Put another log on the fire

In the Lord put I my trust: how say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain? Psalm 11:7

In the background of now, my dad is reading John 14 out loud, William Short is giving his word game on NPR radio, and the St. Francis fountain is dribbling.

And even though I am achingly exhausted, I will not flee.  My trust is in the LORD, I will not be afraid.  One day at a time, I will not be afraid.  

When Thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek.

. . . . 

The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Psalm 12:6

One can consider that the purifying fire is the lives of the saints, a furnace of earth, and the raging trials burn out the dross and leave what is True and Pure, the Word of the LORD.  

And how these words echo across the generations and over the rivers and the seas and under the sun and the moon and the stars offering insight and healing to many an aching soul.  Even the One stretched up in love. Especially.  

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?  O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.  Psalm 22:1-2

And yet the Psalm is entitled: A Cry of Anguish and Song of Praise

The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek Him: your heart shall live for ever. All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee.  Psalm 22:26-27

Because of that great love.  Poured out like water.  

Be satisfied, oh my soul.  Praise the LORD. 

Nothing half so good as a lovely read in the glorious Saturday sun

For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth. Psalm 10:3

Someone spoke of the irony of the Americans who spend one day enumerating that for which they are thankful, and the next scrabbling for that what they do not have.  

The LORD hates it when we are not content with Him.  And His gifts.  LORD may I be deeply satisfied with my lot in life, that which You have cast for me, in Your love and kindness.  

Yesterday one of those ex-seventh graders showed up on my doorstep, in all six foot four gangliness, wanting advise about the rest of his life, and more specifically what to do during a self-imposed break from his studies to find meaning and purpose.  

He leaned in close and looked me in the eye.  Mrs. Voelkel, have you found fulfillment and your life’s calling?  

And I had to smile, because I had just pulled out my regular suggestion list of Guatemala, South Africa, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Kenya: pick a country, any country; we all know that I suffer from restless heart sometimes, longing to pack up a very small bag with maybe an expresso pot, my Mac and an extra pair of socks, and take my own advice.  This guy knows that for both us the Mexicali trips were defining moments of joy where we both stepped into the very most loose and easy stride.  

You’re a secretary, an answer-the-phone and manage mailing lists secretary?  Yep.

And yet.  When I push back the curtain of murmuring which so inflicts the human race and consider His goodness– – – the list is long and deep.  And the beauty of community.  I had just finished answering two emails from Steven running health centers in South Sudan, and in one sense, I am there with him. And funny Katya is doing advertising with Olgivy and Mather in the Ukraine.  And Dana sent me another one of his stories. And a lovely thank you note from New York City.  And skyping with Andrea and Max.  And that cute Chinese Physics student is out there chopping wood to earn money for Urbana. And.  

I answered, “Yes.”  And maybe my life’s calling is just standing on the sideline cheering, and handing out cold cups of water.  But what a fulfilling race, with the weight of glory.

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - These are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors... Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”

“To please God… to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness… to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son- it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.” 

“And that is enough to raise your thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex forever will also drown her pride… Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.” 

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. ... 

“...the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him..." 

- C.S. Lewis: Weight of Glory

After second servings of salty carmel ice cream in a rose garden

Arise, O Lord,

Do not let man prevail;

Let the nations be judged in Your sight.

Put them in fear, O Lord,

That the nations may know themselves to be but men.

Selah  Psalm 9:19-20

As I reflect upon and savor the many gifts of God, my mind and heart and soul turn to what is truly to be praised– the LORD God in all of His goodness and mercy and grace and power and justice. We are but men.  Glory be to His name.

Well, just one more spoonful of the ice cream

O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth! 

Who hast set thy glory above the heavens. 

When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;

What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? 

And the son of man, that Thou visitest him? 

