The Olive May Fail

 “Though the fig tree 

may not blossom,

Nor fruit be on the vines;

Though the labor 

of the olive may fail,

And the fields yield no food;

Though the flock 

may be cut off from the fold,

And there be no herd 

in the stalls--

Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,

I will joy 

in the God of my salvation.

The LORD God 

is my strength;

He will make my feet 

like deer’s feet,

And He will make me walk 

on my high hills.”

A number of years ago, at the beginning of a one year time period that was one of our worst years — a time of severe and long-lasting pain for me that held no end in sight — a physically miserable, emotionally devastating year filled with tests and imaging and surgery and a long recovery, I went to a pastors’ wives retreat. At the retreat, the Lord gave me a song. I had not yet walked through what was coming. And I knew I would be walking through something. 

“The joy of the Lord 

will be my strength

I will not falter, 

I will not faint

He is my Shepherd, 

I am not afraid

The joy of the Lord 

is my strength

The joy of the Lord

The joy of the Lord

The joy of the Lord 

is my strength

The joy of the Lord 

will be my strength

He will uphold me 

all of my days

I am surrounded 

by mercy and grace

And the joy of the Lord 

is my strength

The joy of the Lord

The joy of the Lord

The joy of the Lord 

is my strength

The joy of the Lord 

will be my strength

And I will not waiver, 

walking by faith

He will be strong 

to deliver me safe

And the joy of the Lord 

is my strength

The joy of the Lord

The joy of the Lord

The joy of the Lord 

is my strength”

You can be suffering pain, uncertainty, lack of resources, loss of relationships, and so many other miseries AND still be surrounded by His mercy and grace. I did not know if I would physically survive that year. And some days I turned my face to the wall and just laid there, heart open in wordless pain to the Lord. I fretted that my children would be motherless, and my husband widowed. And then I trusted them to Him who loves them better than me. I sat in a chair much of that year. 

And the Lord sustained me. He delivered me. He walked the valley with me, and brought me out again. 

You might think I don’t like hearing that song anymore. But you’d be wrong. 

When I hear it, and when I sing it, I remember how the Lord helped me endure when I couldn’t endure. How He gave me courage and taught me to trust Him when my prayers felt like they fell to the floor. How it isn’t abundant circumstances that give us abundant life. 

The joy of the Lord is my strength.

Stars and Sand and Every Hair

Grains of sand and all our hairs.

A friend posted a link to a photograph NASA released
that focused in on one quarter of the Andromeda Galaxy,
which is a very small section of the visible universe to us, here on earth.
It is 2.5 million light years away, and the sharpest photo NASA has.
100 million stars individually recognizable in it.
My son and I watched the video that spanned the photograph.
It took a video to look over the image, because it is a huge image.
Part of the galaxy was so densely starred
that it appeared more light than dark.
"It looks like sand!" my son exclaimed.

"That's an interesting comment," I said,
"because stars and sand
are what God promised Abraham's descendants would be like."

The stars.
Whenever I felt troubled as a teenager,
I would go out in the dark and look up.
So vast.
Innumerable.
It reminded me of how vast God's knowledge and His power are.
How the choreography of the heavens is His handiwork.
How His mind comprehends all these things I cannot fathom.
The heavens declare the glory of God.
He sees the big picture.
Bigger than we have yet comprehended.

Ah, but the sand...
From the vastness of the heavens to the grains of the earth.
Details I'm too big and important to take notice of.
I walk on it.
But I don't get close enough to count it.
The sand touches me, but I don't know it.
Not like that.
I've seen so little of it.
Those things that are so out of my reach,
and the ones that are so easily touchable,
are both unknowable to me,
and intimately known to Him.

Surely if human beings can zoom in
on a galaxy 2.5 million light years away
and recognize individual stars clustered like sand,
He can see me.
I'm a lot bigger than a grain of sand, and He has counted them.

"You comprehend my path and my lying down, 
and are acquainted with all my ways."
I am not even acquainted with all my ways.
I have talked in my sleep and not known it, but according to Psalm 139,
"There is not a word on my tongue, 
but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether."
The sum of His thoughts toward me is more in number than the sand.

