my soul finds rest in God alone

1 Reply

We often hear, “Do not be anxious about anything…” from Philippians 4:6, which continues, “… but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” But that feels so out of reach most of the time, doesn’t it? I don’t usually hear the context, especially verse 5, which concludes: “The Lord is at hand;…”

Wait. Verse 6 is not a new sentence! It is the “therefore” to follow this truth about God. Because He is here, near, we need not be anxious. This instruction is not in a vacuum; it is given in God’s presence. His presence is the atmosphere around us, and that is what makes it possible to forego anxiety and to choose gratitude and prayer.

I think anxiety crowds out prayer. It shows us lies or – at best – only part of reality. Praying is how we declare we are not alone or forsaken, because it assumes God is listening. Through asking God for what we need, we give anxiety a shove and our souls a place to land. Thus, the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds.1

If peace has to guard us, anxiety must be a sort of attacker or thief, or at least a deceiver or hacker, or quite possibly a terrorist. An unwelcome thing. But let us not fear anxiety; the Lord is at hand.

He keeps him/her in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him, because he/she trusts in Him.

Isaiah 26:3

Here, too, God is protecting us. “The Lord God is an everlasting rock.”2 “We have a strong city; He sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks.”3 When the Hebrews came to the Red Sea, having been pursued by the Egyptians, Moses told them, “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”4 Some translations say, “… only to be still.” This calls to mind Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that —” (Can you finish this verse?) “— that I AM God.” Earlier in this psalm, we read, “… God in the midst of her; she shall not be moved.”5 And “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”6

Scripture shows us an understood reality that God being God, and God being with us, means we are Safe. That, ultimately, in the most important of ways, we will prevail. The attacker, whether anxiety, an external foe or challenge, or a more spiritual oppression, will have to give way.

When the Israelites were in the wilderness, Moses asked God for a sort of sign that he had God’s favour. God said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”7

Is not rest the opposite of anxiety? We only rest when we can let go, but anxiety roams, grasping for a way to control and manage what feels too big. Our shepherd leads us well. He gives us green pastures and still waters where we rest and are restored. Psalm 23 goes on in verse 4, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”

I think most of these verses are familiar to many, but I want all of us to really take God’s presence seriously as a gift and a shelter. Every day. Nothing else suffices; He himself is the answer.

Now what remains is to resolve how we will press into his presence as a matter of living, for our survival and our joy.

1 Philippians 4:7

2 Isaiah 26:4

3 Isaiah 26:1

4 Exodus 14:14

5 Psalm 46:5

6 Psalm 46:7

7 Exodus 33:14

thou, my soul’s glory, joy, and crown

2 Replies

In the early hours I rose, reluctantly, to use the campground’s pit toilet. Upon leaving it to return to “bed,” I looked up and was halted by a breathtaking ivory moon in the dawning sky. Bird songs accompanied it, and I thought that the Spirit surely hovers over the twilight as God finished preparing the day.

The dimness served to still me. To make me anticipate, to consider what He might have set in store for me and us today. I stared hard at the light He made to rule the night, trying to fathom anything. Then I crossed the road and, before re-entering the tent, I gazed across the campsite to the river and the hill beyond. Everything seems so lonesome and holy in these fleeting moments. Just breaths and inklings. God has hidden this here for me, knowing I would come across it – like a trapper’s snare, but for good and glory and life and renewal – here at the edge of the day. To say, “You are Mine. I know you. I’m already here.” To recreate me by His breath for another day in His world.

The Almighty, who spoke into being the universe, has deigned to welcome me to His day. His kindness is unending. Who am I that You are mindful of me? I do not understand; You are too much for me. I feel overwhelmed and startled by Your attention. I wonder not at all that Your glory and presence have been considered dangerous, and terrifying. If You can use Your voice to create the burning sun, what power are we so nonchalantly engaging with our casual invocations, even our cursing? We are out of our depth in our defiance, our ignorance, our apathy. This God leaves room for none of those things.

But:

To be loved by this God?

What joy. What inexpressible honour. God’s glory should make us serious, but His love should make us light.

We’re left in awe, that the holy splendour has drawn near to us – and moved in.

The grace and favour of the Source of Existence is upon me. Everything I have is His. I mean Everything. Not just my house or my money or time. But also, my body, my thoughts, my lungs, my preferences, longings, impulses, all the things I think make me “me.” These belong to Him, because I belong to Him.

He is surely speaking; it is we who decline to listen. He is showing us Himself and the way to Him all the time. We choose ourselves, like true idiots. Most of what we do makes no sense in light of God and all the implications of God. We fill our minds with inane material, and our time with either worries or distractions from those worries. As though God didn’t exist, or isn’t constantly at work making all things new. As though what we do either matters too little (thus we have no accountability to our Creator) or matters too much (thus we bear the weight of the heavy illusion of control).

But we are clay, shaped for many various purposes, and we ought to ask the Potter, “What have You made me to be and to do? What is Your priority for me, and how may I fulfill this in Your service? What have You given me to steward, and what is not mine to carry or perform? And, [of course] how can I ensure others know Your work? How can they know You made me and them? And, [most incredibly] how can I know You and be with You?”

I want to learn to take this different view. That the life of a child of God is first about being, and being with. And as that identity grows deep roots, out of it I want to go into the territory set ahead of me. With a kind of assurance I am only just beginning to glimpse, but which I hope will continually become more and more a part of me, as the warm light dawns slowly on the mountainsides on a clear day.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace.

