The Sylvr Pen

I open to the Psalms, begin at the beginning:

“Blessed is [(s)he] who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly…”

Yes…

I sit back and sigh gratitude!

How blessed!

For (s)he who walks therein is fooled, misled, manipulated, ensnared, and used. And there but for the grace of God (still would) go I!

(S)he who’s out, who walks not there is free!

I’m free — have been set free!

“…nor stands in the path of sinners…”

For there you get run over, mowed down — or shoved aside into the gutter — or grabbed and dragged along toward disaster.

“…Nor sits in the seat of the scornful…”

Praise to God, by His good grace He led me forth from a place growing darker, so that… 

“I have not sat with men of falsehood, nor will I go in with hypocrites,” I veer away from “the assembly of evil-doers, and will not sit with the wicked” (Ps 26:4-5)!

Tangled in their own peer pressure, mired in elitism sinking to destruction, slinging out negatives bound to swing back around and wallop, to tumble them down.

Chaff in wind, flashing momentary sun brightness in breeze about to waft them away from that most blessed company of all.

O how I thank You my God, who brought me forth into a wide and open place so full of You, and sunk my roots in truth and watered me with shalom, to prosper my leaves and bring forth my fruit in its due season (Psalm 1).

Deep, sweet gratitude. O joy!

Moses liked it better in the wilderness. And so do I.

Here I walk in His counsel, stand in his grace, sit in His presence, pray in His Spirit.

When you see their state, how can you not pray for them?

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“Oh, dear Lord! I want You!” I whisper the loud inner cry.

“The things of earth compete…”

They’re good things. And I feel such obligation to do them. To return blog comments, to encourage the faltering, to be a wife, to not neglect this friend or that…

My mind feels hyperactive lately, and I don’t know why.

Singleness. Of spirit. Of mind. That’s what I need. That single vision Jesus talked about (Mt 6:22).

Well, I’m not going to get it from myself! Only from You, dear Lord! Please, God, come to my aid…”

I go sit and still by my old prayer window. Silent.

What does He have to say to me today?

I just sit, closed Bible in lap.

And this thought comes: Moses liked the wilderness better.

What?

I turn back to the start of Exodus. Where he ran. Where he ended up in Midian, and took up residence with Jethro, and just went herding his sheep.

And the text says this: “Then Moses was content” (Ex 2:21).

I hadn’t noticed those words I’d read overtop of, days ago.

Content? Hmm.

I always used to feel sorry for him, think he must have felt banished, banished forever, like he’d got a big “F” for failure…

But this says Moses was content there.

But then later God called Him away from there. And he didn’t want to go.

But when God calls, you need to heed.

Husband says, “Yes, you wait until He calls, and then you go.”

Meanwhile, the wilderness is “kinda” nice. More than “kinda.”

And I am content…

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“The Prayer of a Mess.”  I  can’t  find  one  anywhere!…

“Mess” meaning someone not mired in gross sin and filth, but bogged down in chaos and missed schedule points and tasks incomplete and objects dropped and spilled and mounting frustrations through the day.

I guess I’ll have to write my own…

“O Lord God, Creator of this whole, vast, intricate, millisecond clock-work, far-flung universe, Maker of nanoparticle precision, Source of perfection and order and beauty and timing, help!

“Deliver me somehow from my out-of-step, disordered, fragmented thinking and living.

“I’ve fallen so far behind myself I don’t know how to catch up! Or, what I should leave out and what take up as “next:” the thing listed next for this time of day, or one of the unfinished…?”

“All this performance procrastination is not on purpose, Lord.

“I just trailed off on side paths that highway-robbed my time. Then the attempted return to the day’s intended track stole more precious minutes, as new hindrances kept cropping up in my shortcuts like gnomes at bridges. 

“Not the defiant, self-willed sinner growing increasingly vile, I’m become more the waif wandering a thick and weedy wood, distraught in distracted circles. Rescue me, I pray from my own ineptitude!”

Growing in frustration, and fear that I’ll fly all apart, and my little pieces go careening thither and yon through great Space, I utter a prayer much like that.

It’s that kind of wasted day.

But (A. W.) Tozer’s wisdom shines light into my cluttered brain and chases out those clamoring, competing demands like money-changers from the temple. He studied the lives and writings of many great men of the Faith and noted their way of defining a wasted day: a day missing time alone with God.

