Still Waters

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Artist Sean Shimmel shares an original work and his reflections that inspired him.

 

This illustration was inspired while reading pastor & author Zack Eswine’s book Spurgeon’s Sorrows.

As The Gospel Coalition observes, “He [Eswine] handles Spurgeon carefully, yet provocatively at points, and produces a volume that promises to help pastors and laypeople confront the sad terror of the dark night of the soul.”

Here are some reflections that shaped this piece.

Windy storm: Hymn writer Thomas Moore.

“As still to the star of its worship, though clouded, The needle points faithfully o’er the dim sea,

So, dark when I roam, in this wintry world shrouded, The hope of my spirit turns, trembling, to Thee, My God! trembling, to Thee,— True, sure, trembling, to Thee.”

Lamb: Every Christian and Jesus himself, on our behalf. Incarnation.

High priest. Immanuel. God with us.

Pool/still waters: Psalm 23. Yet, not all still waters still the soul. I thought of dangerous, almost hypnotic, pools such as The Dead Marshes in Tolkien’s Two Towers. C.S. Lewis’ Deathwater Island. The haunted pool in Iron Maiden’s Still Life. The compelling pull of dark sadness. Bunyan’s Great Giant Despair.

Drinking: That universal experience of brokenness and sorrow. As ancient Terence reminds, “I am a man therefore nothing human is alien to me.” Jesus in Gethseme “drinking the cup.”

Two skulls: Adam and Eve, our primal forbears who introduced the global legacy of brokenness and death.

Single skull/crown: Charles Haddon Spurgeon---the Prince of Preachers--as a follower struggler with deep sorrow down deep in the pool. Yet Jesus as the Man of Sorrows fathomed deeper still. Charles found great comfort in knowing Jesus could truly relate to and comfort in his sadness this side of heaven.

Glow: both the dangerous hypnotic pull of despair and luminous power of ultimate hope... Christ has experienced and conquered the deepest sorrows.

……………………….

“Blessed is he who is skilled in heavenly pharmacy and knows how to lay hold on the healing virtues of the promises of God.”

Charles Spurgeon (cited by Eswine)

A Gathering of Prayers

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Virginia Hughes transports us to another era in this morning's musing.

Under the acacia tree, the twelve students assembled at the Bible College for morning chapel. They were starving in paradise. Supplies were so low there was nothing to gather but themselves. 

The one thing left to eat, a cabbage, sat alone in the empty kitchen. Nearby, an empty bag once full of rice, lay flat as an airless balloon. The very last grain of rice had been shaken out days before. 

Shelves were empty. Nary a can of bargain Spam. No salted fish. No baskets of guavas, papayas or mangoes.

My parents were young missionaries in the 1940s, living in the Philippine Islands, shortly after the end of the war. Having recently arrived by prop plane, they were as green as the coconut palms waving a warm welcome in the tropical breeze.

They had come to the fledgling Bible College with a vision that the graduates would be trained, and then settle throughout the islands planting churches and spreading the gospel of Christ. 

Nothing had prepared them for the scarcity of food and bounty of strife at the school. They felt depleted at the onset of adapting to the white hot heat of the islands.

Some of the students had descended into bickering and disobeying rules. Most had fallen behind in their tuition payments. The supply checks from the mission agency were not in the mail at the local post office. They may have been lost or stolen, but either way, the absence of funds only added to the tension.

The two young missionaries joined the nervous group of students. First, it was announced there would be no classes that day. Only worship and prayer on the menu. So they knelt and prayed under the acacia tree. They sang hymns and occasionally someone would read a verse of Scripture. 

The hours passed. A student left and returned with a water bucket from the spring by the river. They were all so thirsty from the heat. 

When darkness fell, they moved inside the dining hall and lit a kerosene lamp. Having fervently prayed, they sat waiting amidst the buzzing of mosquitos, and the chirping of a gecko lizard on the window ledge.

A voice began to weep, and then wail. It was their lead Bible teacher. He was confessing and begging God to forgive him. He lowered himself prostrate onto the floor. " I am a sinful man!" he declared. "I have done wrong. How I have sinned against God."  

