"what conceivable victory"

It's like taking a deep breath again when you've been suffocating for longer than your lungs can take.  Like gulping one cool glass after another when you've forgotten to drink all day.  That's what it feels like when I sit down to read the Scripture recently.  I'm not quite sure why . . . you know I never stopped, never fasted from this Bread.  I suppose for some misunderstood reason I was force-feeding it to my spirit.  But now, as my heart heals . . . I'm ravenous for it.  Literally delicious.

My word for today is Hope.


"Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.  By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen."  -Hebrews 11:1,3


Robyn's translation: As sure as we can see the stars, so sure can we see His promises for which we hope so deeply.  God's part is to bring it to pass.  Our part is to persevere in hoping for it.  Whatever it is, no matter what it is.  We can't do His part and He won't do ours.


Back to Corrie ten Boom - Oh, what hope she had!  She redefines hope, even.


May I have the privilege of setting the scene for the quote today? . . .


Miraculously, Corrie had received a single copy of each of the four gospels, smuggled even into her solitary confinement in a deplorable prison cell guarded by cruel German women who stripped the humanity of Corrie and countless many others.  She would read and reflect on the life of Christ day after lonely day.  Pondering over Jesus's suffering and seeming defeat one day, she came to this epiphany:


"But . . . if the Gospels were truly the pattern of God's activity, then defeat was only the beginning.  I would look around at the bare little cell and wonder what conceivable victory could come from a place like this." 


And my friends, she wasn't being sarcastic.  She was actually looking for the good God was in the process of doing.  Though it was near-impossible to picture in the middle of painful, dark, drab, and lonely, she was hoping for God's promises of victory.  She was sharing in Christ's suffering.  I wonder - was it just as difficult in those moments on the Cross to see the victory of Resurrection and Salvation?  It must have been, had to have been.  But neither Jesus nor Corrie were hopeless.  They SAW the victory before it came, as sure as the Creation of the Universe.  


It's like God was saying, "Do you trust that there is a ground to stand on?  Of course you do - and I made the ground out of nothing.  So even though you may not perceive the Good I'm bringing you while you're standing in the middle of nothingness - here it comes!"


And what was the conceivable victory God brought to Corrie?  Her perseverance through suffering was God's deliverance of a countless legacy of souls who came into God's kingdom after she was freed from a concentration camp and began almost immediately to speak her testimony in her own country and then around the world.  She even witnessed the repentance and salvation of the man who betrayed her into the hands of her tormentors.  Even shook his hand.   Gospel.  Good News.  Christ's forgiveness.  Eternity for lives un-countable.  

Yeah, I'd call that Victory.  Chalk one up for us. Game, set, match.  


And that's hope.  What, you don't see it?  Take a look at the stars.  See it now?  


Me too.  It's coming.   

"... another discovery about love."

Forgive me, dear friends and followers - my words are still quite unsure.  I would like to venture to comment on a few from my new hero - Corrie ten Boom.  I just finished The Hiding Place and absolutely devoured every letter!  So much of it is indeed PRECIOUS, and worth repeating.  I'd love to share with you a few posts about how some quotes of the book struck me (yes, just as punches or whips might), drew my spirit forth in expectancy, and even tenderly cradled my messy heart.  It touched me like a heavy, angora quilt.  I actually forgot that words on a page could do that to me so thoroughly.
...

For the first one I'll set the scene with this: at the end of WWI Corrie's beloved mother suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed and without speech.  The rest of her family adjusted accordingly, but her mother's far-reaching ministry of love to the town needed to be altered as well...

"It was astonishing, really, the quality of life she was able to lead in that crippled body, and watching her during the three years of her paralysis, I made another discovery about love.
Mama's love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before.  She sat in her chair at the window and loved us.  She loved the people she saw in the street - and beyond: her love took in the city, the land of Holland, and the world.  And so I learned that love is larger than the walls that shut it in."

