The Sylvr Pen

I knew I had it in a journal somewhere. And last week, turning back pages of 2003, I came upon it. Quote from A. W. Tozer’s Renewed Day by Day, published in 1950. (How would he describe our day?)

“Be still, and know that I am God…” Ps 46:16

My journal note after the quote said, “If Tozer could see (or hear!) things now!”

Yet, oh soft peace in the falling snow!

Thanking God profusely for blessed opportunity,

and seizing this little stillness in this part of today.

*****

Linked to

Writing for

on the prompt word “BARE.”

Three dresses and one pair of shoes, her whole wardrobe. Her home: a tiny apartment, cramped and crowded when people gathered there—cramped not just for space but for freedom to speak above a murmur, to sing the joy in their hearts. They came together “for study,” as they’d say on the phone, but not say what they were studying…

And here was the ticket to a dream. A letter from this prestigious American university who knew of her expertise, her teaching gifts.

She could have the dream, or this poor place where every visitor caused danger, but then just having that one Bible here that she shared with them, that itself did, too.

She could fly away to freedom, fame, and fortune, a big house and a big closet, full of clothes, but she had to decide right now. Two days to the deadline.

She’d wrestled for days with the decision. But now she knew, as she looked at them, their shining eyes, their eager hearts, their love for Him and His word, which they only had in scraps and bits that they carried, concealed. 

… She forfeited her dream, and chose the bare essentials.  

He read her story last night, and I settled back into gratitude, not so much for my freedom and abundance, as for the reassurance that it had not been foolish after all to let that dream of mine go, watch it float off, high and away, leaving me bereft as a little child who’s loosed her grasp on her beautiful balloon.

I have more than the bare essentials.

*****

Also linked to

I worry about missteps. Not gross sin, but foolishness, time waste, judgment errors, misled wrong turns…

Because I did…

get fooled, make missteps, stumble and fall in ditches, lose my way and my time on convoluting detours mistaken for my route mapped out. Repeatedly.

And I so want to get it right, steward my time, mine true treasure from my moments, not get robbed by wasted days backtracked to arrive and bow in my King’s presence with deep red blush of embarrassment.

But I still play fool, get it wrong, wander off misled.

How this happens I often can’t even comprehend. I just sorrow, grieve, regret.

And yet. And yet…

We review the life of Jacob so far: He’s on return from a path of escape. Twenty years “wasted”! Cheated of promises, rewards, and time. Cheated by self, cheated by others.

But there were promises that held. Not from the human, but from the True. Grace, ever grace. And Jacob had prayed the promises, all those years before…

FIVE promises, the speaker said, when I was seeing only four:

“I am with you.”

“I will keep you” (from harm, from fear)

“WHEREVER YOU GO.”

“I will bring you back”

“I will not leave you.”

The “WHEREVER YOU GO” he saw as promise in itself.

And now I do too.

Jacob gets dissed a lot today for his Genesis 28:20-22 words, as if he were wrangling a deal from God, “If You do this and this and this, then I’ll call you my God…” panned as meet-my-demands behavior.

But, I just realized in this study, that’s out of context! Look at his so-called “demands” side by side with the Almighty’s already spoken promises, just five verses before:

VERSE 15:                     VERSE 20:

“I am with you.”             “If  God will be with me…”

“I will keep you…”           “…and keep me…”

“WHEREVER YOU GO.”      “…in this way that I am going…”

…and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on,

“I will bring you back”        “…so that I come back…”

“I will not leave you.”        “then the LORD will be my God, &…”

See that phrase in the middle? Not part of those FIVE promises, right?

Yet what it asks, humble, falls far short of what God vowed before “the five” (Gen 28:13-14) — abundant descendants, rich in land, and even their bringing a blessing to all the families of earth!

Jacob could have named all these as “qualifications, demands,” but instead simply requested food to keep him alive to return, and clothing to cover his nakedness.

He knows his disgrace. And now he knows God’s grace. “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it!”

And he trembles with awe and builds an anointed memorial to the place where God’s angels ascend and descend on the stairway to Himself. A place God promises him forever (v 14).

