Bravo Isaiah!

Has there ever been better imagery to help us understand that knowing and living the Word of God is what nourishes us and may well be the key to living that elusive abundant life?

Listen to familiar words in Isaiah 55:10-13:

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return to it without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread   for   the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Are the next verses, the text of a loved chorus, part of the purpose for the word? Certainly they are tied to it.

You will go out with joy and be lead forth in peace;
The mountains and hills will burst into song before you,
and all the tree of the field will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.

Incredible imagery! The brier—any prickly or thorny bush-is dry, ugly, menacing, hurtful, something we want to avoid.

The myrtle, on the other hand, an opposite of the briar, is a family of plants characterized by three things that please those who come in contact with it: evergreen leaves, white or pinkish flowers, and dark, fragrant berries.

Anyone wanting to resemble myrtle instead of briers, reads the Word, and more importantly, trusts it and lives it. Hungering for God and his work in my life almost always goes hand-in-hand with absorbing his Word. My best reading is done with pencil in hand, interacting with God’s revealed word.

Some of my favorite things to write in the margins of my Bible are prayers, prayers I might not have thought to pray without the influence and prodding of God’s Word. Prayers from a Bible passage that take me far beyond natural and narrow petition into areas of understanding and growth.

In the next blogs, I want to show you some of those prayers and hope you’ll see how such prayers have the potential of nourishing us into spiritual vitality.

And I’m praying you’ll ask yourself two things when this series is over: What will God show me if I look for Him in his Word; what prayers will I begin to pray?

(And for any former students—yes, the duck story will be among these blogs about prayers from God’s Word.)

Some of you may have heard about my most embarrassing moment (and let me tell you, narrowing it down to one is no easy task). But there’s little doubt in my mind that singing with that soloist in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, was the worst.

Mind you, I was there to speak. I was sitting on the front row, my two teenage daughters beside me, enjoying the worship songs. Perhaps it goes without saying that I wasn’t paying one bit of attention to my program (they always tell me when to come up and start talking). So I didn’t realize (though in my peripheral vision I could see my daughters pointing frantically at their programs) that the song leader had left off directing and commenced singing a special.

I’m sure you have many questions, and I have a good many answers, but blog entries probably shouldn’t run that long. Besides, I’m sure the image of me sitting on the front row bellowing out a harmony with the soloist suffices to prove my assertion that when I realized what I had done, I wanted nothing more than to skip my speech, get home, lie on the couch, and die.

I didn’t die, but I did hit the couch when I got home. Curled up in the fetal position, I asked God to at least strike me dumb (dumber).

I can laugh at almost any crazy thing I’ve done, but I could not so much as muster a smile about this glaring public humiliation. Someone bring me an afghan and throw it over my head—that’s how I felt.

I did not want to be vulnerable again. Not ever. Hey, I thought, I don’t have to go out there and speak, I don’t have to teach, I don’t have to write an article or book someone might not like, I don’t have to do anything. I can just stay home and read. Get OCC’s academic adviser on the phone!

I wallowed in this misery for a while. Then my prayer changed from strike me dumb or kill me to help me and heal me.

You probably know, of course, that I was able to get off the couch and walk back out the door to serve again, despite the risks. That’s because of this fact: “He restoreth my soul!“ That’s my favorite of all the wonderful lines in the 23rd Psalm.

He comforts, guides, enables—restores.

One thing I comforted myself with as I lay curled up in the fetal position that loathsome Saturday evening is this: “Oh well, I’ll never have to go to that church in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, again!

I’ve been back twice.

The bride had been part of our church all her life. The groom, I had taught in an English class. I went alone to the wedding. Sitting on an aisle seat where I could get a good view of both bride and groom, I took in everything. I was in the mood for a wedding.

But something besides the wedding itself ended up impacting me that afternoon.

It was a line from a song sung by the bride’s sister. I’m sure I’ll never forget the six short words. I even remember the tune. Walking through the house, driving down the road, I sang the words for days, a kind of prayer.

When I first heard them at the wedding, I stole glances around the auditorium, observing as best I could some of those who had gathered for this wedding, and I thought, yes Lord, this is the heart cry of your people-those who know you, and those who don’t.

Those who belong to you, however, already know the sweet answer to each three word plea. Thus for them the petitions are made with confidence and faith. And with great relief.

The line?
“Always love me; never leave me.“

These words express our greatest needs. And in God they are supplied. From the beginning of his word to the end, he has assured us that he loves us and that he will never leave us. In Deuteronomy Moses tells the people that “God will keep his covenant of love” with those who pay attention to and follow God’s law (7:12-13).

Later Moses, passing on the leadership of Israel to Joshua, comforts him with what God has said, a promise repeated by the New Testament writer of Hebrews: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (13:5). This has always been my favorite Bible verse, the most precious promise.

