Branches and Trees

Musings on Marriage

Month: April 2020

Four Anchors

April 26, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Dear Daughters,

I’ve been kinda crabby lately.  Somedays I just wake up angry.  Dad is annoying me – not intentionally – I’ve just become easily annoyed.  Uncertainty, knowing this world is not what it used to be, the palpable fear and panic in people’s eyes and voices is taking a toll on us all.

Rebekah Lyons summarized my emotions well:

I woke up hoppin’ mad a couple days ago for reasons I couldn’t explain.  Maybe because the adrenaline of a new challenge has worn off, Ground Hog Day has kicked in, the month of positivity and reset is over, and isolation feels indefinite.

We’re all in this pandemic together, but the thoughts we entertain can cause either anxiety and fear or bring us peace.  If I try to look too far into the future and consider what might happen to all of you, your children and our world, I become anxious because the future holds much ambiguity.  But if we’re honest, the future has always been uncertain.  We’ve never had a playbook for the future.  We may have had the illusion of control, but in all reality it was just that, an illusion.

Now, however, the deception is gone forever.  One little virus seems to be virtually ruling the entire world – except for the cool continent of Antarctica. 

How then shall we think?  The thoughts we think become our emotions which in turn drives everything we say and do.

On what anchors for our soul can we truly rely?  Mark Batterson points out in Acts 27, when Paul and many others had been on a ship for 14 days in a severe storm on the Adriatic Sea, there was fear that they would be dashed against the rocks, so …they dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight.

The only true words I know, which can be anchors for our soul, those which have been true for millennium, are out of the #1 Bestseller of all time – The Bible.  Here’s a few anchors I have been dropping in my mind lately in order to keep free from anxiety:

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger,

abounding in love.  Psalm 103:8

Psalm 103 is one of my favorite Psalms, it speaks throughout about how He has brought me out of the pit, crowned me with love and compassion, satisfies me with good things, and forgives all my sins.  Although King David who wrote this song lived 1,000 years before Jesus, his words still ring true today.

My second anchor is:

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are Your ways my ways, declares the Lord.  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.  Isaiah 55:8-9

Since God is the Creator of everything seen and unseen as well as the Creator of me, it is an undeniable fact that His thoughts are higher than mine.  An astrophysicist has estimated our universe to be about 93 billion light years.  Since a single light-year is the distance light travels in one year (around 6 trillion miles) and He has created everything within our universe, I know He’s a lot wiser than I. It’s a bit like comparing my thoughts to an ant’s thoughts – though a trillion times more. He understands many things I cannot even imagine.  I don’t always like or even understand His thoughts, but I believe they are true and good.

The third anchor for my soul is Romans 8:28:

For we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. 

Notice He doesn’t say all things are good.  It’s a well-known fact that bad things happen to good people, life is unfair…  Yet, God is the God of great reversals, He brings light out of darkness, life out of death. Just remember the stories of Joseph, Job, Ruth, Esther, King David and Jesus.  They all went through dark, scary, uncertain times, yet God eventually brought good out of everything. 

Of course there were years of grief, heartache and despair, yet the ending in every single story was good.  Reading the Old Testament stories are a wonderful antidote for anxiety. And since Jesus says he is the same yesterday, today and forever, I believe He will bring good out of this tragedy as well.

And my fourth anchor is 2 Timothy 1:7

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind.

Just repeating this verse gives me comfort.  It reminds me that fear doesn’t come from God – only love, power and a sound mind come from Him. 

All fear is but the notion that God’s love ends,

says Ann Voskamp.

So even though it sounds simple to keep these four anchors in my mind, it is not easy. The dire predictions for the future will come, yet I will – with the help of the Holy Spirit – believe that this world is not my home, I’m just-a-passin’ through. Then my soul is at peace, and amazingly, joy and love slip in the back door.  I will not get annoyed so easily at circumstances out of my control.

In the first book of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Frodo – the bearer of the Ring – laments that a great evil has disrupted his life. 

I wish it need not have happened in my time, he says.

Gandalf responds with both compassion and wisdom:

So do I, and so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

I think I will decide to hang on to the anchors that will steady me in the time of this storm and wait for the daylight. 

Love, Mom

Thanksgiving at the Table

April 9, 2020 / / 2 Comments

Dear Daughters,

This week I have been meditating on how Jesus spent the last few days of His short life here on earth.  I find it quite astounding that the day before he was brutally murdered, he celebrated the Jewish Passover meal with his 12 disciples. 

In Israel, over 2,000 years ago where the Last Supper was celebrated, people walked most everywhere they traveled.  It was common in those days after coming into someone’s home to have a servant wash the guests’ feet.  The dusty roads in first century Israel made it imperative for feet to be washed before a meal since people usually reclined at a low table and dirty feet would be quite evident.

What was surprising the night of this meal, was that Jesus already knew that his traitor, Judas Iscariot, was just about ready to leave and collect his 30 pieces of silver – a reward for betraying his teacher.  He knew Peter was soon to deny that he even knew Jesus, and the other ten disciples would scatter in fear.  Yet, Jesus knelt down in humility and servanthood, took a towel and stooped before each one of those disciples. He washed their feet, all 24 of them, dried them, then walked back and took his place at the table.

I have heard this story many times, so many in fact that in years past I had skimmed over those facts, not paying much attention to them.  But somehow, this year the whole story simply stuns me.  Why would Jesus, the Creator of the world, stoop down and be so kind and generous to his friends who often argued among themselves who would be the greatest in this new Kingdom? 

And then, even though he knew all of the beating, mocking, whipping and nails that were soon to unveil, he took the loaf of bread in front of him and gave thanks.  Gave thanks??

What was there to give thanks about?

 A group of friends who were going to run away in a few hours? 

Give thanks for the Roman soldiers who would soon flog him? 

Give thanks as he listened to his own people shout for his death?

I was just rereading the story of Aslan’s death in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.   CS Lewis portrays the time before the killing of the great Lion:

A great crowd of people were standing all around the Stone Table and though the moon was shining many of them carried torches which burned with evil-looking red flames and black smoke.  But such people!  Ogres with monstrous teeth, and wolves, and bull-headed men; spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants…Cruels and Hags and Incubuses, Wraiths…

Then the Witch gave a wild, fierce laugh.  ‘The fool!  The fool has come.  Bind him fast.’

For many people in that day, and even today, what Jesus did was utterly foolish.  What kind of King would let his people treat him as they did?  A King who loved his people so much he was willing to die in their place.

As Ann Voskamp wisely writes:

God is love – thus He only gets to define love.

And He defines love as cross-shaped, cross-formed, stretched out, formed into a reaching givenness that leaves the heart breathtakingly vulnerable.

True love is willing to open oneself to hurt and heartache – all the while thanking God in spite of all the betrayal, lies and fear showing their ugliness through people in our lives.  We have all hurt others, we have all betrayed friends, we have all told lies to make ourselves look better.

Yet we are all welcomed to come to Jesus, the bridge between God and man. 

If Jesus was able to give thanks on the eve of his death, focusing on the needs of others before his own, surely I can give thanks during this week as we live in a time of pandemic, uncertainty of the future, and lessened contact with those I love. 

Giving thanks, in both times of joy as well as times of anguish, gives voice to the fact of our certainty and belief in the love of our Savior.  Although the world has changed, our Savior has not and is as close as He has always been.

Love, Mom

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