God's Got it Handled
God talks to most people through nature or at religious events like sunrise services. As a child in Seattle I used to be dragged out of bed into the cold to sunrise services. Even when I moved to the warmer climate of California I am still sad to say that I have never had a religious experience at a sunrise service. Many do and insist on attending them yearly but God speaks to me at ordinary events like doing the dishes or going shopping at the swap meet. Let me tell you about one of these.
We were trying to have a second child and I had just had my second miscarriage –ironically both had occurred on two Mothers Day weekends two years in a row. I was 43years old and I considered this my last safe year to try again. But as if a birthday gift on my 43rd birthday, I conceived again.
It had been discovered on my second miscarriage that my body was lacking the correct levels of progesterone to carry a child to term. Due to this I had weekly blood work keeping meticulous track of my progesterone level. I begged to be given supplements of it from the start but the doctor didn’t find it wise. One Friday I got a frantic message from my doctor’s office. My progesterone level had dropped terribly into a dangerously low range and I was to immediately start taking supplements. Now this blood work had been taken four days before and who knew if the damage had already been done and another miscarriage would happen again. I could do nothing else but take the pills and wait for the blood work on Monday.
I was a total emotional wreck. It would be the longest weekend of my life and though I prayed and hoped, I could not get rid the continual fear of losing another baby. So I did the solution my family has lived by for years: “When the going gets tough – the tough go shopping.”
It was Christmas time and I did have some gifts I needed to buy so I parked and went into the crowded mall. I went to a house wares store and found photo storage boxes I’d been looking for. They were at a great buy so I snatched up 6 of them and stood in line trying with great difficulty to balance them.
They were quite bulky and took both of my hands and I began to resent that I would have to walk all the way back to my car to get rid of them since I couldn’t imagine balancing them throughout the mall. But when I got to the cash register an amazing thing happened. The clerk put all those bulky boxes into one huge bag, which contained them beautifully, and as he handed it to me I noticed that this bag had handles. So I just slipped my hand into the handles and suddenly the bulky boxes were easy to carry and I continued on with my shopping. As I carried this bag throughout the mall I was hit with a sensation of peace. It was a “moment of grace” when I realized that no matter what happened to the baby, whether I lost it or not, God would somehow give me the ability to handle it. This calmness carried me through as I took my blood work and awaited the results. I would discover later that my levels were in fact up and weeks later I would hear my baby’s heartbeat and seven months later a healthy Benjamin was born.
Now Lent occurs in springtime, a time when many do what is called Spring-Cleaning. It is time to purge your home from what’s old and is no longer needed - things that merely get in the way. Unfortunately however we don’t just carry around extra physical stuff. We may have also accumulated the emotional baggage of subtle things like disappointment, resentment, and self-hatred along with other grief and sorrow, which keep us from living a life of resurrection.
Isaiah 53:4 talks about the suffering servant whom many believe to be Christ the one whose resurrection we celebrate at Easter. As the King James puts it:
“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows”
I love the confidence in the writer here when he says surely. The Hebrew word for sorrow here pronounced “mak-o-bow” can refer to physical or mental pain and is used to speak about the pain of the soul.
How many pains in our souls do we drag ourselves along with when surely Christ can and will continuously bear them for us? The pain may still be there, the calamity not yet settled still Christ can help us handle it, if we but hand him our pain to bag up and confine in his love.
So if you’re doing Spring Cleaning or not may I suggest that you do some soul cleaning regarding the pains of your soul this Lent. Are there some pains you’ve been dragging along much too long? Can you hand them to the great healer to carry for you? By doing so you can experience the “moments of grace” in your own life knowing God’s got it handled for you.
We were trying to have a second child and I had just had my second miscarriage –ironically both had occurred on two Mothers Day weekends two years in a row. I was 43years old and I considered this my last safe year to try again. But as if a birthday gift on my 43rd birthday, I conceived again.
It had been discovered on my second miscarriage that my body was lacking the correct levels of progesterone to carry a child to term. Due to this I had weekly blood work keeping meticulous track of my progesterone level. I begged to be given supplements of it from the start but the doctor didn’t find it wise. One Friday I got a frantic message from my doctor’s office. My progesterone level had dropped terribly into a dangerously low range and I was to immediately start taking supplements. Now this blood work had been taken four days before and who knew if the damage had already been done and another miscarriage would happen again. I could do nothing else but take the pills and wait for the blood work on Monday.
I was a total emotional wreck. It would be the longest weekend of my life and though I prayed and hoped, I could not get rid the continual fear of losing another baby. So I did the solution my family has lived by for years: “When the going gets tough – the tough go shopping.”
It was Christmas time and I did have some gifts I needed to buy so I parked and went into the crowded mall. I went to a house wares store and found photo storage boxes I’d been looking for. They were at a great buy so I snatched up 6 of them and stood in line trying with great difficulty to balance them.
They were quite bulky and took both of my hands and I began to resent that I would have to walk all the way back to my car to get rid of them since I couldn’t imagine balancing them throughout the mall. But when I got to the cash register an amazing thing happened. The clerk put all those bulky boxes into one huge bag, which contained them beautifully, and as he handed it to me I noticed that this bag had handles. So I just slipped my hand into the handles and suddenly the bulky boxes were easy to carry and I continued on with my shopping. As I carried this bag throughout the mall I was hit with a sensation of peace. It was a “moment of grace” when I realized that no matter what happened to the baby, whether I lost it or not, God would somehow give me the ability to handle it. This calmness carried me through as I took my blood work and awaited the results. I would discover later that my levels were in fact up and weeks later I would hear my baby’s heartbeat and seven months later a healthy Benjamin was born.
Now Lent occurs in springtime, a time when many do what is called Spring-Cleaning. It is time to purge your home from what’s old and is no longer needed - things that merely get in the way. Unfortunately however we don’t just carry around extra physical stuff. We may have also accumulated the emotional baggage of subtle things like disappointment, resentment, and self-hatred along with other grief and sorrow, which keep us from living a life of resurrection.
Isaiah 53:4 talks about the suffering servant whom many believe to be Christ the one whose resurrection we celebrate at Easter. As the King James puts it:
“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows”
I love the confidence in the writer here when he says surely. The Hebrew word for sorrow here pronounced “mak-o-bow” can refer to physical or mental pain and is used to speak about the pain of the soul.
How many pains in our souls do we drag ourselves along with when surely Christ can and will continuously bear them for us? The pain may still be there, the calamity not yet settled still Christ can help us handle it, if we but hand him our pain to bag up and confine in his love.
So if you’re doing Spring Cleaning or not may I suggest that you do some soul cleaning regarding the pains of your soul this Lent. Are there some pains you’ve been dragging along much too long? Can you hand them to the great healer to carry for you? By doing so you can experience the “moments of grace” in your own life knowing God’s got it handled for you.
Comments
Post a Comment