Long after Moses spoke and wrote, the Word became flesh, and Jesus showed us what truest love looks like and told us in simple words that God loves us so much he gave his Son. After he was crucified and it looked like all was lost, Jesus made it joyously clear that he will never leave us or forsake us.

On a glorious resurrection morning, he approached a weeping woman and said, “Mary.“

There was a time I would be lying if I sang along with everyone else: “I’ll go where you want me to go, dear Lord.“ I still cannot sing one of the lines from a hymn that has been updated and is sung often today: “Take My Life and Let It Be.“

All the lines are beautiful expressions of commitment, but one is so obviously not true that I let everyone else make the assertion without me.

For some reason I can tentatively sing the sort of general “Take my silver and my gold.“ But the next phrase is so literal, so specific and sweeping, that it makes me mute: “not a mite would I withhold.“

The lady who wrote it meant it. Frances Ridley Havergal wrote the poem on February 4, l874, after spending the night in prayer, seeking a deeper consecration of herself to God. Each couplet describes the writer, a woman committed to saving the lost, a woman who gave her fifty pieces of jewelry “fit for a countess” and the jewel cabinet they were kept in to a missionary organization to sell and use as needed (Albert Bailey’s, The Gospel in Hymns 405).

I like to think that both my husband and I are learning to be more and more generous, in order to be more like our God, who is extravagantly generous. Yet, while Francis Havergal sold her jewelry, I’m still allowing my husband to buy me jewelry on special occasions. So, believe me, I find it impossible to sit in church, my new pearl ring gracing my finger, and sing “not a mite will I withhold.“ The issue is further complicated by my knowing full well I will let the offering plate pass without emptying my bank account into it, or even my billfold very often.

Once this honesty became such an issue for me, it began to complicate so many songs. Is it any more honest to sing “I Surrender All,“ when I could list several things I still am having trouble surrendering.
The only songs that are really completely safe for me are praise songs, but I even ran into trouble with one of them recently, one of my favorites:
     As a deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after thee.
     You alone are my heart’s desire, and I long to worship thee.
I suppose I should be satisfied with three out of four assertions, but the third one gets my attention, asks “Really?“ and makes the others suspect. Is He, alone, really my heart’s desire? Oh, we desire so many things.

My point?

Until recently it would have been that when we sing, we should pay close attention to what we are professing, and sing only what we mean! I still think that’s a good idea. But I’ve finally come to look at it a little differently.

I now believe I can sing everything, and it will either be a testimony of my life with God or it will be a prayer of petition to Him. I think “I’ll go where you want me to go” has become a testimony. “You alone are my heart’s desire” is still a prayer.

It is so much easier to sing praise and devotion than to live it. I once thought of that as something of a cynical reproach, but I don’t any longer. Of course, singing is easier, but when we think of our songs as testimony or petition, God has one more tool to make our lives as beautiful as our songs.

And, come prepared, such singing might require a tissue.

The church gathered to worship last Sunday, and I enjoyed everything about it, including the singing.

The young man who led us had chosen some wonderful songs of praise, and once or twice I had to find a tissue for brimming tears. (And I found one, thank goodness. On occasions I’ve been reduced to using the hem of my jacket or long skirt.) The sound of the congregation singing was not what moved me; much of the time I could barely hear the people around me. It was the words we sang that moved me.

I pay attention to words.

There was an old hymn we used to sing, one that anyone under thirty, possibly forty, has probably never heard: “Work for the Night Is Coming.“ As our congregation stood singing it one unfortunate Sunday night many years ago, a mental image of a phrase from that song got me tickled, so much so that my husband shot me “the look” I occasionally subdued our lively daughters with.

After all these years I can still hardly sing the song, and happily, I’m never asked to. The song exhorts disciples to work “‘til the last beam fadeth,“ for the night is coming “when man’s work is o’er.“ (“O’er,“ for the unschooled in old fashioned or poetic language, would be “over,“ though it sounds like something you mine.)

The old hymn, not of the great poetry ilk, is an enthusiastic, but very serious song, and I will never know why one of the phrases telling us when to work made me laugh—“Work,“ the line goes, “mid springing flowers.“

I stood there that evening and thought about “springing flowers” while everyone else finished the song without any noticeable problem.

Okay, I mused, I might work ‘mid silly, bored, or even mildly disgruntled flowers, but forget working anywhere near a bunch of insidious flowers waiting to spring on people just trying to do their work. The image brought to mind a cliché, though I know to avoid them: “Hey, if you can’t trust a flower, what or whom can you trust?“

I can not say why I got so carried away with those words. I do know they comprise the only phrase from a sacred song that I can’t sing because they make me laugh.

There are other phrases and lines, however, that I have been unable to sing for a worse reason—the dreadful reason that if I had sung them, I would be lying.

I’ll explain that unhappy statement next week.