RICHES OF DARKNESS AND THE IDOL OF CERTITUDE

And I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness—
      secret riches.
   I will do this so you may know that I am the Lord,
      the God of Israel, the one who calls you by name.
~ Isaiah 45:3  (emphasis added)

Last night at church, our guest speaker, Stephen Lungu, shared his dramatic story along with four "D"s that God uses to discipline us.  I was encouraged both by his story and his observation of how God hones us toward holiness.

The four "D"s of God's discipline according to Stephen Lungu:

1. Darkness.  God often brings us into times of darkness and possibly chaos and confusion.  But He also promises us that those times contain riches we could not see otherwise (Isaiah 45:3).
2. Delay.  God sometimes purposely makes us wait.  
3. Discrimination.  Sometimes God will seem to bless everyone around us except us.  He does this so that we learn to bless Him even when He blesses others.  And sometimes as He blesses others, their blessings overflow into our lives.
4. Discomfort.  Similar to how God brought Elijah to the brook of Cherith and then dried up the brook so that Elijah would go to the widow's place, He will sometimes bring us discomfort so that we learn to go and bless others.

God also showed me during the service that I had been holding on to the idol of certitude.  I had been wanting so desperately to know the answers to some of the unresolved questions in my life that I had been spending inordinate amounts of physical and mental energy pursuing those answers.  And I did this at the cost of being able to relax into God's love for me.  Somehow, it was knowing that God uses Darkness, Delay, Discrimination and Discomfort that helped me leave the need to be certain on the altar and hold only to Jesus again.

GLIMMERS OF INSPIRATION

There are two women whom I have come to love dearly and who inspire me greatly.  The first is one of my professors at the Center of Spiritual Formation, the second, is my spiritual director. They both have a gentleness and an attentiveness to God that is so rare.  After every conversation with them, I leave with the feeling, "I want to be like her!"  That's probably because they're so like Jesus.

Over the course of last week, I had the pleasure of seeing both of them.  Not surprisingly, they each gave me a piece of inspiration.  These little nuggets of truth and beauty deserve to be shared.  So, my friends, here they are.  I pray that you would be blessed.

Inspirational vignette #1 (original source was from a novel my professor had read):
In the Old Testament, we are told that no one can look at the face of God and live.  Instead, we can only see His back after He has passed us.  Perhaps this refers to the passage of time.  So often, when we are in the midst of a set of circumstances, we cannot see where God is.  But when we look back in time, we are able to say, "There He was." 

Inspirational vignette #2 (original source was from my spiritual director's friend):
This image came to a woman who was in a season of deep darkness.  She imagined herself on the brink of a large and cavernous pit, about to fall in.  She was terrified of falling in and disappearing into the blackness.  As she prayed, she felt God saying to her, "What you see as despair, I see as opportunity.  The larger the hole, the more room there is for me to pour out my love."

How very beautiful.

DAILY BREAD

I once heard a speaker explain the Lord's prayer in context of the passage that followed it.  Jesus continued his message on prayer by going on to tell the story of a neighbour who came knocking at midnight, asking for bread.  And the speaker said our petition for daily bread is not only for us, but so that we can have bread to offer our neighbour as well.

Last weekend, I had a bit of a what I'll call a "daily bread" experience.  Tim and I were incredibly, disgustingly sick with a nasty cold and my brother-in-law was arriving back from his trip to Asia on that Sunday.  On his way over to our place to pick up his car (which we had borrowed), he called us.  He was jetlagged.  And sick.  And his fridge was empty.  Would we have any food to spare?

As I looked around our kitchen, I was overjoyed that I had made a huge pot of stew a few days before, not realizing that I would now be sick and have a sick brother to feed.  I happily (and somewhat groggily) packed him some stew, a couple cans of chicken noodle soup, and half a loaf of bread.  There, I thought, that should last him at least until he was well enough to get his own groceries.

I didn't make it to church that Sunday, but I had my own worship experience in my kitchen.  God had obviously provided my daily bread.  Not just for me, but for my brother-in-law as well.  And in the midst of my poverty, I discovered that I still had enough to give.