Category: Faith

Kathy Geary Anderson > Journal > Faith

Beneath the Shelter of His Wings

Posted on by Kathy Geary Anderson

I’ve been memorizing more scripture this year—longer passages instead of a verse here and there. Before you start getting all impressed on me, let me just say it’s been a challenge. Some days I feel like I’m trying to hold onto an armful of greased bowling balls. About the time I get a good hold on one, the others slip from my grasp.

But I’ve realized my being able to recite long passages with Awana-like precision is not the point. My goal from the beginning was to go long and deep into various passages, and that has been accomplished.

As I go over and over the passages I’m trying to memorize, I spend more time thinking about the words. Passages I’ve skimmed through in the past, I now take word by word and am gaining insight I never had.

Recently, I’ve been working on Psalm 91. This has been a favorite of mine for a long time and I’ve memorized portions of it before. It’s a great one for reciting when you are lying awake at night, bothered by a mountain of “what ifs.” (Please tell me I’m not the only one who does this.)

I love the imagery of this verse, the beauty of its parallel structure. But I have to admit, I’ve not always believed the message to be 100% accurate.  Phrases like “no harm will overtake you” or  “disaster will not come near his tent” bother me because I’ve seen very real disasters strike believers and non-believers alike. Believers are not immune to the bad things that happen every day in this world.

I began to ask myself, am I memorizing something that is merely wishful thinking, or can I honestly grab hold of the psalmist words as truth? As I put the words to memory this time, two separate phrases stood out to me: “My God, in whom I trust,” and “His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.”  Yep. Those words again—trust and faithfulness. Once again God reminded me—trust comes from a history with somebody. We trust because the other person has proven himself faithful.

Though no one knows for sure who wrote this particular psalm, Jewish tradition attributes it to Moses. Some even suggest it was written after the incident in the desert with the poisonous snakes.  If you remember, the Israelites were once again complaining against Moses and God. They had even gone as far as to call God’s provision of food from heaven “miserable food” (Numbers 21:5). In response, God sends fiery serpents into the camp and many of the people were dying from snake bites. The people repented and asked for deliverance, so God instructed Moses to make a bronze snake and lift it up on a pole. Anyone who looked on the snake would not die. This story is a wonderful foreshadowing of what Christ did for us on the cross (John 3:14).

So, did the Israelites have a history of God’s faithfulness to draw on that should have led them to trust? Think about the miracles these people had lived through! They’d seen the angel of death strike the first born all around them, but escaped unscathed; they’d passed through the Red Sea on dry ground and turned around to see the mighty Egyptian army drown; they’d escaped death by hunger and thirst as time after time God provided water and food for them in a desert; and most recently, they’d just come from defeating a mighty Canaanite king.  No wonder God was angry at their lack of trust.

As I memorized Psalm 91 again—thinking of it in this context and mulling over those key verses, I suddenly understood what the psalmist was saying. This psalm is not about believers going blithely through life and never coming in contact with any trouble or disaster, this psalm is about our position in Christ when we encounter that trouble.

When we put our trust in God, we are tucked safely beneath his wings of protection. “He is with us in trouble.” He—the God of the Universe—is by our side. And with our God at our side— our God, who has proven Himself faithful, time after time—what do we possibly have to fear? By his death and resurrection, He has already conquered our greatest enemies: sin and death.  What more do we need?

If you are struggling with fear and trust issues today, spend some time on the words of this psalm. Remember God’s faithfulness and rest in the shelter of his wings.

Psalm 91

 Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”

 Surely he will save you
from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
 He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.
A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.

 If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
 no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
 For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
 they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
 You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

 “Because he  loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
 He will call on me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.
 With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”

Never Hike with Double Vision

Posted on by Kathy Geary Anderson

I spent last week in the Colorado Rockies in a portion of the mountains that has been a part of my family’s history since the early 1900s. One of our favorite activities while we are there is to hike to nearby lakes. This year was no different, except I brought along a handicap to my hiking ability.

