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In the years before I had ALS, I made and broke, usually quickly, more New Year resolutions than I care to remember. I became so bad at keeping my resolutions that I quit making them. But I began making resolutions again about 6 years ago and actually succeeded in keeping a few of them – resolutions like committing to follow a daily Bible reading program, which I’ve done several times and will do this year also. But following a daily Bible is more like a renewed commitment for me so it’s not one of the new resolutions I’m referring to in this post.

ALS has taken away a lot of the things I wanted to change about myself. Unfortunately it’s also taken away many of the things that I didn’t want to change. For example;

• I am fed through a feeding tube now so I no longer have to make…

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be as you have said.”
Luke 1: 38

We want it to be the way we want it: our plans, our timing, our hopes and dreams first and foremost.
And then life happens and suddenly nothing looks the way it was supposed to be. How are we to respond?

In my work in a University Health Center, I see in young adults a tremendous lack of resiliency, an inability to ride the waves that crash and overwhelm. One of the most common responses to the unexpected is to panic, facing uncontrollable anxiety that interferes with eating, sleeping, working, studying. A common response to anxiety is to self medicate in any way easily accessible: alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, sex, a friend’s prescription drugs. A little isn’t working so a lot might be better. The anxiety is compounded and becomes deepening depression.

The sadness…

Listen, you heavens, and I will speak;
    hear, you earth, the words of my mouth.
² Let my teaching fall like rain
    and my words descend like dew,
like showers on new grass,
    like abundant rain on tender plants.
Deuteronomy 32:1-2 in the Song of Moses

God’s people had been wandering homeless in the desert for years before they were allowed to enter the Promised Land.  To them, there was great hope in the possibility of moisture coming from heaven as the bountiful gift Moses describes in an analogy for his words and teaching.   The dew of heaven becomes the representation of God’s all-encompassing Spirit and gift of grace in this and other Old Testament scripture passages.

Ultimately, God’s Word descends like dew from heaven in the form of a newborn baby in a manger come to dwell among us.   Like dew, He comes at no cost to us, …

“It was when I was happiest that I longed most…
The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…
to find the place where all the beauty came from.”
~C.S. Lewis

Like children who long for Christmas,
anticipating for weeks
what that moment will be like
when they see gifts piled high under the tree–

we revel in our longing.

It is the sweetness
of “already but not yet”,
knowing with eager expectancy
there is more to come,
just a bit out of reach
but still intensely seen and felt,
something more wonderful,
a place more beautiful than we can ever imagine…

A thought from Amy Carmichael on trusting that God loves us:

1 John 4.16 (Rotherham) We have come to understand and to trust the love which God hath in us.

I have been thinking much of this translation.  We can never fully understand that love, but we can begin to understand it even here and now, and as we understand, we trust.  This means that we trust all that the love of God does; all He gives, and all He does not give; all He says, and all He does not say.  To it all we say, by His loving enabling, I trust.  Let us be content with the Lord’s will, and tell Him so, and not disappoint Him by wishing for anything He does not give.  The more we understand His love, the more we trust.  (Edges of His Ways, p. 145)

In October I did a series of posts on “little words” in Scripture that are really “big” words.  I wanted to share another with you today.  

Psalm 73.26: But God

These words have been like strong hands lifting up, bearing up, countless thousands of souls. “My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.”  Many who will read this note are well and strong and joyful in their work, thank God for that.  Sooner or later, however, to most who follow the Crucified, there comes a time when flesh and heart fail, and if it were not for that “But God”, we should go under. . . .   (Amy Carmichael, Edges of His Ways, p. 12)

It’s evident to me what it means to have your flesh fail, but I have been pondering what it may mean to have your heart…