“There are those who rebel against the light, who are not acquainted with its ways, and do not stay in its paths.” Job 24:13 ESV
I could easily stay in my soft cushioned chair, feet propped and fan creating a breeze overhead. The worn quilt from many washings is as soft as a feather and cool against my feet.
I could stay here all day. It would be no matter, and maybe I should.
Stay in this morning spot that is the place where I’m met by mercy and reassured it has no end.
The place of the promise, begin again. The place that is quiet. The place where God informs me through my Bible or the words someone else has recorded.
Or just through the allowing myself to stay, just through my patient sitting.
Job answered his friend’s advice to agree with God and be at peace (Job 22:21) with bitter honesty. He was exhausted over not knowing why or when.
Job was confused over how God would allow his condition, how it seemed to him God was not looking or worse, looking away.
“From out of the city the dying groan, and the soul of the wounded cries for help; yet God charges no one with wrong.” Job 24:12 ESV
The chapters of the Book of Job continue with Job’s debate with God, relentless in both his longing to understand and his commitment to believe in the majesty and knowledge of God.
Job stayed and God answered with redemption and life again.
He listened to his friends’ advising and rebuking and he implored them in his own defense.
Then, he listened to God.
“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” Job 42:2 ESV
I’m letting that truth linger, lessen the pressure of overthinking or demanding quick answers. I don’t need to have nor am I able to have every answer.
I’ll move from my morning place to other things God is calling me to finish.
Paintings and stories of birds and marshes and laundry.
I could easily stay in this quiet spot with God. No television and no habitual social media checking. No news debates and no high pressured conversations nudging my thoughts to write catastrophic stories.
Instead, I’ll continue.
Job gives us permission to be honest with God. To ask how long and still believe.
To continue and believe. To know the light, keep coming back and staying as long as you are able.
Linking up with others with the prompt “stay” from Five Minute Friday’s Kate Motaung
“Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” John 14:5 ESV
When I’m not certain how to join a conversation, I sometimes don’t say anything. I linger with my questions, I gather information.
I acknowledge my lack of understanding. I tell myself this is just too much for a well meaning but insufficient response. Situations over lives lost violently and unnecessarily weigh heavy on my heart. I am not equipped with words to make a dent in the dismay.
I turned to John today, led by my ancient Roman numerically referenced devotional, “Joy and Strength”.
A drawing in the margin illustrated the question asked by Thomas, “How can we know the way?”
I realized Jesus had told them, shown them, modeled it along.
The way is love.
John, chapters 13 and 14, tell the touching story of the love of Jesus.
Jesus, confusing the disciples by sitting at their feet with a basin of water, choosing the dirtiest of their parts, feet familiar with dirt, and he washed their feet.
He was teaching that you do what seems unfitting for you to do, you take it a step farther than telling about Him or giving food or shelter or telling their own Jesus story.
No, you love others if they’re different, you love people who walk on different roads other than your own.
You acknowledge that their steps are led by God enabled feet and journeys, joys and woes.
Feet like your own.
Made by God, loved by God.
Led by God.
Led by love.
All sorts of words can be said about choosing love.
It’s the choosing that matters, not really the words we’ve known so very long and already know.
It’s the choosing to love when that’s all you know or when that’s “all you got” in unthinkable ungodly situations.
“And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:4-6 ESV
Love is the way.
Love, the way to God.
Through the sacrificial death of Jesus, the washer of our faltering feet.
What have you learned about yourself since March whenever when you were scared to death by being told to wash your hands, don’t touch your face?
I’ve learned I can’t blame lack of time for my lack of effort. I’ve learned to understand my resistance to taking chances is for fear of something not happening.
If you’ve read my blog, you may be thinking well, that’s no secret.
I learned that God made me to be merciful and that I have what is called a mercy gift, that this is my redemptive gift. The day after a very wise person told me this, thinking surely I already knew, I received this In Touch publication, their final issue. The issue’s focus?
Mercy.
I’ve learned there is a reader for stories born of trauma. There are authors who are honest and long for their readers to be changed by our stories.
One such author is Jake Owensby, the author of “A Resurrection Shaped Life, Dying and Rising on Planet Earth”.
Jake is a blogger and a minister. He also grew up exposed to violence. He developed a fear reaction. He cowered when he felt that was the only way to feel safe. He grew up being told he was worthless in so many ways. His book is written to convince the reader, God made you for different. You can believe you are valued.