– Helen Howarth Lemmel

Fair is the sunshine,

fairer still the moonlight,

and all the twinkling starry host:

Jesus shines brighter,

Jesus shines purer

than all the angels heaven can boast.

I will build an altar

2 Replies

It was an afternoon in early autumn. The sun warmly, gently met the cold sea breeze with me in-between them. My eyes glanced over the shining detritus left by waves – sand, stones, shells. I caught sight of unexpected colour and picked up a clam shell whose inside was brilliant satin violet. I held it and stared. Would I ever have seen this wonder of creation, had not the shell been opened and the clam surrendered its life? The ocean is full of comfortable clams, living in secret and safety, and we only see the ones on the surface, on the beaches, who have mostly died.

That little clam shell struck me silently with a sense of resonance, because I too know what it’s like to be properly broken open, to feel like death, to witness death. Yet in its breaking, its beauty shines, as though it had just been waiting for the opportunity. In the breaking open, there is beauty.

How can that be? Is it possible to find hope and life on the way through brokenness? Do we come across healing and relief by accident in this cynical, uncaring cosmos? Or, like shellfish and geodes, was it part of the design that our hearts carry treasure and can be remade and renewed after grief and death?

Yes, love. There is glory and wholeness on the other side of the break, the cracking, the collapse, the wound. I only make such an audacious claim because I see God making it. I see Him promising life without death one day. He walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death to a table He’s prepared for us, of feasting and blessing.1

Look at how Jesus chose to resurrect Lazarus instead of merely healing him. The mourners questioned His abilities or couldn’t understand why He hadn’t come to save Lazarus’ life. But Jesus stood at His friend’s tomb, praying aloud for the benefit of the onlookers, that they would see the glory of God and ultimately believe in Him for a much deeper, everlasting salvation.2

Martha’s and Mary’s hearts had been broken open by their brother’s death, but then everything they knew about how death worked, its hold on us, its power over life – that was all obliterated when Jesus called him forth. Nothing but death could have prepared them for the beauty of victory over death. All of Jesus’ healings and resurrections and miracles happened in places of pain and illness and scarcity, and through them He showed Himself to be the One who has power over all creation and even death.

It would be foolhardy to attempt to explain why God works this way, why He allows death, sin, brokenness to have so many small victories. Who can know the mind of God? (Please don’t raise your hand.) I don’t know why He does, but I know that He works through the dark valley to forge strength, beauty, faith, character, hope. He kindles a small flame in the pitch black. Because only He can see in the dark, we have the opportunity to slowly realize what has always been true: HE is the resurrection and the life. We can only see when He illumines, when we walk in His light.

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.

Psalm 36:7-9

So often, it takes coming to the end of ourselves to admit that we are not enough for ourselves. We don’t have the strength, the answers, the insight, the endurance, the power. We can’t make something from nothing. We can’t mend what’s broken. It takes struggling against a headwind in a storm at night to begin to get an inkling that we might not be in control after all. To get a glimpse of the true Light.

After Jesus multipled bread and fish for thousands and thousands of people who flocked to Him, He immediately sent His apostles, His closest followers, to cross the sea by boat. They worked all night against the wind until Jesus walked across the water to them in the dark of early morning. His supernatural presence naturally terrified them, but He reassured them that He was Himself, and as soon as He climbed into their boat, the wind stopped. 3

Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.

Mark 6:50

This is a God who makes scarce resources into abundance, who commands winds, whose mere presence is enough to calm fears. Who takes nothing and makes something, who takes destruction and makes glory, who takes death and makes life. Who disposes of kings, who separates waters, who makes water spring out of dry ground and rocks. Death can never really win against Him.

When we’re broken open, when we’re suffering or dying, or dying to ourselves. When we’re following Jesus and He calls us into hard, hard places and asks us to kill our pride or lay down our reputation or desires, or makes it clear that nothing else satisfies. When we’re at the end. May we remember the loaves multiplied in the desolate place and the ebenezers4 in our own lives where God has made something out of nothing. May we surrender before Him and determine to watch Him make beauty once again. May our hearts be kindling for the fire He lights in the darkness.

I find it important that Psalm 36, quoted above, continues thus:

Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your righteousness to the upright of heart! Let not the foot of arrogance come upon me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away.

Psalm 36:10-11

It seems to me that faith or belief in Jesus is not so much an assent to a set of claims or concepts as it is an acknowledgement and acceptance of reality. The reality that God is, that God has created all that is, that He alone is to be worshiped and followed and glorified. That I can’t be enough for myself or anyone else. The moment I forget that reality and look elsewhere for life or satisfaction, I enter dangerous territory. I make myself more than I am, which is arrogance. I make other things more than they are, which is idolatry. And in arrogance and idolatry I set myself up for falling and fear, because anything that isn’t God has an end and will fail.

But worship and adoration of the Lord puts everything else in its place, including me. And then maybe I can see coming to the end of myself as a mercy that lifts my eyes to Him. And maybe I can abide the pain that is endemic to this life because I’m fixed on Christ, remembering His ultimate power over death. And maybe I can even let myself be made beautiful out of this brokenness, a testimony to the world that God inexorably rescues and saves.

1 Psalm 23

2 John 11

3 Mark 6

4 an exploration of ebenezer

I’m thankful to Pete Scazerro for this message and to Chris Renzema for his song Just as Good. These have guided me by God’s grace.