The Sylvr Pen

We read it together last night after dinner, in Ezekiel 8:14-18—God’s people turning their backs on Him to look in hope toward anything else.

We read it together a while ago in Francis Chan’s Crazy Love (highly recommended faith-challenge book):

“Lukewarm people [by which he means most American evangelicals] do not live by faith; their lives are structured so they never have to” [p. 78] (followed by Christ’s parable of the bigger barns).

He mentions pensions and insurance, bank accounts and fridges filled, as things we trust in—those and our own tireless human planning and fleshly effort.

And then he gives this sharp assessment: “The truth is, their lives wouldn’t look much different if they suddenly stopped believing in God.”

What’s the difference—between that ancient “people of God” and today’s? Not much.

So easy to let “Faith” become a foggy abstract, a vague emoting, floating on clouds.

Yet, real faith is concrete. Real faith is hard. At first step. And fifth. And ninth.

But after a while, I come to realize: It isn’t really hard after all. It’s my lack of it that makes life difficult. Lukewarm people have to worry. People learning to trust God rest easy in His care and guidance instead!

What’s needed? A little scary obedience and willing weakness. Next post (To Practice the Practice of Faith: Radical Resolve).

*****

To consider the immensity of God’s creation and then…  

to see the small surprises, leaves me sometimes breathless…

I pull back a morning curtain, expecting gray dawn along a skyline, and instead! a dipper sending star beams to my joy-startled eyes (dawn is coming late now)…

I step outdoors in early grayness, expecting chill, and feel instead moist warmth of summer, teasing before its southward trip for winter…

and hear again a roaring: creek across the road re-swollen in this season normally dry…

Slow, I hike the farm hill, thinking fall has taken all the color worth consideration, 

… then spot the tiny treasure remnant, frail field flowers, bravely bearing their own tattered testimony to the God of great and small things…

Standing at the wood’s edge, silent, still, I see the movement: birds who’ve hushed their springtime noise, but flitting, landing here and there so close—flash of azure (a lingering bluebird!) and what are those, tinted subtle greenish-goldish? (ah! fall finches, already turned like leaves around them, autumn camouflaged)…  so near, so fear-free, I can almost touch them…

A glint of brightness catches me: gleaming gold in shadow, a tiny two-leafed treeling…

Back down the hill, I round the house and see again that surprise of pumpkins found beneath the vines gone rampant, wild-sown and “magic”-grown in compost heap—and think of slices of superlative tomato, come lately to the kitchen from that same spot, wild…

Inside, hours later, I hear work shoes on the stairway, see Husband in the doorway, bearing berry bucket, wearing boy grin: “I couldn’t just not pick ’em”—October raspberries, here up north, this late!…

I would never have expected…

And that’s just it.

None were miracles, just part of a normal season, only stretched a bit. I really hadn’t considered the possibilities…

God of infinite space and the tiny place, I sometimes box myself inside myself, assuming, assuming—and not considering the wild delightful possibilities.

Thanking the infinite God of the universe for 

~twinkling morning constellations, witness of His faithfulness

~stretched out time before the killing frost

~surprise of flower treasure

~feathered hangers-on in camouflage

~late garden wonders in the leaf heap, and on the autumn berry vine

~Himself, the God of possibilities of all sorts that I fail to imagine.

*****

She knows them by name.

The little flock she’s had for a while, that is.

Meaning, she doesn’t just recognize their faces and overall appearance enough to recite their labels. She knows them by the natures their names reflect. Like Zeus (whose name hints at his size and dominance…)

Or Jump (famous for her interacting with fences).

Or Lulu (Self-explanatory?) Or Teacup. (That name? I don’t know its significance! But Shepherdess Sue does.)

And they draw near to her and she draws near to them. And she feeds them and pets them and talks to them, by name, one at a time. Familiar individuals.

But the flock is expanding. And now she’s coming up with fewer names, reverting more to numbers.

She still recognizes most as individuals. (“Oh, that’s 120. That’s 95.” Etc.)

But the numbers keep increasing…

Ever feel like a number?

Jesus called His followers His “little flock.”

Lilias Trotter, never achieving in her missions ministry the big numbers we love too much today, insurmountable hindrances choking out the possibility, asked one who would know, there in that exotic land she now called home: would the local expression translating “little flock” “mean such a little flock that it would not be worth the shepherd’s care?”

The answer: “No, if it were a very little flock, the shepherd cares for it all the more” [A Passion for the Impossible, p. 216].

So who’s the “little flock” Jesus was talking about in Luke 12? When Peter asked if was it that huge crowd or this inner circle of disciples, Jesus answered, as so often, with another question. “Who’s the faithful and wise steward…?”

Implied answer: whoever follows Him in faithfulness is His little flock.

And Matthew Henry comments, “Christ’s flock in this world is a little flock; his sheep are but few and feeble…

“Though… quite [out]-numbered, …in danger of being overpowered…, yet it is the will of Christ that they should not be afraid: ‘Fear not, little flock, but see yourselves safe under the protection and conduct of the great and good Shepherd, and lie easy… Fear not the [lack] of any thing… good for you.”

