A wedding-week reflection on God’s provision.
By the time you read this, I will be wed, and it is remarkable to consider how God has blessed us thus far. When we became engaged, it was after two years of unlikely romance. A long-distance relationship, job losses, loss of homes, a devastating car accident, crippling debt, and the uncertainty that we’d ever be able to make our own way.
Yet, through it all, God remained faithful, drawing us ever closer to him and ever closer together.
We shouldn’t have had the wedding we’ve had. It doesn’t make logical sense.
I remember, many months ago, when we were discussing and praying about our wedding, we had no idea what date to choose, or how we were going to pay for it. We prayed for it, as did our friends. After much prayer and deliberation we came to conviction: how much did we trust God to provide?
We realized that, with our backgrounds, we were fine with confessing our sins to God and deferring to His judgment, but were secretly clinging to our own human understanding, our human wisdom and all the anxiety that went along with it. We were afraid to pray big prayers, we were afraid to really ask God to show up and provide: long story short, we were afraid that God would let us down.
We prayed over this for a few weeks and came to a decision: “set the date, and watch God provide.”
And so we did. And He did not disappoint. I don’t know how this all happened, but it’s a story I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and repeat to myself, my bride, to my children, and to all who will listen.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that our wedding weekend and this entry coincide. They go hand in hand. Because, when I look back over this book, I see that story traced so clearly: trust in God, Be Still before Him. Accept that there are things out of your control.
2016.
His Eyes Are On the Sparrow
“Your faith is being tested, isn’t it?” Her words.
“No, well, I guess, but it doesn’t feel like it, I’ve been delivered through so much already, I’m kind of just am taking God at His word.”
“Then you’re passing the test.”
That was part of my conversation with her last night, as I expressed my anxiety at my present situation: I had lost my job with a year’s lease on an apartment, crippling student debt, and a treacherous financial situation that had already been stressed. What’s more, there was money owed to me that had not showed up and savings being drained and an uncertain future ahead. A similar situation in October had driven me to extreme anxiety and dread. Why, now, did I feel so calm?
I woke up for church one morning and didn’t even know what to pray. I’d been out of work for three weeks at this point, and any attempt to find new employment had been rebuffed. I was mired in anxiety but was convicted to rest and “Be Still”.
A few months ago, that would have been an unthinkable notion, but that day, as I struggled in prayer over what to even pray for or about, or what God wanted me to do, two things came to mind: lyrics of two different hymns, one contemporary, one traditional.
“Bless the Lord, O’ my soul,”
and
“Count thy blessings.”
I was immediately at peace.
I went to church with these thoughts on my mind, and found my own flesh begin to betray me during the service—I couldn’t focus, the anxiety was returning. Then, the sermon–
“Count thy blessings.”
That old hymn, quoted by the pastor. That got my attention.
The sermon was about identity in Christ, and remembering the blessings that we have in Christ—new life, transformed character, joy in trials as our faith is tested by fire and new blessings come from the suffering of the moment.
And, in all of this, I rested upon a conviction:
“You’ve done enough. Be still.”
Whatever was to happen next, and I had no idea what it could be, it was out of my hands, and firmly in God’s.
In this, I learned another law of the wild:
“His eye is upon the sparrow.”
From Matthew 6:25…
“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow nor reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (NIV)
“His eye is upon the sparrow.”
Perhaps the finest, and most readily apparent lesson of nature: that the Lord will provide.
The creatures of the field and the trees of the forests do not toil. They blithely cavort in the presence of God all the days of their lives yet, still they are fed, still they continue onward.
And if lowly beasts are worthy of such attention in God’s eyes, though their days are short and no thought of anything beyond mere survival let alone the grander machinations of the universe flit by their consciousness, how much more will the Lord provide for His own children, men and women made in His image?
Like me.
Indeed He already shed His own precious blood and unfurled the depths of His wrath upon Himself to ransom us and save us from ourselves—what more could we want or need that our Father cannot provide?
I once despised loss of agency, but in those days, I welcomed it. His eye is upon the sparrow, a fleeting bird—how much more precious are His children? And surely He had been faithful even when I had not. Would He not be faithful now?
