Lord, please hold me

While You show me

Your Will

Amid this circumstance that I don’t understand.

Father, hold me,

While You show me

Your action –

For this all seems so chaotic and unplanned.

I’m all alone, it’s so dark:

Please shine Your light

So I can see.

I’m clinging tight with both hands -

I need to feel Your presence,

To hear Your gentle guarantee

That You will hold me

While You show me

That You are good,

That You are good,

Your love surrounds the whole;

Father, hold me

While You show me

That You are ever, always in control.

jsi

“And we know that all things work together for good to those that love God, to those who are the called according to His purposes.”  Romans 8:28( NKJV)

“Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, His love endures forever.”  Psalm 118:1  (NKJV

Not everything that can be counted counts.

Not everything that counts can be counted. ~ Albert Einstein

A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation. ~ Mark Twain

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points our how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; Credit belongs to the man who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcomings.  But who does actually strive to do the deed, who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, he fails while daring greatly.  So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. ~Theodore Roosevelt

A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker.  A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker. ~ Buddha

Pure Honest Love

The pure, honest love of a pure, honest man

Changes generations.

Pure, honest men devote themselves to the hard task

To make broken things beautiful,

To make crooked things straight,

To encourage and nurture

They build, they create.

Pure, honest men nurture stability

In the midst of chaos,

Despite the shadow of danger;

With the company of a friend,

For the eyes of a stranger.

Pure, honest men use their strength generously

Not for themselves, to gain trophies and awards

They use their strength protecting sisters and brothers.

Strong men take care of themselves, it is true, but,

Stronger men take care of others.

Pure, honest men give and give and give

One father devotes himself to his daughter

Nurturing her inner beauty;

In turn when she is a mother

Her son receives the touch of his duty.

Pure, honest men have pure, honest love

Bringing light, balance and harmony,

Pure love seeks to heal and repair.

Bringing hope, promises and trust

Honest love does not hide from despair.

A pure honest man

Lives his life in degrees of anonymity

Lifting up another soul higher,

He doesn’t say “me” – he always says “we”;

He defends the truth - he is not a liar.

With enthusiasm, he plays;

With compassion, he prays.

Uncomplicated love he displays,

He is generous with praise.

He is transparent in his ways.

The pure, honest love of a pure, honest man

Changes generations.

jsi

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.  1 Peter 1:22  NIV

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”~ Albert Einstein

Red, (narrating):”I find I’m so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head.  I think it’s the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.  I hope I can make it across the border.  I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand.  I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.  I hope.” ~ Final lines from The Shawshank Redemption, based upon Stephen King’s novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

“Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.” ~ George Iles

“Hope is the thing with feathers,

that perches in the soul,

and sings the tune without words,

and never stops at all.”

~ Emily Dickinson

“But even now there is hope left.  I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that.  For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be.  But this I will say to you: your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife.  Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all.  Yet hope remains while all the Company is true.” ~ Galadriel: The Mirror of Galadriel, Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

Hope is my middle name.

That’s not a superlative metaphorical description of a sunny disposition, an aggressively positive personality or an exaggeration. Hope really is my middle name.  It was never used much, except for by my mother and always as a pre-emptive alarm system…when I heard “Jessica Hope…” at the beginning of any sentence, I knew I better get there fast ‘cause I was in trouble or something was very important.

I always knew it was big stuff when “Hope” got involved.  When Dave and I became engaged, I started looking at my name and understood that the choices I wanted to make were going to alter the way I used my name.  My initials JHS were about to undergo a voluntary transformation and I spent thoughtful time just doodling my name in its many forms.  Eventually, I chose to use my middle initial as from my maiden name, and created a symbol for my initials which was unique and expressive.  It was working together very well until the love of my life said one thing, quite lightly and quasi-sarcastically, that stuck firm:

“If this is what you are going to do, that would make you ‘Hope-less.’”

