forest near my house,
my eyes down on the path,
thoughts elsewhere,
   watching carefully where to step next,
discerning what is only a fallen stick
                    or what could be a snake.
I glanced up as I rounded a turn in the road,
startled by a silent deer
    not six feet away on the edge of the trail,
looking at me right in the eyes,
          like God's faithfulness standing in the woods,
            His whisper,
            His Presence.
                       And I almost missed it.
               What other wonders have I not noticed?

God's voice is not always the loudest in the room,
His mighty works
           not always the fireworks,
but powerful and extreme
                right here,
                right where I am.

Don't miss this, He says.

...let the shadow go back ten steps.

                       2 Kings 20. 10

Not always in ways I expect,
     but marked by His profound Presence.

On the other side of that

A dear friend is emerging from a long and rocky place in her life, a tough road where things appeared unnecessarily hard, opportunities unraveled before her, details didn't work out as expected, and most of the time, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, many of us could do but pray.

And we did.  This patchwork group of praying women, not knowing the outcome, not even knowing the next step.  But we prayed.  We prayed a lot.  And God would remind me from time to time, "The prayer of the righteous has great power in its effect." (James 5. 16)

Even in what appears impossible..."there is a gut deep, intuitive refusal to accept the odds or to calculate too closely either the limits of the possible or the sneakiness of grace...[Prayer opens] the one who prays to broader dimensions of reality than he or she may have entertained before.  Once that happens, there can never again be quite an end of it.  Some part of us is taken captive or set free, and that shift changes the world a little...what might be changed in the world beyond us, what might be gracefully released in it by our prayers."  (Guerrillas of Grace:  Prayers for the Battle, Ted Loder)

Would life always be so hard for her?

But this group women kept praying -- praying for others, praying for each other -- knowing that each one of us had seen too much to question God in this. Even in this. It was not that God would not answer, but how.

God was working mightily.  We just couldn't yet see His handiwork in the midst of it, each mysterious stitch, each confusing turn in the road, even in what appeared as dead ends or deepest disappointments.  And even then, "God engineers the circumstances." (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest)

And suddenly, she emerged on the other side of that canyon, all those "misaligned" details converged -- the way only God can -- turning a desert place into pools of water, a long drought into a grove of enormous deeply rooted trees, God's faithfulness visibly before each one of us.

"...when you least expect it,
you see a crack open
and a different city appears."

          Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

God always answers, not in our timing, nor in our ways, but always in the unexpected revealing of His Presence and power.  It is not that God "shows up," but He is already here.  We are just catching up to Him, not the other way around.

As I ran through the forest a couple of days ago, overcome by God's beauty and the working of His mighty ways in this woman's life, I thought to myself:  "And if you knew the outcome, would you have worried as much?"

And immediately, God whispered to me:  "And if you did know, would you have prayed as much?"

Prayer is not the least I can do.
It is absolutely the most vital of all.

First response,
            not last resort.

What I have

My widowed grandmother came to live with my family before I was born.  Indeed, she had already been widowed for twelve tough years, working incredibly hard as a single mom to literally keep bread on the table. 

Those visible needs stirred up not despair, but immense currents of creativity in her.  I can remember many times as a young girl my grandmother taking what little she found in the fridge and a few cans from the pantry and serving a wonderful meal to unexpected --and unsuspecting --guests.

With her, it was never "I don't have enough,"  or "I can't afford that," but "what else can I do with that? How can I make it work?"  whether the fine art of creating casseroles or re-purposing worn out and outgrown clothing.  She did not just recognize need, but opportunity.  She knew how to respond to it, because she had already navigated a lot deeper turbulent waters than what was before her.

She was not paralyzed by what she did not have, but stirred to life by what she did.

When she came to live with us, she had virtually nothing monetarily to live on, she struggled daily with the deep physical pain of rheumatoid arthritis, but oh, what a blessing she brought to each of us.  What I remember most about her were her gifts of time and kindness.  As busy as she was, no matter how busy she was, even in the middle of some task, she set things aside to listen and respond.  She did not have money to lavish on the four kids in our family, but she had time -- she made time -- and always boatloads of kind and loving words.  She was available, not because she had nothing better to do, but because she knew the deep and enduring significance of being ready and present.

It has been so many incredible decades ago, but I can still hear her voice responding to me, "Well, darling, sometimes you just have to trust the LORD about that."  And over the years, how many times that truth has come almost audibly to the surface of my thoughts in times of need.  I witnessed the faithfulness of God lived out in her quiet selfless life.

Whereas all other childhood things and toys have been discarded or fallen apart, her gift of time and loving words continue to resonate in my life.   Her life was largely invisible to the outside world, but she invested generously in the relationships around her, no matter who it was.

Even confined to the house, she had a box of cards to send out an encouragement when she heard about someone struggling.  I think about how much she would have taken advantage of texting sunshine to others at a moment's notice. 

"I cannot do everything, but I can do something," says author Steven Garber in his book Visions of Vocation.

And indeed, she did.  On so many levels.  In word and deed and countless prayers.

What is on my radar today,
who has God placed on my heart,
       what can I do?

But Peter said,
"I have no silver and gold,
but I give you what I have;
in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
                           walk."

                                   Acts 3. 6

The unexpected and proximate
     is sometimes the most profound.