Finding Music

We’ve had a rough few weeks in our house.  While I don’t mean to be cryptic, it’s not something we’re ready to share, but know that Scott, Cara and I are all ok.   

All the while, I’ve been in Psalms and reading again and again about a new song, and God giving a new song, and praising God with cymbals, at a time when I didn’t feel like singing, when I didn’t feel like I had a song in me, or could even find one if I tried.  

A dear friend, coincidentally asked during this time how my prayer life has been, and I replied “well, God and I have been talking a lot”.   “Talking about what?” he asked.  I confessed that I guess there hasn’t been so much talking, as just being. 

I suppose things between me and God have been pretty quiet, not for lack of closeness, just for lack of words.  

So it was a bit incongruous that I kept reading about new songs, when there has been little singing, when prayers have been more subdued, more of the sighs too deep for words type.  

And truthfully, it didn’t feel very faithful, it has felt a little passive.   It felt like I should be singing, finding this song that kept coming up in my scripture reading.  I felt like I should be reaching for some easy platitude that would pull me past the sighing and into the singing.  Yet there’s not one, at least not one I could truly buy into.   

Then I came across this verse

“By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.”  Psalm 42:8

The Lord commands his love…God’s love isn’t passive.

At night, his song is with me

A gracious reminder that it’s not always about us.   This relationship is two ways, we don’t always have to be the one doing everything, being the one "feeling faithful.” 

Because God is more faithful than we can ever be.  And sometimes it’s ok that we are quiet.  Maybe even good.  Continuing to walk with God, even in silence, is faith too, though it may feel passive at times.  

Soon after I ran across this verse

“This I know, that God is for me” Psalm 56:9

And that’s enough.

That’s faith, even when it means just holding that truth in the quiet places of our hearts.  God commands his love, directs it, to fill in the gaps.   

The music plays, even when we can’t sing.  God knows to take over with the piece during the night, when there is not a song in us.

God sings for us, like a lullaby to our broken hearts. 

And we continue journeying together, us and God, sometimes just being, and taking turns with the singing.  

Maybe this new song I kept reading about was meant just for me to listen to for a bit.  

And then sometimes, the music finds you again, and you can’t help but sing along. 

Fallen Trees Make Good Bridges

 We read a lot of books about habitats in our house, including a book about trees, and all the animals that live in trees.  Cara is really into animals and where they live, so it was really fun when we were able to head to Colorado and up to the mountains to see all the things we read about in the books for ourselves.  (Seems like up next needs to be an ocean trip!) We were able to see forests, streams, foxes, deer, chipmunks and all kinds of other woodland creatures and habitats.  To see the forest up close on a short hike was really neat to see the "real thing" from the stories we read.  We looked at all the trees, packed tightly together, creating the illusion of painting more than reality.

We also came across fallen trees.  Huge trees that had been full of life and promise now laying on the forest floor.  Their roots ripping up the ground around them as they fell.  Sometimes it was clear, but often it was a mystery as to why they fell.

I think it’s often a mystery as to why trees in our own lives fall too.   Those tall fortresses of our plans or our work or our hopes that tower in our landscape, defining the view around us.  We’re left wondering why God allows something of strength and life to be toppled.  Or maybe it’s not really that life-full, but it’s roots grew deep and anchored the rest of smaller trees, and losing it upsets the balance of many smaller pieces. 

Sometimes God allows our most prized trees, our strongest growing plans, even things that seem to be bearing fruit, the parts that anchor and color our identity to tumble.  They don’t belong in God’s vision of our landscape.  Sometimes we can see why.  And sometimes it's a mystery.  

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that will prevail.”  Proverbs 19:21

In reality, fallen trees are difficult.  You can feel the ripping, the ground breaking from losing such an anchor, a landmark.  Suddenly your forest doesn’t look or feel the same.  Felling part of our hopes and plans that seemed to grow so tall with potential, changes the horizon of our identity and leaves us with a gaping hole where promise and life used to be, a void now filled with questions of what might have been.  It rips up our foundation, especially when the roots run deep.  Some of these pillars of our plans might have had a good long life, but still the view from the top, and their stability and strength, will be missed dearly.  Others seem to have fallen far too soon, long before they reached their full height.  

But if I’ve learned anything from reading so many forest books, it’s that fallen trees are important.  They make room to let more light in.  New beams stream into the emptiness, changing the cast of the other trees, catching fresh details that went unnoticed before and nourishing small seeds that might have otherwise been forgotten.  They clear the path for something new.  Perhaps stronger, healthier... perhaps just different. 

Fallen trees also provide homes for others.  Though the tree itself lives no longer, the fact that it is there provides shelter for many as they navigate their own way.  The strength that took years to grow provides life for someone else in need of a place to rest, telling a story of what once was, and in the telling, becoming something entirely new, a refuge.  