I haven’t even finished the book and I’ve not been asked to review or mention it. It’s just a part of my learning during pandemic.
I admitted a big hard and better understood truth about myself.
I am a blamer. I look for places to lay blame for the trauma of my past, the way it has and continues to stymie my living.
Jake Owensby defines it this way, a way I am embracing,
You see, I’m a blamer. Or, more accurately, I’m a recovering blamer given to occasional relapses.
Jake Owensby
On the bottom page of this chapter’s second page are almost unreadable notes left by me, the truth of them so true, I had to hurry and leave it recorded.
If you can blame someone or someones for the hurt you felt, the fear unresolved and the physical harm that went unprevented…you won’t have to feel the deep heartache of not wanting to have to blame God.
Me
Mr. Owensby led me to this, it is valuable like a revelation long needed.
I’m only half through the book. The chapter after blame and shame has other underlined and margin notes. One more that lingers is the retelling of an English teacher who believed in him and convinced him to write competitively. His fear and comparison of himself led to failure. However, he writes of the redemptive value of the instructor seeing that in him, seeing him measuring his lack against another’s arrogance.
She yearned for me to see things, to see the world and myself in a different light. In retrospect, I realize that it was my dread of failure that undid me that day. Failure, even perceived failure, would set loose in me an avalanche of shame.
Jake Owensby
I’m remembering now how Jake Owensby and I connected through writing. I remember the time he offered me prayer. I believe he prayed.
Prayer is yet another thing I’m learning more deeply.
Last weekend, I sat with my mama’s sister on her patio. She told a sweet story about how my mama was a teenager when she first heard my daddy singing in a tiny little country bar. She was a high schooler and he had come home from Korea.
I asked her to retell the story. How had I never known it? Then we turned the discussion from life to death. My uncle and my aunt asking me to remind them how old my parents were when they met death. The perspective changed along with the mood when I compared my upcoming 60th birthday with the corresponding too soon years of their dying.
I thought about the scribbles in my Bible, a book I gave my ailing mama entitled “What God Can Do”. I thought about how I believed she would live, that God would do what the Book of Luke records, she would live if I would believe. I thought of how I never prayed that way for my daddy, felt I was not eligible to pray, not equipped back then.
Now, on this Tuesday morning I’m listing answers to prayer because I am still praying and I will pray, continue unrelentingly.
So, why pray when people die anyway, when abuse continues for some and if it ends at last, the deep pain often comes back to visit?
I pray because I know God is far too big for me to know why and why not.
I pray because I know His love and power and knowledge in increments when I continue.
Lost keys found, an old car that started, a baby protected in a storm, a heart condition healed, a softer tone from the heart of one that used to be harder, an opportunity to write about redemption from trauma for others, waking up well, tiny twins a little early yet, healthy, little answers to questions and requests not really life altering but good offering ups of yes”, the bravery to send photos of paintings to a gallery.
Knowing God so much more than before, so much that it’s unimportant the reactions of others when you say you still believe in miracles.
God is not logical. We can’t use a chart like a logic model to list our prayers and our acts of mercy and kindness and line them up in a flow chart kind of way towards a corresponding list of outcomes.
God’s ways are not ours to fully understand.
Only fully believe.
So, what have you learned during this time called unprecedented?
Maybe it’s just that, all of our times are in the hands of a God who promises unprecedented miracles, unprecedented new mercies, unimaginable grace.
Fix your mind on that, not your missteps, the prayers you prayed that left you questioning, or the long held fear of failure and shame that holds you back.
Learn of God in tiny grasps; but, keep longing for steady learning. There is more than enough time to get closer to grasping the truth of Him, the truth not made for us to wrap our minds around completely, simple to be drawn closer every moment to the possibility of it.
The immeasurably confounding and generous love of God.
“from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:15-19 ESV
Like the prayers God answers, I’m enlightened by the possibility of them, not the end result. The book about a Resurrection Shaped Life, written from the perspective of someone hampered by shame was not written specifically for me and its author had no preconceived takeaway for me. I’m simply a reader as I am simply one who is praying. The revelation, redemption and peace in response are God’s answers.
I encourage you to follow the writing of Jake Owensby and to order this book if you’re stuck in your past or if you are prone to shame as a handicap. You can learn more here: Jake Owensby
Last week I read about the longing for resonance. At least this was my interpretation, we long for resonance and for whatever we choose and how we use it, to resonate with others.
This idea made an impression.
Told me to write about the sky, the tiny roses, the way the baby laughs over a shared popsicle time.