"The hairs of your head are all numbered," Jesus said.
"Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul."
Do you need that reminder?
I often do.
Why not fear death?
Because He is Life.
Because He was raised from the dead.
Because connection with Him will raise us, too.
And those who serve and worship darkness and death
cannot snuff out Light and Life,
no matter how many they put to sleep for a little while.

Second and First

I took my son to his second piano lesson today.
Second is a key word to what follows.
His teacher seemed quite pleased with his ability to hear the music.
I do not play the piano, although a number of people in my family do.
I brought a book along, intending to read.
But I kept being distracted by overheard reminders
to sit with a strong back,
and to keep his hand positioned in a hill, and not a valley.
In spite of the repetition of these reminders,
it was obvious she was pleased with his musical inclination.

His teacher taught him a new warm up.
He played it, and then asked her
if he could show her something it reminded him of.
"Yes, of course."
He haltingly worked out a tune, faltering a little at first,
and then plainly resolving into It Is Well With My Soul.

Scenes from my uncle's house, while he lay very sick
with his parents and siblings around him singing this came to mind.
Laughter through tears, and joy in sorrow.
A few months later, they were singing my Grandma home,
with the same uncle brought in through video phone calls.
So many songs of faith and hope in pain and death.
When I recognized the music, I cried.

I do not know
what parents usually experience with their children's piano lessons.
This is my first time.
But my son stuns me.
As we got into the car to leave, I said,
"I've never heard you play that one before."
"Well, that's the first time I ever played it, Mom. That's why it wasn't right."
Ah.
The first time you ever played it, it was nearly in a flash of inspiration
from hearing a short warm-up exercise?
Of course.
"Hey, next time pick something I can hear without crying."

Just Words From a Song

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase.
To added affliction He addeth His mercy:
to multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.

His love has no limit, His grace has no measure,
His power has no boundary known unto men:
for out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
when our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
when we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
our Father's full giving is only begun.

His love has no limit, His grace has no measure,
His power has no boundary known unto men:
for out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!

It's beautiful at any time, but it was sung over a coffin today.
It is the weak He displays His power in,
and when are we more weak than in the face of death?

My Helper

While I listened to Friday's news,
with shooting in the streets of Boston
between the marathon bombers and the authorities,
and the city locked down,
a reporter offered this advice for parents to comfort children with
who were being exposed to terror in this week's news cycle:
Look for the helpers.
It is Mr. Rogers' advice, and I saw it passed around on Facebook, too.
It seems not much comfort
in the light of people bleeding in the streets, their legs gone,
and parents powerless to save their children.
In the face of horrendous evil, brave kindness seems small:
the courage of those heroes who run to explosions,
who drench themselves in the blood of strangers,
trying to tie in their lifeflow.

But in the face of that bloody fear,
He gives real comfort:
He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you, nor forsake you.'
So that we may boldly say, 'The Lord is my Helper, I will not fear. 
What can man do to me?' (Hebrews 13:5,6)
Maybe that seems like a foolish question after a bombing.
Obviously men can do us harm.
Jesus said, "I tell you, my friends, 
do not be afraid of those who kill the body 
but cannot afterward do anything worse. 
I will show you whom to fear: 
fear God, who, after killing, has the authority to throw into hell. 
Believe me, He is the one you must fear! 
Aren't five sparrows sold for two pennies? 
Yet not one sparrow is forgotten by God. 
Even the hairs of your head have all been counted. 
So do not be afraid;
 you are worth much more than many sparrows!"
(Luke 12:4-7)

Be anxious for nothing, 
but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, 
let your requests be made known to God; 
and the peace of God, which surpasses understanding,
will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

A terrorist can separate you from your body,
but cannot separate you from His love.
Our Lord is risen, and He will raise us.
He has conquered sin and death, and in Him, we are also conquerors.
In His Light, we see Light, though we see the darkness, too.

This Reminds Me of Summer

We walked out of the house this morning,
and my New England-acclimated daughter said,
"This reminds me of summer!"
The sun was shining, the snow banks were receding (a little),
and a phoebe was calling out her name.
We got in the van and drove south.

In a town founded in 1623, we found a cemetery.
(Which was a 'dormitory' to the early church -- I like that.)
The cemetery was in full sunlight, and on a hill.
We parked the car and got out to walk.
Yes, we like to bring our children to graveyards to play.
The children ran, but I walked.
Away from the others, I walked in silence,
looking at the Polish and Italian and Irish surnames on the stones,
and at the words Rest In Peace,
and enjoying the feel of the sun warming my back.

