What do you do when you hear bad news?  News from friends of death, illness, and loss seem to come at regular intervals throughout my week.  In those moments, I feel the sadness and the anger, and I pray for my friends — but then in the next moment, I have to move on to a task or responsibility that is calling my name.  It’s like I bookmark it to come back to it later, and later, it’ll pop back into my mind again but still I don’t know what to do with it.  And what I’ve done with it is not what I should’ve done with it.  It’s not that I’ve cursed the air or God, for that matter, when I’ve “bookmarked” the heartbreaking event, but in leaving the anguish truly untouched, I have left a wound inside and not given it the exposure it needs to heal.

The Bible teaches us how to process difficult events.  It’s those psalms of lament and the imprecatory psalms which cause a little embarrassment and confusion on a regular day but give us guidance for moments such as these.  The psalmists knew how to express their honest feelings of sorrow, doubt, confusion and anger towards God and towards the injustices of this world.  They didn’t hold back even their most appalling sentiments of anger (Psalm 137 has a  prime example of sentiments against an enemy, “Happy are those who seize your infants and dash them against the rocks.”).  They knew that God could handle their anger and their pain.  More than that, I learn from them one other very important lesson:  They took the time to reflect on their sorrow, and so should I.  No, not just reflect but to feel the sorrow and loss.  In facing it, I make space for God to speak.  I invite him to show up in that moment. 

“Oh no!”  I heard Sam say while he and our preschooler went to look at the fish one morning.  I knew what it meant and was saddened when my fears were confirmed.  We had lost one of our fishies.  Our daughter is generally very perceptive to our comments and our moods.  There was no chance of hiding or disguising the situation.  And honestly, I had no plans to.  So I knelt down to her eye level and told her that the fish had died.  It wasn’t swimming anymore.  It was gone.  At first, she didn’t really know what it meant, so she just repeated what I said.  “It’s dead?”  But when she began to really understand what it meant (the fish was just not moving anymore), she buried her face into my chest and said tearfully, “Whyyyy?”  With her voice cracking, my heart broke.  Though I know the theological reasons why, on an emotional level, I don’t really know why — and I wanted to cry too.  After I gave her a big hug and she started asking me why again, I tried to explain that every thing living dies.  I pointed to the roses that she and her daddy bought me and said, “See how the roses are brown now?  They died too.”  She said, “She’s not swimming anymore?”  And I said, “No, she’s not swimming anymore.” 

Later that day, we were talking to my mom, and I told my daughter to tell her grandma that we had just bought some fishies this week.  She informed, “We lost a fish.  It’s not swimming any more.”  That’s when I really knew that she really understood.

Different parents have different philosophies when it comes to introducing the realities of life to their children.  For me, I realize that without understanding death, we will not really understand life.  This was something I realized as I read children’s Bibles to my daughter which skipped over Jesus’ death but illustrated the empty tomb.  I can understand the need to omit age inappropriate material, yet, the omission leaves a huge gap in the whole story.  Without referring to Jesus’ death and why, the empty tomb leaves little impression.  To me, there’s nothing more amazing than the heart wrenching fact that Jesus died and then the thrilling victory that Jesus came back to life again.  When we grasp the death, we truly have reason to sing, “Jesus is alive!  Oh, happy day!”  My daughter can sing those words now but one day, she will truly grasp how happy it truly is — and not hiding the death of our fishie might lead her to just that. 

The gospel is the salvation for everyone who believes (1:16), and this salvation is received by faith alone, not by works (1:17).  

Again, salvation is:
1.  for everyone who believes
2.  received by faith alone, not by works

Paul explains that this gospel reveals God’s righteousness.  A part of what it means that he is righteous is in how he gives an opportunity for humanity to receive that righteousness.  

This “gospel” is the fact that:
1. God is righteous
2. All people are unrighteous
3. Christ’s life, death and resurrection imparts righteousness on all people who believe 

Incidentally, I would add these truths:
4. All who accept this by faith are declared righteous
5. God’s provision of this affirms his righteousness
6. The gospel, therefore, reveals God’s righteousness (in more than one way)

Thus, those who live by faith are made righteous and they truly live (1:17b).  It is the “power” of God because it is able to make you righteous, whereas nothing else can (not works). 