And now I'm crying again as I type...mourning the walls I've built to shut myself in, and realizing that love is larger, and refuses to be contained.
This morning I met with a new dear friend who has suffered much pain to her body and soul, but God asked me to love her.  Honestly I didn't know if I could do it.  Part of me screamed "Cancel! You're not ready! Still too broken!"  And thankfully I didn't listen.  For under her pain is joy overflowing from a renewed commitment to Christ.  Joy I needed.  You see, for fear of being used up, I've resisted being used at all.  And what a trick of the enemy!  I poured into her the Gospel and grace and truth and wisdom and marriage advice and so much more and - Surprise! - I still had more to give.  Jesus, my Portion, had shown Himself enough for me once again.  My love was even larger than I knew, and much larger than the walls I attempted to build to shut it in.

Not many people are so bold as to ask me for an appointment.  I don't know why - I like to think of myself as approachable.  I think they just assume I'm "busy."  And while I am, I'm also never too busy to love someone.  I'm really so very happy for her boldness.

One day I'd like to emulate Corrie's Mama (lol - I guess I'm already Kori's Mama). I'd like to love regardless.  Love beyond walls, past boundaries, and outside of limits.  Sort of like our Lord does...

When all I have left . . . is exactly what He wants

Everyone has dry times, desert seasons, dark hours, pit dwellings. Days, weeks, even months or years when everywhere we turn it seems the enemy somehow gets the upper hand. And I'm reminded that Jesus didn't say He'd spare Peter from the sifting, rather that He'd ask the Father to keep Peter's faith intact. And for those who've been sifted, what knowledge of deep and painful beating. Peter's hole lasted a few days that time, though he'd face several more during the course of his ministry and faith adventures on earth.

Sifting wheat consists of threshing (beating it to loosen the grain from the chaff), and winnowing (tossing it up and catching it up in a grate in order to break off the chaff) so as to refine the grain. Over and over. Broken and broken apart again. Tossed about in seeming confusion. Until all that is left - is only what is wanted.

And no doubt, I've been sifted before. Tried, refined, tested, and changed by difficulty and persecution. Recently I've been deeper, darker, emptier than I can remember, though. And like Peter I haven't been spared. Perhaps I should have seen it as privilege to share in his suffering, and in His. But I didn't.

I threw tantrums like a two-year-old, sat as Job and threw ashes over my head and scraped the oozing sores of my heart with broken pots. Withdrew and pouted and cried and hid alone, whenever I could get alone. I held even close friends at arm's length and trembled at what they might see to look at the pitiful mess I'd made of myself in the middle of Satan's attack. I did not stand firm under the beatings of sifting. I was broken.

I've been confused and fearful, angry and bitter. I needed help, and had to stop pretending I could claw out of the pit on my own, or somehow crawl out of the desert without a rescue team. I needed light, and He came. Sent some friends I could trust, some soldiers to fight when I couldn't any more. And I'm still healing from the battle. It just hurts. And then it hurts some more.

When I look at what is left of me in the ash heap I ask, What is there? . . . Lord, what do You see? A question He reflects back to me. Isn't it like our Teacher to answer with a question?

Two things remain: gratitude for His saving Grace to be enough strength when I did not have it in me to take the beatings another day, and refreshed surrender to humility. It's not much to look at, not the confident beauty I once saw. Quite meager when we get down to it. I shrugged my shoulders and asked if He still wanted what was left. What was left of me after Satan had finished taking his hatred out on my heart (if he ever does really finish . . .) .

And this is how He answered in the quiet breaking of the dawn the other day:

"Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High . . . The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise." Psalm 50:14, 51:17 (ESV)

So, I see that in the pile of faith-filled Peter-wheat, ready as pure and pleasing first-fruit - my thankfulness and brokenness were exactly what He had been longing for all along. All I had left once the dark desert was passed . . . it was counted as precious to the only One who ever mattered, who ever really knew what all that beating and tossing would produce:

It's me, only more so.

And if you're there now too - may I offer to pray for you? If you're facing a pit too deep to see light, a desert too parched to find relief, a beating too painful to endure, would you leave me your name? I'd love the privilege Christ took and gave - prayer to the Father that your faith will endure. He is closer than you can feel, and knows that when you have only gratitude and brokenness to offer, they are the most precious offerings He could desire.