I prayed a prayer: Lord, into your hands, I commit my life. I have nothing you have not given me, and I know you will prove faithful once more. Help me to follow in your steps, teach me to feast on you alone, and please grow me further.
The sermon ended—the closing song:
“Bless the Lord O’ my soul.”
I knew it then so clearly, God was there.
I pray I could truly internalize this law of the wild moreso than any of the others, for it is only in dependence upon God that true abundance and freedom is found.
True realization of this was still a few weeks away, but in the meantime I committed myself to God, and prepared for what He would set before me.
I reflected on our cultural idol of security, in an entry from that time:
A chunk of rock teeming with life in a cosmic void the likes of which mankind has striven to discern, only to find, by and by, that our assertions of its nature are folly, and in want of perpetual abrogation.
Here, there, all around this celestial tomb, the inmates march surely towards the great inevitable, the ebbing into self and transcendence from this our mortal coil. Ever longing, no matter who, to grasp the utterness of it all, to find a poultice to ease the very burden which simultaneously drives them and hinders them, the unfathomable terror which forms ineffably on the tongues of the waking man in the moments before the nightmare passes. A desperate longing for the firm rock and safety of a happy childhood free from fear—so eternal in its own time, but so quickly fleeting and far away back on the path. Not afforded to all, enjoyed by few and sadly far too brief and ignorant is its essence that those who seek to recapture it do so because they know that the blossom of youth is invariably wasted for its participants are wholly unaware of how wonderful such peace truly is.
So, we build up idols for ourselves to reclaim it—more money, a stable job, a loving spouse, a new city, drink, drugs, anything at all to afford us the luxury of utter agency so that maybe we might solve the riddle that none have before us—to bind the cosmos and stop up the hourglass and, for just one moment escape the certainty that all we do is a chasing of the wind.
That’s what this book became to me: so utterly convinced of my importance and impressed with my insight, so enamored and compelled that this volume may yield such truth that might illuminate a dark corner not ever adequately addressed by the libraries of the earth or any of its wise ones.
I felt the longing, Sehnsucht, just as every man does, and relied upon myself to satisfy it, time and again by earthly means while ignoring its essence as the hunger and thirsting for God. Oh, the number of times I have re-asserted this revelation amongst these pages is but an indication of my proneness to wander.
How wonderful, then, that this longing does have a fulfillment, and how wonderful that all of the existential angst is so readily assuaged by the precious blood of Christ and the everlasting arms of God—the peace that transcends and defies all understanding. For how could one truly find peace and rest here on Earth when not one single striving can add even a grain of sand to the reservoir?
Only through the reliance on One who is beyond this. For if I am a child of God, known and loved by Him more deeply than anyone ever could offer, the very being that hung the world in its orbit and never ceases to be, what can I possibly fear?
I was paralyzed by fear tonight as reality set in, and I went before the Lord with the only words I had: “God, please help me.”
The response was so clear, and so final: “with what? The battle is won, I have prepared a table before you, your enemies are at your feet.”
For though I know not what tomorrow will bring, I know that I am known to God. He has provided me with at least the bread I need to go just one more mile, and I am sure that, by and by, another cairn on the trail will hold another allotment, and so shall it ever be. So long as there is breath in my lungs, so long as I walk, the Lord leads and also watches from all sides to ensure my passage. Cosmic annihilation, the most terrible of all things, it is not even a possibility, for I am bought with the blood of Christ. Come what may, storms or otherwise, my God walked upon the water (with all credit and respect to Paul Reeves, a personal friend who penned those lyrics).
As I waited upon the Lord and poured over Scripture, I began to see myself in a different light. I had had the tendency, for the longest time, to look down upon myself because I was an “artist”. I never considered “art” to be a truly important calling in life. It wasn’t life-saving, it wasn’t helping to bring justice to the oppressed, it was all shadow plays and fantasy. Then I found myself at the commission of the Tabernacle following the Exodus, and saw a different story written there.