My prayer recently has been, “Search me, God, and know my heart.  Test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”  (Ps 139)

At first, I didn’t really want to pray this prayer.  I was fearful of real scrutiny from God — scared of seeing my sinfulness rise to the surface.  Nobody really wants to be confronted by the truth of their ugly self.  But then I was reminded that “sin is broken” and “Christ is risen” and there is victory.  My guilt does not re-convict me and leave me in a place of desperation.  Sin is broken.  His work of atonement covers any new sin that I see uncovered (amazing!).

When I was a freshman in high school, I wrote a line in a poem that still comes back to me:  “dark black paint stared at me.”  Sometimes I feel as though my sins = dark black paint.  And it is awful — the feeling described in the poem.  The confrontation is terrifying.  Perhaps that is the nuance still attached to having my sins revealed:  terror and entrapment.

And God says, “No, it is not like that.”  Bringing your sins to (his) light results in freedom.

Whenever I feel deep anguish, I always return to Psalm 130.  It begins, “Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord; Lord, hear my voice.  Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.”  I feel a deep resonation with these sentiments.  When I pray over them, I feel like I am identifying with Christians throughout history — and myself from years past.  For, a long time ago, before I was a Christian, I came across this psalm, and every night, I would pray over these words (from v.v. 1-2).  So even now when I re-read these words, a flood of emotions come to me from the past, and I am immediately reminded of how God came through for me… and how with him, there is “full redemption.”

Recently, I received a newsletter from one of my former workplaces.  Just holding the envelope in my hands inspired strong negative feelings, which made me realize that I was still unknowingly holding onto some unresolved hurts and disappointments from my time working there.  To be free from those feelings, I knew I had to identify the root of all my negative feelings (i.e. what incidents led to these feelings?), allow myself to explore the depths of those emotions, and then at last ask God to enter into those moments and bring truth into that situation (i.e. show me how that situation should‘ve been).  These are the usual steps for inner healing.  But I was feeling resistant because it’s often a grueling, time-consuming process.

Saturday, I attended an inner-healing workshop, and, Sunday, I led a Bible study that happened to be about healing as well.  All this pointed to the fact that I needed to bring this work situation before God.

Sunday night, I had a dream.

In the dream, I was at work.  There, I had decided to work on a project that I felt was an important need.  While working on it, my boss from my first post-college job approached.  As I saw him, I was filled with a feeling of dread.  Was he going to be critical and tell me I shouldn’t be doing what I was doing?  I almost scrambled to find something else to do.  But he came.  When he asked what I was doing, I told him, and he said genuinely, “That’s a great idea!”  Then he told me he had a new, big project for me where I could employ my creativity and even do it from home.  I had the choice of whether or not to do it; it was up to me, and he would pay me extra for this project. 

That was the extent of my dream, but when I woke up, I knew right away that it was God bringing truth to my work situations.  Because, though I had only been thinking about one work place, I have actually had two very negative work experiences.  Both were addressed in the dream: 

1.  In Workplace #1, my boss was very critical and unaffirming.  I felt like my spirit was crushed while I worked there.  In this dream, my boss was actually affirming, and it was genuine. 
2.  In Workplace #2, the work environment was very micromanaged.  I felt like someone was always looking over my shoulder, correcting my work and telling me to re-do it.  In this dream, I was being given freedom to choose, flexibility, independence and an opportunity to be creative.
3.  In Workplace #2, there was a general sense of stinginess.  The obsession with being good stewards of time and money bordered on oppression.  In this dream, my boss was generous and gracious.

As I wrote these three points down and began to journal about my past work situations with specific incidents, I realized that this dream sums up the core issues.  And through it, God speaks to my heart, saying, This is how it should’ve been, Mary Ann.  He wants me to be affirmed, to have freedom to be creative, and to experience grace in relationships. 

Psalm 16:7, “I will praise the Lord who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.”  I love that even in my dreams, God desires to speak his words of love to me.

I am memorizing Psalm 16:8 and having a hard time with it because it says, “I keep my eyes always on the Lord…”  In reality, I know this isn’t true in my life.  If the psalmist David had written, “I will” or “I want to”, that would be truthful for me, but this is a declaration that he already does!  This is my desire, because I know that “With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”

How do you move from desire — and knowing it’s your prayer — to making it a reality?  Perhaps declaring it over and over will drive that stake into the ground. 

