Saturday, September 12, 2015

waiting for healing: day 286

day 286
©9-12-15 hannah mclean 

questions repeating
beating 

and beating
upon this strained mind
desiring to find
the answers to alleviate
and obliterate
the pain of not knowing.

what is happening to me?

i wonder as i blunder
from one day to the next
hiding
from the internal chiding
degrading me
as degradation plagues externally
determined to win
at convincing me
my brokenness is as much within
as without.

and daily i must
entrust myself
to the Truth
and to the Father
to which He leads.

o Jesus,
Healer of the broken
You have spoken
words over me
with authority
and i await
from this helpless state
unable to turn away
i lay
before You
forevermore.

Monday, September 7, 2015

Ugly moments and the beauty of God

I had a hard day this past week. In the middle of it, I stood in the shower and yelled at God.

I yelled at Him; I doubted at Him, I threw teenage-quality accusations at Him; I wept like a baby and the water washed my tears down the drain and muffled out the sounds of my sobs.

I’m not proud of it, my feelings were not in the right place (because God owes me nothing and has never wronged me, He has never done wrong in any capacity).

But I am not ashamed of it either; most importantly because I am in Jesus and my sins are covered, but also because my HEART was in the right place--raw and honest and in the presence of the One it longed for.

Because here is the thing, if we want to be with Jesus, and all we have to bring with us at the moment is anger or pain or frustration, He wants us to come anyway. He doesn’t say, “No, go get yourself together and then you can draw near.” Instead, He says, “Come to Me, all you who are weary...” And if all we have to offer Him is the ugliness of a broken soul, then He will draw near and receive it as an offering of worship. Not because He deserves it--no, He deserves alabaster boxes of sweet perfume, houses
of extravagant beauty built to Him, gold, frankincense and myrrh, animals without blemish and songs of thanksgiving (to name a biblical few)--but because He is a God of grace who, in spite of His infinite worth, remembers we are "but dust" and rejoices over the widow’s pennies as they fall into the offering plate, receives food at the table of the outcasts of society and immortalizes the worship of Job.

As I stepped out of the shower that day, my heart landed upon Job and I opened up his book and began to read. And Job 1:20 reverberated through my body like a glorious, hopeful sigh.

“Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped.”

Job--a man the Lord Himself called “a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil”--had just suffered a string of immense losses and felt within himself blow after blow upon his heart; he lost all that he had and almost everyone that he loved. His expression of sorrow was intense and aggressive; he tore his clothes, he shaved his head. He did not hide his feelings, he expressed them fully and fiercely.

And then it says Job “fell on the ground;” the weight of what he felt took all strength from him and he couldn’t stand beneath it. Perhaps he didn’t even try to because sometimes the burdens are just far too great to place upon our backs, the heaviness of the sorrow far too immense; so under the trials of life, he simply fell on the ground.

Job’s ground was solid; he fell onto the expanse of the One in Whom he trusted. And from this place, weak and weary and wounded, unable to stand, torn open...Job worshipped God. He offered his sorrow and he acknowledge his Lord. And to God, this was worship.

There was no exuberant joy required, no withholding of receiving until the heart was indeed thankful and accepting of the losses, no setting at arms length till the confusion was resolved...No. The Lord received his weakness and his sorrow and his acknowledgement as an offering of worship. We know this because He repeated His accolades of His servant Job in 2:3, calling him again “a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil.

And that is reason 14 gazillion why God is so incredibly glorious. Because I can yell at Him in the shower when anger, confusion and despair are all I have to bring Him at a moment when I just want to be near. I can acknowledge His holiness, love and kindness in the next breath as I speak His truth over my weary soul. And I can leave our interaction feeling as though He took my words and my tears and my weakness as worship.

These are the moments when I understand why the KJV bible often translates “steadfast love” as “mercy.”