Amy's Oasis

April showers bring May flowers.

I think I like what they say.

"For I know that my Redeemer lives,

And He shall stand at last on the earth;

And after my skin is destroyed, this I know,

That in my flesh I shall see God,

Whom I shall see for myself,

And my eyes shall behold,

and not another.

How my heart yearns within me!"

Job 19:25-27 

"I, even I, am He who comforts you.

Who are you that you should be afraid

Of a man who will die,

And of the son of a man who will be made like grass?

And you forget the LORD your Maker,

Who stretched out the heavens

And laid the foundations of the earth . . .

But I am the LORD your God,

Who divided the sea whose waves roared -

The LORD of hosts is His name.

And I have put my words in your mouth;

I have covered you with the shadow of my hand,

That I may plant the heavens,

Lay the foundations of the earth, 

And say to Zion,

'You are my people.'"

Is. 51:12-13a; 16 

There is something about being on a plane . . . as the aircraft lifts off the ground and the landscape falls away beneath you, you cannot help but realize just how small we are.  I remember feeling that I could just reach down my hand and crunch the buildings and trees with one press against the rounded earth.  I had to strain my eyes to see the tiny man jogging around the track.  Soon he dissapeared completely as we gained altitude.  Houses and roads laid out perfectly beneath me.  No dirt.  No rust.  No brokenness.  No destruction. 

At the dawn of time, God was.  He was the one who existed complete in Himself, and yet he chose to create a universe. A galaxy.  Some planets within the galaxy.  Earth among the planets.  Continents on the earth.  A country on one of those continents.  A garden within that country.  Particles of dirt in that garden.  A man, made of the dirt.  On that man, the tiny man, the man barely seen from an ascending aircraft, the man made of dirt, God chose to set His love, to bear His Image! More than that, dispite sin and even through sin, God has put His words in our mouth and covered us with His hand of blessing and love!  What?!

 Do we believe in God? More than that do we believe in GOD-prime - GOD-to-the-infinity?  If we did, fear would be gone.  Fear of other people, of what they will think of us, of what they could do to us, of what they have done to us, of how they are responding to us, and all the other multiple ways in which we make others bigger than ourselves and bigger than God.  Fear of ourselves, of how much we sin, of what we will do, of what we will not do, of how weak we are, of how strong we are, and all the other multiple ways we make ourselves bigger than other people and bigger than God.  Not only would fear be gone, but so would guilt, so would pride, so, I suppose, would sin.  Do we believe in GOD?

Of ourselves . . . No.  But no matter whether we believe in Him in the totallity of His essence and in the totallity of our hearts and actions, GOD STILL IS.  The faithful though we are faithless. The strong though we are weak.  The big though we are small.  He IS, even though we do not believe in Him.  And because He is, we can begin to catch glimpses of Him, to take small steps, to gain a small taste of what it is to believe in and fully trust our truly great and awesome God.  It is not about our believing - it is about Him BEING.

Stand in awe.  Worship. Wonder.  And . . . do not fear.  Our God IS. 

I thought this was interesting . . .

Compare these two quotes:

1. 

"My Declaration of Self-esteem

I AM ME

In all the world there is no one else exactly like me

Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine

because I alone choose it -- everything about me

my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions,

whether they be to others or to myself -- I am my fantasies,

my dreams, my hopes, my fears -- I own all my triumphs and

successes, all my failures and mistakes -- because I own all of 

me, I can become intimately acquainted with me -- By so doing

I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts -- I know

there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other

aspects that I do not know -- But as long as I am

friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously

and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles

and for ways to find out more about me -- However I

look and sound whatever I say and do, and whatever

I think and feel at a given time is authentically

me -- If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought

and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is

unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that

which I discarded -- I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do

I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive,

and to make sense and order out of the world of

people and things outside of me -- I own me, and therefore

I can engineer me -- I am me and

I AM OKAY"

-- Virginia Satir 

 2.

"Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong --

body and soul,

in life and in death --

to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,

and set me free from the tyranny of the devil.

He also watches over me in such a way 

that not a hair can fall from my head

without the will of my Father in heaven;

in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.

Because I belong to him,

Christ, by his Holy Spirit,

assures me of eternal life

and makes me whole-heartedly willing and ready

from now on to live for him.

Q. What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

A. Three things:

First, how great my sin and misery are;

Second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery;

Third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance."

-- Heildelburg Catechism 

In which identity would you rather live?

Honestly?

Which one will you live out of? 

Isn't it funny how the older we get, the more we worry?  Ironic, because the older we grow, the more experiences we've had with the faithfulness of our God.

Isn't it funny how the more things and people we love, the more we have anxiety?  Ironic, because the more we love, the more we have experienced the love of God.

Isn't it funny how the farther along we get in life, the more we want to control?  Ironic, because the farther along life's pathway we travel, the more we are forced to realize that there is only one who is fully capable of controlling this world.

Why is it that we as human beings always manage to slowly close our hands over those things and people that we most love?  Why is it that we are afraid of simply lying prostrate before a God who has created and ordered this world, the author who is writing our stories?  Why is it that we pray for situations and people and things often as just another way to gain control over our worlds as opposed to opening our hands before a God who is fully in control?

As Ed Welch asked my class: Are we afraid that God might be stingy with us, as we ourselves are?  Is is simply our last grasp at being gracious gods in our own worlds?

Hard questions - but ones we need to ask.

I heard a quote the other day (again in class) that has stuck with me.  It went something like this: "Freedom is just another word for having nothing left to lose."  Does that mean giving up love and everything that is important to us, just to be free?  Yes, absolutely.  It means giving it all over to the loving and faithful care of the only one who can truly care for anything: Jesus Christ Himself.  In that is true freedom.

"He is no fool who loses what he cannot gain to gain what he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot 

" . . . we are also God's children, which means that we have great hope and potential - not hope that rests on our gifts, experience, or track record, but a hope that rests in Christ.  Because he is in us and we are in him, it is right to say that our potential is Christ!"

- Tim Lane and Paul Tripp, Relationships: A Mess Worth Making

All I am left with is Jesus.  Nothing else.  Nothing in myself, nothing in anyone I've ever known, nothing in any church or institution or country I've ever been in. 

I am so reminded of the story in Prince Caspian lately . . . of Eustace, who becomes a dragon by sleeping in a dragon's lair full of treasure, by forsaking those who cared most about him, by having the pride to forsake the journey and to lust after and feel he owned the jewels in the cave.  After many tears and heartaches, Aslan finally leads him to a pool, where he orders him to get undressed.  Layer after layer of scaly dragon's skin is peeled off.  The more Eustace peels the more he realizes that he will never get to the bottom on his own.  Finally, he is forced to let the great Lion dig in his claws and remove the last vestiges of the dragon . . . before plunging him into the pool where he is made whole once again, with skin as fresh as a newborn's.  

I resonate with Eustace in so many different ways.  At times I feel I am the dragon, able only to cry hot tears and do my best to communicate with poor scratches in the sand that constantly get erased by my clumsiness.  At times I feel I am constantly peeling off layer after layer, and yet am unable to get to the bottom.  At times I feel those claws digging into me, exposing me, leaving me painfully raw.  And . . . at times I feel that loving nudge, those healing waters closing over me, renewing me.

It is when there is nothing left of me . . . that all of You can shine in me. 

" . . . Consider your big Fourth-of-July picnic. You live near Philadelphia, so it's only right to eat a burger in Ben Franklin's honor.  The sun is warm, the grill's working, the grass is mowed for softball, and everyone's bringing a Jelll-O salad.  But unknown to you, God wants it to rain.  He wants your frinds to go home.  He wants your brother-in-law Ed to help you hurry the grill into the garage where you two will stand leaning against the car, listening to the downpour.  There you'll get into a long conversation leading into spiritual things that will eventually lead to your brother-in-law's conversion.  Your brother-in-law's been thinking about God lately but he's a private man, hesitant to broach personal subjects, and needs an ideal time and setting.

