Midweek Music 12/17/14 by Ellen based on With You Now by Ellie Holcomb youtu.be/ZzfCr8QOfYU *note: this was written last week, before the tragedies that have occurred in our community. Rather than adjust the content, I have left it alone. After all, when do we need to know God is with us more than in the darkness and loneliness of sorrow? ---------------------------- I have this sweet sister-in-law. We talk about faith, passions, husbands (all good!), parents and kids. Mostly, we talk about our kids. We are at this stage of life where so much of our theology is being instilled in - and then regurgitated back to us by - our little people. This is both a terrifying and incredible responsibility. So lately, our children share this need to feel and hear God. And we are trying to explain that God is with them even when they cant see or hear Him the way they expect. We are teaching them that we hear God in His Word, we see Him in the lives and prayers of those around us and in the beauty of every gift we have. Needless to say, for three-year-olds, this is not always satisfying. For example, Olivia and I about died laughing last week as I was tucking her in, and we heard from Henrys room: God? God? GOD??! I cant hear you, God! Fast forward to a phone conversation this week with my sis-in-law. She puts her 3-year-old on the phone with my 3-year-old. Their conversation went something like this: Henry, when you talk to God can you hear Him? How do hear Him? (Henry mutters something unintelligible about the dog) Henry, does God talk to you? (I attempt to get Henry back to the conversation, yielding a response to his cousin:) well, I talk to God in my bed and ask Him to make me not have bad dreams. And then in the morning I have good dreams! So thats that. I dont think it was quite the direct answer his cousin was hoping for. But it gave the sis-in-law and me a sweet insight. When Henry prays for God to protect his sleep, and wakes up with no bad dreams, he experiences Gods faithfulness -God with him. And what a blessing to hear your child tell another that God answered his prayer! So why this song by Ellie Holcomb? With You Now has these simple, comforting lyrics. As we near the coming of Christ - Emmanuel: God with us, literally, the with of God - I want to slow, to seek being with Him. To invite God into my dreams, my silence, my reading, my time, my chaos, my sorrow. Slowly, I am learning that it is always, only after I invite Him in that I begin to see and hear. If I never realize that I need Him, what meaning can Christmas really have? if I never invite Him in, how can His coming change me? If I never acknowledge my bad dreams that cause me to cry out, how can I know appreciate His protection and grace? Only when I accept my brokenness -my distance from God - do I begin to see the magnitude of His willingness to descend to be with me. God made helpless babe. Its either a remarkable and life-altering truth, or just a mean lie that makes for a cute nativity scene. This Christmas, will you join me in unwrapping the gift of God with us? Can we with childlike faith call out God? God? -as centuries of biblical families did? As He answered them in that gift of Jesus, He answers us. Making all the broken things and bad dreams come undone: some now, and all in eternity. The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save! Zeph. 3:17 Fear not, I am with you. Isaiah 41:10 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you walk through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. Isaiah 43:1-2
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 04:54:44 +0000
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