The Good Shepherd

Well Lord, I have found paper and pen…

It’s been a while since I wrote like this, not really knowing where I’m going, just letting the pen move along the paper, dancing to a tune that’s not always my own…

Since the last time I wrote, a lot has happened, but nothing has changed, and yet in a way, everything has…

I was waiting to fall, knowing I was in a precarious position, knowing what I should do; focus my eyes on the Lord; and yet for some reason failing to do just that… I wish I could say that I looked up and Voila!! All my problems were solved, but not so.

There’s a strange thing about waiting; more often than not we get what we’re waiting for, not always the way we were expecting it, but still, we get it. I suppose I’m not different.

I was waiting to fall; and yes, I slipped of my perch, but by His grace I managed tom hang on to that rope somehow, managed to keep my fingers wrapped tightly around it even while my legs dangled above that yawning chasm…

Again, I wish I could say that I fought my way back onto that rope, but no, I just stayed there, waiting… and waiting… and waiting… loath to let go and yet unwilling to clamber up and continue on my journey… no one promised me it would be easy.

Suddenly He is here beside me, He has taken me into His arms and that rope is gone; suddenly I’m a lamb cradled in His arms. He holds me for forever, gently chastising me for not having faith in Him, for not believing in Him enough, in a way it hurts, it shames… he has done so much for me already, what is a little faith? And yet behind every word I can feel the love he has for me, know again that this is me Shepherd, my True Shepherd who gave His life for me, who loves me more than I can comprehend…

He holds me for forever; and yet only for a moment… then I realize that the instant before He held me, I let go of that rope, the instant before I was falling, but in His mercy, His grace, He held me up, didn’t let me fall… and He is always here with me…

And now I am back on that rope, strengthened, revitalized and yes, finally looking in the right direction; not down to what could be, but up to my Lord, my Saviour, my Shepherd who will see me through…

Waiting to Fall

I am standing in the middle of a tightrope strung between two high peaks. Nothing but the cool air around me, the beautiful oh so beautiful sky above me, and my destination in front of me… I can do this see, God is with me, He is holding my hand as I stride confidently (yes, I actually do mean stride) on this narrow bridge, and He will never let me fall. He loves me, see? And He led me here, He knows I can do this, and so, even though I am not really sure I can, I can trust Him to know that I can, trust him to see me across…

He will see me across, won’t He? I sneak a peek down, just to see what’s down there. Sure, there is the valley, I knew about that, only now it looks like a canyon, its steep banks falling away into shadow, shadow that resembles nothing more than a gaping maw. What if I fall? Just what if?

Suddenly, balanced in the middle of nowhere, I’m frozen. The rope I was walking along so confidently on just a few moments ago suddenly seems to have dwindled to a thread and I, I’m hanging between where I am coming from and where I want to be, but right now, where I am, there is no support, nothing to lean on but God…and of course, He is always with me, He will never let me fall… see? I know that, I still know that, only now, in the middle of it all, I’m stuck.

I need to move forward, I know I should move forward, but it doesn’t feel like I have the faith to go on. Sure, I know God is there, I know He loves me, I know He will not; He would never let me fall… so why am I looking down instead of up? Why am I terrifying myself with what could be instead of what is? It’s almost like I have made up my mind… I am going to fall…

I am going to fall, aren’t I? So why keep walking? Why not just throw myself off this flimsy bridge and have done with it? After all, if he really wanted me to make it across He would have given me a rope bridge at the very least, wouldn’t He?

So I just stand and wait never looking forward to where I am going, never looking up to God, to my LORD who got me this far, but always looking down into that abyss that will claim me if I fail, always just waiting to fall…

I guess that is where faith comes in, faith that He loves me enough not to let me fall, trust that His grace will keep me going even when I feel like I can’t put one foot in front of the other anymore. Comforted I take a step forward, a shaky step, only half believing this time that I can make it, and the rope bounces wildly under me… of course, I could always just stay here, just stay on this bridge for eternity...

Only, He got me this far. He got me this far, and He can, He will see me through...

Writing

I haven’t written in a month, a whole month I’ve just been, well, gone, had no particular push to write, didn’t feel like I had to at all, and I don’t, have to I mean, it’s just that I chose to, so I might as well do it well. I wasn’t even visiting the blog, hadn’t told anyone about it… I could say that for the past month the blog did not exist for me, and well, that is just wrong. In a way it is my ministry and I was just ignoring it, sure, maybe no one gets to read it, but, maybe someday… maybe I will actually compile these thoughts into a book that will go on to bless millions of people worldwide!! Ah well, a guy can dream :).

