Yesterday was the funeral for my aunt and the reason for my not posting.  Today, of course, I am a bit weary.  The funeral went well, but now, in addition to what I call the “mother-wound” I carry in my heart because of the loss of my own mother, I now have an “aunt-wound” because of the loss of my “other mother”.   This morning when I prayed, I picked up a collection of Amy Carmichael’s writings called Thou Givest . . . They Gather and read this:

“I cannot get the way of Christ’s love.  Had I known what He was keeping for me, I should never have been so faint-hearted”, Samuel Rutherford wrote long ago.  Have we not often had cause to say so too?  But if for a season we are in heaviness, if the morning after a night of pain, or prayer, or fierce fight of temptation, or any other weariness, finds us arid as a burnt-up bit of land, there is a perfect word waiting to hearten us: Grace to help in time of need–in time of need–that is the word.  Often and often I have drunk of that living water very thirstily.  Blessed be God for this brook in the way.  “For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but One that has been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.  Let us therefore draw near with boldness to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb 4.15-16)

Now, I must honestly confess that I sometimes have mixed reactions to reading something like this.  This is what I begin to think: “But will I really feel refreshed after I pray?  Many a time I have continued on arid after coming to Him.”  (I call to mind that time I spoke of earlier when I cried out, “Lord, have you forgotten me?”)  But even as I thought that this morning, I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me: “But can you not trust that if that is the case, that the Father, in His love, has a greater purpose in allowing it?”  And, you know, I cannot but answer yes to that because I know “in my knower”–as they say–that all that the Father does, He does in love.  If I continue on in weariness and grief and aridity, He must have a greater purpose in it all.  And I thank Him for reminding me of that.