[Prefer to listen while your hands are occupied? Click here for the AUDIO edition of today's letter.]
Welcome to our new friends from North Summit Church in Sandpoint, Idaho, who are joining us here for the first time! A couple photos from Saturday and last week’s letter—the first in this new Lenten series—are linked at the end.
Congratulations to Mardy R of Marstons Mills, MA, the winner of our March giveaway— Pray Naturally: Finding Your Spiritual Confidence as a Woman Loved by God, by Rachel Britton.
I WAS ABSOLUTELY FINE until I looked up from my reading around 8 PM and glanced outdoors into the disorientation of sudden darkness. Hastily packing up my books, I hurried up to my room like a timid mouse scurrying into her hidey-hole.
You’re welcome to call me a coward at best, a hypocrite at worst, and you’d be right on both counts. Until we began this new series on holiness last week, I’d been writing you all winter about the benefits of darkness—the gifts of courage and spiritual depth we don’t gain in the light.
Yet when alone for a couple nights last week in a 70-room conference center on my Lenten retreat, my childhood fear of the dark returned. After a small group of pastors departed the morning after I arrived, the center was completely empty except for me—a lone writer seeking solitude and silence to hear from God.
Zephaniah contains that beautiful promise that God rejoices over us with joyful songs (3:17). Too often though, in my anxious attempts to join him in a prayer-duet, I dominate the melody while expecting him to harmonize his plans with mine. I needed to stop vocalizing so I could listen and not just hear.
The staff could not have been more solicitous in giving me, a total stranger, the run of the place. They secured the doors when they left that first night, assuring me, “Our numbers are posted in case of emergency!”
I stood a little straighter, trying to look as perky as possible so as not to be mistaken for a cardiac event waiting to happen.
The director found me reading on the porch the next day and pointed out a beautiful prayer path on the property with scripture posted along the way. “Just let us know when you’re out there because we don’t want you to, uh. . . “
Fall, gotcha. I must look older than I feel, like an elderly pensioner prone to do a faceplant in the forest, because she checked on me again before locking up at 5pm. I had the sense she would have felt better if they could’ve tucked me in before leaving me to the dark.
Yet whether walking the property or reading by the fireplace, roaming in the light or locked away after nightfall, I was asking God to show me what he means about our being holy even as he is holy (1 Peter 1:16). I know it has nothing to do with external rule-keeping; Jesus set the Pharisees straight on that on more than one occasion.
If Jesus was the human embodiment of God’s own holiness, and we—as scripture assures us—are God’s own temple, then his holiness resides in us without human striving.
“The serene beauty of a holy life is the most powerful influence in the world next to the power of God.” Blaise Pascal, 17th century mathematician and philosopher
One big question stirring in my soul has been this:
Should I move ahead with the new book project on my heart? What if I can’t find a publisher? When all else around me falls away, especially this aging body the center staff fussed over, will I leave something behind that might benefit someone someday? Maybe even my own grandchildren years from now when my audible voice has long been stilled?
Lord, I’m asking: Is this desire of you or is it hustle, some human need to feel significant?
And then came the answer, the Word given long ago:
“This is the message from the one who is holy and true, the one who has the key of David. What he opens, no one can close; and what he closes, no one can open.” Revelation 3:7
Whatever your season of life, you have big questions, too—doors you’re wondering whether you should try.
Lord, when will my spouse/child/sibling come to love you as I do? I’ve waited so long.
God, this physical pain is relentless. Will I ever be healed?
Heavenly Father, I am exhausted from caregiving. I don’t have to love this family member—I am privileged to—but now I’m a parent to my parent, a nurse to my spouse, a therapist to my child, and neither of us is comfortable with these roles. How long, Lord, can we keep on?
It’s not up to us. Ultimately, always, only, it’s up to Him.
“It is God who does the work in us until Christ is formed in us.” Galatians 4:19
In the holy season of Lent, we listen.
In the dark, we gain our sight.
In the quiet, we persevere.
And in the Word, we find our rest.
“May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. The One who called you is completely dependable. If he said it, he’ll do it!” 1 Thessalonians 5: 23-24 MSG
Holding onto holiness – and hope – with you.
Maggie
[Did you miss the first letter in this series? You can read or listen to it here.]
