And yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We are all formed by you hand.
Isaiah 64:8
September 8, 2012
This has been one of those weeks when I don’t feel like I ever really got my feet under me. I was really struggling with trouble sleeping…either wide awake way too late or go to bed at a reasonable hour and wake up in the middle of the night. It’s really made hay with my head. How often do I let things like this impact how I connect and relate to the Lord.
When my days…and my nights…seem to get all sideways, I confess that I have a natural tendency to kind of follow my unraveled brain and find myself getting somewhat unraveled by my circumstances. Far too often when I go this way the unraveling or at least the feeling of unraveling seems to speed up and the next thing I know I feel like I’m standing there with an empty spool and everything else on the floor. Hmmm….
As I’ve been thinking about this two different scriptures have come to my mind. The first is Psalm 46:10. In the New American Standard translation it reads, “Cease striving and know that I am God.” In other translations it often reads, “Be still and know that I am God.” This one sentence contains a call that is perhaps the most challenging for our culture (and honestly this includes our church culture) where faster, bigger, more is the order of the day. When I was in in Chicago at my spiritual direction training at North Park one of the guys in my cohort was sharing about a church where he thinks they live this out about as well as anyone he’s aware of. It’s a church in England where anytime it seems that they are “striving” the leadership of the church says, okay wait….we’re striving. Then with great intentionality the church leaders and all in the church stop the area where the striving is happening and they go to prayer and simply do not begin the area again until there is deep peaceful certainty that they are on God’s time table and moving in the way that the Lord is leading and only then to they move forward. Boy does that fly in the face of the way that our culture tends to go! Not only does this demand the ceasing and the stillness but it is clearly calls to account us knowing God. What a huge call to faith! What a profound call to determine our trust….whom do we trust especially in light of that which seems to be unraveling?
This brings me to the second passage…again, just one jam packed sentence, this time in Hebrews. Chapter 10, verse 23, “Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.” Quickly my mind went to promises such as Hebrews 13:5b “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you” or Lamentations 3:23 “Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning” or Matthew 28: 20b “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age”.
As I’ve be letting my mind dwell on these promises I find that the unraveling slows waaaaaaay down and if there’s picking up or rewinding that needs to happen, I’m able to engage there slowly and with the confidence that only comes from hope in the Lord who can be trusted.
So, when the unraveling happens next time…and it most certainly will…I can join our brothers and sisters in England in responding with stillness and prayer – deeply seeking the God who can be trusted until the certainty of the Lord’s timing and direction no matter what the circumstances might indicate.
Oh….by the way, this church in England….it’s called Holy Trinity Brompton and it’s the place where the Lord started at little ministry called Alpha.
Potter’s Wheel will gather again this Sunday at 5:00pm on the courtyard at Second Church at 55th and Brookside. We’ll enjoy a potluck meal and continue to share the journey together…on the Potter’s Wheel. COME JOIN US! If you need more information, please feel free to contact me.
God’s Peace,
Mary
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