The Unchanging One

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.  (Hebrews 13:8)

How thankful I am for the truth and reality of that verse.  Maybe it's because I'm getting older but I can't recall another time in my life when I've experienced as much change in one year's time.  It's astounding!  Friends have come and gone, major illness has struck
my family, major life changes are happening all around me - some very, very good and some not so good.  I sometimes feel I can hardly catch my breath from one event when something else rolls through and leaves me spinning.  How could I possibly continue with any degree of sanity and faith without knowing that our Lord is the ever-present, ever-faithful, ever-constant, loving, strong presence in this life?

In two conversations yesterday, I was reminded that it's the presence of God that we must seek first and foremost.  All the striving to do the "right" thing, the good thing, pales in comparison to being in the presence of the Lord.  I know how much I need that solid, unchanging presence of God. The awareness of his nearness, his direction, his strength and comfort is what enables me to keep on putting one foot in front of the other in the midst of all these unsettled days.  

Most mornings I wake up with a song playing in my mind. I have no idea where that comes from, but it's a rare morning that it doesn't happen.  A couple of weeks ago, during an especially difficult and spiritually dry time, the tune playing in my head was "As the Deer".  Two of my devotional readings for that day included the psalm that tune is based on, Psalm 42.  The first two verses reflected the state of my soul so well:  

As a deer pants for flowing streams,

so pants my soul for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, 

for the living God.

I think the Lord was gently pointing out the obvious to me.  It took the three different encounters with these words for me to recognize my own need - to put words to my unsettled feelings.  How sweet God is to nudge us, to call us into his sweet presence, to invite us to come and be still and sit with him a while, spend time in the presence of the One who is always the same, always IS.

God is calling us to choose.  Do we choose to follow him, to draw close to him, listen for his direction, his guidance, his loving words?  Or do we choose to follow the world's ways, to struggle through under our own power, striving to do what is expected and perhaps feeling like we don't quite measure up?  How long do we have to struggle along, feeling spent and exhausted before we answer the call to Be still and know that I am God?

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.  Thanks be to our God!

Going to the Rock

Does this ever happen to you?  Waking up in the middle of the night, you find your mind whirring with thoughts and worries that won't go away and you lie there unable to go back to sleep for all the fretting going on in your head.  I call it the midnight crazies and I hate when it happens.  Last night was one of those nights - where do these thoughts come from?  The same things can be reasonably handled in the light of day but in the wee hours of the morning, they're catastrophic.  It took me a long time, many nights of the midnight crazies to finally work out a solution:  prayer.  duh.  There's a wonderful prayer from the service of Compline in the Book of Common Prayer and after many consecutive nights of sleeplessness, this prayer came to mind and I prayed it over and over until I realized when I woke up the next morning that, as usual, prayer works.  Here's the prayer (I change the pronouns to make it personal):  Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace.  

Reading my Bible readings appointed for this morning, my favorite psalm was in the list:  Psalm 91.  I didn't get very far in the psalm before these words jumped out at me:  'My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.'  As familiar as this psalm is to me, I had to stop and linger over those words.  God IS my refuge and my fortress.  He is the one I run to during the midnight crazies, during the stresses of the day, the worries over friends and loved ones.  I truly have no one else to turn to with the same degree of trust and assurance.  1 Peter 5:7 exhorts us to cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.  He cares about us and he cares for us - seeing to our needs, our concerns, our joys, our every need.  He is our rock - that strong and solid place of security and rest; he is our fortress - that place of protection from the things that can harm us; he is our Shepherd - he knows each one of his sheep by name and tends lovingly and gently to each one of us.  

The Gospel of John recounts the story of the followers of Jesus turning away because of his teaching that became so hard to understand.  Jesus asks his twelve disciples if they, too, are leaving him and Peter replies:  Lord to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God."  It truly is through walking out this life, day by day, worry by worry, prayer by prayer, that we come to know that we, like Peter and the disciples, have no one else to turn to; we come to KNOW in the deepest part of us that Jesus is, indeed, exactly who he says he is.  When we come to that realization we know Jesus is our Refuge, our Fortress, our very present help in times of trouble (Ps. 42).  He is the Rock of our salvation.

I pray that no matter how difficult things may be in your life right now, or how easy they are, that you will come to know without a shadow of a doubt who Jesus is - how very real he is; that you will come to see him and know him as your Refuge, Rock, and Fortress.