Several weeks ago I woke up to double vision. Three doctor appointments and an MRI later, I was told that one of the nerves (or muscles) that controls the movement of my eye was weak. In my case, it was the nerve that is responsible for the downward movement of the eye—the one we use when we are reading or walking down a flight of stairs. Luckily, after about nine days, my constant double vision left as quickly as it started, but it often returns temporarily when my eyes are tired.

If you’ve ever hiked in the Rockies, you’ll know you spend a good portion of your time looking down.  It’s necessary in order to navigate all the rocks and other obstacles you find on your path. When we took a short 3-mile hike early in the week, I realized this was going to be a problem.  By the end of the hike, I was seeing double again. But it only lasted a few hours and didn’t hinder me too much, so when some of our group talked about another hike later in the week, I was all in. My husband warned against it. This hike was twice as long as the first, but it was my favorite hike to my favorite lake, so I stubbornly ignored his advice and headed out with the others.

We reached the lake just as a rain shower hit, sending us into the shelter of the trees to eat our lunch. The storm passed and the sun came out, giving my cousin a chance to do a little fly fishing while a few of us climbed up along a beautiful stream that empties into the lake in search of the wildflowers that often hide there.

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All was good until the hike home. As we started down the trail, hurrying this time to beat a second storm, we could hear rumbling in the distance. I quickly realized my double vision was back and worse than ever. Suddenly the uneven logs, wet rocks and exposed roots on the trail became insurmountable obstacles. Yet, when I closed one eye to remedy the problem, I lost my depth perception and was unsure of where to step. Luckily, my sweet sister-in -law recognized my dilemma and slowed down to give me a helping hand.

Our progress was slow, but steady. Because the rest of the group had gone on ahead, there was plenty of time for the two of us to chat. We spent a little while discussing a particularly trying life circumstance she is going through. She told me she was trying not to concentrate so much on the end result, but to focus on the journey itself and the lessons she was learning along the way.

To lighten the mood I asked, “So what did we learn on our journey today?”

We had some fun compiling a list:

  1. Come prepared for rain
  2. Choose a hiking partner you can trust to hold your hand over the rough patches
  3. Take time to stop and enjoy the view
  4. Seek out hidden beauty

And a 5th one which made us both laugh: Never Hike with Double Vision.

All points on the list make great life lessons, but #5 was the one I stopped to ponder. How often do I go through my spiritual life with double vision? How often do I say I believe what God tells me in the Bible and yet respond to life with my old sinful patterns? How often do I buy into the world’s values and wisdom rather than firmly relying on God’s?  In James 1:8 we are warned that “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”  The NLT translates double-mindedness as having our “loyalty divided between God and the world.”

I can vouch for the instability of double vision—both literally and figuratively. When I try to look at the world through both mind-sets, my vision is unstable. Lines between right and wrong are blurred and the obstacles in my path seem multiplied.

Want to know what cures my literal double vision? Looking up. If I keep my gaze focused upward, I no longer rely on my weak eye muscle and my vision clears. Now I know each of you is smart enough to take this analogy to its logical conclusion, so I won’t restate the obvious, but I will leave you with this verse of encouragement:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”  Hebrews 12:1-2a  (NIV) [emphasis mine]

Keep on looking up!

Letting Go

Posted on by Kathy Geary Anderson

I watched my oldest child walk across the stage for his high school diploma last weekend. A proud and bittersweet moment in any parent’s heart, but maybe it’s especially poignant when it’s your first. Whatever the case, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about letting go. For what is parenting, really, other than a long series of “letting go”?

When I mentioned this to my husband, he reminded me that our initiation into the practice of letting go began long before we were even parents. He’s right. During our nine year struggle with infertility, we did a lot of letting go—of dreams . . . of expectations . . . of control. But my first truly memorable lesson in letting go of our son came a few weeks into his life.

I can clearly remember the day we took him home from the hospital. We had strapped him into his car seat and stood there marveling that after all those years of waiting and praying, we had a real, live baby boy in the back seat of our car. I remember Kurt looking at me and saying, “Should we just get in the car and drive as far away as we possibly can?”