And then two days ago I got that weekly e-mail that always lets me know no one is visiting the blog, it doesn’t seem to exist for anyone else much as it didn’t exist for me… and lo and behold, I had had a single visitor!! That was all I needed to perk my curiousity so I mosey over to the blog to find out if they left a comment; well, they didn’t, not one I could see anyway, but I figured, since I was there anyway, might as well read through the stuff I had written oh so long ago.

From looking back, it seems like something changed in my writing, suddenly instead of just sharing my walk, hoping someone can draw strength from where I have drawn strength, learn from the mistakes I have made along the way, I was preaching… and of course, I am no preacher, I cannot be a preacher, but I can at least try to be a writer, a good writer…

In my second to last post, I simply wrote a prayer, I was wondering what to write, how to write what I wanted to communicate, but there are more than enough preachers out there, I am not one of them so here, now, I get off my soapbox, and just well, write… that is my gift, that is what I am being called to do, just to write, just to be me, to be human like anyone else, make my mistakes, learn from them and hopefully have someone else learn from them too. Sure, I may not always be eloquent, but I can be sincere, and when I wrote that prayer I was being sincere…

I did say I will not give up… but I guess I did, and yet it is such a simple task He has called me to do!!

So again I say to whoever may stumble across this blog; walk with me, learn with me, and this time, with His grace, I will stay on this path and not presume to lead, to preach.

Have a great week…

Prevenient Grace

I have been reading something on prevenient grace… and something about it just seemed exceptionally beautiful…

Prevenient grace is, in essence, grace being there before we need it, grace being there ahead of our need for it; can you imagine that? Imagine the love God has for us? The care that even before we start something; even before, say we are temped, we already have the grace to scrape through, to come out mostly unscathed; if we but remember to turn to Him and the grace He has so readily provided.

Just think about it for a moment and try to realize what this means… it means that no matter where we are, no matter where we are going, God is always ahead of us, laying our path for us, providing the grace we need to get over the obstacles we might find before we even get to them ; always providing us with a way through what we are going through, no matter what it is, no matter how hard it may seem, He is always, always there before us.

And if He is always there before us, then it means that He is always there with us. There is nowhere that we can hide from God, nowhere on earth, heaven or hell that we can be hidden from his sight; always He sees us, always He watches over us, always He is there with us, for us, that hand held out when we stumble to help us back to our feet, that soft word of encouragement when we need it the most…

And a few times, silence, a few times, there is silence, but not because He doesn’t care, not because he doesn’t see. We are as children is His sight, and to grow, sometimes a child needs to make his own mistakes; to learn to walk, we fall a few times, and He is always there to pick us up again and put us back on our feet. He is there; probably smiling with pride at the few steps we can take towards Him without necessarily hanging on His arm…

I guess the Psalmist says it perfectly in Psalm 139:

Where can I go from Your
Spirit?

Or where can I flee from Your
presence?

If I ascend into heaven, You are
there;

If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are
there.

If I take the wings of the
morning,

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the
sea,

Even there Your hand shall lead
me,

And Your right hand shall hold
me.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on
me,”

Even the night shall be light about
me;

Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from
You,

But the light shines as the day;

The darkness and the light are both alike to
You.

(Psalm 139:7-12)

Again, go read the whole Psalm, and Praise the Lord God of all…

Have a blessed week…

A Prayer

Father, the blog didn’t have any visitors last week; zero, not even me!! I haven’t written for you in more than a week, I guess that’s pretty obvious, I haven’t really tried either, but I usually don’t have to, to try I mean. Take last time; you practically dragged me out of bed to write!! And I was trying to sleep! Why not now?

I’m not complaining Lord, just asking really… is there something you’re trying to show me, trying to teach me? Is it time that I stopped leaning on you so heavily to use the gift the gift you gave me, like a toddler learns to walk away from his father’s helping hands… even though even then they are never out of reach; and then from walking and on to running… somehow that is beautiful Lord…

Is it time for me to stop waiting for you to tell the whole story through me and just go on the hints and nudges I get throughout the week? Those that are enough for me to put down a single sentence, or sometimes a paragraph and never see it through… is it time for me to go back through the drafts I’ve written and try to finish them? Or should I be trying to look for more readers? Is there someone you want to read something here that I need to reach out to find? Cuz I know I pretty much stopped trying to look for visitors when no one really seemed interested, just polite I guess. Or is this just your way of telling me that the waiting isn’t enough, that I need to somehow follow up on that promise to become an actual working cog in church; to volunteers my other talents, whatever they are, for the furtherance of your will?

