Recently while reading the Psalms in a month I came across the verse above. To read the Psalms in a month I basically read 5 per day with a portion of Psalm 119 per day. I thought you might like this reminder to cling to God at all times. He is worthy of our praise. He upholds us and accompanies us through all the areas of our lives.
Today may you be blessed by an increased awareness of His Presence!
Come near to God and he will come near to you. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
In David Adam’s book The Cry of the Deer, this is probably my favorite chapter so far. I try to always give proper credits and not quote too much from the books I enjoy. This time is going to be difficult!
You can purchase the book used for $4 or $5.oo. Amazon has it new for $14.00.
Quoting from the Hymn of St. Patrick:
I arise today Through God’s strength to pilot me: God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak to me, God’s hand to guard me, God’s way to lie before me, God’s shield to protect me, God’s host to save me From the snares of devils, From temptation of vices, From every one who shall wish me ill, Afar and anear, Alone and in a multitude.
On page 98 Adam describes the difficulty I have in trying to transcribe my experiences with God into understandable ideas and actual words.
Experiences cannot be captured and pressed into pages of books or reports without losing much of their vitality. Once we try to put them into words, or to preserve them in any way, change takes place. Too often we attempt to write down an experience because we have already lost it. Words cannot replace the reality any more than a photograph can make up for a lost presence. So much that we experience cannot be tied down or captured in any way.
David Adam Cry of the Deer
So you might see my difficulty here. Adam goes on to say “Since this is true of everyday life, how MUCH MORE is it of the Divine Reality?”
When I was first diagnosed with fibromyalgia one of the books I read said that too often we try to put God in a box – a box full of our ideas about God. That author went on to say that if we put God in a box, He loves to flatten the box and make it into a dance floor. Have you found this to be true in your experience? There was another book published forty some years ago entitled “Your God is Too Small” was written by J. B Phillips.
Your God is Too Small is a groundbreaking work of faith, which challenges the constraints of traditional religion. In his discussion of God, author J.B. Phillips encourages Christians to redefine their understanding of a creator without labels or earthly constraints and instead search for a meaningful concept of God. Phillips explains that the trouble facing many of us today is that we have not found a God big enough for our modern needs. In a world where our experience of life has grown in myriad directions and our mental horizons have been expanded to the point of bewilderment by world events and scientific discoveries, our ideas of God have remained largely static. This inspirational work tackles tough topics and inspires readers to reevaluate and connect more deeply with a God that is relevant to current experience and big enough to command respect and admiration.
Perhaps the most powerful quote from the Cry Of The Deer:
Let us remember that creeds cannot satisfy our innermost longings, nor can any book, only a personal experience of Him in whom we live and move and have our being.
David Adam, Page 100, Cry of The Deer
How is your relationship with the Lord God Almighty? Have you tried practicing His Presence one second of every minute like Laubach? Do you talk with Him like the Celts? Is your relationship intimate and constant? Have you tried to describe your relationship in a journal or letter? Do you know Him? Is the Trinity a reality to you or just a far off religious idea?
One of my best Bible teachers ever called all of this “experiential knowledge”. Give yourself to this practice for 3 minutes every morning. In a week or two move to 5 minutes. Build your practice just as you would build a relationship with a new friend.
It has been said that prayer is talking to God. Meditation is listening for His voice. Call it what you want. I know time spent in this practice will never be time lost. Discover the One who loves you best and loves you the most!
My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek.
Reading the entry for April 4 in The Edges of His Ways I came to this verse of her poem and thought you too might benefit from reading.
So individual is His thought For all of us, did one let go The hand of Joy, and, sore distraught, Forget to sing, His heart would know
Amy Carmichael
Father God knows the needs of each child and He is intimately involved in each formation and need. You are known. You are loved. The Almighty cares. Lean on Him for He cares about you! He has a personal walk with you. It will not be like that of any other person. We can share our insights and experiences, but our walk is personal.
Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
I saw an image years ago a way of reminding myself that I can be with the Lord at any time. I can go meet Him at our trysting place. I wrote the poem below as an attempt to capture it.
