Hearing the Music

Highlights

One generation shall praise Your works to another, 
and shall declare Your mighty acts. Psalm 145:4

What has been the highlight of your summer so far—travel? sunshine? time off from work? family? How about the highlight of your life to date—earning a degree? professional success? falling in love? owning your first home? having a child or a grandchild? 

However you answer, may you see God’s mighty acts in your life and tell the next generation like Psalm 145:4 reminds us. I like that verse so much that I highlighted it in my paperback copy of Psalms.

Let me tell you why. 

A highlight of my life happened one summer many years ago when I was still one of the tallest members of the Mosher family. I had a three year old, a two year old, and an infant then. Even though the day I’m remembering was around the first day of summer, this day was one of the darkest of my life. (My story isn’t all sad though, so keep reading til the end.)

That day, I was returning from my parents’ house. My newborn and I had spent the weekend there because it was time to say forever goodbye to my Dad. His body, not quite old, was surrendering to the melanoma he’d been fighting for years. I was weary from the waiting that weekend while we hoped for a miracle. This parting couldn’t possibly be happening already! I felt too young to say goodbye to my Dad, to the Grandpa my children wouldn’t really ever know. It happened though. God gave me the treasure of seeing and hearing my Dad’s final two breaths just after midnight, as Father’s Day came to a close. I wonder if Dad heard the last anguished “I love you”s from my brothers and sisters and Mom and I as he left us. The words of the Doxology took on new meaning, as did thoughts of an eternal Father.   

The next morning, I carried home the burden of grief in my heart and my infant son in my arms. He doesn’t remember that goodbye weekend he’d spent with me or the Grandpa whose name he shares. But I’ve told him the rest of the story and all the wonders God orchestrated for our family so kindly in ways that turned our eyes from the darkness to Him. I’d tell you all of the amazing things that happened over the weekend my Dad died, but this is the Friday letter and not the Friday book, so today I’ll just share one highlight. 

Something glorious greeted me when I got home that morning. The entire flower garden in front of our house, still green the last I looked, was wondrously in bloom. While I was away watching a dear life end, every flower in my front yard had been busy opening, preparing to greet me with beauty as I came from the dark. The sunny petals silently shouted new life, assuring me of the eternal Father’s love and care. 

So you see, it’s not a sad story after all. It was a mighty act, and I thank God for opening my eyes to it and letting me tell it to the next generation.

May God give you eyes to find highlights—even in the dark.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Hide-and-Seek

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
    Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
    If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
Psalm 139:7-8

I was never fond of the game hide-and-seek. I didn't like the suspense of it. Wondering whether I was hiding well enough and when am I going to get found made me anxious. I wanted to get found first to make the suspense go away. Anticipating who was going to jump out of a hiding place at any moment made me never, ever want to be the seeker. 

The countdown and the “Ready or not, here I come!” was stress-inducing and ominous to me. You can probably now tell that I was a very anxious and odd child. 

Yet I find myself similarly playing a sort of hiding game with God as a well-seasoned Christian. 

Hiding parts of who we are is easy to do amongst people. We can choose to not share what embarasses or pains us, even with those closest to us. 

But with God, it’s a very different relationship. There has to be a deep level of denial for us to think we are hiding any part of yourselves from God. Having a selective memory or a guarded history works when we want to present ourselves to others. But God shows up at our hiding places in the hopes of redeeming and healing the very hurts we are trying to hide. He is absolutely for us, not against us.

Knowing this, why do we want to flee his presence? 

We may not feel worthy of God or His help. We’re embarrassed. Ashamed. This may make us want to hide. Or it may cause another reaction, which is to pretend. If we act like we are getting this Christian life correct, God will be so impressed. No need to deal with the unpleasantness of our hidden reality. 

Whether we are attempting to “ascend to heaven” and believe we are working ourselves into a right relationship with God, or we “make our bed in Sheol” and give up and hide, we are ignoring that we are constantly in the presence of God. Our every thought, feeling, and action is seen and known. And I am a very silly person when I pretend otherwise. 

There is no great thing we can do that will impress Him. No grave sin that will make us less precious to Him. He doesn’t want us to be smarter, tougher, or more religious. He wants us holy, and He delights in our feeble attempts at holiness as He does any of our great efforts or sacrifices. 

We can pretend we’ve descended so far into our hiding places that we’ve hidden even from God. But the fact is He loves us too much to not continually seek us and cover us with His grace in the midst of our foolishness.

I can attempt to hide from His Spirit, make my bed in Sheol, throw up my facade and hope that no one will find me. Or I can surrender and resign myself to the truth: Hiding is not only unnecessary, but also impossible. 

The Seeker found me a long time ago. 

Photo by bady abbas on Unsplash

A Calm and Quiet Soul

Summer for our family is full. Full of playgrounds and pools, days at the beach and barbeques with friends, camping trips and evening walks to get ice cream, bubble machines and squirt gun fights. It is my absolutely favorite time of year, but with four children it can also be a time of constant activity and noise. Perhaps that is why Psalm 131 stood out the most to me from this week’s reading, particularly when the psalmist wrote in verse 2 “…I have calmed and quieted my soul...”. It was as if in the midst of all this summertime activity, someone hit the pause button, and I felt a deep yearning within my soul. If you too find your soul longing for calm and quiet, take a journey with me through Psalm 131 to see what this could mean for you. 

A calm and quiet soul begins with humility. The psalmist writes in verse 1, “my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high.” To quiet our souls before the Lord, we must first approach him with humility, like children, recognizing our own weaknesses and dependency on Him, for our need of His grace and mercy. 

A calm and quiet soul has let go of the cares and worries of this world. When hungry, a nursing baby is troubled and anxious. His entire focus is on his own needs, and he makes his hunger known with loud cries until it is met. But the psalmist calls us to quiet our souls “like a weaned child with its mother” (verse 2), a child who is now content to simply lie in his mother’s arms because of the comfort and joy her presence brings. We, too, in approaching the Lord, can give him the anxiousness of our souls and learn contentment by simply being in His presence.  

A calm and quiet soul leads to hope in the Lord. The psalmist concludes his psalm by encouraging Israel to “hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore” (verse 3). When we see the Lord for who He truly is we can pour contempt on all our pride and trust Him in the urgency of our personal cares and worries. We are reminded of all that he has done for us and we can, in turn, have hope and trust in Him for the future. 

Our Sunday services begin with a call to worship from our great and marvelous Lord. May that call this week quiet and calm our souls in the midst of our constant activity and noise, and may we once again together declare our hope is in Him.

Photo by Umberto Gorni on Unsplash