Current Tunes: Laura Hackett
Plans for the evening: a Michael Cera film in bed.
Current excitement: ....sleeping?
Hola all. Oldest sister informed me on Sunday that because I tagged people in my FB note about this blog, my privacy settings were disregarded and all sorts of creepers had a look. (Creepers like my family, incidentally). So now I feel less inhibited. But I'll try to get over that.
Today was stuuuuupid. I didn't get much sleep last night. I'm convinced that I am 80 years old and have arthritis, and as a result I kept waking up in the middle of the night with a VERY PAINFUL shoulder. I'm dying. Jokejokejoke. Anyways. And Soc was stupid because we got put into our groups... and I hate group work... And then I tried to nap, but it hurt too much and left me groggy. Then I did have a nice time reading with Sadie and writing a paper for school. But then... wooooorrrrk. Blah. And home to grog through some Japanese literature. Akutagawa, if anyone's interested. And excerpts from the Tale of Genji, which is hilarious, because he's suuuuuch a playa. Not a beach. I mean a playeR. Mackin' on womenlike.
Anyways, so this song reminded me of one of my faaaavorite passages in the Bible today, so I will share both contigo.
"Beautiful Mercy" by Laura Hackett:
"And He's brought me to the wilderness where I will learn to sing. And He lets me know my barrenness so that I can learn to lead. There is no pit too deep that Jesus cannot reach. There is no sorrow so strong that would overtake His beloved one."
Here's the accompanying scripture, taken from Hosea 2 in an NIV Bible...Starting at verse 14:
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor (meaning trouble) a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
'In that day,' declares the LORD, 'you will call me "my husband"; you will no longer call me "my master." ' "
Later in verse 19....
"I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness and you will acknowledge the Lord."
SO. There's a TON of stuff I could say about this passage, but because I hope to maintain your interest, I'll try to keep it short. I really encourage you to read this whole chapter, and whole book on your own, because there's loads of good stuff in there that can be applied to both our personal walks with God and our nation's actions.
The idea in verse 14 pretty much that God needs to take us away from what we know and love, away from our comfort zones and our support systems for us to even begin to truly trust in Him. Hence, He leads us into the desert place, where we are made to face our barrenness. He calls us out of lush valleys to a place of brokenness, loneliness, and despair. But it is here in this place of emptiness that He whispers TENDERLY to us, "I love you, I am with you always. Trust me, I know what I'm doing."
This verse, Hosea 2:14, is up on my whiteboard and posted on my wall by my bed. It reminds me that through all those times when I felt desperate for anything to hold onto, God had a plan. Yes, I've lost a lot, hurt a lot, and cried a lot. But through these broken times, I learned what it really meant to crawl back to Him, to rely on Him 100%, and to trust that He will bless me through the brokenness.
And the next verse, verse 15, promises us those blessings. He says that there in that desert place, He will restore our beauty, our comforts, our glory. "There she will sing as in the days of her youth." AHHH God is good! I tear up every time I read that part of the verse because of my own path with music and singing. But that story's enough for an entire entry on its own.
Basically, God has brought me through a desert place, and through the trials, temptations, and sheer agony, He has shown me a tender love unlike anything I've ever known in my life. He is the oasis in the desert, the deep well of abundance in the barren place. Drink deeply, my loves.
Whew. I talk waaay too much and only ever say half of what I mean to.
<3
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