I cannot take a camera to our trysting place My attempts to draw it are incomplete You meet me there in a sturdy platform room protected, sheltered, made from the wood of Your cross and also like the palm of Your hand where You fold Your wings of love around me
The wooden floor of the platform tree is always smooth and comfortable no splinters, fine weather leaves dancing in holy wind my joy to be there
I stand, lie, sit, sing, weep, wait and always You are there
Occasionally I must place myself upon the altar table Your soul correction treatments are swift and sweet when I yield to You I can make myself miserable imagining what might happen if I yield to you. Awfulizing is never a clear mirror of truth.
When I get centered in silence we often travel down the center of the trunk as if by elevator arriving at the stream of living water that nourishes the tree refreshes my soul brings to my being all things I need
My surrender to this trysting place is sometimes jagged, prolonged, not smooth or graceful
Yet once I give myself to the quiet and arrive I always ponder what spawned my reluctance?
I recently made a Soul Collage retreat. Our assignment was to depict what we think of as Sanctuary. I tried choosing from hundreds of magazine cut outs to show my trysting place. It is a complicated collage but with reluctance I share it with you.
Hopefully as you read the poem you can discern what the collage means. The African tree drew my eye as a place for the trysting platform. The woman’s hands are to depict the power radiating from this trysting place. (If you have ever tried Tai Chi you learned about the power you can sense between your own hands.) I love how the tree trunk is illuminated! And they show how the brilliant blue from the Living Water travels through the trunk and is drawn from the stream. The diver in the Living Water reminds me that there is nothing dark that the Lord cannot discern. He leads me always.
Hope this has given you some food for thought and perhaps a place to begin your own prayers? How would you describe your trysting place with God?
Wordnik says Yeti is a noun An unidentified humanoid animal said to live in the Himalayas and also “a large hairy humanoid creature said to live in the Himalayas.” Lately in America is has taken on the meaning of a tough, insulated container that is able to keep things cold for hours upon hours.
For my birthday last year my sister bought me a Yeti tumbler. I outfitted it with a lid that will accommodate the new silicone straws. It fits in my car cup holder. If I leave it on the counter overnight with some tea in it the next morning that tea is still ice cold.
Then she brought me an enormous yeti type tumbler that does fit in the car cup holder. It is so large it gets in Bob’s way when he is driving. I have not been using that one lately. It also very, very heavy when filled with ice and tea. Good for a long day away from home though!
I have friends who are working in the Himalayas. I would be willing to bet that no person living in that area has heard of an insulated container named Yeti. The ‘hairy humanoid’ is not an image I would associate with cold beverages! Now I do though, since I own one.
Whether you use a drinking glass, water bottle, Stanley mug or Yeti Rambler I hope you can quench your thirst without adding to the environmental impact from millions of plastic water bottles!
Besides, the Yeti is insulated and made from stainless steel. Will likely outlast me!!
When we traveled (I think it was in Idaho?) this photo brought back a song I had heard in my heart many years before.
This is the lyric I heard and finally wrote down in 2016
Rub me smooth Rub me smooth With Your living water Rub me smooth I am a sharp stone Quarried from the earth With Your Living Water Rub me smooth
Allelu, Alluelu by Your living water rub me smooth I am a sharp stone Quarried from the earth by Your living water rub me smooth.
“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn;
Isaiah 51:1 NIV
When I studied this out here is some of what I found.
Standing above the water on a bridge, the water was so clear we easily saw the many stones in the stream bed.
look unto the rock – The ancestors of the nation are compared to a quarry, the Israelites to the stones hewn from it,—a peculiar image found nowhere else
Cambridge Bible for schools and colleges
A river rock is a natural stone that has been smoothed and shaped by the flow of water in a river. Abrasion is a process of continuing the smoothing of rocks by water and by other rocks, making them smooth and round.
Where there is a rough edge. the water’s work is not yet finished.
Abrasion from the water reshapes the rock. What is harder than rock? At times my heart is! Yet that living water flows and shapes and corrects my rough edges until they resemble smooth stones.
I challenge you to choose a stone and carry it in your pocket as a reminder of the Presence of God and the work of the Living Water in smoothing you. Yield to that life-giving work and show forth His glory in your life.
Since childhood I have been fascinated with finding dead vines that have the tendril used to attach to another plant still affixed. It has always been a special pleasure to find one on a walk, especially one that I can collect without damaging the plant.
