Simple Journey

I want to know a song can rise from the ashes of a broken life... --Mike Donehey, 10th Ave. N.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and shall come singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.  Isaiah 51:11.
Another simple song began running around in my head this morning. I could only remember the last few lines until I looked it up.  Took me awhile, as my old NASB concordance is scanty, and I couldn't find the right wording in any transla-tion.... until I simply typed in the words as I remembered them in the song on Google.  Then voila! up it came in all its glory. 
 (I love Google!  When I get to heaven the first thing I think I'll do, after hugging my dad and saying hello to all the precious saints I've known who've gone on before, is thank God for Google, because it has been the pathway for me to so many, many blessings, not the least His Word in umpteen translations.)
"... and come with singing unto Zion..."  I began this journey home with you a few weeks ago.  I had intended to write a piece each week, to recap what I'd learned in the study by Beth Moore,  "Psalms of Ascent".  I had hoped so very much for others to post their insights here as well. But alas, it seems not to be.  Apparently others are not as computer trained as I've become.  What a loss!  But my visions aren't always shared by others.  (Am I whining here?  I'm afraid so... On to better things!)  
Also, I have found this study so very rich that I scarcely have time to reflect over the week before a new astounding truth hits me in the head.  Don't laugh, it's no joke. God is seriously remodeling me here. However, I am learning too much not to continue sharing these insights with anyone who happens to come here, so here's some more from our study of Psalms 120-134.  I will simply have to share them as I remember them in front of this computer, and not worry so much about presenting a well-honed piece of literature.  (Picture a winking happy face here, with a curl right in the middle of her forehead, kind of like this:  6;D).
These last two weeks I've been learning that my presence in this Bible study is not purely a coincidence.  There are too many occurrences throughout each we
ek that coincide with what I'm hearing at the meetings, both from Beth Moore on tape and in the book, and from the other women I'm sharing this journey with.  I continue utterly amazed.
    Session One with Beth by video emphasized the song nature of the Psalms, and discussed how vastly deep God's Word sinks into our hearts when accompanied by music.  Almost all Scripture I still remember from my Baptist childhood remains with me because it is accompanied by a melody I can't forget.  The funny thing is, I don't even remember trying to memorize these Words, because I wasn't trying to memorize words, I simply sang along until I knew it by heart, like any other song.  Only these Words have never left me, because they're attached to a song, and "song is the fluent language of the soul", as Beth tells us.
And how much more we are moved by the Word when it's carried by song to not just our minds, but deep into our souls.  It reminds me of someone plodding through the snow, trying so hard to get somewhere fast!  But as soon as she sets herself up on skis, WHOOSH! off she flies, with almost no effort, it seems.  So God's Word to our hearts on the wings of a song. What a precious way for God to connect with me, a singer, and to show me how precious I am to Him!
Here is another insight that I can't pass up: in Session Two, Beth told us about sour dough. We connect these Psalms with three historic Jewish Feasts.  The focus here was on the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which takes place at the end of the Passover Feast and lasts seven days.  It was simply amazing to me, again, the timing of this discussion.  Beth talked about sourdough, and leaven being a lump of dough kept over from a previous baking of bread.  
Wondrously, the week before my daughter had been given some starter dough for Amish Friendship Bread, which in the way of busy teens, she had left for me to care for. You have to knead it every day ("Day 1: squeeze the bag, Day 2: squeeze the bag" etc...).  I had just finished baking two loaves and divvying up the sharing portions before I came to the meeting that night.  (I had meant to bring some starters to share, but of course forgot).  Right here was exactly what I had been doing all week as the illustration for the lesson!  How amazing is that?  Only a minutely personal God who has numbered each of our hairs and formed each cell of us when we were conceived in our mothers' wombs could orchestrate such a "coincidence"!
Coincidence?  Here's another:  at the close of that evening, I had word that a precious sister in Christ and fellow musician in the church had been taken to the hospital with a serious aneurysm behind her eye.  I stayed connected with the prayer chain over this one, praying throughout the night and through the following days, and through her surgery hours.  By the following week I had learned all had gone well with her surgery, and she was so well recovered she was able to go home the same weekend.  Praise be to God!  
"He keeps the Feasts."  But the funny thing was, I actually had on hand a token of friendship to send Nancy, all because my teenager was too busy to take care of her Amish Friendship dough.  Now isn't that something?  