Not that my day totally lacked it. But what time I did “find” was plagued with self-distractions and inattentiveness.

So. I. stop.

So. I. rest.

So. I. still. Shut up, that is, except for reading scripture aloud, but then to listen to its words, rather than blather.

I take time, I make time, for this one thing (Ph 3:13-14), this good part that won’t be taken away… (Lk 10:42).

And the flying-apart fragments of mind and soul and spirit quiet to slow and settle to rest and all begins to come together again, under the cohesive force of Him in Whom all things hold together.

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The prompt word for Five Minute Friday this week is “Trust,” and I’ve decided to go ahead and write about it, even though I want to be careful about this blurt-out-and-publish kind of writing. I can have confidence on this one, because by now I know who I can trust! So…

Go!

When I see the word “trust” here, the proverb immediately pops into my mind: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him , and He shall direct your paths…” (Pro 3:5-6)

I also think how scripture advises not even to trust in a friend (Micah 7:5)

The words of two old songs also come feed into my brain waves:

“I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name..”

and

“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

Indeed, to trust Christ means to trust enough to obey Him, even in the difficult, the “impossible” commands He gives. And balking, not obeying, equals not trusting.

Trust not myself? Or my best friend? But Christ alone?

Why do I hold back sometimes, or follow Him, quavering? Do I really think I can trust myself or some human better?

The path of blessedness: trusting and obeying the Most Trustworthy.

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Jesus said it: “Love your enemies” (Mt 5:44; Lk. 6:27).

So we’re supposed to do it!

But how?

Why did it take me so long to figure out this obvious thing: where scripture gives such a command, it often follows with the how-to.

And that’s what Jesus does with this one.

He tells us to bless them that curse us,

do good to those who hate us,

and pray for those who spitefully use and persecute us…

— as if that makes it easier!

But…

I have come to think that any good course of action best begins with prayer, and prayer is part of both Matthew’s and Luke’s how-to’s…

“Have you prayed for them?” I asked.

Her voice wavered, hesitated. “I can’t!” she said, in a whisper of desperation.

What I suggested, responding to her desperation, was good, but still not good enough. It was just a start.

I urged her just to tell God what she told me, take it to Him, ask for His help.

But just asking for His help might not be enough, in some cases at least, to enable us to forgive.

It wasn’t for Corrie ten Boom…

She stood there, cornered, that former Nazi extending his hand, speaking glowing words about the wonders of forgiveness — the forgiveness she’d just been preaching — and expecting her to reach out her hand to shake his.

She couldn’t. Simply couldn’t. Not that hand, belonging to that man…

the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravens-bruck… first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there — the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, [sister] Betsie’s pain-blanched face…*

But neither could she flee. So there she stood, as “angry vengeful thoughts boiled through” her.

And there he stood, hand extended. And she knew Jesus says, “Forgive,” and she 

thought how He died for this odious man as well as herself,

but she still couldn’t forgive.

“Lord Jesus,” she prayed. “Forgive me, and help me to forgive him.”

Yet the hand at the end of her arm remained paralyzed, like ice, frozen to her side. And the man’s hand was reaching, waiting.

In desperation she said it silent, “Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.”

And with that silent prayer her hand rose up and met that man’s, and…

as I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.*

We cannot love our enemies as we ought. We cannot forgive as we ought. And when we come to a crisis like Corrie’s ourselves, we are presented with an opportunity to behold a miracle, working right within and through us, to experience the incredible power of God in a helpless little human…

Our cases might differ. This man had evidently acknowledged his sins and accepted Christ’s forgiveness, for he mentioned this to Corrie. Also, he approached her, and his extended hand was a sort of silent request for her forgiveness as well.

She did not go to him, nor put herself in harm’s way, in this life-altering interchange. We may have so many mitigating circumstances that wisdom warns us to consider and deal with before we go rushing off precipitously to action without equipping.

How to get equipped?

Well, I’m still working this out, how best to love my enemies.

So more on that in future posts.

Meanwhile… This post is best considered in context with at least the two preceding it.

And if you have old wounds to doctor and forgiveness not yet accomplished, you might just take the next several days, week, month, however long it takes, and wrestle it out with God. Use the Psalms. Find the ones that fit, that express your tangled feelings, good and bad. Speak them out to God. And remember as you pray how He loves you, yes He does.

And come on back later, so we can limp along together.

In Christ’s love.

* From The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom (next to the last page)