Hannah Farver's Blog, page 13

stand

Wrote this in flight to Korea. Sorry for the lateness. Just now dug it up…

Stand forth, O soul.

That's what Tertullian wrote, and I like it. It's better than the slouching, the sliding back, that my soul is so prone to do.

I'm sitting on the plane to Korea. We are nearly 40,000 feet in the air and only (yes, only) 2,292 miles away from Incheon airport. (That's a fraction of the number we started with. Phew.) Having so many hours as empty space for contemplating, I have kept myself shallow. I haven't wanted to think. So I have drowned out the silence.

By watching movies.

Yes, "drowning silence" sounds dramatic—but watching chick flicks can be very dramatic (life and death, even?) when its a method of shirking God.

After all, isn't that essentially why drugs are bad? Why alcoholism is bad?

Isn't the root of every bad thing that it is a shirking from God?

A shirking from reality?

A shirking from giving Him the proper worship?

Every evil thing I have done has been in the act of running away. And everything I grab as a duck-and-cover from God is corrupted by my hiding.

What pulls me back, besides the simple fact of raw time that I cannot manage to fill with any more distraction? Psalm 42 has followed me around this week:

"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God?"

It is a living God we thirst for. I don't know how your mind works, but mine is rather shady. Instead of admitting that I have shirked God, I pretend that we're still speaking. I read my Bible, the same as any old day; I pray, as any old day. Forget that the god I worship in that moment is not the living Most High, but the god of my own piousness.  

Stand forth, O soul. Your thirst is for a God who lives—and not just in the static of your mind; a God who is wholly outside of you, who owns you. You are thirsty for Him. You need Him. He is the wholly Other, not in your power to control.

"Deep calls to deep at the noise of Thy waterfalls; All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me." (Ps. 42:7)

A mysterious verse. What do waterfalls say of God? How does His deep call to our deep?

Simple…but eternally complex. He calls us in. As we know this God, we are brought deep. We are overcome.

We drown. 

And this is beautiful—because drowning in all that He is the very opposite of running. Can we possibly be closer to God than when we are drowning in all that He is? When all that He is overpowers all that we are, we find that all of ourselves, lost, overshadowed, gains more than we could ever search out away from Him.

Stand forth, O soul. God is alive.

"I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead..."

""I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed on a splintered wreck I've come to care for…whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them…""

- Annie Dillard

Photo

"Because He lives, I can face yesterday."

""Because He lives, I can face yesterday.""

- Jared C. Wilson

run.

Our families were camping. I asked to go on a walk. I was about thirteen, so my parents said yes, as long as I stuck to the buddy system. Two of my little sisters' friends—younger girls—asked to come too. We took Sophie, my little schnauzer with the slow stride.

The pine trees grew tall, leaning over and covering the sky above the road. It was an East Texas State Park, after all, known for its trees. But I remember that the trees seemed to make dusk even darker, and our hike along the road quickly became a walk in the night.

I'd seen the park map and knew the road eventually circled, and would bring us back to our campsite in time. So I thought. The girls started to get spooked. The woods were creepy at night. We walked and walked, following the yellow stripes on the park's main road.

Headlights ahead. A station wagon pulls up next to us. The man in the driver's seat doesn't speak. He leers. The girls and I huddle close, scooping up Sophie in our arms.

"Run." A voice in my mind told me (which I now recognize—The Holy Spirit), though a small part of my brain whispered that running would be rude and downright unfriendly.  

"Run," I said aloud. We took off. 
 

I glanced behind us. The man spun his car around. He would see us with his headlights. I grabbed the girls' hands. We jumped into a pile of bushes and brush, cowering low to the ground. I watched the man's car—less than a hundred feet away.

He cut the engine and turned off the lights. Waiting for us to move?

We tried not to breathe, afraid he'd hear us. I strained my ears, couldn't tell if what I heard was him getting out of the car.

It's interesting to me now, remembering that night, how what I remember most is emotion. I remember sending God a panicked prayer. And I remember what came after—while I was running—a deep, crippling fear that God was not going to help.

What if He left us? What if He…won't help?