Like the bell chiming for Rocky Balboa during his deepest point of inspiration and determination, this perspective caught me, inspired me to defend the place for hope in my life.  “I will never be hopeless,” I told myself, “There will always be hope” I reminded myself with my own level of determination.  And I swear there was a bell chiming in the corner as I was fixed within this cerebral contract with myself.

Hope is my middle name.

God’s presence in my life is this hope.  It is a deeply aggressive hope, blood-thumping, life changing, transformational hope.  Hope that looks the darkness square without wavering or cowering.  Hope that brings its own first-aid kit patching up the wounds from spurious attack.  Hope with muscle-bound purpose insisting ferociously “All is not lost, God is in control.”  Hope that is fierce and roaring, filled with God’s power, facing impossible circumstances with divine solutions.

I have needed to draw from that well of aggressive hope more during these past 10 weeks than ever before.  Several fronts within our lives collided together to create a “Perfect Storm” that decimated everything in its path.  To write them all down would sound like I was exaggerating with explosive expertise.  The circumstances have all been relentless, lined with live ammunition launched at us, the living, breathing, vulnerable targets.

And through this all, God has provided hope: defended hope, fortified hope, built structures with hope.  God has brought hope.

Hope is my middle name.

”Now that we have been put right with God through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. He has brought us, by faith, into this experience of God's grace, in which we now live. We rejoice, then, in the hope we have of sharing God's glory! And we also rejoice in troubles, because we know that trouble produces endurance, endurance brings God's approval, and his approval creates hope. This hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God's gift to us.”  Romans 5:1-5 TEB

Encouragement is Oxygen for the Soul

“Flatter me, and I may not believe you.  Criticize me, and I may not like you.  Ignore me, and I may not forgive you.  Encourage you, and I will not forget you.”  ~ William Arthur Ward

“Correction does much, but encouragement does more.”

 ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“You need to be aware of what others are doing; applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits.  When we all help one another, everybody wins.”  ~ Jim Stovall

“Taking an interest in what others are doing is often a much more powerful form of encouragement than praise.” ~ Robert Martin

“Encouragement is oxygen for the soul.” ~ Jessie Irwin

“We live by encouragement and die without it – slowly, sadly, angrily.”

~ Celeste Holm

“You are being forwarded to voicemail box, ***** can’t take this call right now.  Please enjoy the music…”

As the ukulele strums I find myself singing along with *****’s waiting music, “Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly…”  I am irritated to need to leave another message, but her music always makes me smile and it relieves the surface tension.  I am running short on time to hear back from her before I have to make a decision without her.  It’s not her fault, or mine, this communication log jam has simply developed because of our very busy schedules. 

Busy is a four letter word.

I have been the queen of the answering machine lately, needing to leave messages everywhere, not just in my town.  (Has it really been over 100 messages these past few days?  Why am I even trying to keep a count?)  The most effective way to use a message system is to leave a detailed enough message that can almost prevent someone from needing to call back.  “This is what I need”, “I got your message and picked up the orange Gerbera daisies and returned the blue gardenias”, “This is where I’ll be…” “I have ### with me and will be here until 5:36.”  Email and texting fill in the cracks enough that ensure I touched base, brought the right paperwork, got the right signature, etc.

Yet with all of this communication, it is telling to me how little I get to speak to a real person, in a real conversation.   

I answer email while I am in Master’s Greek class, in between parsing 2^nd and 3^rd declension nouns, and take care of routine ministry requests (the Sunday worship bulletin for printing) with a few keystrokes and a Send command.  I have been surrounded by people, more than usual, because of our increased holiday intake, crisis intervention and solution-creation, but it is their concerns and problems which occupy our time together.  

Like Bilbo Baggins describes, “I feel…thin.  Sort of stretched, like …butter scraped over too much bread.”  (Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring)

Playing phone tag with others, them leaving a message telling me what they need, me answering back with answer/action description.  All accounted for, but not a conversation.  Effective – yes, but efficient?  Well, decidedly not.