“Ultimately, Clinging, expresses a radical dependence on God.” So reads part of the cover flap from a wonderful small book about prayer that Emilie Griffin wrote Clinging: The Experience of Prayer The tome continues to impact me many years after reading it. I read it in 1990. It was first printed in 1984.
Contemplative, free, abandoned, authentic prayer is possible for every Christian, whatever his or her state in life; even in the most secular, crowded and busy, high-pressured lives, the peacefulness of prayer is a real possibility.
Emilie Griffin
When we cling to the Lord we are fulfilling his words in John 15:5a “I am the vine; you are the branches.” And how do vines cling to branches? With tendrils of contemplative, free, abandoned, authentic conversation with the Holy One.
Have you wrapped your mind and heart about Jesus lately? Do you choose to make clinging to the Trinity a life style? Did you discuss things with Him like whether to make the rice today? Boil the eggs? Start the laundry? Write a prayer? Run to the store? Write the blog?
I wish I could give each reader a piece of wooden tendril as a reminder to cling to the Lord of Heaven and earth. This is a clinging and dependence that is amazingly good.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. 6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6 RSV
Recently a friend was telling me how her cat dislikes it when she leaves their home. I imagined the cat clinging to her leg like a small child. Jesus never leaves us. Never lets us go out of the house without Him. Can you remember that when you get in your car? Can you imagine the Lord riding with you? There was a saying years ago that went something like “Jesus is my co-pilot.” I always wanted it to be Jesus is my pilot, driver, whatever.
As I learn more and more about clinging to Him, the more skilled I am at realizing that I am never alone. Send your tendrils towards Him. Wrap your mind and your life around Him.
A metaphor seen in many verses of the Bible is the term hold fast or holding fast, meaning “be diligent,” “cling to,” or “take a firm grasp of.” It is based on the idea of gripping tightly to an object.
Holding fast to the Lord means loving Him with our whole being, following Him closely, diligently obeying His Word, devoting ourselves wholly to Him, and serving Him with all our heart and soul.
Holding fast involves not compromising in our relationships, behaviors, or anything that might pull us away from our total commitment to God and obedience to His Word.
When I am trying to cope with unrelenting pain I often tell Bob it is as if I am being ground to powder. Reading Elisabeth Elliot’s book A Path Through Suffering I was blessed by her paraphrase of Job 7:19, 10:8-9.
Can’t you take your eyes off me? Won’t you leave me alone long enough to swallow my spit? You shaped me and made me; now you’ve turned to destroy me. You kneaded me like clay, now you’re grinding me to a powder.
Elisabeth Elliot
Unless you have endured pain that will not let up, no matter what you do or medication you may swallow, you might not get the idea of being ground to powder. It is as if every fiber of your being that was once solid, is being changed to powder, without substance, mere dust.
Early in my diagnosis of chronic illness I came across this quote. It has helped me endure some hours of ceaseless pain, turning loose of my clenched senses and releasing myself to the loving light of my Savior.
O God, grant that I may understand that it is You who are painfully parting the fibers of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within Yourself. -Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
Teilhard de Chardin
While reading the last few days I was reminded (I do not remember in which book) that from dust we came and to dust we will return. Of course, you remember that Jesus also performed a miraculous healing by spitting and mixing it with dust, then rubbing it on a man’s eyes. (John 9) So why not use dust to awaken me to His presence and power even in the midst of pain. Even if it be the dust I call myself?
When you feel as if life is grinding you down to a powder how do you respond? Or do you just react? Elisabeth says of Job on page 52 “A living proof of a living faith was required, not only for Job’s friends, but for unseen powers in high places. Job’s suffering provided the context for a demonstration of trust. … To us who have the New Testament, it would seem that Job had very little to go on, yet he kept on talking to God.”
Job kept on talking to God, even when things looked bleak. In Job 13:15a Job declared, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Have you come to that extent of trust? Have you placed your all on the altar and left it there for God to use as He sees fit?
I had a friend named Char. She was slowly dying of lung cancer. I met her when I was giving a series of group lessons in crochet. She wanted to speak to me alone. We met several times at her house. One thing she really wanted the answer to had to do with prayer. She told me she talked to God all day long about everything. She asked me if she was “doing prayer right.” I assured her that nothing would please the Father more than to be included in every aspect of our life. Elliot pointed out that “Job kept on talking to God.” Are you continually talking to God? Do you invite Him in to your thoughts and activities throughout the day? Once your morning prayers and devotionals are over are you finished with God?
