I saw a grand thing for a bit. It was a beautiful dream, the kind that makes you step back and gasp at the wonder of it all. A picture was before me and I wanted to jump into it, to go on the journey I saw in it, like Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
But I couldn’t jump into the picture.
As beautiful as the dream was, as much as I liked it, I found that I had to let it go. And it wasn’t that I had to drop it, scorn it, never return to it. I was simply called to move it from something I was actively moving toward to something that may be brought to me. And I find that I’m not to clutch for it, to wish to have it back more than a little, to long for it above all else. Rather, I’m simply called to pray “thy will be done” and trust that there are works for me to do in the here and now. I find blessings in these days I didn’t expect, freedom that I find surprisingly comforting.
I have been given good things. I have not been given the good thing I dreamed about, the thing I wanted. But if I fixate on that one thing I didn’t get I’ll lose all the good things I do have by neglect. So I’m diving into what I have been given, grieving the loss of a grand dream, trying not to wonder whether I’ll ever get it back.
I find there are some things I won’t be. I won’t ever be a great artist, I gave that dream up to pursue science. There are other things I may be – I may be a great scientist, a doctor, a wife, or a mother. But I doubt I’ll be all of them. And I doubt that if I had all of them I’d escape with my sanity intact.
But there are some things I know that I will be. I will always love children. I will always be a daughter, a sister, a friend. I will always be curious, a lover of learning and discovering. I will always love traveling and going on adventures. And, best of all, I will always be a daughter of the King, known and loved by the one who made the world.
And I find there is only one whom I can trust with my dreams. For he has promised never to leave me or forsake me, that his plans are for prospering, bringing hope and a future. He has promised that he’s always working for the good of those he loves, and I know that he loves me! He has proven himself faithful on countless occasions and in a myriad of ways. So why not trust him with my little hopes and dreams? The little that I have is being brought to the altar once again to be refined by the great artist. Let him do as he wills, who am I, a mere creature, to talk back to the creator? I only wish to be faithful to whatever he task he sets before me.
This poem has meant a lot to me since I found it a few weeks ago in an anthology of Amy Carmichael's Poems. It's called Discipline.
"Who frames his God
As One whose love unstern
Has never wrought for Man a fiery law,
Has never scourged the son whom he received
Whose holiness does not burn
Against iniquity-
He has conceived
What is not. For no myth, God's awful Rod.
Dost doubt it? Go to Calvary.
See there what angels saw,
The sinless One made sin.
Dost doubt it still? Well, be it so,
But know,
Within
All is not well with thee."
Search me, my God;
Seek to the very ground
Of this my shifting and deceptive heart;
Probe keenly, prove me, and examine me,
O God, and see
Whether in rooms within me set apart
From casual search be found
That which requires Thy Rod.
Look well, look well, my God.
Thus pondering, I prayed
By Christ's good grace;
And in a secret place
Was made aware
Of piled up debris, stubble of desire
Vain-glorious, foolish, fuel for the fire
That must burn where
God's righteous judgements are made known to me.
Fell swiftly then
The Rod of God
But I , surprised
Uncomprehending, blamed
The happenings of my day. Had they conspired
To harass me unkindly? Innocent me?
Till suddenly
That bitter thing, the greatly undesired,
That smiting makes ashamed,
I saw. Thus being chastised,
God's Rod I recognized.
I saw Him who my times
Revere, obey;
I saw Him in my day,
Now evident
To quickened conscience to which circumstance
Is no mere play of irresponsible chance,
But planned intent.
Oh, then I did my holy God adore,
Who was before
Unrecognized.
Thus, my kind Father, God,
Did use His Rod
Which is no myth but veriest verity.
He who of old time wrote
That he would smite, now smote.
Yet never, never has He dealt with me
After my sins, or my iniquity
Had ended me.
Oh Father, Thou
Before whom, in my spirit I do bow,
Stripped naked of my hideous vanity,
I own Thee just, I own Thee Fatherly.
I bless Thee that Thou didst not let me go
Undealt with, as too trivial to know
Severity of scourging. This thy work
Continue, Father, for I would not lurk
An unregarded child, undisciplined;
But, knowing I have sinned,
Oh, let me know I am forgiven. Art
To palliate sin flies from me; Father, right
Are these Thy judgements; therefore smite.
Oh Love, made manifest in this Thy Rod,
My God, my God.
Some thoughts from this morning
Right now, I feel like I’m sitting on a hilltop with a few of my dearest of friends. It is nighttime and the stars are out. The moonlight shines on the valley, making things that would be invisible possible for us to see. At the bottom there is a sweet little town, full of people bustling about their little busy lives. And two by two, we watch a man come to a woman take her hand, and walk down into the valley. We sit and watch rejoicing. We wonder whether anyone will come for us. We wonder whether we will be able to choose someone. We wonder if we are capable of loving as they are at all. But mostly we rejoice, or at least, we struggle to rejoice. We know that our God has given us our time on the hilltop and that while the journey into the valley is wonderful, it is also long and hard. We know that disobedience is not an option and we have felt Him say, “wait.” We have seen a grand thing from the hilltop, but we are content to stay there in today because it is where we have been placed by the Great Author. And oh, we love to read his stories. We love to act our parts in his great drama. We ache to be faithful. Sometimes we talk about these things, sometimes we only feel them deep inside. And so, watching and wondering in the summer nighttime, we sit together, enjoying the companionship of today. We on the hillside have been given the gift of each other even as those walking down have been given their partner. It is beautiful.
Before I go return to Ochem and Spanish vocabulary words, I'd like to include a passage from my friend Oswald Chambers' devotional My Utmost for His Highest that has been challenging me.
Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship... God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself, it has to be given back to Him so that He may make it a blessing for others... The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him. Rush is wrong every time, there is always plenty of time to worship God. Quiet days with God may be a snare. We have to pitch our tents where we shall always have quiet times with God, however noisy our times with the world may be. There are not three stages in spiritual life - worship, waiting, and work. Some of us go in jumps like spiritual frogs, we jump from worship to waiting, and from waiting to work. God's idea is that the three should go together. They were always together in the life of Our Lord. He was unhastening and unresting. It is a discipline, we cannot get into it all at once. - January 7th Reading
May you know his peace that passes understanding. May it guard your hearts and minds in our dearest Lord, Christ Jesus
Jo
