and this hope does not disappoint

i don't even know where to begin.so many things to say and yet the words sort of seem to be nowhere these days.

i feel so wobbily kneed and uncetain in so many things.i can only allow myself peripheral thoughts because i don't want to think too hard about what tomorrow may bring or what next year might look like.and for the first time in my life-i am not wishing my life away or counting down till whatever i was looking foward to...i am resting in each moment and standing in the comfort of what another new day brings.i don't think i have lost hope or forgotten how to dream.i have just whittled down my to do list and my expectations and have tried to value and cherish all of the simplicity and the beauty of the days i have been given.with my family.with my dad.in this house.in this life.because i know that it all fades quickly and that tomorrow is never guarunteed.there is a certain kind of saddness in that.in realizing that i cannot afford to be careless.in understanding that lives wither as fast as the grass.that even a well lived life doesn't seem enough time to fit in all the words we'd like to say,and all of the ways we need to express who we are and how we love eachother.but in feeling the ache of fleeting time here on this earth it makes the groan of all creation even that more resounding...for a new heaven.for a new earth.for a place where moth and rust cannot destroy,bodies that cannot fall apart,and tears that will no longer spill from our eyes.



so many things have changed so much for us.so much has withered away.fallen apart and slipped out of sight.jobs and friends.mothers and fathers.security and comfort.and yet i can still stand and belt out from the rooftops,"i know.i utterly know.beyond a shadow of doubt.that my redeemer lives."and at times.that's all i know.i don't pretend to get it.or to understand his ways.some days i feel abandoned.some days i feel so weak that i'm not sure i have the strength to lift my head.sometimes i feel so sad that i'm sure that i will never smile or laugh or breathe easy,again.and yet.he lives.and in the cistern.waist deep in the quicksand of circumstances that i am sure will swallow me whole.there comes a sweet presence.a quiet rescue.a whisper."i am here.you are not alone."fingertip clinging faith.bare knuckle holding on kind of hope that holds me between heaven and earth and parts eternity with my cries for help.and as the angel told daniel...as soon as we got the call....on his way....to give me strength.to plant the hope.to help me hold on.



mike's dad moved away last week.and he wanted us to clear out anything of ours that was at the house.after just getting walloped by my own dad's pathology report of stage 3 cancer.i could barely drive down to his house through the tears.the last few drives down to hammonton seemed so final.to mike's last tie to his mom and to family and to not feeling totally alone in this world.and part of me was sad.part of me was angry.most of me was just confused at what god could possibly be doing in our lives.and i was waiting at this light and to my left was this monument and headstone business whose lawn was filled with little angels and virgin mothers and this tall,stone jesus.with his arms outstretched and a gaze towards the people who had laid at his feet.a kind and gentle jesus.who called out to me to come.to lay my burdens down and to rest.and i wanted to take him home with me.to crawl under that gaze on a daily basis and let his face quell my fears.a jesus that i could hold onto.that i could weep with and look at.and take comfort in.because the road has seemed so long and the night has seemed so dark.it's been.a few years and a summer of holding onto a god that i don't see.but who i have felt all around me.and i guess that's why i liked that stone jesus so much.because i think that's how i picture him when my heart feels like a bottomless pit and the tears feel like an overflowing dam.when the blue skies and birdsongs have a hard time of chasing away the grey of my everyday.there he is....arms outstretched.gaze fixed.eyes taking in the whole of me and my brokeness and bidding me to come.



my dad's diagnosis has felt like one big punch to the gut after another.it wasn't just a mass.it was blocked coratid arteries.it wasn't just a surgery ot two.it was five out of twelve lymph nodes that were infected as well.it wasn't just getting through chemo and radiation.it was a prognosis that offered an uncertain future and a difficult journey to even maybe get there.it was all of the fear that was kept at bay through every doctor's appointment and every procedure but that whispers almost daily the villanous,"what if's"...that damage my resolve and leave me begging god for mercy.for more time like hezekiah.grasping for a hem of his garment like the lady with the issue of blood.straining to hear the words that only need to be spoken with the centurion so that i know that he will be healed.waiting with mary and martha as lazurus gets sicker and sicker.and praying that it doesn't come to...."if you only you had been here...he wouldn't have died..."