I looked at the rhododendron buds awaiting resurrection,
and up at the bare branches of a deciduous tree with small buds formed,
awaiting resurrection,
and at the snow-covered ground hiding all those dead bones.
I thought about my own grave.

Elisa came and walked with me, and pointed at evergreen trees
someone had planted over a tombstone.
"Don't plant those over my grave," I said,
"and don't put fake flowers by my grave, either."
I told her I wanted them to plant bulbs over my grave.
"Every year they will die back,
but every spring they will bloom,
and you can remember that there is a resurrection."
"That is what I was planning to do!" she said.
And I could not help but look out over all those stones
and think about the men and women who have lived and died
and will live again.

I will join them: uncurling myself in the warmth of the Son,
and stretching out the stiffness of the long winter,
and no longer unadorned and bare of glory.

Before Leaving Them to Sleep

I laid down on my nephew's sleeping bag with him last night to visit before leaving them to sleep.  He was trying to tell me about an event, and referenced the timing of it by mentioning an event in the life of a woman we both know.

"What is the thing when we worship when someone dies?" he asked with his five-year-old pronunciation.
"Um... a funeral?" I said.
"Yes. A funeral."
I like that.
Yes, a funeral.
Where we worship the One who is Resurrection and Life
even in the face of death.

Anniversary Thanks

What to say on this anniversary of her homecoming?
Looking back on my memories of her,
I look forward to realities she's already living in.
When next I see her, her eyes will sparkle more
than they always did when she arrived for a visit.
I expect she'll have a bag to unpack full of gifts of another kind.

"Give thanks in all circumstances," it says.
Grandma did that.
Here we are on the eve of Thanksgiving,
and many of us have suffered loss,
and perhaps only look forward to more losses.
In all these things, we are more than conquerors.
Our prize is already waiting.
The Son of God has crossed the finish line for us.
In Him, all the promises of God are 'yes' and 'amen'.
So remain in Him.
In Him we have Life.
Live in Him.
In all our sorrows, He has shared.
And we will share His joy.
Thank You, Jesus, for the fellowship of the Spirit,
the communion of the saints.

Call me Mara.

She had worked all her life in service to her family.
She birthed those sons in pain and blood.
She packed up her home with her own hands,
and followed her husband out of the drought.
The famine.
Out of the homeland and its inheritance.
They left it all and moved away into Moab.
There in a land not her own, she fed them.
She clothed them.
She took care of them when they were sick.
And then her husband died,
and she had to lead alone.

She began to look forward in hope from all the leaving and the loss,
when her sons were old enough to marry.
She found them wives.
Moabite wives, yes.
That hadn't been her dream.
But these were nice enough girls.
One day soon, maybe the loneliness would fade.
There would be women to share the load with,
and sons who could protect them,
and make their living.
And babies.
Laughing grandbabies she could offer advice about raising,
and rock to sleep,
and pretend away the sadness with.
Maybe it wouldn't all be loss.

For ten years she hoped,
while her daughters-in-law did not conceive.
Every month at first, that hopeful excitement.
Is my grandbaby on the way?
Surely any day now...
But the day did not come.
And then her last living hopes died.

The sons she had birthed in pain and blood were gone.
Their father had led her here to this alien place.
She had no friends.
No sisters a few houses down.
And two barren daughters-in-law.
They probably blamed her.
Everything around her ended in disaster.
Everything she touched turned to dust.
But these women were past their fruitful prime,
and had a ten year record of infertility.
Who would marry them?

Her homeland had good crops again.
It came like a breeze in the market place.
Maybe she bought grain that had traveled the road from her home.
Working it into bread,
perhaps she thought about the fields her young husband had worked.
How they had built their dreams there,
and birthed their sons there,
and harvested life there.
It had been nothing but a harvest of misery for years.
She decided to go back.
She had nothing here to keep her.
Better to die among friends.
Better to cry over losses with friends.
They had known her husband,
and rejoiced over her sons' births.
They could sympathize with her.

