let it be

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"The path of the righteous is level; you make level the way of the righteous. In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. My soul yeanrs for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. for when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness." Isaiah 26:7-9

The way of the just is evenness, a steady course of obedience and holy conversation. And it is their happiness that God makes their way plain and easy. It is our duty, and will be our comfort, to wait for God, to keep up holy desires toward him in the darkest and most discouraging times. Our troubles must never turn us from God; and in the darkest, longest night of affliction, with our souls must we desire him; and this we must wait and pray to him for...The intention of afflictions is to teach righteousness: blessed is the man whom the Lord thus teaches. -Matthew Henry

recently i visited a friend who has a two year old toddler; as we talked i asked my friend if her child was showing any personality traits and she shared about how her child would make noises of discovery and point out new things to her parents. these discoveries ranged anywhere from a spider on the wall to the sound of the ac being turned on to an unfamiliar water bottle.

i remember not so long ago that i felt a different kind of energy about life; my inner thoughts were intense, curious, always churning and so hungry for more and i was eager to unabashedly share about these things. i leaned forward in seats when i was in conversation, greedy for opportunities to pick at others' brains and to bear my soul to others. my desire for intimacy in relationships was un-bound: i was raw and vulnerable and i think i thrived in it. but now the thought of returning to that intensity like sandpaper, or like the thought of a messy room that i have no desire to clean. i find that i have somehow begun to erect parameters in my heart for these conversations. i no longer look for them with nearly the same amount of intensity and in fact, somehow along the way i have begun to value privacy so much so that conversation has become increasingly taxing. i wonder if it's because i feel both burned and weary from relationships that i err on the side of caution, it seems like as i have implicitly experienced what feels safe and unsafe, my heart began to unconsciously build boundaries. it now feels relieving to detach myself from expectant desires and take a back seat to let things be, to let people be.

dwelling

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i am learning as i interact in dissonance with different people than myself that i am a deep dweller. i dwell in my thoughts, i dwell on my situation, i dwell on things i care about. i dwindle and dilly dally and am convinced that by the practice of self-examen i will somehow gain something.

i'm not sure what the connection is between the acting of "dwelling" and the "dwelling-place" where we dwell, but it makes me think of the concept of being home. home is a place of profound but uncomplicated safety, welcome, warmth, protection, shelter, rest, communion, and play. home is where pretenses are shed and burdens are set aside to carve out a sacred space of communing. if i tease apart the word "commune," i think of the act of "coming together" - it is an active coming "towards" and is warm with the potential hope of embrace and connection. it paints a stark picture when compared with the act of turning away, of rejection, exclusion, and isolation. and so with the former image in mind, jesus is to be my home. when i am homeless, cast out by friends and family, rejected or scorned, i am to find my home in the wounds and life of jesus even as he finds a home in my heart. he is to be my dwelling place; just as he has created me to be a "dwelling thinker" and to be someone who places great value in healthy and thriving friendships (as evidenced by my frenzied agitation when denied this), i can be certain that i can also use these characteristics to both dwell on jesus and to invest in a relationship with him characterized by great depth.

blessed are the peacemakers

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You have heard that it was said, "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Matthew 5:43-45

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. John 15:4

the past month has been so strange and painful and also sprinkled with vignettes of God's attentiveness towards me. i have a difficult time recalling what my spiritual walk has looked like for the past year; i remember being distraught one time in february 2014 as i hurt from a conversation on the phone, struggling to get through my ethnic studies thesis in the spring, grappling with my draining internship over the summer, feeling uplifted by the students i led at a summer camp, feeling rest-less going into fall quarter, drowning in grief from september through december as i sought counseling and sat in the midst of a dead relationships, and feeling hopeless, ashamed, and self-condemned all of january. why is it that i desired reconciliation and healing and life so much for the past year and a half? why is it that out of my own strength and efforts i felt as if i was repeatedly ramming my head into a concrete wall? as the pain of unfulfilled hopes and desires sat in the chambers of my withering  and writhing heart, i had begun to give increasing attention to that pain until i was feverish with obsession and until all that was inside was the sticky darkness of hopelessness. reconciliation and life was out of my reach and it was all that i desired. i made every effort to avoid going to fellowship and every prayer i could muster started with "i don't know how to commune with you anymore."