For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Psalm 8: 1-5

So last night we bundled off to Karuna’s and happily shared coconut soup and pad thai and red curry.  And marveled at the Thai temple spire photos.  Which brought to mind some stunning Chinese architecture courtesy of the Atlanticand Marco’s visions of China through a camera lens. And then Nicole’s four months in Indonesia.  To say nothing of the girls’ new community of Pinterest and the artistic marvels thus ordered and stacked electronically.   And really just listening to Heather describe how very happy happy Dustin is to be able to fix up her bike and lift the handlebars and rearrange the gearshift.  And sketches galore are spilling out of his pen about a new maybe project down the street. And then just before the run around Reid Park the girls discuss whether we should make pumpkin cheesecake or mocha chocolate cheesecake to go with the Angie’s salty carmel ice cream and why not both, after we gobble the brined turkey, the jalapeño sweet potatoes and the everything-but-the-kitchen sink gingerbread-cranberry-walnut-sage stuffing. Yet all of this crazy wild creativity and beauty is just a reflection and verification of our genealogy, that we are image bearers. 

O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!

From there we went to the Victory Elevate service at the U of A which was a little thin since its Thanksgiving Break and everyone is home doing laundry and watching football games.  And really, if I were a little more clever and a lot wittier, I could have done the same teaching, Attitude of Gratitude.  But even if we have heard it all before, it is The Truth.  Because I have of course been thinking lately about what made David “a man after God’s own heart." And I am pretty sure that this is it.  David frames the before and after of all of his conversations with God with the statement of truth: O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! 

And Jesus, just before he broke up the seven loaves to divide up amongst the thousands, before it miraculously multiplied like so many fluffy rabbits, gave thanks.  Not afterwards.  Before.  Not give thanks FOR all things, rather we are told to give thanks IN all things.  Which is different.  In the midst of it all, in all of those temptations which are common to man, I shall offer up thanks.  And in the same night that he was betrayed, he too broke the bread, and gave thanks in all things.   

328. For such a dorky swim coach as to make us gobble when we swim our twenty-five sprints.  

329. Can I be grateful again for Panchita and all the neatly labeled jars in my cupboard?

330. For Reid Park and that it is so very fun to see people running around and up and through it, even if I don’t go with them.

331. For the big box of twelve varietal Italians wines that arrived with special directions for each to be explained by Giovanni.   

332. That the ceasefire in Israel and Gaza is still holding even after twenty-four hours.  

O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth!

A God Who feels indignation every day

O Lord my God, in You do I take refuge;

save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,

lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,

rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.  Psalm 7:1-2

Last night I read Kathleen Norris’ introduction to The Psalms in which she lays out an impassioned rationale for reading the Psalms in the King James version of Scriptures.  The wide range of expression in the Psalter–the anger and pain of lament, the anguished self-probing of confession, the grateful fervor of thanksgiving, the ecstatic joy of praise–allow us to bring our whole lives before God.  For her, this translation is a story about the power and primacy of vivid language and pleasurable speech, words that hold the attention of the ear and provide physical imagines pleasing to the mind’s eye...and something about King James’s English cuts across the human constructs of cultural and theological barriers–a cure for literalism, a bracing reminder of poetry’s ability to counter ideology in any age. 

And while my daily pursuers do not bear swords and spears, the effect is the same.  So very much in my world is set upon soul destruction–empty distractions, broken communication, careless selfishness, unnamed fears–in Him I must take refuge.  

And in His justice.  Or my soul would be torn apart. Because wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies, myself included.  

My shield is with God,

who saves the upright in heart.

God is a righteous judge,

and a God who feels indignation every day.

And the depth of Truth of the Psalms.  In the Psalms we find a genuine community with our human past.  The realism of the Psalms flies in the face of much contemporary spirituality that presupposes a golden age in the past to which only the enlightened may aspire in the present.  C. S. Lewis says, No historical readjustment is required.  We are in the world we know.

And when it is all said and done.  When my soul is done listing its grievances and inequities to the God who sees, who grieves deeply at the brokenness of His beloved world and who will stop at nothing to bring redemption and restoration, I can at that moment step into His righteousness, the shadow of His wings and release.

I will give to the Lord the thanks due to His righteousness,

and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.

