I have started and stopped writing this post about half a dozen times.
mostly because my thoughts are scattered and somehow inconclusive. [*disclaimer*] But yet, here I am.
This week was not a good one for me. From freakouts about the future to car conundrums to money mismanagement....to just a general sense of being at odds with everything around me. Not to mention a general hopelessness that results from attending Natural World (we did a breakout on world hunger this time). All of this spiraled into a big fat glum that happened on Thursday night, the kind that you don't want to remember, the kind that you don't typically blog about.
But this poem was on my mind all last week, and I've shared it before, not because of the form or diction, but because of this honesty and identification that strikes a chord in me:
So, oddly, this week, [this very discordant, un-holy-feeling week] has brought me to the cross. He has come to save us from brokenness and discord. I am aching for His harmony, His poetry; and I can't get it any other way. The world needs it, too.
We need Him to rescue us. And He has, and He will. In this we can have hope.
It's just hard to remember sometimes.
mostly because my thoughts are scattered and somehow inconclusive. [*disclaimer*] But yet, here I am.
This week was not a good one for me. From freakouts about the future to car conundrums to money mismanagement....to just a general sense of being at odds with everything around me. Not to mention a general hopelessness that results from attending Natural World (we did a breakout on world hunger this time). All of this spiraled into a big fat glum that happened on Thursday night, the kind that you don't want to remember, the kind that you don't typically blog about.
But this poem was on my mind all last week, and I've shared it before, not because of the form or diction, but because of this honesty and identification that strikes a chord in me:
touching the unseen
when i pause long enough to listen,
i hear noise rather than music in my soul.
the chords of my heart strain to find the first harmony.
it's there, somewhere in my distant memories,
i hear snatches of it sometimes
in the silences, in the corners, on the outskirts of my dreams.
but my days are all so busy and
my moments are all so heavy, that they pull me down again into minor key.
is harmony even possible anymore in this out of whack, out of tune world?
lead me into the music again.
show me where the breeze of your harmony blows.
for only with your help
will i ever be part of the original song
again.
orchestration.
So, oddly, this week, [this very discordant, un-holy-feeling week] has brought me to the cross. He has come to save us from brokenness and discord. I am aching for His harmony, His poetry; and I can't get it any other way. The world needs it, too.
We need Him to rescue us. And He has, and He will. In this we can have hope.
It's just hard to remember sometimes.
But we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Rom 8:23-25
Oh Antonia, I'm so glad to find Romans 8 at the end of this post! It's one of my go-to passages and I just felt instant joy when I saw it, after thinking the whole time that it was most fitting for your musings.
How appropriate that you came to that moment of deep need on Maundy Thursday. I would encourage you with this thought: the word 'hope' in Scripture is not the hope that we often think of. We associate hope with a sense of what we wish for and thus sometimes interpret Hebrews 11 to say something about being certain of our desires for the future, desires for Heaven. What 'hope' actually means in the context of translated Scripture is something much more profound. Hope is the idea of absolute assurance of that which has been promised. I hope in the Lord in that I know without doubt what He says is true. I am certain of what I hope for because I trust Him fully. Hope is powerful. It is not a simple wish and desire, it's a certainty of that which shall one day be. I hope for Heaven, knowing that Heaven is. I hope that He has my days established in goodness, for I know it to be true.
Antonia, I have watched you grow this past year from afar, seeing you in the intermittent times that we run into each other. What I have seen, over and over again, is a deep current of faith that runs beneath your exterior worries. You have great and mighty trust in our Lord. Perhaps now it is time to rest somewhere else, somewhere beyond faith, in that hope that He has for you only the best, even in the midst of all the everyday worries. Sometimes we feel that disharmony within us and we long for it to return to the melody of creation, but sometimes it's more about Him changing the music to a new song then our disjointed feeling before the Father. Maybe you've completed the sonata and He now seeks to plant in you a concerto. Or a rock opera. :-)
Regardless, hope in those things that He has promised you, as I know you know them and have seen them to be true. You are kept in prayers that you are not even aware of, which is the beauty of Christian community. We are ever-connected in Him. Lay down in His rest for now, hope in His peace.