As Beth says in the lesson, sour dough can actually be - well... sour.  Sour dough, as mentioned before, can be a lump "kept over from previous sin".  It got hidden somehow in the new dough... when we weren't looking... when we thought we'd forgiven... when we thought we'd really made the decision to start over new... this lump of sour  sinning was kept over to hold over our husband's head when he did something we didn't like yet again... to remind us we can never do anything without failing... to keep us back from committing to something that could break our hearts all over again...  Sour lumps.  Kept over.
God calls us to throw out the old leaven, to stop keeping over lumps of sour dough and hiding it in the new recipe.  He wants us to stop carrying forward the old, painful debts of our past, and start with a brand new slate.  It's a new day.  It's a new beginning for us.  Only we humans are still using the old dough, still burying the sourness in what we hope to make something new out of.  How can we, trapped in our humanness, possibly throw out the old leaven and start new in this new day??  I could see no way, trapped in my own set of human mistakes.
But praise be to God for His unspeakable grace!!  As Beth says, "He keeps the Feasts". What did God do with His sour dough of Israel? He put Jesus Christ a tiny Babe in the midst of the soured dough of the world.  He buried Him in the sin of humanity, like the unleavened bread he was crushed and bruised for the sake of sinful men and women and children.  "Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and with His stripes we are healed."  I know.  I've been striped.  But He most certainly healed those stripes.  He took our stripes and made them His own.  He fell into the ground and died, to be raised again, the first fruits of the ones who've gone to rest, falling into the ground to be resurrected on the Last Day, my sweet father among them, and one day myself as well.  He became the sweet lump of leaven, replacing our sourness.
As Beth explained, the three great Feasts of Israel represent for Christians three most important, vital truths of God: the Passover - Christ's death, the Feast of Unleavened Bread - His burial, the Feast of First Fruits - His resurrection.  In Beth's words, "He keeps the Feasts".  Wow. Somehow I don't have words for that astounding connection. Think about it in your own words and images for a while... What an amazing God!!
How could we possibly keep from returning, singing, to our personal Zion, where God has showed Himself to us?  For everlasting joy will surely be upon our heads, running down over our shoulders, dripping onto our sore, tired feet, bringing us gladness and joy and driving mourning away forever!  With such a loving Father God as King, who can keep silent?
"Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads!"
Amen!!
And this is only the between lessons lesson of week two.  I'm now in week three, with so much more to share with you!  Come back again next week and see what else the Lord has been singing into my soul.  I hope you do.  And I'd love to see you here, and listen to your song too.  Please share it with me, won't you?
Simply yours,
Patty

Friday, April 4, 2008

Home

I want to share with you an exciting study I'm currently doing with my women's group at church.  It's called "Psalms of Ascent", and was written by Beth Moore.  She also leads the study weekly by video.  We meet in the children's gathering room in our church to view it and share our journey.  One thing Beth points out is that the Psalms contain expression for every emotion humans can experience.  This is what drew me to the study with such eagerness.
This first week we learned that this is a journey home.  When I first heard Beth's words on the video, I wanted to weep for joy.  I've just returned from a trip home to Southern California, having stopped in Mariposa to visit my sister and mom and brother-in-law.  That was truly a joyful reunion and a kind of homecoming, as we attended Easter Sunday service at their Baptist church.  I sang the old songs loud enough for Dad to hear all the way in heaven!  What a solidly faith-inspiring sermon it was too.  Later, my sister, my daughter, and I sang a trio, thrown together at the last minute but done well enough just the same to inspire many strong "Amen!"s from the worship leaders and others.  What a joy to offer such service with my family members! I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. (Ps. 122:1)
Then we drove on to visit my mother-in-law in Duarte, where she resides now in a Presbyterian nursing home.  It is a very nice home, and her care is excellent.  It was a wonderful visit, as she is much recovered from her spinal surgery of a year ago, at last. Yet still she is wheelchair bound, and does not go out doors much.  It was so beautiful there with the sun and everything blooming for all it's worth, but she could enjoy it only through a window, as the air was too chilly for her.  It was very good to see her doing so well.  She seems resigned to her situation, and content. In my trouble I cried to the Lord, and He answered me. (Ps. 120:1)
It was while sojourning there that I realized I was at home, as I haven't been since I left in 1986.  Then, I was full of the thrill of adventure, tired of the smog and the crowds and happy to find a new "home" north in Oregon.  Then, I was the prodigal, eschewing my Baptist heritage and all that goes with it, seeking my own brand of religion that would leave room for the outcasts and the less desirable (to some Christians) - but also looking for ways to have fun and more enjoyment of the good things in God's creation.  Was I simply rationalizing away guilt?  I don't know.  Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. (Ps. 120: 2)