Last night (which included calling hours, hockey game, basketball practice) I found myself on the sidelines in a community gym and felt like the day had been very heavy.  So much done, so much yet to do – and then, as if a breath of fresh air, a gift.  One of N. basketball coaches also coaches baseball and talked with me for nearly 10 minutes about my children, most specifically about my sons.  Not about schedules and games, but to compliment and inform me on how my boys were doing.  He wanted to check about my oldest, who had a nightmare of a baseball season last year… and make sure he was doing okay.  I hadn’t talked with him before; he was just aware of a level of injustice and wanted to bring some explanations (which were eye-opening) and some encouragement (which was needed).  He didn’t have to say a thing, but his thoughtfulness and his generosity with his time meant so much.  The day that felt so heavy was still 24 hours long with all of its same circumstances woven into it, but its weight felt so much lighter exclusively because of someone else’s encouragement.

No one ever has too much encouragement!  Give encouragement to as many people around you as possible. Encouragement is like a cool drink of water to someone who is incredibly thirsty.  You may not even realize how thirsty that person actually is.  We are rarely in a situation where there isn’t someone we can encourage.  Resist the tendency to criticize, instead build guidance and instruction into your speech layered with encouragement.  People need encouragement desperately, for big and small things – none of us are impervious to the attacks of discouragement.  To give authentic encouragement requires a small dedication to think about someone else, unselfishly – listening to their words (what is said and what is not said).  Authentic encouragement is not seeking reciprocal admiration, but stopping and highlighting someone else’s choices, actions, lifting them up.  Your encouragement to one person can be passed on to more people within their lives.  Encouragement is a hopeful transaction of trust and faith.  The witness of God’s love will be bigger and wider and more vibrant because of your effort to give encouragement to one person.  Help make someone’s burden be light as feather, find a way to be an aggressive encourager today.

“When he arrived there and saw the wonderful things God was doing, he was filled with excitement and joy, and encouraged the believers to stay close to the Lord, whatever the cost.  Barnabas was a kindly person, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith.  As a result large numbers of people were added to the Lord.”  Acts 11:23-24

"Hearts will never be made practical until they are made unbreakable."

~ The Tinman (The Wizard of Oz)

“The heart is the only broken instrument that works.”~ T. E. Kalem

"Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I'm only falling apart; there’s nothing I can say, a total eclipse of the heart.”~ Bonnie Tyler

“In all things it is better to hope than to despair.”~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Words and hearts should be handled with care:

For words when spoken and hearts when broken

Are the hardest things to repair.”

“The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed;

The thoughts, the dreams, the hopes, the pleasures,

Whose charms were broken if revealed.” ~ Charlotte Bronte

How Do You Measure a Broken Heart?

The echoes in her broken heart

Were from so many voices,

Too many choices

That pulled her to this place.

She never saw herself right here,

But the tempting voices,

The enticing choices

Promised love but only brought disgrace.

How do you accurately measure

The broken heart which has been robbed of treasure?

Suddenly dark

Empty

Alone, but full of echoes

From voices and choices.

How is it done?  Where can you start?

How do you measure a broken heart?

The deafening cacophony of questions:

Too many ferocious voices,

So many miserable choices

That dragged her to this place.

“Why me?” “What if?” “Why now?”

“I must fix this,

But how?”

“There is so much I want to erase.”

Unrelenting echoes pummel her heart:

Unloving voices,

Unbelievable choices

That abandoned her to this place.

No one can know her,

This broken-winged songbird

With the vacant-eyed tear stained face.

A voice deep within stands up to the noise,

Stronger than the voices,

Understanding the choices

That brought her to this place.

Jesus cares deeply

And His echo brings love

Mercy, forgiveness:

“I will measure your heart with grace.”

jsi

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.  Psalm 34:18

The LORD heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.  Psalm 147:3

A bruised reed He will not break and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. 

Psalm 42:3

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from the darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor.  Isaiah 61:1,2