The Sylvr Pen

I wanted an answer. To a question I should have asked four years ago, before I started blogging: “Should I be doing this?”

I asked the LORD for clarity, for definite yes or no. And I took some time off blogging, because its very doing was only muddying the mental waters…

Restless, I went to get the mail…

And the weather swept pleasant across my face, and leaves rattled happy along the gravel. So as mailbox metal echoed hollow behind me from its closing, I kept on walking, post in hand, on down the road, to stretch the limbs and breathe the leaf-pungent air and clear the closed-in head.

I slapped the big manila envelope against my thigh (I don’t know why. Exuberance? To chase away any bears?) and suddenly the shadowy underbrush to my right exploded in multiple crashes and snaps. My heart suddenly racing, I fanned the blush from my face. Clearly the resident doe and her fawns were hanging out in there again.

But I didn’t break stride. I’d saunter on down to the next neighbor’s house, then turn and walk back. Food need thawing for dinner. 

But I wasn’t thinking much of dinner. Only of Husband’s focus-shifting question:

“Well, what do you know God does want you to do?”

That question rolled round and round in my mind now, on my return, as I approached our neighbor’s sign, planted prominent in his field, for all the passing world to read. Footstep after footstep seemed to emphasize in rhythm the billboard’s words…

Hm. Well, that was one thing I could do that I knew God wanted. Go back to the house and settle in and read. A Gospel. Of… Matthew!

How sweet and light-filled it was to sit on the porch and read the first six chapters—read and “think about it,” see what insights and principles therein might apply to  my question…

There was Jesus’ example in His earthly life. There was His teaching, in the Sermon on the Mount…

There was John the Baptist.

There were the Disciples Jesus called—and the way He called them…

There were the crowds and the Pharisees…

There was…

a lot!

And so began some headwork, viewing blogging through a Matthew lens. Later I would be looking in my beat-up King James for something in Proverbs, and notice all the fuschia highlighting, and remember I’d marked everything there about tongue, lips, mouth, or words. So I would read my way through all of those, too, and consider what applied to “speaking” through a blog. 

Later would come James’ Epistle…

And a little book I would “just happen to” pick up at an opportune time…

My big answer was slow in coming (would it ever arrive?) but did I ever get lots of insights! And many (ooh, many!) addressed the dangers of tongue, words, and… well, shall we say, therefore blogs…?

A lot of good instruction to OBEY.

[In striving to draw C-L-O-S-E-R to the Lord, C is for Call (on Him), L is for Look to Him and Listen to Him. Listening without Obeying what He commands is fake religion, and O is the next letter in my acronym… Obviously “Obey.”] 

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[This little story is an “aside” follow-up to Does the Right Decision Bring Inner Peace? Part One: Hard Obedience to Clear Commands.]

It’s absurd to thank God for something you don’t like! 

Isn’t it?

But Ephesians 5:20 says do it!

“[Be] …giving thanks always for all things to God the Father…”

Always. For. All. Things.

Not just in all things, like 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says. For all things.

That’s what the seminar speaker was telling us to do, giving example from her own life (an example Ann VosKamp would call “hard eucharisteo”): thanking God for her beloved boyfriend repeatedly two-timing her!

I could see reason for gratitude in this speaker’s case. She should rejoice at losing a guy like that, at learning what he was like before she got tied up permanently with him!

But love being blind, I guess she didn’t see it. So her prayer of thanks for this “bad” thing was wiser than she was, in her own human self.

I didn’t know then that my own similar thanksgiving would turn out wiser than my human feelings, too.

But still possessing the “foolish” wisdom of the fresh new believer, as I sat listening to her I seized the concept for myself, and purposed to put it into practice.

Opportunity arose in quick order…

Four hours of driving, quiet rural roads and crowded superhighways. We’d returned, refreshed, I and my toddler son, from visiting my parents. Now the long driveway that wound among trees welcomed us back to “the little house between two highways” that we’d been calling home for six months.

Just six months.

I’d agreed to a six-month, then month-to-month, lease, because finding any affordable rental had been so nigh impossible, and this little cottage had perfectly answered my prayer for shelter.

The house wouldn’t even have been available except for the owner’s putting the property up for sale and wanting the building available at such short notice. The resident couple, not liking that uncertainty, had decided it was time to press ahead and buy their own place.

So I figured I could trust God to keep such a Godsend for us after the six months expired.

Well, now they had. Expired. Exactly. And now what did I see, as I rounded the curve, but men clambering around with surveyor’s instruments!

“No,” I groaned. “Oh, Lord, no.”

Sighing, I climbed out of the car, unbelted my little one, all along thinking of that seminar and my commitment.

Inside the house a moment later, reluctantly I did it: “All right, Lord,” I said. “Thank you! I thank You surveyors are out there, which means this place is sold! I don’t like this at all!” (as my tone of voice made clear). “But thank You anyway. Thank You!”

I hadn’t learned yet that scripture also says to be grateful. That one I certainly wasn’t following. I didn’t feel grateful. I felt whacked in the face! I felt deflated, defeated, frustrated. But I said thank You anyway, at least.

I waited for the notice, the bad news.  A letter. Something.

Nothing came. That week, or the next, or the next.

A knock on the door did one evening, right while I was navigating the challenge of cutting the hair on a constantly moving three-year-old’s head, blond locks scattered everywhere in the disheveled livingroom.

