Living in Tents

 

A friend died this week.  A fighter.  She inspired everyone she met with the fierce tenacity of her fight and she gave me personal encouragement in my own tiff with cancer.  As her body grew weaker and began to wear out, her spirit seemed to bench press, growing stronger.  She taught me that you can still fight with your body while relinquishing your mind and spirit completely to God.

In this grand scheme called life, I believe our bodies are just tents. Temporary dwellings in which our souls live for a season.  When the tent can no longer be repaired, the soul moves on.  It sounds so simple and maybe a little too virtuous.  The truth is, we’re pretty attached to our tents.  We don’t like it when they hurt and malfunction.  It stinks when they can’t do what we want to do and go where we want to go.  It seems especially unfair when they wear out long before we’re finished camping.  David must have felt this way when he cried out to the Lord in his 102^nd Psalm.

He has broken my strength in midcourse; He has shortened my days.  “O my God,” I say, “take me not away in the midst of my days – You whose years endure throughout all generations!”  Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.  They will perish, but you will remain; they will wear out like a garment.  You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.  Psalm 102:23-27 (ESV)

The one who manufactured my tent made everything else too and only He has the power to say when I’m finished on this earth.  My tent shows up as a tiny speck on His infinite timeline.  But He saw me long before the speck appeared.  Psalm 139:16 (ESV) says:  Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. 

Someday after my speck of a tent disappears, I will live on with Him.  Jesus told Martha after her brother, Lazarus, had died, “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?”  Yes, Lord, I do believe this.  With everything in me, I believe it.  I am an eternal being, beyond this temporal flesh I wear.  Knowing that gives me the same eternal perspective that my friend had.  And watching her bulldog spirit has taught me it’s ok to keep fighting for this tent until He says He’s finished with it.

Strong Hands Are Holding Yours

My dad spent his last couple of years in memory care while vascular dementia crawled deeper and deeper into his daily life.  Of all the sweet moments from that time, one of my favorites is this one as he held the hand of one of his grown grandsons.  His left hand could still hold a firm grip.  His right hand curled shut most of the time from a previous stroke.  But he touched my nephew’s hand with his closed fist in lieu of a clasp.  The lightest graze of his knuckles spoke volumes.  The many other times his hands had held, lifted, helped, corrected, and loved were all wrapped up in the history of a relationship.

Our heavenly Father’s hands are never weak.  His right hand is a symbol of power.  However, there are times when we feel like He may have loosened His grip on us.  Like we are falling, and afraid He’s not going to catch us.  When we are all alone, and worried He may not be there anymore either.  After we have asked and haven’t yet received.

But our relationship history with Him gives us reassurance that He is still there.  Our faith in Him gives us confidence that His strength has not waned.  His promises give us hope that we will feel His strong grasp again. 

Isaiah spoke these words to the people of Israel in Isaiah 41:  ‘You’re on my side.  I’ve picked you.  I haven’t dropped you.  Don’t panic.  I’m with you. There’s no need to fear for I’m your God.  I’ll give you strength.  I’ll help you.  I’ll hold you steady, keep a firm grip on you.’  Isaiah 41:9-10 (MSG)

Hear Him speak these words to you as well.  His strong hands are still there holding onto yours.  So squeeze back and know He’s never letting go.

Spacious Places

This week I ran across a journal entry from 12 years ago with two Psalms about spacious places.  At that point in my life, my kids were in the throes of hectic high school schedules, my career stress was mounting at a maddening pace, and the grief from losing my mother was still resurfacing in unexpected waves.  Sometimes the combination of all the pressures felt stifling.

But then the Lord reminded me of his spacious places.

Psalm 18:19 - He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me. [NIV]

Psalm 31:8 - You have not given me into the hands of the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place. [NIV]

David wrote these verses as the Lord delivered him out of the hands of his enemies.  God also delivers us from our modern day enemies of busyness and sadness and fatigue. Why? Simply because He delights in us.

I believe the Lord has a rescue plan for people like you and me - one that brings us to a spacious place.   A spacious place to be at peace from the worries that make us feel choked and crowded.  A spacious place where there is plenty of room to breathe and rest. That place is His presence.  And to enter into it, we simply have to stop and rest with him.  May you find your spacious place in Him and return there often.

Introducing this blog - Something About Him

I prefer my mornings quiet, my coffee strong, my cheese grilled, and my chocolate dark.  I like to read, write, sew, garden, and travel.  I am the baby of the family, a daughter, sister, high school sweetheart wife, mother of grown children, computer science grad, energy industry retiree, empty nester, Midwesterner Texan, dazzled nana, and child of God.  My family has been touched by cancer, diabetes, anxiety disorders, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and perfectionism.  And we’ve experienced greater touches of God’s grace, forgiveness, favor, peace, and joy.  

None of these things define me, but all have been woven into my fabric as God sits at the loom.  In this blog, I will write something about Him and the way He goes with us through the new normals of our pretty normal lives.  I hope it inspires you to live your life close by His side.