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Archive for November, 2011

Nov 24

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CONCERNING THE MORNING AID

 

from my journal: October 2010

 

Psalm 22: “Concerning the morning aid”

This, the title of Psalm 22 in the LXX: concerning the morning aid.

It’s a psalm of deep, intense pain.

A psalm Jesus knew, for He shouted the start of it from the depths of His immense agony.

A psalm He fulfilled, with its descriptions of what He endured.

The darkness and suffering of Calvary.

Sorrow and pain.

Aloneness and being deserted.

Crying out and feeling unanswered in the depths of despair.

Sobbing and sleepless in the night. God seeming so far away.

Life pouring out like water.  Strength drying up.

Counting my bones for I am unable to eat.

 

Bereft.

 

And into the dark night of my soul comes this word:

the morning aid.

Say it aloud and it is my mourning aid.

Then I know that He will grant an end to this sorrow that for now is all consuming. That one day I shall know His love and comfort in all their realities.  For,

“even the darkness will not be dark to You; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to You.” (Psalm 139:12)

He will come. He does come.

“His coming is as certain as the morning.” (Hosea 6:3, old French version)

And He promised to come.

“I will not leave you as orphans [comfortless, desolate, bereaved, forlorn, helpless]; I will come [back] to you.” (John 14:18, Amplified Bible)

Through it all, in it all, He is there ; and if I do not yet know Him in it with me, I will.  I will.

“Oh, that we might know the Lord!

Let us press on to know him.

He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn

or the coming of rains in early spring.” (Hosea 6:3)

Nov 17

Snowdrops

October 2010      Three weeks after The Day

There will be snowdrops again.
There will be snowdrops again. I have to believe it.
One day soon, the tiny tips will push through, struggling, light seeking, upward bound.
First, there will be snow. Frost and freeze. Rain.
Anything the elements can throw on a winter’s day.
A test of patience, hope, belief.
But for now, the bulb lies cold, deeply hidden, dormant.

So lies my soul.

A corpse, buried in winter snow.
Buried within my cold cold body. Iced from within.
I can see it from above, the rectangle of transparent ice
surrounding all that is me.

It is hard to hear you through the ice. Impossible to reach out, touch you, feel your well-meant hug. This ice is brittle, sharp, so-very-cold. It forms a barrier.

Maybe that is my protection, for should the thaw come too soon I would feel too much.

So I will believe that snowdrops will come again. And one day
One day
My snowdrop soul will grow again a tiny tip of life.

For as [surely as] the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring forth, so [surely] the Lord God will cause rightness and justice and praise to spring forth before all the nations [through the self-fulfilling power of His word].                                       Isaiah 61:11

Amplified Bible (AMP) © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation

Snowdrop (n): A.D. Miller

  1. 1.     An early-flowering bulbous plant, having a white pendent flower.
  1. Moscow slang. A corpse that lies buried or hidden in the winter snows, emerging only in the thaw.

Nov 10

LEARNING TO LIVE WITHOUT

So this is how it is, this learning to live again; this living with the sorrow and withoutness. Another  lingering look back, not wanting to forget.

I shall not forget.

There comes a time to move on, a time to learn to live again. To learn to live without.

To live with it, my grief and sorrow; that emptiness which once she filled. My memories.

Her love.

For love does not die. I love. She loves still.

But not here.

And so the space which once was her filling and her loving is my withoutness. I do not want the space to be filled with other people, other things and so I must, I need, to learn to live with it.

From here until.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.” Ephesians 6:10

Not the finally as we often think of finally – in our terminology that means “I’ve got to the end at last.”

Like a long sermon.

No, for I shall not get to the end of my withoutness.

But “from now on, from now until the end.”

From now on it will be like this.

She will be missed and at times the withoutness will recede. Then it will crash back and overwhelm. This is how it is to be.

Withoutness does not pass; it is not some passing whim.

It is here to stay.

But from now on , from now until the end, there can be strength in the Lord and in His mighty power.

He does not pass and there is no withoutness with Him.