A student called out that he too had sinned and begged to be forgiven. One after the other, the group confessed and asked forgiveness, realizing they were all sinners, fallen short of the glory of God. They continued praying until very late.

Wearily, they retired to their dorm rooms, arising the next morning to meet and pray. They continued fasting and praying for two days.

But on the third day, my father announced that the school would need to close until further notice. "We can't feed you. We have no funds to buy supplies. While we wait on the Lord, we recommend you return home and we will send word."

Together they partook a parting meal of shredded cabbage and wild greens fried in a dash of sizzling fish oil. They shed tears as they said their goodbyes. Three students, who had no home to return to, would remain with the missionaries and continue the prayer vigil.

Almost out of nowhere, a neighboring farmer appeared on the dirt road leading up to the school. His carabao pulled a cart loaded with bushels of rice, baskets of fish, egg laying hens, buckets of sweet potatoes, coconuts, bananas, freshly baked batches of Puto, (rice cake) and Pandesal (bread of salt,) the local daily bread. 

He pointed to the load in the cart and asked if they would be so kind as to accept these humble gifts. The group surrounded the farmer exclaiming how wonderful it was that he had arrived. He was an answer to their prayers. 

"Wait, wait, I am here to tell you something," interrupted the farmer. "You are an answer to our prayers. For years we have prayed that God would send workers to help us. Even during the war we prayed, and here you are. We have longed for a church.

"Will you help, with the Holy Spirit, help us be a church?"  The students, my parents and the farmer rejoiced and sang the Doxology together.

They started a church, and the members of the church continued to support the missionaries with helpful knowledge, supplies, and prayer. The Bible college reached its goal to be self-sustaining. 

Future graduates would indeed evangelize the islands and other parts of the world. Today, both the church and the college thrive in Kabakan, in North Cotabato, on the island of Mindanao, in the Philippines.

Let us come boldly to the very throne of God and stay there to receive his mercy
and to find grace to help us in our times of need. (Hebrews 4:16)

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Make upright frames of acacia wood for the tabernacle. (Exodus 26:15)

Lost

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by Cheryce Berg

Lost.

Lost is something that has been taken away or cannot be recovered. Lost is unable to find one’s way. Lost is what all four of these people were. 

I met them all, these four, in just ten days. One at a time, all different from me. Different languages or skin color. Different in what they lost—husbands, homes, hope or all three.

God spoke to me just days before setting them each in my path. He brought me to Hagar, in Genesis 16. Hagar was lost. She fled her home and caregivers, and she was lost in the wilderness.

But then she wasn’t. “The angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness…And he said, ‘Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?’”  She answers, and he gives her a promise for her unborn son. 

Hagar’s response is one of great faith: “So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, ‘You are a God of seeing.’ for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.’” (Genesis 16:7-13)

Hagar doesn’t stay lost. God finds her and God sees her. God speaks to her and gives her a promise. God sees. God looks after those who are lost.

These four that I met, the ones that were lost, have dark, jagged, gaping holes in their hearts.  Holes waiting for hope. Holes that only God can fill. 

God set each in my path for only a short bit. Minutes for one, a few hours for the others. I didn’t get to share with them yet all the hope I have found in Jesus. But I told them about a God who sees. A God who looks after them. A God who has found them in their lost-ness.

My words weren’t perfect. There’s more that can still be said, much more.  But what the Spirit had revealed to me just days before as I drank from God’s Word—that spring of water in the wilderness—I was still bubbling over with inside. I couldn’t help but share it.

God reminded me, and I reminded them. 

If you are lost, know this: He is a God of seeing. He looks after me and you and you. He gathers us to himself. Especially when we are lost.

If you are found, keep drinking deeply from his Word. He will speak to you through it, and you can point the next lost person you see back to a God who sees, a God who knows, a God who saves. My only words of wisdom: Be ready.

A Gathering in October

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By Wil Triggs

October and December are months that make me think of Caroline Hoch—the Caroline behind the Caroline Fund that is set up to help families with the many costs involved in adoption.

December because that’s the month she was born. That’s my birthday month, too. As her great-uncle, we always did something together to celebrate.