sometimes.i don't even know what to pray for.i know that he heals.i know that he is all powerful.but his ways are not my ways as i have learned with my heart in my throat these last few years.



i held my sister's little precious baby.fearfully and wonderfully made and just thirteen days shy of of bounding into this world and opening eyes and filling his lungs with breath.with life.there was no way to explain baby daniel's death.the lord giveth.the lord taketh away.after months of expectation.on hopes pinned on a very loved little boy.he was gone.in one fatal leap within the protection and the safety of my sister's womb.daniel breathed his last breath before he could even burst on the scene and scream his barbaric yawp of hope and promise and a future.and it seemed so cruel to make my sister have to still go through the pangs and the pain of childbirth to deliver a little one who had already passed away.and we prayed for it to be quick.we prayed for peace.we prayed for the lord to give her the strength.and after crying out,"lord.i've already given you my son.please have mercy on me."in a scream that i am pretty sure pierced heaven.little daniel nathan was born.already gone into the arms of eternity but given to us for a little while as a precious gift to hold and say goodbye.and it was the most sacred and beautiful thing i have ever experienced.he was perfect and pink.he had ten fingers and ten toes.he had a head of dark hair and my brother in law's profile and there was such peace.and something incredible happened in the valley of the shadow of death.god came near.emmanuel.god with us.in that room.in the stillness and the wonder as the rain tapped gently on the windows and the tears flowed freely from our eyes.word becoming fleshing and dwelling among us.for i was not just holding a little baby that i would never get to truly meet in this life,i was holding that peace that passes all understanding.literally.i was holding a little piece of heaven and a glimpse into eternity.and i understood for the first time why paul kept referring to the dead in christ as asleep....because daniel was resting and sleeping in the arms that hold eternity.and i will never let go of that little piece of heaven for as long as my lungs hold their breath...he was a gift from god that changed me forever.it didn't explain why our hearts were being wrecked but nonetheless gave us the peace and the joy to cry out,"it is well with my soul."and it was.that day and even today as my heart cries all over this keyboard and the ember days sing songs of heaven that make me homesick for what truly lies ahead.