God doesn’t want us to feel small, simply know we are smaller than Him.
me
You are loved.
You are seen.
You are not finished.
Yesterday morning, I woke with a longing to understand the “stuck in the middle” me.
So, I prayed about it, scribbled a sleepy question in my journal.
What is a calling and how do you know?
Me
It felt serious, the question like risk analysis of quitting or resuming. It was a question about why ideas feel so tangibly possible only to be set aside because of fear.
I’m thinking art again, and I’m thinking manuscripts. I’m asking God is this calling or is it just something good I love to do?
There seems to be (at least to me) a whole lot of pressure to call out to the world our callings.
Maybe, the calling is simply to be attentive to the call towards God and to keep getting closer.
Perhaps any other pursuit of calling can’t help but be tainted by selfish endeavor.
Maybe the call is to continue and I suppose see what develops. Crazy we can’t be content with that, we need to feel pressure in our pursuit I guess.
Unexpectedly, I received a request to contribute to a writing community. Out of the blue it would seem.
But, I know better.
Something about my Instagram resonated and this leader of the community sent an invitation.
The sky last evening told me stories, the sort of story I told long ago and had stopped sharing.
The quest for bigger calling made my sky stories seem odd and irrelevant.
The sky with the heart shaped window, the brilliant moon that saw me growing and the bend in the road that said, God is calling.
Continue.
Continue and believe.
A new question today, a prayer.
God, how can I resonate with others? Help me to see the calling as a calling towards you.
me
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Jesus Matthew 7:7 ESV
I think it’s what is thought in the processing that may be more distracting than the noise of distractions.
I kept my earphones in although no sound came through. I’m still the one walking with the long white cord swinging. I’m way out of the loop, no cordless audio and nothing on my wrist to ding an alarm, message or celebration of steps. I just keep walking, occasionally I run.
“Bethesda’s Water” detail
Walking is an escape, an unraveling, a reconfiguring of my intentions gone astray by thinking.
The sound in my ear is not distracting. It typically is a guide for my thoughts, songs and the words in them that help me believe. Lyrics like this:
“And, oh as you run, what hindered love will only become a part of your story.” Out of Hiding
Yesterday, I thought of the man who laid beside the pool of water that was known for healing, Bethesda. He watched others bathing, hoping for health benefits but stayed at a distance on his mat for 38 years.
When Jesus asked if he wanted to be well he didn’t seem sure. He pointed out the crowded water, how from where he was lying he’d surely get trampled trying to get in.
I wondered if his thoughts were what kept him from going. Was the water truly healing water and what if it wasn’t, would he be better “as is“?
“Bethesda’s Waters”
I wondered if it was mental torture for him, his own thoughts distracting him from possibility.
“When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.” John 5:6-9 ESV
Jesus was there and then he was not. The man was left with wondering over his very own miracle.
Maybe wondering, will it last? Then Jesus finds him or he finds Jesus. Either way, it was confirmation, your healing is true, carry on now, keep on running.
It’s that way with me, maybe you. Thoughts cause me to be distracted by the reality of my redemption. This crazy world feeds into the natural and leaves little space for the miraculous.
We know we’ve been healed by mercy’s water but some things make it feel less than enough.
This is when we remember our very own Bethesda moment, we remember we are one soul in a crowd of others all sweetly welcomed into the fold.
“Bethesda’s Water”, detail
We remember our soul is aligned to that love. We see Jesus in the sky, the words of a song, the gaze of a child or the worrisome situation that we surrendered that has led to easy breathing.
We hear Jesus. A more serious tone in His voice and yet, we’re not offended, we’re simply reminded of who we were and who we are becoming.
“But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.” John 5:14 NLT
Grace and truth.
Continue and believe.
Believe and continue.
This painting is mixed media on reclaimed wood and is available as original or prints. Comment to inquire.
Last night, the first star was out, the one some wish on, the one that makes me think of my mama. The Lab and I sit outside in our spot til dark. I saw two stars shoot by the first one and I just sat waiting for night.
My son and I talked earlier, not long and drawn out, just acknowledged this time like one neither of us had ever known. He listed his unknowns, calmly gave worst case scenarios of his future, defined this time as limbo. I agreed. Limbo that’s an acceptance you can’t really fight against, you just are in it. I mentioned God and the power of prayer, said I believe this time will be remembered by prayer, God will be remembered by many, newly recognized by some. These are my certain convictions. My hope.