I penned the following:
Scripture honors the craftsmen and artist with a qualifying statement during Moses’ time on Sinai: that those who were to create the ornamentation for the Tabernacle are blessed with the wisdom from God to perform their work. The details that follow are easily glossed over, for they entail specifications for the crafting of the Tabernacle, and are considerably less dramatic than other episodes in Scripture, but reflect a truth that is convicting and an illustration of the believer’s life.
Precious stones in representation of the 12 tribes of Israel as a memorial before the Lord—His people are precious to Him, and this detailed breakdown of ordinances are primarily about forming a place where He will dwell among them—what an honor! It is so easy to view God as an intimidating authoritarian, and neglect that we are undeserving of any of His grace and blessings. He owes us nothing, but still has given us everything and seeks to foster a personal relationship with us as our Father, our Savior, our deepest love, and closest friend.
Frankly, I’d call Him crazy to want communion with the likes of us, but I won’t reject the incredible honor and gift of communion with the Divine.
Further, the prescription of making an ornamented worship place with gold plated fixtures and elegant dressing is a prescription for the life of believers: all we hold precious and dear is a gift from God, and should be first and foremost applied to His worship and our relationship to Him (though, the offering of this is, later in Scripture, characterized as a “freewill” offering).
I’ve been considering my own gifts and blessings. I have found new meaning in life.
It was maybe a year ago on one of my drives back from college to work for the weekend that I posed to God the question: “What do you want me to do?”
The answer was simple: “Keep writing.”
I realized last night that writing is one art, though I love many disciplines, that consistently “turns me on” and brings me great joy. I have won awards for it, have been paid to do it, and now find myself getting steady work doing it. I love it.
What’s more, as I have continued transcribing earlier portions of this book, I have seen, recorded in ink, the transforming power of Christ in my own life—a process I have never been so acutely aware of until I began this volume. I hope, sincerely, that through my writing—and I have been convicted to complete and publish this volume—that the Lord may be glorified, and I consider it an honor and privilege to be given words with which to glorify Him.
May my work always be such.
Yet, despite my writings, and despite the fact that I had been offered jobs writing, those jobs were not paying, and as a result, I was still in financial straits.
“Be still.”
“Bless the Lord O’ My Soul.”
Ok. I would remain at peace. Perhaps, I reasoned, this time was a time to prepare for what was to come.
I continued to write:
Perchance to Dream-January, 2016
We’ve all experienced it: a nightmare so palpable that it shakes our very soul—and then, as soon as the darkness seems inescapable, just as you can no longer take it…
You wake up; and there’s nothing to fear.
That is much like life and the Kingdom of God. We experience those “good times”, the Kairos where everything happens in an instant and the presence of God is palpable—but we live in a fallen world, and the reality is that we have to face our fallenness.
But those moments, that taste of Kairos, that’s the taste of true reality. That’s the presence of God in which there is no temporal, only eternal.
Waking life, that’s the dream—the nightmare.
Any taste of goodness we experience here is but a fraction of a scintilla of what there is in but a thimble-full of Heaven.
This world and our dark times are the nightmare,
the waking world—the true waking world:
That’s the Eternal.
And I continued to love.
Knotted Cord, January, 2016
How might I describe my love?
With words?
By deed?
Indeed my words be impotent.
For how could one, such as I, begin
To approximate such beauty?
In her the light of God shines forth
So bright.
In fact
It is the overflow of such radiance
That human eyes can most plainly see.
But beyond lovely countenance,
Behind the razor wit;
The depths of joy, eternal, finds
its precious rent.
To view her is to see the love of Christ,
I know her heart beats for He.
And O’ what blessing, most Divine,
That she might long for me?
With each new entry, I became more keenly aware of how few pages were left within this volume. With all that had come before, what could possibly follow? I remembered how I had expected to finish writing the book during my first weeklong outing in the woods, and laughed. If I had only known…
A bout of melancholy skupped me, it was a recurring trend as of late. I would achieve mountaintop experiences of deep spiritual joy, only to be dragged back down into the thick of day to day life and anxiety.
I talked a big game about “being still,” and “waiting upon the Lord,” but the realities of my dwindling bank account and looming rent and loan payments still caused me to struggle in my trust. My calls for work remained largely unreturned. My screenplay submissions were yielding a healthy crop of rejection letters. Every avenue that I had used in the past to gain meaningful employment were exhausted, and I had no recourse.
