The drought that was June has been broken by rain. My home is greening, the trees can drink, and there are beads, brighter than silver, on the leaves.
I am grateful.
The day before yesterday, without visible reason or explanation, a drought in my soul was quenched as well. I was doing a job for which I have no fondness and listening to music that I have heard many times before. As I wiped coal-dust from the 1800’s off fragile pages, I realized that my soul was singing and I did not know why. It certainly had nothing to do with the bitter estate-dispute I was cleaning.
I have been praying. For a while, my mind being what it is, I had found it difficult to pray, but in the past few weeks I have pushed on and forced myself to do it. In order to focus, which is difficult for me, I write most of my prayers out. I look at them now, and most are short little nothings, like touching base with a family-member in passing. A complaint here, a thank-you there, a rant or a statement of love. There are many requests for rain, both literal and metaphorical. They are the bare minimum.
Apparently God is willing to answer even small and pathetic attempts to seek Him. For that I am grateful. It is easy to take up the false assumption that only truly great and faithful people are answered by God. Jesus, of course, shows us differently by his behavior, but the false assumption still crops up like a weed to strangle and discourage us from making any effort. “What is the point of doing anything,” I ask myself, “if I can’t do anything worth doing?” “Why pray if I have nothing to say? Why try if I expect to fail?”
But He has placed the answer in my soul, and my soul sings it to me without words. I am unfaithful, and yet He does not abandon me. He seems to value even my attempts at fidelity.
“Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love! Here’s my heart, oh take and seal it…” There are many lines in that hymn that speak to me at this time, but that one is the loudest.
My mother recently said, quite rightly in my experience, that spiritual things come in waves. Others have described mountains and valleys. It is clear, though, that walking with God is anything but monotonous.
I will continue to strive for my soul’s desire. I know that I will stumble, wander off, get lost and get hurt, though I will try not to fail. I know, also, that I will never be abandoned. As always, I feel that words fail to do justice to what I mean, but at least language allows me to release some of this fullness in praise.
“Here I raise my ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.”
July 13th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
I am blessed. I love you.
July 13th, 2012 at 11:27 pm
I love you too.
July 13th, 2012 at 8:55 pm
Powerful words…. And I go to that hymn often, myself.
July 13th, 2012 at 11:28 pm
Hello Barbara!
That hymn is one of my favorites. :)
July 14th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Your mother is wise and so is your writing. All I can say is “Amen.”
July 14th, 2012 at 5:01 pm
She is, and I am grateful for her. :)
July 14th, 2012 at 11:01 pm
“But He has placed the answer in my soul, and my soul sings it to me without words. I am unfaithful, and yet He does not abandon me. He seems to value even my attempts at fidelity.”
Amen.
I love that hymn, and I also write my prayers out. It helps me process.
This week I was reading in Jeremiah 29. Verse 11 has been thrown at me so often in the last year or so, but I would recommend reading verses 12-14. Even though it speaks of exile and hard times of loneliness, I find those verses almost if not more encouraging than their more famous fellow verse:
11 For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’
July 15th, 2012 at 1:40 am
It took me a long time and God almost literally dropping a book on my head for me to realize I could write out my prayers. It has made a lot of difference! I have attention deficit issues, and focusing on praying for more than a few seconds is hard if I don’t write!
What translation is that?
July 19th, 2012 at 7:10 pm
It’s the New American Standard Bible. When I was in college, I took a class on the Psalms, and I was required to use an NASB Bible, so I went out and bought the cheapest, lightest one I could find because I didn’t expect to use it once I was done with the class. (I had a very nice, leather-bound NIV that my parents had given me, and I didn’t like the fact that I HAD to buy another.)
And then I moved back overseas and was trying to fit my life into two suitcases, so the lighter, smaller NASB ended up going to Asia with me, and I’ve used it ever since. ;)
July 20th, 2012 at 8:10 am
Ah, thank you! I didn’t think it was NIV, as that is the one I am most familiar with. I recently was given a bible that has the King James, NIV, NASB and one other that escapes me at present, laid out together. It is interesting seeing the different translations, though it doesn’t travel well.
A good, tough, easy-to-handle bible is a wonderful traveling companion. :)
July 19th, 2012 at 10:56 pm
What a beautiful post, Jubilare. I needed to read this today. Also, your photos are great, I find Waterpearl especially evocative to my imagination.
July 20th, 2012 at 8:15 am
*hugs* I am glad to have been a source for what you needed today. God is good, even in our hard times, ain’t he? :)
I love Waterpearl for both it’s aesthetic beauty and the beauty of its metaphor. The edges of that leaf were burned by the drought, which is what allowed it to hold such a large drop of water! Perhaps humans are the same, at least sometimes.