Two Lenses

God, Trials 0

The Lord took no pleasure in my broken neck.  Like any father who has compassion on his children, it pained his heart to see me hurt.  Yet at the same time, it pleased the Lord to permit my accident.  My spinal cord injury was something he sovereignly designed in and for his good pleasure.

God’s ways are so much higher than ours, he has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses — through a narrow lens and a wide-angle one.  When God looks at a painful event through a narrow lens, he sees the tragedy for what it is.  He is deeply grieved. . . .  When God looks at that same event through his wide-angle lens, however, he sees the tragedy in relation to everything leading up to it, as well as flowing out from it.  He sees a mosaic stretching into eternity.  It is this mosaic with all its parts, both good and evil, that brings him delight.

— Joni Eareckson Tada, Pearls of Great Price, July 6 entry

The Best Promise

God, Life, Trials 0

Everything that happens to you is for your own good.  If the waves roll against you, it only speeds your ship toward the port.  If lightning and thunder comes, it clears the atmosphere and promotes your soul’s health.  You gain by loss, you grow healthy in sickness, you live by dying, and you are made rich in losses.

Could you ask for a better promise?  It is better that all things should work for my good than all things should be as I would wish to have them.  All things might work for my pleasure and yet might all work my ruin.  If all things do not always please me, they will always benefit me.

This is the best promise of this life.

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, quoted in The Promise, by Robert J. Morgan

Pain

God, Inspiration, Joy, Letting Go, Life, Trials 0

And so God must, from time to time, and sometimes very insistently, disrupt our lives so that we release our grasping of life here and now.  Usually through pain.  God is asking us to let go of the things we love and have given our hearts to, so that we can give our hearts even more fully to him.  He thwarts us in our attempts to make life work so that our efforts fail, and we must face the fact that we don’t really look to God for life.  Our first reaction is usually to get angry with him, which only serves to make the point.  Don’t you hear people say, “Why did God let this happen?” far more than you hear them say, “Why aren’t I more fully given over to God?”

We see God as a means to an end rather than the end itself.  God as the assistant to our life versus God as our life.  We don’t see the process of our life as coming to the place where we are fully his and he is our all.  And so we are surprised by the course of events.

It’s not that God doesn’t want us to be happy.  He does.  It’s just that he knows that until we are holy, we cannot really be happy. . . .

We are so committed to arranging for a happy little life that God has to thwart us to bring us back to himself. . . .

Now, I am not suggesting that God causes all the pain in our lives. . . .  But pain does come, and what will we do with it?  What does it reveal?  What might God be up to?  How might he redeem our pain?  those are questions worth asking.

Don’t waste your pain.

— John Eldredge, Walking with God, p. 87-88

The Future Is Always Available.

Letting Go, Life, Trials, Trust 0

The past is irreparable; the future is always available.  In every case, when good dreams shatter, better ones are there to newly value and pursue. . . .

No matter what happens in life, a wonderful dream is available, always, that if pursued will generate an unfamiliar, radically new internal experience.  That experience, strange at first, will eventually be recognized as joy.

— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 53-54

God’s Timetable

God, Life, Trials 0

Did you realize that time could possibly be the stander’s greatest obstacle?  Charlyne could report, “Bob delivered hurricane supplies across the state today,” and be correct.  What she did not tell you was that it was a six-hour trip.  I encountered heavy traffic, post-hurricane congestion, rude drivers, and so much more.  The Bible is exactly like that.  We are told of an event, and assume it happened all at once, when in truth decades passed.  May we each learn that God’s timetable is far different from our timetable.

— Robert E. Steinkamp, The Prodigal’s Pen, p. 170

Shattered Dreams

God, Letting Go, Trials 0

Our fondest dreams for this life, the ones we naturally believe are essential to our happiness, must be fully abandoned if we are to know God well.

But we cannot abandon them without help.  The help we need, most often, is suffering, the pain of seeing at least a few of our fondest dreams shattered.

— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams, p. 52

Getting It Done

Inspiration, Life, Trials 0

“It’s not about prophecies, boy.  Or magic swords, or any of that nonsense.  It’s about getting it done.  Always is.  You’re going to be king someday.  Seen a lot of kings come and go.  I know what makes them.  What breaks them.  Save your friends and kill the dragon.  Or you won’t be worth a cracked copper to Idris.  Or to yourself.  That’s what it’s really about . . . in the end.  About you.”

— The Prophecy, by Hilari Bell

Do Not Lose Hope.

Core Value, God, Joy, Life, Trials 0

“When all of this comes to pass, My word to you is this:  Do not lose hope.  A plan is unfolding that you cannot clearly see.  If you could see it as I do, you would still hurt, but you would not lose hope.  You would gladly remain faithful to Me in the middle of the worst suffering.  I guarantee you the power to please Me, not to have a good time.  But pleasing Me will bring you great joy.

“In the deepest part of your soul, you long more than anything else to be a part of My plan, to further My kingdom, to know Me and please Me and enjoy Me.  I will satisfy that longing.  You have the power to represent Me well no matter what happens in your life.  That is the hope I give  you in this world.  Don’t lose it.”

— Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams:  God’s Unexpected Pathway to Joy, p. 46

Rock Bottom

Letting Go, Life, Trials 0

It’s a good thing to have all props pulled out from under us occasionally.  It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.  It stops us from taking anything for granted.

— Madeleine L’Engle, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, compiled by Carole F. Chase, p. 104