But with my God I leave my cause

Though trouble springs not from the dust

Words: Scottish Paraphrases (1781)

Though trouble springs not from the dust,
nor sorrow from the ground;
Yet ills on ills, by Heav'n's decree,
in man's estate are found.
As sparks in close succession rise,
so man, the child of woe,
Is doom'd to endless cares and toils
through all his life below.

But with my God I leave my cause;
from Him I seek relief;
To Him, in confidence of pray'r,
unbosom all my grief.
Unnumber'd are His wondrous works,
unseachable His ways;
'Tis His the mourning soul to cheer,
the bowed down to raise.

Selah.

Action in waiting: Arise, and meet the day

Renewal: Living ready for disaster or glory

There are many things that threaten us. Even if war does not break out, millions of people lose their lives all over the world through all kinds of trials: storms, landslides, explosions, earthquakes, epidemics, all kinds of accidents. At the same time there is an enormous amount of sickness of body and soul. How much sighing there still is in hospitals, how much misery in the mental institutions. And how many are being killed, some slowly, through envy, through hatred, through maliciousness of people towards each other. Just think of all the people murdered in one year. It doesn’t even take guns; people are perishing anyway.

Every family must be prepared for something to happen suddenly that will disturb its peace. Then we have to believe and pray that the judgments may be turned away. If God keeps his word, we can stand up against anything, especially if we ourselves are already living in what is new (1 John 5:3–5). Arise and go to meet what is new. Pray for it. Beg for it. The whole world will yet be renewed through the almighty power of God.

Christoph Blumhardt, Action in Waiting

Selah.

Meditation: I will renew thee in My love

O little bird that sings

by Amy Carmichael

O little bird that sings
Long before the glad day springs,
What radiant victory
You show to me.

You sing of conquering faith,
And of life subduing death,
And of joy before the light
Has vanquished night.

God of the sweet bird-song,
Let us all be borne along
By this triumphant mirth
That is not of earth.

Foreseeing dawn, would we
Now exult melodiously,
And sing before the light
Has vanquished night.

Selah.

I will renew thee in My love

by Amy Carmichael

But there are times when we feel too tired even to desire; nothing is left in us to be refreshed – virtue has gone out of us. Will it ever come back? Can fatigue annihilate that which used to be, that resilience that so often has saved us from collapse? To be wakened by pain long before we should awaken, in spite of all that has been done to give us sleep… that is to know the feeling of being too tired to be refreshed, too tired even to desire.

And yet, when wakening, there comes a song of a bird – a magpie robin, a happy little bird in tidy black and white that sings before the dawn, sometimes as early as three o’clock. A long sustained sweetness suddenly breaks through the darkness, and drops of silver song are scattered everywhere. You lie listening gratefully, and your “Oh, how tired I am!” gradually becomes, “O little bird that sings” – which is at least happier than the other.

But not even the memory of that silvery sweetness can carry us through the day. Nothing but the very word of God made vital to the heart can do that. I wonder if this will do for another what it has done for me? The Septuagint reading of Zephaniah 3:17, “He will rest in His love,” is, “He will renew thee in His love.” There is enchantment in that word. There is life. There is strength.

O God, renew us in Thy love today’
For our tomorrow we have not a care;
Who blessed our yesterday
Will meet us there.

But our today is all athirst for Thee;
Come in the stillness, O Thou heavenly Dew;
Come Thou to us – to me –
Revive, renew.

September, on the southeastern coast of India, is a burnt-up month. Round about Dohnaver the earth is terra-cotta colored, and asks for the relief of low-growing green things; it can glare hotly when all that grows low is brown. The henna, within view of my window [henna is the camphire of the Song of Songs, “My beloved is to me like a cluster of henna”], is then bare, brown twig – the creamy, scented clusters are a mere memory; the little butterfly, caesalpinia, is a flicker of gold on unhappy stalks; frangipani, the temple flower, breaks out in strong blossom from a naked, fat finger-stem, and the flame of the forest is all flame and no forest green.

But this year is different, and this morning my chair was turned so that I could see into the enclosure upon which my room opens, and till the sun rose and made it too bright I feasted my eyes on the greenness. Never before have these eyes seen a green September. This year, the first time within living memory, not only are the greater trees, and of course all the palms, green [that is their happy custom], but the little henna is green, the gaiety of the caesalpinia set in green, the temple-tree flowers are like pale stars in a green night, the gorgeous crimson of the forest flame glows bright from among its own gracious foliage. Rioting over a tangle of low bushes near my window the delicate large bells of the blue convolvulvus call to the little sunbirds, and those lovely things, iridescent jewels in feathers, peck through the tube from the outside, poised in the air on tiny, fluttering wings. Beside me is a fern, lately achieved after many a vain assay; the mass of fragile lace is full of the whispers of woods and water. The unwonted beauty is because this year we have had rain during the hot weather: the sap is racing up every growing thing as though the thermometer did not register between 90 and 100 degrees in the shade.

And all this sweet greenness and the dewy freshness of flowers is like a picture in color, set to familiar words. Leaves and flowers, down to the last leaf bud and flower bud, are nourished in sap. They do not cause the sap to rise or regulate its flow. They do not understand its mysterious power. But as it flows through them it revives them, renews them. We who are ill [and tested and dry] know that we could never do much to bring the sap of life to bear upon our own souls. We may have helps [I have, and they are countless], or we may have none [some have very few]; but whether we are set in families or as lonely as a sparrow on a housetop – that friendliest of little birds that does not like to be alone anywhere – we know that we depend on something that is not of ourselves to keep us fresh and green. And we know that we are sometimes too spent even to pray for it.