But unlike sheep with a human shepherd, we don’t have to wait in line. The omniscient, omnipresent, all-loving Keeper of our souls, Who transcends time, can hear, and love, and answer all the needs of all his flock at once. 

What shalom, to rest assured of such Shepherd care, in times of numbers and heartlessness and uncertainty, to “fear not the lack of anything good”! Let me never forget His care in the past. Let me just follow my Shepherd… and trust.

“He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”  (John 10:3)

“Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  (Luke 12:32)

*****

Where does faith come from?

This is big faith:

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (Job 13:15).

Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor fruit be on the vines; Though… the fields yield no food… And there be no herd in the stalls—Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab 3:17-19).

How do you get from Zero to there? How do you even believe at all if you just don’t believe, if you’re stuck in skepticism, glued fast?

That was my question.

I’d tried the worldly-wise approaches. They all fell through the floor crashing, broke apart, and leaked like sieves when life poured through. Now my truth hunger was driving me to want belief in those impossible things the Christ faith called for. But how? You can’t just make yourself believe!

The man on the radio said…

The tongue is like the rudder, steers the whole ship. Say it. Confess with your tongue Jesus Christ as Lord…

But that’s fake. That’s hypocrisy. I hate hypocrisy! (my brain replied).

Then be like the man who wanted so much to believe but,…

who cried out to Jesus, “I believe, help my unbelief!”

And so I did.

And so He did…

… He helped my unbelief, by pulling rugs right out, fierce, from under my smug self-sufficiency, right out from under life as I knew it.

Now the fixer was flailing out of her depths, gasping, drowning. Knowing none of those old sieves could bail out the boat, I grabbed that tossed lifeline of unbelievable promise from the Book: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things…

[that you shouldn’t worry about, like what you’ll eat or wear, or where you’ll live, how you”ll keep warm…]

…and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mat 6:33).

I had nothing to lose. It was all running out through my fingers already. I was helpless! I grabbed the crazy line and clung to it for dear life…

And He gave me that: Dear life! Sweet life! Real life! And amazing dropping out of heaven food and money and things life and employment in this world demand, like car and clothes and roof and winter warmth! And deliverance from fear and depression.

I was abandoned but not alone, destitute but receiving rich presents everyday. I was breathless! This was real!

Then came comfort. Then came ease. Then came spiritual sloth. Then came new troubles.

Then came doubt.

(Which sometimes grew till someone had to sit me down and ask, face on: “Now, tell me what you know.” And my mind so jumbled again I didn’t think I knew anything, about God truth and all. But the question repeated, demanded, “What do you know?”

Well…, I knew there was a Creator. I couldn’t deny… And I knew that He once…

And I started remembering things He’d done… amazing things…

And I prayed, “I believe. Help Thou my unbelief!” Repeatedly.

And He did. Repeatedly.

I grabbed whatever line He was throwing me, whatever scripture promise-you-can-believe-but-how? (Just say it, just pray it. And hang on.) And I clung.

And again, I saw impossibles happen. Evidence not seen become seen.

Ephesians 2:8 says we’re “saved by grace through faith, and that not of [our]selves; it is the gift of God, lest any man [or smug woman] should boast.” I know scholars point out grammar showing that the text means grace is the gift. But I know (it’s one of the things I know) that the faith itself is also a gift that I could in no way get to myself.

And that’s how you believe when you can’t believe.

*****

Linked to…

Today sparkles.

It shimmers, it shines. It twinkles in its trembling.

It reflects the light.

All things in this dewiness, moist with living water, glow bright with living light. Even the ragged and untrimmed. Even the blemished and diseased, even the fallen and dying, that have the beauty of the water and the light.

She wrote it long ago, Lilias Trotter did: “It was in a little wood in early morning… suddenly, from a dark corner… there shone out a great golden star!” [From A Passion for the Impossible, p. 331.]

It was but a low-down dandelion! But it was standing “full face to the sun, and had caught into its heart all the glory it could hold, and was shining so radiantly that the dew that lay on it still made a perfect aureole round its head. And it seemed to talk, standing there—to talk about the possibility of making the very best of these lives of ours.”

I am lowly, yet I can shine. Washed with the living water of the word, sprinkled with my tears and His blood, standing full face to the Son. It happens. The light shines brilliant over me, and I too can sparkle. And gleam. And shine.

Thanking God today…

for the washing of the water of His word

for the sunshine of this morning’s light, rare among so many days of rain

for the greater, richer light of His Presence, always there for me, if I will focus “full face to” it, catch into my heart all the glory it can hold, to shine back radiant, myself like the low dandelion in the wood.

for the health and energy to meet the day, enthused

for eyes that can still see all these beauties around me, of earth and sky and water brook, and even a few of eternity

“for the love which from [my] birth over and around [me] lies.”

May your day today, dear reader—and your spirit—sparkle, and shimmer, and shine in His blessings.

*****