Psalm 77:4-9
"You kept my eyes from closing;
I was too troubled to speak.
I thought about the former days,
the years ago;
I remembered my songs in the
night.
My heart mused and my spirit
inquired:
"Will the Lord reject forever?
Will he never show his favor
again?
Has his unfailing love vanished
forever?
Has His promise failed for all
time?
Has God forgotten to be merciful?
Has he in anger withheld His
compassion?" Selah
Many of us know how it is to....loose sleep. Many as well know...the kind of sleep that is lost due to the eyes being kept open. It's them nights, that we find the most difficult to endure. Personally for me it goes from one extreme to the other. I have had seasons where all I wanted to do is sleep. And sleep. And sleep some more. Then, there have been nights, where I've not been able to sleep. On both sides, it's hard. I love though how much the Psalm's speak with such a real experience of which we can easily relate. "I was too troubled to speak". Being troubled to the point of loosing sleep and being speechless. It's a wrestling...a place of screaming silence in the midst of sometimes the loudest and longest laments of lingering adversity. We spend them nights just agonizingly - going over and over, meditatively musing the events of which are catastrophically out of our control. Looking for something...to reveal a window ...where we just might regain control.
In such a night - I remember myself literally as the Psalmist writes, "remembering my songs in the night..." I not only like to write meditatively, but also, poetry and lyrics. I have a chest of lyrics laced around the legacy's left behind by my father. Many of which were written in "the night'. Songs have been sung over and over, while traveling miles on the road making trips from here to there...all while in the midst of such nights. Songs that have carried me through the desolate desert of betrayal, murder, rape, addictions, socio-pathic behaviors, and the like. Longing to become a rose...in a dry and barren land, I was. As I would muse...the questions were easily found flowing freely from my fragile fragmented heart...and they sounded much like the Psalmist writes here. Listen again...he holds nothing back- of the human hearts hungry; haunting cry for answers:
"Will the Lord reject forever?
Will he never show his favor
again?
Has His promise failed for all
time?
Has God forgotten to be merciful?
Has He in anger withheld his compassion?" Selah
What are the themes in this pouring out; this posture and position of his heart?
Rejection.
Loss of Favor.
Promises - Lost.
Forgotten.
Merciless.
Anger instead of Compassion.
I asked in the first part of this Muse....What kind of relationship does one have, with one who can ask and pose such statements? I would say...a very intimate one. Otherwise, where and what kind of relationship really contains such things- lost? I adore the writing God has given in the Psalms...because it gives us both affirmation and permission to be fully authentic, fully transparent before our God. Is that not the kind of relationship we are all longing for? If we aren't...then we aren't going to find relationship fully alive!
I can remember so very much all the desolation, I have come through. I remember so many tears. So many feelings. So many memories. We remember much...when we have been through. Through and through; we have been, many of us. We're not alone. Not in the going through. Not ever. But, if we don't ask the questions, if we don't muse and meditate, if we don't as it said in the first verses I talk about from Psalm 77 of my writing; "Muse part 1", - "Yell out to God....Cry out", and pour out our soul....but instead, let it stay inside- we'll find ourselves purging it out in some fragmented way or another. And we never fully find we indeed are - not alone. He is always with us. But...
I'm pondering right now, a thought-.... Until we feel we have lost something or are missing something, might we not go looking for it? Or, ask it this way; until we find ourselves, without something, will we recognize our need, the vacancy of what it is we don't have? What does it take for us to have a need to- Remember? What causes one to have any thought to Remember? Why Remember? What causes us the need to Remember?
The knowledge of something; having been.
And so where does one begin to remember from? How far back does one go; in remembering? Well, I guess that would depend on, what it is you are trying to recall? Or perhaps, why you are trying to remember.
Are you good, at Remembering?
The Psalmist goes on after this pouring out,...and begins again to write about what he will do;
Verse 10 - 12:
..."To this I will appeal:
the Years of the right hand of the Most High. "
"I will remember the deeds of the Lord...
Your miracles of long ago...
mediate on all your works, consider all your mighty deeds.
Your ways are....Holy, ...great, ...miraculous...powerful...mighty...redemptive, ...."
and he writes more going on about the amazing and miraculous ways God delivers His people out of slavery and bondage from Egypt. I encourage you to go and read the whole Psalm.
I see often in the Psalms, the writer will pour out his soul...and all that it contains. He will unveil the real struggle, the perspectives of his situation from his angle of agony. Oh...how thankful I am for this. It's the quote I love from Shadowlands, "We read to know we're not alone"; that resonates as I read the Psalms. And what I love more than anything...in all the recounting and revealing of the reality of his soul, peril and all....the writer does this....he Remembers. And it's in this remembering...that we are once again, seeing what we began to see in the beginning, differently. It's that beautiful rainbow that comes after the storm...full of color and radiance that can only be seen after, but longed for, leaned upon, and lived within...in the remembering.
Dear Savior, of whom has suffered and agonized;
for me,
Thank you...for opening through your Holy Spirit;
windows of pain-
the writer's of the Psalms; have given us.
I love Lord, that many nights...
these Psalms have not just spoken the tears of David and other's,
but have dripped with my tears;
trailing through the tragic,
threads of time.
Oh Savior...how I have found comfort in these times.
How I have been able to remember...
"I read to know I am not ...alone". But, Savior, ...
there are those times too, where the remembering has not come so easily.
Yes, I have remembered.
But, not those threads of the story...
where You, held it all together for me.