If I let myself feel the pain will I become intoxicated with the pain? Overwhelmed by the pain will my life then become JUST PAIN with no other sensation, value, or purpose? Will I be consumed with gauging the pain sitting in the pain walking in the pain? All my perceptions dulled except to pain under pain in pain pain through and through pain behind me ahead of me pain on all sides of me pain above me beneath me life reduced to pain in every cell pain Sleeplessness because of pain Restless when sleeping due to pain
If I acknowledge the pain will I have fortitude and courage to live beyond the pain, Somehow given grace to override the pain, not censor it ignore it deny it but live a life in the midst of pain always haunted by pain? Pain of bone deterioration, random muscle pain, unwarranted from any strain or excess.
Pain my life drugged or not my partner companion in my genes product of ancestral history or just misfortune?
For years my life has been pain denial pain drugs pain hope pain drained-of-hope pain denial I am afraid that no, the pain will never end, or, even worse, the pain will increase envelop, dictate, control my life.
There, I've written it. Many marvel that I'm so busy try to accomplish so much. They are not acquainted with my relentless task master who drives me on with fear that my capacity to accomplish anything will one day be diminished to near zero.
Jesus awoke in the boat and said, "Why are you so afraid?"
Yet then, through Him, I'll arise a phoenix intercessor on behalf of God's children engaged perhaps in the biggest battle of life to date. A supreme calling more valuable than my do-ings. With bones cracking, muscles aching, nerves shooting red hot signals to nowhere and everywhere outer body diminishing while inner woman draws upon her experience with the living, dynamic, omnipotent Father and she is renewed, remade in His image, inhabited daily, hourly, in every cell of her being by Holy Spirit overshadowed, indwelt in spite of all this carnal container can develop - a woman of God passing through journeying towards home where all sorrow, all tears, and all pain will be no more. Forever inhabited by Holy Spirit in rapturous adoration of His glory peace and mercy. Even so, Lord Jesus, I offer myself a living sacrifice unto You. Renew my mind according to the word and transform even this pain.
The ogre crumbles, rivulets of plaster dust falling from its once daunting facade gathering in powder clumps revealing its paltry nature.
1 Peter 4:19 encourages us to "entrust yourself to your faithful Creator." I pray you and I will both do this constantly regardless of how we feel.
At the beginning of the new year I brought the idea of Philippians 4:8 as a practice for 2024. How is your thinking coming along? Have you been able to pattern the ideas Paul gives us in Philippians?
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Philippians 4:8 NIV
Remember when I wrote it is not just reciting the attributes but actually naming things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, etc. that is beneficial? I find that was easier when I was sitting in a chair recovering. Never to late to return to the practice though! Thinking things that are beneficial to me will help me more than anything else I might think about. A mind running rampant in the negatives is certain to get me nowhere in the Kingdom of Light.
Even though I was frustrated when the therapist said I had lost ground in my recovery I was also thankful for the honesty of measuring range of motion from week to week. It must be difficult for the therapists to have to deliver news like that day after day to various patients. I am thankful for his honesty. My lack of progress was true.
How about you? Have you been able to train your thoughts to things that Paul says are best for us? When you get in a negative thought pattern are you able to catch yourself and turn to the things in Philippians 4:8? I believe that using this practice during my recovery has helped me continue the practice.
If I catch a negative wanting to lodge in my mind (like a nasty fish hook) I turn my thoughts to ideas about that situation or person that are right, pure, lovely, etc.
It is not easy to train our mind, but it is essential if we are to mature as the followers of Jesus. Yes, He loves us just as we are, but He does not want us to stay the same as we have always been. There is very little in my life that I can control, but I am told in Scripture to control myself. Reining in my mind to come alongside the Mind of Christ is a lifetime job. It is probably best to begin by thinking on things that are excellent and praiseworthy. Find at least one example of those. Then try finding examples of one or two others. Paul is not asking us to do something that is impossible to us. This will however take discipline!
Treasures in Plain Sight, A Christian Blog 