I laughed but knew exactly what he was feeling— so many of our adoption dreams had fallen through before. Instead, we did the responsible thing and drove to the lawyer’s office to begin the process of making him legally ours. A few weeks later we got a call from that lawyer telling us she had found the baby’s birth father.  This news was potentially good since it would mean we could tie up all loose ends, but also fraught with fear because the birth father could easily choose differently than the birth mother and decide to parent our baby himself.

I say “our” baby because by then that’s exactly how I felt. My relationship with this boy had been, on my side at least, one of love at first sight. It was as if God had looked into my heart at my most secret hopes and dreams for a baby and delivered them to me in this little guy. As far as I was concerned he was mine, and I wanted to hold onto him with all the white-knuckled intensity I could muster.

After a second call from the lawyer to tell us they’d extended the birth father’s court date by two weeks, I remember sitting on the floor next to my son’s crib, watching his precious face while he slept and arguing with God. How could He possible expect me to let this baby go? No one could love this child like I did. How would they know the special way he liked to sleep, how to comfort him when he cried, the way he liked to swing when he was fussy and the many other special things I knew about him? What if they didn’t love him the way I did? What if it wasn’t safe? How could I let my child go somewhere that wasn’t safe?

God’s answer was clear: “Trust Me,” he said.” I loved this child long before you ever did.  He is my child too. I know my plans for him and whether they include you in his life or not, trust me they will be for his best.”  I held my baby on an open palm that day, my Isaac, choosing like Abraham to believe God’s promises.

Little did I know that moment was merely a training ground for the many parenting moments that lay ahead.

Letting go of his chubby fingers for his first shaky steps across the living room floor.

Letting go of the bicycle seat for that first wobbly ride down the drive way.

Letting go of that small hand for those first tentative steps into the school bus.

Letting go of the car keys for that first solo drive to school.

Letting. Go.

In a few short months, we’ll be letting go again as he takes off for college. I find myself falling back into the mire of the “what ifs.” What if he’s not ready? What if he makes poor choices? What if it’s not safe? The answer remains the same: Trust Me.

And I know now from experience—lots of experience—that I can let go, knowing I’m releasing him into the hand of the One who has proven Himself trustworthy. The One who by his sacrifice on the cross demonstrated a love that never lets us go.

Mountain-sized Problems

Posted on by Kathy Geary Anderson

A drought can be overwhelming, can’t it?

I realize this every time I go out to water my lawn and garden. We live on a large acreage. There’s absolutely no way I could water the hundreds of trees and acres of grass that cover our property. The best I can do is try to maintain a small island of green in the area that surrounds our house. Even then, the battle seems hopeless. Each new day of 100+ temperatures and absolutely no rain takes its toll. Our hydrangeas are wilty, our hostas are fried, and more than one of our potted plants has surrendered completely in spite of my best efforts in triage.  It’s like spitting on a forest fire. The trouble is I’m trying to bring man-made tools to a God-sized problem. No amount of watering I can do could come close to what God could accomplish in one afternoon of rain.

Ever feel like that in your prayer life? Sometimes when I sit down to pray for myself and others, I can feel overwhelmed by the vast amount of hurting and pain in this world. We all have them—those lists of broken relationships, incomprehensible tragedies, insurmountable health issues, and lost and floundering loved ones. The weight of it all can sometimes seem more than I can bear. Then, this week God showed up with an answer to one of my prayers that was so miraculous it caught me by surprise.

What I’d forgotten was I’m not meant to bear these burdens nor struggle to find the answers myself. That’s God’s job. My job is to lay them at his feet in believing expectancy that He can and will answer—sometimes has already answered before I even thought to utter the prayer.

Will you pray with me today?

Dear Lord, I confess my faith is often smaller than the mustard seed, more pitiful than a grain of sand. And yet you answer my prayers—not only answer, but completely blow me away with your awesome power to accomplish the impossible. You’ve promised if we ask in faith, we can tell mountains to go jump in the lake. So I lay my mountains before you—all my impossibilities, all my doubts, all my fears—in  humble expectancy of your goodness and faithfulness to answer and provide. Lord, I believe . . . help my unbelief. Amen.