Every time I look at the verse, my heart lunges forward.  I want to go from here to there — everything in me surges forward.  But I know I need his help to get there.

My life could most easily be summed up in this one word:  Lordship.  It has been a continual battle for and declaration of Christ’s lordship in my life. 

Psalm 16:2, “I say to the Lord, ‘You are my LORD; apart from you, I have no good thing.’”

When I meditate on this verse, I always emphasize the first ‘you’.  “I say to the Lord, ‘YOU are my Lord…’”  He is my Lord — and not anyone or anything else.  But what does that mean and what does that look like in my life?  I had 27 years of singlehood in which I came at some certain point to grasp what his lordship looked like in my single-minded, devoted life.  But what does it look like now?  After 5 years of marriage and 2 years of parenthood, I can confidently say that I don’t know!

I wrestle with my flesh and my responsibilities on a daily basis.  There’s the tiredness, exhaustion and sheer lazyness.  There’s the endless list of to-dos.  And the enduring longing to spend every precious moment with my baby.  How do I give him lordship over all of these?  And what does that look like?

The deepest depths of my soul knows that apart from him — apart from him — I have no good thing.  So why is it that I spend so many moments and so many days apart from him?  Tasks drive my life rather than my soul-craving.  Why do I live my life apart from him?

Lord, you are my Lord!  Some days, I get this right.  I declare it and I live it with every ounce and fiber of my being.  And I experience all that is good — yes, all that is good – from being united with him.  And I realize in those moments that I cannot bow enough, I cannot worship enough, I cannot honor and exalt him enough.  He is the Lord — he is my Lord — and apart from him, I have nothing good. 

When the psalmist David wrote ‘LORD’, he didn’t just mean ‘sir’.  He was referring to YHWH — the very personal, very intimate, graciously revealed, covenant God of Israel.  And that is who he is.  Lord, you are my very intimate God who has graciously revealed himself to me.  You are my LORD!  Deeply, personally, intimately — why would I ever want to be apart from you when I have known you and you know me?

I never want to be apart from you. 

But how do I make this true, truer and ever-more-so true each new day?

My meditation on Psalm 27 this morning — particularly verse 4 led me to these thoughts:

The Lord is full of beauty.
He is worth seeking,
and he is able to be found.

“One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.”

“The Son is the image of the invisible God…” Col 1:15

This is a powerful statement.

God is invisible.
This is something we all know.
But JESUS is the image of God.

Jesus makes God visible, tangible, knowable and understandable.

When we look at Jesus, we’re able to see the One whom no one has ever been able to see or know before.

I can’t get over how amazing that is.

“Hiiii, hiii, hiii…” I heard the lady behind me speaking in a tone, reserved only for babies.  I knew she was talking to my baby.  I also knew that she wasn’t the one who initiated.  I turned around to find my baby waving her little hand at her.

“Is she being friendly?”  I asked the lady, acknowledging their interaction. 

“Your baby is so smart, she already knows how to say hi,” she responded. 

It was, in fact, very true that my little one was making a sound that very closely resembled the word, “hi.”  I just smiled and pushed my shopping cart farther down the aisle. 

Though this was not the first of such an occurrence, I couldn’t help but continue to think about the incident even as I was on my way out of the store.  My baby says hi to everybody.  She is nondiscriminatory, has no hesitations, no fears and no hangups that cause her to hold back.  She just waves at everyone she sees. Sometimes they wave back at her, sometimes they don’t.  Often, she’ll keep waving and smiling at them until they notice her and wave and smile back.  I have seen the tiredest, frowniest, most unhappiest looking people discard their frowns because she somehow broke through their weary ruminations.  They just can’t help but smile back at a baby who is waving at them with such abandon.  It really amazes me. 

But when people don’t notice her, I often try to help her get their attention.  I do it because I want to protect her.  I imagine that she would feel really sad if they don’t wave back at her.  But then I realized today that it never really affects her when she gets no response.  She has no fear of rejection.  My baby is a completely clean slate.  And I realized that I could definitely learn something from her.  What would my life be like if I had no hangups, no fears, no hesitations?  How would my impact on people be different if I loved with God’s love and with God’s joy with no fear of rejection?  I think I would see the tiredest, frowniest, unhappiest people wave back with great abandon.  How awesome would that be?