And here is grace: we need not pray. There are times when all that is asked of us is just what is asked of the leaves and flowers and the fronds of the fern. They continue in the plant, the sap flows up to them.

Continue you in My love, says our Lord. And even the most tired of us can continue, stay there, be there – no words can be too simple to say what He means. Do not go away, He says. Why should we? How could we? Do we want to speak to Him? “He then, lying on Jesus’ breast, saith unto Him…” Are we too tired to speak at all? Be silent then, in love. “Surely towards God silence becometh my soul; from Him is my expectation,” is Rotherham’s rendering of Psalm 62:1, 5. And as we are silent, letting our hearts rest in quietness in Him from who is our expectation, He will cause sap to rise. He will renew us in His love.

And so, however weary the clogging flesh my be, we shall win through and we shall know,

Patience of comfort, peace and fortitude,
Drink where fresh waters flow,
Taste angels’ food.
For loving, Thou dost love until the end;
O great and dear Redeemer, we have proved
What Love Divine can spend
On its beloved.

The things we would least choose to have are round about us. But “In these things be not thrown down, nor in despair; but stand evenly at the will of God, and suffer all things that come to thee, to the praising of our Lord Jesus Christ; for after winter cometh summer, and after night cometh day, and after tempest cometh clearness.”

Alleluia!

Selah.

Amy Carmichael, Rose from Brier, 60-65.

A word of joy in trial

If you remain in me and my words in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given you… I have told you this, so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

John 15:7, 11

Your Joy

“…your joy.”

A strange word to come from God, considering the circumstance, but it was the first that came to me…

I had never thought that I would be confined to a bed all day long. I expected always to be strengthened, so that I could either ignore or tread under foot any bodily illness, and [having earnestly prayed for this] to pass straight from the midst of problems without giving anyone a moment’s trouble.

What has happened, then, is strange to my nature. The shining happiness I experienced, through months when my will-power could do nothing to conquer pain [and it could not simply be ignored], was not natural. It was one of those surprises from our heavenly Lover, who never tires of giving us surprises.

This word came to me the morning after the accident. I experienced a terrible fall in the little Indian town called Joyous City, where some of us had gone to prepare for two missionaries from our group who were about to move there. The fall broke a bone, dislocated an ankle, and caused other internal hurts much harder to heal.

We made the difficult night drive of forty-six [Indian] miles back to our mission base, and by the time we arrived, the effects of the merciful painkiller were beginning to wear off. It was then, as if through a haze, I heard our chief nurse saying something about wishing to take the pain from me – and I knew she meant that she wanted to bear the pain herself, in my stead.

That was when I heard myself spontaneously answer, “Your joy, no one takes away…”

It was like echoing aloud something heard deep within me. I did not recognize it as a Scripture verse, only that it was a certain and heavenly word given to me – truly a word of peace, even exultation! I could see our whole missionary “family,” each one wanting to bear the pain for me. Yet because of the intense comfort of that word, I was glad and grateful that it was impossible for them to do so.

And now, so that you may know why I humbly venture to write to those who know so much more of the awful, trampling power of pain than I do, I will tell you how it was that I thought to write all I have learned.

One day, after many, many nights when, in spite of all that was done to induce sleep, it refused to come [except in brief snatches], I received a letter from a friend. It went on at some length, with what sounded almost like pleasure, about my “enforced rest,” and the silly phrase rankled me like a thorn. I was far too exhausted to laugh it off, as one can laugh off things when one feels well.

So this was supposed to be rest?

And was the Father breaking, crushing, “enforcing” by weight of sheer physical misery, a child who only longed to obey His slightest wish? These words – “enforced rest” – had what I now know was an absurd power to distress me. They held such an unkind, such a false conception of our Father.

Until the moment I’d read these words – although I was puzzled about my accident – I’d had not one unhappy minute or inner restlessness, and that was because I had been given peace in acceptance. The spirit can live above the flesh, and mine, helped by the tender love of our Lord Jesus and the dearness of those around me, had done so.

But the moment I read these words of “comfort,” and for a long while after, it was different. I had no peace. Not until I heard deep within me soft and soothing words again, such as a mother uses: “Let not your heart be troubled. Don’t you know that I understand what you are suffering? What do people’s words matter to Me, or to you?”

And I knew once again that the Father understood His child, and the child her Father…

I will share my crumb of comfort: Do not be weighted down with loose words. Do not expect your peace to come from human mouths. And do not allow the ignorant stock phrases of the “well” to the “ill” to break your shield. How can they, the unwounded, know anything about the matter?

But the Lord our Creator knows! And all who have suffered know: Pain and helplessness are not “rest” and never can be; nor is the weakness that follows acute pain; nor is the great tiredness of inner weariness – tired of being inwardly tired. These things are poles apart from true rest.

Our Father knows our rest is only found in receiving a sense of well-being – a well-being that, no matter what our circumstances, is like the sense one has after a gallop on horseback, or a plunge in a forest or the glorious sea… He knows it! He created us, so can the Creator ever forget? If He remembers what true rest is, what does it matter that others forget?

Thus, we can be comforted and filled with His gift, an inward sweetness. And we can thank Him even when others trample unawares upon us, talking loose, easy nothings.

Prayer

My Father, you know the things that weigh me down… hurtful words… crushing circumstances…

I will be grateful when others offer me faulty, superficial words. I will listen only for your words, and let my spirit rest in the assurance that comes from your every whisper to me…

Selah.

Amy Carmichael, Rose from Brier: 1