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Archive for January 19th, 2014

Trust is your Rest

Posted in General, God Thoughts, Poem, Strength, Sustaining, tagged , , , , on January 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »

I sure am thankful that it is God who judges me, because He is so merciful and gracious.I lost all perspective during the recent events involving my wife’s stroke. All I could see were the seemingly insurmountable frustration she had with speech, the hesitations I experienced, the pressure from well-meaning people, and the mounting bills. None of those difficulties have been overcome but I am beginning to look up rather than around me as I seek ways to move on. I wish others could give their perspective on these events since they are severely skewed by my own fears and failures, but alas, not here. So here is my last of three poems on my feelings about the events of New Years Day, 2014, and following:

Fretting has no value at all

It only leads to early demise

And turmoil with those you love

And everything that you despise

 

In quietness and trust is your rest

The peace you seek is with God

And love from those who are close to you

Whatever the nature of the test

 

It is God Who is at work in you

To work and to will His good pleasure

The path He ordains is beyond view

So stroll forward in faith at leisure

 

Your struggle and strain is of no worth

Only serves to frustrate all designs

To have peace, joy, value and mirth

Written on your life’s last lines

 

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Pushed, or else Carried, Along

Posted in General, Poem, Sustaining, tagged , , , on January 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The context of the following poem is a story that I have frequently told my students over the years about how my fifth-born child came into the world. It is a story that is as close to a miracle as I personally have ever experienced. Now I encountered a new difficulty, my wife’s stroke, and drug my feet because I both feared and did not understand; I hesitated, but in God’s goodness I do not think it made any difference, though I will always be accused of neglect.

It doesn’t always work the same

This walk of faith we’re called to tread

No miracle this time did He

No sure answer to my prayer came

 

Provision came another way

To human interventions trust

Wisdom and prudence are the must

In all of this I had no sway

 

Now I am counted as the fool

I could not see just how He led

In fear from the solution fled

For my faith was a training tool

 

What are others to learn from this?

Do they trust God or their own schemes?

Surely for others there are themes

Their faith lessons they will not miss

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A New Way Led

Posted in General, God Thoughts, God's Word, Sustaining, tagged , , , , , , on January 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »

I break the present silence with trepidation because as always I feel compelled to be honest and that is hard when you have also been foolish in the eyes of others. So, I will start off slowly and get around to several points in a circuitous way.

At 4 AM on New Years Day, my precious wife awoke with what I now know to be “having a stroke”. She rubbed her head both front and back, complaining of it hurting and could not recognize me speaking to her. There is so much I am not saying because it is too hard to say, and there have  been many doubts and tears. We finally arrived at the hospital for a 3 night stay. Thankfully the stroke did not effect her motor skills other than a general, temporary weakness. She walked into the ER, spoke in a limited way without slurred speech, grasp numerous nurses and doctors hands and pushed against their resistance. Instead, her language center was arrested. She could not say names, mine, her own, and to her, most notably, her children. She could not understand many instructions which led one doctor to conclude she had motor skill deficiencies because she could not follow his instructions to apply pressure against his push.

I am going to post several poems that came 2 weeks after the events described above that reveal some of my reactions to all that I saw and experienced during this time as a result of seeing my wife’s debilitation and having family push me this way and that. The reflections are obviously focused around my thoughts and struggles concerning the stroke my wife had and are therefore skewed away from the events to my feelings about the events. No one is truly objective afterall though that does not mean untruthful. My first poem is a short one that deals with the immediate “why” question, to which there is no answer other than “He is good”:

I know in my heart that God is good
His Word declares it so
From His works to show
How His providence and care
The abundance He does share
Reveal that He is kind
And powerful and involved and good

If you have not yet concluded by faith that He is good you will probably ask endlessly “Why”, or perhaps, accuse Him, when it is sin in the world that is the cause of so much pain and suffering. Oh, so its sin and not Him. Why didn’t you say so? It is because all good and ill is filtered through His providential hands, otherwise He is not truly God: “I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’; calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of My purpose from a far country. Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, surely I will do it.” (Isaiah 46:9-11) Here it is, pay careful attention, those of you who want to soften God down, “who are stagnant in spirit, who say in their hearts, ‘The Lord will not do good or evil'” (Zephaniah 1:12): “I am the Lord, and there is no other, The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.” (Isaiah45:6-7) Wow what a tangent! But it is not a false one because His goodness is based on His sovereignty- He is not fickle; He has purpose, much of which He has made known and yet is inscrutable by man. He is good and there is purpose in difficulty and harm we experience.

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Overflows from the Heart

"But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart…" Matthew 15:18

CreatorWorship

Pointing to the One who made, saved, and sustains