She didn't want these poor daughters-in-law
to have the same fate she had suffered.
Bereft in a strange land.
They'd been good girls, but it was too much to ask.
Ruth, odd girl, chose the mourning.
She'd rather stay under the cloud.
It seemed like choosing a curse.
Even her words sounded like she was choosing death.

All those old friends still recognized her.
They were excited to have her home.
Ah, but they remembered her hopeful and pleasant.
They remembered her a landowner.
They remembered her a mother.
They remembered her a wife with a husband who loved her.
They remembered a woman with a future.
There was nothing for her now.
All her fruit lay rotting in Moab.

"Don't call me Naomi.
Call me Mara.
I had full hands when I left,
but the Lord has taken everything away from me.
The Lord afflicts me.
The Lord sent tragedy to me.
Call me Mara."
I've eaten bitterness, and I'm a disaster.

Aren't you glad it doesn't end there?
Because this woman with no hope
and no family
and no property
and nothing to live for
is cuddling her grandson in the last verses,
and her daughter-in-law is better than ten sons to her,
and the future she thought was cut off
is connected to the past by a different branch.
And she embraced it.

In The Midst and During

I was reading last night from Psalm 138:

In the day when I cried out, You answered me,
and made me bold with strength in my soul...
Though the Lord is on high, yet He regards the lowly;
but the proud He knows from afar.
Though I walk in the midst of trouble, 
You will revive me;
You will stretch out Your hand
against the wrath of my enemies,
and Your right hand will save me.
The Lord will perfect that which concerns me;
Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever;
do not forsake the works of Your hands.

And then this morning, I was reading from 2 Chronicles 15.
These are the words of Azariah;
it says the Spirit of God came upon him,
and he gave this message to King Asa:

"The Lord will stay with you, as long as you stay with Him.
Whenever you seek Him, you will find Him.
But if you abandon Him, He will abandon you.
For a long time, Israel was without the true God,
without a priest to teach them,
and without the Law to instruct them.
But whenever they were in trouble 
and turned to the Lord, the God of Israel,
and sought Him out, they found Him.
During those dark times, it was not safe to travel.
Problems troubled the people of every land.
Nation fought against nation, and city against city,
for God was troubling them with every kind of problem.
But as for you, be strong and courageous,
for your work will be rewarded." 

Though I walk in the midst of trouble...
I don't want to walk in the midst of trouble.
I don't want to live in dark times, unsafe times, wrathful times.
Don't we all just want to live quiet and peaceful lives?
But though we walk in the midst of trouble,
He will revive us.
He will stretch out His hand against the wrath of our enemies and save us.

Revive. Do you know what it means?
To live again. To return to life.
Let's set our faces toward His salvation:
to live again, to see His justice though we walk in the midst of trouble.
Jesus is the salvation of His right hand.
Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
He is our future and our hope, though trouble is our present.
Though the wrath of the enemy is our present lot,
He will perfect that which concerns us,
and He will not forsake the works of His hands.

All Are Yours

"Therefore let no one boast in men.
For all things are yours:
whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas,
or the world
or life
or death
or things present
or things to come --
all are yours.
And you are Christ's,
and Christ is God's."
~1 Corinthians 3:21,22

I read this the other morning, and it stopped me short.
Death belongs to us?
It's been something to ponder.
Death is mine.
I own it.

Beauty For Ashes

She was born in 1935 in Oklahoma in her grandmother's house in Love County.
Not even her own house.
The town is nearly empty now.

If you've read American history,
you know that Oklahoma in 1935 was an ecological disaster.
An unheard of catastrophe.
Her family joined the largest migration
in the shortest amount of time in U.S. history,
and moved to California.
They picked cotton when she was five.
They picked prunes.
Her father dug tunnels for the mines.
He worked on roofs and at carpentry.
Her grandfather died before she was four of TB,
leaving her father to provide for his own wife and children
and his family of origin.
He had three older sisters, three younger sisters, and two younger brothers.
Her grandfather's brother also died of TB.
My Grandma and her brother came down with TB.
It required 15 months or more in a TB hospital when she was six --
which is where she was first taught to knit by a nurse.
Two older women from the Assemblies of God church
traveled out to where she lived in Northern California,
and began a Sunday School.
She went with a number of other children from her neighborhood,
and in 1945 was baptized in the creek.