A summer birthday could have all kinds of possibilities—pool parties, Great America, a campfire at a park, other things. And Caroline had family members who took full advantage of warm-weather birthdays. But December is cold. Plus, I think Caroline felt a little upstaged sometimes by sharing a birthday month with Jesus.

So I always made it a point to remember and do something with her. It was special and fun for us to share that month. We weren’t born on the same day, so anytime in the month would do. For me, it was a treat to do something with just her, to celebrate that we had both made it through another year, and to look forward to something special in the year ahead. I remember sitting in a darkened movie theater munching on popcorn together, painting ceramics at a paint-your-own pottery shop or eating some of her home-baked cookies, which she seemed to always be baking whenever we went over to her house.

We can’t do that in December anymore, which brings me to the month of October. It was in that month that a car struck and killed her. Since Caroline and her family had moved to Spokane, we heard the news by phone. First about the accident. Then, weirdly, that she was gone. How could it be?

And so it was that we made our way from Illinois to Washington State for the gathering that was her funeral. It was the only time we’ve made our way out there to see family. We’re glad we were able to go, but it still seems dreamlike. Not a nightmare, but a dream where family come together to grieve and love each other.

I remember walking into the funeral home—situated in a park-like setting—and we saw Caroline’s younger brother Elijah, walking and holding hands with people we didn’t know. We called his name, and without saying a word, Elijah broke away and came running to us. We gathered him close, holding tightly to each other, and we began to cry.

This year, as another anniversary comes near, Holly, her mom and my niece, posts this on Facebook:

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“This heart I wear around my neck in October is very special to me. It has little monetary value, but the center heart that fit perfectly there and is now missing was tied around Caroline's wrist when we buried her. It was given to me by the Child Life specialists at Sacred Heart Medical Center. The heart-shaped hole represents the hole in my heart that still remains with one of my babies gone home to Jesus before me. Someday that hole will no longer be there, praise God! But today I feel it deeply. Missing my girl.”

We live in the hope of the Resurrection. It’s great to think of children joining families through the Caroline Fund here at College Church. Every child is a gift, a miracle really, and the element of adoption underscores for me that we are all adopted by God into his family and he is preparing a gathering at his table in his home for us, forever.


Got Any Jesus?

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by Beth Kucera

Every once in a while, I take a turn at using my limited retail selling skills and work a day as a floor walker in the shop in which we sell antiques. It is an established antique store that contains a-little-bit-of-this-and-that. The shop owners like to have dealers staff the shop and I enjoy the odd day out to take my turn wandering from floor to floor to help customers, open display cases and wrap purchases as needed.

Recently while I was wandering around, a customer walked up to me and simply said, "Got any Jesus?" 

That was it. I suppose being a preacher's kid and enthusiastic church volunteer—a more theologically based and creative answer should have immediately come to mind—instead I stared blankly and replied, "Pardon me?"

"Jesus, JESUS—you know THE Jesus—I buy vintage framed pictures of Jesus, the Last Supper or praying or in the boat with the big storm. You know, with his arms open, you know:
J-E-S-U-S.” The fellow was agitated and impatient.

"Yes, yes, I know Jesus, well, yes, let me show you what we have," I replied. He and I headed off to look at the shop's offerings.

What he was looking for and collects are those early 20th century framed prints that used to grace many homes and Sunday School rooms—the artist renditions of Jesus at the table with his disciples or Jesus alone in the garden or Jesus with arms outstretched surrounded by little lambs and smiling. All six-feet tall of handsomeness, complete with brown naturally wavy hair, (always shampooed I might add) and blue eyes and soft pastel robes. That Jesus. All the better if these depictions are in their original frames and in good condition, with no mildew marks and not faded from the sun. The shop had one framed print, even that wasn’t in the best condition.

My insistent customer looked at what we had for sale and said, No, no, I already have THAT Jesus. I am looking for the really unusual Jesus. "

Actually, if Beth’s customer had looked more carefully at Jesus in the boat in the big storm, he would have discovered THAT Jesus Christ, the son of God, whom even the wind and waves obeyed, a unique Savior we can trust with our very lives.