 

God Is Faithful

Posted on by Kathy Geary Anderson

My late mother-in-law loved the color blue. As a result, my father-in-law would be sure to plant as many blue flowers as possible in their backyard garden. Growing up in south Texas, I was familiar with all sorts of tropical plants: poinsettias, bougainvillea, oleander, hibiscus, but northern plants were all new to me. So when we moved to Nebraska, I was always looking to my in-law’s flower garden for inspiration for mine. One plant especially intrigued me. I found it was actually a wildflower—the blue flax—that my father-in-law would grow from seed. You’ll often see it growing in the ditches around here in late May and early June.

I loved that plant. Not only were the flowers a gorgeous shade of blue, but they were also dainty and delicate and seemed to dance with the slightest breeze. In fact, the blossoms were so fragile that by the end of each day, the plant would be bare, the ground at its base a carpet of blue petals. Yet each morning, when I’d look out at the garden, the plant would once again be covered with brilliant blue flowers. I got so I called them my God’s Mercy flowers because they reminded me of that familiar verse that tells us God’s mercy is new every morning.

Like many familiar verses, I think this particular one takes on even deeper meaning when we look at it in context. You’ll find it in Lamentations shining like a diamond on a very black background. The book is just what it says it is—a lament, a mournful cry, a funeral dirge. The prophet, probably Jeremiah, is in mourning because everything he’d prophesied for the nation of Judah had come to pass. Because of the nation’s sin and their refusal to turn from worshiping other gods, God allowed them to be conquered by the Babylonians. Jerusalem lay in shambles . . . Solomon’s great temple destroyed . . . its treasure plundered. Most of the people were either dead or taken in captivity back to Babylon. The ones who remained barely eked out an existence among the ruins. The nation that had once been feared because of the God who fought for it was now a laughingstock because that same God had seemingly deserted it. Yet in the midst of all this darkness and despair, the prophet penned these verses:

“I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3: 19-23

I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve had a very blessed life. I can’t recall a time when I didn’t know God loved me enough to die for me. My family tree is packed full with godly Christian men and women, and I believe my blessed life, in many ways, is a result of their prayers on my behalf. Yet my life hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. Like Jeremiah, I live in a world that is broken and dark because of mankind’s sin and our desire to worship gods of our own making rather than the God who created us. Here are a few of the dark circumstances I’ve had to deal with:

  • My father was a pastor and a missionary. He was also bi-polar. Those of you familiar with this disease know how difficult life can be for those who suffer from it, or live with those who do. When I was nineteen, my father took his own life during one of his periods of deep depression. . . . We live in a broken world.
  •  My mother, who suffered with health issues all her life, died five years ago from cancer—long before we were ready to see her go. She was my rock, my mentor,  my earliest example of unconditional love and grace, and I still miss her dearly. . . . We live in a broken world.
  • For the past ten years, I’ve watched my beloved mother-in-law slowly slip away from us into the fog of dementia. She passed away last June, but we lost the woman we knew and loved long before that. . . . We live in a broken world.
  • My husband and I struggled with infertility for the first nine years of our marriage. Month after month, year after year, we rode the roller coaster of highs and lows as each new dream of a child and family would grow and then die. . . . We live in a broken world.

But difficult as any of these circumstances were to live through, they do not define my life. They’ve shaped me, grown me, in some ways, made me who I am today, but they did not consume me. My life has been one of incredible blessing because of God’s great love and faithfulness. There was never a moment where I had to tackle these circumstances on my own. He was always by my side—bringing hope, peace, strength, comfort, and in some instances, protection. His mercy and grace were new every morning. His loving arms all I needed to make it through the night.

In the third verse of the familiar hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” the author lists just a sprinkling of the daily blessings we enjoy as believers:

“pardon for sin, a peace that endureth, Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide, strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow . . .”

Day after day, I’ve experienced these blessings, and, like the author of the song, “ten thousand beside.” Because of God’s loving faithfulness, we are all truly blessed.

So, when you see the flax blooming in the ditches and along the roadways this spring, I hope you will remember with me God’s awesome faithfulness and how His mercies are indeed new every morning.