When the darkness closes in

But You, O Lord—how long?  Psalm 6:3

Yesterday I led a devotions at work for our monthly staff meeting.  And the book we are working through...something like “Diary of a Desperate Man,” asked, “What is the hardest thing God could ask of you?”  

And the examples were of Abraham offering up Isaac, and good old Elijah, which I just read in one sitting last week, and there were no end of hard things that God flat out told Elijah to do.  I really did not want to go into the dreaded unnamed questions we might be called upon to answer, “Speak, LORD, your servant is listening.”  So the folks around the table shared hard bleak moments that God had led them through, except, like Joseph’s inexplicable years in prison, these were not just moments.  But long dark nights, long Daniel-in-his-lions’-den-nights when, each of us shared this cry of David, “But You, O Lord—how long?

And sometimes, like Joseph, we get to share the backside of the story, the ever-after side of the story, and sometimes, we simply don’t.  The dawn sorts of leaks in through the windows, we get up, brush our teeth and wonder.  But His steadfast love led us through the shadowed valley.  And that truth girds our loins for the next moment.  And the next.  Because those dreaded unnamed moments are waiting for us, part of the story, the long messy story of redemption.

How long? How long must we sing this song? 

How long? How long?

And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die

The real battle yet begun
[Sunday, bloody Sunday]
To claim the victory Jesus won
[Sunday, bloody Sunday]
On Sunday, bloody Sunday

Still I will say, Blessed be the name of the LORD.

The abundance of Your steadfast love

O Lord, in the morning You hear my voice;

in the morning I direct my prayer to You and watch. Psalm 5:3

I will take my stand at my watchpost

and station myself on the tower,

and look out to see what He will say to me,

and what I will answer concerning my complaint. Habakkuk 2:1

Yesterday as we gathered around the massive cheese and chicken nachos with extra jalapeños at Bisonwiches yesterday after church, we did that thing where we introduce the person next to us to the new guy we met who was absolutely so cool and brilliant and even fun, this Chinese guy who had just sorted through his universe and found Jesus and who was now a double major in global studies and physics at the University of Arizona because they both declare the glory of the LORD.   

And I was introduced as the most spiritually disciplined person ever, who every morning is at it again, directing my prayer to Him and watching for what He will say to me.  

So why is that?  I mean, there are chunks of undisciplined life in me, like I still don’t floss my teeth, and I am married to Mr. Floss-his-teeth-every-night Voelkel and I know it is like the number one factor in keeping one’s teeth and preventing heart disease, or something like that.  And Alan will mutter along with his dentist, “I just floss the teeth I want to keep,” and it still doesn’t move me beyond a day or two of cooperation.  And I will pop handfuls of gummy bears even though I know the short-term result will be a whack of a headache right between the eyes. Why is that?

And “ever” is of course not true since I live next door to Jack and Mary Anne Voelkel, and I am just baby step, baby step in this watching thing, compared to them.  

But why do I do this?  Why do I roll out of bed just before the click of the alarm ding at 4:15 every morning?

The answer that comes to mind is that of Simon Peter when he replies to Jesus, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

This is beyond the eight-year-old girl’s established discipline when I first started reading the Bible every day, and pretty much underlining every single word in the poofy-green-covered Living Bible that I was working through, because to underline it seemed to make it mine.  But the seeds were planted then, with the implication was that it was good for me, like Popeye, the sailor man’s spinach.

This early morning watch is utterly selfish.  

To answer the aching in my soul, the meaning making grasp of what-is-it-all-about.  I so easily stumble.  And Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and light unto my path.  Which is good, but that is not the real reason, simply avoiding stubbed toes and bruised knees.

It’s that seeing what He has to say to me.  He, The Almighty, The Strong One Who Sees, The LORD Will Provide, Shalom, El-Shaddai, the Alpha and Amen, The LORD our banner over me is love.  

Because over and over, tromping through the dark valleys and clambering over the sunlit mountain peaks, I know what I will find, every morning without fail.  He is here, whispering in the stillness, “You are mine, and I am Yours.  My beloved child, welcome.”

Selah.