There were four children when her home was broken.
Her father remarried and moved to Alaska.
Her mother remarried a man with four children,
two of which joined their household.
Being the only girl in the home,
at 14 she had the responsibility of making breakfast for six,
getting lunches for them all, doing all the dishes,
making the beds, and getting them to school.
They were late.

In 1949 she came home from school one day and a neighbor said,
"You all's house burned down."
Her stepfather had the top of his head burned
by the fire that came under the door of the room he was sleeping in.
In 1952 Papa's family moved into the area.
She told me once when I asked her about Papa,
that he had asked her seven times to marry him before she said yes.
His final winning proposal was, "When are you going to marry me?"

Mother to five children, she took in two more while hers were still young.
She has so many grandchildren (both real and adopted)
that we have difficulty counting ourselves. 22?
And great grandchildren? I think 20.
But her habit of adopting those who might need a 'bonus grandma'
has spread to her own children,
and those have been accepted in just as readily as her own.

I doubt she has left any money to her heirs,
because she probably spent it all on gasoline and Motel 6 and postage stamps.
Every one of us has something she made with her own hands.
She gave up knitting when she learned how to crochet,
and her hands have been busy with it for many years.
I never saw her when she wasn't giving something to someone.
She opened her trunk as soon as she drove up
and came up with something for each grandchild.
If she didn't have something, she sat down and made something.
And if it wasn't finished by the time she had to leave, she mailed it.
She gave to her children,
and she gave to her grandchildren,
and she gave to her great grandchildren,
and she gave to old people in homes,
and she gave to homeless people,
and the babies of strangers.
And just this week, in characteristic fashion,
she made the plans final that she has always intended.
She gave her body to science.

Her life began in the ashes of what might be called a plague.
But it has been a life of love, and forgiveness, and thankfulness and praise.
A legacy of grace.
When she was diagnosed with lung cancer, she said,
"What I know is that the Bible says
'He who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it.'"

She had four generations of her family around her in her final weeks,
praying with her, singing with her.
She made videos for her children and grandchildren,
reminding them of the truths in Philippians
which she had been in the habit of telling them for many years.
"I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me -- and that means you."

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; 
because the LORD hath anointed me to publish good tidings to the meek; 
he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, 
to proclaim liberty to the captives, 
and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; 
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, 
and the day of vengeance of our God; 
to comfort all that mourn; 
To appoint to them that mourn in Zion, 
to give to them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, 
the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; 
that they may be called trees of righteousness, 
the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified. 
~From Isaiah 61

Our Outward Man

I was not looking for what I found.
I was looking for the second passage.
But this one came up first:

But the LORD said to Samuel, 
Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; 
because I have refused him: 
for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; 
for man looketh on the outward appearance, 
but the LORD looketh on the heart.
1 Samuel 16:7

I was looking for this one to contemplate:

So then death worketh in us, but life in you. 
But having the same spirit of faith, 
according to that which is written, 
I believed, and therefore did I speak; 
we also believe, and therefore also we speak; 
knowing that he that raised up the Lord Jesus 
shall raise up us also with Jesus, 
and shall present us with you. 
For all things are for your sakes, 
that the grace, being multiplied through the many, 
may cause the thanksgiving to abound unto the glory of God. 
Wherefore we faint not; 
but though our outward man is decaying, 
yet our inward man is renewed day by day. 
For our light affliction, which is for the moment, 
worketh for us more and more exceedingly 
an eternal weight of glory; 
while we look not at the things which are seen, 
but at the things which are not seen: 
for the things which are seen are temporal; 
but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:12-18

As our outward man perishes, our inward man is renewed.
The outward grows weak and frail, gasping for breath.
The inward grows stronger, breathing Spirit-life.
Outwardly too weak to sing, she makes a silent noise.
More frequently, she forgets herself.
But she remembers Him.
"Jesus."
She remembers that 'He who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it.'

The End of Your Faith

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
who according to his great mercy 
begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 
unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, 
and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, 
who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation 
ready to be revealed in the last time. 
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, 
ye have been put to grief in manifold trials, 
that the proof of your faith, 
being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, 
may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ: 
whom not having seen ye love; 
on whom, though now ye see him not, 
yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory: 
receiving the end of your faith, 
even the salvation of your souls.
1 Peter 1:3-9