The 6th chapter of Deuteronomy contains the greatest commandment and it closes with Moses telling the people what to tell their children when they ask about God’s rescue of them in times to come.
“When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.” Deuteronomy 6:20-21 ESV
God would want us to remember just as Moses told them. To remember the palpable fear and uncertain dread in this time of limbo, to remember that God was aware.
One piece developed from little more than colors on one side transitioning to the other. Originally, “Eden” until it became “Redemption, This Side of Heaven”.
Redemption Series
Then seven pieces added, colors conjuring emotion. I laid them all separate then in a stack, thinking oh, now that’s a painting, all of them lying together different but the very same.
The bystanders recognized the beggar up walking around. All of a sudden he could see and they began to dispute the truth of Jesus, they began to argue over the day of the week and were certain the beggar was mistaken in some way.
I’m wondering how he became a discarded one at all. Scriptures say he had parents. Had they given up on being his support system? He was an adult after all, he’d have to fend for himself.
Or was he so downtrodden by his lifelong blindness, he just grew tired of being their burden? He could beg others for money instead of his parents.
I love the Gospels, the Books of encounters with Jesus. There are many people who stir empathy in me. There are relatable stories to my healing by Jesus.
Jesus came along and he noticed the man blind from birth. The disciples, always looking to learn from Jesus, asked what had caused the blindness, were his parents neglectful, had they been bad people before they became parents, or was the little boy born with some sort of predicted worthlessness that led to him being born blind?
They wanted to know who or what was to blame.
Jesus told them it was God’s plan. The blind man would be an instrument for God’s glory to be real, for the mysterious to be memorable.
“Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” John 9:3 ESV
Jesus made a paste of mud and his own spit, pressed it against the blind beggar’s eyes and then said go down to the water and wash it all off. The man did and he could see.
Everyone asked how, the man said I did what Jesus said and that’s really all I know.
His vision restored, the interrogations continued. The parents were questioned, they confirmed their son’s blindness as well as his current condition. Told all the skeptics to ask him, not us, he will tell you! According to scripture, the parents were keeping their distance because they were Jews and they would be disallowed from the synagogue if they acknowledged Jesus, if they acknowledged their own child’s healing.
These were the times I suppose even a parent of a son who was healed was careful about boldly agreeing and believing in Jesus.
Seems it was safer to be a skeptic, to know there are people who believe in Jesus because of their own healing; but, they were not ready to believe for themselves.
Maybe it seemed too impossible, too unattainable, too supernaturally “magical”.
Same as today really.
The man who could see could only speak for himself, hope with all his heart that his testimony mattered.
“So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” John 9:24-26 ESV
Centuries later, I sit in my mama’s covered chair with my Bible, the margin on the page has a pen and pencil resemblance of me, my face turned towards the words and a slight listening tilt.
I understand the blind man. I can relate to his dismay over Jesus initially. I can sit with my Bible and know beyond doubt that I too have been healed when many for valid reasons discarded me, left me to fend for myself.
And like the blind man who couldn’t explain mud and spit restoring his vision, I often wonder how me simply believing in a cross, the likeness of which I now add to my wrist could have altered my life so very significantly.
It is not my place to understand it all, to know every how or why God found me worthy of healing. It is mine to believe. To be able to rest in this:
But, you do know, God, You do.
We’re all in a state of not knowing now. On Sunday, I knelt in the place by my mama’s chair. I was distracted, I admit. Still, I joined in the prayer of Pastor Steve Davis with many others. I prayed and am praying in agreement with him that this time will bring people who don’t really understand God, maybe just hope in the possibility of Him being real closer to believing. The prayer closed with that very request of our Heavenly Father, that during this pandemic stirring panic, countless people will come to know God, will believe in Jesus as their healer.
I pray this as well. I know healing that saved not just my soul but my very life from risky, dangerous, threatening to kill me situations.
Like the blind man, I believe in Jesus.
“Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.” John 9:35-38 ESV
Continue and believe, moment by moment if necessary.
Acknowledge/Admit you were born a sinner. Believe in Jesus, God’s plan for us to be with Him in heaven. Confess your sin and begin to live healed.
A few days in a row I fixated on the idea of a bluebird landing in my palm. I imagined being able to get close enough before it flew away.
I set out with the plan that if I asked God to let that bird make a nest in my palm, I’d believe even more strongly in a God I can’t see.
I would see faith in a whole new way.
The fencepost is marked by a blue ribbon! Trickery to my vision even today.