Years later, this story fits with what I read this morning from John Piper: "…let us trust God for great things in our little faith, and let us not be paralyzed by what is left to be done…"

My first reaction had been despair—and that still rings true for me now. Asking for God for help is easy; asking without a suspicion that He will abandon me is another matter entirely. 

David fought with this same suspicion. In Psalm 42 he laments that God is far away. Fear of abandonment cuts like wounds deep in his bones. His enemies taunt, asking, "Where is your God?" 

But the Psalm concludes in a re-statement of faith. At the end of Psalm 42, God has not yet shown His Presence—but David continues to believe He will:

"Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him,
my salvation and my God."

I remember plunging into the woods, running until my lungs felt like they were going to split. One of the girls and I took turns carrying Sophie, whose short legs couldn't keep up. We kept parallel with the road, tried to walk close to the trees where it was darkest.

It wasn't long before we saw the glow of little pop-up campers. Apprehensive, we stuck close to each other, rounding the corner to the camper labeled "Park Host," near the ranger's station. 

"Will they help us, God? Do you want us to keep running?" 

I don't remember a reply, but it didn't take long for the Park Host to find our parents, and suddenly our long run became just a Stranger Danger story to tell our younger siblings. But whenever there's danger, even these days, the emotion still rises.

What if He's left us? 

But when I ask, "When has ever He left us?" I pull up no memories. We have never for a moment been alone. 

"…let us trust God for great things in our little faith, and let us not be paralyzed by what is left to be done…"

If there is work left to be done, it is not because He has forgotten; it's that He has chosen to wait, or to show His faithfulness and glory in another way.

The commission is to scoop up our mustard seeds and panicked prayers and place them in the palm of God. Because our faith's abundance is not what will win the day. It is His faithfulness, stronger than the fear which cramps our running legs; faithfulness that swoops us up and guards us behind and before.

He is the Giver of Grace. And His kindness doesn't depend on the fearlessness of our running. Thank goodness.

glimpses

I don't remember if I was one of my occasional, solitary winter walks or whether it was perched in the corner of my room. But I do remember what I asked. 
 
"God, you know me. I don't get it. I have a hard time imagining the depth of Your love, let alone believing in it." 
 
It had fit together when I was a kid. But something happens, I think, as time passes.

We feel the need to earn like mad. 
 
Furthermore, the older we grow the more we see love as dangerous. People we love hurt us most. Mom and Dad prove although they're older and wiser, they're still just human. Friends we assumed would stick with us to infinity and beyond, well, move on. 
 
It wasn't one big traumatic event that tore apart my belief in God's love. You could say it was just a slow erosion—it was just another casualty in this big sin-struck mess we'd call an average human experience.
 
That prayer to see love, to really, really see it and know it through every fiber of my being—it was one of those rare prayers where I felt God answer right away. "Yes, I'll show you that." Not audible, but I knew the prayer was in His will.

Since then, a thousand things have happened. Sometimes it felt only like a glimpse of a glimpse. Sometimes it felt like a split-second peep at a panoramic view. The pieces have slowly begun clicking together. God's love.
 
Most recently, God has been dropping hints at what He meant when He claimed me as His child. Of course, it makes sense that He'd put me in a job where I'm surrounded by adoption and orphan ministry. But not leaving it there, He's personalized adoption. He's letting me understand the realness of my adoption into His family. 

What does it mean to be His kid? It's beautiful enough to see an orphan adopted into a loving family; what does it mean for you or me, a messed-up creature of this earth to be adopted by the God-King? For Christ's death to be our adoption fee? What does it mean to be loved for thousands of years—even before the dawning of time itself? To be chosen and cherished since before the earth learned how to spin?

That's the lesson at hand (and the lesson that will probably be at hand for all eternity). And, that's the backstory on me. I'm still just getting pieces of the view.

"The gospel gives me hope, and hope is not a language the dark voices understand."

""The gospel gives me hope, and hope is not a language the dark voices understand.""

- Andrew Peterson

Photo credit: meAutumn leaves in Ilsan, Korea

Photo credit: me
Autumn leaves in Ilsan, Korea 

photos from 한국

photos from 한국:

Photo album: Hope for Orphans Korea 2011.

At an orphanage for special needs children. This little girl...

At an orphanage for special needs children. This little girl latched on to me and wouldn't let go. I didn't want to let her go either…