I told myself always, "It's not that I don't want God.  I just don't want a lot of God's people."  This was ok to me, as I guess I thought I was better at being a Christian than they were, I'm sorry to admit.  Also, I wanted to protect myself from the kind of hurts I'd received at the hands of Christian sisters and brothers.  Never again, I told myself.  So I wandered from denomination to denomination, looking for a home, and sometimes attended no church at all. The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in... (Ps. 121: 7, 8a)
We learned this week that God wants us home, with Him, and that He is willing to do anything it takes to get us there. That sometimes means a whole lot of grief and pain for us until we realize we're heading the wrong way and turn around, toward home. When I realized I was at home again at last, in the dry, dry dust of Southern California, the light all around me as light should be, the temperature spring soft, as spring temperature should be, the mountains in the north, where mountains should be - when I realized that it was home, I could relax.  I was never so content and happy inside in all these 22 years.  Our feet are standing within your gates, oh Jerusalem! (Ps. 122: 2)
We are on a journey, we are pilgrims, as Beth told us.  We are like the pilgrims journeying to Jerusalem, to their home city: a religious law for them, one they apparently rejoiced to fulfill.  We are pilgrims, sojourners in a land we don't belong, striving to find home again.  But home is not on this earth.  For us, home is found only in God.  I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help?  My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. (Ps. 121: 1,2)
 I have done a lot of things to keep myself sojourning in a place where people don't want peace, but war, don't want to rest in the knowledge of God's love for them, don't want to hear where they are perilously close to driving off the road, or stalled, or have a flat tire. The people I thought I'd minister to don't want to know.  In fact, they want me to lose my faith so much that they will do just about anything to bring it about.  When I talk of the peace of God, they talk of struggles with God's people, struggles with God's word, struggles with believing in anything worth believing.  I've found that often their unbelief is stronger than my belief, to my shame.  Sometimes these people actually reside in my own family, too.  Too long has my soul had its dwelling with those who hate peace.  I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.  (Ps. 120: 6,7)
This week I learned I've been feeding my mind mainly negative, faith-defeating thoughts. Telling myself I was seeking information, I took in all kinds of dirt and low thinking, low talking ideas.  Telling myself I could filter out what wasn't wanted, I've exposed myself to the sharpest kind of anti-Christian, anti-faith, personalities, on a consistent basis.  I said to myself, "I will learn these people in order to minister to them better, I will learn a new kind of religion, one that can include these skeptics."  In turn, I was reworked into someone more like them.  While mouthing words like "more like the Master I would want to be", in actuality I was working to be more like the world.  I sought the approval of men before the approval of God, all the while telling myself I was doing ministry in the world.  Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar! (Ps. 120: 5)
We are on a journey, a journey that leads us from the places we've settled in this world that we don't belong, to the place God has prepared for us where we do belong, with Him.  If we are not to wander off the right road, we must keep our 
eyes on the goal.  We must listen only to the voices that give the right directions.  We must follow the Leader, and not His impostors who would lead us into the wilderness and rob and abandon us.  God is calling me to follow Him home.  He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber. (Ps. 121: 3)
I learned this week that the pilgrims to Jerusalem for the yearly feasts sang these Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134, in specific places along the way.  I've put my foot on the first step in the Temple, pulled the other one up next to it, put my foot in the next step.  I'm coming home, Lord, home where You want me, home where I belong, where You made me fit to dwell.  I'm leaving the places I've sojourned that keep me warring inside myself, and never allow Your peace to stay for very long.  
I've wandered far away from God,
Now I'm coming home.
The paths of sin too long I've trod,
Lord I'm coming home.
I've wasted many precious years,
Now I'm coming home;
I now repent with bitter tears,
Lord, I'm coming home.
I've tired of sin and straying, Lord,
Now I'm coming home;
I'll trust Thy love, believe Thy word,
Lord, I'm coming home.
My soul is sick, my heart is sore,
Now I'm coming home;
My strength renew, my hope restore,
Lord, I'm coming home.
Coming home,
Coming home,
Nevermore to roam.
Open wide Thine arms of love,
Lord, I'm coming home.
(Wm. J. Kirkpatrick)
What about you? Are you sojourning in a land far away from the home you were created for? Can you hear God's voice calling you home today? Why don't you come with me through the Psalms of Ascent? We can share our insights as we go along the road together, the road toward our heavenly home.  
Simply a matter of putting one foot in front of the other.  C'mon, let's go!
Simply yours,
Patty