Cuts To Grace
This has been a season of Lament. I wrote what follows as a lament. It is not perfect, but it is what I have been processing through over the last couple of months. I see hope and beauty in the dark times even as I mourn for the losses we have all suffered. I am angry at the choas in our world, yet I know my God is a God who redeems. He will win and in his victory all that has been lost will be made new. All that has gone wrong will be made right. I know this is true, because I know what he has done for me. I look at my scars and I see the how deep the beauty cuts.
“For if he causes grief, then He will have compassion according to His abundant lovingkindness.” -Lamentations 3:32-33 (I do not believe God has caused Covid-19 nor the death of George Floyd, but I do know he will have compassion on us.)
I reap what I sow
So I plant seeds of love and kindness
But the seeds could not grow as expected
Instead in my four walls I’ve sheltered
My classroom is empty
Zoom calls are ignored
I’m still teaching, but is anyone listening
Who is to blame? My students cry out for their loss
Gone is time with friends
Gone are my sports season
Gone are the Graduations
Gone are the vacations
Gone are the high fives
Gone are the warm hugs
Gone are meals out
Gone our the jobs
Gone are Goodbyes
Gone are new hellos
Gone is our breath
Gone, gone, gone
Our world is masked for protection
But masked we fight on line and in line
Disconnected and discontent.
Full of grief we weep.
Yet, I know I’m not forgotten
God has remained by my side
My God turns gravestones to gardens
My scars declare beauty
Ashes to beauty, cuts to grace
His love is in the laughter
Beauty behind the blue sky
Beauty is always left, in nature, sunshine,
Freedom, in yourself; and in God’s love for you.
I can think of all the beauty around me
It makes me happy
And I know the best is yet to come.
Hope in beauty, not that of the sunrise or sunset
But of the love God grants me when all good seems gone.
Because grace is not gone
I cannot do enough good to sow a perfect world
Brokenness remains, but there is beauty in the healed scars.
I can still love kindness and walk with my God.
Adventure With Brendan 
I remind myself that there is a difference between the “temporal” and the “eternal”,…
when our temporal existence/experience is going along in “a pretty good groove”, I have learned to be grateful/thankful for that ~ which is an improvement on “taking these things for granted”,… and I enjoy leaning on the “eternal” and inspirational backdrop that God provides,…
when things get more “stirred up” in our temporal situations, as we are experiencing more acutely in these stressing times, I remind myself that “this too shall pass”, and that God preserves (on one side or other of the “veil”) that which is His,… my weakness will never be a match for His strength, but I can pray and have confidence “in Him”,… there are “chaos” factors and various types of storms at work in this temporal realm, but God “is not the author of confusion”, and He can give me “His peace” internally, while we wait for the storms to pass,…
what the “message(s)” might be for each one, in all this, as they face, endure and deal with these struggles, could run a gamut of possibilities, that only God will understand fully and appropriately,… some “issues” might pertain to various things that do affect our temporal conditions on this earth,… but perhaps even more pressing and significant, could be facing the “eternal” questions that times of dealing with such difficult challenges will inevitably bring to our awareness,…
” … For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” 6 So we may boldly say:
“The Lord is my helper;
I will not fear.
What can man do to me?” ”
Hebrews 13:5,6
Absolutely!! He will never leave us and he never loses a battle. He is fighting for us!
I enjoy looking at “Creation”, accepting that God has made everything that is, and that it is Good,… in regarding the effect of what we call “the devil”, a prideful belligerent “spirit” that rebelled against the supreme wise and loving God, we have a lesser force with a negative “attitude”, who is powerless to actually create anything, but who will exert much “force” to try to distort what God has already made,… there is no “rest” in the devil, because he has to work so hard all the time (propelled by continuous hatred and resentment), to try to twist what God has done, to make it appear to resemble/(“be”) something else,… so, at the bottom of everything, we can still know that the true essence is something that God has made, but that the devil is trying to warp,…
for example ~ God is Love and sends us love, but the enemy’s jealous force(s) will try to negatively twist that love into hatred and resentment,… he will also try to turn joy into despair, blessing into cursing, peace into turmoil, even life into death,… his jealous negative outlook apparently “knows no bounds”, but his power is limited ~ most especially compared to God’s,…
“faith” helps us to have “eyes” that can perceive the true essence of things, and of God as the Master Creator, the wise and loving Father, the radiance of Truth, Love and Beauty,… in comparison to this ~ no matter how much noise and chaos he tries/pretends to “create” ~ the devil is extremely limited (and he knows it),… the more we understand this, the smaller the devil will begin to look to us, even at his noisiest ~ becoming more like an irritating speck in our eye,… sure, he has done damage, and we can feel sorry for those effects, but the cure is “more of God”, and less of him,…
we know that God hears our cries for mercy and help, because He sent us Jesus, as well as many other blessed helps,… “God is not the author of confusion”, but the supreme God who is Love,… and He calls us “friends”: “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15)
so, when we “see” temporal disturbances and have a lack of peace and rest, we can know that our God is stronger and better than this,… He is our Peace, and “in Him” we have true Love and Rest for our souls,… Our God is the eternal Creator,… He is powerful and Good,… (-:
p.s.: the devil has to work too hard, and his illusory “power” is limited,… it will come to an ignominious end,…