we do a bad job in the modern day church of explaining suffering and trials.of sad days and people that will pass away and leave us with holes in our hearts.we mistakenly preach this overcoming-more than conquerers kind of life...without really explaining(like oswald chambers)that he gives us life as we overcome.which means that these things that hurt us are a given.that we are made more than conquerers because we are weak and poor.hapless and hopeless.and yet his strength is perfected in our weakness.in our struggles and our feeble attempts to hold on.he comes in and swoops us up-and says,"stop straining.stop trying to fight your windmills.just stand and know that i am god.that the the things that come against you and beat against your walls are nothing compared to my might."we treat trials like they are infrequent.we treat death like it comes out of nowhere.we treat disease like a display of god's displeasure and dissatisfaction with his creation.if we just serve enough.are good enough.tithe enough-we will overcome this life unscathed.and yet it doesn't work that way.jesus himself paints a picture of what we will face.paul has a laundry list of heartbreak and suffering that few of us could withstand.we are born to die.we live in bodies that fall apart and a world that is passing away.we weren't created to hold onto this life as if this is all there is...and yet we live that way.we look to the peace of having plans.of retirements.of savings.of a good job and a stocked fridge.and we fit god in.into the daily scedule and punch the time cards on sunday for what we give back to him.and we go through this life with a peripheral god.who we expect to bless our mediocrisy and our meagerness and who we are shocked to find we know so little of....until the call comes.until the cancer rears its ugly head.until the job is lost and the savings spent. and not that god zaps us into submission.he values the gift of choice that each of us has been given.he wants no twisted armed lovers.no arranged marriages.he wants our hearts.he wants our dependency.he wants us to have butterflies in the stomach each time we think of him.and he wants to steal our breath away each time his presence fills the room.he wants a love affair.a suit and a tie and a pretty dress on a summer night under the stars holding hands with little sparks of expectancy and yet never wanting the night under the firelies to end.and it's crazy to say...but it's usually in the desperate hours.in the long dark nights and the rainiest of days that we actually find ourselves in that love affair.and realize that he's been there waiting for us all along.and unfortunately it takes the trappings and the possessions of our everyday to fall and tumble at our feet to remove the scales that blocked our view of this perfect god and his unflinching gaze.his kind eyes.that know all about us.and yet amazingly see us as beautiful and something pleasing in his sight.it is in the loneliness and the cruelty of this broken world that we find a god who is crazy about us.who loves us with abandon.who watches for a just a glimpse of our return so that he can sweep us off our tired feet and into his capable arms.somehow suffering strips us bear of all of the tattered fig leaves and finery that we tried to hide our shame behind.it makes us stand square in the face of what is to come and draws the line in the sand...of whether we truly believe in something greater than us or whether we just give up and die and let despair bury us alive.it is that verse in 2 cor.that talks about feeling as though we were given a death sentence-so that we would not rely on ourselves...but on a god who raised the dead.so that we could become partakers of life as we overcome.of the hope that lies in the horizon.of the heaven that awaits.



i feel smaller and simpler.i have no answers.and many circumstances just make me stop and shake my head.but in the stillness.in the echos of the caves and caverns of saddness.in the quiet of the not really sure and the who knows what tomorrow brings...i have learned to rely not on myself.but on a god who raised the dead.on a god that understands my sorrows.who is not offended by my questions.and who keeps watch over my restless nights.



i love psalm 91.and i love my bike.i love being outside.because i feel god all around me.in creation.in the baby birds that sing their brand new little life songs on my back porch.i love the wind that rustles the leaves overhead and the words that spring out of my heart and onto my lips that proclaim his glory.for that is why i am here and what i was made for.to love my god.to love his creation.to love the feeble and the broken of my fellow man.and to bring him glory.to be the little light that punctures the scary dark nights.and the living letter that tells a love story of a god that comes near.in the good times and in the gut wrenching.in the merciful and in the midst of things i can never explain.



the other day while riding my purple bike and taking in heapfuls of sunshine and hope.a giant shadow loomed over me of a giant hawk circling overhead.and the shadow was big enough to feel as though it covered me and my bike and it followed us down the street towards home.and psalm 91 jumped off the page and into my heart.word becoming flesh ,once again."he who dwells in the shelter of the most high...will rest in the shadow of the almighty..."and i was immediately grateful for what his word has become to me.nourishment and protection.strength and a promise.that his eyes are fixed on me.and i was so thankful for the little ways that he reminds me...in the face of a stone jesus with outstretched arms,in the bundle of my little nephew in a few stolen moments between life and death and between this life and the one that awaits,in the moments with my dad,and in the gathering of likeminded lovers of christ who love eachother and love their god on a thursday evening,and in the shadow of a great bird that flies overhead.a god that has made the bitter waters sweet.a god that has shown up when everyone else has seemed to scatter.a god that collects my tears and feels my pain.he has overcome this world and with his help-has given me life each time i am called to overcome.



how can i not love him. how can i fear what lies ahead. how can i not hope. how can i live with dread. i know.my redeemer lives. i feel him all around. though he slay. yet will i praise. i was lost.and now i'm found.



help me,lord.to get through.to hold on.to seek you. make me a living sacrifice. may i be pleasing. may i bring you glory. may you give me peace. may you fill my heart with the hope that lies in you. may you give me life as i overcome. peace that passes. all that i could even pretend to understand. you.are god. amen.