Remember

Moses wrote that we should write the commandments on our doorpost and on our hearts. He said that we should be telling testimonies of what God has done every morning, evening and night. That we should tell them to our children so that one day when they are ready to understand they will ask us why. Why do we do the things we do? Why do we serve this God? Why do we care for the oppressed? Why do we rest when everyone else keeps working? Why are we different?

...because we were once hated and oppressed slaves. And the crazy thing about it is that we walked into it freely. We serve this God because he was the one who reached out his mighty hand and brought us out of the oppression and slavery and into freedom. He brought us into life like he'd promised to us long ago.

Moses wrote deuteronomy at the end of his life. It's the final words and wishes of a dieing man. You can hear the longing in his words. He's longing that these people would trust his words as wisdom. He's longing that these people would continue to walk in faith because he knows how dark the slavery was. He was the only one left from those dark days. He had seen with his own eyes the oppression. It wasn't just a story that he had heard some old person tell. He had lived in it and had felt it's destruction.

He's longing for the new generation to understand.

Over and over he tells them to remember. "don't forget what you have been saved from so that you won't go back!", he pleads.

On the days when you feel so far away from that land of slavery that it feels like a distant dream. On the days when you can't really remember the darkness very well and you begin to forget how it felt to be freed. On the days when you forget that at one point you were freed from the thing that is starting to look appetizing again...

...remember.

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Mourning

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted...

This trip is like a bookend. It's like the end of a section of my life.

It's been a little over a year since I was here. I remember the walkways and the nasty lake and the cluster of buildings and the great piano in the main meeting room.

How I wish that I could jog by the gazebo and hear Emily play something sweet. I wish I could borrow the white mini van and block AP in. I wish I could hear Beverly processing through the things she's been learning. I wish I could work on a prayer card while the parade of speakers carries on. I wish I could go eat outside with my best friend. And I wish that I was bright eyed and heading off on my Great Polish Adventure.

I look back and I think... How much have I lost. I mourn today.

No, I wouldn't trade any of it for anything because I know it's been the road to here--healing and hopefilled life that's been breathed deep into me. I'm being restored. I'm being renewed. I'm being redeemed. But at the same time, there's been such a great loss that I find myself mourning those losses today.

But the hope is this... In my mourning, he is here and he is near. In my weeping, he sees me and holds me tightly in his arms. In my brokenness, he draws near and he accepts me like this--exactly where I am. Exactly how I am. For he is the God of the oppressed, the hurting, the broken, the lost, the fpo dropouts...

He is my God in whom I find rest.

Posted with LifeCast