Leaving chain hooked to door jamb, I opened the door enough to see the lanky man who introduced himself as my new landlord-to-be and let me know that I’d be able to continue renting, although no new tenants after me, but of course the rent would go up. Peering around the crack in the doorway to glimpse what he’d bought here, but seeing my mess and occupation, he graciously apologized for “discombobulating” me, and backed away to his car in the shadows.

Another sigh. I could thank God that he’d not boot me out. But could I afford any raise in rent? I could barely pay the bills already.

So I waited for expected changes, notices, letter, phone call, whatever.

Nothing.

Nearly two years passed! Same rent rate, and nothing happening to our little surrounding woods.  Now I was moving out and moving on anyway.

So I was talking with the landlady on the phone, and she started to complain.

If only she hadn’t granted this buyer his two requested extensions! Right afterwards, both times, another buyer had appeared, offering full asking price with no contingencies—and the quickest possible closing!

I caught my breath! And thanked my Good Father—with genuine gratitude this time! Thanked him for the buyer those surveyors’ presence had announced, those eighteen months before. Just the perfect buyer!

Now here’s the thing about peace: If I’d known God better, if I’d had more Romans 8:28 and 1 Corinthians 1:25 faith in the first place, I would have had more inner peace, wouldn’t I? 

Have you ever thanked God for something you just plain didn’t like?

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The first thing I did on my vacation from blogging was…

write a blog post, which became two, which would have grown into more, had I not screeched the flowing words to a halt! 

Couldn’t tear myself away, right?

Well, maybe, but I had “good reason”—two good reasons, actually: two Mueller post comments, questioning the peace it talked about.

So, before going on with anything else, let’s consider the questions at the top of this page, about that peace—in three parts…

Part One: Hard Obedience to Clear Commands

Mueller’s “method,” the post pointed out, was for deciding “among morally neutral choices… beyond obeying the principles of scripture.”  In many matters of life we don’t need such a process because the Bible clearly points out God’s definite will, in His specific black-and-white commands. All we have to do in these cases is obey the commands.

Simple.

Yet often so hard!

Obeying some of them can grate unpleasant, run counter to our nature, even terrify. We may have anything but nice peaceful feelings about it. Yet we need to obey, just the same.

I found myself summoned to such a task a couple years ago. To walk obedient to the Bible’s instructions I had to do something that every fiber in me screamed out against.  I spent the whole day literally trembling about it, wrestling with God, declaring,

“Lord, I can’t do this!”

“I don’t want to do this!”

“Please take this away!”

“Isn’t there some other way?”

I wanted God to tell me I didn’t have to, but I knew what His word already said, and there was no doubt: I needed to surrender or be downright rebellious!

I finally did (surrender), and He carried me amazingly through the situation—though it was still anything but pleasant.

Actually, at the point of confrontation to which obedience took me, an amazing calm swept over me, and flowed me through the whole ordeal. This had to be God’s Spirit (or else state of shock from stress!) Clearly it was answered prayer, my own and that of knowing friends.

But that incredible serenity only kicked in at the last hour. The whole day leading up to it was an agony of inner turmoil in which I couldn’t calm down, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t even eat.

It felt like Gethsemane, although I hated to compare it to that! What Christ had to face was so much worse. Yet my emotional struggle was similar, and came to its resolution in similar surrender to the Father’s will.

With that surrender came a different kind of peace than the later inner calm. What lay ahead still looked dreadful, but my mind had settled into the rest of trusting Him.

The point is that though I certainly didn’t have blissful emotions about it, I did have settled  assurance in my mind as to what I must do! I think this is more what Muller meant than an emotional state in any case.

More about that in a later post.

A quick summary report of much that happened while I was “on vacation”…

Improvements to the blog:

– ReCaptcha killed! (I didn’t do this. Web-guy son did.) Hallelujah! Now all you have to do when you leave a comment is check a little box that attests you are not a spammer!

– Avatars enabled with blog comments now. If you have one, it will appear

Praise breakthrough:

– I found TEN THOUSAND REASONS to praise our God! 10,000 biblically verifiable ones, found! Yes, really.

Vacationy stuff, if but for a day (or two):

– Amazing afternoon of R and R with Husband at a local lake — oh, so soothing, and oh, so needed!

-An errand day turned slow-down “rest” day. Something learned from this.

The unplanned:

– Sad news, next day after the lake visit, of dear sister-in-law’s passing two days before. (Husband’s sister.) It was good to have had the day of peace and rest and quiet before we knew…

– For Husband, first a kidney stone then a bout with gout (evidently from the same cause) — followed by some dietary changes around here.

– Four days of dog fostering, a wonderful stray dog, which Husband and I both bonded with and nearly adopted. Will I ever forget this dog?

Hopes realized, partway, anyhow:

 – Incredible lessons from God, through His Word: such as…

blogging and the temptation in the wilderness

blogging and the Sermon on the Mount

blogging and the whole book of Matthew

blogging and all the Proverbs about mouth or tongue or lips or words

and blogging and the Epistle of James.

– More incredible (life!)lessons from God, through my grabbing the right book at the right time.

More unplanned:

– One more week “off” than I’d figured on, when some flu bug or something knocked me flat! (giving me exactly the total days needed to finish the 31 daily lessons in the book mentioned above—and exactly what I needed to get some of the lessons—on being still. (For two days there, I didn’t have much choice!)

Hope to be sharing about some of these things in upcoming posts.