Leaning In

I remember the phone call fifteen years ago, with news so devastating that it physically bent my knees.  "Should I go?" I asked, tentatively --fearfully.  "If not you, then who?" was the bald challenge.  Driving the ten minutes to a house of sudden bereavement I metaphorically dragged my feet each mile.  "God, I don't know what to do, don't know what to say, don't want to be this close to this kind of pain.  Help me, please.  Send someone else.  I cannot do this."

A group of us had studied a book together about a family that barely survived the death of a child, and we assiduously noted the practical ways community kept these heartbroken members alive by bringing food and making arrangements and moving them through their days until they could begin to take wobbly steps all on their own.  But now the intellectual discussion had abruptly become a call to action.  

So I went.  And I wasn't as much comfort as company.  I said the wrong thing, was the wrong thing, most of the time.  Others went as well; many wiser in their ministrations than I.  From them I learned to close my mouth, stop bustling about, have tissues at the ready.  Being there meant sorting clothes or reminiscing or talking about a new book/movie or companionably pushing food around a plate.  And possibly crying through all of it.

It feels I have lived a lifetime since those days of joining together, working out a round-the-clock schedule to come alongside loss that was beyond comprehension, carrying out a commitment to not leave someone alone in the deep waters of grief.  They were "desperate times" calling for "desperate measures."
But human need is the same, whether the trial is a fiercely raging inferno or a nagging dull despair: people who know God's great love and mercy humble enough to show up, to walk beside, to be companions through days that take every effort just to keep breathing -- even with the wrong words, or at the wrong moments, or in the wrong ways.  

A currently popular philosophy admonishes taking all there is from life, pursuing each advantage and experience to the utmost.  The premise, as I understand it, is that you have to "lean in" to the opportunities.
But what if the truly great calling is to step closer to the hardship and devastation in the lives of those around us?  Not begun in a reluctant, begrudging attitude, but with the assumption that something vital and life-giving could be accomplished by that momentum?

I have been blessed to have people in my life who love well.  They are faithful with their prayers and faithful with their presence, particularly when this world seems to be most broken.
Their courage has deepened my faith in God, whose love equips and emboldens and empowers us to bear one another's burdens.  To enter into the pain.
To do the things we cannot.

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Thinking Aloud

Every human being has trials.  Every blessed man, woman and child of us.  
They look so different from one person to the next that it isn't always easy to remember similarities outweigh the distinctions.  For some, known physical deficiencies accompany birth, others are burdened by malignancies that creep up gradually or sudden injury that lasts a lifetime or a period that feels like a lifetime.  Trials are loneliness that has never eased, or heartbreak that empties a cup once overflowing with abundance of loving relationships.  Even deprivation of material substance brings a different kind of testing, a heaviness that often weighs down a life.  
Each experience can isolate, weaken, hinder.  And somehow, it is always unexpected when the locusts swarm the fields, and stay for years.  

Concerned for the vulnerability of students I love, this was the focus of my graduation address in the spring:
"'Do not be surprised at the fiery trials.'  Right living does not erase the brokenness of this world.
There is no guarantee that Christ's righteousness on your behalf is an armor against disappointment, grief or even devastation.   But those are the times when you will know God to be your refuge and your strength -- a very present help in time of trouble.
This is amazing news.  Your greatest triumphs will be when you are emptied and weak and a beggar.  When all of your merit is stripped away and you know your own helplessness,  God will be near to you.  He will supply His strength, so that the boasting will all be 'the Lord has done great things for me.'  Those are moments of true, refining gold making. 
God made you, uniquely fitted you to do something great.  You will fall and fail.  BUT in those times you will find the true accomplishments of your lives.  Each of us needs a Redeemer of our soul and our life...in all its motives and minutes."

They were true words six months ago, and are so today.
And yet.
Trials (fiery, or run-of-the-mill-garden-variety-type) often encase me in a fog of me.
Having never been an insect, I am led by numerous readings of Charlotte's Web to surmise that a fly stunned into inertia by a spider feels similarly the numbness which renders a binding web and imminent demise to be things barely worth a wriggle or twitch.
I'm thinking that isn't my purpose.
Actually, I am increasingly convinced that God doesn't "supply the strength" in order for me to feign death until my enemy loses interest.  The "great things He is doing" must describe more than my living a few years just holding my breath. 
Then, truth came as a micro-adjustment to the focus of my heart this week.
From two separate sermons from two separate pulpits from two separate decades I heard that God brings us through trials in order to equip us to serve.
Hmm.
Wow.
I like imagining the muscle building accomplished during a fiery time might be used to pry a heavy beam off of another pilgrim further on.  That seems a much more valuable outcome than semi-conscious, web-bound survival.
And perhaps God even brings us joy in the middle of our trials through our serving.  Although the end goal is not my happiness, surely James was alluding to something worthwhile when he encouraged believers to consider the aspect of joy within the context of faith-testing times.

It might be that these opportunities to focus on something other than the roaring wind and the rising waves provide that elusive way to "turn our eyes upon Jesus."

And if not, 
...it still seems a more worthwhile way to pass the time.


Lead on, O King eternal,
till sin's fierce war shall cease,
and holiness shall whisper
the sweet amen of peace.

For not with swords' loud clashing
or roll of stirring drums,
but deeds of love and mercy
the heavenly kingdom comes.

Extraordinary Palette

I planted seeds this year: started some in January, diagrammed a garden and followed a rigid schedule.  In my mind's eye, everything would be staggered by height and color and blooming time. It was a lovely plan. A goodly plan, as it used to be said.
The particular dahlias I longed for were out-of-stock four days after they went up for purchase, so I haphazardly, frantically, chose new ones before there were none of my fifth and sixth choices.  They sprouted before I had them in the ground and the hardier of the feeble stems grew to be trampled by a skulking garden beast or two.  Sweet peas and stock were nibbled by something smaller, while rapid growth of a tree above turned a sunny spot into something less to be desired than the full beams required by the larkspur.
All in all, not exactly a win.  
I philosophically reasoned that the seedlings had carried me through a bleak January and February and perhaps served a different purpose than the one I had intended.  Still, the palette would have been extraordinary...
However, the flower farm that shipped my brown paper package of potential also included two complimentary offerings.  Not to be wasteful, I hastily sowed them in the last portion of available soil and thought (in my grandmother's words), now we shall see what's what.

And see I did.
Because zinnias flamed salmon where no stock or larkspur or sweet pea would show a hint of their cultivated vintage hues -- abundant shaggy spheres that rivaled the dahlia strains unavailable from my top three varieties.  Those substituted fifth and sixth choices were the colors of the setting sun after a day of perfect cornflower blue skies.  I have yet to know the pigment of the final plant which is covered in buds, as yet unopened.
Most mystifying was a pod termed "Hyacinth Bean", which came devoid of any description.  As the spade shaped reddish-blue leaves flourished I wondered if that was the sole achievement of all the plant's twining and climbing effort. Never thinking to look it up, I watched the unfolding surprise as it took over more than its portion of the space.  It was sufficient in its beauty to need no flower.  
Until flowers came and it seemed as if the whole was incomplete without the sprays of variegated pinks and dainty purples that almost seemed an afterthought.

There is much to capture my heart in this unlooked for bounty -- too much of God for me to miss His love.  
He is not hindered by drought.
He is not thwarted by shade.
He is not helpless under the attack of marauders or hampered by neglect.
Instead, He brings life and beauty in the most unlikely ways.

Always.

Thus says the Lord,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters...
"Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?"
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
...for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my people, the people whom I formed for myself
that they might declare my praise.