If I clutched that resting bird, I’d go back home or sit on the front steps and I’d make a call. “Cousin!” I’d say with a loud happy voice, to my cousin who believes bluebirds mean hope.
“Cousin, you’ll never believe it! I have just held a little bluebird in my hand!” And she’d reply in her southern strong voice with either,
“What???? …Get outta here, no way!!!”
I love the way she always gets excited over my revelations.
Or, she’d say “Oh, Lisa, I can’t believe it, isn’t God so good?”
She might find my behavior odd, that I long to see a bluebird sit still in my hand.
That this crazy idea born of seeing a bird near the fence for me is a metaphor for faith, for sustaining it.
For me to be honest with me. Holding a bird in my hand would just lead to me longing for more. I’d love the way God answered my crazy request; but, what next?
Would I ask God to bring a cardinal indoors to live next to my bed? Would I have no fear of flying and ask to soar on an eagle’s wing?
Outlandish thoughts! Really elaborate tales I write in my intricately woven head.
God made me this way.
Last month I was more focused on the birds than ever. Crows all over the country field and a gathering of blue birds in the yard. Several cardinals seem to time it just right and I am turning my face towards the sky and they unravel themselves from the branches and hover over my walk on the trail. Bright red, soft and luminous blue, even the omenous charcoal black buzzard sitting atop the falling down house.
I noticed them. I thought about how God made them all. Thought about God telling us we mean more to Him than birds, than sparrows.
We are more intricately made. A blessing and a worrisome thing is a mind, a complex and compromised by life on earth brain.
Maybe that’s why I love the birds, love the idea of flying from place to place with my little flock. Being able to simply know my nest will be strong and safe if even for just a season.
Knowing there’s a pattern to life, there is a path for safe transition to Heaven.
Birds stay in that pattern undaunted by earth.
The coldest and most wet winter and I still hear the new bird in the tall pine singing its newly acquired noisy song. It sounds like anguish to me. Who am I to say? It’s most likely excitement.
It is a birdsong of faith.
As I type, the sound of a bouncing off the tall window has occurred. I don’t look up soon enough to see it, to know its color, brown, blue or rich red.
I know it may have been off course or maybe, just maybe it felt my longing and it thought it could come inside. Most likely not land in my hand, only let me truly see up close.
That’s faith that accepts our complexities. It’s faith in the God who made me who makes me unconcerned over writing this post, a crazy essay type story about how a bird not in my hand is leading me to deeper faith.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” Psalms 139:13 ESV
My thoughts are known and they are unique, one of a kind wonderings and at times quite woeful.
I am thankful I am loved completely by a God who knows me so well, who knows me because He knew me.
Who’s watching over and is satisfied by my longings over bluebirds.
Who is satisfied that I am coming into me as a work of His hand. A God who sees me testing Him to give me a bird as a measure of faith and is understanding of my ways and compels me deeper, deeper into His view of me.
God is okay with my oddities.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.” Psalms 139:23-24 NLT
None of us are the same.
We don’t see one another’s inward parts. For me to write about birds is a risk; a risk I pray gets others thinking. We can never understand the mind of another. We can only accept that as truth. We all have hidden vulnerabilities. Some of us overcome them. Others show and then regret showing because they’re met by the very different thoughts of another. Some brains have fought back with resilience.
Others still have little corners and crevices that have stored up fear. Some hearts don’t appear to be broken but are quite broken. They are not beyond repair. No, not at all beyond resilience sustained by faith. Some are not healed yet; but, they are closer to believing they will be, closer to the possibility of coming into God’s own. The place of rest.
So, from the perspective of one who ponders birds and skies, let’s all join together, separately and yet wonderfully made and believe together.
Faith makes us well, may we not need earthly evidence to believe it.
I don’t think Jesus would have told us to look at the birds if we couldn’t grow by looking. So look up today. Look for the birds, imagine if you like, being allowed to hold one gently for a minute.
“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Matthew 6:26 ESV
Heavenly Father, thank you for making us so individually well and reminding us that we are so very fragile. It is you that makes us strong. Help us remember you through a flash of blue against a winter field. Because of mercy, in Jesus name, Amen.
we run away from our discomfort... but it doesn't leave us. to heal we need to turn around and face it, experience it and once we truly do we are out of it. We heal and we grow.
2 Timothy 1:7-8 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. This blog is about my Christian walk. Join me for the adventure.
Lisa Anne Tindal 