How does God pull this off?  Miracle rain out of nowhere?  Something that baffles AccuWeater and brings the X-File team in to investigate?

No.  While it's still warm in your backyard, five miles above the air is starting to cool.  A miracle? No, a polar jet stream - bringing colder air from the northwest.  Dry and heavy, this air will drop, shoving the steamy air in your back yard upward.  Rising, it will cool, and its water vapor become clouds.  About three miles up, those clouds will make ice crystals.  Watch out.  Ice crystals get bloated from eating up nearby water molecules - too fat to keep floating.  They start falling as snow, but it's summertime, and by the time they hit your infield it's raining.

"Bye Smiths!  Bye, Wilsons!  It was fun while it lasted.  Sure, Ed, I could use some help carrying this thing."

Yet not long ago the jet stream was two-hundred miles north.  What shot it your way this particular weekend?  Something that happened three days ago - a jet-stream disturbance over the Canadian Rockies - a disturbance just right to send things Philadelphia-ward. And to get this disturbance "just right"?  A precise path of that jet stream over the mountains.  And to achieve that precise path? A complicated sequence of atmospheric twists from the earth's rotation and the proper Pacific Ocean water-temperature a day earlier.  Yet that temperature was being affected back in April - when the right amount of cloud-cover was letting in the right amount of sunlight.  Six thousand miles away and four years earlier, a volcano spewed ashes into the atmosphere that affected last April's cloud-cover.   And eleven years before that the sun was gearing up for its next sunspot cycle that eventually affected last April's Pacific temperature. 

God's been thinking about your brother-in-law for a long time.

Of course, sure-fire rain doesn't guarantee that Ed will show up at the picnic.  He had been looking forward to eighteen holes today.  But his golfing buddy's wife caught an ad this morning about the "Red, White, & Blue Sale" at Harry's Lawn & Garden, and immediately swore that her husband had seen his last hot meal until he gets himself over there and finally buys that lovely Comfo-Life lawn furniture that promises EASY ASSEMBLY WITHIN MINUTES.  So today God planted thoughts in a wife's mind and allowed advertisers to stretch the truth aboutr assembly-required by about - oh, say, five and an half hours - in addition to lining up nature in advance.  And God is doing the same with people all over the country who need a little rain, or sunshine, to further his work in their lives.

Totally natural.  Mind-bogglingly complicated."

- When God Weeps, Joni Earekson Tada & Steven Estes 

A quote that really blessed me today:

"Our mistake is to think of grace as deliverance from problems; in reality, it is the ability to persevere in the midst of those problems.  We desire the "grace" of relief while God gives us the true grace of empowerment.

We make a mistake when we measure our potential to deal with difficulty by the size and duration of the problem.  We should be measuring our potential according to the size of God's provision and the promise of his eternal presence.  Even in the deepest difficulty we are never without resources.  WE are never alone.  This is a profound and radical way to think about relationships.  Our problems have everything to do with sin, and our potential has everything ot do with Christ . . . While sin is an ever-present reality, it is no match for Jesus Christ."

- Relationships: A Mess Worth Making, Tim Lane & Paul Tripp

"If only we knew.

When he washed the disciples' feet, he was washing ours; when he calmed thier storms, he was calming yours; when he forgave Peter, he was forgiving all the penitent. If only we knew.

He still sends pigeons to convince the lost and music to inspire the dance.

He still makes our storms his path, our graves his proof, and our souls his passion.

He hasn't changed.

He trims branches so we can bear fruit;

He calls the sheep that we might be safe;

He hears the prayers of crooks so we might go home.

His thunder is still gentle.

And his gentleness still thunders.

If only you knew "the free gift of God and who it is that is asking you . . ."

The gift and the Giver. If you know them, you know all you need."

- Max Lucado, A Gentle Thunder