Is it any of this Lord? Or am I just stabbing in the dark? Inferring meaning where there is none?

I do not know, I do not know Lord, but this time I will not give up; not on the writing. It’s been my dream, my passion for too long, and finally I finally found a way to do it for you… Or should I say you showed me a way to do it for you; showed me to surrender it and let you work through me… most times at least.

I will not give up Lord, I cannot believe that you have brought me this far just to leave me in the dark; I guess all I have to do is open my eyes and see where you are pointing me, where you are heading me too Father.

Teach me Father, bless me and guide me Lord, guide me according to your own marvelous will.

In Jesus’ Holy Name…

Amen.

Want

Have you ever wanted something badly? And wanted it now no matter what God says? Praying for it day and night no matter what answer you get?

I have. I remember wanting something so bad that nothing could stop me from getting it, no matter what I had to do. I figured as long as my conscience was clear, I was good to go. Yes, I prayed about it, knowing my own determination I actually prayed that God get in my way if He really didn’t want me to have it!! And yeah, He did, but for some reason I always just looked at whatever obstacle He’d put in my way as another challenge, just another thing I had to do to prove how much I wanted what I wanted.

I did everything I had to get it, even going beyond what I had to. No, my conscience wasn’t perfectly clear all the way, but it was nothing I couldn’t rationalize away. In the end, I guess like the persistent widow and the judge (Luke 18: 1-8) I got what I wanted, and even though even as I finally crossed that finishing line I wasn’t too sure if it was worth all I had done to get it, somewhere, somehow, I had convinced myself that that was indeed what I wanted so I should be happy, nay ecstatic; and so I was, for a while, a very short while.

And then slowly, reluctantly, I realized that I had pretty much strong armed God into giving me what I wanted. And somehow it didn’t seem like it was worth it after all, good, yes, worth some of it, yes, but not worth everything I had done just to get where I was standing.

Then I also realized that if I had only waited, just waited for God’s time, yes, I would have gotten it just the same, just not at as high a cost to myself; if I had waited I would have had the time to actually think about how much I really wanted it. And if I had waited, I would have had a much larger selection to choose from…

So right now, looking back, yes, I wish I had waited, but I didn’t. Was it worth it? No, not really, but the lesson I learnt was; God loves me, completely and unconditionally, and yes, He knows what is best for me, knows when is it best for me, all I need is a little patience…

Next time I am faced with a decision like that, with something that I want that much, I pray that I remember this lesson and just wait, just wait and let Him lead, let Him choose, after all, He does know what’s best for me, when it is best for me. And yes, that’s what He wants for me too. All I have to do is let Him lead…

Resolutions

I’m guessing by now most of us have already made their new year’s resolutions, maybe even broken them already. :). I’ve never been one for making New Year’s resolutions; I’m more the kind who figures if I want to change something, change it now, don’t wait for a particular day or season to make the change. Besides, it almost seems part of the resolution making tradition that sooner or later we will break those resolutions, more likely sooner.

Why is that though? Is it because we don’t believe we can do what we set out to do? I don’t think so, coz otherwise we wouldn’t have bothered making the resolution anyway. Laziness? More likely, much more likely.

But that’s beside the point. What kind of resolutions do we make? The kind that are to build us? And how? Do we ever remember to pray before making them? To involve God in the decisions we make before we cast them in stone? And when we do make the resolution, whatever it is, do we surrender it to Him and ask for His help in fulfilling it?

Sure, the resolutions might seem pretty hard to live up to after a while, say if I want to drop a bad habit, but then I need to realize that I cannot do it alone, and there is no better person, no better friend who can help me through it that God himself… I did mention we are friends, right? At least, He is always my friend, always there for me, always there to catch me when I fall, even when I am not being his friend.

And yes, the resolutions we make with God’s help are going to be hard to keep, coz yes, He is God and he holds us to what may humanly seem like a ridiculously high standard, a standard we probably won’t be able to reach on our own; but that is the point of faith, is it not? If we only let Him, He will lift us to it…
If we but let Him…


Oh yeah, Happy New Year…