this particular arch of my life has been threaded into the greater story of God's work in my heart in such a methodically hidden way that all i feel is the pain of the sanctification. it came to a point in january when e asked me, "do you feel like jesus loves you right now?" and "do you love jesus?" to which i responded "no" and "i don't know." i didn't realize it was possible to reorient my identity around a conditional "i am worthy only if i can successfully pursue reconciliation." and because i failed, and i failed so hard, i naturally and logically became unworthy and unloved.

i cried out to God that week and in the following month, things have happened at a pace faster than i was used to. these vignettes come in the form of an email i've been anticipating for almost six months; a twelve minute facetime and several phone calls home; a painful situation that has caused me to feel homeless and has forced me to my knees in desperate prayer and dependence upon jesus; the sweetness of walking with e and seeing how god has used each others' prayers to draw us back to jesus; the sweetness of my friendships with a handful of sisters who love me well and lift me and carry me in prayer.

things i have been learning:
1) my desire for reconciliation and peace and life-giving relationships is such that it tears me apart when i cannot have it; i do not know what this says about me, but it seems to me that at the very least it says that God, as a peace-making God, has placed this within me and calls me to lean on him as he is the sole active outworker of this peace
2) blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those who mourn. i am not happy when i mourn or when there is discord but jesus sees me and turns towards me.

lead me

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From the ends of the earth I call to you,

I call as my heart grows faint;

lead me to the rock that is higher than I. Psalm 61:2

Along the iron bound coast of our northern shores, lives are lost because the rocks are inaccessible to the shipwrecked mariner. A clergyman of one of the coast villages has with immense labour cut steps up from the beach to a large chamber, which he has excavated in the chalk cliffs; here many mariners have been saved; they have climbed the rock, which had else been too high for them, and they have escaped. We have heard of late, however, that the steps have been worn away by the storms, and that poor sailors have perished miserably within sight of the refuge which they could not reach, for it was too high for them: it is therefore proposed to drive in iron stanchions, and to hang up chain ladders that shipwrecked mariners may reach the chambers in the rock. The illustration is self interpreting.

Our experience leads us to understand this verse right well, for the time was with us when we were in such amazement of soul be reason of sin, that although we knew the Lord Jesus to be a sure salvation for sinners, yet we could not come at him, by reason of our many doubts and forebodings. A Saviour would have been of no use to us if the Holy Spirit had not gently led us to him, and enabled us to rest upon him. To this day we often feel that we not only want a rock, but to be led to it. With this in view we treat very leniently the half unbelieving prayers of awakened souls; for in their bewildered state we cannot expect from them all at once a fully believing cry. A seeking soul should at once believe in Jesus, but it is legitimate for a man to ask to be led to Jesus; the Holy Spirit is able to effect such a leading, and he can do it even though the heart be on the borders of despair. How infinitely higher that we are is the salvation of God. We are low and grovelling, but it towers like some tall cliff far above us. This is its glory, and is our delight when we have once climbed into the rock, and claimed an interest in it; but while we are as yet trembling seekers, the glory and sublimity of salvation appal us, and we feel that we are too unworthy ever to be partakers of it; hence we are led to cry for grace upon grace, and to see how dependent we are for everything, not only for the Saviour, but for the power to believe on him. -Spurgeon


No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39

The devil cannot dye a soul so scarlet in sin but what the blood of Christ can make it white as snow. Satan cannot drive a chosen sheep of Christ so far on the mountains of vanity, or into the deserts of sin, but what the great Shepherd of the sheep can find that sheep, and bring it back again. There is hope for the mart sunken. There is hope for those that grovel, and that sink in the mire The infinite compassion of God can reach them, and the eternal power of God can lift them up. Spurgeon
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