“Keep your heart with
all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life.” Proverbs 4:23
“Let every heart
prepare Him room.” – Joy to the World
My heart’s often been full, but not always of what it should
be full of. Anxiety, recrimination, the burden
of responsibilities, the fear of disappointing someone or letting them down; these
things have kept up a permanent residence in my heart and it’s been difficult
for anything else to get in. Oh, sure; I
have love in my heart for my husband, family, friends, and pets. I feel waves of great compassion towards
people who are grieving, in pain, or struggling. Yet, even these feelings are, I fear, driven
in large part by a sense of obligation; which derives from the anxiety,
recrimination, the burden of responsibilities, fear of disappointing someone or
letting them down. My heart has been confused;
and lately, I’ve experienced an almost overwhelming cacophony of noise. I’ve blamed it on the external: the pets
running around in the morning when I’m trying to be quiet and pray, or the
landscapers coming by my kitchen window with their deafening machinery. I’ve been figuratively beating my chest and pulling
out my hair while crying out to God, “How
can I hear you above all of this NOISE?”
The other day I was quite ungracious about the whole thing and told my
husband, “I’m just going to give up trying
to talk to God because I have no peace and quiet.” I didn’t mean it, not really; I was just so
frustrated because, in all honesty, I was having performance anxiety. God was
going to be disappointed if I didn’t figure out some way to talk with him
without being distracted. Later that morning, I thankfully had a moment of
clarity when I heard God say, “You talk
to me in other ways, it’s ok.” That
kept me soldiering on.
So intellectually, I get Jesus. I get that He came to heal the sick, set the
prisoners free, give hope to the poor and suffering. I also get that this can be both literal and
an analogy. “Set the prisoners free”,
for example, may mean to literally free those who are wrongly imprisoned, but
it may also mean to set people who are enslaved to their addictions free. I think
my brain, if I can get it off its “To Do” list, does grasp the concept of
Heaven on Earth; of the simplicity of doing nothing but Love God, Love Each Other;
which is not nothing, but everything.
Still, it’s ironic. Or
maybe it’s typical. I don’t know, but
here I am the most involved with church that I’ve ever been in my entire
life. And it’s not just churchy-church
stuff, but, I’m studying the Bible, I’m attempting to open myself up spiritually
to new ways of being, I’m serving, I’m giving. But my heart, my heart has been
so weighed down for as long as I can remember; and if I dwell on that too long,
I start to slide down the slippery slope into self-pity. I think if my husband hears me wail, “It’s always been the story of my life!”
one more time, he may close the book on me (no he wouldn’t, but I can sense his
frustration because he can’t tell me what I need to hear).
A year or so ago, I was feeling guilty because I thought I
wasn’t doing enough to serve Christ. I
went on a silent spiritual retreat where the Spiritual Director gave me several
scripture verses to mediate on. When she
wrote down Psalm 131, she instructed me to envision myself being wrapped in God’s
arms of strength and comfort. “I’ve given up my pride and turned away from
my arrogance. I am not concerned with
great matters or with subjects too difficult for me. Instead I am content and at peace.” Psalm 131:1-2. Well, in those moments I WAS
at peace! I heard God say, “Amy, there is
nothing wrong with your heart”. I
felt a burden lift! I was assured that
whatever I was doing or was not doing, it was for the right reasons.
Several months later during Lent, many of these stinking-thinking
emotions had unfortunately crept back in; all that junk taking up residency in my heart and leaving
no room at the inn. So, I decided to go through
an exercise to banish them from my life.
I thought of them as “My Goats”; you know, as in the goats that Jesus
rejects and sends off to the left when He’s separating them from the sheep (who
go to the right). I thought I might pick
40, for the 40 days of Lent, but even I couldn’t think of 40 goats, so I went
with 20. For each one, I found an
appropriate scripture verse reinforcing its elimination and amplifying the
message of hope. I wrote the goat’s name
(e.g., “Recrimination”) and its accompanying scripture (2 Timothy 4:8) on a
wine cork and lined them all up on the shelf where my Bible, devotions, and
other spiritual paraphernalia reside. By
the time Easter arrived, I’d added this litany of reciting scripture, goats,
and more scripture to my daily prayers (usually at noon Bells). On Easter Sunday, I took each cork in turn,
named the goat, recited its scripture, and threw it into a huge ornamental
vase, symbolically eliminating them forever from my life.
Yeah. That didn’t
really work. My goats; they had a way of
finding their way back to the barn.
So, here’s how our God works.
This morning while doing the practice of Lectio Divina on a passage from
Isaiah 11:1-3, I was at my wit’s end.
The focus was on “justice” and in all honesty, I was having to force
myself to even do the work because I wasn’t feeling it, getting into it, whatever. But, I gave it the old college try because,
well, I didn’t want to disappoint God.
The two words that jumped out at me were “not judge”, and this is what I
wrote down:
“It’s not my
responsibility to judge anyone, including myself! Christ is the perfect judge because He is
full of wisdom, knowledge, perfect love, and fear (awe) of the Lord (the Father). Understanding this, why would I even try to
judge? I can’t see; I have too many logs
in my eyes and I can’t hear, my ears are closed to things I don’t agree
with. I also need to be easier on
myself. Trust in Christ’s perfect
wisdom. Let go of the burden that I have
to be responsible for everything (which leads to resentments). Christ came for me too! He’s not standing there saying, “Yeah, well,
you still need to do this, that, or the other things before I’ll save you!” He came to free me from myself. Holy God, may I have a “Helen Keller at the
water pump moment” this Advent! May I
truly “get it” so I can be set free from all of the imposed and self-imposed judgments of myself and others.”
Well, my watershed moment came this morning as Pastor Michael
was wrapping up his message on The Messiah as Conqueror; Jesus coming not to conquer
in the worldly way, but in the other-worldly way; to intervene in whatever way
we need Him to. I had an image of a moth
flitting around a lantern, persistent, never stopping. I thought of Jesus standing at the door
knocking, “Let me in! Let me in!
I will take care of this for you!” And I got it.
I got it. The reason I couldn’t get rid of the goats was they were not
listening to me. But, they will listen
to Him. I couldn’t conquer them, but He can,
and He will. As much as I thought I knew
Jesus, I’d done with Him what I’ve tended to do most of my life, and that’s to shoulder
all the responsibility (and then feel resentful about it). But this Jesus, this
Messiah, He’s persistent! He’s been working on me for some time
now. That noise? Him trying to get my attention. “Let me
in!” So just like that, I let down
my guard and in He walked. Right there,
right then, that moment, and I felt instant relief and a lessening of
tension. Freedom. Peace. Quiet.
(I finally gave Him the stool, Mark ♥) If
I were Pentecostal, I would have stood up at that moment in church and shouted “WA-WA!”
“Jesus said, “Those who come to me will never be hungry, and those who
believe in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35
In September 2011, I came to Jesus, but it took another
six years, some excellent preaching, and His steadfast love and grace until I finally
heart-believed He’d also come for me.
Today is my 54th birthday. What other gift could I ever want or need?
Mrs. B