Jacob messed it all up. And it all lies in evident ruins, and he’s left destitute of all but his staff, without even flocks for its use. Yet God is there. And anywhere. Wherever he goes…

Wherever I go, even misstepping.

Wherever.

…..

A fountain of gratitude welling deep within, for these inviolable gifts:

“I am with you.”

“I will keep you”

“WHEREVER YOU GO.”

“I will bring you back” (to where you need to be).

“I will not leave you.”

…

It used to be easy. Well, easier.

The shade-lined streets of my childhood stood still on Sundays.

Sound? Church bells. Birds and breeze in trees. No busy traffic rush and roar. Doors of stores all locked up tight. Except one drug store, taking turn, round robin with the others,  providing just its pharmacy for emergencies. No shopping malls sprawled wide, and up in the city where we sometimes shopped, no businesses anywhere lured in crowds with Sunday sales.

No football games filled stadiums, or TV screens. Our child play was quiet. It was just expected. Just the way it was.

One woman three doors up from us, sometimes she hung out laundry on the pulleyed rope strung over the alley… On Sunday! It was glanced askance, and frowned upon.

And lots of us (including me), neighbors and family, weren’t even Christians. Some might have checked “Christian” on forms asking “religion,” but didn’t know what that meant.

The inward faith was already dying then. But outer trappings remained—still blessing all the worldlings round about. Most everyone seemed to sense that. So those who loved the Lord’s Day got to spend it far less hindered. And the others got a rest, a break, refreshment for the week ahead.

Peer pressure is strong. And sometimes quite helpful. All this peer pressure made it almost natural to settle down, kick back, rest and refresh…

…

Many years later, once I knew Christ, those childhood sabbath remnants returned upon my mind, like treasure from the past unearthed. And I stopped. Stilled. Rested, read, and prayed. Breathed deep and smiled.

It was oxygen to my gasping! Single mommyhood alone, far from family, with jammed schedule and demanding job whose endless paperwork and expectations, piled high, made me feel like a cult recruit: overworked and over-exercised and deprived of sleep and allowed no time for sorting thoughts and thinking straight.

So I seized sabbath more than surrendered to it! If only to get my mental bearings and restore my weary body, I saw it as manna for survival.

It wasn’t too hard even then.

Because…

I didn’t have a church yet.

I was a single parent alone.

Yes, I had a bouncy toddler. But he knew that day was for quiet fun: Playing about the yard as I sat on the bench in tree shade. Or, in bad weather, coloring in patterns on big bubble letters spelling “God is great. God is good,” as I stilled.

When it got hard was later. After I found a good church and a good man and married into a good Christian family.

There Sabbath mostly meant go-to-church. And no one had to work Sundays, except in emergencies…

But big Sunday dinners were expected tradition.

And Sunday afternoons were often times for ambitious projects like canning big batches of jam or pickles.

And a friend from the good church pronounced my own private attempts to hold onto this gift of rest “legalistic.”

So I hungered.

But persevered.

And bit by bit, over slow time, it happened, took root and grew in fullness, if (even yet) imperfectly. And Husband, he grew into it himself, that weekly sabbath, and now thinks everyone should enjoy it…

*****

Joining with Shelly and the others in the Surrendering to Sabbath Sisterhood.

(Would you like to join us? Click on the link and find out more.)

And linked to

Writing for five minutes on the prompt “Afraid,” for

Lord, I am afraid. Ashamed of my fear, yet possessor of it.

It’s fear that makes me shout in anger. But it’s helpless, foolish anger, fury signifying and achieving nothing…

except trouble, further trouble.

But what do I fear?

Name that fear.

Sometimes in the naming I see how foolish is the fearing.

Nearing God, I see a power so large, so with me, so enveloping me with care, protection, and biggest, love…

Lover of my soul, that’s what He is

There is no fear in Love, and so, as it flows, His holy love,

His perfect love…

Perfect love casts out fear.

And I wonder at my trembling, and why I should get myself afraid…

*****