Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen

“I am full of trouble…” (Psalm 88:3)

I marvel at Heman, the poor fellow who wrote Psalm 88; his lot was unmitigated suffering. “I am full of trouble” he laments, or, put literally, “I am sated with suffering,” Enough, already!

Heman looks back and sees nothing but poor health and misfortune; he looks around and sees adversity and abandonment; he looks up and finds no solace. “I’m distraught,” he complains. “Afflicted!” “Cast off!” “Adrift!” “In darkness!” No light at the end of his tunnel; no resolution of his troubles.

Heman’s honesty warms my soul. Chirpy Christians who never struggle mystify me. There’s balance of course: people who always air their problems are hard to be around, but it does my old heart good to know that someone else is having a bad day. 

Yet, there’s more to Heman than candor. Despite his troubles, he had a stubborn, intractable faith. He clung to God with cramp–like grip, and cried to him “day and night” (88:1). He would not give up!

I like folks like Heman. They strengthen my grip on God.

DHR

Common Things

“You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”

“Thank goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed (Gandalf) the tobacco-jar.

J.R.R. Tolkien

I don’t know that I ever aspired to greatness, but these days, thank goodness, I don't have to be great. I can be a little fellow in the wide, wide world, and stay close to home. I can love those nearby and leave the salvation of the world to those who are younger, stronger, brighter and better at it than I. I’ve wondered at times if I’ve gotten slothful; I rather think I’ve just gotten old.

An aging friend wrote to me the other day bewailing her loss of opportunity. Publishers no longer clamor for her manuscripts; churches no longer call on her to speak.  She’s trying to adjust, she said, to a snail-like pace of life.

“Thank goodness,” I wrote in reply. “More time now to love and to pray; more time for reading and contemplation; more time to develop intimacy with Jesus and with our other friends; more time to enjoy our Lord’s presence in creation; more time for ordinary duties; more time for common things.”

Ruth Bell Graham has written...

Lord, let mine be

a common place

while here.

His was a common one;

He seems so near

when I am working

at some ordinary task.

Lord, let mine be

a common one, I ask.

Give me the things to do

that others shun,

I am not gifted or so poised

Lord, as some.

I am best fitted

for the common things,

and I am happy so.

It always brings

a sense of fellowship

with Him Who learned

to do the lowly things

that others spurned:

to wear the simple clothes,

the common dress,

to gather in His arms

and gently bless

(and He was busy, too)

a little child,

to lay his hand upon

the one defiled,

to walk with sinners

down some narrow street,

to kneel Himself

and wash men’s dusty feet.

To ride a common foal,

to work with wood,

to dwell with common folk,

eat common food;

and then upon the city dump

to die for me

Lord, common things

are all I ask

of Thee.

DHR

When God Tears Up our Nest

 “All was well with me, but he shattered me.”

—Job 16:12

Once upon a time, there was a colony of ground squirrels in front of our home that appeared when the snow melted in the spring. Carolyn and I would enjoy watching them as they scampered from one hole to another, while others stood like tiny, alert sentries watching for hawks and other predators.

But one day, in mid May, a man from the golf course arrived in a little green tractor with a large tank on the back loaded with lethal gas. Ground squirrels, the groundskeepers told us, dug holes in the fairways and thus had to go. It made us sad to see the truck arrive.

If I could, I would have chased the little animals away, torn up their holes and forced them to settle some other place. I’m sure they would have resented my interference, but my actions would have been solely for their good.

So it is with our Lord: he may break up our comfortable nests from time to time, but behind every change and displacement lies the love and eternal purpose of God. He is not cruel or capricious; He is working for our good—to conform us to the likeness of his son and to give us glorious enjoyment in heaven forever.

Can we then resent change when it comes from one whose love is so sure?

DHR

For the Love of God

“We were born for the Love of God. If we do not find it, it were better for us if we had never been born.” —Justice Hugh Black

There are two kinds of people in the world. There those who aimlessly trip through life with goofy grins on their faces, who, if they think about life at all, are more concerned with what it provides than what it means. I think of friends of mine whose lives revolve around hunting, fishing, sex and six packs and who sincerely believe that the one who accumulates the most toys has won. 

And then there are other friends who spend their entire lives trying to discover what, if anything, life is all about.  They’re the readers and thinkers, the lovers of music, art and wisdom, who take on the ideas of all the ages, examining them from all sides, trying them on for size, jettisoning some, embracing others, in order to find the good, the true and the beautiful—always learning, always searching, always trusting that life someday will reveal it’s long–concealed and exquisite design.

