Borrow

My friend sent me this article, because she knows me.  A stranger, who is, strangely, a sister with whom I will spend eternity, draws familiar with her testimony, speaking of how God reminded her that He is with her in the details of her life, in the scary and the frustrating and the difficult.  He spoke a single time to her, and once the story played out a little, it was proof that He had foreknowledge, that He was providing for her.  So that later on, when things went “wrong”, she could hold that evidence before her and remember to trust Him.  It’s what she said at the end that made me want to share on here:

“Borrow this hope.”

God’s specific work in her life boosted her hope.  God’s specific work in her life can raise our hopes as well.  We can borrow it.  And, on the flip side, our testimonies can lend hope to others.  

Psalm 84:11

I hear it, but I’m only half-listening.  On purpose.  I’m distracting myself groping for the truth to counter these lies, the lies that don’t whisper quiet, but yell, from everywhere some days…  There it is.  The truth: 

“No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.”

There is good to experience in this world, and that’s hopeful. 

There are not good things, and it is possible to experience those, I believe.  Sin steals good from my moments, until I throw myself on His grace again. 

Good is not always what the world defines.  Sometimes good takes everything I’ve got and more, but there is always enough for the next thing, too.  It is not always pleasure.  It is not always satisfaction of every hunger. 

Good exceeds the glory of those things.  It is glorious to praise God while still hungering.  My dear friend, Alanna, has had a quote from her hero, Amy Carmichael, up on her whiteboard,

Part of the glory in this good is that God is here, walking with me, and I am not alone however lonely my heart is. 

God is able to give good things; they are “in His gift” as the old term goes, and He chooses not to withhold them.  It isn’t that I deserve them, even when I’m walking uprightly.  It has been established that “there is none who does good” and “all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags”, that the “wages of sin is death” so that every breath, every new morning I wake to, is another instance of mercy. 

Uprightness is accepting His grace, rejecting my own way and welcoming His.  It is incompatible with this welcoming to reject what He calls good, the way He scripts my days and years.  If there is suffering in it, in the uprightness, it is not something to be ashamed of. 

Welcoming looks like peace, looks like prayer, looks like little work and lots of loves and sometimes not trying to change the people that God wants to change Himself.  It looks like rejoicing and praise and a life of confident purpose, or if not confidence in that, at least security in belovedness.  That's hopeful. 

If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee

"If thou but suffer God to guide thee

And hope in Him through all thy ways,

He’ll give thee strength, whate’er betide thee,

And bear thee through the evil days.

Who trusts in God’s unchanging love

Builds on the Rock that naught can move."

~  Georg Neumark, translation by Catherine Winkworth

This is verse one of a seven-verse hymn John Piper describes in his discussion of his favorite hymn. 

As are dawn and sunrise...

“Unfulfilled and fulfilled promise are related to each other,

as are dawn and sunrise.

Both

are promise

and in fact

the same promise.

If anywhere at all, then it is precisely in the light of the coming of Christ

that faith has become

Advent faith,

the expectation of future revelation.

But faith knows for whom and for what

it is waiting.

It is fulfilled faith

because it lays hold on the fulfilled promise.”

~ Karl Barth

Why Should I Buy and Why Should I Build?

Lamentations is one of the fiercest books of the Bible.  The prophet dares to know that God is good when there is not a speck of hope, when people are suffering and dying and refusing to listen.  He declares God’s mercy, bowed for the sake of man’s sinfulness.  And God can take everything, but this worship will stay – not the tender worship, but the hoarse shout of desperate truth, aching but glad that God is right and mighty and still good. 

Judah thought they would escape Israel’s fate.  They had false prophets saying that things were well when things were terribly wrong.  Their king rallied morale and insisted that God’s faithfulness would preserve the country from destruction.  I don’t know why he thought the suffering already going on would have a limit.  In typical Jewish fashion, maybe they were all just unable to believe that God would let another, more wicked, nation have the victory. 

Nebuchadnezzar’s armies marched.  They besieged.  Our peaceful, “civilized” imaginations can barely accept the horrors Jerusalem endured before falling.  The noble and the rich – even the faith-full – were targeted and taken, relocated and enslaved.  Babylonians were triumphant and proud.  Jews were devastated and sad. 

Then God does something for them that shows He is a God of Hope and Love and Promises:  

            "Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon; Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them;Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace. …For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive." 

And a few chapters later, God told Jeremiah to buy land.  Buy land!  Land about to be taken away by foreign invaders.  The prophet is obedient, but he wants to know why.  He acknowledges the righteousness of God that has brought calamity on Judah.  And he says he knows nothing is too hard for God…

            “Then came the word of the LORD unto Jeremiah, saying, Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me? Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, and into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it: And the Chaldeans, that fight against this city, shall come and set fire on this city, and burn it with the houses, upon whose roofs they have offered incense unto Baal, and poured out drink offerings unto other gods, to provoke me to anger. …And now therefore thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning this city, whereof ye say, It shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence; Behold, I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: And they shall be my people, and I will be their God: And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul. For thus saith the LORD; Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them. And fields shall be bought in this land, whereof ye say, It is desolate without man or beast; it is given into the hand of the Chaldeans. Men shall buy fields for money, and subscribe evidences, and seal them, and take witnesses in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, and in the cities of the mountains, and in the cities of the valley, and in the cities of the south: for I will cause their captivity to return, saith the LORD."

Nothing is too difficult for God.  Even when things are darkest, there is nothing stopping Him from restoring what was lost.  The question is “What will God do?” 

And then the question, the glory of man to ask their God, is “Why?” 

(Scriptures from Jeremiah 29 and 32)

Only If We Endure

"Mostly we want to get away from suffering, and will often take the quickest path possible to escape it. And then we feel hopeless. Things will never change. I never noticed this connection that God makes though- suffering producing endurance producing character producing hope. Suffering leading to hope! But only if we choose to endure (and yes, I think that sometimes enduring is a choice if escaping is an option)." 

~ Alanna at Through Deserts and Rainstorms

Dare Not

"To hope, for thou dar'st not despair."

~ Francis Thompson