 

And of course, perhaps most importantly, fallen trees make good bridges.  They take you somewhere else, allowing you to cross what was before un-crossable.  Sometimes the footing is a bit tricky, and maybe you’re not sure if the spindly bridge will really hold all the weight of your past plans.  Still, they lift you up above the muck and allow you to travel to somewhere new.  Perhaps it’s not the view from the top of the tree in its height, but it’s a new view no less.  Because the tree fell, it creates a bridge  taking us to places we might not have been able to get to on our own, places where the footing would have been too treacherous or the path too hidden.

From death comes new life, new hope, new beginnings, new journeys.  A fallen tree bringing hope and life, and taking us somewhere we couldn’t have gotten on our own.  

Isn’t that the story of faith?

Looking at the Stars

Last week was the Perseid Meteor Shower. It was a shooting star filled event with as many as 100 meteors per hour. I missed it.

I had intentions of seeing it, but in reality they didn’t play out. Scott was out of town for work all last week, and so of course, everything fell apart. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say between our toddler and two dogs it involved 3 doctor trips, vomit, blood, a sleepless night, police helicopters circling the neighborhood, and a toddler appendicitis scare on top of cooking, cleaning, working and being mom. So I missed the shooting stars.

Everything is fine (and of course perfectly peaceful this week with Scott back home). But in the midst of all that, I probably missed more than the meteor shower. I’m sure I missed noticing the little stars, the bright spots of the week as well; a wonderful evening with a dear friend, family nearby to help, a fabulous pediatrician who called me right back after hours, and a very positive Meet the Teacher day at Mother’s Day Out for a little one who was not looking forward to going back to school. Barely counting these, though I certainly counted everything that went wrong.

Still, I was disappointed to have missed the meteor shower, but looking at the stars didn’t make it to the top of the list last week. Isn’t it funny how often it takes leaving your normal circumstances, going camping, or to the mountains, or somewhere else to actually look at the stars? On just normal, average nights, the stars are out for us to marvel at. They’re always there. Well, truly, I suppose they’re always changing, with the light in perpetual motion, but there nonetheless. But we often miss seeing them, unless somewhere outside our normal routine. I think that’s what makes a meteor shower so fascinating, is you actually get to see the motion. But we could look at the stars nearly any night. Now yes, I know that the stars are more brilliant in remote places. Places that are unfamiliar, set apart from our normal location and expectations. I think God does too.

“The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” Genesis 12

God had called Abram to leave a good life, a stable life, a predictable life and pick up everything and move so that he would someday have offspring. And just three chapters later, he finds himself still without children in a place very different than he imagined he’d be. And just as Abraham has finished complaining (or perhaps he’s not really finished yet, am I right?) it says …

(God) took him outside and said, "Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.”  Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”   Genesis 15

Abraham was trying to figure out his own situation, how he might indeed see the promise of children, by having a child with another woman, because after all, surely there must have been a mistake; No children by now, not at all the plan. I imagine he supposed the story just wasn’t going to work out, wasn’t going to have a happy ending, and he’d better salvage what he could, find some way to settle with what he’d been dealt.

And God pulls him outside, away from all that is present and pressing and logical and practical. Pulls him out from the only solutions that seem feasible… to remind him of the promises. Promises so much larger than any circumstance Abraham could imagine, so much bigger than his present situation.

And God says, step back from that, don’t just not look for the simple solutions in circumstances, but it something much bigger. Don’t try to jam all the puzzle pieces

together into some makeshift solution. There are pieces to come that you don’t even know. Look at the stars.

When we feel out of our normal place, like there’s not any way forward that we had imagined, that’s when God wants to show us the stars. Or perhaps sometimes God pulls us away from the glare of everyday life, intentionally calling us to somewhere unfamiliar so we can indeed see them; the promises of God laid in brilliant tapestry before us. Reminding us that there are hopes and dreams and futures that we can barely fathom.

It’s as though God says, look, the only way I can explain this is to have you look at the stars. That’s the only way you could start to see how vast and wide and eternal are my promises for you. That’s the only way to explain to you how in fact they are already in motion, with light and possibility careening toward you, though it seems like everything is just standing still. There is movement, hope, promise. Though it may seem light years away. Though it may not make sense just yet. That’s ok.

A writer that I recently started following (Sarah Bessey) wrote “I think sometimes we rush the narrative construction of our seasons.”  I’ve been thinking about that a lot. We’re so quick to try to tie up all the loose ends of our lives,

when really God is saying, I’m still weaving with that end. Though it may seem frayed, once it’s woven in you’ll see the pattern.

You wouldn’t be able to grasp all of it at once, it’s too much to wrap your arms around, or pin down in a tidy plan, but look up. Because your sky is bright with promise. Because just as the light from those stars started nearly forever ago before you actually see it, so did the promises. Promises that are unfolding over the course of years, of lifetimes.

If it seems slow, it’s because you don’t know how remarkable they truly are. If it seems dim, it’s just because there are clouds in the way now. But in fact, the universe is blanketed with reminders that you are mine and that I don’t forget my promises. Look at the stars, God says.  Though the night seems still, there is much in motion that you don’t see.

And then, God’s hoping we might, at the same time, be stars—that our faith in the promises, however far off, might be bright spots in dark nights that cause others to look up.