In either case, about age 40 or so, when they’re more in sight of the end of life than it’s beginning, the enterprise becomes senseless. That’s when they get deeply restless and the search for fulfillment through money, power, sex or celebrity no longer suffices.  They get no satisfaction from philosophy or morality, artistic creation or any of the pursuits of the will or ego. That’s when they may realize life’s stupendous simplification: God is what they’re been looking for all their lives. And there he is at the end of every alternative, standing and waiting!

If you’re looking for God, my friend, you will find him. You will find him because he has been looking for you all your life. It is his longing for your love that has drawn you to seek him. “I look for God,” Pascal said. “because he has found me.”

DHR 

In January, Carolyn's 95 year-old mother fell and was taken to the ER. Her condition deteriorated and on Sunday morning January 22, she slipped from our presence into the presence of the Lord. Mother was an extraordinary woman whose life continues to bear fruit. She will be greatly missed, but we do not sorrow as those that have no hope. She is with her Savior whom she loves and whose presence means infinite joy for her. She is "fine," to use the self-assessment she always gave when asked how she was feeling. Her obituary, which Carolyn wrote, can be accessed below.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/idahostatesman/obituary.aspx?n=clara-ellis&pid=155637857

As you can imagine, we've had much to do and no time to write. I hope to continue in a week or so when our schedule settles down to something like normal. 

DHR

Into My Heart

One Christmas, a long, long time ago, when our granddaughter Melanie was very small, she was wandering and wondering her way around our living room, gazing intently at Carolyn’s “set–arounds.”

    

Carolyn has a wonderful array of ornaments and Christmas knick–knacks she has collected over the years. One of her cherished items is an olive-wood crèche she bought in Bethlehem many years ago. Every Christmas Carolyn arranges it in its place on our living room coffee table. It’s there as I write this piece. 

    

Melanie came to the crèche that day long ago and stood over it transfixed for a moment. Then she picked up the carving of the baby Jesus in her tiny hands and drew it up to her heart. She closed her eyes and said, “Baby Jesus, sleep…” and rocked the little olivewood figure of Jesus in her arms.  

    

Tears sprang to my eyes and I felt the strangest, strongest emotion. I could not have told you then what I was feeling, or why I was so deeply moved, but I knew that something profoundly stirring had occurred. 

    

Later I realized why my heart was so deeply touched by that simple gesture: it was symbolic of that other childlike act in which we take up the wonderful gift of God’s love, our Lord Jesus, and draw him close to our hearts. This is what he longs for—to love and be loved in return.

    

There is that song that children sing (and adults too, once they get over their fear of being child–like):

Into my heart, into my heart;

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

Come in today; come in to stay;

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. 

    

And so it is, “where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”

DHR

Two Caves

English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy writes of Mixen Lane, a low district in the city of Castlebridge, as “the Adullam of all the surrounding villages. It was the hiding place for those who were in distress, and debt, and trouble of every kind.”[1] He was thinking of a cave near the city of Adullam in Israel’s lowlands, a safe place to which David fled from the rage of King Saul (1 Samuel 22:1,2). 

As the story goes, word of David’s cave spread rapidly and mysteriously through Israel and in time “every one who was in distress, and every one who was in debt, and every one who was discontented, gathered to him; and he became a prince over them.” It was a threatened and threatening crowd that found David—full of their own troubles, frightened, faint–hearted, stressed out, burdened and embittered by what they had endured.

David took them in—all of them—and taught them what God had taught him through years of adversity and pain. He read his poems, sang of God’s covenant love (Psalm 89:1) and taught them to fight the battles of the Lord. The outcasts found a new center of life in David, and he in turn became their prince.                                                                                                                                                                         

This once–motley crew became the core of David’s mighty men, brave warriors, “ready for battle and able to handle the shield and spear. Their faces were the faces of lions, and they were as swift as gazelles in the mountains” (1 Chronicles 12:8). They were Israel’s border guard protecting her southern flanks against the Philistines and Amalakites, a wall to Israel “by day and by night.” They became the nucleus of the greatest fighting force of that time, an army that carried the standard of Israel from the Tigris to the River of Egypt.

—All of which suggests another cave not too far away, near Bethlehem in Judea, a stable in the earth into which shepherds drove their flocks at night. There another prince was born, that other David whom the prophet foretold: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says,” ‘…my servant David will be a prince among them’” (Ezekiel 34:23–24).

There in that lowly cave (one must stoop very low to get in) the weary and heavy–laden still gather. Some come in dire distress, worn out by worry and fear. Others come burdened with debt, owing much to many. Others are downcast by an unhappy childhood, a failed marriage, a cruel death that snatched love away. Still others come starved for want of something they cannot name.

There they find a Prince who sings to them in their misery and weakness, who tells his stories and strengthens them with his love.

There, as they sit at his feet, they learn to be mighty men and women once again.

DHR

---

[1] The Mayor of Castlebridge