Words I wished I had written, but glad I've read

Marcia Moston

I stare at the new journal, pages blanker than a Vermont meadow after a snowfall, on the table next me. Every January 1^st morning, this is my dilemma: what word, what wisdom, what prayer, petition or thanksgiving will be the first I commit to these pages.

Oh, that life would be so tough, you say!

I know, it’s a writer thing, and I am thankful that’s the extent of my dilemmas this morning, but here’s why it means so much to me.

I can easily be an info addict, a glutton for useless information, enamored by the sound of an idea, lured into learning about all kinds of things (did you know Japanese first-graders work at solving puzzles 40% longer than American ones?) rather than doing anything.

So before I start listing any intentions and resolutions for this next 584 million miles about the sun,

Standing with her who is standing firm

I have friends who say they don’t watch the news because it fills them with anger and despair. I have to agree. My reactions to many of the stories surfacing—especially those outrages aimed at Christians—frustrate me no end and recall to mind some of the psalmist’s pleas to God to deal with his enemies: “Let them be like grass upon the housetops, which withers before it grows up,” (a more mild example).

Too aware of my own shortcomings, I usually leave the eye-plucking to God and pray for the evil sent out to return on the one who sent it. But as far as despairing and losing hope, I don’t.

The one weapon I have that is more powerful than uranium in a madman’s hands is prayer. Prayer to THE Living God. THE all-powerful, almighty one. THE one with whom nothing is impossible. Nothing.

But I am sitting here in my warm, lovely home with a refrigerator full of food and a closet of clean clothes. My children are well and none lacks. It’s easy for me to keep confidence.  

I am acutely aware that despair and faltering hope prey on suffering, suffering that involves not only one’s self, but that of having to watch loved ones. These are the ones who need me and you to stand in faith when theirs weakens; when rats run over their child having to share a filthy jail cell and the hangman’s noose swings outside the cell in anticipation of their neck as soon as the child in their womb is born.

I am thinking today of Meriam Ibrahim, jailed for apostasy  (being a Christian married to a Christian man). According to new reports, her 20-month old son is with her in jail because the courts won’t recognize her husband.

Meriam has stood firm for her faith. Please stand with me in prayer for her. For her young son. For the child in her womb. And for the husband and father who has lost his family.

Evil surrounds and may at times seem to walk off victorious, but we appeal to you Lord. We pray for strength, for grace, for your very presence to fill that cell room, to protect this woman and children, to cause your face to shine upon her and hold her pain and suffering.

Prison cells are nothing for you. Jesus, we lift her to you.

  ***

 Really wanted to leave on a cheery note, as I go off to Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference this week, but I have had a heavy heart for Meriam, as well as for the kidnapped girls in Nigeria. And so, I ask you to wield that weapon of faith and power with me as you go about your day and I mine.

Until next time--

Blessings,

Marcai

The Most Formidable Weapon of All

For a person who derives great pleasure in finding the right words to express an idea, I am starting this year remarkably adrift. 

After taking holiday time off, I find the discipline to sit and think, to observe and write, requires the same kind of effort as hauling myself off to the gym. (A procrastination I quelled by downloading a good book on my nook and allowing myself to read only on the treadmill. Gotta know your rewards.)

The problem is purpose. Focus. Direction. And for those of us with task driven personalities, losing your purpose is like being adrift in a dingy without oars. You can either wait for a current to catch or start kicking.

I started with prayer. Even that is work. There is a pressing in, a labor of ask, seek, knock, and a trust that even if you haven’t broken through to the experience of God’s pleasure, you are sure of his presence. As Manning says, “When the craving for reassurances is stifled, trust happens.”

So, I am believing the words from my New Year’s Day reading: “Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”—Jeremiah 33:3

And I am persevering like the bothersome widow before the unrighteous judge (Luke 18) who is rewarded for perseverance, and like the Syrophoenician woman (Matthew 15), who withstood what could have been perceived as rebuff or offence, and pressed on to receive her reward.

Because there are times when it seems “God has unstrung your bow” as Job laments,

And there are tyrant keepers: The Procrastinator, The Critic, The Judge, and The Taskmaster who delight in keeping you down. 

But there are things you can do, small and indirect as they may seem, that can dismantle

these tyrants as surely as David’s stone toppled the giant. (Will talk more about these later.)

Today I just want to encourage you that prayer is the most formidable weapon we have. If only we could gain even a mustard seed sized glimpse of just Whom we are speaking with and how much He values our prayer.  

“A saint's life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer.”—Oswald Chambers. (This year I am full of the bow and arrow imagery and analogy God use.)

For now, imagine what this would look like in your situation today:

“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Lord, would you touch each of those who have paused here and whose lives have briefly entwined with mine, and fill us with the zeal to ask, seek, knock, and find more of YOU.

Blessings,

Marcia