I read back through my writings and realized that, in the worst of things, the best thing I had done in all of it was to lean on God and “make the best.”
I had seen great growth through the breakup some months ago because I resolved to use it for “the best”, to grow despite the pain. In all trials since, I had attempted the same. I reasoned that troughs and peaks were the way of things, and as such, must be treated as a cohesive whole expression of the universal human experience. Things will be good, and then they will be bad. The length of these periods may vary, but one can be sure of their ultimate fleetingness, for things will eventually change.
I realized that in order to live a fully fruitful, fulfilling life, I must not merely allow the troughs to happen as a cross to bear—something to be endured, but something to grow and glorify the Lord with. They were going to happen anyway, so they may as well be taken captive for The Kingdom. With this in mind, my mood shifted: I may have been gloomy, but I certainly would not be passive.
I began to view these troughs as a challenge, an ordeal in a mythic sense—a trial to prove my worth—a quest to undertake with a two-fold “grail” as my goal: one, to grow in my faith and enlightenment, and two, to raise my basal metabolic rate, that is, to be able to stand more and more adversity at my base level. This change in perspective and attitude illuminated my mind and heart and near set me to fits of laughter.
See, the Hero’s Journey or “Monomyth” is a cycle of metaphorical stages that pervades literature and art. In it, a reluctant hero embarks on a quest through an “unknown” world, being tested, getting wounded, failing, dying, and rising again with treasure in hand before returning to the “normal world”—and then repeating the cycle.
Was my cycle of ups and downs not just this? Are any of our ups and downs not just this? The Monomyth pervades culture because art imitates life, and indeed is a reflection of the trials that beset us all.
I thrive in the face of challenge, and I love a good game. I reasoned that if I viewed my trials as such—a challenging game—I was sure I will be able to deal with these times of melancholy all the more effectively. I decided that henceforth this would be my approach: I would embark on my quest with the Lord as my mentor, seeking to grow in faith, mind, and body. I would face down the darkness with a spirit of conquest and lay siege to my grail: growth in faith, and increase in basal metabolic rate.
The former by virtue of leaning on God and seeking His Kingdom, the latter by pushing myself harder in these troughs so that my “normal” phases would have a diminished threshold of will required to function optimally, be it intellectual, spiritual, or physical. I reasoned that this would allow for the normalcy to increase in efficiency and productivity, and the troughs to function at least as well as a “normal” in a past phase. This would, theoretically, spur on the growth so that even my darkest hours may be serving to the Lord instead of miring me in sorrow.
The trick, now, would be to keep this mentality in mind so that circumstance would not cloud my judgment and will.
Moving forward, I hoped to diminish the use of destructive therapies—overeating, sugar, nicotine, and excessive sleep—in favor of healthy alternatives: steady diet, healthy foods, deep breathing, and exercise. By diminishing reliance in a trough, it would be easier to sustain the lifestyle once out in a “normal”, a process that will continue into the next trough, making it harder to relapse into negative habits.
I wondered if perhaps we do not wish too much for comfort and convenience—it is the deliberate growth and conscious efforts in times of hardship that have the most lasting effects.
Indeed, what change is there to the essence—the soul of a man—in a time of sorrow? The desires, hopes, dreams, tastes, history, memories—all of it remains, though subdued. To be governed solely by feeling, to do merely what we feel like, is a lamentable state—for we cannot possibly “feel like” doing right all the days of our lives. We must push ourselves beyond such a threshold and do what we must regardless of our intermittent emotions.
Are we to neglect the holes in the tent merely because we would prefer to bask in the intermittent warmth of a clear day? The ensuing rain will surely swamp the camp and lead to a most miserable night.
Are we to neglect to bring with us water due to its weight? The summer heat and unknown path will soon threaten to snatch our life away.
Are we to act on lust merely because the opportunity presents itself despite logic and conscience screaming “no”? Such will lead to degradation and heartbreak.
Are we to admit defeat merely because the battle has worn us harder than we hoped? No. We must advance. With each drawing of breath we must fight the fight we have been given.