Where the time lines of all that took place,
were tenderly tasseled
in the torrents of Your Grace.
Oh, how if I had not taken time to remember...
I'd not have seen; just a glimpse; of such sovereign scenes. Help me Savior,...
to remember more often,
You too, felt-
alone.
Forsaken.
Abandoned.
And in that truth alone,
I can take the comfort of those words,
as companions traveling alongside me.
Thank you for the songs, in the night.
And help me see beyond, the storms;
that I might see more quickly...
the rainbow of the miraculous-
moving amongst...
the remembering.
"Look Mommy, an Excavator, a Bulldozer, and a Backhoe, Mommy. Can you even believe it Mommy!" stated Seth in a jubilant exaltation!
My little boy is very much, all about Construction Trucks these days. Every where we go, we are seeing them. You know how it is when you get a new car, you suddenly see "your" car, everywhere.
I was on my way to an appointment, alone. Though not often do I go anywhere alone, when I do - it's a time of uninterrupted thought, reflection, and worship. A time where; a deep breath- is good for the soul.
I had been breathing in a deep breath of worship, playing a song on repeat by Mathew West called, "The Reason For The World". It's an amazing song about just that, making sense of the things that happen in the world we live. Leading us ultimately into a realization that, we long for Home. Home being Heaven. I was pondering how much I have longed for Heaven; decades now. How tragedy's have a way of setting your perspectives on higher ground. How just as quickly as the traffic raced past me, fading into my rear view mirror, so memories raced by my minds eye. However, I wish memories disappeared just as quickly.
Though the sky was that of a summer blue, the air outside was clearly not that of summer, but rather seeking permission for the arrival of winter, as it lay at the edge of it's coming. Life...does not take such steps. It does not slowly emerge. It just comes. It waits not- for you to gently ease into such things. It simply ...arrives.
As I considered the destination of which I was going to arrive at this morning, I began to notice many Construction Trucks all around me. Echoing in my heart, "Can you even believe it Mommy!". And in that quiet moment of reflection, I heard it again, only it wasn't my little boys voice I heard, but rather the voice of the Holy Spirit..."Can you even believe it, Dawn? Look, ...that is what I say when I see the construction work of my children going on. When I see the 'trucks' of life coming at them, the Excavator of eradication and all that hinders one from fully coming alive. The Front End Loader coming to scoop away that which has been chisled, after the Bulldozer first did it's job of plowing out all that was destroying me. Friendships that were unhealthy. The dirt of derailed and daunting decisions left behind. The Crane Truck of which had the wrecking ball effects of poor discernment. Can you even believe it, Dawn! Because, what I see Dawn...is not the torn up Construction site, but rather the restored site. The fully alive, breathing life site, that has come to it's fullest potential."
And then, just as Seth asks; the Holy Spirit asks me, "See it Dawn, see it!" Like my little boy, with longing- Jesus looks and asks, do you see it? Really see it?
And then I felt the Holy Spirit ask, like when you buy that new car... do you see it everywhere? Not just in your own life, but in the life of others too? Do you see the beauty of the construction in the lives around you? Do you see beyond the trucks of tragic trauma, into the places where, foundations are laid, cemented in, like a Cement Truck pours cement,...firming up that which cannot be shaken? Do you see... the way I am forming and making what seems like an excavation of enormous magnitude of the enemy's making, and taking what was stolen and giving it back, miraculously beyond what could or would have been before? Do you see Dawn, how with great joy, delight and freedom, I AM? That I too, am moving among this construction site of your life, with immeasurable longing, patience, pursuit, that none would perish, so that my healing, deliverance and redemptive restoration might fall forward to all who hear, see, listen...?
Then He asks me,"Do you want to see more? Be a player in the in the story of all that I am doing not just around you but through you as well? I don't need you, true! But oh...how I love to use my creation, to reveal all of who I AM! Can you even believe it, Dawn?"
As I sat there just about to get out of my car, having arrived to my destination, I mused a moment...what will I have to go through, before I arrive at my eternal destination? Can I see it through the lens of; all I've been given in this short drive today? Can I say it with the jubilation that Seth did? See, the thing is...we don't always get the blueprints of what the site is being torn up for...what is being built. Unless we look...eternally. And it's this view...that I long for more of.
Dear Holy Spirit,
Wow...you really do know me don't you. I did not expect such an intimate moment, on such a normal kind of day. But, you don't see as I do. You see perfectly, while I see...dimly. You see what I can't see. And yet; you invite me to come close,...you invite me to see, listen, hear, all that You are doing. You invite me to also, play a role...in the work that you are doing in others. This is nothing less than humbling for me.
I have had some pretty major construction work going on for a long time now. I'm humbled all the time, that you are continuing your promise, fulfilling it..."I will bring to completion, the good work which I begun". Thank you. Thank you for Your patience with me.
And Father, please draw near to ___________ who is going through a very intense excavating experience, as well. Show me, how I can be used in that site. Help me rightly usher in the privilege of what you want to do, to help them come fully alive through it.
I pray Holy Spirit, while in the midst of my own
construction;
I would not be concerned with how long it will take,
or what I can't control,
or what I see as it's happening.
But rather remember...every truck of transformation has a role to play.
Just as I have a role to play.
When all the digging, pushing, scraping, and excavating is going on, I pray I would be enveloped by Your intimate presence. And help me most, while standing in a world longing for home,
to see the eternal.
So that I can say in response; "Can you even believe it!" and rest in all around me, coming fully alive.