I began to chart the weeks’ changes and variations. I took note of stressors and pinch-points. I noted how I reacted in any given situation. Patterns, inevitably, emerged, and I was able to address challenges before they occurred.
Ideas were flowing because I pushed back on the encroaching blackness and leaned on God, trusting Him to guide me. I faced struggles that would have totally wrecked me a few months prior, and kept going in spite of it all.
Yet still the payments loomed on the horizon, still I could not find work, and still I fell into melancholy. One night, I felt as if I were at death’s door. I was at my lowest point within recent memory, and cried out to God for help.
Nothing.
I cried out again.
Nothing.
Once more, and a still small voice deep within my soul answered.
“In spite of your feelings, still you have leaned on me. In spite of your failures, still you have returned. In spite of circumstances, still you have trusted.”
I felt convicted that I had been repeatedly tested unrelentingly in the last few months, even further back to that time I embarked into the wilderness and began this book, and somehow I knew—no, not somehow, this was entirely a “God” conviction—that I had passed.
My faith had been tested, found wanting, strengthened, and retested until it passed. I will not chronicle the things I believe I did right in all of this, such would be masturbatory at best. I do, however, want to offer up another law of the wild:
“By your faith, you will be delivered.”
This is the oldest of them that the Lord has laid upon my heart, but it is the one that I have seen proven again and again. I first heard it when I was in my exiled years and entrenched in the hardest struggle of my life—one that I had made for myself. When vice did nothing to assuage my abject terror and sorrow, I had picked up a friend’s Bible and began to pray. That prayer was the first in my journey out of exile, though I had much, much further to fall yet. At the end of it, the still voice: “by your faith, you will be delivered.”
I clung to that notion in the ensuing months and, sure enough, though the path got much harder to follow and my pain was great, I emerged on the other side and the Lord carried me onward. My exiled time was over. Though I had to be cleaned up, I was at least leaning on God and trying to grow.
But this bears mentioning: I had little to do with it. God was doing all the heavy lifting. He only ever asks us to walk in faith, and to lean not on our own understanding. He wanted me to seek Him first and submit to His ways so that He could dig me out instead of me burying myself further with my thrashing. That’s what I mean by “By your faith, you will be delivered.”
Deliverance doesn’t come from faith, but it is facilitated by it, because it is faith that grants the courage and humility to say, “Thy will, not mine,” and let God work as only He can.
We may not know the reasons for our trials in the moment, but if we seek the Lord first in spite of them all, we will be better for it. He alone can deliver us—even if we don’t immediately acknowledge or realize what He’s doing. Then, at the end, once our faith passes the test: “I will bless you.”
Just like the Remnant in the book of Haggai who were challenged to move and do their work once brought out of exile—act in faith, and you will be blessed in time.
But be careful to never idolize the blessing. The Lord alone is from whom all blessings flow, and He is worth worshipping even if those blessings dry up for a season, for as long as you breathe, there is still reason and purpose, and the Lord is at least blessing you with life.
He, who owes us nothing, yet gave us everything. He that hung the stars and engineered the atom. He that is from everlasting to everlasting, amen. Trust in Him, draw close to Him; He does the really heavy, mind-bending work if we but reach out and accept, and let Him do the work He needs to do for us to be fulfilled.
I lay there, broken and soaked in tears, yet not letting go of the Lord. He was all I truly had. His still voice then said, “and I will bless you, beginning today.”
And then, I slept.
The following morning I received an unsolicited phone call from some folks I had known a decade prior. They had started a non-for-profit and needed a promotional video shot. They didn’t want to negotiate, they didn’t want to shop around, they had seen my work and wanted me specifically.
I gladly took the job and found myself buried in work until the end of my lease, more work than I could handle, and more blessings on top of that. In a way, those blessings have continued up until the present, up to and including the wedding and I pray the life we set out to build beyond it. I know that the Lord hears my prayers, and I know that the Lord is watching, and I know without a doubt that that first phone call was the call to action I had been waiting for. Because that first organization that kicked off that season of blessing had a unique corporate slogan that spoke to my heart and was a literal answer to prayer. The slogan was: “Bless the Lord, O’ My Soul.”